We’ve upgraded to a new version of WordPress, which offered so much extra stuff built into the native theme that we couldn’t pass up on a major update.  After upgrading we customized the native theme to our liking, and even kept a little of the old Madness theme around. Originally we had planned to keep as much of the old theme as possible, but everything looked so good without adding the extra background images that we felt they were no longer needed.  All of the extra modifications would of just been unnecessary work.

The new theme allows us to have new header images, and to randomly display them with each page load. With this feature we can easily have our page looking different and fresh all the time.

We’ve also updated the content of most of the pages on the site, and even separated some of the pages from their original parent sections.  A lot of stuff was listed under Community that we felt didn’t belong there.

More to come:

• Forums here will be deleted.
• New Forums will be setup on the Unbounded Productions server and linked to.
• The theme here will be updated to use a child theme system so we don’t have to constantly customize the theme with every update.
• Songs from Black Misery will be added to our site since the bands have merged.
• New recordings, videos, and extras will be added to the site as they become available, but we hope for them to be available very soon.

Updates:

• The child theme system has now been created and implemented.
• The Forums have been moved.

First off Blissful Misery and Black Misery are basically combining once again under Blissful Misery.  Black Misery’s songs will not become ours as well.

I, Michael, will be playing lead guitar, and maybe doing some singing.  Jessica from Black Misery is joining the band as the lead or maybe co-lead vocalist.  We will be using our notation and studio programs to create our complete songs and then using them as backing tracks for whatever we happen to be missing in the band at the time.  We use a combination of 3 main programs, Power Tab, Guitar Pro, and Sonar PE to do this. In Sonar we use the Studio Instruments soft synths also by Cakewalk to get realistic drums and bass tracks, as well as some strings an key tracks.  We also have a lot of other soft synth instruments at our disposal that we use in studio and as live backing tracks.  At the current time I, Michael, am writing all of the music and vocal melodies, as well as a lot of the lyrics.  Jessica will continue to write lyrics as well probably.

So what’s on the agenda?

Yesterday and today I cleaned up the studio really nicely, and worked a lot on the studio computer. I got the computer running much better again, but may still have to do a complete restart on it at some point to get things to working better.

As for the website I will be working on a customized version of either the Twenty Ten or Twenty Eleven themes for WordPress. I am going to try to get the site to look as close it’s current looks as I can.  The theme we are currently using I personally designed from scratch a few years back for the much older versions of WordPress. The theme has worked very well for us, but the advances in WordPress over the last 2 years has left the theme pretty much obsolete. By using customized version of one of these new themes we will be able to use many new features without having to have old obsolete plugins.  This may take us a few days or even weeks to finish. During this site development stage our site may go offline, look completely different, or even look completely screwed up.  In the end it will be worth it though.

Another change coming to our website is that we are going to be deleting our current forums located here on this server.  We may add or copy the forum over to the Unbounded Productions sever, but either way it will be gone from this server.  In removing the forums from this server we will be able to bring our fans more pictures and content even if they are streamed from the UP server.  As it is we are very very close to running out of room on this server.

E-Mail Updates. We do not use the blissfulmisery.com email addresses at all anymore.  If you for some reason get email from a blissfulmisery.com email address it’s most likely spam that we have no way of stopping.  The best way of contacting the band is via the contact form on the website in the community section.

Old songs and new songs will be played, written, and worked on. We have decided to not abandon anything we have done in the past, because we love playing and listening to those songs.  We may change up some parts of the songs, but we will still work on them.  However, our new methods may end up changing the site contents to only provide information on songs we’ve recorded, or contain information in different ways based on the song’s status. We are going to be working on The Demon Within, The Madness, Remembering, and probably one or two other songs. Also, we are going to be letting our fans pick 3 other songs that we don’t decide on to start with to work on as well.  We will give a list of the songs to choose from when we are at that stage.

Other things we are doing include fixing up equipment and getting things around the studio and office in better shape. My first project of this type is modifying my pedal board to include a second tier that will allow me to actually use the top row of pedals. As it is now the top row is lower than the back of my bottom row, and very hard to get to.  This will make things in practice and live situations much better.

For now that is everything I can think of.  I’ve had another great morning in the studio working on getting things setup, and can’t wait to get more rolling. I will be trying to post more updates and information as they arise.

However, today I am posting to let it be known that Blissful Misery is not dead. I really do not want to give out many other details at this time, but I wanted to let any fans out there know to be aware and watching for new updates to come from Blissful Misery. 

I can go on and say that Black Misery is merging back into Blissful Misery as it only feels right to me.  However, any old songs from either band or anything I’ve personally done in the past are currently going into the Vault Of Misery as I like to call it.  Weather or not we play any of these songs ever again will depend on our mood at the time. I have no idea if we will ever record anything else or ever get any shows to play at all. However, we are doing this for fun, and because my music runs so deep within the blood in my veins that I cannot live without playing.

If any fans out there make an requests we will hear you so don’t hold your requests for recordings or jam videos back.  If we can do it then we will do it, and I NEVER say that I cannot do something music wise… eh… Well except sweep picking… I just do it to damn fast for it to sound right. lol…

Oh by the way. Auditions? We are currently based in Hillsborough, NC. If you would like to jam on some covers (see list below) for an audition let us know. You must have your own gear, and be willing to travel to Hillsborough. We can also possible do a little traveling for some jamming, but we only go between maybe Burlington and Durham / Chapel Hill.  If you would like to audition or even just get together for some jamming let us know via our contact form or call / text Michael (me) at the Unbounded Productions number: 919 360 6268.

For covers to jam to we will play with some Metallica, Breaking Benjamin, 3 Doors Down, Black Sabbath, and Nightwish. If there’s something else you’d like to try ask and well see what we can do with it.

• Metallic: The Unforgiven, Enter Sandman, Master Of Puppets, Fade To Black, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Nothing Else Matters
• Breaking Benjamin: So Cold, Home
• 3 Doors Down: Here Without You, Be Like That
• Black Sabbath: Paranoid, Iron Man
• Nightwish: Nemo

Well I’m out, and planning on having one hell of a head banging rocking out time today with some covers and old tunes.

Today I’m working on the Community Section somewhat.

However, I’ve already done some other stuff around the web on our sites.
I partially updated the Blissful Misery MySpace, and added a new Blissful Misery Band Page on Facebook.
Over the last few weeks I’ve also updated the themes of our Twitter and YouTube profiles.

The MySpace theme will be changed over soon to the new Madness theme like this site currently uses.
Also, our YouTube account may be breaking off from the joint account with Unbounded Productions and the other bands.
If this happens the current YouTube account will remain as ours and new Unbounded Productions and Black Misery accounts will be created. YouTube really isn’t setup for Music Labels to host several artists under one account. If this was the case it would be easy to continue the use of one account.

OK… To today’s updates…

• Added the SocialGrid Plugin to our site which lets us display nice larger button links to our profiles elsewhere.  It’s just under the calendar now
• Added content to the Community: Contact page.  Opted to use a customized from through emailmeform.com instead of creating one from scratch. This will help with our server load.
• Added a new Banners Page under Community: Extras.
• Added content placeholder to Extras: Banners Page.
• Added content to Events Page.
• Added a new Avatars Page under Community: Extras.
• Added content placeholder to Extras: Avatars Page.
• Added content placeholder to Extras: Backgrounds Page.
• Added content placeholder to Extras: Icons Page.
• Added a new Midis Page under Community: Extras.
• Added content placeholder to Extras: Midis Page.
• Added content and placeholder content to Community Page.

That’s all for right now.
Later today and tomorrow I’ll be working on getting some real content in the Extras Section, and hopefully updating the forums a little.

• Avatars: Thumbnail avatars that can be used on forums or websites.
• Backgrounds: Desktop Wallpapers and Web Backgrounds
• Banners: Banner Ads used by fans to spread word of the band
• Icons: Buddy Icons that can be used with AIM
• Midis: Midis of our songs.

Forums

Our Official Forums where the community of fans can gather to discuss any and everything Blissful Misery.

MySpace

Our MySpace Profile with media player.

Facebook Page

Our Fan Page on Facebook

Twitter

Follow us on twitter for plenty of updates about everything we do.

YouTube

Our YouTube page featuring our originals and covers.