With the exception of level mixing Black Misery and Angel Incarnate are both finished. A Place currently only contains an acoustic guitar track.  A vocal melody will be written for the song when we decide to practice it, but we are not sure if we will add more instruments to the song or not.  A Place was originally written for WYRM and adapted over to the MK Musical Project that only used 1 acoustic or keyboard.  I personally feel it’s a little under orchestrated in it’s current form, and would like to at least brain storm on ideas to fill it out a little more. 

Today we are going to be working on converting more songs over to the GP6 format.  We are planning to do the fully written songs first, and then head into the mostly written area.  This process is going to take a while, but we feel that we are refreshed enough to get a lot of it done.  I’ll post more later on when I’ve finished up for the day.

We really had a lot of files. We deleted probably about 1,000 to 2,000 duplicate and out of date files already, but we decided to go on and get the file structure setup instead of continuing to delete files.  Every day now we are going to go weed through at least one directory in attempts to reduce our archive from around 35,000 files to something more easily managed.  Yes, I did say 35,000 files, but anyway on to the other parts of our update. UPDATE: I was wrong that’s 40,000 files!

One of the main reasons we wanted to do a restructure and file weeding is we upgraded to Guitar Pro 6 for our Notation Software.  While I have very mixed feelings on the program, it was the best thing to do.  After testing out things and learning the new format I am very confident our backing tracks will sound amazing and fit perfectly with our music and tones.

However, there are a few very shitty updates that took the program backwards from GP5, but overall there’s only one thing I really hate about the program.  In GP5 you could switch instruments via instrument mixer right in the middle of a track. So writing or playing along with a song was extremely easy to do as you didn’t have to watch different tracks in the middle of a song.  Now in GP6 you have to put new instruments on a different track.

For anyone lost… When a guitarist playing an electric guitar through an amp wants to switch sounds they step on a box to change from clean to distortion or cut on different effects. It’s still only one guitarist, but the program now acts like you have a different guitarist for every single change other than pickup position basically. This was a very stupid decision on the GP company’s part.

Anyway, let me stop rambling about that. Due to this new format in GP6 we have to take every single one of our songs and tweak every thing about it to get it to work right.  I don’t mind as I love playing with the editor, and working on music all the time.  We have decided to go on and convert what we have of the main originals and covers that we are playing as they are. However, as we come to songs we are looking at them, and figuring out our grand plan for them.  That takes us to… Remembering…

I just happened to pull up Remembering as the first song to convert. I was trying to think of something with more than one tone for a single guitar so I could get the hang of doing the conversions.  While doing the conversion, and tweaking the hell out of the score, I just had string ensembles playing in my head. I know that I don’t want anything overpowering at all in this song, but I’ve find some keys / synth string parts that I’m loving.  For now the keys are following along just adding a little extra padding to the acoustic guitar track, which really really sets it up nicely.  I will definitely be doing an acoustic and strings version without the clean, second, guitar part.

I am also going to be throwing in some vocal melody ideas as I progress through the song.  I already have pre-existing melodies for the first verse and chorus, so it shouldn’t take much to finish them up.

Woah.. Anyway, I’ve been on here writing for almost 30 minutes now.  I need to get back to writing. I’m going to be trying to do shorter updates at a faster pace from now on. Trying to tell about 4 or 5 days worth of stuff really makes me long winded.

\m/ Keep it Metal!

So this morning I get up early early, and paint my 2nd tier for my pedal board. I let it dry for about 2 hours. While I was letting it dry I looked up some Avenged Sevenfold stuff that Jessica is wanting me to learn for as covers. I couldn’t wait the full 4 it said to wait on the paint can. I threw some paper down on the table, cut on some music, and started laying down the velcro top.

Boom my hard drive with all the music I listen to while I work died on me. Pissed me off. Tried running test on it while I finished up laying the velcro. What should of only taken me an hour tops took 3 hours, because of the damn hard drive going out. However, I finished laying the velcro about noon, and fixed the velcro fasteners to the feet of the tier, so it would be removable too.

I got my wires in place and placed it down with great ease. Ah shit! it was rocking I thought I had miscalculated something. I went on and put the pedals on and hooked them up, and then decided to try placing the power supply in a different place. Well look at that! The damn ethernet cable from my PODxt Pro was under the middle leg right in the center. I worked the cable out from under the leg and BOOM! it worked and set perfect! Damn I love this thing!

Ethernet cable? you ask. Yes, Line 6 uses ethernet cables to hook foot boards to their heads, racks, and other devices. Look up Gibson Magic for more very interesting ehternet cable madness. Using a “Magic” guitar you can go as far as to amp up, effect, record, or do anything you want with each individual string! As the saying goes “That is some shit right there!”

So since around noon I’ve been playing guitar, and having band practice by myself. Jessica isn’t feeling too well today. So I mainly played around and re-tweaked my pedals since I had hit knobs during the modifications. I also rearranged the order I placed my pedals in, and it actually worked out great this way.

Finally I got around to song practice.  I pulled up some backing tracks in guitar pro and the set was…

1. So Cold (x2)
2. The Demon Within
3. Carnival Of Horror
4. The Madness (x2) : Re-Write
5. The Madness (x8)

After playing around with The Madness twice I decided to finish up re-writing the solo. Once I finally got that done an hour later I decided to try slowing the fastest parts from 160 to 140, and much to my amazement both Jessica and I loved it slower.  After the new version was finished I practiced getting the new timing down better. I finally got it right around take 6.  The video we recorded is take 8. 

Unfortunately my amp had made it close to 100 degrees in here, and my fingers couldn’t take anymore today.  So I’m out for the day. Hopefully it’ll be cool enough to do something else tomorrow. 

See ya!

• Forums moved to the new location and redone somewhat: http://blissfulmisery.unboundedmusic.com/forums
• Updated Media: Videos to contain videos from Black Misery that are now relevant to Blissful Misery. 

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.

Last week I had a small brain storming session on ways to make the practicing / playing / recording experience better and easier.  What I came up with was another small rearrangement of the studio.  I basically ended up turning turning the singing area around 180 degrees, and putting my pedal board where the monitors were originally. Now all I have to do is uncover my board, plugin my guitar, and flip a few switches to be ready to play for any reason.  By flipping one more switch and turning one volume knob I can add vocals in as well. I can basically be ready to do anything within 2 minutes now.  It used to take me a good 30 minutes to get everything set up and ready to go.  I’m really enjoying this a lot.

Now that it’s so easy to just pick up and play I have finally started my new practice system.  My new method basically consists of playing Blissful Misery, Black Misery, and cover songs all in one big setting using backing tracks from the computer.  I also mix everything up as much as I can to keep it more exciting. Currently the practice list is as follows: Black Misery: The Demon Within, Carnival Of Horror, Angel Incarnate; Blissful Misery: The Madness, Remembering, Dead To The World, Twilight; Covers: Nightwish: Nemo; Breaking Benjamin: So Cold, Home; Metallica: The Unforgiven, Fade To Black, Enter Sandman, Nothing Else Matters.

Now I’m going to get back to that Blissful Misery section of the list.

• The Madness is still being practiced a lot, and the vocal melodies are still in the playing around trial and error idea stage.  I do still need to work on relearning the solo, but everything else music wise sounds great.
• Remembering is another old tune that I love.  I recently had a request to play the song, and decided to add it back to the practice list.  I am going to keep the music the same for the song, but may also add a few string parts.  I have actually started writing a vocal melody for this song, and hope to have it done soon. It feels so good to play this song with the full backing track.  I can’t get enough of it.
• Dead To The World is a song I wrote years ago, but I never got around to playing it much.  It’s a fairly simple song to play guitar wise.  However as I practice it I am also changing it little by little and adding the other instruments into the song.  The song is still a work in progress, but I hope my new method of practice really helps the writing process as well.
• Twilight is currently just a guitar song, but I’ve been working on writing the bass a little along as well.  There are currently no lyrics, but there will be at some point in time.  I absolutely love the guitar for this song, even though it’s fairly hard to manage to pull off a complete full song during practice right now.  Just so every one knows this song has nothing to do with those shit movies and books.  I probably wrote the original guitar parts for this before those books were even dreamed of.

I’m planning on relearning as many songs as possible as fast as possible. This includes all of the Blissful Misery and Black Misery originals, as well as most of the covers previously played by Blissful Misery.  There truly is nothing like playing your favorite songs yourself. During this time I also plan to work on at least one unfinished or new song at all times.

Before I end this I do have one thing to say about the studio.  Currently I have decided to not worry with studio stuff at all until I have pretty much relearned a decent amount of songs.  While I don’t care to record more than one song at a time, I love learning as many as I can at once.

That’s all for now, but I should be back on here to give updates more often now that things are going so well.