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 We deleted probably about 1,000 to 2,000 duplicate and out of date files already, but we decided to go on and get the file structure setup instead of continuing to delete files.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!

I just got everything installed back onto it yesterday, so today it was time for some testing practice style. This morning I pulled out the trusty ole’ silver EC, and started weeding through some OLD stuff. I said to myself “hell man I’m gonna play some of this old shit just for fun.” Boom! Tons of fun and memories came flooding out.

The set consisted of:

• Cold
• Dark Soul
• Born Into Christianity
• The Link
• Lunacy
• The Start
• Waiting (Reaper)
• Tired Of This
• Cycle Of Sins

Like I said old shit, but damn it was fun.  I ended that practice with Cycle Of Sins, which is a huge grooving song.  I admit I omitted several parts, mostly solos, because I just didn’t remember anything about how they went.  It was still great to jam along with those backing tracks.

Of course you know this means something.  I’m going to get busy and write some vocal melodies for Jessica for all of those songs plus The Madness and Remembering.  I have a lot ahead of me, but I’m back to getting that amazing feeling when I write something.  I can’t ignore that. 

With the exception of a very few, every song we have is considered to be in a rewrite or additional writing stage. When the songs are complete enough we will try to do videos of them. I usually rush videos out, because I get so damn excited about playing the song for some reason.  I wish just once I could capture a video of how I really play. Videoing things just make it so weird for me. 

We may have yet another practice later today, but I’m not sure yet. If we do you know I will post about it.

I’m experimenting with two different ideas for adding a second tier to my pedal board  so i can access my back row of pedals over my huge line 6 controller board.  I love the thing, but I can’t turn anything else, but my wah and tuner on. I’m going to experiment with some other setups as well when I pick out the best option for the second tier, but I think I got it pretty much the best way I can get it. 

Oh well off to work some more on it!

As you should know if you’ve read anything from the last few days, I’ve been working my ass off getting things back in working order. The only problem is the heat. I think there’s a little bit of Hell protruding into the studio this time of year.  I’m sitting here now in the studio with it at least 95 degrees in here.  Thanks to a box fan and some cooler morning hours I’ve been able to get all of this work done.

I’ve cleaned up the studio computer, updated this website, and done tons of other stuff as well.  Aside from the U.P. work that I have to do tomorrow I will be spending a few hours tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday hopefully getting in some good practice time.  I’m going to be working on The Demon Within, Nothing Else Matters, The Unforgiven, Fade To Black, So Cold, and The Madness probably. I can’t wait to get back into my practice mode, because I have so much fun. It’s like I lose myself completely when I’m just practicing my favorite solos or jamming on some heavy riffage.

Hopefully, tomorrow or Saturday I will be able to get around to modding my pedal board.  I hate not being able to press the damn pedals with ease. 

Well, it’s way too hot to be trying to sit in here much longer so I’m off of here for now. 

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.

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.

I won’t be in the studio for the next two weeks at least, because I have an extremely busy schedule.  After that I should be able to finish up the song fairly fast though.

I will work on the vocal melody as much as possible today, but it looks like recording guitar is out of the question.  I hope that tonight / tomorrow morning will be a little cooler.  The electric guitar tracks shouldn’t take too long to record, but all of the processing may take a while once the takes are done.  The acoustic guitar parts, if put in the song at all, will be a more direct approach as they won’t be processed as much.

I am still hoping to find a 12 string acoustic sometime soon that I can at least rent to record the chorus and maybe verse parts with as well.  This song sounds so good with all of the guitar parts layered properly.