Thats right! another boring news update...

It's been a while and since I'm sitting here waiting for this song (In Deep) to export, I thought I'd use my time productively to do this, even if no one reads it ^_^;

So upon reading my previous update I did about 6-8 months ago, I spotted this funny segment at the bottom,

"As for next year, it'll be a completely different ball game again as I'll be studying for 3 and a half years to get my diploma in sound production."

I'll start with that.

Just before Christmas in 2011 I finally found a house to move into which was rather close to where I was going to be studying music for the next 3 and a half years of my life.
I found it with some friends from high school years ago and they had the same agenda of study for 2012 and the coming years.

I'll mention now but this place that I've since moved into already is about an hours drive from where I used to live, where all my friends and such are.
Pretty much, I've gone from living in the southern suburbs of South Australia, with it's open fields, higher speed limit roads, less traffic and speed cameras and most importantly, the coast.
I've lived in the those suburbs for my entire life, and this house, the one that I'm in right now, is north of Adelaide.

Built-up suburbia, full of closed spaces, packed roads with slower speed limits and an endless supply of "shitty location" which constantly tops-up everyone with a nice daily dose of shit.

But the real bummer about all this is that I didn't get into the course I wanted to.
And although I could try again and start mid-year I've decided to drop the idea of studying altogether and just keep working with my natural flow, which seems to keep getting a little bit better with each song.

So now, I'm here, stuck in this place until the lease runs out for the house at the end of this year
and then it's back to the south I shall go!

But until then, I'm going to be working on music inbetween the months where I'll be working just to keep my financial situation afloat.

As for the albums and the progress, you might already know that my first two albums are already out, and although I've finished my third album, Star Gaze-R, I cant help but feel like it's not worth even releasing.
I mean, as usual the first drafts of the songs are up everywhere to download for free, but I feel like my music just isnt up-to-par quite yet.
Releasing albums is fine and it's a major achievement and milestone in my progress but I'd like to think of them as "test albums" just so I can prove to myself that I can compose an entire album and have it available to buy from some big store, like iTunes and such.

And although Star Gaze-R has some fairly good songs in it (like Inception) but I just think it would be beneficial to leave it as a "completed album" thats for free on here and soundcloud etc.

As for a fourth album, im thinking of calling it, Synapsis. Or something like that.
I've already got a song that I'm working on for it, it's actually just finished exporting a few seconds ago!

I'm actually really excited about uploading this song because it'll be the first proper time that I've gotten a female vocalist to help produce some nice vocals.
Bloody hell she's a wicked singer and I'm so bloody stoaked with the outcome of this song ^_______^

Anywho, I guess I'll leave you to it.

Heres a link to the vocalist if your interested.
http://www.youtube.com/user/wisa89

Hey guys and those who bother to read through my massive amounts of characters and such.

In recent times I've been slowly but surely building up myself musically and financially in the hope to actually get somewhere.
In alot of ways I have succeeded far more than I have previously thought, I remember exactly one year ago, I had started a new job as a wine-maker/hand at d'Arenberg winery which had slowed me down to almost a complete stop.

I had the ambition and desire to release an album in the year of 2011 but the outlook for that was grim..
I'd come home from a hard days work only to want to sit on my ass and play L4D until It was time for bed and the cycle would continue.

A few good things however quickly emerged from my short 4 months at the winery;
I had learnt that with a little hard work I could buy pretty much everything I wanted, and that's how my Akai MPK 49 came about, I was even lucky enough to get it 50% off as they only had 2 left in the store so I saved a massive $500 and gained a wonderful machine that would later be almost necessary to my composing efforts.

Within the first week of leaving the winery I had released two songs and had even gotten the ball rolling for my first ever album release!
I spent my newly acquainted sleeping patterns sifting through all of my songs looking for anything that could or should be changed, mastered and or other.

After days and sleepless nights I finally got the songs uploaded to a distribution agency "Valleyarm" and the album was paid for to be released onto iTunes.

a month later and it was officially released!

Of course, I didnt expect to get much money if at all, I don't care for it.
I was proud to have gone for something that I truly wanted to happen and I accomplished it.

Well, this is in the past and is pretty much the real starting point of my soon to be career.
Since then I have composed many many more full songs, each one being composed a little better than the last and voila`! Caustic spider was created and is currently on iTunes as well!

I decided to keep to a standard of 15 tracks per album as they were rather expensive on iTunes (I couldnt set the price myself sadly..)

The whole non-negotiable price thing really irritated me, for a number of reasons.
Firstly I didnt and still don't think that my albums, although good aren't really worth the same price as a fully professional album that has had months spent on for just mastering.
And also because I knew that lot of younger folk wouldn't bother buying something that was worth $17 when downloading is far easier...

And that's when bandcamp came into play.
Someone's comment on one of my videos had given me the hope that I could release the same albums, still online but set the price for myself.
And yep, I certainly did! Both Albums, Hot'n'Cold and Caustic Spider are on bandcamp for only $5 an album with the option of paying more if you feel like it.

But not only that but instead of each track being $1.70 to buy each on iTunes they are only $0.50 each on bandcamp.
In my opinion its a far better incentive for those who like my music but don't really have much money to spend, $5 isnt much at all and It really is a much more fitting price than what iTunes offers...

My work on the third album, Star Gaze-R is well under-way with almost 10 tracks done and another 5 that havent been started yet.
You never know, I may even have enough time to release it this year as well.

As for next year, it'll be a completely different ball game again as I'll be studying for 3 and a half years to get my diploma in sound production.
I mean, I'm still bloody proud to have been able to get this far with no knowledge of composition or even fl studio and I've kinda worked it out as I went along, but with some actual professional tutoring under my belt I should be able to produce some outstanding tracks for the 4th album!

Well thats pretty much it for me, I thought it was time for a bit of a bloggy entry for my newgrounds account, I'm barely active on here due to the lack of the site being updated and the terrible amounts of 0-bombers who restrict tracks from being listened to because of their bad rating..
Very sad really...

Anywho, I'll leave you with a link to ym bandcamp if you'd like to take a gander at my albums.

Take it easy guys, check back here in a years time when I feel compelled to do another one of these typing things ^_^

Bandcamp: http://djignyte.bandcamp.com/

Catchas!

-Ignyte
~Tai

The more work I do, the more work I create for myself, or so it would seem.

Reading back on my older blogs I saw that my life was a bit simpler in terms of my music.
I would compose a song and put it on here and thats it.

Now what with a second album that I'm working on, a First album that has been released and many many loose ends that need tying, I'm finding that I've become somewhat consumed in all of this technological frustration..

The reason being, I compose a song, first of all I export it as an mp3 for here and for Soundcloud, I then make another ZGame Editor track and many different automation lines so the visualization changes (Via me making said changes at certain parts/sounds of the song) then I export as .wav, when the mp3 version of the song is finally uploaded, I then place the .wmv of the visualization and the .wav of the song into movie maker (Its shit I know but it does the job) add in some notes, a title and farewell and then I export to youtube. which... takes... for..... freaking..... ever!

Who would've thought that a small 3 and a half minuet video @ 720p would take well over 3 hours to export and upload?! (hence why I'm still awake) sadly I have the kind of mentality where I will refuse to stop working until what I have set out to do is done! no giving up for me!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. My fun doesn't end with the song going on youtube, ooooooh nooo, then I need to send an Advert revenue thingum to youtube stating that all graphics and sounds etc are the result of my solo efforts and that this video and blah blah blah has been produced using so and so programs with so and so licenses and GOD it just goes on and on!

and finally, I place a few links around the net to entice new viewers and such.

lastly, I watch the video on youtube once to ensure that everything is well and that nothing has screwed up.

That's just what I do when I finish one song. but the work doesn't end there, I am constantly working on Album art covers, Album construction (song titles and track positions etc) along with forums, youtube maintenance and other schtuff that requires almost constant attention.

Need I remind you that I do everything myself too. all art work, all sounds all music, all accounts all everything, was done souly by me and no one else. only 1 song has had influence by someone/s other than me and thats the youtube only edition of Re-Living which has been somewhat "Mastered" and has a female vocalist in it which sounds nice but I would have done a better job of finding a vocalist and mastering in my opinion.

recently I actually finished the entire physical copy of Hot'n'Cold! and your probably already wondering "didn't you already do that?" and you'd be kind of right!
You see, I only did the front cover and the inner sleeve with the track names and such. thats it, no spine work or backing or even interior work.
So upon giving birth to more want to work than humanly possible I constructed a number of.... duds and finally made a decent looking one and creating a nifty little method of construction said Jewel Cases.
But thats not all I constructed, I also made the first and currently ONLY physical copy or Caustic Spider!, It's the full Jewel case and everything too!
-Disc Label
-Front Cover
-Sleeve
-Interior
-Front Spine
-Spine
-and backing.
All made! albeit it doesn't look as flashy as it could be if I had a decent printer and some nice paper to go with it but I make do with what I have and work from there.

guh I'm so tired and want to sleep... its 10 past 3 now and the percentage has only gone up by about 2%...

If someone finds my limp body on the floor, let the world know I died whilst waiting impatiently.

OKAY!

So The Album has been officially live for about half a day and everything's going well.

Even thought I swore in my vlog that I would take the rest of the day off (which is mentioned Here on my YouTube)

I ended up working on a mock-up of Physical copies which is the image at the very bottom.
This as well as joining a new forum has been pretty much what's been keeping me busy most of the day.

My Album can be found on iTunes
and my facebook page can also be found right Here.

Thats enough from me for now.

So upon contacting ValleyArm twice, It was confirmed that there was indeed a minor problem.
However the rectified this very quickly and the album has been released to iTunes.

iTunes did their thing and now that album is available online right now!
http://itunes.apple.com/au/album/hotnc old/id431754261

I am VERY happy with this.

So today is the 10th of April, 2011.
Also known as the release date for my Album.

Naturally I went straight to the iTunes store to take a gander, only to find that it was not up...

Upon going to ValleyArm's site (The Joint that's supposed to be distributing my album) I discovered that their servers are STILL Generating the Album, which it has been doing so for the past few weeks!

Upon further examination, It appears that there are 3 steps, Generation of the Album, Upload of the Album and then its up to the outlets to do their thing.
So my Album is still on their first of three stages!

Apon looking even further I noticed a little Asterix, "The release is waiting to be generated and sent to this Outlet. If the status has been Generating for several days or more it is possible there is an issue with your release."

Yeah... good one ValleyArm, can I just note that "it is possible there is an issue with your release" means that there is yet another problem with their shitty, cheap-ass setup.
Or in other words, it is THEIR fault and that there is nothing wrong with my album or the content that I have submitted...

Great, it would seem that by setting the release date a fortnight into the future to ensure that issues like this wouldnt happen, I've just wasted my fucking time and have created hype for something that ISNT going to be available until god-knows-when!

and yes, I've sent an e-mail to ValleyArm AND tried to call them, but seeing as it's sunday no one answered.. I guess all I can do is frantically refresh the page until I see that it's been sent to Apple, or wait for a reply from them...

Guh! this is so bloody frustrating!

So, the other day whilst bored, drunk and randomly sloothing about the nets I stumbled upon a list of Distributors that are Apple certified in Australia (And other countries too)

Surprisingly, there were only 4, so I opened up all 4 in a new tab to inspect the sites, 3 of them were porly constructed and 2 of them didnt even offer new artists to submit their work, you had to manual contact them and then send them a demo...

However one of them had a very professional look and had the ability for self-service sign up and all that.

So I did, I signed up, read their legal BS and yeah, it was all good.
Valleyarm is what they are called

Uploaded my music (which took ages!) and paid for my album to be released on iTunes.
Ive set the release date for the 10th of April.

If your from Australia and are looking to release your album, these guys seem to be the one to do it.

I had no issues, they were very descriptive of what to upload and in what format.

a few key points I found that were god was that.

-I keep 100% of the Royalties and Net income.
-They provided a ISRC number for each track and
-They provided my Album with a UPC Code.

All in all, it cost me around $73 for the UPC Barcode ($32) and the rest for distribution fees to iTunes.
they offered Singles fees and wide Distro to many other places like Amazon and other online stores but that was an extra $160 (which I didnt have)

Its VERY important to know what your getting yourself into when accepting a contract, when signing up your opting in for an annually-based contract which needs to be renewed yearly, which induces another Distro fee.
Also, they only pay you by Paypal payments, and more importantly, they will not pay you anything until you have made $100 worth of sales, then they will transfer the money to you.
I'm not sure what the other guys do, but I have a feeling it's a similar setup.

And finally, I had no option to set the amount I want to sell the album for, which I was rather upset about.
I wanted to sell my first album dirt-cheap to encourage people to buy it and get to know what I do.
but unfortunately it seems you have to set up your own web-shop thing to do that, or find some sort of 3rd party re-seller thats willing to sell your music for a small fee.

Even google/Youtube does this method of not paying you a cent until you have earnt a certain quota (I'm a Youtube Partner)

anywho, thats enough outta me.

I must say that its about bloody time that I got my album shit together and its a bloody good feeling that it's finally going to be available in full ^_^

so.. the thing about music is that, if a song sucks, it sucks and its not spread.
If a song significantly sucks, and I mean, it is on par with Justin Beiber and/or that 'Friday' song by Rebecca Black, it goes Viral, all because it is unfathomably bad!

However, when i comes to songs that one likes, most people dont really spread the word about it, in some cases some people will download the song/s that they like and will listen to them themselves and if the artist is lucky enough, the person may even play your song in their car and with any luck, their friends will like it and ask where they got the song from...

sooo, in other words, word-of-mouth is a damn good way to get more views.

Theres no real point to this post other than bringing it to people's attention the human behaviour towards music and all that jazz..

So, I'm really in the need for some more equipment and software etc to expand my music creativity.
Which is why I'm going to try and begin a Sponsorship program, where if you would like to help me become a better composer and produce better song's you can! by donating whatever you see fit or whatever you have spare.
As a result, anyone who sponsors me will be featured in the 'special thanks' section of my next album, Caustic Spider.

Well, as of December 2010 I begun a full-time job at d'Arenberg Wines in the McLaren Vale Wine area.

Shortly after I begun working there I quickly found that I had almost no time to work on any of my music, which is a shame.

However This past week, I have really forced myself to get into it and make another song as it had been 2 months (according to youtube) since I had actually composed anything.

As I result of this, I seem to have started and never stopped. my 3-days off from work proved extremely useful as I composed 3 brand new songs, Re-submitted a special Youtube ONLY Edition or 'Re-Living' which has been expertly Mastered and comes complete with vocals, as well as an Instrumental of one of my songs.

all of these latest songs will be featured in my current album 'Caustic Spider' which (if my counting serves me correctly) will be Album no2.

Horray, Ive made one album already and it has yet to be released... =_=

I know... It's not very good of me, but I cant help but not find any really good way to sell the High quality versions of my songs anywhere. not to mention that I need to source a mob who can produce Jewel cases and cd prints for the Physical copies (And that's not cheap either).

As far as funding goes, I'm stable.
With a recent lashing-out of AU$500 for an Akai MPK49 Midi controller (Which was down from AU$1000) and some new 'Open' Studio headphones (Legacy PH250) I've noticed how hard it is to have any sort of saving's when your trying to purchase musical equipment and software...
so for all of you music-making wannabe's out there, Fun Fact: IT IS NOT CHEAP!

Heres a bit of a list of the prices of everything to do with my music so far.

-FL Studio (Signature Bundle) $150 (on christmas special) -$150
-FM8 VST Plugin $250 -$400
-Pitcher $10 -$410
////[Keep in mind that those three are only software]\\\
-Akai MPK49 $500 -$910
-Legacy PH250 $80 -$990
-Logitech G35 $150 -$1140
-Korg nanoKontrol $50 -$1190
-WD 320GB External HDD $90 -$1280
-BenQ 23" Monitor $220 -$1500
-Logitech X550 $150 -$1650

I also plan to purchase many MANY more VST plugins, but the are far more expensive than FM8...
Also, hardware wise I still need a Condenser Mic and an external soundcard, some acoustic treatment for my room would be nice as well as another monitor...
ahh, one can only wait and save up the pennies...