Well I redubbed the drums on “Thing-Ummi-Jig” again just to tighten them up. And yesterday I finally managed to get the first CD of my boxset finished. “A Pocketful of Stars” – the first CD – is done and it is 68 minutes of hard slog over three years with eighteen tracks in total. You’ve heard some of the stuff already and some of the songs have appeared in my audio podcasts too.

What a little beauty!
For the first time ever, I am actually using some mastering software to give the tracks an extra bit of audio sparkle. I read about using such software in “Guitarist” magazine and it really does lift the track, giving extra life and pizazz (never thought I’d ever use that word) to the proceedings. Anyway, the first CD is done. I wash my hands of it. No more editing or juggling tracklists. It is over.
However, I still have discs 2, 3 and 4 to complete. Disc 2, which is coming together rather nicely, is 38 minutes in length, but it is going to be around 40-45 minutes. It’s a different environment to the first disc in that I want the listener to sit down and listen to the whole lot in one sitting, whereas disc 1 is more a cherry-picking exercise with people saying: “Oooh, I like that one” or whatever. So I am not that far off of completing the second, as untitled, disc.
The third disc is the sticker because it is intended to be a CD of vocal tracks. Now I have about 30 minutes of songs that I recorded/re-recorded/revived from the dead, but I am not sure how I am going to finish it. I don’t know. I’ve got lots of words scribbled down, but I am not a very good song writer in the classic sense of the words. And I hate my voice. And I am never satisified with my vocal songs. Ahhhh…but the point of this set is to make the ultimate artistic statement. And then I can sell my music equipment and stop all this silly mullarkey.
The fourth disc is my experimental playground. Mainly soundscaping and looping stuff, I have another 30 minutes in the bag. I am not worried about finishing this because I find it a lot easier to create this kind of dull ambient drone that crafting clever songs.
So I reckon that it’ll be complete in another six months maybe. Who knows? And then there’s the packaging. I would actually like to get this put into a litlte box with each CD having a little LP cardboard sleeve. That’ll cost money, but I have this dream, you see. And dreams often cost money…

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