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All content © Copyright 2007-2010 Tony Seo |
These are some of the blogs from my MySpace Page. When I get some time I'm going to
add a blog type feature to this page.
| Angels On Fyre Wednesday, November 11, 2009 I figured I would post an update as to where I am with my latest CD "Angels on Fyre". This has been a tough CD to get done. I recorded the first song which is also the title track over a year ago. I guess I am setting higher standards for myself with each song because they have been a lot slower in coming than with my two previous CD's. With the release of 'A Tangle Of Tango', I'm done with the songwriting. Now, the work will be going through the mixes and getting everything right. Of course, there is also the 2 to 3 days it takes for me to work up the artwork for the CD, the CD print, as well as the inside and tray covers. I'd like to get it down and in hand by the end of the year. Time will tell. I am pleased with the overall results. On Soundclick.com, I have put up 5 of the songs from "Angels On Fyre" and they have all done very well on the charts there. Angels On Fyre #1 in Acoustic Rock #15 in Acoustic Main Category Gabriels Reel #2 Traditional Celtic #33 World Main Category Whitecaps On The Susquehanna #3 Contemporary Classical #15 Classical Main Category Winds Of Flame #1 Acoustic Rock #16 Acoustic Main Category Wings From Hell #2 in Acoustic Rock #16 in Acoustic Main Category These songs have also racked up close to 8500 plays there as well. So I'm getting there. I also worked up a title and cover for my next project, titled "Eternity Bridge". Unlike "Last Sun" and "Angels on Fyre", where I had a couple of songs or song ideas left over from the previous CD to give me a little start with, this one I'm going in cold on. But that's the way it is. I want to thank all who have listened to my music and commented as well. I really do appreciate the support. Tony |
| Another Year On MySpace Monday, March 23, 2009 Greetings Well today marks my 2nd anniversary of being here on MySpace with my music. Started off with not a lot, just an old guy trying to make some music out of an acoustic guitar and well, not much has changed in that department. I'm up to 619 Friends, 7613 profile views and 4317 song plays here on MySpace. Over twice what it was last year at this time. I've gotten to meet and listen to a bunch of great folks over the past year, both on-line and in person. Over on Soundclick, I've had close to 5800 plays since I started. The first 3 songs from the new CD I'm working on, Angels On Fyre have been in the top 5 of their respective subcategories and the title track hit No 1 in the Acoustic Rock chart last week. I did a major rework of my MySpace page yesterday, stop on in and take a look see. New profile picture as well, since the beard is now on summer hiatus. I'm 6 songs into Angels On Fyre as of today. I have bunch of ideas for other music as well. The guys from the soon to be famous Wormy Wood String Ensemble have been bugging me about getting their own page as well so that's in the works along with some new music from them as well. I'd like to thank everyone for their friendship and support. The last year has been fun, and well that about as good a reason as any for being here. Tony |
| 2008 or The Year Gone Bye Wednesday Dec 31, 2008 Greetings What a year. Could have been better or could have been worse I suppose. Made a whole bunch of music. I recorded 15 songs this year, not counting the songs that I had started late in last year after releasing 'Forgotten Walls'. Most of which are on my CD for 2008 'Last Sun'. I'm 3 songs into "Angels On Fyre" for 2009 and also have another CD kinda going for some different sorts of things. I played a bunch of places, mostly open mics. But near as I can figure I did at least 60 performances at 8 different venues during the year (yeah I know you "road warrior" types are saying, big deal..but for me it's a big deal). Got to meet a bunch of new and great folks along the way. Got to jam a few times as well. (I even sang, yeah SANG, one song, ain't saying what it was, where it was, or when it was, but the place didn't clear out so...) Even sold a few CD's although not as many as I would have liked. 2009, well I'm going to continue with what I have been doing, musically, but I do plan on expanding things as well. 2008 saw the introduction of the Wormy Woods String Ensemble and well, much as they can be a pain in the rear at times, they will be back this year as well. I did my first recorded song with the Native Flute and that is something I plan on using more this year as well. I also have my first collaboration in the works, well it's been in the works, guys...GUYS!!!, and hopefully that will come together real soon. One of the first songs from 'Angels On Fyre', Whitecaps On The Susquehanna, hit the # 3 spot in the Classical Contemporary category on SoundClick and # 15 overall in the main Classical category. I will have a No 1 this year! I'd like to close by saying thank you to all of you, especially those who have been listening to my music on a regular basis. May the coming New Year be the best one ever, for all of us!! Tony |
| The Cost Of A Creation Sunday, Oct 12, 2008 Greetings I am by nature (Virgo) and by work experience (26 years of PC sales, support and consulting, which I got out of doing a few years ago), something of an analytical type (kinda of an understatement but..) As many and hopefully most of you know, I have been working on a new CD, titled Last Sun. I have been working on it since the end of November of 2007. Baring unforeseen problems, I should be wrapping it up and getting it off to the duplicator's this week. Just a few final mix tweaks and finishing up the art work, is all that is left to do. As I was driving back from a gig today, I got to thinking about how much work and time I had put into this project. So I ran the numbers and this is what I came up with. Total weeks (including this coming one) = 46. Total days = 322. Hours per week, I'm figuring 14 as an average. Some weeks were less, some were more, but factoring in the composition and development time for the songs, as well as the recording and mixing times, I think I'm pretty close. That works out to 644 hrs of time which translates to a little over 16 weeks of work, figuring a 40 hr work week (or should I say the mythical 40 hr work week, because being self-employed for the last 18 years, there ain't no such thing..!!) There are 12 songs on the CD and 50 total minutes of music. That works out to 53 and 2/3 hours of work per song and a little shy of 13 hrs of work per minute of music. Sure there was a lot of learning going on. I did close to 40 recordings to get the 12 songs. I'd sure love to be able to sit down and do a perfect performance each time I record, but as I'm sure that many of you know, that doesn't always happen. I'd like to think I'm getting better and more efficient with the mixing end of it, but there is always something new there. I started to stray a little into the world of MIDI, which despite my computer background, I never had any desire to learn. Maybe I'm doing a lot of things the hard way, but learning what doesn't work, sooner or later leads to learning what does work. The end result, well I think overall it's a strong musical statement. Not 100% perfect down to the last note, but I think all things considered, it came out well. So was it worth it? My thoughts are yes. I'm hoping that other's feel the same. I'm already starting to think about the next CD and what directions it will take. I figure, while the faucet is running, might as well keep filling the glass, cause you never know when the well will run dry. Thanks for reading Tony |
| The Path to "Last Sun" Tuesday, July 08, 2008 Greetings As many of you know I have been working this on a new CD titled "Last Sun" for the past 7 months. I currently have 11 songs done but it needs at least one more to tie everything together. Plus there are a couple of the current songs that I feel need to be reworked and about 3/4's of them I want to re-record to try and get a better sound (and eliminate the odd oops). I'm doing all my recording now on a PC based setup and it's working well. Been a big learning curve to say the least. Not to mention getting the mixing down as well. I recently re-arranged my setup here, mainly to get better placement of my studio monitors, and just in the week that it's been, I'm noticing a big difference in what I'm hearing now verses what I was hearing before. Hopefully all this will translate into a much better final release. Last Sun does have a theme to the whole CD but until I have all my songs finished, well I'll leave discussing that for another time and place. For those of you who are familiar with Soundclick, three of the songs from Last Sun have done very well on the charts there. Angels Attack hit 13 in Rock Unplugged out of 2,191 total songs and 365 in the overall Rock catagory out of 150,196 total songs. Daybreak Awaits hit 10 in Acoustic Rock out of 16,203 total songs and 66 in the overall Acoustic catagory out of 102,649 songs Fyre In The Skye hit 13 in Acoustic Rock and 102 in the overall Acoustic catagory as well. This song has been on the charts now for over a month. So I'm starting to get some recognition out there. But there is still a lot of music left to be written. I appreciate all the folks that have listened to my music and hopefully they will keep listening. And I already have some ideas working for the next CD.... Till the time of next Tony |
| The Journey Of 2007 Saturday, November 17, 2007 Greetings Been a while since I wrote one of these so I figure it was about time, eh? My first CD titled "Forgotton Walls" is winging it's way to the duplicators. Because of lead and shipping times I expect to have it in hand by the middle of December. It is the result of a lot of work. Some times I never THOUGHT it would get done. I had some ongoing guitar issues, some of which turned out to be a bad batch of strings. I ain't going to name names but a set of strings ought to last more than a couple of hours of playing before sounding like rattle crap, I mean it ain't like I'm working on the "Shredder Of The Year" award or anything like that! The other problem was that the guitar was just very temperamental in the staying in tune department as far as humidity and temperature went and that I finally traced down to the fact that the truss rod, which I hadn't touched since I got this one new last spring, had absolutely no tension on it at all. I could have done the first couple of cranks with the wrench using a feather to push it. But that is all better now. Then there was the mixing and the mastering. I spent a good 6 weeks tweaking and redo'ing, burning CD's and listening to them elsewhere. Was a big learning curve at this end. And I know, I should have probably had it mastered properly but the funds didn't allow for that. I'll save that for the rich and famous days (yeah I'm laughing at that thought also so....) For the techo types out there, most of this was recorded at a local studio that was running Cubase 4.0. I had gotten a copy of Cubase SE3 with the hopes of being able to read the files and project files but that didn't work because of the version differences. But since Cubase saves each recorded track out as a Wav file, I was able to rebuild the proejct files at my end. I used Audacity to do the prelimary work on the individual Wav files, like overall volume adjustments as well as doing the panning effects (which were all done manually, something I can "painting the song"). They were then brought into Cubase to make the mixes and do all the EQ work, and reverb and all that good stuff. The final mixes were then brought back into Audacity for the last bits of tweaking. (And in case anyone is wondering why Audacity, I just have gotten to know that program pretty much outside and in over the past 11 months. I'm sure I can do a lot of the same in Cubase but I haven't had the time to do all the learning.) But with the ending of one leg of the journey it's time to start the next one. I have a couple of songs that I had done over the past year that I kept off of Forgotten Walls because they didn't fit musically what I was trying to do with it. The next CD has a working title of "Last Sun". I plan on expanding things musically and genre wise a bit. I put one of the tracks in my music player today. I'd like to thank all that have listened to my work over the past year and here's looking to the next one!! Tony |
