OK, this is probably crazy...

[mdlbear]

... but I'm going to try to have the next two albums done in a year and a half.

I have reasons for wanting to get Amethyst Rose done -- at least at the duplicator -- by next August. On the other hand, two years is a long time to wait for the one after that, Hacker's Heaven, especially since that will be more upbeat and have more of peoples' favorite songs in it. Also, I've been feeling particularly mortal lately, and have both cancer and heart disease on both sides of my family. Should have started a decade ago. Oh, right.

On the gripping hand, a lot of the time I spent mostly not working on CC&S was spent learning how to use the tools, trying to figure out what needed to be done and how to do it, working on things like the bonus CD that didn't really need doing, and not knowing when I needed to ask for help. I've done that now. Got the T-shirt (from Oasis), even.

So here's my plan. (And if that phrase calls up an image of the cartoon that has two prisoners hanging on chains from a dungeon wall, well, it's intended to.)

The plan is to have tentative set lists for both albums, all the scratch tracks for Rose, and the most important ones for Hackers done by the end of the year. (That's roughly 120 days, but when you phrase it as "2/week" and remember that they're scratch tracks and that I'm going to be taking at least the week between Christmas and New Year's off, it sounds doable. Doesn't mean it is doable, mind.)

Then I'll be ready to take advantage of the Spring convention season (Conflikt, Consonance, and Baycon) to work on the arrangements and get most of the tracks for Rose done. Which is pretty much what I did this year, except that I was also putting together ABT and thinking I could do the layout by myself.

Getting the tracks done for Hackers will probably require some travel time in the fall and winter, but it's manageable. I'm also better-equipped to manage a long-distance collaboration than I was this time around.

I will also not have the distraction of working on a bonus disk: I'm not going to go there again. Instead, pre-orders will get you access to the collaboration server. I'm currently dithering between ikiwiki, trac, and an extension of my own web-management package, but leaning heavily toward the latter. (Which of course gives me Yet Another Project, but...)

I spent most of my year-end vacation last year working on ABT, hacking on the website, and building the toolchain. When I sat down and analyzed what I've done over the last couple of years, I really did crank out two albums. (Facepalms.) No wonder it took longer than I expected.

OK, you can call me crazy now.

Comments

[kayshapero]

The first time I heard that, I couldn't help looking around to see what had busted loose now.... never mind the fact that there's nothing IN my computer room that makes that sort of noise and hasn't been for decades.