‘Rogue City’ is my last LP for a while…
Hey Glitch Army, Fabz here aka Megaglitch. I’m excited to announce that my new LP ‘Rogue City’ released on the 25th August 2024. Happy days, but I need to also mention that I’m absolutely cooked! This record has been both fun and a bit of a rollercoaster ride to produce.
In all honesty, ‘Rogue City’ has been a frustrating bunch of songs to record, so I’ll talk a little bit about the album, song writing, recording, mixing, mastering and all the bits in between. I’ll talk about the highs, the lows, and all that good jazz.
Grab your favorite beverage, sit back and enjoy the rant, because I can tell you, creating electronic music might be fun and exciting, but it can also be f**king frustrating at the best of times.
For me at least, it’s frustrating because I have to leave producing music and then come back to it again. In the sense that I run my main online business as a freelancer web developer and digital content creator, then I come back at the start of the summer to start writing and recording new songs. The problem with this is that I have to refresh my skills, and sometimes learn how to do it all over again.
But let’s get back to the music for now. A short while back I decided to remove a lot of my songs off the streaming platforms (Spotify and Apple Music) for a few reasons. As a creator, regardless of the digital medium, I believe artists deserve more for the work they produce. Which is why I am planning on doing the following –
- Releasing singles, instead of another LP, throughout the rest of 2024 and into 2025.
- Centralize everything that I do as a music producer to this website and my Bandcamp page. Although I currently have a few songs, including the new LP, available on Spotify and Apple Music, I may decide to remove them in the future. I’m not 100% convinced that these streaming platforms prioritise the best interests of artists, and nor am I comfortable with manipulating algorithms just to artificially inflate streaming numbers.
Anyhow, back writing, recording, and releasing Rogue City. It was fun, but I’m glad it’s done and I left it to just seven tracks and not 9 that I originally intended. I’ll explain why shortly.
So a little bit about ‘Rogue City’. It is a collection tracks featuring some cool synths, some simple guitar work but mostly instrumental pieces. In places, the album is dark, but I’ve tried to keep it melodic and bright in places. I’ll talk about each track in just a second, I just want to talk about the process I took to producing this LP.
Writing music
Back in January (2024), I started playing around with some chords and melodies for new and a few old song ideas. Some songs I originally wrote for my first LP ‘Endless Echoes‘ in 2021.
After a month or so, I decided it was time to throw some drum tracks down and begin putting these song ideas together. When I’m writing new songs, one thing I like to do is watch a few old movies, or listen to the OST of movies from my childhood. It really helps.
Just as before, most of the tracks on ‘Rogue City’ are instrumental, asides from Bloodline, Firebird 1985, and Die Corrupt which has some spoken words over the music and some old film dialogue diced up.
What really inspired this record, I would say is… nothing. Absolutely nothing. I wanted to just get creative and do something that stemmed from nothing I’ve ever written or released int he past. I don’t know if that makes much sense.
My favorite tracks on the album for sure has to be Firebird, and Midnight Patrol. Midnight Patrol has a lot of twists and turns, an array of warm pads, classic 80s synths, and melodic keys, I love it. The inspiration for Midnight Patrol actually came from a video game that I’ve been obsessed with playing for the past six years called Tom Clancy’s The Division 2.
Firebird 1985 is something very special to me, it’s a melody I actually started putting together almost 30 years ago. Back then, I was playing music on an old Casio Portable Keyboard with a bunch of built in presets. But yeah, this track has sat on my shelf for a while. Although it’s been released on the LP, I’m not done with it yet.
So there you go, I had a blast adding some cool guitar pieces to my earlier experimental songs. I didn’t add any guitar tracks to Dans Len Noir, that was mainly a record of drums, bass and one or two synths. Nothing really that special.
So when I got to writing the final track listing for Rogue City, I had some ideas to include guitars in the songs.
Recording the tracks
The next part was to record the new songs, which again, I had a lot of fun doing.
I started recording in March (2024) with a hope for a June release, but then it was delayed due to work and family commitments. It was looking more like August early September.
OK, so creating the music, what did I use exactly?
Since I use mainly VST instruments and also my trusty Korg Monologue (my only hardware synth), the process was quite easy enough to do.
Hardware synths are recorded directly onto a double track via audio outputs, but I have a library of presets that I’ve created over the past few years with the Korg, which I’ve converted to Midi to use later.
I’m not a pro at sound design by any means, but I’ve certainly loved creating a few of my own presets to use in the music over the years.
For the bass tracks one of my favorite VST to use is the Polysix. In fact, I’ve used the same few bass presets from the Polysix for almost all the tracks. I managed to add some flare and tweak them to fit in with the music with a little phaser, flanger, and stereo.
For the guitar work I use a combination of VST and hardware modeller. I mostly used the modified EVH Cabinet emulator from the MG-30 modeller over some ambience reverb using the Valhalla Shimmer plugin. It worked out quite nicely.
I like to tweak my guitar tracks so that they are in the background and not the main focus of any of the tracks on the LP. The ping-pong effect using the Fruity Delay FL stock plugin was useful too, so nothing too fancy there.
Mixing the songs
I actually do most of the mixing as I go along. I’ve always done this, and then at the end I spend some additional time making final tweaks and balancing things out.
That said, this can be a frustrating back and forth process. I will mix around two dozen versions of a song before deciding which one I actually like. I try not to spend too much time on the same track as ear fatigue can trick me into believing a mix sounds trash when it actually doesn’t. Or most of the time, vice-versa.
I don’t really record everything and then spend hours trying to mix and fix it all, but I know everyone has their own workflow for things like this.
Also by mixing as you go along is a great way to get a better mix at the end of your song. When I’m recording my guitar work for example, I usually dial everything down in the mixer, apply a little compression, FX and that’s about it.
Mastering…
This, as is always the case, is the hardest and most frustrating process for me. I’m still learning. And I will say, I’ve honestly toyed with the idea, so many times, to just hire someone to do it because it really is an art and one that is 100% subjective.
I’m a web and applications developer by trade (the day job), so for me, mastering is a little bit like debugging a thousand problems with website or application code whilst a ton of other problems are stacking up.
But, here’s the thing.
I have to learn to do it the best I can. I’m never going to become a master at it, I just don’t have the time or brain energy for that. But I try to learn as much as I can as I go along. It will take a lot of time, but it interests me so I’ll do what I can, when I can with regards to learning mastering.
I’ve done my absolute best mixing and mastering this record, it’s not perfect by any means. It’s a little harsh and muddy in places, but I look at it as a work in progress. I will continue making improvements to each track until I think I’m happy. And then I can listen to the music and know that I mixed and mastered it the best I could.
There are some amazing videos online too, which has helped me with my mix in particular. The better the mix the easier it is to master, apparently so.
Again, I look at my music as a constant work in progress, even after I’ve released it into the wild, I will continue to improve it. So I will definitely go back and see if I can enhance the tracks on this album or any of the previous records I’ve released.
Rogue City now available for pre-order
So the LP is complete. The album officially released on 25th of August, and it’s available now to order.
My last LP for a while…
Lastly… I have some sad news. This is my last LP for the Megaglitch Project for the time being. I’m taking a long break to focus on other projects and business ventures. In the near future I will release singles only. But that said, I may come back in a few years to write and record another LP. In the meantime, enjoy the new music and thanks for your continued support.
