Identity is now streaming everywhere and on Bandcamp. This is how it was made.

While doing an annual year‑end review of 2024 and planning for 2025, I started jotting down ideas on my whiteboard for a new music project – things that might be fun and interesting to try.

Some ideas were based on tools I wanted to use and/or get more familiar with (Spitfire Audio’s Fragile String Evolutions, Abbey Road Strings, Abbey Road Percussion, Universal Audio’s Luna and mixing plugins, Tone Master, Superior Drummer, Omnisphere, and Dorico). Others were genres I wanted to explore (Texas guitar, Motown‑ish funk bass, gospel chords & changes, a Nine Inch Nails‑style synth piece, an acoustic piece, a Radiohead‑meets‑Soundgarden song, a guitar texture looping piece, and a long textural orchestral composition).

I started by creating an abstraction of how I imagined the album starting and finishing, with some artist references to draw from.

I then fleshed out the abstraction to get an even clearer picture of what happened in between.

The working title was Harvest. I gave myself three months (June 1 to August 31, 2025) to finish it. (Spoiler: that didn’t happen.) For the most part, I stayed true to these abstractions and musical sketches I put together in that first week. 

The album became Identity – nine tracks that start small and elemental (a cappella) and end huge, bombastic, ornate, and broad, with everything in between. To prepare, I listened to and studied artists I’ve long admired: Todd Rundgren’s “Pretending to Care” (for the a cappella piece); Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” (gospel); Ry Cooder, Jedd Hughes, and Lyle Lovett (that lonesome Texas guitar feeling); Joe Dart’s playing on Vulfpeck’s “Dean Town” and James Jamerson for Motown funk; Robert Fripp’s Frippertronics (guitar looping); Nine Inch Nails’ Tension 2013 tour (Pino Palladino on “Sanctified”) and their collaboration with David Bowie (“I’m Afraid of Americans”) for a hard‑hitting synth piece; Ligeti and Penderecki (aleatoric and textural ideas); and Peter Gabriel’s New Blood Orchestra versions of “Signal to Noise” and “Rhythm of the Heat” (which informed my approach to the orchestral piece).

Again, my initial timeline was more than a little optimistic – “Vantage”, the orchestral piece, took on a life of its own. It grew from the Radiohead‑meets‑Soundgarden rock song into a large symphonic piece with a notated score and full orchestral instrumentation. It had so many challenges: compositionally (many metric modulations & meter changes), technically (maxed out rendering memory in Luna), and emotionally (it seemed to never end). It was a massive undertaking.

I created numerous spreadsheets to handle project planning, tracking, and observations along the way – things to remember next time. They were invaluable in helping me to get my thoughts clarified and progress tracked. Here are some screenshots of a few of them.

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Below is the monthly summary of how the whole thing unfolded – the good, the bad, and the metric modulation.

2025

May – Planning & Listening Parties
I spent the first week just listening and imagining. A cappella, Texas guitar, gospel, looped/texture guitar, funk, acoustic guitar, NIN‑style synth, Radiohead‑meets‑Soundgarden, orchestral – I wanted nine distinct genres that would somehow feel like one album. The working title was Harvest. I felt inspired.

June – Songwriting Drill Downs
Structured writing sessions, daily acoustic rehearsals, and “Cafe Show & Tell” (CST) performances for my wife. The Open D piece (I-40) started to feel real.

July – A Slow Month
I dove into the ThinkSpace BBCSO course as well as an InsideTheScore composing challenge. Little direct album progress, but my skills improved.

August – Intensive Writing & Research
Deep dives into Todd Rundgren, Aretha Franklin, Robert Fripp, Ry Cooder, Jedd Hughes, Lyle Lovett, Joe Dart & Vulfpeck, Robert Fripp, Nine Inch Nails, Radio Head, Sound Garden, Peter Gabriel & New Blood Orchestra, as well as the composers Holst, Ligeti and Penderecki. Daily work on all songs in rotation. By the end of the month, I had most song structures as well as full lyrics for the Gospel and NIN pieces. “Yes!!”

September – Daily Rehearsals & Charts
Wrapped up writing of structures and lyrics. Rehearsed all songs six or seven days a week. Started doing deep‑focus rehearsals: Angel section by section for 50 minutes, Fields and Gospel for 30 each, etc.. Lead sheets in Dorico underway.

October – Charts, CST & Logic Templates
Finished charts for Angel, Gospel, and RadioGarden. Restrung all guitars. Created Logic template files for every song – tempo, meters, markers, chord track. Continued performing at CSTs.

November – Production Begins
Recorded scratch tracks, primary guitar parts, and vocals. Re‑amped Fields through my pedalboard – “sounds amazing!” Also added more Spitfire libraries, UAD plugins, and Superior Drummer SDX to my system.

December – Vantage Takes Over
Everything came to a halt due to metric modulation and orchestration issues for Vantage. Eventually figured it out, after losing a lot of momentum. Then completed notation of Vantage – 2nd verse, chorus, strings, bridge, outro, transition. “Made significant progress – feeling good about the piece again.” 

2026

January – Orchestral Scoring & Logic Transition
Exported Dorico MIDI to Logic. Assigned articulations for every instrument. Fixed tempo errors where “.500” had gone missing. Discovered that Horns 1‑4 share samples (legato nightmare). Used Tim Davies’ approaches for string and woodwind arrangements – spread out arpeggios became a lifesaver.

February – Articulation Hell → Breakthrough
Created SHORTS and LONGS track stacks. Then the workflow adjustment that saved me: Humanisation → Quantisation (40%) → Copy to SHORTS → Re‑assign articulation → Delay offset. Applied to every instrument. The result? “Can’t express how relieved I feel … sounds so much better.” I rendered virtual instruments to audio and never looked back.

March – Vocals, Melodyne & First Luna Mix
Learned Melodyne (YouTube and Groove3). Started mixing in Luna, with “The Gospel” being the first song. Discovered clipping before the second chorus – a poorly edited comp region. But then: hardware Manley Voxbox on lead vocal. Huge difference. My vocal recipe became: clip gain → Melodyne → Voxbox → parallel Distressor → Shadow Hills + Pultec. Blackbox on the master bus – “sounds amazing”.

April – Album‑Wide Mix Prep
Mixed Angel, Fields, X9, Us, I‑40, Freedom, and Disintegration in Luna. Built a repeatable template. Added to my plug‑in cheat sheet: AMS doubling, Cooper Delay (default for widening), Oceanway in reverb mode.

May – Vantage Deep Mix, Mastering & Burnout
DeepSeek helped me generate tables for tape machines, console emulations, summing, reverbs, and delays. Then I created a Mix Processing Bus – all submasters → processing bus → trim bus. This let me keep my tone while hitting -6dB peak for mastering. Vantage went through multiple iterations. I was exhausted. I made a Plan B (only Adaptive Limiter) and a Plan A (full Ozone processing). Plan A sounded better. 

June – Submission & Release
June 1st: Submitted the audio files to CDBaby. June 5‑8: I went back and updated Vantage Dorico score with timpani, bass drum, piatti, tubular bells, tam tams. June 9: CDBaby passed inspection – album appeared on Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify and other streaming services. June 11: Set up Bandcamp release. Announced album release on my website.

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Things I Want to Remember for Next Time

• Abstractions for everything! – for albums, songs, lyrics, arrangements, mixes, mastering.
• Parallel processing – work on all songs in rotation. Prevents getting stuck.
• Keeping a project log was super helpful. Often I lost track of what I did and/or when I did something and having the log helped to put things in perspective.
• Whiteboard word dumps – adjectives and emotional arcs before writing lyrics.
• Modeling after other songs (e.g. Afraid of Americans) was super useful
• Songwriting Status Table before notation, huge help!
• Created Chigiana-like spreadsheet to identify everything I might want to do in Vantage. Definitely helped to give clarity.
• While notating challenging parts, determine rhythms first then add pitches
• Having a piano reduction for Vantage was key, particularly for the arpeggios in the WWs.
• Having the Chord Track in Logic was super helpful, even just for reference while playing parts in live.
• Rehearsals: 1) Extended focus (repeat one section at a time until locked) 2) Going over all songs for a couple of months was huge
• Remembering Confidence on opening line is everything
• Performing @ CST (Cafe Show & Tell) – weekly creative sharing. Uncovered every blind spot.
• Re-Amping with two amps rules (Tone Master + Landau = Amazing)
• Stereo pair mic’ing for room tones worked beautifully (watch for positioning and phase coherence)
• Tim Davies approaches – string & woodwind arrangements, spread out arpeggios.
• Shorts/Longs + delay offset – essential for realistic sample orchestras.
• Remember to keep original MIDI tracks with Virtual Instruments removed after bouncing to audio. Hide, but keep them around.
• Clip gain to -18dB RMS on all audio tracks.
• Melodyne – superior to FlexPitch. Sibilant tool is a lifesaver.
• Hardware Voxbox – massively better than software. Use it.
• Parallel compression on acoustic guitar is awesome! Loved the Fairchild 770 on Us (Time Constant set to 5, cranked the input gain and the threshold so that -10dB of compression was applied.
• Using different Studer A800 machines and tape formulations/setting per instrumentation group made a huge difference to create space EQ wise. See project log for specific settings.
• DeepSeek was invaluable in figuring out which tape machines, tape, & settings to use in Vantage (orchestra & rock instrumentation). Also gave really helpful guidance in delays and reverbs to use on all instruments other than the vocals (see project log for specific settings). Really great.
• Blackbox HG-2: “Mix bus 1” preset is pretty excellent on just about anything
• Other plug-in mentions: AMS vocal doubling, Cooper Delay (default) for widening and giving presence particularly synth bass, and Oceanway in reverb mode on a send
• Mix Processing Bus – submasters → processing bus → trim bus to -6dB. Decouples tone from delivery level.
• Plan A / Plan B – always have a safety net. Saved me multiple times.
• 96kHz workflow – record/mix at 96kHz, then convert: 24/96 → 24/44.1 → 16/44.1 with POW‑r #2 dithering.
• The making/creating is the prize/goal. I’ll never be this intimate with these songs again.

What to Avoid (or Do Better)

• Never skip the metronome during rehearsals – even if not recording to click. My timing suffered.
• AI isn’t always great at doing musical analysis and often makes mistakes on advanced usage of music and audio apps.
• Need a way to circle back to/review original intentions – e.g., The Gospel drifted from its original meaning. A one‑page abstraction for the lyrics might have caught it.
• Create a tempo track before layered recording – I‑40 drifted because I had no click.
• Need to remember to voice lead better when writing on guitar and transferring to other instruments
• Practice in the recording setup – outside noise and unfamiliar mic position ruined takes.
• Hit a roadblock w/ orchestrating Vantage. I think I was making it too important.
• Don’t let burnout drive decisions – when exhausted, make a Plan B, rest, then do Plan A properly.

Identity is now available on all streaming platforms (such as Spotify), or you can also listen to it on Bandcamp.