well, it looks like the work on the new album will begin sooner than i thought. i had to deal with some handproblems (similar to carpal tunnel syndrom) but they’re gone now and i’m in the process of regaining full power and control in my right hand again. while i was unable to play an instrument for quite a while i thought about creating the album in a complete electronic way first. getting into the whole synthesizer programming stuff taught me a lot but now that i’m able to play again, i will begin the way it was planned in the first place. although i’m not a ‘hardrock guy’ – i don’t think in genres anymore – this will be a hardrock album, plain and simple. some of the songs were written over ten years ago but for some reason i couldn’t use them in different bands so they stayed in the back of my head all this time. and every now and then another idea for a song of this kind came to me so there’s six songs ready to record (some have no lyrics yet) and i’m planning to write another four at least.

so now comes the toughest part (for me): creating the sound those songs need and only a part of me is looking forward to this because on the one hand i love messing around with sounds and creating them but on the other hand it can be a real boring and tiring journey towards brainwash-island. first i’ll have to decide if want to record the guitars the old-fashioned way (amp + mic) or if i prefer some kind of digital re-amping (recording a clean signal and creating the sound afterwards inside the mac). maybe i’ll do a combination – i don’t know yet.

and there’s another thing to consider: i wanted to do a complete see-through-production with this record, meaning i wanted to write about every step in this blog – explain the choices etc. and post samples of the whole process. i thought of this as a great idea to let you guys be part of it, or at least witnesses. but i’m not so sure of it anymore because i don’t want to bore anyone and listening to dry guitar takes without any idea of the song itself might not be that much fun. so maybe i won’t post every single step but more like every finished stage of the process… we’ll see about that.

i know you guys are the quiet type but it would be cool to know if anyone would even be interested in that sort of idea, so feel free to speak up. if no one wants to know about such a process and only the finished product matters, i wouldn’t bother anyone with it. because this is by no means meant as some kind of advertising. au contraire, there will be flaws and stupid mistakes for i’ve never done that before and i’m doing this album mainly to finally listen to those songs i kept inside of me for so long…and because it will be so much fun, yay.

so if you want to be embedded somehow, go ahead. if not you’ll have to live with the consequences, muwahahahahaha.