How to release an album in 2023 // Written on a Polyend Tracker

My new album 'The Glasgow Coma Scale' is out TODAY on Bandcamp - which is also Bandcamp Friday. That means I get 100% of the cash from any sales which is nice. It will land on streaming services shortly, but then I get almost zero pennies. So please do buy if you like. Otherwise, it can be found on Patreon for freebz - / allmyfriendsaresynths
cowtonguetacorecords.bandcamp...
The album was written entirely using a ‪@Polyend‬ Tracker, over the course of the past few years. I've put together talking about how it came about, and my process for doing something like this.
SUBSCRIBE OR ELSE: kzbin.info...
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I post all of the music I make, including WAV stems; sample packs; Dirtywave M8 song bundles; collections of video textures; early access to videos; and a whole pile of other stuff on Patreon. I know I know, I hate doing this as well, but if you like what I do and want to get more of it, while also helping me offset some of my ludicrous gear purchases, this is the best place to do it:
/ allmyfriendsaresynths
If you just want to hang out and chat with me or other (nice) folks, drop by the Discord: / discord
If you just want individual sample packs or downloads of video footage to use in your own projects, get them on Gumroad here: gumroad.com/allmyfriends
If you're in the market for new gear, my favourite place to find new and interesting synthesizers and other electronic music gear is Signal Sounds. They are based in Glasgow, but ship all over the place and often have stuff nobody else does. Find them at www.signalsounds.com/
and a whole pile of other stuff...
Instagram: / allmyfriendsaresynths
My main photo and video art blog: allmyfriendsarejpegs.com
The band I play guitar and sing in: closetorgan.bandcamp.com
The band I play bass and sing in: hogwyld.bandcamp.com
My DIY tape label, Cow Tongue Taco Records: cowtonguetacorecords.bandcamp...
My occasional music blog: unexpectedbowtie.com
Get in touch for possible collabs/offers of large sums of money, etc: allmyfas at gmail

[@StephenMcLeod]

Download the album at the following link: cowtonguetacorecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-glasgow-coma-scale

[@dogstare]

🕺🏻❤️

[@jamisondonald384]

Thank you for this

[@StephenMcLeod]

No, thank YOU

[@mastaboog749]

sounds awesome ill check it out! I got the polyend tracker about a month and sadly haven't given it the love i have wanted yet because i got a microfreak right when the mpc started to really make sense to me. What i have done on the tracker tho is fantastic, the sampling is top notch, plus the wavetable thing is insane! I'm going to make custom wavetables for my microfreak actually, that sounds great.

[@CNTRRNDM]

Nice one! That's also pretty much the way I approach producing songs with the PO-33...recording all the single tracks from the PO into Ableton is a pain in the neck, to be honest...but the amount of control you get over how each element sounds is totally worth it!😁

[@StephenMcLeod]

Hell yeah. I used to do this with my Game Boy tracks. Recording each individual one... oft. That was a mission. At least it was only four tracks though!!

[@CatFish107]

Aye, it's here. Thanks for the music and thoughts pal!

[@StephenMcLeod]

Awesome! Thanks for listening.

[@DavidDeLuge]

I'll have a listen 😁. I have just ordered the Polyend Tracker Mini. I have the Dirtywave M8 and the Polyend Play too and really like them both. I think the creative fills, that Polyend add to their devices, along with the tracker workflow is going to make for a very immediate and creative device. I know the Tracker Mini is probably not going to be as deep as the M8, certainly from a synthesis perspective, but I suspect, like the Play, it will allow me to get results very quickly and encourage creativity.

[@StephenMcLeod]

Nice!!! Curious to see what you make of the Mini when it arrives. I'd like to check one out at some point.

[@subiesojourner777]

I appreciate your "one man band" approach to what you've done with these songs. Bravo!!!

[@StephenMcLeod]

Thanks a lot!

[@mcentertain]

great album, great video inspiring and motivating and completely non commercial intended, well there are some artists left :D tracker album is a great idea!

[@StephenMcLeod]

Thanks a lot! I appreciate you watching.

[@koinpusher]

I Love The Polyend Tracker!!

[@StephenMcLeod]

It's no bad!

[@LillySchwartz]

Well done on finishing the album! I don’t have my studio set up perfectly either, because I actually like a bit of a sweetened sound when I’m just listening to music in here for inspiration. If I get it to sound acceptable on suboptimal devices and nice on my stereo, I’m perfectly happy with that. And I also use Ozone as a starting point. I tweak and demud after that, hunting for frequencies I don’t like, and I also narrow the bass some because I usually have big reverbs on everything. If I leave that super wide it’s a huge mess. I’ve now started doing the mixing and mastering much sooner after I write my tracks because it’s really annoying to mix and master a whole album in one go, especially the last finessing stage? I’m too much of a perfectionist for that. Takes me forever, so I procrastinate indefinitely before I even get started. Got two albums finished and waiting for the mixing and mastering. Just can’t be bothered right now though 🙃

[@StephenMcLeod]

See... I need to do the mastering etc in one go or I find that everything is wildly different to each other ha. Now I usually do draft masters for the demo... Then when I have an album worth I go back and remaster everything, and if necessary tweak the mix on tracks. It's such a pita but has brought a bit of consistency at least ha.

[@LillySchwartz]

Ah, well, that’s true of course. I’m just hoping that if there is something there already then remastering isn’t such a big deal. I mean, certain frequencies will always annoy me in the same way and I’m particular about my low end. I’d think that I’d just need the finessing stage to be repeated. But then in the end I have to get it pre-mastered for YT now anyway since I started doing music stuff on my channel too. Guess I’ll be just doing it twice in the end 😬

[@JosuaKarlson]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the topic. It’s exactly my approach to release music so far. The price point is the reason why I am quite often going the Ozone mastering chain + ai generated artwork path. It still gets your touch by doing some tweaking an doing the final layout for the cover. I have to say that, when I got professionals to do mastering and artwork one time I also invested more into advertising and the money put in was definitely worth it, but I wouldn’t do that for every release, that’s for shure. Otherwise I would have to cut back on releasing music and in the end thats what matters to me. People care way to much about the looks than the actual music in my opinion. Thanks again for sharing your approach and thoughts, I really appreciate it and it’s encouraging to keep doing it that way 😊👍💾✨🤘

[@sodiumlights]

Brilliant video; informative, funny, and fckin' perfecto editing (aahhh, no more micro-edits, baby!).

[@StephenMcLeod]

I am going to bring them back just for you :*

[@sodiumlights]

@@StephenMcLeod 🤣🧡aawww:)

[@dogstare]

Bought a copy mate love it also followed you on Spotify and Bandcamp under my Dogstare guise. Going to be releasing some new music myself got a few more live gigs coming up as well. Just learning the Syntakt at the moment and enjoying it tbh 😊

[@StephenMcLeod]

Thanks a lot man! I appreciate it :) Syntakt looks cool af.

[@dogstare]

@@StephenMcLeodyeah I’m loving it mate but makes me wanna grab the other boxes, that means selling off some surplus organs! ☠️👀🕺🏻

[@dogstare]

@@StephenMcLeod there’s two new Syntakt jams on my KZbin mate if you fancy a watch have a boss weekend 😊🕺🏻

[@klankenkabaal]

Great vid, I can really relate to the mixing-mastering struggle you described. I got the audio meter from TC Electronic, that helps a bit ;)

[@StephenMcLeod]

Ohhhh tell me more about that.

[@wiggesobk]

9:09 yes i feel that haha

[@StephenMcLeod]

Awful.

[@tweakingtuesday1743]

Well that’s all very well but what’s happened to your white glasses?

[@StephenMcLeod]

They're hiding

[@Ethyl.breaks]

I like these glasses better imo

[@LabRatWarfare]

Another great behind the scenes! I love the album man and I always enjoy your track titles! hahaha The album artwork is SUPERB 🤩 and you know I feel the same as you on AI art! Wish we had a bigger budget, lol, I would commission comic book artists to do my album/single covers every time!! 😁🐀

[@StephenMcLeod]

I stole a few titles from the band and they are ragin

[@LabRatWarfare]

@@StephenMcLeod LMAO! 🤣 When you said that in the video, I wondered what they might think! 🤣

[@Nick-yk4pq]

where is the album on bandcamp?

[@StephenMcLeod]

I guess that would have been helpful eh? cowtonguetacorecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-glasgow-coma-scale Thanks!

[@Nopp3]

Not really into patreon so I bought the album. cheers.

[@StephenMcLeod]

Oh nice! Thanks a lot :) I appreciate it

[@Nopp3]

@@StephenMcLeod Fluttering hole is the fav after first run through.

[@leewightman8619]

Would love to try making music on a tracker i dont understand how they work but im pretty sure i could get the hang of them..i should have got on the Ls dj train back in the day ..never mind its a skill set im yet to require

[@DavidDeLuge]

They are actually really quite intuitive. I have the Dirtywave M8, which is very powerful, but you'd be up and running in no time at all. 😊

[@StephenMcLeod]

You could download a Game Boy emulator like OpenEmu for mac and get LSDJ - that way you can get a feel for it before stumping up any cash!

[@leewightman8619]

​@@StephenMcLeodjust saw your video where you explain the m8 and it's starting to make sense to me now

[@leewightman8619]

​@@DavidDeLugeI'd like to try it out one day

[@jeffryarchambeau5441]

I think the white glasses are your artist glasses and the black glasses are your producer glasses. I shudder to imagine what your marketing glasses look like.

[@StephenMcLeod]

Think more... Dame Edna.

[@dogstare]

Looking forward to hearing the album mate, I’m heading to you’re Bandcamp now 😊🕺🏻

[@jeffryarchambeau5441]

@@StephenMcLeod Better Edna than Liberace. She had a 68 year run. May you be as successful!

[@subiesojourner777]

I'm gonna really date my self here (Yes, I'm an old fart but with a younger person heart) but his marketing glasses should be like the lead singer of the group, "The Lovin Spoonfull" Sort of a rectangular granny glasses. 😁

[@omnifvck2596]

Canada gets the shitty end of the stick. My preorder Tracker was $815.

[@StephenMcLeod]

USD or CAD?

[@allanroney]

Good bit on AI art.

[@StephenMcLeod]

Love the AI

[@I.O.M.]

100% on ai art and distrokid.

[@StephenMcLeod]

I for one welcome our AI overlords.

[@howarddyla9676]

get that headphone cable out of that keyboard >:(

[@StephenMcLeod]

Well spotted!!!