Victory!

After much anxious waiting, Notepad Command is here! A lot of hard work has gone into this game, and we're glad that we finally got it on the app store. I think it's a pretty fun game to play, so if you have an iPad and are looking for a fun game, look no further. Just buy it.

Album Update

The people at Monoclesoft now have a trailer for the iPad game that I've been working on, Notepad Command. My work on the project is starting to wind down, so I'm looking forward to spending more time finishing my album. I have decided to distribute through CDBaby because I like their pricing, and they seem like a company that really know their stuff. They will sell my music directly, and will also get my music distributed on iTunes and other digital distributors.

I have settled on which songs I want to include on my upcoming album. I have finished writing all but one song, and a few of them are even recorded, but still need some post-production massaging. The one I haven't finished writing will probably be my favorite song on the album, and I'm excited to finish it. I have fragments of lyrics and phrases floating around in my head, but I have yet to bring it all together.

The guitar part is in a very strange tuning, one which I have never used before (Low C, G, D, G, C, E). I wanted to record the guitar part so that I could listen to it on my iPod, in the hopes that it would help the lyric-writing process. Since I did a guitar demo, I though I would post it here anyway. I got a strange stereo effect when I recorded it, and I'm not exactly sure how I got it. I hope I can reproduce it for the final recording.

Guitar Demo by ryanholaday

Waiting, waiting, waiting

The long-awaited iPad finally launched outside of the United States on Friday. Since I have been working on a video game project for the iPad, it has been a rather anxious wait for the release. No matter how hard you try, you can't sell an iPad game to someone who doesn't have an iPad yet.

Now that iPads are available in Canada, I now have to wait until the iPad game officially gets approved for release via the iTunes store. I thought that once I wrote the music and created the sound effects, it would ease the pressure, but I'm finding the waiting part to be the most stressful. Even under the time constraints that I had before, I was not as anxious as I am now. I had the power to do something about it before, but now, it's in someone else's hands. Apparently I don't like other peoples' hands.

Digital Distribution of Music

I have spent the last few days looking into the options that a musician has for distributing music digitally. There are a lot of options, and many of them are similar. I came across the following useful article on 7 Ways to Sell your Music on iTunes, which proved to be quite useful.

Some of the sites also have promotional tools, their own network of musicians, and other means of helping musicians to market their music. Having tracks on iTunes does not make a musician rich, and they know it. It's so good to see this kind of support for the music industry.

For now, I plan to release my solo stuff for free, but I also want fans to have the option to pay me if they so choose. The easiest way to do that is to get my music on stores such as iTunes or Amazon Mp3. I hope to settle on an online distributor by next week.

I have added another solo track on my music page, and have uploaded the commission work that I did for the upcoming iPad game from Monoclesoft, entitled Notepad Command. You can find the soundtrack here.