Twenty twenty six fix.



Schwiiiiing! We're back. What's up?

Had a few rehearsals, last one fully manned. We pimped up Dying Leonard, it's much more interesting and playful. Much of it comes from Milenski stepping forward with his take which is great for us, because he's feeling at home and novelty in old songs is refreshing for the rest of us. All that's left is to figure out how to fit the old parts we liked with the new ones, but it's close. The other pimp-up was that of My Final Game (now with a new codename - Final Wave). Ali played around and got some nice clean chorus sounds. The bridge part is expanded, some of the chord changes are happening later hopefully to keep the listeners' interest for longer. There's a potential added homage to the 80's with some thirds, vocals and arpeggios. 

Between rehearsals we're starting to get serious about production. Still figuring out the use cases and best approaches for sharing files, shared projects, software tools (could be switching to Reaper...?), hardware setups for the rehearsal room and home studios for demos/ideas. Our use cases are three: 1) scratch demos of ideas for songs and song parts; 2) demos we can send to the producer to get feedback; 3) production versions. We got a bit mixed up who's talking about what, but we'll get there. Ali's really picked up his work on song ideas. Not all of us are able to follow the tempo, but we'll have to. This year we need to get songs out of the rehearsal room and off the stage into published versions.

In other news, we're in talks with some consultants from abroad to help prop up our "artist world" and maybe live show. The idea is to bring things to the next level where we can proudly present the entirety of our work anywhere in the world. This also involves revisiting our social media strategy, as much as it hurts to have to spend so much time on this. But we got allies in The House of ALI to help us with this. It looks like we'll be going ahead with the plan, so we'll share what comes out of it without censorship, but also respecting the privacy of our partners.

New year usually means new budget. We had to redistribute some of the fixed monthly payments for our rehearsal room and the marketing support. We'll be sticking to the idea that we should do our best to keep the band as a break-even operation as much as possible. It's clear that many of the expenses will continue to be covered from family budgets, but our lovely significant others are used to it by now. Can't have kids in college and a band at the same time. It's a fair deal.

How we will fit the gigs, the ambitious production plans, the international expansion and continuing to enjoy the process remains to be seen. We'll need your support for sure, but we also know that it doesn't come for granted. We tend not to allow external factors influence us too much lest we turn into attention vampires, but at the same time we do feel like we're all in this together. The new stuff is very promising and we're impatient to get it out there, but not at any cost.

Buckle up. The ride's going to be bumpy, but fun.

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