John and I often have discussions about mixing, mastering, and dynamic range and one of the things that comes up is wanting to use a more vintage mastering style and preserve dynamics. We knew that Chipsurf Pipeline was probably not the best album for dynamics as it is a loud album, due largely to the genre – chiptunes and surf guitar have a narrow amount of dynamic range. We did try to bring out the dynamics where we could and think we did a pretty good job. How does one qualify dynamic range, though?

One method is to use the ideas from the Pleasureize Music Foundation. Trouble is, though I agree with their mission, their website is currently in a state of disrepair, making trying to find the tools they suggest using difficult to do – the Foobar plugin mentioned on the site is out of date and was a time limited release (oops). But with the help of a kind Redditor, we have finally been able to see how Chipsurf Pipeline stacks up.

Not terrible, and certainly better than the mastering of some modern hits. I did my own test of one in particular and it’s rating was DR5. Ouch! Either way, our next album should allow for even more dynamics. I really hope the DR rating system takes off, though I don’t have high hopes sadly. Regardless, John and I will continue to master our music as we see fit, and not to the incredibly loud and compressed benchmark that most modern music adheres to. That’s not how we think our music should be heard and, in fact, is not how we think most music should be heard.

So where are we at with Chipsurf Pipeline? The tracks have been mastered, tagged, and uploaded. All the album art is done, save for the CD cover we are going to provide with the digital download. That is mostly done – it just needs a few minor tweaks. We have been talking about whether or not it makes sense to keep all the songs available individually. Because we place an emphasis on the story driven aspect of the album, simply getting a few songs off the album would not have a desired effect. At the same time, we want to keep some songs as singles – just not all of them. In terms of cost, we also do not want to devalue the album, as we are quite proud of it, but also recognize that it is a bit unique and certainly not mainstream.

So, we are trying to work through a few of those ideas. I don’t believe it will take very long. But at the moment, John is traveling around for his day job and since our day jobs pay the bills, they tend to take precedence. I suspect we will drop the album in a few days time so it won’t be long now! It will take slightly longer because we decided to do a quick launch ceremony wherein we’re both there to “flip the switch” as it were, but I think it will be worth the wait!

There are a few songs on the album that we have intentionally saved for the album release and they are begging to be heard!

Some of our fan are probably wondering why we have not yet released the album yet. I want to SOOO bad but we want to do it right and it’s been a busy month for both John and myself. January has been the busiest for John at his day job since I can remember, and I’m still recovering from my wisdom teeth removal as you may have seen on Facebook. We are both still alive and well and dedicated to releasing Chipsurf Pipeline as well as continuing work on our new album. Though the new album has no official name, we have been calling it Hero or Hero Album for the moment if that gives you any clue what it may be about.

We also are pretty excited to be working with the Hackerspace San Antonio to help bang out some workshops, mostly for our work with chip-synths. That should be rather fun and a good start to what I hope is a pretty awesome relationship moving forward. Those guys do some really cool things and help facilitate lots of neat workshops. They are currently in the process of putting together what appears to be a fantastic set of Arduino classes and workshops. If you are in the San Antonio, TX area, it’s definitely something to check out!

But back to the topic of Chipsurf Pipeline, I would love to say we can have it out by the end of this week, but John will be traveling for his day job this weekend and we have decided to rework at least one intro for one of the songs for the album so that things fit a bit better. We are still excruciatingly close to releasing the album but, as I have said before, we want to do it right! Regardless, thanks to all our fans for sticking with us while we all patiently await its arrival! One last note, we have been asked if we are still planning on doing a Kickstarter project for the album and the answer is most definitely! But we wanted the digital version to be done first so we can focus on figuring out the best next steps without having to do multiple things at once. We’ll get there!

Since it is taking longer than we thought to perfect the track-listing for Chipsurf Pipeline, as well as other odds and ends before we formally launch the digital version, we thought we would offer up some out-takes from our Kickstarter filming sessions. We’re not done with the Kickstarter video itself (which means maybe we’ll have even more out-takes!) but some of these are cute. Enjoy!