DJ Bulletix
Starting Member
United Kingdom
9 posts
Joined: Dec, 2022
|
 Posted - 2024/05/27 : 18:27:41
Hey folks. BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:
I'm pleased to announce that my MAGNUM OPUS AND ULTIMATE BONA-FIDE MASTERPIECE If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT!, the solo album AND magnum opus that I'd always wanted to make (and have been working for) since I was eleven years old in late 2004, is finally, FINALLY COMPLETE AND RELEASED ON MY BANDCAMP ACCOUNT!
https://bulletix.bandcamp.com/album/if-you-wanna-reach-out-sing-out
Here's the REAL STORY behind the making of If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT!, as follows....
In early February last year 2023, I was really inspired to create the ultimate DJ Bulletix solo concept album where every single track on it is a KILLER track (as in all high-quality and no bog-standard mediocrity; brilliant and not bland; ALL KILLER, NO FILLER, so to speak), with the resulting goal being ultimate accomplished culmination of 16 years of honing and perfecting (and constantly working at) my craft of creative songwriting, composing, producing, mastering, recording, sound design, singing, rapping, etc., ever since I was introduced to Steinberg's beginners' music production software Sequel in March/April 2008 when I was 14 years old.
And in the process, I was able to mine out lots of creative ideas gems that were buried deep in the very heart of my creative mind AND in the very depths of FL Studio 10 alias Fruity-Loops (unlike my peers who themselves have worked, and still work, with FL Studio), and in doing so, I ended up creating the DJ Bulletix solo album that I'd been working towards since I was 10 years old (I'm 30 years old now).
I also wanted this album to sum up the positive wellbeing/mindfulness message that I'd established with my SIGNATURE SONG ‘Sit Back and Enjoy the Ride, LIVE!’ (recorded live at Inclusion Fest 2019 in Derry City, Northern Ireland, UK https://bulletix.bandcamp.com/track/sit-back-and-enjoy-the-ride-live-official-release-2) and I conducted a coast-to-coast nationwide search (so to speak) for the perfect album title that would fit to the album's overall concept. The only way to conduct this search was through online research.
Having remembered that John Davis used to work for Education Authority Northern Ireland's wellbeing/mindfulness programs, as I was researching online one day I accidentally stumbled across the REACH program on Education Authority's website (REACH, I quickly discovered, is their acronym for “Resilience Education Assisting Change to Happen”, https://www.eani.org.uk/reach), and the resulting thoughts came to me: ‘reaching out to people-in-need via music...’ ‘sing out to reach out...’ ...and then all of a sudden, I finally found the perfect title that had been sticking in my head, and I instinctively knew it was the perfect (and only) title that matched the recurring theme throughout the new concept album.
This title ran thus: ‘If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT!’
I had earlier found out that many wellbeing programs had similar ‘sing out to reach out’ events as well, and the aforementioned perfect title was also partly inspired by the title of Cat Stevens' wistful celestial-tinged guitar song
‘If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDq36YD1ESM
If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! explores different genres and styles, ranging from Ulster Hands-Up (aka Northern-Irish Hands-Up! music) to electronic arena rock to 90's-influenced happy hardcore/rave to Ulster-Pop (Northern Ireland's heavier-sounding equivalent to British Synth-Pop), and even classical music (including classical crossover). In this respect, If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! serves as an electronic version of Michael Jackson's Thriller (particularly because one of the goals for the If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! album is that all of its 12 tracks are potential hit singles).
To achieve the main goal of If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! in terms of its musical and sonic concept and blueprint, my first objective was to create the electronic/dance/synth-pop equivalent of Def Leppard's Hysteria, Kiss’s respective albums Alive and Destroyer, and Queen’s A Night At The Opera, respectively, in that I wanted to employ a painstakingly perfectionistic attention to every single last little bit of minute dense sonic detail on If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! (including its accompanying cover artwork and photograph-shoots), the same as Mutt Lange when he helped Def Leppard create their biggest blockbuster-smash album Hysteria (their fourth studio album).
Click the following links below so that you will know exactly where I'm coming from in terms of my album's overall sonic/production/musical goal:
https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-def-leppard-made-hysteria
https://loudwire.com/def-leppard-hysteria-album-anniversary/
https://www.guitarworld.com/gw-archive/interview-phil-collen-making-def-leppards-hysteria
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-horror-behind-making-the-def-leppards-hysteria/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWl-sk2P0ec
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_hahhj3UU
In reading these aforementioned articles and watching these aforementioned videos myself, I’d quickly discovered that Mutt Lange made a tremendous influential impact on my production techniques. Basically, he taught me so much. He taught me not to steal from one genre, but to steal from as many genres as possible – that’s how you make something unique.
To give If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! a sound that would stand out from the sleek, polished dance records and hands-up music albums typically ruling the dance charts and flooding the marketplace since the heyday of Cascada's 2005 smash hit ‘Everytime We Touch’, I used a variety of technology, explored multi-layered vocal effects, created intricate layers of sound, and experimented with unorthodox recording/production/mastering techniques. Basically, there are no rules on how to get the best sound as far as I’m concerned. To quote Joe Meek’s motto: “If it sounds right, it is right.”
If I remember correctly, dozens of vocal (and occasional keyboard) tracks were recorded and layered for every take, fortifying many of the songs with hundreds of vocal tracks. A lot of the drum-sounds I've designed myself while most of the drum-sounds are from the legendary Roland TR-909 drum machine (that I'd recorded at Dave Murray's studio at the Nerve Centre in October 2016). Finally, the takes were saturated with echoey reverb, giving the songs a stadium rock/Eurovision Song Contest vibe.
Especially in regards to the lush vocal harmonies, I recorded a bunch of vocal takes that I then copied and added together, and ultimately you get this massive, boomy, rich sound. There are probably more than 100 vocals on some of the tracks on the album. And some songs needed that. But then a lot of the "SSE Arena" crowd sing-along refrains and chants in many of the songs, that’s me doing the big crowd vocals, and I only did them on certain songs on the album. But I have to admit that I almost irritated my throat doing it because I sang in such a rip-your-throat-out style. But it had the desired effect.
In keeping with my vision to make my If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! solo concept album my ULTIMATE MAGNUM OPUS AND BONA-FIDE MASTERPIECE and a LANDMARK of sorts, I decided that the next step to make If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! stand out from the glut of regular run-of-the-mill German/UK Hands-Up producers/DJs and Cascada wannabes/doppelgangers was to create a sense of grandiosity, heft, awesome power, boundless magnitude, and an atmosphere of powerful grandeur and majestic splendor within the If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! album, mainly by creating and developing a cinematic feel and majestic vibe that would represent the magnitude of opera/oratorio, large-scale stadium/arena concerts, musical theatre, massive uplifting trance anthems, massive theatrical rock shows, gigantic arena stage-shows (e.g. Eurovision Song Contest), and such-like.
Due to my gift for melody, and by fastidiously and carefully studying and analyzing the timbre, magnitude, sound and majestic grandiose splendor of classical orchestras and choirs (including church choirs), I'd learned (and am still teaching myself) the vital essence and paramount importance of great production and great arrangements (including big complex intricate production/arrangements), and somehow I managed to bring it to bear on the If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! album in a way that would be both ground-shaking AND ground-breaking for electronic music in general (and for ALL music, for that matter). All the more reason why I decided to employ a highly perfectionistic approach to If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT!.
In fact, being something of a no-holds-barred perfectionist, I literally SLAVED over the album, making sure everything was doubly-perfect, bang-on-the-button; I literally slaved over this album for months on end non-stop, working myself to the bone and sometimes staying up nearly all night in order to perfect every single last little bit of detail on the album's lyrics, subject matter, musical composition, sonic aspects, production sound, and graphic artwork on the cover designs. But it was all worth it in the end because, at the end of the day, that was what I wanted to do and what I'd really been consciously working toward.
After all, at the end of the day, the PARAMOUNT GOAL was that If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! was NOT going to come out until it was an ABSOLUTE BONA-FIDE CLASSIC ALBUM.
In fitting with the album's overall concept and title, I knew that the album would NOT be complete without including ‘Sit Back and Enjoy the Ride, LIVE!’ (the Inclusion Fest 2019 live recording) and its official Happy Hardcore/Rave remix ‘Sit Back and Enjoy the Ride! (Part 2: The Return Journey!)’ in its track-listing in addition to including my ‘Piano Concerto No. 1 in A Minor’ (recorded at Parkanaur Manor House in Dungannon on 3rd May 2019) as the album's official relaxing INTERLUDE.
The term ‘finish an album’ DOES NOT apply to If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! because straight after all the recording sessions were completed and finalized, it was up to me to tidy it up. It was basically just a jigsaw puzzle thrown into a bag; I had to put it all together.
I've also designed the album's cover artwork in a green backdrop, mainly because green is my most favorite colour and has been my most favorite colour since I was a kid.
For the sake of the under-fives, If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! is also known as THE GREEN ALBUM!
Handy-Hint: This simple colour-coded album title approach coincides with common sense because e.g. The Beatles made THE WHITE ALBUM and Jay-Z made THE BLACK ALBUM, and then DJ Danger Mouse mashed both albums together to make THE GRAY ALBUM.
The good, the bad, the ugly, everything; EVERYTHING went into making this solo album masterpiece. In fact, If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! is an album that I was dying to hear. For years and years and years, I wanted to listen to an electronic music album and pop album that sounded like If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT!, and I'm thankful that at the end of the day, it was ME that managed to create it, and single-handedly too.
Truth be told, If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! is the album when I knew that I could do everything I'd wanted to do; everything I'd dreamed of doing since I was 10 years old I finally could do it, and I knew it. This is the album (and concept album) that I can finally break the wall (and break the mold), and somehow I know it; I just know I can somehow now do it! :)
Just for the record: I can still remember the time in late 2008 (not long after I turned 15) when my classmates and I attended an Autumn disco held at a local High School, and they were playing ‘See You Again’ by Miley Cyrus over the PA system.
Little did I know at that time that that experience would later make a spbstantial contribution to inspiring me to create ‘Stand Up, Say It, SING OUT!’ which is sort of like my Wellbeing/Mindfulness life-anthem equivalent of Miley Cyrus' ‘See You Again’.
Anyhow, to conclude, nearly 30 years of saved-up ideas were all compiled into this ONE FOCUSED AURAL ROCKET OF A CONCEPT ALBUM (If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT!). And I sincerely hope that this concept album's overall positive will help encourage wellbeing/mindfulness and resilience as well as help and encourage youths and young people everywhere.
My If You Wanna Reach Out, SING OUT! masterpiece solo album is out now on BandCamp AS A FREE DOWNLOAD!
https://bulletix.bandcamp.com/album/if-you-wanna-reach-out-sing-out
__________________________________
DJ Bulletix
Alert moderator 
Edited by - DJ Bulletix on 2024/06/15 10:48:50 |
Printer friendly
