For way too long, this site has given the impression that I haven't been productive. I have -- it's just a lot of the stuff in the pipeline never got around to being released and now probably never will.

At the same time, I needed a way to corral all the random items I post willy-nilly everywhere, so I opted to show the whole roadmap. I've redesigned the Music section to show all the releases forthcoming. About three of them are on the verge of getting out the door, and the rest -- well, there's a lot of proverbial ground to cover.

And when I get tired of being in the studio all weekend, I'll come here and post more about all the songs you haven't yet heard.

Somehow through it all, I managed to lay tracks on what could be considered my first new song since 2007. I'm not sure if I'm afflicted with writer's block or if I've just been distracted by real life to have done any writing in nearly five years. Maybe it's a combination of both.

I don't think this new song is something I'd put on an album. In fact, it feels very much like a b-side, and it bears too much of a resemblance to Kumuiuta-era Cocco. But I'm glad it's something new, and perhaps it might nudge me into focusing on creating instead of this endless whirlpool of mixing and remixing in which I find myself.

I'm sure this song will join that whirlpool, since I have this nagging feeling it's not completely fleshed out.

Oh, and the lyrics are mostly in Japanese. I can't guarantee that they won't sound to Japanese ears how Engrish sounds to ours. The title is transliterated as "Threnody".

Listen to 「スレノディー」

I'm not sure what the next Eponymous 4 album will be, but I have a sense a future album will be instrumental and attempt to corral all these libraries.

Just to test out all these new libraries, I threw together an untitled track. Yes, that's what it says in Japanese: "Mudai Heisei 23 Rokugatsu Itsuka", or "Untitled 06/05/2011".

The gamelan samples are put through some Western tuning to mix harmonically with the strings. I've also thrown in a brushed gong, tabla and taiko.

I don't know if this particular sound will expand into a full work, but it's a start.

Listen to 「無題平成23六月五日」

I finished the challenge, then put the resulting work off to the side while I worked on other projects.

One piece from that album -- imaginatively titled NaSoPiAlMo 2006 -- struck me as something that could be arranged for string quartet, which I did. I've had a lot of time to listen to it, and I think I prefer the quartet arrangement more than its source piano piece. In fact, I'm probably going to extract portions of that piano album to become a set of string quartet pieces. (But not an actual string quartet itself. Not in the traditional sense, at least.)

While that's going on, here's the piece that's taking me down this particular path. Yes, the title is in Japanese. Maybe I'll explain this fascination of using Japanese titles later, but translated, it means "String Quartet Pieces, Vol. 1, No. 5", and it's pronounced, "Gengaku Shijuusou Kyoku Sono Ichi No. 5"

Listen to 「弦楽四重奏曲其の一 No. 5」

One of the goals of the "Ex Machina Series" was to replace all the faked guitar parts with actual guitar parts where possible (read: if I can adequately play it), and nowhere is that more important than with acoustic guitar parts. Fake electric guitar parts can be obfuscated with mountains of effects, but faking acoustic guitar parts is harder. Reason has some excellent acoustic guitar samples, but coercing the digital audio workstation to sound human is where the true sorcery lies.

Or I could just play the damn part.

I covered The System's "Don't Disturb This Groove" back in 2008 after listening to Sam Amidon's All Is Well album and thinking that song would sound good using that kind of chamber orchestra arrangement. The acoustic guitar part I fashioned also served as a bass, with a single note on the downbeats marking the time.

Over the weekend, I re-recorded the acoustic guitar, this time just strumming in rhythm. I lost the bass note and had to add an upright bass part to compensate. The feel of the cover has changed dramatically because of those alterations. Still trying to decide if I like them, but I may stick with them just because I'm not inclined to go back to the fake guitar.

Listen to "Don't Disturb This Groove"

Propellerhead Software, the makers of Reason, announced it would let users who own Reason 5 and Record 1.5 to upgrade to Reason 6 for any price they name. It's Radiohead's In Rainbows all over again.

Reason 6 incorporates Record, so now there won't be two separate products. When the new version was first announced a few weeks back, I decided to skip it and wait for Reason 7. Since I already had Record, I didn't feel this upgrade was essential, and honestly, I don't actually use Record -- I tacked it onto my Reason 5 upgrade for an extra $20 out of curiosity.

But now the Pay What You Want option makes me inclined to upgrade. I don't know how much I'd pay, but it's not going to be for the usual upgrade price of approximately $130. Nor will I be a cheapskate and pay the minimum $1. Most of the value in the upgrade is for Reason owners who don't have Record, but for those users who do, Reason 6 seems more like a point release.

Really, the only thing I'd like to see -- which most likely won't happen -- is the addition of a solo viola instrument in the Orkester library. Short of dropping $500 on the Solo Strings library from Vienna Instruments, the solo strings in the Orkester library do the most convincing job of emulating solo strings I've encountered.

As part of an effort to study some of my favorite string quartet scores, I've programmed a few works into SONAR using the Orkester library as an instrument. Samuel Barber's lone string quartet is the source work for his famous Adagio for Strings. I can't say I was impressed by the movements that frame the Adagio, but after entering each note of those movements, it's eased up my criticism of them. At least now I can spot the sonata form.

Listen to "Samuel Barber - String Quartet: I. Allegro"

"enigmatics V" was one of those tracks that was complete enough but never really finished the way I would have liked. When I first wrote it, I didn't even have a fraction of the tools available to me now -- just the sequencer and an RCA cord to my computer. So the clavier part was really intended to be a guitar part, and that drum beat could have very well sampled Soul II Soul, if I actually had a sampler. I had also wanted that solo synth in the middle section to sound like something off of a Wayne Horvitz/The President album.

So 13 years later, I did what I set out to do. I replaced the drums with an emulated Roland 909 (thank you Battery!), replaced the clavier with guitar samples in Reason fed through Guitar Rig and passed the solo synth through a Guitar Rig distortion plug-in.

Now the track sounds closer to what I had imagined, which is different from the one that was actually released.

George Lucas has been getting a lot of flack for revising the Star Wars movies every time they get remastered for a new format. I can almost get his urge to tinker. He revised the original trilogy because the technology wasn't around to let him do what he wanted. I'm revising my tracks because I now have the right technology to do what I intended to do -- or at least closer to what I intended.

Of course, the big difference between Lucas and me is that way, way more people notice his tinkering. I can pull back the original enigmatics -- which I may do at some point -- and replace it with the revised version, and few people would notice.

Listen to "enigmatics V"

It started with Battery. I tried out a demo and liked how much better it sounded than the kits in my old KORG N364 or Reason, for that matter. When Guitar Center had a sale on Battery, I bought a full version. Cakewalk SONAR also bundled a limited version of Guitar Rig, so I experimented with that as well. By Christmas, I upgraded Guitar Rig to a full version and impulsively tacked on KONTAKT with my purchase.

Guitar Rig and Battery are at the heart of what I call the "Ex Machina Series". I'm going back and redoing all the drums on my tracks to use Battery (if it seems appropriate -- the N364 stil has some useful drum samples), and I've even tried my hand at recording guitar parts, even though I'm not much of a guitar player. Despite that lack of skill, Guitar Rig has quickly become an essential tool in my arsenal. So much so that it's eclipsed Reason, which I use now to fabricate guitar parts I know I can't play (usually arpeggios, definitely solos.)

One track that's definitely benefited from a remix is "Untold Demons", an adaptation of the first song I ever wrote. It always had the spirit of a guitar song, even though it was written on the piano. I posted an early version on Metafilter Music, but I much prefer the remix.

Listen to "Untold Demons"

I've revealed a few of them in other places but not here on the official site. One that I particularly like is "Hurt So Bad" by Linda Ronstadt. For some reason, I could totally hear Garbage playing this song, and while I don't have quite the studio acumen of Butch Vig, I did want to give the song more punch than the original.

It's the first time I really used a canned drum loop instead of programming my own drum track. I would like to replace the Reason guitars with actual guitars. I'd probably keep the bass line as is because I like the sound of it, but if Guitar Rig can approximate that grimy sound, I might consider making a live track of it.

Listen to "Hurt So Bad"

I've actually been posting a lot on the Eponymous 4 Facebook page, and I've even posted tracks to Metafilter Music. Then there's all the stuff I've been working on -- remixes mostly -- that I haven't even made available.

I had the wrong-headed notion that this site should follow a more traditional role of pushing only officially released material, which I obviously haven't been doing for a while now.

So I'm taking this site back and making it less formal. I've given it the proverbial new coat of paint, and over the coming months, I'll be making changes on how new material gets unveiled.

And as a sign of good faith, how about some new audio?

A year ago, I purchased a new computer, which allowed me to get really intricate with my mixes. I've been going back and re-recording a lot of stuff, actually trying my hand at playing my own guitar and bass parts.

One of the first tracks I remixed was "The One to Make You Whole", the lead track from Restraint. It's probably one of the only tracks where 99% of the recording is performed live, as compared to my usual modus operandi to let software synths and MIDI take care of everything.

The drums, however, remain synthetic, although Battery 3 does make them sound a little less mechanical.

Listen to "The One to Make You Whole"

I'm using a new camera because the old one -- a 2003 Christmas gift that could capture only three minutes of 320x480 footage at 15 frames per second -- died. The new camera can shoot in high definition, so it's a huge upgrade. I really like the results, and it's inspiring me to make more videos.

I also posted covers of Roberta Flack's "The Closer I Get to You" and Cocco's 「星に願いを」 to Myspace and Facebook as well. I've got a few other tracks posted on Metafilter Music as well.

I also went ahead and fixed the broken tracks on Amie Street. It was easier just to re-upload the album than wait for Amie Street support to do it themselves.

Back in June, CD Baby redesigned its site, improving the interface significantly and added a content upload section. It was too successful for its own good. I uploaded the files for Restraint back in July, and I set a future release date for Aug. 18. When the release date rolled around, nothing happened.

I sent an e-mail to CD Baby, and they haven't answered. Then I visited the site's Twitter feed and saw a whole lot of unhappy customers. Yesterday, I discovered CD Baby disabled the content upload section, citing an inability to turn around content as the reason.

I'm giving CD Baby some slack, and I'll try to reach them again later. I wonder how much testing went into this relaunch, because it seems to have been riddled with hiccups from the outset.

I don't know what happened -- I put those files up a long time ago. Amie Street was pretty reliable for the Imprint and 「風の歌を聴け」 releases, but there's a whole lot of clusterfuck going on over there as well.

Bandcamp, thankfully, has not managed to screw me. I uploaded the album a while back, and now I've made it available.

I made a decision a few weeks back to delay the next few releases in the Work Release Program, since money is really tight at the moment. The fact this release has gone so poorly makes me think the decision is serendipitous.

I'll be traveling to Japan in November, and I'll consider starting up the Work Release Program again next year. Perhaps by then, CD Baby will get back on its feet. Right now, it's a total mess.

The lyrics for "Restraint" are somewhat autobiographical. I'm far too reserved, and I could probably do well to exercise less restraint every so often.

Unlike most of the songs on this album, "Strange Arrangement" was pretty much written back in 1999, lyrics included. It just needed to be recorded. I knew I wanted it sparse, so organ and strings, upright bass and light percussion were as far as I went.