Author: Well of Souls

“To struggle and to understand. Never the last without the first. That is the law.” George Herbert Leigh Mallory

It’s Missa Innominata’s first birthday!

2023.05.31.

It’s always hard to start writing these kind of posts – not because I don’t know, what to share with you, but rather because there are too many things at the same time on my mind. So, instead of trying to “find my voice”, let me jump immediately into the middle of things: Missa Innominata, my second full-lenght album became one year old today!

Missa Innominata represents an important milestone for me. Not just because of its concept and multicolored musical approaches (back then I was in a mood for heavily experimenting with various tonal and emotional elements) but also its sound and way of production. I don’t say that it turned out to be perfect in this regard (not at all!), but I do say that it was created with the intention to reach the best achievable quality both on the songwriting and music production side. I always used to say that composing and making music is a constant journey towards an ideal, never-achievable musical perfection: and Missa Innominata is definitely a significant step for me in this continuous learning process. While I internalized the basics of music making and sound production during the recording, mixing and mastering of my first album, here I already had at least a general idea on how to do these things better than before. Compared to the rawness of Hexapla, Missa Innominata turned out to be a less brutal, but more sophisticated and multilayered album with various emotional aspects and faces.

Let me tell you that I’m extremely proud of this album. I really poured my heart into these six tracks, trying to condensate multiple feelings and thoughts in the shape of a wide range of musical approaches. Besides the joy of creating (hopefully quality) music, however, I learned a couple of lessons too, while creating this album. The most important lesson was that I realized that I need professional help to further refine my recording, mixing and mastering skills. There is always a point where one has to realize his own limitations – and my most obvious limitation was my instinctive way of mixing and mastering my own music. I needed guidance on how to evolve. Hopefully the sound quality of the next album will witness those enormous efforts that I put into learning how to mix music.

Anyway, it’s almost midnight here, and I just wanted to share my joy with you guys before the day ends: happy birthday to the second Darkwave album!

The new album is almost ready!

2023.05.11.

This is the post that should have already been written weeks ago. I should have shared my joy with you guys earlier: the recording and mixing of the new album is finally finished!

The whole process is not 100% complete yet, though. I still have to spend a couple of days with mastering and fine-tuning the tracks. Also, I must upload the result somewhere to distribute the new album on the main streaming platforms, and it will probably take an additional couple of weeks. But first I must put aside everything for one or two weeks, in order to have a chance to re-listen to the new songs with “fresh ears”. My brain and auditory system are already saturated with the constant sound-overload: I must double-check the tracks again from a certain “distance”, to identify any possible weak points.

What to expect from these new songs? First of all, I think I succeeded to work out a significantly improved, clearer and more robust sound. Although it’s not easy for a home studio to compete with “real” studios quality-wise, I think this time I managed to do a quite decent job. The new songs sound fatter, darker and more compact than the previous ones (someone whose opinion I rely on so much even said to me the other day that the new material “sounds very confident”). Also, I tried to keep the new songs in a more compact shape than I did in the lengthy and multifaceted compositions of Missa Innominata, while maintaining the raw and uncontrolled energy that was characteristic to Hexapla. Furthermore, I applied either classical or sometimes even more experimental harmonies that seemed to me to represent many of my feelings and thoughts that were inside my heart and head while working on these tracks. Therefore, the new songs intentionally incorporate a wide variety of emotions ranging from distraction, sadness and bitterness to joy, grandeur and hope. I really can’t wait to show you the result of almost one year’s hard work and I do hope that you will like these songs!

Also, let me share with you the title and tracklist of the new album. The album will be entitled “Thanatology”, which is “the scientific study of death and the losses brought about as a result” (quote from Wikipedia). I have been meditating a lot about the “big questions” of human existence lately, and many of the books I read was somewhat concerned about the ultimate meaning of life and death, too. That really made a deep impact on the way of my thinking, and this is what you can see represented in the tracklist, too:

  1. The Last Wasted Dawn
  2. Stepping Through The Shadow Line
  3. Necronym
  4. Legacy Of The Worthless
  5. All Shall Perish
  6. Farewell Before Sunset

Stay tuned friends, because more news are about to come!

Another short video teaser

2023.04.25.

Hey everyone,

This is just a small excerpt from one of the new songs for you. It’s neither short or long (and definitely doesn’t sound like final), but I hope you can catch a glimpse from the general feeling of the new album. And yes, I was bored and did some experimentation with the video filters – that’s why the hard light and black cuts lol…

Do you like it? Let me know it in the comments!

Sicksense guitar solo challenge

2023.04.17.

This is something I really wanted to share with you guys!

The amazing Sicksense invited guitar players from all over the world to recreate Billy Grey’s excellent guitar solo from their “Fools Tomorrow” single. Well, just for the record: this is my attempt for this amazing challenge!

For the original version of the song, check out the band’s new single “Fools tomorrow“! Or, you can find my version below! I hope you guys will like it!

Happy birthday to Hexapla – The Remasters!

2023.03.31.

Let me stop for a second and commemorate the first birthday of Hexapla – The Remasters. Without the intention of repeating the thoughts in my previous post on the first birthday of the original Hexapla, I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who already listened to it! And if you haven’t done that yet, here’s the link to the tracks – go ahead, and give them a try please!

Thank you for being here and supporting my work! As I wrote in my previous post: stay tuned, because I’m slowly but inevitably getting closer and closer to the release of my third album!

We did it!

2023.03.28.

Well, it seems that another serious milestone was reached: Darkwave just hit 100 followers on Spotify!

Let me stop here for a while! For an independent musician like me, reaching such an important milestone is a serious reason to celebrate. It’s not every day when a small, one-piece musical project hits 100 follower on the biggest music sharing platform – especially not in times when 100.000 songs get into Spotify’s database every day. This success, however, doesn’t exclusively belong to me: this is a serious achievement of the whole community around Darkwave. We did this together: everyone in the Darkwave family had a significant contribution to achieve it by following, supporting and continuously encouraging me.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being with me on this wonderful journey. I just ask you one simple thing: please stay with me, keep following and supporting me – and of course stay tuned, because good news are coming!

Soundcloud statistics (as of 14.03.2023)

2023.03.13.

OK, I know that SoundCloud doesn’t own the philosopher’s stone, and it’s a rather closed community of music enthusiasts, but at least it offers reasonable amount of useful feedback resources. I was just checking my statistics and look, what I found. Below you can see the average ratings of all my songs (from 0 – 10), together with the total number of ratings per each songs.

HexaplaAverage ratingTotal number of ratings
Hebrew8.942
Secunda8.739
Aquila8.545
Symmachus8.845
Septuagint8.844
Theodotion8.333
Hexapla – The RemastersAverage ratingTotal number of ratings
Hebrew8.844
Secunda8.938
Aquila9.044
Symmachus8.734
Septuagint8.840
Theodotion8.735
Missa InnominataAverage ratingTotal number of ratings
Introitus8.752
Kyrie8.650
Gloria8.458
Sanctus8.750
Agnus Dei8.746
Postcommunio8.554

What does it all mean?

First of all it means that the average ratings of my albums are high and uniform (8.7/10, 8.8/10 and 8.6/10 for Hexapla, Hexapla – The Remasters and Missa Innominata, respectively). Also, the songs of each albums were scored by 34-58 people, which is really a huge amount of feedback!

I am more than aware of the importance of the feedback and support I constantly receive from you guys, no matter which platform you use to listen to my songs or to communicate with me. Still, the fact that you valued my tracks so high and gave them such incredible scores is heartwarming – and pleasantly unexpected (!) – to me. Thank you for the feedback – this is exactly, what gives me motivation and inspiration to carry on on this long and windy road of making independent music totally by myself! (Btw, I would have said the same if the feedback hadn’t been so positive. I really appreciate the time you spent with listening and scoring – and eventually even commenting! – my songs.)

Thank you for everything!

Of past and present guitars

2023.02.25.

Well, to cut a long story short, I have a new Jackson (a fast, and modern metal axe) in the Darkwave family. Buying a Jackson finally put an end to a decade-long yearning: the fact that I had to sell my old PS2 Performer approximately 20 years ago always made me somewhat sad. Since then, I’ve been constantly eyeing Jacksons from the corner of my eye, until now… Look at this beauty:

The new Jackson actually put me into a somewhat nostalgic mode: it made me remember not only my old PS2 Performer but also my very first electric guitar, a Jolana Strat. For those who are not familiar with this gem of the former Czechoslovakian music industry, let me show you a couple of pictures of this highly uncomfortable and suboptimal guitar. Still, I’m grateful for this very simple musical instrument, because this gave me the first impetus to become a guitar fanatic.

The long and windy road

2023.02.17.

Before I start, let me apologize for my long absence – it’s been a while since I posted anything, and it was with a reason.

First of all, lately I’ve been having health issues. Nothing to worry about, though – it’s just time and energy-consuming to find the time for all those physical examinations, especially that I have a regular 9-5 job and live in the suburbs. So, in the last couple of weeks my energy was mainly dedicated to carry on with the necessary things. Besides, I’ve been constantly struggling to find a good guitar tone – I know that once or twice I showed you interim results of my experimentation in Bias FX2 (or more recently, Neural DSP), but the battle is still raging on. All of my previously used guitar tones sounded suboptimal to me, so I tried to find new ways to achieve a robust, still crispy and clear guitar sound. Anyway, I think I’m finally on the right track: I experimented a lot with various amp, cab and mic settings, and ended up with a clear, but robust sound (please find below a short excerpt from the first demo recording that may give you an impression on not just the tone, but the overall feeling of the song).

Please let me know in the comments, whether you like it or not!