It’s CW20 of 2012 by now – which means that the #secretalbum has been worked on for well over a year now.

This last weekend, I decided it’s time to get some proper project status and milestones done – and let’s start with that!

The All-Important Milestone

A release date has been set:

The public release of #secretalbum will be December 15th of 2012!

(note that I reserve the right to move that release date by +/- 3 days – I still have to find out which day of the week is best to release an album – suggestions welcome!)

Now this sounds rather manageable – after all, it’s seven months, or more than half a year from now. However, if you consider that the exclusive pre-release (yes, that’s for you authorized readers of this blog!) will be four weeks before that, that’s November 17th when everything must be ready, and as I will as always take some time to finalize mixes and masters, this means that all of the music must be completed by early to mid-October (i.e. less than five months from now).

So, this brings us to the next question – is five months from now realistic for the music?

Track Status Overview

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AjgfNkWDKQnVdFpiNmVHYkRSMVlIVzA4ZmxXU044YWc&single=true&gid=20&output=html

So, this is the track status overview as of today – a May 14th baseline if you will (and I believe I will add another blog post that links to the current version as well).

Some explanations may come in handy here:

1. columns C-K hold a track progress, from no bar=just a general idea to fully filled=ready for mastering.
2. risk is your typical project status risk, ranging from green=everything fine over yellow=risk identified but remedy implemented to red=problem, and don’t know how to solve it.
3. priority goes from grey=will rather not be considered over white and light green to orange=this MUST BE on the album!
4. finally, “Artists” lists the artists – round brackets means “not confirmed”, square brackets means “job completed” – so if you’re an artist and your name appears not in any kind of brackets and you don’t know what it’s about – well you’ll hear from me anyway .

From the combination of progress, risk and priority, you can get some clear picture already:

• tracks with high progress and green risk are the happy ones – nearly done, everything fine!
• tracks with a low progress and/or high risk, combined with a grey or white priority will most probably not be included on the album.
• tracks with a red risk or yellow risk/low progress combined with orange priority: those are the problem children. They may very well endanger the album as it is currently planned. Such candidates are some parts of Aeneis and Größenordnungen.
• tracks with a low progress and orange priority are those where I need to get my ass up and start writing soon!

All in all – a very mixed picture. And I need to get some composing done – like, right this following prolonged weekend.

Things Non-Track-Related

Fortunately, the cover art is the responsibility of the talented Anna Bejenke – only problem is, I didn’t inform her about the deadline so far.

Furthermore, there’s also all kinds of marketing etc., and all of this must be planned – and this is also something I need to get working on (in addition to writing music, that is).

A Brief Assessment of the Status

During the growth of this project (and you may well step back and read this blog from its beginning), the concept has changed somewhat: while in the beginning this would have been just a collection of short, unrelated tracks, in the meantime some suites have formed as the cornerstones of this album. Currently, there’s five of them defined (Aeneis, Größenordnungen, Rückwärtsfließpreßverfahren, A Collection of Hardcore Emotions and Baßtelstube). Unfortunatley, the first two of them are also two problem children here, so:

Rückwärtsfließpreßverfahren has already been completed. As I envision the album right now, it needs two more of those big suites. As Hardcore Emotions is not a good candidate (see progress/risk), this comes up to get both Aeneis and Größenordnungen done. Größenordnungen (due to lead artists, Raul Bonell, having somewhat vanished) is highly endangered right now, and that means that there is a considerable project risk, but:

There might still be a #secretalbum sans those big suites (which will then be a short EP with ~20min. of running time) and the suites following later as really short EPs in separate releases (something Mops Moser had been suggesting anyway).

So there’s still some issues to be resolved and some questions to be answered – and this needs to be done withing the next few weeks. Let’s put June 15th as a deadline for that.

Closing Words

The next few weeks will be very crucial for this project, if not from a composing, then at least from a project organisation viewpoint. Withing those weeks, the fate of the project will be decided – but rest assured, I won’t be willing to cancel it, but maybe modify it slightly.

All of the artists involved so far will also get info mails within the next few days, where I will report on and ask for status – stay tuned!

Yours sincerely,

Rainer