Severed Fifth

Keep your eyes peeled for the new Severed Fifth album coming soon! You can check out the current demo at http://www.severedfifth.com/releases/ or see some live performances on http://www.youtube.com/user/severedfifth

Stay tuned! \m/

Severed Fifth: Live In The Studio

Check out the live video Q&A and community report with Jono Bacon. Feel free to participate in the free Ustream chat to meet community members and ask your questions to Jono directly.

Folks interested in attending, please blog about the cast ahead of time so others that are interested can join in as well!

You can tune into the cast every Wednesday at 3pm Eastern/8pm UTC on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/severed-fifth-live-in-the-studio

Every Wednesday at 12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 8pm UTC/UK / 9pm Europe I host a live Severed Fifth videocast in which I provide updates about the band, the recording, the Severed Fifth Street Teams, how people are spreading the word and more.

On Wednesday I did one of these shows and discussed:

• The Severed Fifth Recording Campaign Final Stretch and showed the video.
• The new album, the recording and future plans.
• Street Team work that is going on.
• Played a few videos of rehearsals and the 2010 recap.
• Played some music from the demo.
• Other updates and news.

See the video below:

Just a quick heads up for you folks to let you know of two important events this week:

• Severed Fifth Video Update – today (23rd February 2011) at 12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 8pm UTC – I will be running a live and interactive video update to discuss the latest happenings in the band, in the Street Team, the latest studio news (we started recording at the weekend), and more! See it here!
• Street Team Meeting – Thu 24th February 2011 at 12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 8pm UTC – we will be hosting our weekly Street Team meeting in which we put together plans for the next week for growing our global Severed Fifth Street Team in preparation for the album and beyond! To join, simple join the chat channel – everyone is welcome!

I look forward to seeing you at these next two events!

Severed Fifth is an ambitious project and one that requires a lot of moving parts to happen. This includes studio equipment, hosting, software, rehearsal space, merchandise, and more. A lot of these moving parts cost money and as such the project needs a certain amount of money to succeed. Some wonderful Severed Fifth fans have used the Severed Fifth Fair Pay system to help support the project, but also some companies who I have asked for support have also been gracious enough to support us. I just wanted to highlight these companies now.

Bytemark Hosting

Bytemark Hosting has supported Severed Fifth from the very beginning by providing free hosting for the website. As Severed Fifth has continued to grow we can thank Bytemark for helping to keep us online, and my friend Adam Sweet performs the administration on the machine.

I have been using Bytemark for years due their pretty affordable hosting and rocking service and they have been incredibly supportive across other projects I have been involved in such as LugRadio too. If you need decent hosting check them out, and let them know we sent you.

ToonTrack

Toontrack produce a range of tools for audio production. Their two flagship products are EZDrummer and Superior Drummer. When I recorded Denied By Reign I played the drums like an acoustic kit but using electronic drums. As such, I used the drum sounds from the kit itself, and the drums sounded really synthetic. The drums were the main criticism I got for the first album.

For the new album I wanted to fix this. I went out and bought a copy of EZDrummer and Drumkit From Hell, and while it sounded good, it lacked the flexibility I needed. Toontrack’s flagship product, Superior Drummer, is much more expensive but it, and the Metal Foundry expansion pack which I also needed, had the features that would make the new album rock. So, I emailed Toontrack and explained what Severed Fifth was and the Free Culture nature of the project and Toontrack kindly donated a copy of both Superior Drummer and The Metal Foundry for the new record. Lo and behold…the drums are sounding awesome! Thanks, Toontrack!

Microsoft

For the live recording of the new album which takes place from 11th – 15th August 2010, I wanted to stream the recording live on the Internet. To set this up I needed a fairly specific recording set-up to take the output of the mixing desk and pump it into ustream.tv. To do this I needed a separate laptop with a USB sound card to output to the net.

While I tried to get this working in Ubuntu, this particular hardware is not well supported so I needed to use Windows. I contacted a friend of mine at Microsoft and explained the project and she kindly hooked me up with a boxed copy of Windows 7 for the laptop. Now we can stream the live album online!

Remember, you will be able to watch the new album streamed live here!

If you are reading this you have probably heard about Severed Fifth, read the website, may have listened to the music that has been released, watched some of the videos, and possibly chatted in the forum. You may have even taken some Severed Fifth music and used it in your own music or videos, played it in your car, shared it with your friends or otherwise enjoyed the content.

Severed Fifth will never expect any kind of payment for this content or service; a core part of the ethos of Severed Fifth is we provide an awesome free service with lots of awesome music to rock out to.

Severed Fifth does however cost money to produce. I need to buy hosting, equipment for the studio, invest in promotional materials, buy t-shirts, buy recordable media to give CDs out, and ultimately I would love to take the project in many new directions such as sending our awesome Severed Fifth Street Team contributors free schwag for doing good work, putting on live shows and tours, upgrading the Severed Fifth studio, renting rehearsal space and more. Of course, each of these things cost money, but I don’t believe I should ever require money from you folks to benefit from the fruits of these investments. I am though keen to explore how I can fund these goals and ambitions in a fair way.

And thus, Severed Fifth Fair Pay is born.

Hows does it work?

It is simple: you pay what you feel fair and comfortable with.

If you download the music and enjoy using the website and services and would like to pay $1, that is awesome. If you decide to pay $50 that is awesome too. It is also awesome if you decide to pay nothing at all.

Everyone still gets access to all the content as soon as it is ready, everyone will always get the music freely, everyone has equal access to the services, irrespective of whether you pay nothing or something. Severed Fifth Fair Pay puts control in your hands to decide (a) how much you can afford and (b) what you feel would be a fair and reasonable amount to pay. Simple.

How can I pay?

Payment is simple, just head over to the Severed Fifth Fair Pay and use your credit/debit card to make a payment. You choose how much.

Thanks to everyone who contributes!

Well, it has been 24 hours since Severed Fifth was announced. Since then I have been surprised by the incredible support shown by a number of bloggers and commentators. I thought it would be nice to summarise our progress in the first day.

(more…)

So, finally, Severed Fifth is unwrapped. It has been something that has been kicking around my brain now for a few years and something that I really decided to start working on a few months back, shortly before LugRadio Live USA 2008. The first thing you should do to learn about the project is to head over and listen to or read the Announcement – it gives a pretty solid overview of the aims of the project. (more…)