Album Notes

3 DISCS!

The History Of Recorded Music is the all-encompassing solo album. It is written, performed, produced, financed and documented by myself, Brian Dobbs.

This album includes a Vinyl CD, a DVD-Video and a DVD-Audio disc. I shot and edited all of the video, authored both DVDs and designed my own way of multichannel mixing. I also designed the album artwork with the help of photography expert Enoch Chan.

The History of Recorded Music Vinyl CD
16 bit, 44.1 kHz, Stereo

1) Breathe, Into My Soul
2) Biolume
3) Needle Whip
4) The Spirits of Tomorrow
5) Superior(ity)
6) Stand the Test of Time
7) X Max
8) Light Emitting Diad
9) Breathe, Into My Soul (reprise)


Comments:

When recording for this album began there were only rough ideas floating around, mostly stored as demos on my computer. The songwriting process was linear, working and completing one song at a time. I ultimately wanted to hear certain types of songs and sounds, so once I was done with one type I then moved on to the next. For instance, I wanted a heavy metal song, an electronica song, an epic song, etc. Once the creative process of composing and demoing a song on my computer was complete I went to the recording studio and tracked it.

Composing the next song wouldn't begin until I was mostly done tracking the previous song. It's not the most efficient way of doing things, but I unfortunately never had the luxury of isolating myself for a month or two and knocking this thing out. From conception to completion this album took one-and-a-half years. Besides the fact that I took over the roles of guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, drummer, songwriter, producer, videographer and editor, I had to fit this thing in-between having a full-time job and being the drummer and webmaster for Concrete Prophet. Since I also paid for studio time myself I had to budget the recording process from paycheck to paycheck. I am not listing complaints, I just wanted to express the reality of the whole process.

I loved experimenting with synthesizers on this album. I never worked with the keyboard intimately before, but once I started doodling I found myself completely immersed into the world of patches and effects. The keyboard sneaks it's way into most of the songs, sometimes producing interesting musical hybrids. I find it difficult to classify the album into any one particular genre however. I suppose most of the material on here is derivative of rock music, but I wouldn't call this a rock album. I'll leave that up to you.



Visuals to the Aural Medium DVD-Video
16x9 Anamorphic Widescreen, Dolby Digital 2.0

1) Interview with Brian Dobbs
2) Studio Footage
3) Music Videos


Comments:

I thought it would be interesting to put myself on camera to answer questions and offer some insight into the making of this album. Who am I? Where am I from? What were my motivations? Just how on Earth did I manage to do all of this? I do my best to give as much information as possible about my background, my reasons and methods for doing this as well as song-by-song analysis. The interview is quite long, but after all this is my album.

I knew going into this I wanted to get some video footage of the recording process. I didn't anticipate capturing the performances of most of the material but once this thing got started I thought it would be stupid not to set up the camera to capture exactly what would be heard on the album. From that, I thought of making music videos to each song showcasing each instrument being recorded for that song. I refined the editing process as I went along but ultimately what you will see are simultaneous performances of myself playing each instrument for each song.



The History of Recorded Music DVD-Audio
24 bit, 44.1 kHz, Six Channel Surround Sound

1) Breathe, Into My Soul
2) Biolume
3) Needle Whip
4) The Spirits of Tomorrow
5) Superior(ity)
6) Stand the Test of Time
7) X Max
8) Light Emitting Diad
9) Breathe, Into My Soul (reprise)


Comments:

I'm a home theater nut. I love surround sound. Listening to music in surround sound can be a breathtaking experience. In a word, beautiful. About midway through the recording process I started thinking about whether it would be possible to include a surround mix of each song on the album.

After doing some research I came across a company that sold DVD-Audio authoring software at a reasonable price. The only catch was that it didn't include the ability to mix in surround sound. The recording studio only had stereo mixing capabilities so I knew that I would have to start thinking creatively towards a solution.

Ultimately what you'll hear is the music broken up into multiple channels. I'm confident no one has attempted something like this before because I came up with the mixing process myself. In the process I think I drove my engineer crazy! In the beginning he had no idea where I was taking this project, but after time he eventually began to understand. His idea for an album cover was dressing me up as a mad scientist in a laboratory.

During the recording process I told some people about my plans for a surround sound mix to which most of them asked, "But why?" My answer is that I have faith in the future of multichannel music. I've been an early adopter of the virtually unknown (and misunderstood) format and I can now also consider myself one of the privileged few on this entire planet to have an independent DVD-Audio surround sound mix.