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@Noah Brode Thanks for the kind comments. I'll share some of the workflow. I used EZ drummer 2 for my samples, and the rest was just straight GM drums programming. I mean it'd be good if you could actually play drums for real, then you'll have a good idea of what "sounds right" when you write it down in a sequencer. However, if you don't, the trick is to actually see how drummers play drums. I know that sounds stupid, but seriously look at how drummers play. See what's actually possible with the limitations of how many arms/legs a person has and match that to a sound. You can start to get a good idea of what kind of "typical" patterns show up. Also good is to watch youtube drumming lessons, even if you don't play drums, so that you get an idea of the physicality of it. If you can understand that, you'll write much more natural sounding drums than if you didn't. As for how to write drums in principle, the way I do it is to start with the kick and snare basically on their own and then I work on the toms and eventually on cymbals and hi-hats. Then I work on fills and ornaments as I deem necessary to add them. The other thing is actually the production of the drum "sound" in the mix, so in this case I basically made the drum "sound" from scratch on each track (since I'm not working with an actual drumset, why limit myself to a single drum sound?) That way I could pick and choose what I thought sounded best for the track. I would then run each "microphone" from EZ drummer through its own effects chain, but mostly that meant a compressor and EQ, which I would use to shape things so they "pop" in the mix to my liking. And of course you don't need to use EZ Drummer or somesuch, there's plenty of other drum VST out there. I tend to use Reason's redrum a lot too, but it depends on what kind of music I'm doing. As for the timeline, it took about a year to put together the actual album. Form October 2019 to release. I had many of the songs already so this wasn't so much a "songwriting" process as a production process. However, I did allow myself a bunch of experimentation time during production to come up with new ideas or to mess around with things and out of that came many ideas that did make it on the album, so it's not just strictly a production process either. On the hardware/software side, I used Cubase 10.5 for all of the production. Guitars and bass were done mostly on Guitar Rig 5 and occasionally using Helix Native (which sometimes has better sounds for some specific things.) As for EQ and mastering tools, I used the stuff that comes with Cubase which is pretty great (as are most included VSTs in the major DAWs like Logic and Protools, etc,) but also Melda Productions' VSTs, which are also really good (And a bunch of them are free!) Synths and any other thing was done using Cubase's own synth VSTs which are alright. I much rather prefer Reason, but I didn't want to complicate things too much since Reason is its own beast (even as VST inside cubase it can be cumbersome to work with.) Like I said before, drums I did using EZ Drummer and a couple of expansions, but even just the default kit is pretty good. On the hardware side, I used like 8 different guitars throughout the album, depending on the song. 40s was played entirely on my MiM Fender Telecaster which I absolutely adore. All the bass lines were played on a Fender Jazzbass, which is pretty standard. You can get just about any bass sound out of that thing, it's incredibly versatile. On the computer side, I work on Windows and I used a MOTU Ultralite MK3 Hybrid (USB then, using firewire now) interface along with a SE2200aII Condenser Microphone. On the voice side, I ran the signal from the SE2200 into guitar rig 5 (lol) because, for some reason, I found it much easier to work with guitar pedals to tweak out the way my voice was sounding in the mix. Like I would with a guitar, let's say. This also made the workflow easier since I could store presets in GR5 without having to save the entire effect chain on a track. However the voice was probably the hardest part to record altogether. I practiced singing the entire album back to back for about 3 months before starting to record the tracks. So that means I made most of the tracks as karaoke and sung to that, as to get the timing and everything right with my own mix. Also it's important to memorize the lyrics so you can focus on the performance, so I did that too. Maybe this is super obvious, but it wasn't to me! Once the tracks were mixed, I made a Cubase project to master the entire album where I would import all the exported songs and then arrange them so that each track had a song. That way I can listen to the entire thing through and manage transitions and silence between songs. This is also important so you can bring all the levels and relative loudness levels together. In this case I used EQ and a multiband compressor going into a limiter for each song as necessary. Again, I wanted to bring each song into a single relative loudness level. Note I'm saying loudness, not volume. This is pretty standard now, so make sure you do that as well. Get a "Loudness" measurement VST so you can check that. Then I would just export the whole master as a single track, which is what the youtube video is, and then cut each individual song for the bandcamp album. So yeah, that's about it for the production in broad strokes. If you have more questions just ask. Oh yeah, my room is not acoustically treated in the slightest (I have an upright piano right behind me lol.) The only thing I did was to arrange my room so that it's cramped enough that there is no audible reverberation. I don't use studio monitors but instead a pair of sony mdr 7056 studio monitor headphones for most of the "studio work," and then when I'm mastering I'll use all sorts of different speakers and headphones to get an idea of how the final result will sound across many devices. So, y'know.

Wow! Great job with this piece! I love the creative rhythms and hemiolas! It sounds like it's fun and challenging for every member of this versatile group which I guess could be any given mix of tubas, euphoniums and trombones which is great! The music is vigorous and I love your use of 6/4 chords! I don't know what kind of journey you had while getting this finished since I didn't get to listen to the unfinished version but I admire the result! Thanks for sharing!