A Fool's Paradise

We develop taste a lot faster than skill. Or, in other words, we all know we suck way before there's anything we can do about it.

Matthew Colville

The Album

A Fool's Paradise was the first album that I released as a solo artist. The music is instrumental hard rock, with the electric guitar as the main melodic instrument. I played all stringed instruments on the release, whereas the drums and keyboards were programmed in MIDI using samples.

If you've been around the block, then you will likely be aware that this album was recorded way back in the day. I originally wrote and recorded the songs between the fall of 2012 and the spring of 2013. I didn't really release them, unless you count posting them on Soundcloud and then putting a link to the playlist on my Facebook and (then) Twitter accounts.

The Remix

I have always been very happy with the songs on AFP, and mostly so with the playing. It is sloppy at times, and there is definitely some overplaying going on, but I ultimately decided that those things are part of my style, and if anything, I should be true to myself.

However, I was never satisfied with the sound. That's where the quotation at the start of the page comes in. Except that it never really occurred to me what mixing and mastering was actually about, and I wasn't interested enough to find out. I eventually found out—and then I got interested.

Despite the section header, the album is not really a remix, if nothing else then because that would imply that it was mixed to begin with! I prefer calling it a reimagining or re-recording. I did re-record just about everything except for the original melodies and leads. I wanted to take advantage of the superior sound of the guitar amp plugins that are available nowadays.

The Hardware (and Software)

This is very much a Les Paul album. I'd say my black 1990 Studio model was used for 90% of the leads and heavy rhythms, with some SG (Standard, 2005) thrown in for good measure. The title track and On the Meadow were mostly my yellow Strat and Elegy my Telecaster. Wherever you hear a lower note than the E standard, it's my PRS SE Holcomb making an appearance.

Heavy rhythms and melody guitars were tracked using Softube's Amp Room Marshall Edition. I usually mixed and matched three amp sims, JMP 2203, JCM 800 and Silver Jubilee, all boosted by the yellow overdrive pedal included in Amp Room. The clean tones were the Archetype Petrucci from Neural DSP, and the bass tone Guitar Rig Pro 6 from Native Instruments. The lead tones are from the original 2013 recording, and were therefore played on a Fender G-DEC 3 Fifteen combo, going from the emulated headphone out straight into the audio interface.

The Artwork

I've always had a fairly good idea of what I wanted for the cover art for AFP: a fantasy landscape, with the obligatory tiny figure in the foreground, gazing across the stormy sea towards some idealized paradise. But the state of my art is sadly not much better than this concept sketch:

When I managed to improve the sound quality the way I did, I decided that the album not only deserved a proper release, but also some serious cover art by a real artist—absolutely no AI involved whatsoever! My first port of call was DeviantArt. I did a general search of the entire site for "fantasy landscape" and scrolled for ages, popping up Chrome tabs for the ones that really stood out.

It soon turned out that four out of the six paintings I liked were by the same guy: Mr. Michal Kváč from Brno, Czechia. I reached out to Michal, and after a few days of back and forth, this is how his artwork turned out, after I defaced it with my name and the album title:

Here are some links: Michal's DeviantArt, there's an official site, another official-looking site, and then I get a kick out of checking out how he arrived at the finished product.