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[Mr. Yes]

http://thrompd.hinchy.us/vocalmarole/

I've been working on this project since around August last year, and I posted about it after finishing the first album. Now that I've finished album 2 I'm editing this post and showing it again.

From the website: "Vocal Marole is a story about people who may or may not be there, told through songs with accompanying descriptions."



Album 1



Album 2
(album art by the amazing Johnny Panic)


Any amount of feedback would be appreciated!

[noah!]

Wow, that was a long listen... (I found the thread this morning, and have been making my way through the album since)

First off, the story. Err...I got lost. But in a good way! (I think...) Personally, it would be really nice if you could get the whole story at once from the web player, and just have it scroll to/highlight whatever section you're on, as my memory really got lost trying to link each chunk of two paragraphs together. Also, it doesn't help that surrealist imagery isn't meant to be served in the bite-sized chunks given here. ;-)

Though I'll give you this: I downloaded the album, and the story in that context is actually a lot more understandable, and actually quite enjoyable and unique!

As for the music, it's rather nice, and fits the story really well. The real standout tracks for me were Escaping the Silence 2 and Counting Backward. The only thing I really have to say is that you might want to look into narrating the story over the tracks (of course, allowing download/streaming of both narrated and plain versions). If anything, it would make it more podcast-like and also be more accessible for people who like the idea but don't really feel like reading...

I have to say, I love this idea, and if I ever decide to suddenly become prolific or something I may have to steal this idea. ;-) I hope you make more of these!

(p.s. hypnopomp totally sounds like one of those "invented genres" you'd see two threads over)

[Mr. Yes]

Aw man, you are awesome. Thanks for listening through it all! Beautiful feedback, too.

The story so far is a bit difficult to understand, and this is my fault for not being prepared enough in the beginning. Surreal imagery is fun, but it's also usually a sign to me that I don't know quite what I'm really writing. It's easier for instance to write "her head took notice of the future and dimmed itself, spreading light evenly forward" than to actually describe the actions taking place. At this point I know what I'm doing though, so I'll try to tone down on the strange stuff from here on.

I like your suggestion here (to have the whole story displaying at once), though I don't know if I'd feel like setting that kinda thing up now. I'll keep it in mind for the future though.

Narration is something I thought about early on and decided against, but if I can get somebody else to do it (because I'd be horrible at it) and if I could somehow get it to fit well with the music, I would probably try it out. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'm glad you like the idea! And that would be awesome, if you stole it. I would love to see some other people doing this.

Also, yes, I will be making more. In fact, I'm probably going to start the first track of album 2 after I'm done typing this. I plan to keep this up for a while.

Thanks again for listening to it all, I really appreciate it.

[Evan Balster]

This sounds very interesting.  I am going to listen to it...  Soon.  I hope I don't forget.

[droqen]

I am downloading it right now, but I am also going to bed.

Hopefully there will be no lack of enjoyment this morning.

[Mr. Yes]

Bumped because the second album is done now:



Album 2

[Johnny Panic]

The second album is a lot better than the first one, and I already enjoyed the first one a whole lot. The songs are a lot shorter, which is nice because it takes around the same amount of time to read the description as listen to the song. Plus the quality of the songs in general has been improving a lot, it's crazy how you can make so many short songs and make each one so distinct and unique. You're almost impossibly prolific with these.

The story is getting really interesting too. The first album had a lot of surreal shit, which was cool, but it was a little confusing for an introduction. I really like how the descriptions have leveled off for a perfect balance. On one hand I can easily tell what's going on, but on the other there's a lot of interesting elements that hint at something alien.

And I'm not sure if you had the illustrations when you originally finished album 1, but they really add a lot, and along with the site are beautiful to look at. It's a shame there aren't as many in album 2 as album 1, but what is there is fantastic, and I hope you do a whole lot more in the future.

Everyone should listen to/read this.