Final considerations
With all of the major compositional work done, I was left with one seemingly simple task: reviewing and fine tuning. I listened to the whole album numerous times with a special focus on finding all the rough edges to be smoothed out. Some songs turned out to require a bit more pause in between here and there, some songs needed sound/mixing/mastering adjustments, other songs needed to be simplified in some parts. All these little details only became apparent as I listened to the album as a whole and in context. Since my album was planned as a concept album meant to be consumed as a whole, this was all the more important.
After way more hours than I had first anticipated, there finally came a point where I was satisfied with the album as a whole and decided to call it finished.
Wait, there's more...
The actual music was only part of the deal. With the music all done, lots of work was still left to be done. I still had to make the CD cover, the CD rear side, the booklet and the website. I first made the CD cover, the CD rear side and then started making the booklet. As most of the songs are instrumental, I decided to include some texts discussing thoughts and background information concerning each and every song. Some songs received small chunks of poetry instead of the lyrics usually found in booklets.
Alongside the text I also had to design fitting background pictures. Being a passionate hobby photographer, I thankfully had quite a repository of raw pictures to choose from and the technical means to edit and modify the photos to fit their designated purpose.
Once I had the booklet done I attended to making the website - a task I was more than familiar with, having worked as a Software Engineer in the web development sector for over 10 years. However, I decided to use a new CMS for the job. A CMS I didn't yet know, so I first had to work my way into it. The website concept developed natrually during the making, but I already had some good ideas what information I wanted to present in addition to what's already in the booklet. I also wanted to give interested customers a very quick and easy way to preview my music, so I added a song preview function.
The website has an adaptive and partially responsive design which means that the website adapts to the various display sizes of modern devices. I wanted to ensure a good level of compatibility and seamless usability.
As the whole project is slowly coming to a close, I do now look back on it with pride. I never thought this project would turn out as time-consuming as it did, but it was certainly fun and worth the effort. I hope that now I'm sharing the album with the world, it will be successful in extending the fun to you, the listeners.