Production Log #2: Thunder Stag

 

It's that time, again! Time for a song release!

It's been 3 months since Electric Boogaloo. A bit of a longer break than we planned, but in this here post, we'll explain to you why!

But first, let's talk about the tune itself.

*Thunder Staaaaag*

Imposing name, innit? 

Well, there's a little story behind it. You can read it down below in the log. 😉

But yeah, there's a clear theme with this tune, and it's tempo changes. It's been one of times when you find a new toy (Studio One's tempo automation feature), and just kinda go wild with it.

We'll be sure to do some more of that in future projects, but not quite as much, perhaps. I mean, check out the tempo track of this tune:

Up, down, all around, going from 60 BPM all the way to 334!

Going faster, going slower, changing rhythms, mixing things up in general. Honestly, it's quite fitting considering what was going on behind the scenes while we were making this one.

In fact, let's talk about that.

Because really, while we hope that Thunder Stag is a cool tune that listeners like yourself will enjoy, to us, it sort of represents a lot of shifts in terms of our workflow and general approach to making music.

See, as you might now, up until the release of Electric Boogaloo, we were following a 1-release-per-month schedule.

We've obviously stopped doing that. Mainly because we took an honest look at what we were doing, and how we were doing it.

We kinda made peace (again) with the fact that we're a hobbyist, that music isn't our job, that we actually *have* a full-time job and also other hobbies that we like to relax with.

That's why you've been seeing some video game posts on this blog, too. Because while we like making music, neither of us are so hyper-focused on it that we're ready to pour all of our energy into it.

We gotta relax, sometimes. We already have a job, so we really shouldn't turn music into a second one.

But yeah, that's why we decided to move away from the once-a-month schedule. T'was too stringent, and it also meant that once we had a song ready, we barely had the time to create any sort of related content, like videos or this blog.

..... though we weren't quite planning on 3 months.

That came about because for one, the big heatwave earlier this summer slowed everything down to a crawl for a few weeks, and also because in changing our schedule, we also worked out a bit of a new approach to how we go about releasing our music.

You see, over the past year, we've tried quite a few methods of marketing our music, because let's be honest, the idea is to build a bit of an online presence and actually get our music heard.

Now, some of those methods worked better than others. For example, this Blog itself actually turned out quite well, not only as a harmonious extra to our music, but also as a hobby of it's own.

Another example would be YouTube Ads. See, these are fairly affordable and very, very effective.

And actually, that's the problem with them.

See, our experience with YT Ads is that you spend say, ~20-60 bucks, and you'll gain say, a couple thousand listens on your song, and a couple hundred subscribers. Which might sound awesome, but to be honest, it feels a bit.... wrong.

You're not buying clicks. Nobody's forcing people to click on those ads, and nobody's forcing them to subscribe to your channel. But nevertheless, it just ends up feeling like completely inorganic growth. It kinda feels like you're bribing people to listen to your music.

I mean, we still run a permanent small-scale google ads campaign, but that's there to just generally drive a bit of interest and traffic. For our actual releases, we've settled on a different approach.

You might have noticed that in the past couple of months, we've experimented with short from content.

Well, those experiments turned out to be fairly successful. We're not planning to turn into a full-on TikToker or anything, but basically, the plan going forward is to produce a few little bits of extra content for each release.

Little fun facts, a montage of how the tune developed, a little vlog about the release. Little things to provide some extra value for those interested, while also driving some traffic and interest. Raising awareness of the tune's existence, basically.

We're hoping that this approach will provide a few benefits:

For one, all of the "marketing" material for each release will be bespoke. Now that we're not forcing ourselves to crank out a tune every month, we can actually take the time to properly put together some extras that hopefully add value.

Since it's all DIY, it'll also spare our wallet, and every small success will actually feel organic. You know, even if we only get a handful of listeners this way, at least it'll feel like we properly earned it. 😉

And there's also the potential advantage that peppering the internet with shortform content might not only drive interest in each particular release, but generally poke various algorithms into activity and help establish a proper online presence in general.

Though that's the sort of dry "5 steps to synergize and hyperoptimize your SEO"-yap that we'd rather not think about if we can help it. Takes all the fun out of it. 😒

But yeah, that big shift in our approach led to further delays in releasing Thunder Stag, because we had to do some strategizing, and also create a bunch of new assets in order to actually implement those new ideas.

Oh, and we also switched our video editing software in the middle of all that, because CapCut, after more than doubling their prices for pro, then also started doing some shady stuff in their EULA.

We've gone a bit grassroots and switched to Kdenlive. It's not as fancy, but works for our purposes and is open source.

So hopefully without all those things to slow down the process, our future releases will be a bit quicker, again. Not monthly perhaps, but more like 2 months, rather than 3. 😛

Anyway, i think that largely sums up what we wanted to share about Thunder Stag. I know we mostly spoke about the behind-the-scenes marketing stuff, but well, that's largely what we associate this tune with, under the bottom line. Hopefully *you* appreciate the tune mainly as a cool piece of music though! 😉

Oh, and i suppose we really ought to put some links to the song into this post. You can find it here:

Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud | Bandcamp

Anyway, here's the log, and see you for our next post!

 18th of May, 2025  

Right then, go time on a new project!

Wanted to do something with big, thumping drums, so we came up with a nice, thundering rhythm, and put in some arpeggiated horns, too. Feeling a real itch for making this kind of tune, right now!

 

 

 30th of May, 2025

 Right, bit of time since our last entry. Some minor, but important changes since. Those arpeggiated horns are out, but instead, we've got this REALLY dirty synth bass that we're absolutely in love with. Track's lacking structure for now, but we're writing some good parts to put in. Some technical difficulties, though. Big update on Arturia's "Augmented" instruments, which our DAW now doesn't wanna recognize. Ah well, we'll sort it out.

 

 

 

 3rd of June, 2025

 Mhm, small steps with this one, but it's getting along. Played a bunch with a Synthesizer today (Pigments) to get a cool plucked lead sound going. Gotta add some variety to the drums, though.

 

 

8th of June, 2025

Wahay, this one's quite fun! Like intended, we've massively upped the variety in the percussion, and we'll be sure to keep it fresh and interesting throughout the rest of production. We've also been experimenting with tempo changes in Studio one for the first time, and we -love- that stuff! Definitely gonna be using it more, going forward. Oh, also, the current working title of the song is "Haboob". A Reference to Cyberpunk 2077, which we recently finished.

Oh, also also, the issues with the Augmented series instruments are sorted. They all needed a reinstall, but no biggie. 😉 

 

20th of June, 2025

Phew, okay, been a bit since our last entry. We actually made good progress on the song, but it's been fairly gradual. Small steps, which in turn didn't lend themselves to being written about. But! The tune's name is now marked as "Time Storm", because we leaned into the tempo changes quite a bit. Beyond that, we've been adding to it, mixing things up and generally having a good time chippin' away! 

 

7th of July, 2025

Hrm, we really have to make entries in here more frequently. Well, to be fair, the last week, we took a break due to unbearable heat. 😓

But! We added a whole second lead to the tune today, something which it needed a fair bit. And now, it's nicely moving towards the finish line. It's got a beginning and and end, and the elements are mostly in place! 

 

 

12th of July, 2025

 Awrighty, this tune is now firmly in the mixing-phase! We're happy with the instruments and what they play, and now we'll be spending some time optimizing things and making sure it sounds right. Did so for the drums, today. Hoping you'll enjoy those, they're very.... thundery.

... which also reminds us, there's been another name change for this one! Time Storm is out, and now, the tune's called "Thunder Stag".

What on earth does that mean, you ask? Well, funny thing: Being German, we kinda thought that hey, the German word for Thursday, which is "Donnerstag" actually sounds pretty cool. It actually means "Thunder day", you see. Aaand well, you can see how our minds kinda mixed and matched elements and ended up with a cool sounding name like that. At least we hope it sounds cool.😜 

 

 

13th of July, 2025

What's this? 2 entries in 2 days? We're spoiling you!

But yeah, we did some basswork, today, giving it a bit more movement. We also did some funky sidechaining between the bass and sub-bass. Turned out pretty interesing! 

 

20th of July, 2025

Righto, we've been working on the mix, hashing out volumes, filter settings, automation and the like. At this point, the tune feels about ~90% done. The next few days, we'll see if it still needs anything, and then it'll become a mastering job.

 

26th of July, 2025

Okay, so the song itself is now indeed ready for mastering. It's pretty much done. We've now also created a cover for it. And generally, the next week or so will be spent creating a few bits and bobs needed for release, as well as mastering the tune. 

  

3rd of August, 2025

 Alrighty, good news! We've got a Master file. Needed a bit of love to get it to sound right on various headphones/speakers, but we figure we've got it. We're now looking to create just a handful more release materials, as well as actually uploading and scheduling the release of the song itself. Should go smoothly from here, fingers crossed! 😉

 

9th of August, 2025

Right, so by now, the song's scheduled for release, most extra bits and bobs are uploaded and scheduled as well, and we just wrote the top part of this Blog post. as well. Scheduling it to come out on the 22nd, along with the tune itself.

Also, if you see some unusual links in this post, it's a new beta feature of Blogger, suggesting some terms that users might want to search up for some context. Sounds like a decent idea, so we'll use it and see what we think.