Introduction

I’m Alan, a musician, audio engineer, record label guy, and writer. This is my blog. The purpose of it is to teach myself how to build and publish simple static websites, keep friends in the loop by posting updates about my music projects, and to talk about my books, when I have finished books to promote.

The newest thing on the horizon is a book that I’ve started writing. It’s a companion piece to the upcoming Pull The Strings album, which has yet to be fully announced. I can say that the first taste of it will be out before the end of the year, as part of a cool project at the label that I’m excited to announce.

Writing is an all-consuming task, I’m finding. It requires a lot of dedication and discipline. I have the work ethic to make a ton of music every year, but it still feels different when I’m telling stories through words alone. My friend Brett Tharp, a published author and musician (who is behind the project Acrid Tomb, for which I contributed session vocals on their latest split EP Hermetic Invocations) told me something very reassuring, however. He said, “thinking about writing IS writing.” Explaining further, he said “obviously it doesn’t matter if you don’t also take the time to put it on the page, but if you are doing that, literally don’t ever betray yourself into thinking this other part of it isn’t also writing.” That made me feel better about my process, as I’m spending quite a bit of time, in between actually writing, thinking about writing.

In other news, I started an instrumental progressive metal side project that I’m calling bodyscan. Writing for this project is insanely fun, liberating, and strangely easy. I feel as though I’ve been training my entire life for this. It’s entirely focused on melody and groove, with the center of the songs being lead guitar. For this project, I was heavily influenced by acts like Intervals, Plini, Sithu Aye, Periphery, and even the metalcore bands that I grew up adoring. The introductory EP is out now, titled “the escapist ep.” Please don’t mind the hard-headed insistence on lowercase - I was vibing when I made that choice.
Almost immediately after I finished that EP, I got to work on a full-length album, which I’m happy to say is 95% completed, save for two guest solos. Very excited to get those back from the artists and hear this thing completed. All will be announced on the bodyscan Bandcamp and Ampwall pages, as well as here, on this very blog.

Now is a good time to let you know that you can subscribe to this blog via RSS if you use an email client like Outlook. I’ll be setting up a newsletter soon.

Thanks for reading and caring about what I’m up to. With that, remember that there are no rules, and I hope everyone in the States has a good Thanksgiving.