Infinity Reigns
The Story of ONE
12 songs, 9
instruments, 420 final tracks, 745 channels mixed,
5 years, 211 GB of audio, 2920 million miles around the sun.
ONE writer, performer, producer, engineer...
ONE
Who is in Infinity Reigns?
I had hoped it would be a new band with a drummer, bass player, and
myself. I was not planning for this to be a 'Me, Myself and I' project. But after a decade of
holding auditions, and numerous failed starts, I decided to go it alone.
Is there really only one person on all of these songs?
Yes, it's just me, except on My Tribe,
where my family all sing in the intro section. All of the other vocals, instrument performances
and arrangements were done by me.
Could you already play all the instruments?
No, it took thousands of hours over a 3 year period
to develop the abilities to compose drum and string parts, and improve my chops on bass playing
and piano. I had already spent years singing and playing guitar.
Did you write all the music and lyrics?
Yes. Some of the songs were written just for this album.
Some of the songs started many moons ago and have gone through variations over the years as they
were performed live and different recordings were made. They were all re-written for this album.
Who is Bunjo?
Bunjo is a nickname given to me by my daughter when she was 3 years old. She was
learning words for describing different sized things and excitedly said: "Oh so I'm small, mom's
medium, and you're Bunjo!" She was trying to say I was "Jumbo" because I was so much bigger than
she was.
How many roles did you have?
I wore many hats on this project. I had originally hoped to hire a producer, and mix and
mastering engineers, but I ended up taking on these roles myself. I had spent many years recording
music, and even some time as a mastering engineer - but I still had much to learn to achieve the
quality level my producer self was demanding.
What does a producer actually do?
Historically the producer was hired by the label to manage the money, and hire the talent necessary
to perform, record, mix and master an album. Their job was to make sure the band stayed on track
and produced a professional product on schedule. Off the record, producers often took on the role of
therapist for the band dynamics, and played cheer leader to get the band pumped up to give the
best performances for the recording. As a self producer, I had these traditional roles but
applied to myself when wearing different hats; i.e. drummer hat one day, guitar player hat the next,
vocalist hat the next. The most important job was to make sure all of the parts served the song.
This was especially important when editing and mixing the album as each 'hat' typically wants to
be the loudest and take up the most space. The joys of inter-hat dynamics :)
Why did the project take so long?
Well I had to invent time travel, and then clone myself first so I could pull this project off.
Ok, ha ha - now seriously - life tossed some big challenges along the way, but the bulk of
the time was spent putting on the hat for that day (song writer, performer, arranger, producer,
engineer), and working on the songs.
I heard you also worked as an engineer?
I was originally going to study music and computers in college but I didn't like actually studying music.
I preferred to remain a self taught musician, so I changed my path in college to Computer Engineering and
Physics. However, I continued to write, perform and record music, even though by day I was an
engineer. As an engineer I've primarily worked in the graphics, animation and audio worlds.
Most recently I was at DreamWorks Animation as a Tech Lead, leading the development
of the Academy Award winning animation system Premo. Before that I was at Universal Audio leading
the audio plugin development for the UAD systems; including the AES winning Neve and AES nominated
Precision Multiband plugins.
How can you perform parts in the song that are happening at the same time?
This is possible through a process called overdubbing. Multi-track recording technology provides
a way to record a track at one time (often called a 'take') and then record additional performance
'takes' against the previously recorded tracks. When the multi-track recordings play back, it
creates the illusion of time travel and all the performances play back at once. It's much cheaper
and safer than cloning. :)
Why were the original 2016 singles re-released in 2021?
The original 2016 singles were too pumped up and too bright unfortunately - some of this was due
to not having a professional tuned room to mix in. I originally thought I would be going to an
A class facility with a professional mix engineer to mix the album. When I ended up being the mix
engineer, I had lots of knowledge about mixing, but unfortunately not enough actual experience.
The 2016 releases were a first attempt at mixing these songs, in a poor environment. The
2021 singles and ONE album re-mixes (and re-mastering) were done in a new A class tuned studio
room, and also included 4 more years of humble pie.
Is it true you got a brain tumor while working on ONE?
Fortunately I did not get a brain tumor; unfortunately inflamation in the brain adjacent to my
ethmoid sinus area due to an unknown cause (suspected virus) caused severe tinnitus in my left
ear. This destroyed my ability to work on this project for 1.5 years. Thankfully, meds brought
the swelling down and ~3 years later, the tinnitus levels had dropped without major hearing loss.
Are there hi-resolution versions of the songs?
Yes, the songs were recorded, mixed and mastered at 24 bit / 96k and the distributor has released
these versions to partners that can support hi-res streaming such as Tidal (note the Master badge on
ONE songs on the Tidal site). Hi-res versions are also available for download through other stores
like Bandcamp. I am hoping that in time, more streaming and download partners will support higher
resolution non lossy formats, so that you can enjoy the deeper dimensionality and smoother high
end of high resolution audio.
All words, images and music
on this site are (c) (p) 2022 Infinity
Reigns Music