** Project Update 17/05/2024 **

We are well into the mixing stage of our albums and we are excited to share with you a sneak peak of 16 songs from our new 23 track double album including behind the scenes footage of each song's production. Click the link below.

2024 NEW Double Album Sampler with Production Behind the Scenes

Thanks again for your support and please pass this link as well as the campaign on to anyone you think may be interested.

A New Double Album

We have been working on these two collections of songs for a long time. Whilst there are some relatively new songs in recent years, most of these songs were written over the last 8-10 years, with even the first of which written in the 2000s and have now made their way onto this new double album!

This album contains over 20 original songs written by our team which are made up of epic conference and camp group songs, sombre personal reflections, and celebratory praise ballads we hope will inspire and encourage you on your walk. 

Thankfully more than half of the songs have already been published in the latest Blue Worship book so there is already sheet music and chords for them to be immediately used in services and events.

https://www.theworshipbook.com/worship3blue.html

Production approach in the past and what's changed this time

Our albums to date have all been self-funded by using our personal money to purchase equipment and instruments to record, and performing mixing and mastering of the albums ourselves before finally printing the actual CDs. We would then recoup the finances by selling the CDs and Digital Downloads online and at events. We also then donated left over funds to contribute to music projects and resources in other parts of the world. https://shop.theseventhday.com.au/funds

Self-production the recording process post song writing already takes a huge amount of time to do, which is why it has taken us so long to get this next collection complete. But the next steps of mixing and mastering for professional quality and digital distribution can take even longer, depending on the complexity of the track. As an estimate, a single track on this record can take between 20-30 hours to mix and then to master the track in context with all of the adjacent songs, could then take approximately 2-3 hours more. 

NOTE TO EXPLAIN VOCABULARY:

Mixing: getting the levels of the individual elements like the voice, piano and guitar sounding in balance with each other and the sound of the songs to a genre reflecting The Seventh Day's vision  
Mastering: getting the songs sounding at the right loudness compared with other commercially available music

Why have we engaged 'Island Studios'?

As we have all gotten a bit older and life has become busier with work committments (and some of us married with children), we no longer have the extra time we once had to get the content complete and out in a timely manner. We are handing off many of the skills and equipment use to the next generation, but this takes a lot of practice as well as time. (and has been done extensively on this project)

Because of what we believe is the higher expectation for sound these days and the quality of the recording of these songs and their many layers, we lack the skill internally to be able to mix and master to the level of professionalism that we would like and we believe the songs deserved. We strongly believe that this collection should be given an extra level of detail and care before we shared them with you.

We have worked with Joseph Cheek from Island Studios in Adelaide with mixing and mastering the Sunshine & Rain EPs. Joseph and his team at Island Studios are exceptional at what they do and we believe they will really make these songs shine. Joseph is really enthusiastic about this project and bringing these albums to life personally, and will also contribute one of his own conference songs to the collection.

https://www.islandrecordingstudios.com/

Spending to date:

In the process of producing this next double album, we have had to upgrade much of our gear and software such as a new computer as our prevous computers reached their end of life. We have spent approximately $5000 to do this already from money which we had recouped from previous CDs, digital sales and (the tiny) streaming revenues. We have already paid a deposit to Island Studios and are well into the mixing process now. 

Old and New Funding models

As mentioned, most of our costs were recouped through selling physical CDs and Digital Downloads. However, the way in which people purchase and listen to music has changed a lot in the last 10 years and most people are now using streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music to listen to music. Most laptops, computers, and cards don't even have CD players anymore. So people just use streaming and as a result, the money that we could recoup from projects from streaming services is extremely small, and would barely cover the cost of a single song.  To give you an indication of how long this would take to recoup the costs for making this project, we would break even after we had about 2 million streams on Spotify!

So we are now looking to new ways in which we can fund this project and provide funds for future projects by ourselves and the next generation we are handing off to and mentoring.

What will the Pozible funds go toward?

We still require about $8000-$10,000 AUD to mix and master the songs which will be paid to Island Studios for their services across the 20+ songs.  Joseph and the team have already gone above and beyond to keep our costs as low as possible and we are extremely grateful for their generosity. Pozible also take 5% from all funds that are raised. (which is much better than Apple taking 30% of all transactions!)

We have set an $8000 target for our Pozible campaign but we are hoping with your help we can raise this money and this project will be funded with the help this Pozible campaign and the money we still have available. Note - this is an "all or nothing" model for backing - if we don't reach our target, we don't get any of the money and it all gets refunded. So it's important that we reach our minimum target. 

The new double album will be released in July 2024, God willing, with early access in June through the campaign.

Thank you so much for all your ongoing support.