[PLEASE READ] Your Songwriting Deck Survey
over 4 years ago – Thu, Jan 16, 2020 at 01:23:00 AM

[PLEASE READ] Surveys are being sent today!

IMPORTANT! If you want your copy of the Songwriting Decks, you are required to fill out this survey! 

Please check your inbox. If you don't receive an email from Backerkit about your Survey within the next 72 hours, you can use this link to recover your survey: https://the-songwriting-decks.backerkit.com/.

Why is this survey so important?

If you don't fill out your survey, we won't know where you live and we won't be able to send you your decks. 

The survey will let you enter your address so Backerkit can calculate shipping costs for your county. Then you'll have to enter credit card information so Backerkit can charge you for those fees. 

A Tip

We prefer to ship to addresses where someone can personally receive the decks during the day, whether it’s a work, home, friend, or neighbor’s address. The point of this is to prevent theft due to a package sitting on someone’s front porch all day.

Stay gefährlich,

Friedemann

Time Schedule, the Box, To Do List, Pledge Manager
over 4 years ago – Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 01:26:24 AM

Hey everyone, 

Thank you all so much for the kind words I keep getting from you. I'm working on the Decks pretty much 24/7 and have made good progress this past week (more on that later). I also had a talk with Panda and things are looking very good. I sent in the first files already and all the notes I got from Panda are reasonable, so I don't expect delays on that front. 

Tyler also gave me some deadlines for the cards. Check it out:

Time Schedule

Here's the time line for the project:

Design Verification: Feb 14
Pre-production: Mar 6
Mass production: May 22
Assembly: June 5

...which should lead to fulfillment in mid to late July. So yes, we are still on schedule. 

The Box

The magnetic box will look awesome! Check this out, even without any artwork it looks cool:

New Stuff

Good news: I've added a new Exercise to the Melody Deck (Melody Outlines) and I've finished the Structure Cards, which act as a kind of meta-deck - can't wait to show you. 

Also, we'll add a little surprise to the box which I think will be very cool - the guys from Panda certainly seemed to think so :)

To Do List (72% DONE TOTAL)

1. Color Correction Cards DONE

2. Small changes to all 3 decks DONE

3. Design Section Deck DONE

4. Design Rhythm Deck STARTED, 90% Done

5. QC every single card front and back STARTED, 50% Done

6. German translation DONE

7. Write & design rule book DONE

8. Design Box

9. Get files ready for print STARTED

10. Send files off to Panda STARTED

Pledge Manager

My #1 objective is getting the cards to you as quickly as possible, in as best a quality as possible. That's why you didn't get any news on the Pledge Manager yet. I'm hoping to send out the surveys this week, if not next week. 

Once you've filled out your Survey, you'll also get access to all the other courses you ordered through Kickstarter (such as the bundle in the Master Songwriter Pledge). 

If you were part of the pre-orders, you'll also get your $30 coupon for the HS store. 

That's it for now, more soon!

Best,

Friedemann

Late Pledges, Small Update
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jan 07, 2020 at 10:28:32 PM

Late Pledges

If you missed the campaign, you can now late pledge via this link:

https://the-songwriting-decks.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Small Update

I got a good chuck of the card translations done yesterday, and I'm moving forward with the rule book now. Here's the design so far:

Nothing set in stone, but that's what I'm working with at the moment. 

Feedback is welcome as always. 

Stay gefährlich,

Friedemann

Back at work, Late Pledges
over 4 years ago – Sun, Jan 05, 2020 at 11:07:48 PM

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm back in the office and already working hard on the translations, rhythm deck designs and last changes to the English Decks. 

The money has arrived and we're officially producing!

Kickstarter has finally sent over the funds, I'll be signing the contrast with Panda Games Manufacturing today and we're in business!

I want to get this started asap so I can send over some test files for approval. I still have quite a way to go with creating all the new cards (keep in mind we unlocked 2 completely new decks, translations for all the cards [which is about 14.000 words!] plus the rulebook). 

Late Pledges

Hopefully Wednesday, I will open the Pledge Manager for the Songwriting Decks. This will allow you to Late Pledge in case you didn't get a chance to back the Songwriting Decks while the campaign was live. 

To Do List (40% DONE TOTAL)

1. Color Correction Cards DONE

2. Small changes to all 3 decks DONE

3. Design Section Deck STARTED, 40% Done

4. Design Rhythm Deck STARTED, 80% Done

5. QC every single card front and back

6. German translation STARTED, 30% Done

Here's all the material that needs to be translated:

• Lyrics Front DONE
• Lyrics Back STARTED, 30% DONE
• Harmony Front DONE
• Harmony Back DONE
• Melody Front DONE
• Melody Back
• Structure Front DONE
• Structure Back
• Rhythm Front DONE
• Rhythm Back DONE
• Rule Book
• Box

7. Write & design rule book

8. Design Box

9. Get files ready for print STARTED

10. Send files off to Panda

That's it for now, take care everyone & Stay Gefährlich!

Friedemann

Rhythm Deck EXPLAINED *New Design*
over 4 years ago – Mon, Dec 23, 2019 at 03:49:59 PM

Rhythm Decks Redesigned!

I probably won't be working on the decks for the next two weeks, so here's a major update on the Rhythm Decks before the holidays. I had a bit more time now and decided to start from scratch.

As a reminder, here's the old design for the cards:

Here's why this doesn't work for me:

• Doesn't fit the overall look of the Songwriting Decks - the colors are too saturated and doesn't match the flat design look of the other sets. 
• Design could be more straightforward - too many details, boxes look confusing for non-DAW people. 
• I will not be doing prompts for the Rhythm Decks, as creating, writing, testing and translating these takes A LOT of time, so the bottom part of the card would have been empty. 

And here's some additional ideas I came up with, some of which based on your suggestions:

• Add Polyrhythms Exercise. This will basically just tell you to work with a specific polyrhythm.
• Add unique rhythmic ideas to start building your own rhythms. This would be simple rhythmic phrases that could be repeated to come up with a hook. Ideally, these would be flexible enough so that you could turn one phrase into many different ideas. My idea was to combine it with a count (like 3+ or the 1), so that you could start these phrases on different counts. Even better if I can combine them with a unique tempo. 
• Add variety to combinations. Example: I don't want a meter and a tempo on the same card to tell me what I should do, because that means that there's only 52 possible combinations (one combination per card side) - and they would be tied to specific snare drum patterns. Ideally, we want to create variance by combining two or more different cards. Since building up the kick drum pattern means I've already drawn two cards, I don't want to draw yet another card just for the tempo, so I had to came up with an idea for a layout that would solve this problem. 
• Make the front and back the same for more combinations.

Long story short, here's the new designs...

The Rhythm Deck - New Design Explained

The biggest change is the little window at the top. If you turn the card over horizontally, you will see a rhythmic pattern on the other side of the "4+ | 110bpm" box. Combine that with another card that is oriented as above and you get a unique combination of a rhythmic pattern, a tempo and a count that tells you where to start your pattern. This works front-and-back, so if you want a different rhythmical pattern, you'd just turn over the card and you would get a different combination. It took quite a bit of arts and crafts to figure this one out but I think it was worth it :)

At the top left, you can see a time signature with suggested accents (so in this case, the accents would be on the 1, 2+ and 4). 

At the top right, you see a polyrhythm which you can use to come up with a groove. This one here is 9 over 6, which is a great sounding rhythm. If you don't know how to read polyrhythms, don't worry, I'll make a video about it. 

The numbers refer to the counts in the bar. For these lower sections, we're always in 4/4 (which is 99% of Pop Music anyway), and the numbers give you the 1, 2, 3 and 4 and upbeats (+).

The first row of blue boxes is your snare drum pattern. There are 14 unique patterns distributed amongst the 54 sides. 

The second row of blue boxes is your kick drum pattern. These patterns will be created by layering cards on top of one another. Some boxes will be filled out, others won't. Best of all, they are designed symmetrically, so you can turn over cards to get even more unique patterns. All the kick drum patterns on cards are unique, front and back (with a few obvious exceptions like - - - X X - - -, i.e. patterns that are already symmetrical). 

As I said, this will probably be the last update for this year, so I thought we'd end on a big one :) Have a Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Eye-Rolling-And-Breathing-Out-Deeply Day and a happy new year.

Stay gefährlich,

Friedemann