That’s what I want to talk about here, but not too much. I’m a big fan of setting realistic expectations, and I think it’s only fair to give you a heads-up that we won’t have this next thing ready for some time. The next project is a little more ambitious than our usual stuff, and it will take more time as a result. There’s an old saying: “Cheap, fast, and good — pick two.” Well, we’re going for cheap and good.

Jude and I have been kicking around a few ideas for a while and one of them really took shape early last year. We didn’t really do anything with the idea at the time, because we were focused on Rage Quitter and Alliance, but we put this idea on deck for the next thing after they were finished and out the door. Since that point, we’ve been spending all our PSwap time on it; some research is involved. I can’t give you a hint because a hint would give it all away; it will be better when it’s done and we can just say “It’s this” and you will hopefully go “Holy cow, you’re kidding, really?” and we’ll go “Yeah, for real, you can download it here.” And then you will tell all your friends and say “You’ve gotta hear this” and then we will be famous on the internet. This is the loose plan. Please note your part in it.

Really, that’s all I wanted to say. We’re heading into a public drought but a private wellspring. We didn’t break up and we didn’t get bored. We’re just working in secret in the dojo.

Happy 2012 to you and yours. We hope to see some of you at PAX East again this year. And if you bought a t-shirt that wouldn’t suck.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Download the MP3 if you dig it.

More info after the jump.

Jude and I (and our spouses Wendy and Kat) are WoW players and we often thought we’d like to do a song about it, but we didn’t know exactly what to do until the title suggested itself. (We both play Alliance and Horde characters, for the record.) It was also an 80s classic, and in much the same way that I was very concerned about the bass on “Rage Quitter,” Jude was adamant about doing a great job on Thomas Dolby’s famous synthesizer lines. He also took on the lion’s share of the duties — not only did he have keys to tackle, but electronic drums and synth bass as well. I basically dropped in vocals and the guitar line, which was so simple and straightforward that I wasted a lot of time trying to figure it out when it was in fact the very first thing I picked out by ear. After that, it was death by a thousand cuts — little tweaks, minor issues, small improvements…incremental music creation. We are both glad to have this released. We need some distance from it and probably won’t appreciate it for a while.

At some point I suggested we debut the song with a machinima video, and reached out to a few filmmakers to see if they would be interested. Nobody was — but then again, the song was not complete when we asked, and maybe nobody wanted to take a risk. We ultimately realized that if the community wants a video, the community will provide a video. We are hoping someone out there thinks it’s amusing enough to warrant its own WoW machinima video. Feel free to tell the Scorseses and Spielbergs of the Horde and Alliance if you happen to know them.

This is our 10th song, and the last on what we are now retroactively calling our debut album, Still in Beta. All the MP3s have been refreshed with full ID3v2 tags with album art, artist data, and lyrics embedded in them, and you can download the whole album as a .zip file for one-stop shopping. Ten is a nice round number, and it gave us an excuse to consider what we’ve done in the last four years. It’s not a lot of tracks but it’s been a lot of work — amazingly, we used four different software suites to put it all together. Some of the tracks were done in GarageBand, some in Pro Tools, some in Sony Vegas, and some in Logic Express. The genres are all over the map; the only thing the songs really have in common is they’re about nerd culture and Jude and I recorded them all. After thinking about all that, it felt right to lump these all together in a collection for some closure and say “Well, that’s done.”

Of course, it’s not really “done” and we are not stopping here — the next release will be the beginning of something new. But we will need some time to put that together, and I don’t think we’ll be releasing our next track until some time next year.

We have also come to an important decision. This will be the LAST Palette-Swap Ninja song…in our debut collection, “Still in Beta.” Heh. We both feel like 10 is a good round number, and after four years of doing this, it’s nice to pause and say “achievement unlocked.” All it really means is that the MP3s will be tagged with the album title and you can download everything in one chunk. We’re working on album art now so it will look all nice on your iPod. We’re also going to add the lyrics to this site — what were we thinking by not posting them with the songs themselves? Silly.

Our next project is already decided and that will be a fresh start of sorts, but we won’t be ready to talk about that for a while, due to personal schedules and being busy in real life. But we’re not taking a break, we’re working on it — just can’t pin down a release date or anything yet, and it’s too early to discuss (not like we ever do that anyway). Still working on lyrics and Jude is currently tracking drums. And, if we’re lucky, we might play our first live show next year, if the stars align. Ever onward!

So…check back here soon for our 10th song.

–Dan

As mentioned in an earlier post, this song came from a random idea from one of our fans, Chris Repetti. He sent a note on Facebook and it instantly made sense to us. So we did it! And we thank him. He’s a fan of TalkRadar, so that’s why the song debuted on TalkRadar #157 first.

Click here to view the embedded video.

More details after the jump.

Jude and I are both big Beatles fans, and our other song in the works was giving us some difficulty, so when Chris’ idea came in, we thought “this will be easy, let’s just bang this out, it will be fun.” Well, it was fun, but it wasn’t as easy as we thought! Jude tackled Ringo’s drum lines with relative ease, and they sounded really good out of the gate. He also threw in some guide parts for me so I could assemble the rest around his temporary keyboard melodies. I didn’t have a guitar that sounded quite like George’s (especially with his flatwound strings) so I got as close as I could with the Variax 500 and a POD HD500. I wound up selling a bass and buying another one, just to try to get that McCartney tone right. The Variax 700 bass does a great Hofner impression, and it’s going to be a lot more useful to me in the studio in the future.

I have messed around with that guitar riff for years, but when I got serious about learning all the parts, I found there are multiple interpretations in books and tabs and things that show you how to play the song. Then I found my OWN way that combined a lot of those transcriptions. I then realized that I had been playing the bass part wrong for 20 years. (Fellow bassists: No, it doesn’t start on the open E like you’d think!) Then I cut the vocals and realized something was missing — a lot more vocals. Without double-tracking the three-part harmony, it sounded weak and thin; when we ended up with six vocal tracks, THEN it sounded right.

The addition of Jude’s angry rants was a “let’s try it and see” addition which really worked this time. We’d already finished the instrumentation but we both felt, as much as we loved the song and the lyrics, people who were tuning in for the jokes would wonder “Where’s the comedy?” during the solo. (The other fear was “why did you ruin a nice Beatles cover with all that ranting stuff?” But then we realized…if you wanna hear the song, just play the original!) So Jude — sweet, innocent, rational, polite, smiling Jude — did research into how gamers scream at each other online (did I mention he’s a scientist by day?) and, gritting his teeth while screaming into the mic, channeled something that was very much not the real him. I added bleeps (because let’s face it, bleeps themselves are inherently funny) and we finally had something we liked, after many more mixes than we expected.

But you know what? I really feel it was worth the extra effort. You don’t get a second chance to release a song on the internet. Go forth, spread the love, share the link, and hell, buy a t-shirt now in preparation for the next PAX event you attend, you cheap [BLEEP]. These [BLEEP]ing songs don’t make themselves.

Lyrics!

Got a good reason, for kicking that whiny jerk out

Got a good reason, I don’t need to hear that guy shout, now

He was a rage quitter, lousy teammmate, yeah

It took me so long to find out, and I found out

He’s a sore loser, he couldn’t shoot anything

Really sore loser, he blamed his lag and his ping, now

He was a rage quitter, temper tantrum, yeah

It took him so long to drop out, but he dropped out

Threw his controller, we saw it fly from his hands

Poor controller, I wonder where it will land, now

He was a rage quitter, angry baby yeah

It took him so long to lash out, but he lashed out

Rage quitter, rage quitter, yeah

Rage quitter, rage quitter, yeah

But that one time out of 100 happened a few months ago. I got a message on Facebook from Chris Repetti with a suggestion that was really just a title. But it was the right title — it was the kind of title that once you hear it, the entire rest of the song falls into place around it. “Three Red Lights,” “The Viva Pinata Song,” and “Halo ((All I Play-Oh))” were like that too; I knew they were worth doing just from hearing the jokey phrase over the title of the song in my head. Jude and I both loved the idea instantly. So we’ve rolled the dice and Chris’ idea will be our next song. We get by with a little help from our friends.

We are currently in the later mixing stages; there may be multiple passes before we get to a final mix that’s ready to release. I need to record a few game sound effects to put the bow on top of the song’s concept/jokes. As a fan, Chris has asked that it debut on TalkRadar, and since it was his idea and he’s getting basically nothing but our deep gratitude for the song idea, this can be arranged! When I have more info on exactly when it’s up, we’ll post it here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jude and I also did a podcast, which I’ll post a link to as soon as it’s up — it’s a juicy half-hour where we talk about how we started out, how we do what we do, and all that crap. Kat got a great photo of Jude, who is now officially The Cute One.

Yes, that makes me The Loud One.

Better still, we came up with another idea on the way out of the show and I wrote some lyrics on the plane ride home. I don’t know if it will bloom as much as we want it to, but we should be able to get at least one song out of that idea. Stay tuned.

If something goes horribly wrong and the food court is not open that early, just watch the Twitter feed and we’ll call an audible.

UPDATE: According to the official PAX East site, daylight savings kicks in this weekend — so make sure you set your clocks ahead Saturday night. Do not be late for the meeting, chumps! Also, the food court should be open for the hours of PAX, and you can enter the hall at 8am. However, it’s still unclear as to whether they will serve food that early.

The answer is yes, yes you may. Kat converted it to an M4V — 640×360, 1500ish bitrate, about a 45MB file — and it’s downloadable right here.