Hi all,

We hope you had a wonderful year-end/holidays.

We had hoped to complete Refractions in December and be on to music for Tales, but shortly after our last update, my family got hit by several rounds - one after the other - of sicknesses. From Covid to strep to flu to another round of Covid, it's basically been non-stop. As I'm writing this, we're suspecting some more possible Covid (not yet confirmed).

But... that doesn't mean we didn't make progress! 

Track Overview

Here's a breakdown on the overall status:

Timeline

We're currently running into 2 issues on the timeline (in addition to the aforementioned sicknesses):

1. Scheduling

We've been having a hard time scheduling the last of the performers. She's rather important to the given track, though we do have a fallback if things fall through. Still, if we can make things work with her, we'd prefer it.

1. Rights

We've been able to secure the rights to a majority of the tracks. (Since most of these were written as part of a project, we've had to speak with the rights holders for everything.) We received verbal agreements for each of the tracks, but we want to make sure that everything is properly tied down, so we are currently working through finalizing contracts. This is a process that takes a while, and we're still waiting on three separate parties (which collectively hold the rights to eight of the tracks.)

We're absolutely confident in being able to finalize three of those eight, but the other five--and one in particular--may have some challenges associated with them.

We do have a backup plan should any of them fall through, but we'll let you know.

Due to the status of the separate Refractions album, there's nothing new to report on Tales. As soon as we wrap on Refractions, we'll be reaching out to authors to start working with them on the music for Tales.


We're excited to be so close to wrapping on Refractions and especially excited to be nearing the start of the Tales music. We'll keep you all in the loop!


All the best,
Michael & The Team @ The Black Piper