Working on that new track
Many people seems to like the track I posted a preview of on Instagram the other day, so I’ve decided to finish it. Been working on it today and I think it’s turning out great. Still have to name it though…
Many people seems to like the track I posted a preview of on Instagram the other day, so I’ve decided to finish it. Been working on it today and I think it’s turning out great. Still have to name it though…
I re-connected my old Sega Dreamcast today and tried out some of the old games. One that still holds up perfectly is REZ, originally released in 2001. What a great and addictive game that is. It plays like a psychedelic music video version of William Gibson’s vision of cyberspace. You are this polygon avatar that has to fly around in the matrix and watch out for various geometric constructions out to get you. All while digging the interactive techno music. It’s impossible playing this game and not moving your feet to the beat.
Deep, melodic, progressive house music. I think this tune will fit nicely with the other tracks on my next album.
Somebody asked my why I don’t do remixes anymore. Well I did a lot of them, for quite a while. You can listen to most of them here. I’ll try to explain why I stopped. When I started remixing other artists it was more or less just for fun. This was back in the early days of mp3.com, when independent artists actually could make a buck from their music by uploading it to the mp3.com web site. Think late 90s, before the first internet bubble. Through that site and a few other I got in contact with artists like Mystical Sun and Dimbodius. I would do “swap-remixes” which meant I would remix someone and they would remix me. No money involved and I only remixed tracks that I liked. Although I’m still waiting for my Mystical Sun remix, Richard. ;)
One thing led to another and suddenly I would get requests to do more high profile stuff, like cover “remixes” of Klaus Schulze and Jean-Michel Jarre. Then when I started to produce more dance oriented music I got requests to do those kinds of remixes, which I did.
But the thing is, it was always more or less for free. The deal was I would get 50% of the income, but there was always a floor of say $100. So I wouldn’t get any money until my remix made at least $100. Being this was remixes of usually lesser known artists on lesser known labels.. Guess what I made from remixing all these tracks from the mid 2000 onward. You guessed right. I made $0.
Please don’t misunderstand me. If you’ve produced electronic music for as long as I have, you’re not in it for the money. The green I’ve made from my music during all of these years are about the same amount that I make one month working with web design and development. But you get to the point where it’s not fun anymore to put all this time and effort into making these remixes. You get zero payment from it and once the remix has been delivered to the label, that’s that and you basically never hear anything else about it. No feedback, no nothing.
Still I thought if I keep doing this long enough someone important will notice and I will get that brake, that chance to do a remix that really matters. Well that didn’t happen. When I started thinking about how I instead could have produced a couple of my own albums, the decision to stop doing remixes wasn’t that hard to make.
So there you have it. I quit remixing other artists because it didn’t lead anywhere. I rarely got any feedback and it took away time and inspiration that I could have used for my own music.
So busy at work right now. When I’m back home I’m just too tired to do anything creative. Instead I’m playing computer games and watching The night manager. Two more days until the weekend… Hopefully the creative juices will start flowing again by then.
So I started playing Metal Gear Solid V, The Phantom Pain today. The intro is BONKERS. It’s one hour of shaky cam and cut scene bonanza. You start out having to crawl SLOWLY through bloody hospital floors while Keifer Sutherland in bandages urges you to hurry the fuck up. At the end you’re riding bareback through the woods while chased by some crazy ass fire god on a burning unicorn.
So this track I’ve been working on and off for a couple of weeks kind of took off today when I introduced a sound from my Access virus. The arpeggio on this thing really is amazing. So easy to make interesting melodies. The old Virus has more or less become my go to synths for the melodic stuff in my tunes.
It’s been a pretty intense week at work so I haven’t really had much energy left in the evenings to do music and such. I have a few seeds of tracks that I continue to work on whenever I feel like it so hopefully I can get something done this weekend. I also should get going with installing that Nintendo Gameboy amp mod I bought…
Yesterday I got a little package from my favorite online shop Thonk. It was the DIY version of the 4ms Rotating Clock Divider. It’s a clock devision device for my modular. It will replace my Doepfer A160, which is cool but doesn’t fit all my needs.
There have been a lot of new exciting products this year but so far only one that truly trigger my GAS. I’m talking of course about the first synth from Behringer, the DeepMind 12. Just listen to this new demo, showcasing just a few of the things this beast can do.. wow! And then there’s the recommended price for it. $999. Wow again.