My Music (Patreon)

Most of you probably know that I had recorded my own music in my youth (posers would maybe say "produced"). I would like to give you access to all the music I had created since the early 90s. I am not doing this because I am proud of it, on the contrary I never thought my music to be good enough to be published and I never reached the level not only musically but also technically to be fully satisfied with what I created, but I am doing this out of desparation, as I need to set up additional funds in order to somehow survive the next months financially.

I am offering all my "albums" for purchase on Patreon to those interested or simply liking what I am doing now and maybe curious about what I was doing before. You can purchase each of my albums separately or cheaper as a complete collection including additional remixes I did or that were done by a friend who adored my music back then and even dedicated a track to me. Unfortunately we never managed to record anything together.

I would be really glad if you purchased some of the albums even if you think they sound crappy, it would help me a lot to pay my bills. Instead of letting my music burn around on some old CDs, I decided to collect all tracks, organise them and offer them for purchase here on Patreon. It took me a while to find everything again and rip it from my old CDs, some of them being hardly readable after more than 20 years. Keep in mind that these are mostly recordings I did when I was still at school. The most recent tracks I finished were around 2001-2002, I haven't done anything since then anymore because creating music was a very time consuming hobby at least for me. I always tried to make the tracks sound perfect and mostly had all-night sessions to finish some sequences until I was finally satisfied. This of course started to interfere a lot with my daily life when I began studying and finally after getting to know my current partner there was simply no time anymore to record anything as I had to concentrate on finishing university amd starting earning money.

Of course I regret not having done any music since then, with today's tech starting with simple recording apps like Garage Band etc you have way more possibilities to start creating your own music without the need of any real instrument. You just need some decent notebook together with some USB masterkeyboard playing various synth plug-ins. I still have all my synthesizers from back then and was always tempted to start recording again, I had lots of unfinished tracks and ideas which I was sure could have potential to become something special, but I was always afraid of losing myself into music again and sit the whole day in front of the keyboard wasting my time. I never regarded myself as a good enough musician or keyboard player to justify all the time wasted into this. But nevertheless I still think that my own music became an important part of my life and initiiated why I am still interested in sound and music and why I am doing what I am doing.

Therefore I would like to provide you some history how all this started adding some samples of several tracks to give you a better overview of what to expect. Unfortunately Patreon doesn't provide any option to add preview samples of all tracks for the product itself, therefore I will just present you some selected more representative songs.

I remember getting my first kind of keyboards when I was around 10. The very first one was a cheap primitive Bontempi air blower keyboard where I learned the basics about all the white and black keys, next was a Yamaha toy-keyboard with 100 different sounds and several rhythms, which I liked to fool around with but I only started to create my own music when I was around 14 years old thanks to a Commodore Amiga and some tracking software which of course was all pretty limited. You could only play 4 different sounds at once, later with Octalyzer for the Amiga you were able to play 8 sounds, but the music I created back then always sounded very simple and cheesy. I still should have some old cassette with some of my tracker music somewhere, but I am not sure I would like to share any of these sorry efforts.

It took some years until I could set up my final little "home studio" which you can see in the image below, I still have all these instruments at home, although hardly touched them during the last 20 years.

My first real "serious" keyboard was the Korg01w (the keyboard at the bottom) which I got around 1992. It was a "workstation" which means it had a sequencer built in and one could immediately start recording music without the need of any other hardware or computer, just turn the keyboard on and start playing. The Korg01w although claimed to be a synthesizer, was rather a simple ROM sample-player with mostly samples of natural instruments but also some artifical sounds. It had no filters, thus the influence one could apply to the sounds to make them sound different was pretty limited, it was rather the built in effects section which was quite advanced and could make the internal samples sound somehow more interesting. I did lots of tracks with just the Korg01w and even adding further synths later on I still used the internal built in sequencer for most of my music. You can listen to a sample of "Nyctalopia" from my "Early Years" collection to hear just the Korg01w which contributed all sounds for this track. Also my heavy influence from Jean Michel Jarre is still hearable from this track which I had recorded around 1993 I think. Around 1995 I could purchase a used Clavia Nordlead (the keyboard on top) which finally made a big dream come true and allowed me to dig deeper into real analogue synthesis, something I was missing with just the Korg01w. I coddled up some of my very early tracks afterwards by replacing some original sounds with the Nordlead which you can hear in the track "Modicum Of Truth". Just the arpeggiated sequence is coming from the Nordlead, the piano and pads etc are all still from the Korg01w.

I also owned a Roland Sound Canvas SC-55 since the very beginning which I even got prior to the Korg01w, it's visible at the very left below the Korg Electribe drum machine that I got much later. The SC-55 was disdained as a General Midi crock back then, but it had the famous Roland filters build in and thanks to the ability to modulate the filters in realtime it allowed for some nice analogue sounding leads and basses which you can hear in the track "Leaf Out", where I was trying to adopt a more modern dance-like style. Most other tracks I recorded in the beginning I would rather describe as "instrumental music", back then I was just glad to be able to create something which actually sounded like music and did not care about the style or if it sounded modern or fashionable. I was still a big fan of Vangelis at this time and created rather music that sounded like a movie score if you listen to "Streams", but it helped me to find my own way into music acquire my own style and get some practice into arrangments, sounds etc, although overall my early music was still quite simple and harmonically not very advanced it may be nevertheless interesting to also listen my old recordings and hear the progress and change in style I was undergoing over the years.

My first "real album" with tracks that somehow fit together in style and sound was "Journey" which I finished 1998.

I was still heavily influenced by my old idols like Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis, although I had already started to listen to Jazzrock and Fusion in the meantime, therefore I tried to include some more advanced chord progressions and modulations despite not really knowing what I was doing harmonically I somehow tried to make it sound coherent. "No Return" has the typical synthetic arpeggio sounds one knows from Jean Michel Jarre but I tried to include some distinct lead solos and more uncommon harmonic changes while keeping the sounds more synthetic and electronic like heard in "Through the Desert". As I had started to listen to a lot of funk and fusion I also tried to somehow include these influences a bit without really knowing what I was doing which you can hear from the track "First Stop". Most of my friends rather listened to dance and house music in the 90s, "Techno" was the most popular style back then and to also satisfy their needs I tried creating some faster tracks with more house-like beats which you can hear from the sample of "Beyond the Border" or "Talking to Strangers".

Technically I was still quite limited. The Atari you can see in the image above came much later. On Journey there were still just my 2 main synths responsible for all the sounds: the Korg 01w and the Roland SC-55, when I got the Clavia Nordlead afterwards I tried to include some more analogue sounds from this synth as well, but everything was just mixed through a small 4-channel Boss Mixer and recorded directly to CD without additional effects or mastering. Because of this all Nordlead sounds didn't have any kind of effects or reverb. To make them still sound a bit more appealing I usually played the Nordlead sounds unisiono with other sounds coming from the SC-55 with some added reverb. Because the Nordlead could only play 4 different sounds at once, I mixed 2 of them slightly to the left, the other 2 more to the right to get a bit of stereo separation. On "Onde" most sounds including some of the drums are coming from the Nordlead, I tried to avoid using any natural sounds like Piano etc and started to build my sounds completely from scratch trying to avoid most presets.

I left the original recording more or less untouched and just added some slight dynamic compression afterwards, therefore it still sounds pretty rough and far not as professional as more common genuine studio recordings.

"Rotondo" was my 2nd album which I finished around 1999 and should be a better showcase of what I had in mind musically.

I would describe this style as electric funk and my influences from Herbie Hancock, various Fusion artists, but also modern NuJazz and Drum'n'Bass music are better recognizable now. "Junk Funk" sounds a bit like Paul Hardcastle from the 80s although I haven't even known him back then. "Inverse Bubbles" sounds as if Herbie Hancock had met Daft Punk. The instruments I used were still the same: Korg 01w, Roland SC-55 just that I put way more emphasis into integrating the Clavia Nordlead this time, thus the entire album has these bubbling weird sounds allover that all come from the Nordlead. This was also the reason for the album title, which simply means "round" in Italian, I had an Italian girl friend at that time just to let you know. The only new addition was the Korg Electribe drum machine, which allowed me for more groovy beats, which I created with the built in step-sequencer. I usually tried to play everything I could on my own, but I always had problems recording nice drum beats, therefore adding a drum machine helped me to create some better grooves, due to the Electribe only being able to create 808 and 909 kind of sounds, my music started sounding even more electronic than before like you can hear from the track "Flibbertigibbet". I was still recording without any added effects, thus all Nordlead sounds are dry and are doubled with other sounds to get some reverb or I programmed delays by offsetting the main parts by several beats, it was pretty tricky to make it sound acceptable. Other sounds like the Rhodes were mostly coming from the Korg01w. "Tube" was a very simple techno-like track which most of my friends loved, although I was just experimenting with the features of the Nordlead when I first got it.

I still had lots of tracks from earlier times which I decided to finish anyhow. I had started listening to a lot of Jazzrock and Smooth Jazz, like Dave Grusin, Lee Ritenour in the 90s and was so fascinated by this genre that I also tried creating similar music with my own style without really knowing much about jazz theory. Most of these attempts were never finished, but you can hear those cheesy results from this period in a collection I called "Breeze Through" with music which didn't really fit in anywhere.

"Spring" is a sweet track I still like today, especially the break in the middle adds a bit of diversity to the rather monotonous 6/8 beat. All tracks have some easy listening vibe to them, like "Easy Living" which has a bit of a smooth jazz character or "Bubble Gum" where I fooled around with simulating some slap bass with the SC-55. For all these tracks I synthesized the drum sounds with the Nordlead, thus snare, hi-hats, kick drum and also toms are all analogue sounds. I also reused some of my Rotondo sequences creating completely new tracks out of them, which you can hear in "Dumbbell 2.0".

Around 2000 I managed to buy some additional gear from a friend who decided to dissolve his own home studio including an Atari TT with a built in 40Mb HD, a bigger mixer together with a microphone, an effects processor and a very spartan Yamaha sampler, which allowed me to record my own voice etc and allowed for more complex arrangements also using my voice for singing or to modulate some vocoder effects. You can hear my more advanced and most recent tracks on "Transparency" including my latest tracks that I finished around 2001 or 2002.

"Dreamer's Fantasy" was one of my very first tracks including the Yamaha sampler, where I not only sampled drum-fills from a jazz album and included them into this track, but also sampled several single notes of my voice. By looping the samples, doubling and detuning them I could play a choir-like sound with my own voice. Thanks to the bigger mixer I could also add some low-fi effects from the Electribe by looping through some percussion sequences and applying various kinds of bit reducer distortions. I expanded my home studio with the addition of an Access Virus b for even more electronic sounds and I started to sequence on the Atari instead of using the Korg01W, which also allowed me for more complex arrangement structures. On "Better Times" you can hear me singing into the Vocoder which was played over the Virus b, as I had still no real way to record vocals I simply sang into the Yamaha sampler for several beats playing back my singing and trying to play the same solo on the keyboard. Drums are again from the Electribe, while bass and all the background sounds are from the Nordlead, the Rhodes is still from the Korg01w. My biggest and maybe most important aquisition was the purchase of a DAW which in my case was the Yamaha AW2816 that included a HD recorder with a 16-track mixer and motorised faders, together with 2 own return channels and 3 PEQs per channel with 2 different effects at once. You can see the AW2816 it in my Bumpboxx video from some years ago. This finally allowed me to equalise separate channels for a better overall mix and also add some compression where necessary to add more kick to the drums etc. I could finally also record vocals or any other instruments. It opened up completely new possibilties for me and I started to add sounds from the Gameboy running Nanoloop. I could sync it to my MIDI clock through an DIY interface and record it life onto the harddisk. You can hear the results on 2 of my most recent tracks which took advantage of all added features like the Gameboy. On "Relativity" you can hear the Gameboy in the background adding some weird chirping percussion effects, or my voice modulating the Vocoder for some background chord arpeggios, while my lead sounds finally had a proper delay and reverb added. Drums are from the Electribe, Nordlead plays bass and lead-sounds, while all background chord effects are mostly Virus and its built in Vocoder. Also the kick drum is created on the Virus together with the Rhodes which is also synthesided from scratch. I really had fun trying to build up all sounds up from scratch and avoid using any samples of natural instruments, I tried to make my music sound even more artificial and electronic which you can maybe hear on "Shoot'Em Up" where some background sounds are again contributed by the Gameboy. I also re-recorded some of my Rotondo tracks with completely new mixes like "Night Exposure 2.0" which even had some radio play on the Austrian FM4.  "Transmission" on the other hand showcases my love to house and EDM music from that time while still sounding somehow different.

Those were my last attempts to create some own music as due to the way more complex setup I had now it also started to become frustrating sometimes having to recall songs or arrangements after some longer break, with instruments suddenly being missing or sounding completely different than the last time, let alone having to set up everything when I moved to another place. It also became too time consuming because I always tried to make it sound as good as I could and was actually never quite satisfied. Afterwards I still bought another Electribe drum machine with sampling option, thus I could finally also create beats with more natural sounding drums and I also found a Kawai K5000S for cheap which I was always interested in because of its additive synthesis, unfortunately I never managed to use these for any of my songs. I always loved to have real instruments with an own character in front of me like the Nordlead or Virus and also the Electribe managed to put an own stamp onto many of my tracks. I would have loved to explore making music again but as for now I am simply too old to start with everything from scratch. Just to play some notes and create half hearted ideas or beats or even use finished loops or samples was never my thing. I always wanted to finishe real tracks which somehow made sense to myself and hopefully could also be enjoyed by others.

This is the only thing I can offer to let you somehow participate in the music from my youth that I created between an age of 15-25 maybe and which can hopefully become also interesting to others. It would be a huge help for me to be honest, even if you are totally onto Metal or Rock. All tracks are in FLAC format to make downloads smaller, if you need another file format instead, please let me know.

Thanks guys, I hope you can find at least some tracks that you like!