Yesterday i was at the “Schallwelle Preisverleihung”, a music award by the small, but very active electronic music scene of germany. My part was a laudation for the “best artist 2009″.

I will listen to a lot of “EM” stuff the next days, for sure

It is like looking into my own past, the late 80s, as i was listening to the radioshow “Schwingungen” full of “classic” electronic music like Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Ashra and the like…

As i wrote in my second post here (May 2008) there was a first concept for this album. Originally i tried to find a topic that includes technology and creativity and wasnt used on any concept album i knew of. It should give me enough flexibility for very different styles but still be cohesive. I chosed architecture. The album should be about buildings. All different kinds of buildings. Then i added places to even have more possibilites. So i wrote some songs about different buildings and places and changed existing songs to fit into this concept. But i got stuck in the middle. Some Songs were cool this way and there is one song about silicon valley that even made it onto the final album but i was missing something with this concept…

The early concept wasnt leading me to emotional ideas but to rather “constructed” tracks… and i was in fear that this way the whole album might not be athmospheric enough for the future listener…

So i had a meeting with some good friends. We thought about what makes a musical piece a great song and which of these factors might already be in my music. From the point of view of the listener a great song should paint a picture and draw him (or her) into it. It should be a little world of its own to be discovered. It should be like a good novel. And we found that some of my songs actually achieved this. We all listetend to the songs again and we concentrated on just one question for each track: Is this song telling a story?

Thus the final concept was born. This album should be a collection of songs that are like little movies and should be produced with the associations of the listener in focus. I tried to find out what each track could evoke and then how this effect can be improved. Emotion and energy seemed to be the most important factors. Then i realized that these two factors always have been an important part of the “ROLF MAIER BODE sound”:  emotion and energy.    melody and beat.    heaven and hell   

Finally there was a concept that really made sense for my first full length “solo” album. Telling stories with music.

And so all songs grew and grew until they were having an emotional impact and were energetic enough to really catch me. I dont think that music is such a precise language that all listeners hear exactly what i had in my mind as i was writing and producing the songs. But it definitly helped me improving them and gave the whole album a cohesive touch. The concept of virtually telling stories with music worked for me. And if you like emotional but energetic music it should also work for you  

yesterday evening i had another nice meeting with Kai Hoffmann - a good friend of mine who is doing the whole artwork for the upcoming album… its really great to see ideas growing - especially if someone else is doing all the work

I have to admit that i really liked the new visual concept he is working on at the moment… its wonderful to see another artistic aspect of the album growing

The cover design also dictates the use of a DigiPak… and did i mention that there will be a booklet? Ha! I am looking forward to getting the finished cd myself…. counting the days

Its time for some mixing at a different place this weekend. I hope to mix 3-4 songs this two days. These will be the first finally finished and fixed albumparts

Ill post a snippet monday… cheers!

2008 had been a busy year for me. so many hours of composing and producing. my first commercial audio logo and a thirty minutes non-repetitive composition for example. but most of the work went into the upcoming album. there were times when i was struggling and nearly lost my confidence but nevertheless after a short break and further work pieces fell into place. i sometimes even lost the general survey handling many dozens of song ideas and preproductions and needed to focus again - then threw out a lot of songs for the better of the album and the final candidates have been chosen and refined again. and although i am not finished yet i know that i will be very proud of this record. i believe there could hardly be a better ending of a year

not all years in my past were that productive or even joyful so if you are having a hard time - keep up hope - there will be sun after the rain and dont give up chasing your dreams too early - success might just be around the corner

i wish all of you a great new years eve and an even greater 2009!

About two months ago i had a collection of thirty songs & snippets from which to choose the final candidates…  i picked ten and worked on them so that they all had a song format (3-5 minutes) and were roughly mixed… and i thought that some of these songs are quite finished while others were - well, you might call them typical “album tracks”… and i decided to try better, to raise the quality of every song - at least from my point of view - and look for solutions that bring the “album tracks” to another level… and, just as you witnessed with the “stretching the seconds” motif, try many different things although that might be time consuming…

i know that i couldnt hold a december release date this way but this album is very important to me and no one would press this cd in the last week of december anyway…

so my new time frame is finishing the songs the first week of january, spend another week with mastering and trying to finally release it at the end of january… thats six weeks from now

please post all general questions into THIS thread… i will start by copying some questions from christopher

christopher Says:
11. October 2008 at 02:30

… and again i got some questions about producing music:

do you work with a “goniometer - stereosichtgerät”?
if yes, what do i have to keep in mind while working with it?

Rolf: No, i dont… my software has one built in but i never use it… if you know how “out of phase” sounds like (on good monitors or on headphones) and you have access to all sound sources (no out of phase recordings tracked by someone else for example) and you dont put the wrong effects on the wrong sources it is quite unlikely that you will have that big problems with phase cancellation…

christopher Says: do you have any tips or do you know any rules to keep in mind for a final mix? i am aware that i will not sound as you or any other producer BECAUSE i do not have the knowledge an i am not that experienced yet.

(…) when you have done your final mix of a track, do you still have to do some mastering? i have read that a well mixed song does not need much mastering…

Rolf: There are a lot of sources for mixing and mastering tips: Books, Websites, DVDs… for example you can start with the link on the right “gearslutz”…

Concerning mastering: Most of the time i get away with some kind of “mini mastering” included into the final mix - i will put an UAD Precision EQ with LoCut (20/30Hz) and some further adjustments on the master bus, route it out to my pair of germanium compressors (or sometimes even use a plug in as the waves SSL) and finally limit it with the UAD Precision Limiter (just the peaks!)

tonight there has been a change of the server my sites are running on…all the data seem to have survived with an exeption of the “umlauts” öäü…

i hope the newly entered ones will sürvive 

I finally found a melodic theme which would make a fine break and still fits the “Finale 1 Motif”

But i dont have the time to finish it in a way that i´d dare to post it as a full length song BEFORE the game… so… be patient

imagine looking tv and only five minutes into a movie there is… a commercial break…

I will not start to praise candy bars or toilet paper here, but this picture came to my mind as i realised how much time of the last two weeks i had to work for my advertising network LOUDBRANDING… Quite interesting stuff like an audio logo for example - but it nevertheless  postpones the album work…

Some “old RMB fans” might comment in a bitter sweet voice that they are not too unfamiliar with waiting for new stuff but… yeah, ok, start ranting

On the other hand - if the advertising work is published i could write about all the creative and technical processes here… if someone is interested in “mere merchandising music”