The Doepfer Dark Energy is a small semi-modular analog synthesizer and was one of my “self given” christmas presents… its a little box with knobs which really invite to modulate sounds… but its only monophonic (one “voice” only)

So i played around with a little sequence, plugged in the output of another sound-source and recorded five different tracks with heavy modulation…

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Then i added some “classic” progressive drums and percussion, some effects… i had an idea for a sample as well, which lead to the title “SECOND TIME”, but i wasnt pleased with it yet… but as an instrumental its quite enjoyable i think…

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Its an old idea, of course, but several people have asked for it, so here wo go:

If you produce music and are interested in remixing a THIRTEEN STORIES song, then please mail me. Send a snippet of one of your productions in the style you intend to remix and some information about you. I will answer with further details, if the style fits the general scheme of the remix album

If you really like to remix a special THIRTEEN STORIES song, include that info too… I can and will provide samples/files for ANY of the thirteen songs.

ATTENTION all remixers *****************************************************************************

If you have finished a remix, please only mail it as an mp3 to me as a standard email with your full name… i will then listen to each remix and answer, but it may take some days… good luck

Creativity is by definition rather the breaking of than a set of rules. But there are rules with creative work that stood the test of time and are really making the creative process easier and more results oriented.

One fundamental rule in producing (and mixing) music is: Find the most important element of the song and emphasize it!

Many mixing and songwriting tricks are kind of “subtractive” to fulfil this rule. A great melody doesnt need dozens of notes. See if you still can cut down your songtext or your arrangement. Dont play the stuff that isnt helping the main element (or mix it really soft). Try to mute clashing instruments. Prefer subtractive EQ etc… A lot of producing and mixing is “taking away”.

And i had this song with too many elements. Several minutes of multiple tracks of edited synthetic percussion, a piano melody, string hits, an acoustic drumloop and two electronic drumloops, sampled string harmonies, a lot of sound effects, re-amped synths, loops and strings… and moreover i found that fat bassline… normally i had to trash half of it and split the rest between three songs… but i wondered WHAT WOULD IT SOUND LIKE to put it ALL IN…

It was a total mess For example there really are THREE drumloops playing at the same time… here is a snippet that plays them one after the other and then together with another bassdrum and a ride cymbal like in the final song…

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That was fun and i went on producing in such a “maximal” style… the number of elements is exceeding the number of elements in three normal electronic songs by far, but i liked it somehow… mixing wasnt easy, because conceptionally i didnt want to mix parts too soft… otherwise it would count as ALL IN

Here are the elements of one part at the end of the song being played briefly one after the other - in the  song they all play simultaniously of course…

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So it began as an experiment to break a firm rule of music production for the sake of creativity, but finally it became one of my personal favourite 5 of THIRTEEN STORIES.

Sometimes you need to clean the table, take a new sheet of paper, tear the house down and build it up again…

You might remember my “Stretching the Seconds” Post where i told you that i tried to make a full song out of a 30 second layout… but in the end the way of building onto the material i had didnt work like i thought it might… so i started again, just with the main melody and the two harmonic transitions and developed a three minute long progression of harmonics… but now i cant use most of the recorded stuff and i have to do the arrangement and production again… this is how the new layout sounds in the middle:

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the sound is too much “rock” and not enough “rolf” for now

i am still looking for a cool synthetic driving sound that fits into it…

Here is a place for you to ask questions which are not related to other posts…

…and a snippet from something else i am working on these days…

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