Buy the full album for only €8,99  @ iTunes:

www.itunes.com/rolfmaierbode

The first shop (iTunes and others will follow) has put THIRTEEN STORIES online…

www.amazon.de/Thirteen-Stories/dp/B003B0KQ96

I´d really appreciate if some of you would write a customer review about THRITEEN STORIES there…
And for € 8,99 its a bargain for those who didnt want to pay the full price for a physical album as well…

Here is a full version of a wild elektro remix of CHALLENGE made by the two germans Elektricker. With vocals that include the german translation of CHALLENGE… Works best very loud

http://fairtilizer.com/track/58204

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

I tried some things, but those two ideas will be worth some further work to my mind.

I thought a deep, pumping style would fit best to the freaky voice of TRUTH AND LIGHT…

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And here is an idea for a remix of CHALLENGE…

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Don´t think this question is the same as “Whats your favourite”… keep in mind, that a remix often changes a lot… style, tempo, arrangement… so its rather about which song´s melody/theme/samples you would like to hear in a new style… and to make it a bit harder, you can only select ONE

…of THIRTEEN STORIES at the end of the year with - lets say 8 remixes by myself and some remixes by others - what kind of release would you support with your purchase?

Please be honest and vote only ONCE! It´s possible to vote for two answers, but be honest and do so only if you really would make two purchases of the same album (for example mp3 AND Vinyl)…

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.

If any of you is talented and experienced in any kind of film/movies/animation and would like to do something for/with any of the songs on THIRTEEN STORIES i´d be delighted to get a mail from you

So if you have some 3D renderings, animated short stories or cool mini movies let me have a look!

Some time ago i read Philip K. Dick´s Stories (Ubik and a lot of short stories) and was very excited to learn that this genius had all those ideas we know from movies of the last thirty years in the 1950-1960s…

One basic thread often used in his works is the idea of artifical intelligence… and inspired by his short stories i wanted to produce a song with the voice of an AI. The idea behind the text is, that in future some supercomputer calculated what is really important to mankind. And what is not.

Imagine a time where you dont comunicate with a computer by typing on a keyboard, but with a direct neural interface… then think about how millions of powerful computers all work in a network and people think it is a great idea to give this supercomputer a gift we call “creativity”… and by its mere defintion that means that you never know what this AI will “think” in the end…

Maybe it sees people struggling with their imperfect bodies and damned to die one day… It may seem a great idea to this supercomputer to “download” all these minds into a server and give them immortality… Therefore a computer generated female voice explains to man: “Your physical existence is no longer of importance”

The name of the song and the text refer to silicon valley as the “valley of birth” of the AI (which itself talks in plural about “them”) and the “final destination” for mankind. One side aspect is that the AI might think that it also improves mankind in creating a superorganism by using all these minds and consciousnesses as nodes for a meta-mind…

This kind of horror scenario needed a calm, nice female voice and Doris Lauerwald seemed perfect for it. The only problem was, that the sound was too direct and too “perfect”… it sounded like an advertising… until i “destroyed” it technically… I didnt only use EQ and compression like i also would with vocals, i played it back in my room and recorded the speaker with a little handheld recorder while moving… this way, and with some effects added, it was just what i wanted it to be… a voice hard to locate, from a moving speaker, with a voice that sounded like a friendly stewardess - a kind of computervoice i would NEVER trust

Here is the original recording of the voice:

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And this is the re-recorded, edited version that was used in the song:

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