Imphenzia

Following some very positive feedback on the tutorial video on how I create trance music I also decided to dedicate today to make another tutorial of how I arranged the entire track Spirit Within You . This video takes a detailed look at all the sections that form the track - such as the intro, the build up, the breakdown, the culmination, and the outro. It also explains how various instruments are introduced and modified during various stages of the track. I am, by no means, saying that this is how you must make trance music - it's just at peek into how I arrange most of my tracks. When I started out making music in the 90s I found no tutorials like this and I'm hoping that this video can help some of you that are interested in making music. Right then, here is the tutorial of how to arrange a trance song / track: As usual, I use Cubase 5 and my trusted VST instruments Nexus2, VanGuard, and Sylenth1 - but this arrangement technique can be applied regardless of what software y...

Today I decided to create a tutorial based on my latest trance track " Spirit Within You ". It's a detailed look at a section of 15 measures of the track where I go through each and every instrument, what notes and chords are played, which presets are used, what VST instrument was used, etc. This should hopefully give you the foundation of percussion, bassline, melody,  filling effect - but it won't teach you how to arrange a full length track - that will come in another tutorial. Have a look at the tutorial What's in the video? The video describes the following elements: Percussion (drums) - kick, closed hihat, open hihat, claps, cymbals First bassline (rapid 1/16 notes) Second bassline  (offbeat 1/8 notes) Cluster of 5 simultaneous leads for extreme atmosphere Two trance gates for an even fuller effect Pads for more euphoria And a classic trance piano with delay end reverb First the video lets you listen to the end result. Then I solo each instrume...

After recently discovering and listening to the Dub Step genre I got influenced by it and modified the Nostalgia chill out edit to incorporate some of the elements. Well, mainly it's the wobble sound but there are other aspects I like as well like the random stabs and effects. The track that caught my attention was Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites by Skrillex . And I also liked Kill EVERYBODY  a lot. Without attempting to make a "proper" dub step track I decided to boot up Cubase and this is what I got so far: Nostalgia [Dub Chill Edit] - Work in progress by Imphenzia I'll continue this piece tonight and hopefully it'll result in a 3-4 minute edit of the Nostalgia track to be added to a new edition of the maxi single. I'd be curious to find out what you think of this so feel free to comment =)

Following the launch of the revamped website, Imphenzia Soundtrack is currently my main priority. I tend to switch focus between Imphenzia Music (my trance music), Imphenzia Soundtrack, and Imphenzia Games depending on where I find most motivation at any given time. Shifting Focus The first half of this year I put a lot of effort into Imphenzia Music by rebuilding the entire web site from scratch, creating a new web shop, introducing Full Access feature, releasing new singles, releasing the Chillout album , introducing all my music to digital stores and Spotify. I also made the decision to allow full length streaming of ALL my tracks (previously high quality streaming was only allowing the first two minutes.) I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do because since then the number of Full Access users have dropped and now one person every other month opts for (the low end of) Full Access. I will keep things as they are, but I think the lack of interest in downloading my music ...

Making seamless loops is an essential part in creating music suitable for games. Loops will keep the distribution size of games to a minimum and it also makes the audio cheaper to license which is crucial for smaller indie game developers. Although I've been making music as the trance artist " Imphenzia " for 14 years, which is starting to sound like a very long time also making me sound old, I've only been releasing music for games during the past 3-4 years as " Imphenzia Soundtrack ." I mention this for no apparent reason at all, so lets move on. I've created a video tutorial of how I go about when creating a seamless loop. In this case it's an orchestral movie-style piece of music that will be added to my library of non-exclusive music. I use Steinberg Cubase 5.5 and Sony Sound Forge 10 to create the loop but you will probably be able to replicate the steps in your sequencer and audio editor of choice. Time for the tutorial - have a look at it and...

Following three months of development the new Imphenzia music site has been launched to start off the new year. This time it was a total re-make from the ground up of the music site and I had to learn how to develop using JQuery in order to get the visual effects, real-time updating of pages without page reloads (using “AJAX”), and at the same time keeping the development effort to realistic proportions. During the development process I set two requirements upon myself to fulfill, 1) make the new site clean, and 2) make it very simple to use. By using JQuery and quite modern features of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) I realize that there are visitors that will experience problems with the design and functionality, namely the visitors that use old browsers or have disabled javascript. For the first time, however, I felt that it is a sacrifice for the greater good as the vast majority of visitors will benefit from a much improved experience. I also had time to reflect on the historic desig...

Another two years have past since Illusion was released and I was pleased, and somewhat surprised, as I unexpectedly decided to release "Duplicate My Soul". I should probably follow traditional marketing strategies and build up a hype well ahead of an album being released but when I have my creative periods I spontaneously do these things. At the same time I'm quite happy not to follow all the rules and I'd rather take the opportunity and take advantage when the spontaneous outbursts pay me a visit. On the 19th of March 2010 I started working on a new track under the project name "Logic Surface" (I always have random names of my tracks until they are finished and I can name them appropriately depending on their character). I nearly completed the track on the 19th but on saturday 20th March I also managed to complete it fairly early in the day. As I named the track "False Awakening" I started to add tracks released after Illusion into my winamp play...

A while back I was approached by Adraw through Soundclick who expressed a request to remix State of Confusion. I'm always welcome to remixes so naturally I accepted the request. Some time went past where I didn't hear much about it but little did I know what was to come. The remix is now finished and will be released under Emona Records but you can already listen to the entire track on Adraw's Soundclick page for this remix. To help promote this track, I've put together a preview video that you can watch as well:

I update this blog only when I have something to say and also when I have time, and today it happens to be twice! As I mentioned briefly in my previous post I've simply released a track once it's finished without saying anything ahead of time and also saying very little once it's been released. Unfortunately Imphenzia is basically 99% productivity and 1% promotion which is not how it should be if you want to reach out to a wide array of listeners. My first step towards making Imphenzia more interesting is to announce the release of tracks ahead of time. What I am trying out is first of all compiling a YouTube video clip of the track with some simple yet colourful graphics. By embedding this on my web site and also announcing it to channel subscribers on YouTube and though Imphenzia on Twitter it raises awareness and hopefully the anticipation of a coming Imphenzia track. My second step is through the new Next Release page. Here I announce the track that is queued up to be ...

It's been over 12 years since my first album, Sector, was released and back then physical CDs was how music was distributed. I know many listeners still prefer to own a physical copy of the music they purchase, but for me that train has passed a long time ago. The money wasted in pressing, printing, storing and delivering physical discs, both for the artist and for the listener, along with the environmental effects of this process, is to put it simple: unecessary. Making quality MP3 albums was a focal feature when I redesigned the Imphenzia.com web site and an important factor was to make sure  that the album would be instantly accessible upon purchase ready for transfer to your MP3-player. The cover and disc artwork is also available for those of you who wish to make a physical copy for your car stereo (although your car most likely plays mp3s by now as well so even that is becoming a redundant requirement). If you purchase an Imphenzia album today, you will always have access to ...

Three new Imphenzia tracks have been released (click to listen to clips: Liquid Generator , Liquid Generator [Crystal Edit] and Evolution [Extended] ). You can also check out this video teaser I posted on YouTube for the new track:   The past six months Imphenzia trance tracks have been suffering attention somewhat due to being very busy with the relaunch of Imphenzia Soundtrack . The soundtrack section is a new library of music focused mainly on rapid availability of music for independent game developers (indigamers) and custominzing the site with a fully features shopping cart with automated discount bundeling and direct download access to mp3/ogg/wav versions consumed hour upon hour of development. I've also been receiving requests to create custom music for some indiegames and which has been very exciting and fun. These tracks will be available for promotional use once the games have been released. Now that the Soundtrack site is fully functional I can focus more on Imphenzia ...

Just a quick line or two before I have to run. I've published a few full length videos on YouTube now. You can watch them here! Example:

I have registered a new account at YouTube and THIS is the new Imphenzia Music Secion . I am creating 30-second previews of most of my tracks and using the "video response" feature to other popular trance videos. By creating two "channels" at YouTube, I release full length videos and these preview clips and I plan to keep adding to these channels whenever time allows me to. I use " Animoto " to create what could be classed as something between a video and a slide show and I'm quite impressed by their engine to quickly produce quite cool clips. This is also part of my promotional drive to get Imphenzia more established in the trance world.

I've been working hard to make a new track that is more DJ-friendly than most of my other tracks and the result is the recently released " Mind Machine ". The main aim of my music have always been focused on the casual listener rather than a dance floor but I want to make sure I also cater for this market and hope to raise the awareness of some DJs about Imphenzia. So, what's Mind Machine then? Over 7 minutes of progressively building trance with a central core of melodic and euphoric trance. The track has also been released through TuneCore which means that it will eventually appear on sites like iTunes, Napster and eMusic . I hope you like this new release and please let your friends know about it =)

I have recently finished a new track that so far remains unreleased. It is more club-oriented and DJ-friendly with longer intro and outro and it's been a long while since I contacted any labels but I am eager to check for interest so I can reach the audience of established DJs and services such as Spotify that currently don't accept material from independent artists. I have just contacted trance labels such as Armada Music (Armin van Buurens label that also contains many sub labels), Could9Dance , Maelstrom Records , Yawa Recordings , Storm Music , Mondo Records , Vandit Digital and we'll see if I get any reply :) I also sent it to Ministry Of Sound but their inbox was full so the e-mail bounced - hopefully I will get further with the other labels, haha.

Many many hours of hard work finally resulted in the launch of the new 2009-look for Imphenzia.com. All previous sections (music, games and soundtrack) have been united and also a new addition is the section textures which is a searchable database of textures for game makers and modellers. The new site has cross functionality between the sites and it was developed in PHP with a MySQL backend. The sections now share a common user account feature which will enable anyone who has previously purchased a track, mp3-album or registered a game to access this content at all times. Another feature is that it was designed with the ability to skin the site so it can be customized, maybe becuase you want a different look or because you want a bigger font or narrower page size etc. There is only the default skin available at the moment but now that the site is launched I may find some time to create some skins. I hope you like this new site and please feel free to give me feedback or comments. You ...

Another sleepless night resulted in a new track called "Evolution". It's a very upbeat trance track with a very happy melody and I found the mood quite appropriate now with it being Christmas and all :) As you may have read on the main page it's a free track so the mp3-file (in very high quality) can be downloaded. My next focus will be to try and get my music launched on Spotify.com. I have already contacted them but they are not quite ready for indie-artists yet but will hopefully launch an upload platform next year some time. I think that Spotify finally delivers a good platform that is perfect for both artists and listeners. Not only is the songs extremely accessible for fans and listeners, but the artists receive compensation from the adverts on free accounts and from the paying members. It's like radio on demand basically :)

A video showing off of a two month alpha demo of the Xbox 360 game "Duality: ZF" is available on YouTube. I'm excited to announce that this game will be featuring an Imphenzia Soundtrack! You just can't get enough of the good old 2D-shooters and this one will surely not disappoint :) Read more about the game in the comment on youtube.

Just an update to say I've been working extremely hard on the new Imphenzia site structure the past week, probably put a good 40+ hours of development into the sites the past week and I hope to be able to make the results visible over the coming week :) I've also added the blog to Nynäshamn bloggkartan.se :)

Today I youtubed 'Imphenzia' as I do sometimes just out of curiosity and I'm always happy when I find contributions to spreading the word of Imphenzia. This time around I came across two videos :) Thanks and keep using music for your youtube videos and spread the word :)