Imphenzia

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...

I'm not sure why I haven't bought this VST instrument earlier because I remember trying the demo a while back and then I forgot about it for one reason or another. As I was engaged in a forum thread regarding good trance VST instruments at the trance.nu forums I saw it being recommended and I had another download of the demo yesterday and within a few minutes I was back at their web site and purchased it (€170 including VAT). Delivery of the Sylenth1 and license took a few minutes and unfortunately the 64-bit version of the DLL crashes Cubase 5 which is odd because the demo version in 64bit worked fine. I'll contact their support soon and see if we can resolve the issue. I can still use it by simply installing the 32-bit version for the time being. To start off with you get a lot of presets (over 1300) with this synth spread across three factory banks to play around with. The quality of presets included is very high with a huge selection of ARP (arpeggiated and gated sounds...

After receiving quite a few questions regarding how I go about to compose my music I decided to start making some video tutorials on the subject. The other day I released my first tutorial which covers an important element of my music which I refer to as "layering". I'm not sure if there is an official term for this and I know that many artists consider layering to be over saturating the music and to some extent I may agree that it could be a way to "cover lack of skills by adding more stuff". At the same time I'm really pleased with what the result sounds like, which is a strong enough argument to keep doing it =) I created this tutorial using my sequencer software of choice, Steinberg's Cubase 5, but it should be very easy to translate this technique into the sequencer of your choice (e.g. FL Studio, Reason, Logic, Alberton, etc). The VST instruments I use are Groove Agent ONE (native Cubase instrument) for drums, reFX Nexus2 for a selection of pads, b...

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...

Creating music for Imphenzia Soundtrack is great fun as it offers such a variety from my normal Imphenzia trance music. I've put together a new Youtube video to showcase the different styles: The music still targets independent game developers (indiegames) with very competitive pricing and it's royalty free ofcourse.

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 ...