Six Piano Pieces

Today I finished the sixth in a series of Piano Pieces. It was also the first one where I used the recitations of the vocal project. I am really pleased with the provisional result. The piano parts of the project are now finished (until the production fase starts) and I can concentrate on the vocal compositions.

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Preparing lecture

On April 10 I will spend the day at the Avans art college of Den Bosch. There will be interviews and presentations by Dutch sound artists like Frans De Waard, Hans Kulk, Ad van Buuren and Anton Viergever. I hope the audience, students, will be able to concentrate on a whole day of (relatively) old farts telling them sound art.

What will they expect? I am really an lab rat when it comes to making music. I have done performances in the past (and hope to do more in the future because I actually like it) but when I tell them about my music production it really is about building and constructing sound.

I expect that the context of these art students is about plastic arts, rather than sound art. Hmm, maybe I could construct (there and then) a piece that could serve as a sonic installation piece. Hmm, yes, that might work.

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new project under construction

In the mean time I am preparing something completely different. It's a series of piano works. These are already in a finishing stage. Six works in which I investigate what result I would get when working with pitched instruments (rather than noise with a fixed pitch). Well, I think it worked out rather well. But it is, at times, quite different from the stuff I did in recent years.

After hearing the results of the piano works I decided that they needed a counterpart. This will be the human voice. And a coincidence, happening late 2007, helped spark this idea. Swedish artist Henning Lundkvist found my release 'Mama' via a peer 2 peer network. He contacted me and asked whether he could perform the tape in Malmö. Of course I agreed and I even remastered the old tape. But inside me my brain kept going and I decided that a new series of vocal works would be interesting to accompany the piano rumblings.

I got to work and dived up the old texts that I had written at the time. I have rewritten them slightly and invited people (Delphine Measroch, Henning Lundkvist, Christopher McFall) to recite the texts, record and send me the recordings. So this will be the basic material for the vocal counterpart to the piano's!

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pipeline projects

So, what am I actually doing these days? There are two projects finished. First is a collaboration with Christopher McFall and Sascha Neudeck. We did all of the music in our private studios and we exchanged files and projects via a webserver.
We presented the master to a couple of labels and Entr'acte seems to have agreed on releasing it, although there is no schedule.
Second project that is finished is a series that is called Gaussian Transient (Megaphone). It will be released by Nonvisualobjects (nVO) but here too, there is no release date fixed.

TEST
THIS IS A TEST TO SEE WHETHER OR NOT A MP3 LINK WILL WORK SMOOTHLY
MP3
FLAC

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Production at EARLabs

Sometimes I receive a request to master, remaster, remix or just mix a work that was made by someone else. I must say that I often times enjoy doing that. Polishing up, adding spice, sometimes making new arrangements, is really good fun to me.

So, suppose you would be interested in letting me have a go. Or, you're in a snag and don't know how to finish or to just proceed with the stuff that you're working on. And you think: "Let's see if the EARLabs guy can help me out".

How do we do things
The first thing to do is contact me, using [ this ] form. Explain what you would like me to do. Listen and give some advise, do an alternative mix or master or remaster an almost finished product.

Most of the things can be done via the Internet. I have a fast DSL connection and am most of the time online. Exchange of big files or sets of files (up to 2GB) is no problem. If you want to send stuff on cd that's okay, of course.

Speed
Most times I am able to respond within a day. Remixing/mastering a song usually takes me a couple of days. An album or a series of compositions can take up to a week. If you want the end result fast, then I will have to reschedule other things and will have to ask for a fee. If there is no hurry there's a fair chance that I will not charge you anything. This is not my job (yet), so I'm not financially dependent on doing these things.

The end product can be a finished mastering disc (compliant with Red Book) or a digital set of files. If you want the complete mix I can send you the whole set of rendered tracks, so that you can continue work in a different studio.

Discretion
Most times I work discretely, that is: the artist does not want to make it public that he/she had assistance from anyone else. That is no problem. But, let's not get ahead of things: if you're interested in trying something: [ contact me ] and we''ll work something out.

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