No, I am no musician by any stretch of the word. For many years, in the meanwhile even decades, however, I have had an interest in synthesizers, patch programming, digital synthesis and the resulting music. And I happen to be the proud owner of two of these fascinating machines. So, if time allows and if I find myself in the mood, I sit down at the keyboard to doodle and toot. Sometimes the resulting sounds even resemble music. You can find a few examples down below.
But please be aware that, as much as I do know about the creation of sythesizer patches and digital audio programming, as much do I still need to learn about music theory, composition, production, mixing and mastering. Furthermore, no DAW was involved in the creation of these hits and misses. The following is definitvely not for the faint at heart. Or faint at ears. You have been warned.
In October 2017, the South Korean singer Taemin released the song "Move" which became quite famous for its accompanying dance choreography by Koharu Sugawara. In January 2019, a sub-group of the South-Korean group Twice performed a cover version of "Move" which I happen to like much better than the original, and of which I think that it is by far the best song and dance performance ever done by Twice. Unfortunately the soundtrack of their MusicBank Live Stage is badly spolied by the vocally hyperventilating fans. So, what to do?
Also known as "The most annoying bell" ever to appear in a piece of pop music. The inspirations to this little ditty are manifold. And I finally delved a lot deeper into the sound programming of my Kronos to get these ultra-wide stereo sounds that do not suffer from phase cancellation as soon as I put aside my headphones.
I did hesitate to upload this piece of music, because it lacks any worthwhile top-line melody. But whenever I listened to it and tried to imagine a melody, nothing came to my mind – until I realised what it actually is that is “wrong”: the roles of the synth and the drums are switched. It is the synth that carries the rhythm, and it is the drums that play the melody. Kind of. So, here it is:
In autumn 2022 I had the sonic idea for a Halloween song – which I then managed to finish right in time for Christmas. Duh. Recently my home music server deigned to lay that very song onto my auditory passages. What atrocious horror! The mix was really – and I do really mean really – bad. But I still like the funky rhythm and the melody (as far as that piece even does have something like melody). So, I sat down and spent some time debugging, rearranging, cleaning and polishing that musical concoction of mine. Padestrian as I am, the piece is still far from perfect. But I think it sounds a tiny little whee bit better than before. Now even the treble troubles have been resolved. So, here it comes, again perfectly failing to match the season:
In the year 1990 the Japanese producer Korg introduced a new synthesizer named ‘Wavestation’ to the market. One of the most famous preset sounds of this machine is the so called ‘Ski Jam’ which has been also installed on all subsequent models capable of wave-sequencing under the name ‘Ski Dance’. Recently the Youtuber AudioPilz reviewed the Wavestation on his channel ‘Bad Gear’. He mocked the Ski Jam preset by stating that he does not know of any song making use of this sound. Today he upped the ante. Okay. Challenge accepted. Here comes my piece of music using the Ski Dance preset created by Peter “Ski” Schwartz: