Synoiz Music Blog
Synoiz music blog.
Posted 31st October 2009
I'm so excited, my debut album "Ambients" is OUT NOW!
You can buy it from any of the stores listed in the dropdown below, including iTunes and Amazon.
One thing I must mention is that I have had very little control over the pricing of my album and personally I think it's way too expensive on Amazon (£6.99/$8.99) and iTunes (£7.99/$9.99). To apologise for this I'm offering a FREE Limited Edition CD copy of the album (only 100 in existance) with every digital purchase from those two stores (including postage to wherever you are).
I love this album, spookily it was exactly a year today that I finished the album with my tongue-in-cheek horror piece "Shock! Horror!" which was the last track made for Ambients. It seems weird that it's been an entire year of producing/mastering/re-mastering/promotion and working on the EP and three singles (two of which are still to come). Please buy the album and and follow the instructions on the mini-site to get your free CD.
Posted 14th October 2009
Hey all,
It feels like years since my last update yet I know it's only been about a fortnight. I can't express to you how busy I've been but as you can see, there's a few more things ticked off my To Do list to the side. The big day is coming and so I thought I'd post a quick blog to tell you about one of the special promotions I'm doing to celebrate.
Ambients CD Offer
Finally I have the CD copies of Ambients and they're very cool, the artwork and inlay took ages to prepare but I'm really happy with the final result. This means that it's time to tell you how you can get your hands on one.
The CDs are in a very limited quantity and will not be going on direct sale, basically I will be giving away a FREE copy of the Ambients CD (including P&P to wherever you are) with every digital purchase of the album from either Amazon or iTunes while stocks last. You can find out more about it here including how to apply and security/legal information.
Posted 22nd September 2009
Just a quick update today. It was a crazy day, one of those everything goes wrong type days. People being all grumbly around me, dodgy weather, missed my bus, lost ticket so had to pay again etc. When I got home this evening I was in a right strop with the world, was about to press the ignition on my doom lazer (which I obviously have so be warned).
Then I did something I never, ever do. I just said f*ck it. Stepped away from the computer and the artwork that needs doing, the website that needs building, and went to run a bath. Then I spent like 3 hours in there, just chilling. Watching the Studio Ghibli film "Whisper of the Heart" on my laptop across the room. Kinda put things in perspective and calmed me down a lot.
Essentially the moral of the film is that the work we do is always "in progress" and that we should never attempt to do things perfectly first time. Made me realise that yeah, while I'm still gonna push my debut album all I can, it'll probably not be till like the fourth or fifth album I release that someone goes "hey this is sounding pretty good, come help out with this soundtrack" or something. I've always been around music and yet I've never made it myself until I started the Synoiz project. Just gets a bit scary when a lot of the people I look up to or am surrounded by are like classically trained pianists who have been writing songs since they could walk etc.
Every track I create I can feel it coming together more.
Plus I got a wonderful email reply from Rob from Temposhark, really boosted my mood even more. I'll be down in London this weekend to see them live, and then I'm going down next weekend as well to be an extra in their next music video too. Good times. 
Anyway the LIST! As you can see, not much ticked off so far, but the stuff I've bracketed (is that a word) are things that progress is being made on. I sent the b-side for "Getting Safer" to my friend Lori Cunningham and she pointed out that it was way too dissonant lol. So working on that a bit more before sending it off to Ghostsmut for mastering.
The big news is that the album CD artwork is nearly done, the limited-run physical copy of "Ambients" should look -awesome-. Here's a sneaky look at my paper-clipped-together-printed-on-a-bubblejet copy:
Thanks for reading! See you soon.
Posted 22nd August 2009
Hello all, It seems like a very long time since I last updated my blog yet I think it's been about 2 months. I've pretty much never stopped working during this period and so apologies about the lack of blogs.
It's a bit ironic really as when I did have time to blog every day/week it was when I didn't really have anything to tell you, now that I have 101 things to tell you about upcoming albums/singles/websites I'm somehow not finding the time. I guess it's like homework, you let it pile up and then it becomes too much to handle so you avoid it! 
Really exciting news now though, my debut album "Ambients" has a final release date. Ambients will be made available digitally (iTunes/Amazon etc) on 31st of October 2009. Halloween! You can view the final cover artwork to the side there.
Please note that the CD copy mentioned below may not be available to purchase if we get too many press requests (ie: we run out of CDs) but if you can comment on this journal/message me to tell me that you'd like a CD copy then I'll gauge the demand and try and get more printed.
Somehow being able to have something as freakin' awesome as a Halloween release date makes me kinda glad there's been so many setbacks/distractions over the last couple of months. I admit though that 90% of those setbacks have been my fault as, following Ghostsmut's amazing work on mastering the album in Edinburgh, I still wasn't totally happy with it and it took me like 2 months to pull it off the shelf and finalise the mixes to be (in my mind) perfect.
Obviously because of this upcoming release I've had to shift things around a fair bit, basically the "Chernobyl EP/OST/whatever-it-is-called-now" is on hold yet again, and the next single "Getting Safer" will be released AFTER the album sometime in November.
Still to do...
If you look to the side you'll be able to see what my current To Do list looks like for the upcoming 2 months until Halloween. It's slightly daunting, but as a lot of it is dependant on other people/getting things back etc, I should have a few nice pauses between steps with which to blog/keep in touch.
I was meaning to do a VBlog today but that may have to wait until tomorrow as I have to meet up with an old friend for dinner (I'm having to miss her wedding next month so it's the least I can do!).
Thank you very much to everyone who is following me on Twitter and helping me out, over the last month I've been posting lots of nice tidbits on there such as the "in production" artwork for the album and allowing people to suggest things to help me get it right.
Help me out
Basically releasing this album is a daunting task so I really need help from fellow artists and fans in order to get me through it, if you can do any of the following things for me I would be very appreciative:
1. Help me get the word out. If you know someone who might be interested in my music and the upcoming album/singles, tell them about me, send them a link to the MySpace or the Facebook.
2. Help me get radio play/press coverage. If you're a DJ or music critic and you'd like to be added to the list of press to receive the album for review, get in touch and I'll look into it.
3. Join the Facebook group. If you're on Facebook then please join the group I set up to promote/inform everyone about Ambients, click here to join the Ambients group on Facebook.
4. Follow me on Twitter. I talk a lot about stuff on Twitter as well as posting new song demos/ideas, links to early artwork etc. If you want to know everything that's going on before I can be bothered to write a blog entry, sign up and follow me: http://www.twitter.com/synoiz
Right now that that's over with I've got to get washed and showered for this meal! Hope you're all doing well, Graeme
Posted 12th July 2009
Hey everyone,
I must warn you there may be more blogs coming atcha like an old woman with a shopping trolley, got a few of them stored up you see. Been amazingly busy lately that I've had no sleep or time to do anything except work for about 2 weeks. Thankfully we're almost finished the video for the 3rd (as yet unannounced) single from "Ambients", last day of shooting will be tomorrow; I'm pretty much done with the music for the Pebbledash game (huzzah) and now it's time to get our moo into gear for the 2nd single "Getting Safer".
Now "Getting Safer" is probably the most commercial song off "Ambients" and I'm sure everyone who has heard promos of the album (or listened to it on this mini-site here: http://ambients.synoiz.net ) knew it would be a single eventually. At the moment we're planning stuff for the music video (I've managed to get my way out of starring in it this time so you'll get someone infinitely better lol) however I need to get the artwork sorted and sent off before we start on the video.
Oh oh oh I'm quite excited about this, I'm not sure if the single will include a remix or not as currently I'm writing two b-sides for the single (both of them are sounding quite strong so far). So if you're interested in doing a remix of the song "Getting Safer" for the single, please send me an email at ambients@synoiz.net
Help me with the artwork for "Getting Safer"
Now the main point of the day, I really can't decide what to do for the artwork for the next single. I was really happy with how the "Long Lost..." art turned out and so I really want to have a each-single-a-different-primary-colour theme. However "Getting Safer" (you can listen to a sampler on the mini site) doesn't really fit any colour that I can think of.
Please click the following link to see a list of options I've created (you can suggest your own) and vote for what you think should be the "Getting Safer" artwork.
Click here to cast your vote for the artwork for "Getting Safer"
