Synoiz Music Blog
Synoiz music blog.
Posted 28th June 2009
What? What is theeees? A blog? A BLOG?
Yes, exactly. I've finally forced myself to sit down and update my blog. A lot has happened since last I updated this, I've been ill, I've had the most gluttonous comfort food imaginable, I've played more games of Risk than the mind can handle however (and I can only tell you this aptly with the use of an eyesore) the brilliant news is that
LONG LOST... IS OUT NOW!!!
Oh yes, it finally actually happened! My debut ambient single "Long Lost..." is finally released to the world in its 3-track nothing-really-happens glory. We're still in the process of promoting it at the moment so if this is the first you've heard of it being finished and released then I don't blame you. I've done a really terrible job of organising myself on this but the reason we held off "Getting Safer" as the first single was so we could try our hand at this music video/promotion lark on something smaller first.
That being said though, "Long Lost..." is one of my favourite tracks on the album and I'm so amazed at how well it's turned out. Such a sense of pride seeing it there on Amazon to buy!
You can check out more information on the single as well and the music video itself (as well as a special message from me talking about the song and other random stuff...) on the special "Long Lost..." mini-site that I set up:
What's next?
Well today I've had a rather lazy day, was up till 4am playing Dynasty Warriors with my housemates and bizarrely enough Ian Lawlor, who directed the music video for "Long Lost..." above, it was lots of fun but it makes me think I need to get back into playing computer games. The last one I really made time for was Resident Evil 4 and that was years ago now... wait, Silent Hill Origins too, that was good. Anyway if I ever intend to make a living doing game soundtracks I'm going to have to listen to what everyone else is up to in the industry so more games in the future I think.
At the moment I'm working frantically on the soundtrack for my friend Phil Lutas' puzzle game for the XBox Live Marketplace. It was (if you've heard me mention it before) going to be called "Pebbledash" but apparently they're having to change it now due to similarities between Pebbledash and Boulderdash (considering they're pretty much the same sort of game, fair cop really). Now this is the thing, I NEVER expected this to be so difficult! I've spent so much time on these 5 tracks that I'm beginning to get sick of them lol.
Basically the problem is that every time I tried to make proper music for it the tracks ended up way too dark/dramatic/focal, whereas the game is a very vintage style arcade game for kids so I've had to change my style significantly and dredge up loads of old fashioned vintage synth noises and catchy melodies in order to make music that fits. The hardest part is fitting it to the game (+ sound effects) and listening to it over to see if it gets annoying. I wish I had a playable demo of the game so that I could play it and listen to the music to see if it gets frustrating when the game gets tough...
I'm still not happy with any of it however when finished there will be 6 tracks in total. I've uploaded the three problem children above so you can have a listen to them, please tell me what you think, too vintage? Too boring? Too repetitive?
Hope you're all doing well, please help me out by checking out the single and buying it from Amazon.
Graeme x
Posted 7th June 2009
Hello there everyone,
I've been pretty rubbish with blogging lately, I used to bother everyone at least once a week but lately not so much. Things are stressful but wonderful for me at the moment, the other week myself and Kirsty (of forthcoming sideproject Siren) wrote the press release for the "Long Lost..." single, they're basically what you give to record labels/shops to describe your release. It was horrible having to think of ways to big myself up! Then again if it was up to self-defeatist old me I'd probably write like:
"Long Lost... is the debut single from pretty much unknown stumbling-in-the-dark strategist Synoiz. We're not expecting it to do very well but give it a listen and possibly buy it"
Apparently this is not what marketing is about.
You can read the final press release we wrote on the Last.fm page for Long Lost... (you can also listen to the full tracks off the release)
Long Lost... on Last FM
Long Lost... Video Shoot
At the moment I am sitting in the garden with my housemate Agata enjoying the first day off I've had in like 2 weeks. For the past three days myself and director Ian Lawlor, co-director Mark Liddle and wonderful extra Phil Heckles have been filming the video for "Long Lost..." (very small crew I know but the video is rather minimal and since it's all in daylight we thankfully don't need lighting rigs).
Tomorrow will be the last day of filming and we'll be down in Seaburn, we need to use the pier and it's been too stormy these past few days to film safely there. Thankfully I've managed to speak with the pier authorities and they're gonna open it up for us tomorrow morning and allow us to get our shots in, I think we'll be under supervision but who cares lol.
You can watch my latest VBlog (filmed on the way home from shooting on Saturday) on YouTube by clicking here.
Agata and the carrot cake
In other news I introduced Agata (natively from Poland if that makes a difference) to carrot cake. She thought I was joking to start with "A cake with carrot? Is it not sweet?" so I went off and bought some for her and before I could blink she'd decided they were the nicest thing in the world and munched like the packet!
Then she went on a big guilt trip and so we went down to the 24/7 garage to buy some more cakes (Although I think she had another agenda other than apology as the cakes are already disappearing fast...), so we're in the garden next to the fire with tea and cakes. This is how all days off should be :D
There will be more news soon about the Long Lost... single. It should appear in a few online shops on the 15th of June (next monday) however the OFFICIAL (ie it is when I say it is) release date from me may be the week after. This is due to a cock-up on my part not realising that iTunes takes forever to process new releases.
Posted 27th May 2009
Hello everyone, today we're re-shooting the video for my first single from "Ambients", "Long Lost...". We're doing this because a) we didn't like the original footage as it was a bit naff, and b) we had a much better idea for the video after filming for the third single.
I've woken up ill today which isn't a good start but hopefully I can grab a lemsip and hot bath and manage to hide it from the camera! We'll be doing the shooting at both Seaburn in Sunderland and Tynemouth in Newcastle although sadly we're not in need of any extras :( boo video concept!
Important change to single release
Now this is where you're going to kill me. I know in previous blogs, vblogs etc I've stated that "Long Lost..." will be free to download, however this is no longer the case.
Due to a worry I had regarding which distributor to use to get the album "Ambients" on iTunes and Amazon, I have decided to test-the-waters with the single and have submitted that to be digitally available. This means that to download the 3-track "Long Lost..." single will cost you like £1.50 or such which, while not free, is still a tasty deal.
Plus I'm trying to work out a way of offering a free bonus track to people who can prove their purchase just to show that I'm not focussed on the bling.
I just didn't want to throw the album at iTunes and then learn that they now own all the rights and profits to it because I missed some small print somewhere!
Anyway it's bath time now, wish me luck today,
Hope you're all doing great!!!
P.S Pray for rain and stormy skies for us today if you can, we need gloomy cloud shots and so I'm scared we'll have another perfect sunny day like yesterday!
Posted 15th May 2009
(This was written on Friday on the bus but I haven't had time to upload it until now!)
On the bus to London at the moment, I was kinda dreading it as usually coach trips are agony but thankfully I've got a bit of leg/laptop room and there's no screaming children apparent (seriously though, why would you take your newborn on a 7 hour coach journey? I always wonder about the logic there, maybe they're all masochists...)
Things have been weird for the past two or so weeks and I just haven't stopped. I've been so busy with my music, my job and helping people out that I have had no time for sleep, been scraping by on 4 hours sleep and then getting up for the 9-5 for 4 days of the week. Last night I was up till about 1am finalising a version of "Ambients" to give to the lovely Rob of Temposhark when I get to meet him this weekend. They're filming the music video for their new single "The World Does Not Revolve Around You" on Saturday and I'm lucky enough to be one of the many extras on it. I'll probably be tweeting all about it so if you don't already you can follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/synoiz
I'm glad the Temposhark thing came up though as it means I get to catch up with all my London mates while I'm down there, I haven't seen Mark in yages and apparently he's finished his first novel finally. We'd always been bouncing stories off each other for years but he's the only one to actually knuckle down and complete a novel. I got like 200 pages into mine and then realised it was unfollowable dirge lol.
Also as people from Twitter will know I've become a bit of an eBay-aholic this past week, yesterday I bought a Sony digital camera for only £65 and the phone I've wanted for ages, the HTC G1 for just £108. It's hardly breaking the bank like but it's nice for me to stop being frugal for a bit, although I should be saving for getting the physical copies of "Ambients" printed!
Err... what else... oh yeah. A rather downbeat new VBlog is available on YouTube if you want to check it out: Synoiz on YouTube filmed after spending two days mastering the album in Edinburgh and realising I wasn't sure about any of it.
Oh yeah, watch this space too as I was helping a friend out with his final year uni art project for photography on Wednesday (how strange to think that this time last year I wrote the "Chernobyl" OST for another friend for exactly the same exhibition!) and we ended up taking some Synoiz promo shots. All I'm going to say is that they're both beautiful and horrible. We were on an old spot of wasteland if that gives you an idea what to expect. I doubt they're gonna sell any albums but I loved what I saw on his little camera screen thing.
Hope you're all doing well, thanks for reading this!
Posted 6th May 2009
[Typed from a table seat on an Edinburgh -> Newcastle train]
Well that's it done. "Ambients" is finally finished, fully mastered and sounds amazing (in my humble opinion of course!). It's been a pretty difficult past two days in Edinburgh as it was very difficult getting the most out of every song. Some songs in particular (once we cut them open) we realised had a lot going wrong with them, although it kinda explains why I'd never fully liked them. For instance "Of Rolling Hills" which is the second track on the album has never been one of my favourites and so it was nice to find loads of millisecond out-of-time string sections and dissonant harmonies amongst the lower instruments. Now I'm actually liking the track a lot more!
Mastering the album was my brother, the wonderful Ghostsmut with me there to help and to make sure things didn't veer too much away from what I was intending for the songs (a right I kinda exerted a few too many times I think!). Here he is blatantly not working:
Though I did get a bit worked up today when we were running out of time and all the software suddenly turned on me. For instance I exported the whole album track by track only to find it had decided to cut off the last 5 seconds of every song because some rogue setting was not turned off, or when we converted the entire album to high-quality MP3 and transferred it to my MP3 player only to be told they were all corrupted. Boo!
It's funny how stressful situations can bring out the worst in you, it was scary seeing myself in proper stamping-feet-and-whining mode as we began to run out of time and nothing sounded right.
Luckily my brother is a wonderful and VERY patient man and made sure about everything.
At the minute I'm on the train back from Edinburgh, as tired as tired could be, here's a picture of me in my current pitiful state lol:
The reason I'm so tired is because I was up till 3am last night checking the mixes only to find we had normalised them all and ruined a lot of the subtlety of tracks like "Forest" and "Ever Emptiness" then up at 9:30am because of building works... See the picture below for a few of the notes I made. I recorded a VBlog before I left my brother's place for the station so that'll be up on YouTube in a day or two.
Hope you're all doing well, just think the next place you'll hear "Ambients" is on iTunes. How scary is that?
Right now I could really do with some kind messages or interest in the album so please feel free to comment or just say hello. I can barely type at the minute lol.
Syn x
P.S. If you're wondering what state Edinburgh was in while I was there, the answer is of course, rubbish!