Synoiz Music Blog

Posted 13th November 2013

News at last! At the moment I'm working on a soundtrack for the short horror film "Blaze of Gory" for Mitsuko Studios and pretending I know how to use a Korg MS-20 synthesiser I've just bought from Red Dog Music in Edinburgh. 

The new album is almost done, vocals need tweaking and I've dropped another track that I just couldn't get happy with, some voice over sections have been added and hopefully at the end of the month I will be going back up to Edinburgh to master the album with Ghostsmut (who also mastered the first album Ambients).

At the weekend I wrote up ideas for the music videos for the album (no singles per say but we are hopefully having videos for some stand out tracks), I've discussed two of these videos with Ian Lawlor at 12 Foot Beast Productions (who has done all my other videos as he's mint) and I'm discussing two digitally rendered CG videos with Ryan McKindle of Pathogen Pictures. All early days still but hopefully these videos will come out really good! 

Hope you're all well, eat a biscuit. Unless you're allergic, then just have an apple or something.

I've been a bit more into Twitter as of late so feel free to message @Synoiz on there.  

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!

Posted 22nd March 2009

Righto, I'm doing this on the train because it's the only time that I actually seem able to sit down and not get distracted by anything (speaking of which, try typing "distracted" on your QWERTY keyboard, it's a very soothing circular motion when you can touch-type lol, oh yeah getting distracted...).

I just thought I'd do another blog so soon because loads has been happening lately (I've barely had time to sit down for the past 3 weeks) and if I don't force myself to type it up I never will!

New Album "Soundtract" News
Quite a bit of news on the new album, I've got like 31 tracks out of the 40 I intended to get done, now I'm going to write like 4 proper songs for it (3 "ending themes" and one in-game vocal track) and then try to sort out the remaining 5. So any ideas of game music/emotions you'd like to see attempted, post me a comment!
It's really strange seeing how this album has shaped up. I can't really remember being at the same stage with "Ambients" because that just flew by in a few weeks, this is 40 tracks so even if it flew by I'd probably still be catching the tail end of it somehow.
I think the reason why I'm getting a bit strained with Soundtract is because I've been putting off some of the more stressful tracks (things like the opening themes or general walking-about music) as they're so tough to get right.
Also I'm a bit worried about what people will think of it all, I mean, when I step back and think about it, it's a 40-track album of just background music ranging from chill out techno -> fantastical new age -> experimental horror. Now I know that I'd like to stick that in my HiFi regardless but I'd really like to know if anyone else would!
Maybe I should release it in three parts... So if you only really want the horror stuff you just download that or such. I dunno. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Lori Cunningham / Ghostsmut Giveaways
More important than anything I'm up to however is the fact that there's lots of free-stuff up for grabs from two of my favourite artists. Lori Cunningham is (for a limited time only, she said) is offering a free three-track download from her amazing debut album "Unseen" (seriously, if you like female vocals in any way Enya/Evanescence/Kate Bush etc then you really should check her out). You can find out more about it on her blog here:
Get free sample pack of Lori Cunningham's album "Unseen"

Also while we're on the subject of free stuff, my brother Ghostsmut released a compilation of all the b-side-type-tracks he has left over after completing his debut album. The tracks were all cut due to length restrictions or because they were too samey to tracks already on the album. The album is called "Besides & Suicides" and is pretty damn good, you can download the whole album here (Including my favourite track of his "Let's Live As If We're Dead" which I argued a lot with him about when he took it off his first album):
Download "Besides & Suicides" by Ghostsmut on Last.FM

Ambients / Music Videos
Yes, yes, they are coming, however we're doing them all at once because of time restraints on our locations and so it means all the editing will need to be done before anything can actually be seen.
As for the actual release of Ambients, I'm still trying to sort things out with Konami about the sample in Another World. They say it's okay if I only make a small-run of physical CDs but not if I put it on iTunes which is ideally where I'd like it to go :(


Free Tracks on Twitter
Oh yeah... you know, if you want some free songs you should really start following me on Twitter, I've got a nasty habit of putting demo versions of tracks I'm working on there for people to download and listen to...
http://www.twitter.com/synoiz


Happy Birthday Ghostsmut!!!
In more important news, my brother (the artist known as Ghostsmut) had his 30th birthday on Thursday. I can't believe it either as he's always seemed to me like the youngest person I know (he's pretty damn immature lol), doesn't look like the age landmark will affect him at all though so huzzah!
Me and my mum were visiting him in Edinburgh on Wednesday so I'll put some pictures from that in another blog soon when I'm back on my main computer. Oh I think there's a video too, me and my bro being very, very un-PC :D

It was a wonderful day there on Wednesday, I think I'll post some more videos on YouTube, or maybe just a big crazy montage. Yeah a montage would be best I think. One day I'll move to Edinburgh I hope.

As I say I'm heading back up there now because we knew that with bro's party being tonight that he wouldn't really have enough time to distribute between everyone while also playing the host (I know I'm always dashing around at these kinds of occasions). The theme of the party is Arnie. Yes... some of the costumes should be amazing (mine is not lol). MY NAME IS NOT QUAAAAAID!!!