Synoiz Music Blog

Posted 12th October 2013

Finally some music news, I've been really busy lately with so many things that aren't Synoiz related it's unreal. A week or two ago I scored a short horror filmed called "Summer's Night" which is apparently going to be released as part of a horror compilation at some point. I'd like to say I enjoyed making it but at the time I was really ill, the film edit had overrun and when I got it to start on there was only a weekend before the submission deadline and no time to get better, so it was a weekend full of Lemsip, hot chocolate and playing long cello patches on the keyboard with a wild disregard for tempo. I liked that though, the more soundtracks I work on, the better I get with them. The first one I did I treated like a collection of songs, finding a tempo and key for each scene (compromising when I had to) and making it very mechanical, now I've loosened up a bit and seen that when most people edit films they're not counting the beats in their head between one shot and the next, they're working the flow around many different factors and so a fixed time signature and tempo can hinder rather than help in some cases. 

Anyway that's enough on that, the new Synoiz album is in that horrible unending 99% complete stage that a lot of other artists have told me they get also. The songs are written, I'm playing about with some voice acting parts and the production is really close to being good but it's just been stuck for the last few months where I tweak little bits and fiddle about with patches and sounds rather than going "sod it, this is done". I'm aiming for a February release date and while I don't want any singles from the album there might be an EP with instrumentals of the vocal tracks and some outtakes. There will be music videos too but while myself and 12 Ft Beast Productions are bandying around ideas for them I don't want to think of all that stuff until I'm done with my music. 

I do hope you'll like the album, it's not as varied as Ambients I don't think but really nice to just slap on your headphones while you're out and about. 

Over and out, for our unity,

Synoiz 

Posted 18th December 2011

Ohohohoho it's getting close to Christmas, and we all know what that means! The horrible and tragic realisation that you don't truly know or understand the people you're trying to buy presents for. Maybe I have a very pessismistic view of the Christmas season but for me it's just cold, ice, social expectations and sodding Wham! on the radio every ten minutes. Still I suppose it's nice for getting a bit of chill time to, say, update this blog and finally say hello to the nice new followers on Twitter.

The main thing I want to say now I've got a moment is thank you to everyone who came along to the first ever Synoiz live performance in November as part of the Cutting Edge Film Festival in Newcastle. The whole day was awesome once I'd stopped stressing about things and just decided to have a good time!

Hilariously the performance was a bit of a shambles as lots of things went wrong and meant that neither the backing videos that myself and 12 Foot Beast Productions had spent most of the previous week filming nor the right channel of most tracks worked at all. Two of the more important tracks had to be skipped because of a bizarre and unforeseen bass limiter on the venue's mixing desk (meaning that the main parts of Getting Safer and Ever Emptiness were totally cut off)!

Still even if I see the gig as a disaster a lot of the audience still said they enjoyed themselves and it gave me a great opportunity to get used to playing in front of people and being the centre of attention (which I've never liked the idea of), I had a lot of fun with the audience, joking on about the technical issues, even attempting with Alex (after someone shouted it out) to do an a cappella version of Getting Safer that was both hilarious and a disaster.

Setlist:

1. The Open Sky
2. Andromeda
3. Long Lost...
4. Ever Emptiness¹
5. Getting Safer¹
6. Of Rolling Hills
7. Darkling

¹ These were the tracks that had to be skipped due to technical issues.

Thanks to everyone who came down and who requested songs to be played, Andromeda and Of Rolling Hills were the fan chosen tracks and went down a treat I think. Thanks also to Alex Campbell for pulling through for me and helping me out with additional keyboards and banter for a few of the tracks.

All in all the Cutting Edge film festival organised by Antoni McVay of Mitsuko Studios was a big success, there were some great films being shown as well as some hilarious ones! Lots of nice compliments (ie: "that was bloody freaky") on my scores for the films Nightmares and The Dark Passenger plus, I think it got mentioned in the news section, I won the award for "Best Actor" for the stuff I did for Le Belle Dame Sans Merci and The Dark Passenger (the soundtrack of the dark passenger was cobbled together meticulously compiled, remastered and released a few weeks ago if you want to go get it by clicking here btw). We've discussed the idea of releasing the more dramatic Nightmares soundtrack too but since it was composed by both myself and Guy Newby and edited by me we'd have to work a bit more out in terms of which versions to use, whether to include unused tracks or scenes and stuff and so it's probs a "tomorrow after tomorrow" type job.

I didn't win the "Best Soundtrack" award as that was taken by Brendan Ratliff (aka @echolevel on Twitter) and his brilliant organic score for Le Belle Dame Sans Merci. I think I would have been jealous if any of the other soundtracks had beaten the three I had done for stuff in the festival but I remember hearing Brendan's first version of the score on a pre-final edit of the film and thinking that it was exactly what I had wanted to go for but didn't really know if I could achieve, his score was perfect for the film and I'm a firm believer in the importance of considering what is best for a project and not just my own portfolio.

Anyway there may be some pictures or videos of the Synoiz live performance coming at some point, I saw one or two camera phones and Ian from 12 Foot Beast was recording the whole thing from somewhere at the back so they may get added to the YouTube or news section at some point.

Hope you're all well and if you don't hear from me, have a very Merry Christmas and happy New Year!

Posted 21st October 2011

Hello again! 

It's been bloody ages since I wrote a blog, it's that typical thing that whenever you have stuff that people might actually be interested in, you're too busy to write it down. Well the main thing I'd like to point out is OMGNEWBLOODYWEBSITE, hope you like it, tell me what you think in the comments section below.

So what have I been up to? Well I've done a few remixes and also a few horror film soundtracks, the first is a mad industrial electro one for the still-photography short "Nightmares", another more atmospheric spooky one for the film "The Dark Passenger" by Lee Bibby, and some currently unreleased music of mine has been used to score a TV pilot/short film called "Freakarama" (which is INSANE but strangely watchable!). 

In addition to this I've played lead acting roles in two independent films, one being The Dark Passenger mentioned above (the things I'll do for a soundtrack gig eh?) and the other being the amazing Le Belle Dame Sans Merci written by Phillip Michael Buchan and directed by Antoni McVay from Mitsuko Studios.

I -think- all of these films are going to be shown at a local film festival in Newcastle upon Tyne sometime next month but that's a pretty major event so I'm gonna dedicate a whole blog to that sometime later. 

There's lots more to tell you but I'll sit down on Sunday maybe and write that out for you, hope you're all well, thanks for being fans of Synoiz!

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!!!

Posted 11th March 2009

Hey again,
I can't sleep, went to bed at like 1:30am and have just woken up at 8 and unable to get back to sleep so thought I'd double check everything again and post a new blog to wake myself up.
Today is a big day for me as we are filming the main scenes for one of my music videos. Essentially these are the "oooh fancy" bits which we only have one shot at (you'll have to wait for the video to find out why - or join the Facebook group...) and it's been chaos to organise. I have been at work fulltime for the last month or so, so yesterday I was at work till 5, then I had a singing lesson until half 7, then I had to meet with the directors and ended up arguing with them for 2 hours cos I want it done exactly how I imagined it and they think it'll work better this other way etc, they're right I know, however the case I was making was "Well we only have one evening to do all this section, so can't we attempt to film my version of this shot as well just incase we decide to use it in editing after all?" I'd rather not walk away with "Oh yeah it would have been nice to have a shot like that..." bits when we can't shoot them again.
Okay, okay, maybe I'm not the easiest person to work with! Mark Liddle (Co-directing) stated it as "You have your artistic vision and we have our directoral vision". I think they're just happy cos when I'm on set tonight I've said I'll keep quiet and just do as they say, after all they're the directors but I just want to be sure that we're both aiming for the same video here.



Anyway it should be fun, but today is me running around all day buying last-minute props for new extras and then getting things like hair sorted and slightly dolled up, just to get mucked up again for the video, weird how these things work eh? So I start running about in 10 minutes and then finish at 11pm tonight only to go to work again tomorrow at 7, huzzah!

Just to keep you entertained though, here are some photos I forgot about from the location hunting for this, as you can see the place is horrible and looks worse than these pictures can show, but it works so well for the song and video:







New Album Update
Oh and if you're waiting for information on the new album "Soundtract" (new name that has recently been kinda decided on... by me and Anguaji) don't worry, it's coming and I'm working my little rear off on it, but there will be a website made for it so that you can actively participate in the finalising of the songs. All very exciting but that's stuff for another blog methinks.

"The Esoteric Order of Dagon" on OurStage (Again)
This has totally taken me by surprise but I thought, after hitting the top ten with my track in Experimental on OurStage, that this month it would just get thrown to the back of the charts, and that's what happened, it dropped right down to like #200-odd, but now I wake up and check and after a lot of lovely fans voting for it, it's back at #4 lol. How amazing is that? It's cheered me up a bit when all I can think of is work right now.

I'll try to post another blog tomorrow if I'm not too knacked,
Wish me luck!