Synoiz Music Blog
Synoiz music blog.
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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:
- The Open Sky
- Andromeda
- Long Lost...
- Ever Emptiness1
- Getting Safer1
- Of Rolling Hills
- 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!
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