I’m not sure why I haven’t bought this VST instrument earlier because I remember trying the demo a while back and then I forgot about it for one reason or another. As I was engaged in a forum thread regarding good trance VST instruments at the trance.nu forums I saw it being recommended and I had another download of the demo yesterday and within a few minutes I was back at their web site and purchased it (€170 including VAT). Delivery of the Sylenth1 and license took a few minutes and unfortunately the 64-bit version of the DLL crashes Cubase 5 which is odd because the demo version in 64bit worked fine. I’ll contact their support soon and see if we can resolve the issue. I can still use it by simply installing the 32-bit version for the time being.

To start off with you get a lot of presets (over 1300) with this synth spread across three factory banks to play around with. The quality of presets included is very high with a huge selection of ARP (arpeggiated and gated sounds), leads, basses, pads, sound effects, keys, and some sequences. I found it very entertaining to listening through the presets with some lead and bass lines I created for this purpose.

It may not be the prettiest GUI (graphical user interface) I’ve seen but saying this I must admit that it’s very easy to understand and use. I’m usually a bread and butter type of guy who prefers to use presets and tweak them slightly. With the simple design of Sylenth1, however, I was instantly tempted to start creating my own sounds.

First of all, at the top of the GUI, you’ve got the global ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, release) settings for the instrument along with the sound emitting oscillators where you can set your waveforms, detuning, volume, etc.

Below you have a access to a window to perform stuff like basic I/O operations (load and save) and also enable the different effects that can be applied. The effects allow very easy access to add different forms of 1) Arp (arppegios and trance gates which in effect plays a sequence of notes automatically (ARP) and chops up the instrument by altering volume (gate); 2) distortion (like overdrive, bitcrusher, foldback, etc.); 3) Phaser for a pulsating and sweeping motions; 4) Chorus for added width to the sounds; 5) delay for nice echoing effects; 6) reverb for added atmosphere and spatial sense; and 7) compression to alter the dynamics. What’s powerful about this control window is the simple approach and accessibility to tweak your sounds and this ease of access is what steps up the game for this VST.

In addition to the oscillators and effects you have control over some LFO (low frequency oscillators) that can be used to alter the sound where examples are sweeping the cutoff frequency, altering the volume, and applying phaser or chorus effects.

What does it sound like?
Check out this video tutorial I created on creating trance leads and melodies where I use Sylenth1.

Verdict
Sound: 9/10 (fantastic)
GUI: 7/10 (looks outdated but very easy to use)
Value for Money: 7/10 (nicely priced for what you get)
Purchase Process: 10/10 Quick (I used PayPal and received the software and license in a matter of minutes)

Reference Tracks
* Imphenzia – Aura of the Alien (coming soon – check out this preview clip)

After receiving quite a few questions regarding how I go about to compose my music I decided to start making some video tutorials on the subject. The other day I released my first tutorial which covers an important element of my music which I refer to as “layering”. I’m not sure if there is an official term for this and I know that many artists consider layering to be over saturating the music and to some extent I may agree that it could be a way to “cover lack of skills by adding more stuff”. At the same time I’m really pleased with what the result sounds like, which is a strong enough argument to keep doing it =)

I created this tutorial using my sequencer software of choice, Steinberg’s Cubase 5, but it should be very easy to translate this technique into the sequencer of your choice (e.g. FL Studio, Reason, Logic, Alberton, etc). The VST instruments I use are Groove Agent ONE (native Cubase instrument) for drums, reFX Nexus2 for a selection of pads, basses, and leads; reFX VanGuard for virtual analog leads (great for transformations using cutoff and resonance filtering). As with the sequencer any VST instrument can be used in a similar fashion.

Layering is basically playing certain notes with multiple layers of instruments to give it a euphoric and atmospheric character. I can sometimes play the same set of notes with up to 4 instruments simultaneously, as seen in the tutorial. It may take some practice to not having it all resulting in a big aural mess – but with some trial and error you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t.

In the tutorial I first play a section from my recently released track “Imaginary Friend” and then I spend most of the tutorial playing each instrument individually and then together with previously covered instruments in order to position its place in the overall mix. The instruments covered are drums (percussion), main bass line, secondary rolling bass line, a dreamlike pad, two supporting and transforming leads, and 4 melodic layers of leads.

You can view the tutorial here (it’s in HD (high definition)) so you might want to view it on YouTube in SD if it doesn’t play smoothly:

Feel free to comment the tutorial, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and listen to all of my music (7 hours+) at my official site. You may also request a tutorial topic if you hear something in my music that you wonder about. Also, I’ll be archiving all my tutorials HEREif you want to find out more.

Another two years have past since Illusion was released and I was pleased, and somewhat surprised, as I unexpectedly decided to release “Duplicate My Soul”. I should probably follow traditional marketing strategies and build up a hype well ahead of an album being released but when I have my creative periods I spontaneously do these things. At the same time I’m quite happy not to follow all the rules and I’d rather take the opportunity and take advantage when the spontaneous outbursts pay me a visit.

On the 19th of March 2010 I started working on a new track under the project name “Logic Surface” (I always have random names of my tracks until they are finished and I can name them appropriately depending on their character). I nearly completed the track on the 19th but on saturday 20th March I also managed to complete it fairly early in the day. As I named the track “False Awakening” I started to add tracks released after Illusion into my winamp playlist and as the total duration grew to 1 hour, 11 minutes, and 51 seconds (including 4 bonus tracks) it hit me – it’s time for my next album to be released! By the evening on the 20th “Duplicate My Soul” was released and available for anyone to get as an mp3-album or as a physical album with artwork and the complete works.

So, in addition to creating “False Awakening” what did I do for this release during the 20th March?

Compiled the final track listing

Created the cover artwork for the jewel case and disc label (using a photoshop tutorial on the internet)

Changed ID-tags for all tracks included on album and re-encoded them in MP3, OGG, ACC, and FLAC

Uploaded all the re-encoded and ID-tagged tracks to imphenzia.com

Added album (artwork, zip-archive for mp3-purchases, and individual tracks) to imphenzia.com

Updated the web site to include the latest album

Created promo video for album demonstrating how I created the artwork (+ upload to youtube)

Sent out an e-mail to my mailing list regarding the new album release

Updated common social networking sites with album release (twitter, facebook, youtube, etc.)

Over all I’m very pleased with achieving all of this in one single day from spawning the idea of releasing an album to actually releasing it.

What to expect from Duplicate My Soul
Most of the tracks are of true Imphenzia character with a melodic and uplifting sound. The main 9 tracks are all trance styled with what most probably would refer to as a classic (or retro) styled Trance which was more popular in the late 90s. I haven’t been on for following trends or releasing what is currently hot or not, I’d rather create the type of music I love as there are still quite a few out there who appreciate this style. The one exception is probably track number 9 named “Vapour Trail” which was a very experimental track incidentally enough also casually released in silence on imphenzia.com in retrospect 2 years after it was created =) Following the 9 tracks of trance is the first bonus track “Theme of Decimation X” which was originally created for the intense retro shooter game “Decimation X” by Xona games. It fits the over all mood and is very much in line with my normal music that it qualifies as a bonus track on the album. The last three bonus tracks are chilled out downtempo edits of some of the tracks featured on the album.

The name of the album comes from the first track on the album with the same name. The name was selected for two reasons. First of all it is a tribute to my first child (a son) so it is in a sense duplicating my soul, and secondly because the track and all the music of Imphenzia really does reflect my soul and the music I create.

For those of you who are curious of what type of equipment I used to create the music on this album I use the following:
Computer:
Quad Core Intel 2.4 CPU with 4GB Ram running Windows 7 x64
Master keyboard:
Roland FP-7 (88 keys hammer action) and an Evolution MK-226C
Sound card:
Motherboard’s own soundcard believe it or not (with ASIO4ALL drivers)
Sequencer:
Steinberg Cubase 5
VST instruments:
Mainly native Cubase instruments, reFX Nexus2 (plus expansion packs) and reFX VanGuard (plus expansion packs)

Finishing off this post, here is the promo video for the track featuring clips from the first four tracks and a quick preview of how the artwork was created:

I hope you enjoy this release!

Creating music for Imphenzia Soundtrack is great fun as it offers such a variety from my normal Imphenzia trance music. I’ve put together a new Youtube video to showcase the different styles:

The music still targets independent game developers (indiegames) with very competitive pricing and it’s royalty free ofcourse.

A while back I was approached by Adraw through Soundclick who expressed a request to remix State of Confusion. I’m always welcome to remixes so naturally I accepted the request. Some time went past where I didn’t hear much about it but little did I know what was to come. The remix is now finished and will be released under Emona Records but you can already listen to the entire track on Adraw’s Soundclick page for this remix.

To help promote this track, I’ve put together a preview video that you can watch as well:

I update this blog only when I have something to say and also when I have time, and today it happens to be twice! As I mentioned briefly in my previous post I’ve simply released a track once it’s finished without saying anything ahead of time and also saying very little once it’s been released. Unfortunately Imphenzia is basically 99% productivity and 1% promotion which is not how it should be if you want to reach out to a wide array of listeners.

My first step towards making Imphenzia more interesting is to announce the release of tracks ahead of time. What I am trying out is first of all compiling a YouTube video clip of the track with some simple yet colourful graphics. By embedding this on my web site and also announcing it to channel subscribers on YouTube and though Imphenzia on Twitter it raises awareness and hopefully the anticipation of a coming Imphenzia track.

My second step is through the new Next Release page. Here I announce the track that is queued up to be released next and I also give visitors an opportunity to request this track to be released totally free to the public. The idea with this is that promotion and word-of-mouth is extremely valuable and by relying on a larger number of people requesting the track to be released for free it would encourage fans to spread the word further in order to reach the goal of requests before the release date. The reward of this is a free track in exchange for promoting Imphenzia through social networks, messaging, twitter, blogs, etc. I set the goal to 300 requests for the first release although some serious WoM will have to take place in the next 3 days to get there, but I am still hopeful!

By the time you read this the release date of October 31 2009 may already have passed for the Tranquil Edit of Duplicate My Soul, but there might be another track queued for release so please have a look at this page http://www.imphenzia.com/release – request the free release if available and make sure to tell everyone about it!

My third step is to offer competitions where everyone who participates will at least get something (generally in the shape of free music) with the potential to win something bigger. The first competition is a task to write a short review of Duplicate My Soul and post it again on social networks, blogs, and music forums. You can see the competition page here to get the idea: http://www.imphenzia.com/music/competitions.php

So whether these steps are the right ones or if they are effective means of promoting my music remains to be seen but again, I am hopeful!

The original version of my latest release “Duplicate My Soul” is now available on the official Imphenzia web site. It’s a 5 minute 41 second long trance journey starting with a lengthy and emotional intro that lasts about a minute and a half. An ambient boom and morphing pads sets up the track before a lonely and piano is introduced with a single not melody. As the harmony flows a detuned trance lead is added to intensify the mood. As the track evolves it is a journey through combinations of traditional static beats and euphoric sections literally projecting my soul through what you hear. This track has a lot of meaning to me and there are two reasons of why this track was named “Duplicate My Soul”. The first and foremost reason is that I am about to become a father with my first child due in March so I am literally duplicating my soul so to speak =) The second reason and what will probably be the guess amongst listeners is that the track also duplicates my soul in terms of music. This track contains very strong trademarks of what Imphenzia sounds like in terms of how the track was constructed, how the melodies flow, how the layers come together, and the overall feel.

The track is available for instant high quality download for those of you who have the Imphenzia All Access download feature enabled – If you don’t then have a look at this feature on the tracks page.

You can also listen to Duplicate My Soul [original] track here:
Hi-fi stream (limited to 2 minutes)
Lo-fi stream of entire song
Hi-fi clip

As I mentioned, the original release is already available and I have also completed 3 additional edits with a fourth one being finalized. Instead of releasing all the edits at once I have to improve my approach to getting the word of Imphenzia spread so I’ve decided to release tracks over time rather than a bunch of them at the same time. I hope to see some more returning visitors this way and it may also hopefully help in terms of promotion as Imphenzia relies solely on Word-of-mouth.

The edits that will follow the original release are: Tranquild Edit, Submerged Edit, Extended Club Edit, and an Imphenzia first with an Acoustic Piano edit. The Tranquil Edit is a 110bpm chilled out version with a melodic relaxed feel featuring a similar intro but a very different beat and a prominent lead with retro styled portamento slides. The Submerged Edit is an “offbeat” with the bass offset to 16th Triplets creating a rhythmic beat that made Hypertraxx very famous (as they filled their album with that style =). The Extended Club Edit does not have the dreamy intro and should be more DJ friendly, it also has a different set of sounds although it sounds very similar to the original. Finally, the piano version is totally different and this new ground for Imphenzia. Even though I play the piano sometimes my piano tracks are rarely released and taking the melodic influences from Duplicate My Soul and creating an acoustic piano track was a lot of fun so if fans like it I will continue to release the odd Piano track as well – we’ll see how it develops once the piano version has been released.

You can preview the versions here:

I hope you enjoy this new track and make sure to tell everyone you know about it =)

Today marked a new milestone in Imphenzia Soundtrack as the first orchestral tack was released. Due to its character it was named “Emperor Victorious” as it portrays a glorious, somewhat epic (although that word is very much overly used) and powerful mood. The track received nice and encouraging feedback in the Indegamer development forums.

Coming from making electronic music this new orchestral style had a fair share of challenges involved. The first step was to identify what instruments actually play in a track. Once I achieved this, I had to go through the building blocks of cinematic style music – and boy is it complex or what? Not only do you have to pay close attention to the architecture of instruments and melodies – but also how the individual notes are played dynamically in terms of velocity and emphasis.

Next step for me is to upgrade my sample library to the huge sample collection “East West Samples Complete Composers Collection – Play Edition“, probably with the Platinum upgrade for 24bit orchestral samples each recorded from three different microphone positions. I can hardly wait for this library and I am convinced it will lead to a great deal of new cinematic style tracks!

It’s been over 12 years since my first album, Sector, was released and back then physical CDs was how music was distributed. I know many listeners still prefer to own a physical copy of the music they purchase, but for me that train has passed a long time ago. The money wasted in pressing, printing, storing and delivering physical discs, both for the artist and for the listener, along with the environmental effects of this process, is to put it simple: unecessary.

Making quality MP3 albums was a focal feature when I redesigned the Imphenzia.com web site and an important factor was to make sure  that the album would be instantly accessible upon purchase ready for transfer to your MP3-player. The cover and disc artwork is also available for those of you who wish to make a physical copy for your car stereo (although your car most likely plays mp3s by now as well so even that is becoming a redundant requirement). If you purchase an Imphenzia album today, you will always have access to download the music from wherever you are. Have a look at the screenshot to see how the tracks, zip-archive of the entire album, and artwork is presented.

For a long time, however, I’ve actually thought that the entire concept of albums is quite out of fashion as well. Why should you need to purchase a collection of tracks that may contain tracks you don’t particularly like just to get the ones you do want. Again, it comes down to the extra sense of value found in the packaging and concept of an album. The obvious solution to solve this would be to purchase singles, but then it becomes a tedious work to add the ones you want to a shopping cart…

What is the music worth to you?

So what is the solution? The most recent feature developed on Imphenzia.com, available from 8th July 2009, is that instead of purchasing a single or an album, you make a donation representing what the music is worth to you – and you’ll get instant access to ALL the imphenzia tracks. I’ve been thinking about this concept for some time and it is the time to take this step. If you feel 6 hours of trance music is worth $10 – that is what you donate to get access to the music in high quality. If you want to show extra support and appreciation and feel that the music is worth $30, then that is what you donate. I believe that the consumer is mature enough to make this decision and I think it is a way forward for the music industry to combat piracy. In all the debates I’ve seen about piracy, it’s all been about “It costs too much”, or “It’s not simple enough”, or “I don’t want DRM” – this is a solution to solve those issues.

Three new Imphenzia tracks have been released (click to listen to clips: Liquid Generator, Liquid Generator [Crystal Edit] and Evolution [Extended]). You can also check out this video teaser I posted on YouTube for the new track:

 
The past six months Imphenzia trance tracks have been suffering attention somewhat due to being very busy with the relaunch of Imphenzia Soundtrack. The soundtrack section is a new library of music focused mainly on rapid availability of music for independent game developers (indigamers) and custominzing the site with a fully features shopping cart with automated discount bundeling and direct download access to mp3/ogg/wav versions consumed hour upon hour of development. I’ve also been receiving requests to create custom music for some indiegames and which has been very exciting and fun. These tracks will be available for promotional use once the games have been released.

Now that the Soundtrack site is fully functional I can focus more on Imphenzia Music again and to celebrate, I’ve instantly created the new trance track “Liquid Generator”. It features a progressing intro (DJ-friendly I am hoping) and then launches into a digital mayhem of melodies. I wonder if it will be too much of a sound scape for some fans, but hopefully feedback will tell I’m happy with the result and even though the BPM is slower (140bpm) than some of my more recent trance tracks, I get the feeling that the pace is higher due to the beat and rapid transforming melodies.

Following the creation of Liquid Generator I decided to also make a slower (110bpm) chillout version of the track by extracting the melodies and making it over all calmer with an offbeat rythm. My future aim is to always release a calm version of every trance track I release as some listeners prefer the slower ones. Personally, I like both full on trance tracks and the soothing slow ones so why not

The extended version of Evolution was actually created a few months ago but it wasn’t publically released. It’s basically just a refurbished version of the track with instrument replacement and an extended less hectic layout.

I hope you like the new music and don’t forget to spread the word of Imphenzia to your mates. There is no big publicity engine behind Imphenzia and I am totally in the hands of my fans when it comes to spreading the word

Thanks all!