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!