Man, 3 months! It took me 3 month to do this thing. I did an Interrail-Trip in March/April 2010. Travelling from Aachen through Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy to Greece. By train. In Greece i travelled a bit around (Peloponnes, Athens and Tessaloniki) and then went to Istanbul. The way home was through Bukarest, Budapest, Vienna and Innsbruck. Really a great trip for me, it finally gave me the last kick to liberate my head from this internet-thing here. I saw lots of great places and met many great people. And i collected sounds. And since three months i always wanted to put a cut together, that represents my journey in sound. Like watching a photo-album with the ears. Or listening to a documentary without the picture.

I don’t know if this is of any value to anyone out there. I can remember these moments where some relative took out a video-camera and showed videos from last holiday in southern france or such. For them it was very exciting, i mean the shaky camera, the non-action going on there. But obviously holiday-movies are only pleasure to those who actually participated. So please let me know if it is boring

But one part of travelling for me was always to be at some place, sit and listen. It is the sound.

Though you could listen through the widget above, i recommend going to the Soundcloud-page, where you can see all timed comments, guiding you through my journey. Have fun (or not)!

Ps. if you nevertheless want to see some pictures, try this link..

What you see above is the trailer of a russian documentary, that I will contribute sound and music to. We are still in the beginning of our workflow, but it is a very nice team around russian director Sergey Kachkin and the romanian film-producer Andra Matresu.  I am really looking forward to compose music, that is inspired by the pictures and the mood of the film. Long russian streets. Cold russian winters.

A melancholic love poem in modern times of Russia – this documentary unfolds around a married couple at the age of fifty. He is a truck driver. She is his woman tending for love. Nobody knows when the situation will change until one of the family member dies…

Darage Bang presents Cloudy and Pleasant

With my piano piece Ursulurn, I happen to be one of them. Thanks a lot, Frank!
The music over there is somewhere between ambient, downtempo, drone and experimental. If you’re interested give it a listen through my Cloud-Playlist for an uninterrupted playback. (you’ll need a Google-Account, though)

I like and support the idea not just because the underlying thoughts are quite similar to mine, when I started ‘Found in the Cloud’. It is good to see Soundcloud evolving, being a platform driven by people. And with applications like The Cloud Player build ontop of the infrastructure, it has the potential to be Spotify for independent artists.

If anybody still has the desire to listen to the tracks, shoot me a message, I’ll pass you the files.

But why? Why didn’t I manage to put my musical ideas (which I guess are still there and vital) into actual pieces you can listen to?

Last weekend it became clear, that it was form. In the days of playing in bands everything was quite fixed. The band setup consisted of drums, bass, two guitars and vocals. I was one guitarist with some songwriting-responsibilities. Time I spent for the band was either practicing guitar, writing songs or riffs and attending rehearsals. Note: 100% of that time is directly connected to music. 100% of my ideas were direct musical ideas.

Now switching to music done with the computer. Just adding this device into your music makes everything a lot more complicated. You have to question everything that was kind of pre-set in your band. What kind of music do you want to do? What is your sound? How do you perform this music? Adding to that, computer is technology. And technology needs to be adapted to your needs. So you have to learn about programs, underlying principles and interaction-patterns.  These topics are all barriers in your way of developing musical ideas.
And this is the reason I look back on not too much output. I did not find answers that satisfied me. So I looked further. More energy and time was consumed dealing with stuff surrounding music than focussing on actual music.

Hopefully this will change now. I finally found a setup that fits my needs. A first version of a setup, that is Ableton-centered but not screen-centric. Actually I can turn off the screen and put the laptop aside.
It makes use of  all of the MIDI-equipment I have now (M-Audio Keyboard, NanoKontrol, PadKontrol, Nocturn and FCB1010) and is all about looping both external input and sounds I collected. It uses multiple instances of Ableton Looper, a self-hacked Step-Sequencer for the PadKontrol and some instrument racks. One for key-sounds, the other for collected sounds.
I guess I will do some sort of video tutorial round-trip of the setup when time is right.

The most important thing, though: I finally found answers to all conceptual question and solutions to all technical problems. I now know, that I can spend my time again thinking about music, not about technology. And when I have enough pieces done, I can now easily perform them.

So stay tuned…

If anybody out there puts together a playlist, where my track sits in neatly (besides the original compilation), I’d love to hear it.

After purchasing the lovely Tascam DR100 I found myself enjoying the very fundamentals of sound. I guess you could also tell that by listening to my recent work. Just running around, recording everything I can find, as long as it has some remarkable character.

All that collecting of sound-fragments has proven meaningful, as I now got myself working on a first sound design project: Making small animated Typo-Idents audible. They are meant to promote the fonts of a new typo-webshop called Hype For Type. Animated by bauwrk, this clip introduces their best-selling Neo Deco:

NEO DECO IDENT from HypeForType on Vimeo.

The best possibility to grasp the nature of this work is to watch it without sound. This is where i started. Then gradually made my way to that “spacey” feel. Find the match! Tell me what you think!

Nevertheless, it was of course (again) a bit naive to think, that after these 3 weeks there will be an EP to be released. Here I can let my activity circle full-time around music and sound, but I had to reconfigure myself first. Get myself on track again, after my head was dug into some other stuff for university (programming Flex/Actionscript for example).

Still, i get something done. Have ideas to follow, loose ends to connect and instruments to play. The feeling turned out to be right, that my basic musical nature is about playing “real instruments” with direct control over all aspects of musical expression. I’m falling in love with the piano more and more. It has such a beautiful and warm sound. Just hearing the sustain of a nice chord reminds me of home.

So beside my Ableton-activities I also wrote a little piano piece, which is not yet completely finished. I recorded it, all the tiny little hick-ups included. But in the end they really don’t matter, as the message lies somewhere else…

Small Piano Piece from Nicken on Vimeo.

I assure you that all of my activities will definitely lead to an upcoming EP, but there is still a longer way to go for me. 3 weeks not enough (who would have thought). So stay tuned…

They made a really good and professional Short Documentary on Kite-Surfing called “Synthese”. Paid a lot of attention on small little details, which I really appreciate in film. It is in German, but even just watching the footage and listening to the nice soundwork pays off. Enjoy!

Synthese – Vereinigung von mehreren Elementen… from Tranquillity on Vimeo.

(For the impatient ones: These Days starts at about 60/100)

Back in the days, when I got my first own computer I started using it for making music. It was a tough learning process, digging through all the possibilities, the technological barriers and especially getting equipment together supporting me in this process. While still learning, there were (here and there) some tracks popping out. For me as a perfectionist they were not what I had in mind. When listening to them, I could hear what was wrong and why this special track did not represent what I thought I would actually be capable of doing. Nevertheless, as some kind of self-healing exercise I uploaded some of these tracks to Last.fm. Did not expect anything. Called the album “Mixed Sessions” as there was no connection whatsoever between the single tracks. I thought that this “album” could be regarded as gradually growing. When I finished a new track, that could just be added to the list. And nothing happened at first.

This changed, when CixxxJ stumbled across my music and recommended me to Pixieguts. For those who don’t know, Pixieguts is a vocalist from Australia who collaborates digitally with artists from all over the world. Doing this, she created a whole network around her art. Created a network of independent artists, who support and respect each other. I got to know her massive network, when she recommended me to all of her friends (or “followers” in today’s language).
And all of a sudden I woke up having people listening to my tunes. The tunes, that were not meant to be anything. That were just experimenting with the possibilities. Just searching for a home in this never-ending electronic landscape. Thank you really much, Pixie. I learned a lot from you.

That searching for a place is not over yet. (Probably it should never really be over) I should be delighted, that there are still people out there on Last.fm who regularly listen to my stuff. I am. But on the other hand these tracks really don’t represent “me”. There was a time I really digged Drum and Bass. You can clearly hear that when listening to These Days. But these days are over now. I guess finding a home in electronic landscape is finding what is really “you”. And when you found it: just do it. Explore your style and refine it.

What can I say – right now it is the first time, that I really have a very precise vague picture of the music I want to do. The elements. The sounds. The atmosphere. It is more acoustic and has more to do with real instruments and playing of real instruments. This is me: fell in love with the sound of electronic music, but want to make space for the real Nicken: Getting lost in playing piano / guitar / melodica / trumpet (soon?).

In a few days I will begin to take 3 weeks off my daily routine to just focus on music. The result will be some sort of EP. I am excited as ever to see that I’ll get the chance to really put all of my ideas into one baby. To really put tunes out, that yell: “Listen, this (!) is Nicken.” To stop searching and settle down in the new home that I just found.

Stay tuned!