Warpfuz blog

Back online

So, finally the new version of my website is out for all to see and use. Some tweaks are still to be done when I have the time, but all in all it should work just fine. I’ve put some time and energy into this one, especially the adaptive part of it. Try to resize the browser window and you see what I mean. That’s made with mobile browsers in mind (people visiting the website on smartphones, tablets, netbooks and other devices with a smaller resolution than a normal computer screen) So far I’ve only tested it on my Nokia N900, where it works like a charm, but I’d love to hear from you how it works on your gadgets. Just drop me an e-mail or message me on Twitter.

As I said in the last post, I’m not entirely back on track regarding my music, the reason why this website exist. But I’ve realised it’s better to have something to show, than nothing, and as the new version is more or less finished I have no reason not to publish it. For the last months I’ve focused more on web design and graphics (made one or two logos for clients, finishing a client website with the guys at JT Tech and taking some courses at university in web design) and even if I’ve had the time to work on the album or music in general, I haven’t been in the right mood. During the winter I’ll try to cure this by picking up photography again. Might sound like a strange way to handle things, but I really have to try to find the playful side of being creative again, to drop the mental pressure I apply on myself whenever I try being artistic.

To wrap things up, I hope you enjoy the new look of my website. Personally I think it’s very fresh, slick and easy to use while still being very basic. But as all websites, this is a work in progress. “It’s working”, as Anakin said, but it can be better. And that’s the beauty of it.

Lost and found - Creativity

Last night I once again had some creative frustration, music-wise. I have been composing/producing since about 2004, mainly electronic music. I have signed some original works and remixes to small indie labels, nothing fancy. But along the road I have had (and still have) such a hard time to compose and produce freely, to find inspiration and use it to go further in my knowledge.

I came to the conclusion that it mainly comes down to two things.

First thing: My sources of inspiration, other musicians. I find such a joy in discovering and exploring new music, new genres, new creations by various artists that I want to share it with others; I try to sound exactly like them or replicate elements from their music. Problem is, I’m fast with comparing my works againt the original, the inspiration. You hardly get happy or enjoy your creations when you’re still learning and developing your skills, and instantly compare yourself to artists with way more knowledge and experience.

Second thing: The public person in me. I find joy in more things than creating the music. I love photography. I’m fond of graphic design. Web design. Typography. The list could be much longer but let’s stick to these. Recently I took the website for my music project Warpfuz.se offline to give it a redesign; use cool new techniques (HTML5/CSS3/Media Queries…) and make it simpler and more user friendly. But then I thought to myself, when I was finishing up the website: “What am I doing? I no longer spend much time or enthusiasm in the music I compose, since I get disappointed and feel like I don’t make any progression. Why on earth do I then put a new, fresh website up when I have no content, no fresh and inspiring music to showcase?”

I realised that the PR person in me, so to speak, are nagging over the creative musician in me. “Come on! Do something! I must put some new material up, at least give me something!”, while the musician in me are more like “But what’s the point? Everything I do turns into half-finished projects or utter junk.”

So, how to change this negative spiral I’ve been in for the last years?

Firstly, I realised that the reason I find the music I listen to enjoyable is because it’s innovative, detailed and original. If I only try to recreate it I’m lucky if I end up being detailed, most likely not even that. To succeed, or move forward, as a musician, I need to find my own path and develop a sound and style that I find a joy in creating. Sounds very simple, but that’s more or less it.

Secondly, I need to send the PR person in me on a permanent vacation. If I stress my creations even just a bit they will undoubtly end up being half-finished or utter junk. I’ve said for more than three years that I’m working on an album. I’ve delayed the release date several times (lastly I scheduled it for summer 2012) as it still isn’t finished. I will now once and for all say the truth: It’s ready when it’s ready. Not because I think many people wait for it or really care, but for my on sake, so I can continue work on it without feeling an ounce of pressure.

Inspiration is something wonderful, when you feel like your not creating but rather discovering something. While drawing this little sketch I felt that feeling for the first time in many years. Hopefully I’ll get back there.

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No, I don’t usually draw or are particulary skilled at it. Made this in ~1.5 hour with Pilot marker pen while listening to Trentemøller “While the cold winter waiting”. Please, please do me a favor and listen to it while taking a look at my drawing, hopefully some of the emotions get through. You can watch it in higher resolution here (on deviantART).

Exploring and being inspired - a creative journey

First of all, I hope you enjoyed watching the demo. We, and especially jaw @ Vovoid, poured a lot of our spare time, creativity and imagination into creating this little space oriented story.

In the demoscene, the groups of people who produce realtime demos on various platforms (everything from PC to Amiga, older game consoles, mobile phones, basically every platform you can imagine), I experienced that there are roughly two genres of demos. The majority of them are effect demos, where you showcase cool stuff, basically. Trends are naturally appliable on this when some prefer particle effects, some different vectors and/or cool materials like liquids. The effect demos are often cool, really cool, and the limitations are, as you say, endless.

Then we have the other genre, or category, called story demos. As it says, you try to tell a story throughout the demo, mostly about some character. As you can imagine, these are a bit harder to create, as it takes more to create a demo about something instead of anything. That’s where we started. The story behind Luna, the logo, brand or icon of Vovoid, is partially what we try to tell. Now, I shouldn’t really be the one telling you the story as I’m not the creator of Luna herself, neither have I been a part of Vovoid from the start and, to be precise, this is my first time co-producing a demo. If you head over to http://vovoid.org/luna/, you can read the backstory which jaw has written and see some screenshots from the production stages.

I was introduced to the project somewhere late 2007/early 2008, when jaw, who I had known for quite some time, asked me regarding my musical skills if I wanted to help him out with the demo, mainly creating the music for it. Of course I felt intrigued and started helping him out. At that time he had just finished the first version of the Luna model in 3D, from what I can remember, and he had the basic plot ready. So from 2008 and onwards, I travelled to VovoidHQ aka jaw’s house a week at a time mainly during my holidays from school. I basically moved my studio to him, so that we could compose the soundtrack together, exchanging thoughts and opinions instantly.

As you can hear when you watch the demo, there is actually three different parts of music. One pretty ambient piece from the start to the title (around 3’10”) where the music changes into a more intense section until it ends with a bang @ 6’10”, where, again, another ambient piece close the curtain. The intro and outro was produced by jaw, improvising on his synths. With those two as inspiration and guidelines I started producing the main part of the soundtrack as jaw started working on Luna’s outfit and the scenery. You could say that we boosted each other’s creativity by working literally back to back and I would definately like to work like this again in the future.

This was also one, if not THE major turning point in my music style. This was during the summer 2009, and Solar Fields’ latest album “Movements” had been released a few months earlier. Together with his soundtrack to the game Mirror’s Edge and the graphical style it presented, these things inspired me to move in another direction, away from the “classic” trance I was producing. You probably haven’t noticed, but the basic drum structure in my music for “Luna: Reactivation” (listen to the kick and the fat snare as my music starts) is copied from the track “Sky Trees” on Solar Fields’ album “Movements”. That track is still one of the finest musical pieces I have listened to.

The direction part of creating the demo was probably one of the toughest, but I learned a lot while doing it. Basically it was sitting next to jaw, looking at the animations over and over and over again to really make sure it looked neat and natural, or at least as natural as it can get. Animating an android performing a figure-skating dance with rocket shoes isn’t what I would call natural.

Of course, this is just my experience, and the technical and mathematical aspects of creating this demo are something I didn’t have a great part in. The demo was created in VSXu, a program continuously developed by jaw, so naturally he had the biggest part in this. This was his story, as well, but I’m very happy that I had the opportunity to be a part of this and create something creative together with a friend. And apparently more people than us appreciated watching the demo, as we ended up on third place in the combined demo competition at Assembly Summer 2011.

But, to sum this little insight up, a creative product is always a derivative work. I was inspired by other musicians while creating the music, we was inspired by figure-skating while animating and the math itself was copied from…the one who invented it. Isaac Newton, being sort of a wise guy, he said something like this:

“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Back in new style

At last I have finished my studies, all exams and homework are officially done. Graduated a few weeks ago, so right now I’m on summer vacation, but will probably work quite a bit with various projects anyway.

Since the migration to my new computer almost all music project files miss the location of the VST presets, which means that all album tracks more or less are being re-written. The pattern structure, sample locations and mixer channels are intact, so the major problem isn’t that critical, even though I have to manually reset every corrupt VST channel with the correct preset I used in the projects.

My plan is to boot up my old computer and manually edit every project file on the new computer, based on how the old working files are. This might take some time, but so far about 3 tracks are already fixed and one track are timewise completely finished! I have some ideas for the last album tracks that are still to be written, and during the coming weeks I will try to draw out the structure of those.

Apart from this I have some other music related projects which I will work on during the summer, and hopefully you will see the final result of at least one of them in August. More details about it will come later.

So, long story short: I’m back! And you can see that I have switched blog platform to Tumblr, the old one I used for nearly 4 years wasn’t really that flexible. Let’s see if I stay here.