Oops! High time for a new website upgrade. I had originally planned to do this in 2019 but somehow time kept slipping away.
It's not that I have been sitting still or something. Even Covid 19 hasn't changed my pace much since I have always been good at keeping myself occupied anyway.
Age might have a bit to do with it though. I tend to be a bit less focused on the end results and thus have more fun with the processes. The only problem is that this tends to increase the number of projects that run in parallel.
But enough with the excuses. We start of with 2 new musical projects. The first, Tesseract, is semi Berlin school synthesizer stuff. The other, The Griffon And The Bringer Of Fire, is more oriented towards classical music.
Lastly one track of the Zamidat Suite, namely the second part, called Siberia, has been updated.
This adds about 1,5 hours of new music to the catalog. Check the electronic music page for the results.
Wow, I am keeping my word this time. After the spelling update from last month this is the next one already.
Remember how I promised that all older music projects would be remastered by Marko Vlasic? Well, most of them now have so a very serious update of the audio download links has been performed. Thanks again, Marko!
But there even is completely new music again. Quite a lot actually
Firstly a batch of tracks was again added to the long running (Post)Modernisms project.
Furthermore: I recently built a few Janko keyboard adapters. I will not explain much about it here (the next update will feature an article about the whole project on the WRITINGS page) but in short: A Janko keyboard is an alternative musical keyboard layout that, in my opinion, works much more intuitively then the conventional piano keyboard.
The new music, called Chamber Music For Starships was for the bigger part played on such Janko keyboards. It stays less within specific scales but moves around much more freely in a harmonic sense. I know that does (again) not make it easier for the average listener to appreciate my stuff but please try it anyway. It´s not that I throw away harmony but more that I do not want to be constricted by it more then is natural to me.
Oops! This time I am rather late with the next update. In the mean time new stuff is however piling up. Just to show my good intentions for the coming period we (Till and I) have started with implementing a concise text clean-up to create a new starting point for the next major reshuffle. So nothing really new this time. Just fixing some old mistakes. See yah soon!
The wheels keep turning and stuff keeps being added. Some of it new. Some of it old. Every time I think I am getting there “new” old stuff keeps being unearthed. The term “full ouvre” suddenly does not seem that silly anymore. The website as a mirror of a life's work so to speak.
As always the next upgrade took longer then I planned but at least it is another major one. All 8 buttons on the main screen now lead to active sections. That means the original concept has at last been fully implemented.
The most important new stuff is:
Ah, so little time, so much to do. In the mean time the number of hits has grown to a quite satisfactory level for such a personal website. Don't forget to tell me what you think. There still is that CONTACT button on the main screen, you know!
Although I am constantly coming up with new material projects are often running in parallel. Furthermore I do not update the website myself. Till Kopper is doing all the hard work. That's why it took me quite some time to come up with this first upgrade. But I am as committed to the project as ever.
New at this moment in time are:
Next in line is the launch of the MOTORCYCLES page. I have been working quite hard on an overhaul / upgrade of my beloved Ducati Grifone special (see the thumbnail on the main page button). I am presently waiting for better weather so I can take photographs of all my three bike projects. Furthermore I'll write an accompanying text. Let's see how long it takes me to prepare the next update this time.
Preparing this website has almost been a rite of passage. I wanted to do it for quite a long time already. What finally brought me to putting the idea into practice was the insight that such a site could also be an open repository for the things I did and do, thus combining access to my material with organizing and saving it for the future.
Being creative has always been an integrated part of my existence. And I have never created things with the intention to simply put them on a shelf. While commercial success has proven to be elusive I realized some time ago that success is relative anyway. It often depends more on luck and / or how much ones personal vision is in tune with fashion then on talent.
Furthermore I think a body of work lasting the bigger part of a lifetime can have a value far beyond what trends dictate. But first that output has to survive. And thus I have also become my own archivist. Is that sad? One could also call it perseverance under extremely adverse conditions. Let me use a line from a Rush song to put it in another way: "If you want to go the distance, first you've got to last". So even if one does not care too much for the quality of my output one might at least appreciate my willingness to go that distance.
But formulating an intention is one thing. Putting it into practice is another. It is not without some reason that I used the word archivist above. So much material is involved that it sometimes becomes difficult to choose what to do next. Setting up this site has in itself taken a few years. That's what you get if you can never sit still. So much to plow through, restore, convert, describe etc., etc.. And then there is the new stuff. A last minute add to this launch version is a 37 minute electronic music composition called "Balance" (see Music/Electronic Music). And like all of us I also have other obligations in the mean time. Life is just too short!
Still the work is not done. You will find that at this launch only 4 of the 8 sections indicated on the main screen are operational and even to those more material is still to be added. So watch this space for news about forthcoming updates.
I would like to end this news item with a big thank you to my friend Till Kopper. He actually turned my concepts and designs into a working site. Not only did he do this free of charge but he has also been very patient with my constant requests for little tweaks. Here's to you, Till. Thank you for being so patient.