September « 2006 « indieOpolis

The Tangerine Dream Collection Project – Part 3 – The First Order

September 29, 2006

I placed the first order today which consisted of the following as noted in my previous post in this series:

Between this order and my previous post, my good friend Joe Ross of EelMada found the following 3 CD’s at a local half price store:

Underwater Sunlight
Optical Race
Lily on the Beach

Since they were in good condition, I had him pick them up for me, not thinking and realizing I already had Optical Race in CD form LOL! (Oh well, it only cost me the price of a lunch and time to spend with a good friend, so no worries )

The total cost so far?

64.91 for the first order of 5 CDs.

20.00 for the CDs acquired via Joe. (I’m only stating 20 even though it was more…Like I said, it was an opportunity to sit with him, have lunch and a couple of beers )

In the end, a total of $84.91 which included shipping.

In reviewing my “To Aquire” list, I decided to go with full CD releases, rather than include the individual solo works or singles even though they are chronologically in the next set, so the next batch will probably include the following:

I’m really looking forward to order the next batch after that, as it will include some of my favorite releases which are:

Force Majeure
Tangram
Quichotte (This was the original name for the Pergamon release)
White Eagle
Thief

Here’s something interesting….If you search for “quichotte tangerine dream” in search.live.com, my discography list is the number 2 item in the list!! :)

I’ve also decided that once this project is done, I’ll work on building out my copy of the Tangerine Tree. I feel it’s best to first send my money where it is due for the official releases, before beginning to collect the entire set of trees and leaves (See the Tangerine Tree project for more details)

- Keith

Previous Posts in this series:

Additional references and links:

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When the heck did you find the time to do all this music?

September 29, 2006

A few folks have asked me this question over the past few months, primarily, because at the end of 2005 I released 3 CDs, and then I’ve released 3 more this year. First of all, most of this music already existed. I just hadn’t polished it up, and was unsure of exactly the distribution method I wanted.

I figured I would do a quick post and give you a bit of history on this.

A longtime ago….in a virtual studio far, far away (Roughly 1999, 2000)

I had plenty “Melodies” in my head, and some down on paper and recorded, but I didn’t have a way of really getting my music out there to be heard. (See my History of Musical Influences…. postings)

Back in the day, there was this place called mp3.com. (It still exists, but is totally not what it once was). The OLD mp3.com, allowed any artist to upload their music, in mp3 format, and call it an album. Users could come to the site, and have and order a “Burned” CD of a single artists music, or a custom cd with music from multiple artists. If you were not an audiophile, and didn’t really care about total quality, this was great. The OLD mp3.com, allowed artists to get paid by streams to their music, downloads, and CD purchases.

This was really cool for me, and allowed me to get some stuff heard and get comments on my music early on. (And back then, it was pretty terrible )

Unfortunately, many people learned how to game the system, so they would upload one stupid track, and then create spiders and such that would cause their earnings to roar sky high. Obviously, this wasn’t very profitable for mp3.com, so they stopped doing it And eventually sold it off. (I won’t go any further with this, as I’m sure most of you knew about them, and there was plenty of coverage of it…)

Once MP3.com was dead, I reconsidered many different ways of getting my music out there. There are literally tons of web sites that allow artists to do pretty much the same thing, and all of them have their pros and cons. I had come across CDBaby at the time, but personally didn’t like the way their web site looked. I then created indieopolis.net initially to develop a platform that allowed artists to do pretty much the same thing as MP3.COM, but only with “Pay for download” and CD production. I realized shortly after, that I did “Not” want to get into the business of running a full scale indie music site, as there were tons of these out there, and rather I wanted to concentrate on my music rather than running an indie site. I decided to just use the name indieopolis as a name for my music and a few others who were interested, as far as distribution, that was somebody else problem.

In the mean time, there were a couple of other sites that I tried, and hated. I won’t go into a diatribe of why, they just didn’t fit with what I wanted.

Then one day CDBaby started allowing folks to sign up for their digital distribution deal that enabled you to have any CD you sold through them, to be channeled to tons of digital download sites such as iTunes, MSN Music, Rhapsody, Napster, etc….for a small fee of course . Since this was exactly what I wanted, and really didn’t want to get into the business of physical CD’s, this was perfect. Of course, this still requires a physical product to be sent to them, that is then used as masters to send to the individual digital distribution companies. I figured if I started selling lots of physical product, there are places I can use to help out with getting them made.

Roughly mid 2005, I decided to give CDBaby a try, and started re-mastering all my material I had that was ready to go.

I had about 3 full CD’s worth of material ready to go, and 2 or 3 more that were still being polished up, thus a bunch of music seemed to be churning out pretty quickly , but mind you, this was music that’s been sitting around for nearly 8 or so years, just trying to find the perfect distribution avenue .

In 2005, I released the following 4 CDs:

Sidetracks – Volume 1

Sidetracks – Volume 2_DARN_LOUD

Sidetracks – Volume 3 – The Heikkenen Exclusive

Réalité De Destination

In 2006, I spent some time polishing up more music and released:

Sidetracks – Volume 4 – Eye of the Innocent

Mark Akin and I finally stopped talking about it, and decided to start colaborating, and in the process decided to work together to get his CD released:

AlienCarChase

Mark is a Multi-Platinum Soundtrack recording artist for the insanely popular anime series Dragonball Z, with syndication on Cartoon Network. He’s also shared musical credits with Dream Theater, Bootsy Collins, Buckethead, Sum41; and Saliva to name a few. He has had music on MTV’s Real World with Pop-Tronic band ‘TripRocket’.
His style is diverse, ranging from Hard Rock to Electronic Soundtrack Vibes, to all out Metal Mayhem. Mark also teaches at Murphy’s Music in Irving, Texas.

I was inspired and put together

The Maestoso Interstellar Suite

So, in answer to the original question….I didn’t just come up with all this stuff in the past year or so . I still have about 2 more full CD’s worth a material that needs polishing up, and once I have the time (Probably AFTER we release Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007), I might have some more personal time to get back to work on them.

- Keith

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Review of Sidetracks – Volume 3 – The Heikkinen Exclusive

September 29, 2006

Review of Sidetracks – Volume 3 – The Heikkinen Exclusive

Bill Binkelman, founder and current webmaster of Wind and Wire, performed the following review of Sidetracks – Volume 3 – The Heikkinen Exclusive.

With his permission, I’m including the review in it’s entirety here, and have incorporated quick links to the samples of each track from the CD that he speaks directly on throughout the review.

Thanks Bill!

KEITH RICHIE

Sidetracks Volume 3 (The Heikkinen Exclusive)

Indieopolis (2005)

In the liner notes, keyboardist Keith Richie cites musical influences as diverse as Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter, Enya, Deep Forest, Kraftwerk and Vangelis. Listeners might be apprehensive about how such a mishmash of inspiration will be translated on this CD of nineteen tracks. Have no fear, because, while there is a fairly wide assortment of music styles on Sidetracks Volume 3, the album itself holds together quite well, owing to Richie’s recognizable keyboards which help maintain continuity. Also, nine of those nineteen tracks are actually short transitional pieces, entitled “Relaxed Breathing Sessions” in the liner notes. These brief musical interludes and their accompanying nature sounds serve to unify the disparate songs into the “whole” of the recording.

Richie is certainly ambitious. Sometimes, this ambition gets the better of him when his artistic vision is slightly undercut by less than spot-on execution (such as less than optimal keyboard sounds). However, I can easily forgive him this when I take into consideration how diverse and wide in scope the music on Side Tracks Volume 3 is. If I had to categorize the CD’s music, it’s probably safest to list it as either electronica or electronic new age, although elements of world fusion and EM can be heard as well. “Arctic Shores” has Vangelis’ gravitas and flowing melodicism with twinkling bell tones, forlorn horns, and swirling washes. “Ghost Town” attempts to paint a musical portrait of the title, even going so far as to include sound effects such horses walking. Mychael Danna-ish strings are blended with short bursts on shakuhachi flute and plenty of synth embellishments in the background, e.g. sparkling bell trees. Sadly, the sound effects may tend to pull you “out of” the music. However, maybe you will enjoy their novelty more than I did. “Ptilopteri Waltz” is properly delicate with a waltz-like cadence and melody played on plucked harp with an undercurrent of strings. It’s here that Richie’s vision is booby-trapped somewhat by the solo violin sounds which are of lower quality than I think the song deserves.

“Lost in Beijing” fares much better and nicely blends male chorales, muted bass drums, and smooth synth washes, eventually folding in some cool wood block percussion and Berlin-esque electronics. I’m not sure what to make of “Mellow Fellow,” a jarring contrast resembling an English-style chill-out track (after a new age-ish opening) with snappy snare beats and thumping bass. At nearly nine minutes long, it has to work hard to sustain listener interest. “Sun in Central Park” may be my favorite song on the CD, uniting elements of Berlin school at the outset with contemporary electronica featuring a great midtempo beat and lots of high quality synth work. Another solid number is “Ambient Highway” which has the sound of a thunderstorm at the beginning (nature sounds abound throughout the CD) with sampled steel drums, synth chorals, especially nice synth string washes, and a sweeping visual sensation that grows more and more dramatic as the cut builds into something more closely akin to Vangelis’ cinematic soundscapes than ambient music.

While not a perfect album, Sidetracks Volume 3 certainly offers solid evidence of Richie’s keyboard and composing talents. As long as you’re not opposed to nature sounds (especially between selections during those “Relaxed Breathing Sessions”) and you favor electronic keyboard music with lots of melody and structure, you’ll find plenty of good music contained herein. However, fans of the Berlin school should be aware that despite the liner note mention of Tangerine Dream, I think Vangelis Kitaro are better comparisons for the album.

Bill Binkelmann

Music Reviewer

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Review of Rain in Central Park on Space Junkies Magazine

September 29, 2006

Review of Réalité De Destination

Wednesday Elektra of Space Junkies Magazine has created a song review of Rain in Central Park from my CD Réalité De Destination, and she described it exactly how I envisioned it!

KEITH RICHIE’s song “Rain In Central Park” (from the album “Réalité De Destination”) is delicately soft in electronic soundscapes of polished synths and what I could only call “Nature’s landscape music” (tweetering birds, croaking frogs, hooting owls, rumbling thunder, etc.). The song, courtesy of it’s title, puts you in a quiet place where you can imagine yourself sitting on a park bench with a light drizzling mist surrounding you as you listen to the peaceful sounds of nature with thunder rumbling in the background. It has dramatic elements yet is still harmonious and peaceful. Very enjoyable to listen to and surely the songs featured on his just released album “The Maestoso Interstellar Suite” will be just as splendid!

[Wednesday Elektra]

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History of Musical Influences – Part 3 – 1980-1981

September 29, 2006

Before I start with 1980, let me note that I’m afraid the same thing that happened after I made my previous post in this series of becoming inspired to create a piece of work based on the artists in that time frame is going to happen again .

Shortly after posting part 2 of this series, I got inspired and wound up composing The Maestoso Interstellar Suite. I finished that CD, and it should be live on CDBaby any day now, then shortly thereafter, distributed to the digital download services.

Now that I’m working on Part 3, it’s already happening again .

1980

During this year, I discovered Kraftwerk. Interestingly enough, as I was listening to my limited Kraftwerk collection, a member of my team must have noticed my link to their official site on my blog Music category. (Btw, if you have not visited Kraftwerk’s official site, it’s actually pretty darn cool). This team mate made the statement something to the effect of “You’re about the only other person I’ve seen since High school that lives in America that actually has heard of Kraftwerk as well”

Jean Michelle Jarre came to my attention by hearing Oxygene and Equinoxe. (I really don’t follow Jean, but he was still an important part of the story at this time).

There was also work by Brian Eno brought to my attention as well as Gary Numan . You’ve got to thank Gary for his song Cars, now considered a classic rock staple.

The early 80’s introduced me to so many different inspirational artists, it would be impossible to list them all. And I can’t end 1980 without mentioning The Cars, themselves. Every single one of their albums up to 1980 were in my regular play list all the time and into 1981. I know I wore out at least 10 different cassette copies of Panorama, along with constantly swiping my brothers vinyl copy I even own a copy of Greg Hawkes solo release, Niagara Falls.

1981

The only thing I can say about 1981, is simply, Vangelis and Chariots of Fire. This entire release is a fantastic work of art IMO.

During these years, I heard a lot of music utilizing a Vocoder. With my latest round of listening to my Kraftwerk collection, I’ve been playing around with a virtual synth version of a Vocoder, and thinking about doing yet another CD on the Kraftwerk like style. It’s undecided, but inspiration is happening yet again .

Next up, 1982-1983

- Keith

Previous Posts in this series:

Additional references and links:

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History of Musical Influences – Part 2 – 1978-1979

September 29, 2006

1978

During this year, I discovered ELO, The Bee Gees (No, it wasn’t the Disco releases like Stayin’ Alive, etc that really caught my attention with them, but more on their mellower releases, like Spirits Having Flown ), and stuff like Dream Weaver by Gary Wright.

Probably the second most influential band I discovered this year was Rush. And boy was it a rush for me . Sequential Circuits released the Prophet 5 which was used by just about every favorite artist of mine, and Superman The Motion Picture was released. Yet again here we go with John Williams creating yet more inspiring music for me.

John Williams is great, but there was another artist named John that really got me hooked, and it was probably this year that I decided and said to my self

“When I grow up, I wanna be just like John Carpenter!”

Yep, the quintessential horror movie King John Carpenter.

This was the year that Halloween was released. (Yes, I saw it when I was 8 years old ), and the pulsing sequence in the main title was all I needed to hear. I thought this was the coolest thing…dark, eerie, electronic. I was hooked , over the years, this began a buying spree of everything he produced as well. It was this thing alone that made me want to do soundtrack work. Later, as I discovered that he also wrote; directed; and scored more movies….I knew for sure that eventually some day, I would do something similar to what John did.

(I know I’m jumping ahead in years here, but My personal favorite John Carpenter tunes are Chariot of Pumpkins from Halloween III, the Theme song from The Fog, and from the Big Trouble in Little China Soundtrack Lo Pan’s Domain and Into the Spirit Path are both great tracks.)

He’s the primary reason I wanted to get into doing short films, and is the inspiration behind my Original “N”otion Picture soundtrack Réalité De Destination.

There were tons more artists this year, but these were the primary ones who influenced me during that classic year of 1978.

1979

I honestly can’t remember anything specific from 1979 Except of listening to more music from the other artists in this post and the previous Oh well, if I remember…I’ll update it later .

In closing…I’m not Jack Burton, but I figured this was a nice way to end this post . Or not.

Next up, 1980

- Keith

Previous Posts in this series:

History of Musical Influences – Part 1 – 1976-1977

Additional references and links:

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History of Musical Influences – Part 1 – 1976-1977

September 29, 2006

I don’t necessarily plan on detailing in chronological order the events that marked the musical influences on me, but I’ll use it as the basic outline. Just note we may take a segue here and there as the synapses in my brain fuse back together and old buried memories are reborn

The purpose is not to just note the electronic Musical Influences, but all musical influences. I think you’ll see that at the end, you’ll see why it’s my passion to do music for film..

1976

Logan’s Run. I won’t go into a plethora of detail on Logan’s Run itself, except that I am patiently waiting on the remake of this and this is the earliest form of electronic music I can remember at this time, that evoked a bit of emotional “Oooooo….What’s that!” from me “ Jerry Goldsmith did the orchestral music, but I’m not sure who actually did the electronic pieces.

1977

Star Wars. Other than a simple masterpiece of science fiction and cinema, this was probably one of the first albums I ever listened to and owned. It, of course, was my introduction to John Williams. My parents constantly nagged me to please stop playing that same album on the family turntable day in, and day out. Uh, well…It was the only album I owned , I found myself mesmerized by the music, and then I heard “the five tones”.

It was probably a month or so of hearing “the five tones” all over TV, Radio etc before I actually saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but when I realized it was also John Williams, it had to be immediately added to my collection I remember that when my parents would ask me what I wanted for Christmas at this time, I would tell them anything that John Williams has done. I’m not sure they even knew who he was, and I didn’t even own a turntable at the time.

It was also about this time I started hearing music from Kraftwerk, although I didn’t realize it was them at that time. As well, I kept hearing things “Moving in Stereo”, and was immediately hooked. It was a couple of years later, but my brother and I became serious fans of The Cars. For my brother, it was the everything about The Cars. For me, it was learning who Greg Hawkes was. I still have his Niagara Falls LP .

I’ll end with a little Popcorn by Gershon Kingsley.

Next up, 1978-1979

- Keith

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The Tangerine Dream Collection Project – Part 2 – The cost estimate and the wifes’ reaction!

September 29, 2006

The Wifes’ Reaction

So I told my wife about my little project, and to my complete utter amazement, she stated “Ok”

After I got back up off the floor from falling out of my chair (I don’t think she realizes just how much this is going to cost yet ), I started thinking of how I wanted to attack backfilling my collection.

Should I start with replacing the destroyed media first?
Or should I just start chronologically from the beginning?

I think I’ll go with the chronological pattern first (as much as possible . What stinks about this, is that I’ll be replacing all the earlier releases which I either had at one time, and were damaged, etc. So it will be tough until I start getting to a lot of the newer releases I haven’t even heard yet.

The Cost Estimate

Based on my current Items to Acquire list, which is currently sitting at 136 items, with an average of $10 per CD…simple math tells us that this will run me $1,360 at a minimum.

Obviously I want to order as many as possible if I order them online, to save costs with shipping and handling.

Some of you may be asking

“Why don’t you just purchase as many as you can from the Digital Distributors like MSN Music, iTunes, etc?”

Well, I could do that…but I want the to be able to rip using the highest quality for my media server.

“Why don’t you use someone like MusicGiants who provides Hi-Fi music downloads using Windows Media Audio Lossless encoding?”

Well, for me…Each CD is like a fine painting . Some people collect paintings…I collect CDs of my favorite artists:)

Truthfully, there are only a few artists in which I would just insist on having hard copies of CDs. TD is one of them. I want to ensure I have the hard copies as backups in case I have to re-rip again. That’s just that Until we’re able to download (legally that is) uncompressed 24bit audio I’ll stick with the CDs, as a lot of new music (Especially from TD) is coming out in 24bit formats.

The plan

I think the best way to tackle this, would be for me to order at least 5 CD’s per month on each months self allowance for this project.

That would allow me to complete this task in just over 2 years (around 27 moinths )

But, if I find good copies of CDs in used shops, etc…Obviously I’m going to go that route, for cost savings and time savings.

I’ll probably use Amazon as much as possible as they have the widest stock of TD material at this time. Once I get into the “Current years” releases, I can go to the official TD site and order from there if necessary, for specialty items.

Also, after each purchase is established, I’ll update my Items currently in my collection list and the others with the source location so in the end, we’ll have a complete list to refer back to just in case.

With that in mind, here are the first 5 CDs that I’ll be purchasing.

Stay tuned for Part 3 “The first order“

- Keith

Previous Posts in this series:

The Tangerine Dream Collection Project – Part 1

Additional references and links:

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The Tangerine Dream Collection Project – Part 1

September 29, 2006

As I was preparing for my first post of “The History of Musical Influences“, I did something that caused a stirring in me that’s been going awhile, and thus it turned into a tornadic experience and I’ve started up a new project called “The Tangerine Dream Collection Project“

I spent the better part of the morning of Saturday May 20th 2006, re-ripping and cataloging everything I had TD related. To my surprise…I no longer had as many items as I once had. I’ve either lost them, loaned them to someone and forgot, and a lot of my material was destroyed in moves, etc.

It’s been a few years since I stopped buying everything TD related due to necessary budget constraints. But now, I’m ready to dig back and complete this lifelong goal , thus a new personal project to acquire missing CD’s, replace destroyed ones, and purchase all outstanding TD related works that are yet in my collection.

So I went to http://www.tangerinedream.org/ and got the official Discography list and compared my collection to that list. Even the official list at http://www.tangerinedream.org/ isn’t 100% concise due to a lot of imports, etc, but it’s what I’m going off of right now.

Obviously, I’ll be using SharePoint lists to keep track of everything .

I’ve set up a site simply called “The Tangerine Dream Collection Project” here:

http://www.indieopolis.net/sites/krichie/tdcp

There you’ll find the following lists:

I thought it would be an interesting project to blog about.

Stay tuned for Part 2 “The cost estimate and the wife’s’ reaction!”

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Posted by Keith Richie