5 years ago I started my own company for music. I called it Melodiefabriek. Didn’t know what to expect really, just wanted to make music.

Now 5 years later I am still 100% enjoying my work. I have found my niche.

Thank you clients, partners, friends, colleagues and customers! I am ready for some more :)

Yeah, I know. I am not blogging much here. I am mainly blogging in Dutch at my personal blog www.marcoraaphorst.nl.

The Melodiefabriek blog needs a makeover. It’s all in the head. But for now:

• I am making a daily photo
• I am posting a weekly soundtrack, song or sound snippet; KlankBeeld Raaphorst
• I am active promoting new music online, a public speaker, a consultant
• I am working with Dutch radiomaker, Bert Kommerij, on our second large project: Media Me
• Flick Radio (the first large project I did with Bert Kommerij) will hopefully have a premiere at this year’s IDFA (international documentary festival) and after that international screenings worldwide
• I am involved in a sampling project for Vlieland, a small island of The Netherlands
• I have plans for new live performances
• I have more news for you soon, I promise!

Marco_Raaphorst_-_Happy_New_Year_2008.mp3

Flick Radio, a radio drama for which I have composed the music (we’ve also re-used a bunch of our ccMixter collegues’ music), is now also a video. This video was presented in Hilversum, Holland, during the NPOX festival two days ago. The compliments the whole team behind Flick Radio received were overwhelming. Flick Radio will get a lot more viewings at art-festivals and probably television too.

The video is posted at the number one website for documentaries: HollandDoc. Check out and sit back for 47 minutes and please add your comments below.

Update 1: Flick Radio is available in fullscreen DivX quality at Stage6.

Update 2: Also on YouTube (bad quality, audio in MONO!):

Maybe some of you are wondering which of the new patches included in the Factory Soundbank for Reason 4 were created by me. Scroll down for a complete list.

Propellerhead has created a special page for the sound designers of Reason 4. I am not on that list as well as all the other sound designers which were involved (old mate Peff for example). They are way more popular than us and therefore Propellerhead labeled these patches as Signature sounds.

Thor

Bass: Booty funk.thor, Electrix Bass.thor, Fat Boy.thor, Flatwounds or zero frets.thor, Hollow Minds.thor, PPbass.thor, Rubber Duck.thor

Fx: NoiseBomb.thor, Robotic Horror.thor, That lost phone of ET.thor

Lead Synths: Digital Head Hunter.thor, Digital Spectacles.thor, Flanger Gas.thor, Flutely.thor, Fung Fu.thor, Lost In Translation.thor, Mellow Screamer.thor, Sizzling to the top.thor, Tear the roof of the sucker.thor

Pads: CZ-123.thor, Detail String.thor, Flutes On Tubes.thor, In mysterious ways.thor, Sakamotions.thor, Sun kids.thor, Synthex Boards.thor, The deep trips.thor, Thick Storm.thor

Percussion\BassDrums: BassDrumBuilder.thor

Percussion\Misc Percussion: Kitchen Zing.thor, ZEN moments.thor

Poly Synths: Accordion.thor, Analords.thor, Awakenings.thor, Between Raindrops.thor, Chamber Synth.thor, Easy Tunes Organ.thor, FM for Dummies.thor, HamayayaDX6.thor, LA clean Piano.thor, ModWheeSpaceAge.thor, Music For Children.thor, Sweep the House.thor, Synthi Organ.thor, Virgin Organ.thor

Rhythmic: Da Pulse [seq].thor, SpacePulse [seq].thor, Word of mouth [seq].thor

Sequenced: Melodic Pulsa [Seq].thor, ModSEK.thor, Morble machines [Seq].thor, Pitching Feedback OSC [Seq].thor

Textures: 2 cells left.thor, Berlin ice bar.thor, Rolling Slurpy (Seq).thor, Singing coral reef [Seq].thor, Spaced Out.thor, Squares and Zeros.thor

Voice and Choir: Femenine.thor, Roman boys and girls.thor

Combinator patches

Drums and Percussion\Machines: Electronic Research [Run].cmb, Ethno BEET Machine [Run].cmb, Naughty ‘n Funky [Run].cmb, Random HiHat machina [RPG].cmb, Synthi Drum Machine [Run].cmb

Drums and Percussion\Percussion: Wet floor.cmb

Effect Device Patches\Delay: Almost dead tape-echo [Insert].cmb, Dub Delayla [Insert].cmb, Thor FiltersX [Insert].cmb

Effect Device Patches\Dynamics\General Purpose: Class A 2 band Compressor [INSERT].cmb

Effect Device Patches\Modulation: Fair Pusherristix [Insert].cmb, FilterMals [Insert].cmb, Flangah.cmb, Phazah.cmb, Rolandus Dimension E.cmb, Super Chorus.cmb, sweepy Filters [Insert].cmb, xtreem Filter [Insert].cmb

Performance Patches\Song Starters: Uplift n Klean [Run].cmb, Warm Bathroom [Run].cmb, Zawinul on Tribe [Run].cmb

Rhythmic: Fairy tails.cmb, Magical Mysteries.cmb, My brain pleasures].cmb, Phase Rider.cmb, Press Keys Hear The Handdrums.cmb, Synthex Arp.cmb

Strings: Old Hollywood.cmb

Synth Poly: More sugah.cmb

Textures and Musical FX: The white sharks.cmb

For a couple of months I have been working on a project for Dutch Public Radio (RVU /// educatieve omroep) called Flick Radio. It was aired on radio last friday at Radio 5. Since the Dutch ‘Publieke Omroep’ is a non-profit organization I always felt they should start using Creative Commons licenses so everyone can share and re-use that material.

Flick Radio is one of the first projects for Dutch Public Radio which falls under a Creative Commons license. Hopefully more people and production companies will follow soon. Creative Commons is the future no doubt. It’s all about sharing these days. Prosumers, active consumers.

Flick Radio is based on a true story: a writer who meets an American girl called Kendra on Flickr.com. The dialogs are for a great part taken off the internet, comments on Flick photo’s for example. In a mosaic like method the script was created. And reality became fiction again.

The scriptwriter is Bert Kommerij, an award winning radiomaker for Dutch Radio. Flick Radio is a radio drama. A film without images.

Most of the voice-tracks and the music will be uploaded to remix-websites like ccMixter, so people will be able to remix our work. We’re more than curious what happens!

The ‘making of …’ I have published on my Dutch weblog. At the moment we’re also working on a video-version for Flick Radio. And don’t worry, we will translate everything from Dutch to English for you. Stay sharp!

I did most of the music and sound design, but we also re-used some of the excellent music of ccMixter. Here’s the full credit-list:

• I wish - Marco Raaphorst
• Mijn profielnaam - Marco Raaphorst
• Grip - Marco Raaphorst
• Personage - Marco Raaphorst
• Meaningful - Marco Raaphorst
• Untitled 2 - Teru
• Van moment naar moment - Marco Raaphorst
• What if … - Vincent Vega 11
• What else … - Marco Raaphorst
• Blowing Snow - Marco Raaphorst
• Tags - Marco Raaphorst
• Second Life - Marco Raaphorst
• America land for sure - Marco Raaphorst
• Wonderlijk personage - Marco Raaphorst
• Don Quioxte - Narva 9
• Jumpshots - Marco Raaphorst
• Ending the drought (featuring Shagrugge) - Gurdonark
• Hier op de kade - Marco Raaphorst
• What is wild? - Marco Raaphorst
• I got to spread the love some way, somehow - Marco Raaphorst
• Photo theme: Yellow Flowers - Antony Raijekov
• Je wacht - Marco Raaphorst
• Combis43 - Marco Raaphorst
• Roestige Boot - Marco Raaphorst
• Niet te snel, niet te snel - Marco Raaphorst

Idea, script and control: Bert Kommerij.
Music and sounddesign: Marco Raaphorst.
Studiotechnique and voice control: Jaap Vermeer.
Video: Pepijn Kortbeek.
Advice: Piet Marsman.
Final control: Monique Mourits.

Narrator: Bert Kommerij.
Kendra: Andel Sudik.
Anonymous girl: Lobke van Beuzekom.

Have a listen:
flickradio.mp3 (see also - Dutch text: RVU / Flick Radio)

Technical details: Voices were recorded in ProTools. All music and editing was done in Ableton Live 6. Reason 4 was used for additional sounds.

Tonight at 8 pm I will be speaking at Radio Online (Radio1, Dutch radio - they also podcast the show the day after). I will be talking about Operator 11 together with Roeland Stekelenburg of the NOS. Since a few weeks I’ve been experimenting with Operator11, a broadcast solution which is web based. My first show about ‘Searching for the Perfect Popsong’ has more than 700 views and growing. Not bad.

More about this in Dutch (It’s still very hard for me to double blog and translate everything. Maybe I’ll find a solution someday.)

Update: The interview in mp3-format:
Radio-Online-Zomaargasten-2007.mp3

And we also did a live video-show at the Trost radio studio using Stekel’s MacBook :) Check it out:

(click on image for a larger version, or go to my photo-page)

Dutch magazine MusicMaker asked me about some mastering tips. They are available in a 3-page article for the 2007/06 edition. More about this on my Dutch blog.

I would not have thought about calling myself a mastering expert, but I feel honored if others do :)

I have created a backchannel for Melodiefabriek at Jaiku. Great for direct contact, ideas and future ideas!

I have also started a backchannel for Propellerhead Reason users. This is without doubt the quickest way to share your thoughts and knowledge about this product.

I am also active at Twitter, but Twitter lacks channels and there’s no way to separate language preferences because of this. Jaiku does offer this, so I also started the Nederland channel at Jaiku for Dutch members. I might also start one for my award winning blog MarcoRaaphorst.nl.

Today Propellerhead announced Reason 4. Reason 4 includes the new synth Thor, the RPG-8 arpeggiator, the ReGroove mixer and a more matured sequencer. The cool thing is: I am using Reason 4 since October 2006 and it rocks!

October 2006? Yes, I was involved in the patching/sound design. I have created 60 Thor patches and 30 new Combinator sounds. As most of you already know: I was also involved in the sound design for Reason 3, which brings the total number of patches created by my company Melodiefabriek to more than 270!

On the Propellerhead website you can find several sounds created with Thor. Here are a couple of demos of Thor using my patches:
FunkyFatBoy.mp3
SacredFemenine.mp3
WestAfricanKitchenZing.mp3

Sounds killer, right?