Toxic Vibes
- (Mpeg Audio, 5.2 MB)
Toxic Vibes
I shortened several samples from a Magix
Music Maker cd I still had lying somewhere
with Cool Edit Pro, and altered them.
I used the samples in Loops to make melody
and beat. I had discovered many ways to
alter sounds, for instance the Cutoff
filter, which I clearly used on this one.
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Bogusbeat -
(mp3, 5.8 MB)
Bogusbeat
I made this one shortly after Toxic Vibes,
think it must have been in november 2000.
I pretty much did the same only used different
samples and a more complex beat this time
with weird sounds. |
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Interview
with Floris de Vries |
MG: |
First,
tell usbriefly about yourself. |
Floris: |
I'm Floris de Vries from Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
I was born on the fifth of April 1977 and I grew
up in Ouddorp in Zuid-Holland.
I study law (specialized on taxes) and work parttime
as a tax-lawyer for Deloitte&Touche in the
city of Rotterdam. I'm almost graduated but I
still need to write my paper. |
MG: |
Tell us about your
family. Do you have and siblings? |
Floris: |
I have a brother, Arnout, who studied Industrial
Engineering and now works at the Research department
of a dutch telecom company, KPN. My mother translates
Spanish books. My father was formerly a teacher
(he taught German) at high school, and is now
studying and translating Classical languages (old
Latin and Greek). |
MG: |
Do you still live
at home with your family? |
Floris: |
I live in my apartment in Rotterdam,
on my own, and enjoy my freedom. |
MG: |
Tell us about your
hobbies, please. |
Floris: |
I have a lot of hobbies, such as making electronic
music on my PC (which led to this interview),
collecting music, playing trading card games (Magic:
The Gathering and StarWars: Customizable Card
Game), playing basketball, watching movies and
TV shows (I love sci-fi, fantasy and horror),
reading (when I have the time...), and of course
chatting in the Cloud City Cantina or TenForward.
I like meeting people who share my hobbies and
interests and have found most of them while chatting
or playing the trading card games. Some of them
have become good friends. |
MG: |
How
did you find Outpost 10F.com? |
Floris: |
I read about it in a newsletter
from my provider and got immediately interested.
I started to visit it since november 2000 I think.
I like it because in other chats you don't usually
meet people who share your field of interest,
your love of SciFi for instance. |
MG: |
We're lucky to have
found you. We're told that you play piano. Tell
us about that, when did you first start playing? |
Floris: |
I started
playing the piano when I was about 8 years old.
My grandfather gave us his piano so my father,
mother, brother and me started practicing and
taking some lessons.As the only one who stayed
interested I kept playing and taking lessons for
about 8 years. |
MG: |
What kinds of music
did you play? |
Floris: |
I played a lot of music, classical, particularly
Chopin, and also Pop (50s and 60s, like Elvis
and The Beatles). I enjoyed playing Pop the most,
but I found it a little too easy. Classical was
more challenging to play but I never really got
interested in the music, for some reason I only
liked listening to Pop, although I loved playing
Erik Satie (whose compositions however were also
a little too easy to learn). |
MG: |
You said you stopped
playing the piano, what, if anything, might've
had something to do with that? |
Floris: |
Later on we also bought a Casio keyboard, but
despite a sample recording option (it had this
little speaker that could record sounds), I
found it too limited after playing it a while.
So, unfortunately many would say, I quit playing
the piano and keyboard. I simply did not enjoy
playing them as much as I used to and I never
really enjoyed performing for others, also,
to play only other people's songs allowed little
creativity.
So I don't play piano anymore and I doubt if
I could pick it up quickly. It would probably
take a while to learn it again, because I haven't
touched a pianokey in 6 years! Maybe at some
point I'll find it necessary to start playing
an instrument again, but I'll buy a synthesizer
then. It is nicer to make music by touching
those keys instead of clicking in an interface,
but to make music I'll probably always use my
PC. |
MG: |
When did you start
composing music? |
Floris: |
About two years ago the idea got into my head
that I had to do something creative with music
because my mind was almost never without music.
Sometimes I made up or even dreamt melodies, or
I would play piano with my fingers in thin air. |
MG: |
Could you tell us
a bit about the first program you used when you
started composing on the PC? Where did you find
it? |
Floris: |
I saw TV ads for a software program
called Magix Music Maker and I found it for a
cheap price at a store a little later on. I tried
it for one day but got quickly bored with prefrabricated
songmaking that only allowed you to construct
a track out of ready-made melodies and drum loops.
I hoped there would be better programs that allowed
more freedom and creativity to create my own melodies
with cool instruments. |
MG: |
Did you find a program
that did allow you your freedom and let you create
your own music? |
Floris: |
I discovered a friend of mine was into music
a lot. He had deejayed at small parties in the
past and made electronic music with synthesizers
and other hardware and software. So when I said
I was interested in making electronic music he
gave me a CD-ROM with music software. I quickly
discovered the brilliance of a program called
FruityLoops.
I've been using it for almost a year and I can
do almost everything I want with it. It's a so-called
sequencer that allows you to use samples in a
certain rhythm or melody you make up and make
a song with them by combining all the sounds. |
MG: |
What
styles of music do you create? |
Floris: |
Since the beginning I have created many many
Loops, and a couple of complete songs. They differ
a lot from each other but most could be categorized
as House and Ambient, although sometimes that
doesn't accurately describe the somtimes bizarre
music I've made. Simply put I just make electronic
music and enjoy it very much. I also keep learning
new things about the program to make better music. |
MG: |
How
long have you been collecting music? |
Floris: |
I've been collecting music since
I was12. |
MG: |
Is there a member
of your family that you might've picked up your
sence of music? |
Floris: |
My dad is also a passionate collector
of music, so I probably picked that up from him. |
MG: |
What was styles
of music interest you? |
Floris: |
The first kind of music that really
blew my mind was HipHop but later on I also learned
to appreciate other genres such as House and Alternative
Pop. |
MG: |
What
artists do you like? |
Floris: |
The artists that I still like
and listen are GZA, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon,
Ice Cube, Outkast, The Brotherhood, House of Pain,
3rd Bass, Eminem, Beastie Boys, Grandaddy, Garbage,
Placebo, Korn, Marilyn Manson, Depeche Mode, Underworld,
Olive, Orbital and a very funny but raunchy
and juvenile bunch of losers with no reason to
live called The BloodHoundGang, whose
lyrics and music I find brilliant, which says
enough about my taste in music. |
MG: |
Finally, where do
you get inspiration. |
Floris: |
Being an electronic musician I
think I get inspiration from artists such as Orbital,
Underworld, Aphex Twin, Faithless, Chicane
and The Prodigy but don't overestimate
their influences, I think everyone should try
to be original and find his own style, because
so do I, even though I haven't found it yet. I
think I'm only a beginning musician despite my
experience with the piano. |
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