Floris De Vries (AKA Floris Solo, Fozzie)

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.

 
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.

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.