Love!
/Foona

Studio5 

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I recently got an android phone a “HTC Wildfire”, and I wanted to tell you how I use this new piece of “gear” to actually create music. These androids/smart phones are pretty amazing. My model has got a processor with a power of 512MHz and a RAM of 384Mb and this is a smaller less powerful model. Now I remember a time when only computers where this powerful.

These android phones have a lot to offer in the form of widgets and applications, “apps” for short. Though very quickly I discovered that applications for musical creativity where scarce. When browsing the market I found just a few drum machines, voice recorders, synthesizers etc, as I said not much to offer at the moment. Also most of these applications need more power than my droid can offer. Bigger models wouldn’t have this problem so make sure you get the right one if you consider purchasing a droid. On my phone I also experience most apps being laggy and somewhat slow, some of the apps even ending up crashing. I almost started regretting my purchase just one day after opening the package my droid came in. But then I found “Pocketband Studio” and finally I saw light!

“Pocketband Music Studio it’s a complete composition environment for android devices. Make hi-quality tracks using three concepts: Song, Loop and Devices (including Synthesizers, Drum Machines, Modulators and Recorders). Publish your songs in our community and adapt the work from others to your compositions.”
-copied from Uloops.net. (Home of Pocketband Studio)

Here is a link to my first published track made solely with Pocketband studio. Some external devices where used for the vocals but expect from that, it’s all Pocketband studio. Pretty amazing coming from one little droid I might add.

LINK: Foona – Respect My Droid

Thanks to the hard work and Ingenuity of Juan Bordón, Sebastián Marconi and the graphical design skills by Darío Georges, we droid musicians have a really versatile platform to work with and it won’t make you poor either. I purchased a 6 month subscription for about 5€ and with that you also get a full version of Pocketband (there is a “Lite” version for those who might want to try it out), 200Mb of server space among other things. Now this is a web based app and everything you do within this app gets stored on a Uloops server, so you’ll need internet access etc. I’ve been working with this app for 5 days and I love it. Pocketband isn’t perfect but as with anything new, bugs are to be expected, found and dealt with. Both Juan and Sebastián are working hard to perfect this wonderful application. Keep up the good work guys!

So if you’ve got an android and want to use it for creating music? Then you seriously need to check this out. Trust me!

LINK: Pocketband Studio home

LINK: Uloops @ndroid market

Love an’ Blessin’s
/Foona

Studio 5
P.T.C-Crew
Rub-A-Dub Stockholm

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Finally People!

I was supposed to release this song last Christmas, so it’s long overdue, but better late than never as they say.  For those who have no clue of what I’m writing about, I was contacted almost 2 years ago by Charles Lazarus from the Jamaican based roots band “Rootz Underground” about doing a dub collab with them. Of course I jumped at the chance and Charles even gave me the freedom of choice in their catalog. I only searched for a few minutes until I stumbled upon the song “Herb Fields”, a track I completely fell in love with! I informed Charles about my choice and a few months later I had the track ready for some nice dubbin’!

So here it is people some new dub for the mummy masses! I Foona from Studio 5 and Rootz Underground proudly present “Herb Fields Dub”. And the best part, it is free people!  If you want to listen to the track before you download it, just follow the link to SoundCloud.com.

Listen to Rootz Underground feat. Foona – Herb Fields Dub on SoundCloud:
http://soundcloud.com/foona/rootz-underground-ft-foona-herb-fields-dub

Click here to download the song!
(right-click and choose “save as”)

Merry Christmas everybody!

Love an’ Blessin’s
/Foona
Studio 5
P.T.C-Crew

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Regardless of the lack of time I have been making some progress with my music. Two new songs have been released on two different labels and in this post I will present one of them.

Album compilation: C303 -5 Years of DIY
Featured artists: Foona,  Daniel Arya, reset, Ars Dada, DJplaneten, jgb, Pitchplant, Lisa & Kroffe, Pehr Meldert, Node, jgb + mr, enapa, Suzywan

These artists have all performed live on the Camp303 stage at the NorbergFestival, an electronics festival that started over 10 years ago in the Swedish town Norberg. This festival gets more and more visitors every year and it is packed with electro based and influenced music. DIY builders meet to show off their excellent builds to the electro horny crowd. I myself have had the privilege to perform two times at this festival and with great success.

A few months ago Daniel Araya aka “Dar303” and Kristofer Ulfves aka “Kroffe”, two of the hosts of Camp303, decided they wanted to make a compilation album featuring artists that had performed on the Camp303 stage. I was asked to contribute to this album and so I did with a remix/new version of one of my songs from my album “Foona’s In’I Sound”. The song on that album is called “”. In this song one can hear the phrase “When you step into the gates of Zion, your soul will be touched by the lion”, and I really like that phrase.  As worked progressed with this new version the song took an interesting turn and I infused it with some Dubstep influences.

“Lion’s Den part 2 transforms into Lion Dubstep”
The song basically starts up with a weird waltz together with me laughing over it. I didn’t want the listener to know what to expect next and I though a waltz would do the trick. I actually produced an entire Waltz track just to get the right feel before I cut the first 15 seconds to use for my intro. I then grabbed my KORG Kaossilator and recorded some synthesizer grooves and at this stage I knew I was walking the right path. I also poked deep into my brain back to the times when I was producing Trance music (like the works of Astral Projection) and with the help of a plug called “Delay Lama” I was able to inject the track with some vocally filtered Psychedelic arpeggios.
I also wanted a reggae backdrop feel in my track but this time I didn’t want to use an organ as I always do, so I searched my archives for a piano instead and found an old shitty sounding SoundFont. The funny thing is I was going to change that sound to something else but totally forgot about it while I was working with every other element in the track. It even escaped my attention during the mixing part.
About two and a half minutes into the track I decided to transform the song and put more Dub and Dubstep into it. I recorded some new vocals witch I’m still not satisfied with, but since I couldn’t do it better it had to do. I hardly practice my singing enough, something that needs changing. I also put my favorite “Lion” phrase in it and finally I could start mixing my track. There are two things I regret, the fact that I didn’t pronounce the bass enough and I also should have cut out some of the high frequency’s, to give my track a more “Foona” like sound. Well there you have it people and the result can be heard on the C303 – 5 Years of DIY compilation album.

You can download the entire album for free at NorbergFestival.com. The album includes 13 tracks in total and personally I love all the different flavors from all these excellent artists.

Link:  C303 – 5 Years of DIY release page @ NorbergFestival.com

C303 – 5 Years of DIY promo video on YouTube

Take care people!

Love an’ Blessin’s
/Foona

Studio 5

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Arize n’ Foona – Clown Clones (democlip) Album: Gunnerizing / Unreleased

Arize n’ Foona – Horny Gonner (democlip) Album: Gunnerizing / Unreleased


Me and Flim had to go through a lot of wierd projects before we finally were able to produce the CoffeShop album. Our collab was something new that had to be tested and experimented with, and so we did. We made a few songs that got “trashed” and here is one of those wierd projects.

Flim n’ Foona – Enter Coffeshop (democlip) Album: Lost Songs / Unreleased

Game Music
I worked a lot with game based music in my years. I’ve mainly made music for fantasy based games since that’s my favorite genre when it comes to RPG games. Here is a very old track that I made for an RPG game I was developing (that project totally died). I can ad that the game I was working on was based on the Final Fantasy series that I love so much. Imagine walking through an Ice cave when listening to this track.

Jngaelin – Sassou ICE CAVERN.2 (democlip) Album: Siforia Soundtrack / Unreleased

2. Nowaydays
Every time a friend visits me I always take the opportunity of doing something creative. This is a fun way of getting to know someone on a different plane then just going out drinking or watching movies etc. This is a project I made with Alexander Vagianakiz, an old friend that lives in Greece now. He and his brother Andreas usually comes once a year for a visit and at the last visit we made this trashy track together.

Foona n’ Bolloxology – Invaders (democlip) Album: Borderline / Unreleased

In this time I have no more parts of this series planned. I’ll have to dig deeper into my old archives and see if there might be some stuff I left out (there most probably is).

Till next time, stay tuned people!

Love an’ Blessin’s
/Foona

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Love an’ Blessin’s

/Foona

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I’ve used a lot of different nicknames in the past for various projects, so I decided to gather some of my old stuff. Going back once in a while checking on your old work is healthy. This way you can see how you have evolved and what you need to work on. I admit I don’t do this very often.

1.Back In the Days

Jngaelin
I started using this nick roughly about eleven years ago. The first genres I started working with where HipHop, Djungle and Drum & Base. These genres together with Reggae have always been the biggest influences for me. Sure I listened to a lot of other kinds of music but when I produced these where the main genres. I then started incorporating “world music” into my projects and discovered that no matter what music I was working with, I was always happy with what I was doing

D&B
Jngaelin – Manuu (democlip) Album: Step This / Unreleased

Jngaelin – Tribe (democlip) Album: Step This / Unreleased

World influences
Jngaelin – Roots (democlip) Album: Hookah n’ Chai / Released in 2005

Jngaelin – Hookah n’ Chai (democlip) Album: Hookah n’ Chai / Released in 2005

Twentif Orbit 9.6
About nine years back I also started using the nick “Twentif Orbit 9.6”. I have been a huge fan of “Astral projection” since they started out, and for a very long time I tried to walk in their footsteps. I started producing Psychedelic Trance, Chill Out,  Goa, Gabber and I did that for maybe six years. This was one of the most fun periods in my life. Alot of dancing I tell you”

Twentif Orbit 9.6 – Landing (democlip) Album: The Arise / Unreleased

Twentif Orbit 9.6 – Continuing (democlip) Album: The Arise / Unreleased

2.Nowadays
I experimented a lot with styles and sounds but I never seemed to get where I wanted to go. So I stopped and went on with other kinds of music instead. This was a good thing cause I recently started producing within this genre again and discovered exactly what was missing. Two years ago I threw myself into the world of Do-It-Yourself electronics and after finishing one of my most important project I made a song. I was building a SID synthesizer using real SID chips from two old “Comodore 64” computers. As soon as I was done with the build I produced a song using this newly built SID synthesizer. I completely love what this magnificent machine can do. I will be putting up a post regarding this DIY project in the near future so keep your eyes open.

Twentif Orbit 9.6 – Mosquitos (democlip) Album: Circuits / Unreleased / Song Released in 2009

If you like the song then I am happy to announce that this song is free, and that you can download it right here.
Free download: Twentif Orbit 9.6 (Foona) – Mosquitos.mp3

Until next time, stay tuned people!

Love an’ Blessin’s
/Foona

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A few years back we started something called the “Beat Circle” in the P.T.C-Crew. All the members sent each other beat packs with started songs in it. It usually started with on member creating a drum loop. This member would then send this drum loop to another member within the P.T.C-Crew requesting a baseline. When that member was done he sent the drum loop together with the baseline to another member, requesting another instrument to be put on it. We had alot of fun doing this and many times ended up doing wicked stuff. Here are some clips from the BeatCircle – “Beats” folder. These are unfinished beats.

P.T.C-Crew BC – Millie

P.T.C-Crew BC – Marmelade

P.T.C-Crew BC – Jululu? …sometimes it just goes wrong…

P.T.C-Crew BC – Alot of Sven

2.Nowadays – “Bobby n’ Foona“ Beat Circle
I recently started a Beat Circle together with Daniel Bäckström aka “BobbyGunnar” a member from “Svenska Elektronik Forumet” (The Swedish Electronics Forum). He also exists on myspace and right now there are two nice tunes in his player. He produces mostly 8-bit style music but also other types of mashed up techno. I totally love what this guy does and if you visit his myspace, make sure you listen to the song called “All These Years” for some real “Hero SID” sounds! Either way I just knew a Beat Circle together with him would be fun so I asked him about it and he sad yes.

Step 1. I created the drumloop

Step 2. Bobby added baseline

Step 3. I Foona added organs

Step 4. Bobby put his hands on the keys and of it went

Step 5. Doesen’t exist yet since this project is an ongoing one. Stay tuned to hear the result.

If you’re a musician professional or even a amateur, start your own beat circles and see what happens.

Stay tuned for “Part 2″ of “Not Rocksteady, Reggae, Dub or Dubstep”

Links:
BobbyGunnar on MySpace

Love an’ Blessin’s
/Foona Studio5

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1.Nowadays – “LGRFBS Trackmania Nations”
One of my projects are producing music for an online game called “TrackMania Nations”. It’s an old “Stunts” based racing game. The administrator for this game calls himself LGRFBS and is also the builder of all the courses in this game. LGRFBS is hosting races for the members of the “Swedish Electronics Forum” (Svenska Elektronik Forumet, SEF for short). Last year I worked with Jeffrey Carlsson aka “Arize” (P.T.C-Crew), and we produced seven songs for this game.  This year I am making half the songs myself this year and Arize is doing the other half. We are not the only ones making songs for this game. JimmyAndersson and Spinxen also members of the SEF are creating music for the game. Here are two short clips. The second clip is a completely new song I’ve made for this years race. It’s Kind of a fusion between Drum n’ Base, Tech Step and Breake Core. You need “Quicktime” installed to be able to hear the track.

Arize n’ Foona – Running (democlip)
Album: TMN Race 2009

Foona  – Shut Psyche (democlip)
Album: TMN Race 2010

2.Back in The Days – “Flim and Foona”

Another project I’ll like to write about is “Flim and Jngaelin” wich we now call “Flim and Foona“, due to the fact that “Jngaelin” was one of my old nicks. I met Kim Hansson aka “Flim” (P.T.C-Crew member) about ten years back and we started producing music together. We made about three albums together though we only released one of them. Alot of sampling going on in our projects, that’s for sure. One can hear a wide range of influences from Jazz, Blues, Soul and Hip Hop in our music like, Louie Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holliday among others.

Flim n’ Foona – Kill It (democlip)
Album: CoffeShop / Released in 2004

Flim n’ Foona – Gypsy (democlip)
Album: A Blues Of Your Boogie / Unreleased

Flim n’ Foona – Another Billie (democlip)
Album: Tiny things That Glows In The Dark / Unreleased

No matter what kinds of music I am involved with i always put my heart and soul into it. Same goes for all members of the P.T.C-Crew. We are musicians and we believe music is one of the greatest tools of mankind. With music you can spread any type of message anywhere and anytime you want. Music moves everything living on this planet and we would be lost without it. Mow get out there and discover music, look for anything you haven’t heard before and I bet it wont take long until you find something that that will move your senses beyond reason.

Stay tuned for “Part 2″ of “Not Rocksteady, Reggae, Dub or Dubstep”

Linksmania:

Trackmania

TrackmaniaNations

LGRFBS Courses for TMN Race 2010

Arize on MySpace

Flim on MySpace

Love an’Blessin’s
/Foona – Studio 5

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