Click here to listen to the EP! 2009 is an EP inspired by sketches I recorded during that year in Mexico and Scotland. The challenge for this month’s EP was to record at least one track only using ukulele and vocals. I ended up recording 1.5 (LA and Fin, the latter having a few more instruments build in during the middle section). This is the last EP from project 12 so I decided to make it a bit…
Click here to listen to the EP! 2022 is an EP inspired by sketches I recorded during that year in Belgium. The challenge for this month’s EP was to bounce all tracks via cassette tapes before mastering. I failed. Kind of. The resulting audio was very interesting, with some artifacts here and there, a bit of tape wobble, warmer audio, and a bit of harmonic saturation, everything I hoped for… EXCEPT…
Click here to listen to the EP! 2011 is an EP inspired by sketches I recorded during that year in Mexico and Scotland. The challenge for this month’s EP was to compose all the tracks using a maximum of 4 channels in the DAW. This often meant using the vocal channel (during spaces) to add an additional solo guitar or other instruments. I did allow myself to use stereo channels to bounce down…
Click here to listen to the EP! 2020 is an EP inspired by sketches I recorded during that year in Belgium. The challenge for this month’s EP was to compose all the songs with piano first. It ended up being twice as challenging as I had knee surgery and had to record most of it from bed, but in the end it came out better than I expected. One of the things I noticed is the style of composing depends…
Click here to listen to the EP! 2012 is an EP inspired by sketches I recorded during that year in Scotland and Mexico. The challenge for this month’s EP was to use only vocals, no instruments (real or virtual); it was a lot of fun but very exhausting, yet I allowed myself the use of plenty of effects to achieve a fuller and more interesting soundscape. The end result is quite weird, even by my…
Click here to listen to the EP! 2015 is an EP inspired by sketches I recorded in 2015 in Belgium and the US. The challenge for this month’s EP was to use a different DAW (digital audio workstation) than I am used to, which was tougher than I expected. After trying out a few free DAWs I realised I’d settle for GarageBand on the mac. It took me 3 weeks just to get into the flow, but once I got into…
Click here to listen to the EP! 2018 is an EP inspired by sketches I recorded in Belgium during that year. This month’s EP challenge was the opposite of the last one: Instead of purely acoustic recordings I went for fully-electronic. Only samples, loops, VSTis, built-in instruments, not a single second of anything recorded on my microphone. It ended up being a bit synth-waveish with a touch of…
Click here to listen to the EP! 2016 is an EP very loosely based on sketches I recorded in 2016 in Belgium. The drafts were too simple and I thought I could make something better, so I set myself a few challenges for this release: Everything acoustic, no VSTis (only effects), and no vocals. It was a challenge for sure but I love how Sunlight Jacket turned out (the first track) which gives me the…
Click here to listen to the EP! 2019 is an EP based on sketches I recorded in 2019 in Belgium, which is arguably the best year of my life; Having travelled to the US, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland and other places, running a marathon, amongst many other things, it was a year full of crazy high notes and a few shocking moments. I tried to capture some of that vibe in these 4 tracks. Thanks for…
Click here to listen to the EP! 2013 is an EP based on sketches I recorded in 2013 in Mexico during a very tumultuous year. Juggling owning a business, figuring out my future, dealing with massive amounts of stress, yet at the same time having on of the most epic years of my life, led to a lot of interesting and weird compositions during this time. I wish I had more time to post about the creation…
Click here to listen to the EP! It is based on sketches I recorded in 2014 when I moved to Belgium and subsequently went on a month-long trip to Australia. It was a turbulent time in my life, so the cover represents this time, a bit of a blur; things changing too fast, people coming and going, life being turned upside down. The quality of this album is a bit more chaotic than my previous release,…
Click here to listen to the EP! It is based on sketches I recorded in 2010 in Scotland. The topics include moving to a new country, meeting new people, adapting to a new culture, the feeling of things changing, and saying goodbye to friends. Of course there are deeper topics in the lyrics, but I’ll leave this to the listener to spin their own story around these songs. Thanks for listening and I…
Click here to listen to the album! If you’d like to read the story behind the album you can click here . Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoy it! Sign up to the newsletter to receive new album updates: Email: Name: And feel free to follow @lemiffe if you enjoy the album: Spotify Follow @lemiffe
When you keep moving around and you don’t have a studio (or most of it is locked in storage for over a year), it can be quite difficult to record an album, let alone keep momentum high and deliver it in a reasonable timeframe. This is the backstory for FRUTAL, coming out on the 9th of August. In early July 2022, Pyrathee — who’s been a friend of mine for over 20 years — had me over to his house.…
This is a list of tools, VSTs, services, websites and research on AI music generation. Last updated: 30/Mar/2024. I’ve divided the list into four areas: Research, Websites & Services, AI vocalists, VSTs & Plugins for DAWs. There is quite a varied use of AI models across the board, the first section primarily focuses on prompt to music, aka “ChatGPT for music”, but there are also tools and VSTs…
It’s funny how sometimes you’ll have a spark of an idea, to create something small like a sketch, or a little art project, or a small video series, or an EP, or a web app. Something not too big, yet large enough to convey a message, to craft a little world, to tell a story with changing themes, to hold and express sentiment like a roller-coaster at sunset with a glistening bay in view, going up…
As the weeks pass by after finishing this book, I realise more and more how perturbing the experience was. It’s like a lingering nightmare from nights gone by which looms every night, threatening to return while you sleep, to terrorise your dreams with a complex distorted reality of cold, coats, toads, rabbits, cows and “the other side”. The Discomfort of Evening, known in Dutch as De Avond is…
I just came back a few days ago from spending a week in Krakow, and what a beautiful city it is. With an amazing historic city centre, and lots to do around the city, it is well worth visiting. I recorded quite a bit of footage with the intent of making a somewhat experimental video. Instead of being your standard vlog narrating our strolls around the city, food, and landmarks, it takes a…
Note: This book review has minor spoilers (specially towards the end)! I’m years late to reading this book. I bought it for my sister around 2019, because I thought the title was a bit edgy and maybe had a few glimmers of insight and protocols to deal with life, social situations, stress, anxiety, and the seemingly overwhelming need to perform and put on a face that has become ever-increasing in…
Every year on the first of October a band (which gets together with the sole purpose of making a record) meets in a studio and records an album in a day, or 12 hours to be precise. It has become a bit of a ritual to listen to the album upon release, just out of mere curiosity. The act of making music or art under constraints has always intrigued me, and music is even harder because you can so…
I’ve been on call for about 10 years. I wanted to share a few thoughts on this, such as: Managing stress, how things change over time, and how the tech landscape and architecture change the scope of responsibilities of the person who is on call. When I was asked to be on call nearly a decade ago, we had about 4-5 people who were selected as the group to be on call. This would mean we’d need to be…
When I was younger, I once told my dad I was using word to discover all the synonyms to try to write more interestingly. Many of those words have stayed with me over the decades, such as epitaph, serendipitous, agglomeration, languidly, tartar, preamble, estrafalario (another word for bizarre, in Spanish), among many others. He replied that it is better to use easier-to-grasp words when possible,…
More than 15 years ago I wrote a blog post called “how to use 100% of your brain”. It was a bit click-baity as the intention was to illustsrate that we already use 100% all the time, and it included a few references. The intention was mostly to inform people who had grown up with the fables of “we only use a small percentage of our brain, imagine what we could do if we could use all of it?”… I…
Note: This book review has no spoilers! This was a great book, I listened to the audio book which, in my opinion, is how this book should be digested. As it is narrated by the voice behind Bob from Bob’s Burgers, the narration style is perfect, the jokes, the sarcasm, the self deprecation, everything carries flawlessly as if listening to Bob on an extended episode. One of the downside is there is…
Note: This book review has no spoilers! I ordered the paperback edition on Amazon, translated by Constance Garnett. After a few days I noticed it would take a couple of weeks to arrive, so I got the digital version in the meantime, as I didn’t want to be late for our monthly book club. The introduction was a bit overly complex, too much information about the stories which you haven’t even read. I…
I watch from the end of the hallway the window panes in the kitchen, the glowing light like an orange candle at play, or a bronze saucepan in the glistening sun of a hot noon in May. The colours, warm with all sorts of shades, from bronze, to gold, to rust, to clay. As I got up from bed, on the other side of the house, I couldn’t yet see the light, yet as I walked out into the hallway it…
Both physically and on the internet. Physically I went to Ireland for 6 months which was quite an interesting experience. I lived in the beautiful little town of Carrick-on-Shannon, about 2/3 of the way between Dublin and Sligo. The thing that will stay with me the most was the absolute lack of running infrastructure when leaving any town, the roads are built for cars, not for bikes nor for…
The walls of your eyelids, painted dreams, colours, textures, moving pictures, except when you return, you see red pulsating structures… in this in-between state, you let go, you dream, you come back, red, what’s the difference? where do you dream? what is an image? where’s the seam? the border between imagination and what we perceive. If we can dream asleep, can we dream awake? not as in…
Antimony is out now! You can check it out here: Spotify Apple Music SoundCloud Thank you so much for all the support, I love it when I receive comments about my tracks, or when you share my music with other people. If often look at the stats in Spotify and find people streaming it from all sorts of places… Super cool! Story Setting: Earth, 2010s. Concept: An album about computers, politics and…
The track “Methane Dreams (V3)” from my latest album Antimony contains a section in the middle which is essentially a speech I wrote independently of the song. I later incorporated it into the song as I realised the rhythm and song concept worked well together. I wanted to lay it out here and go a bit more into detail with what I mean with each section, as it could be easy to misinterpret. Before…
Karaf , my latest album, is out now! Click here to listen to the album! If you’d like to read the story behind the album you can click here , and you can read the lyrics here , or on each individual song on Soundcloud. Thanks a lot to everyone who helped with the production, mixing and reviews of the album, as well as the_vicken for the album art. I really appreciate your support! Sign up to the…
All the Other Times Where are you (4x) Summer has gone dreaming on, brother. Autumn has come, full of fun. Dance with the dog, lie on the floor, he passes out. Where are you? Where are you? All the other times, we were the sons it was a mystery, hope it never - hope it never ends. Where are you? Where are you? All the other times, we were the men it was a mystery, hope it never - hope it never…
Making an album is always a weird, convoluted process. For some people it might be a week at a studio recording previously rehearsed material, for others it might be sitting in front of a computer computer every night for weeks with a midi keyboard and a bunch of VST, but for this album the process was very different to how I usually work. It started off as a demo I made back in 2005 using Mod…
Gone, is the vibrant community Beautiful neighbourhood Scattered bricks, crumpled roads. Bent pipes releasing toxic gases are left to inhabit this land today. One wonders how it all began when and how it will all end, and what became of the people Who lived in the town that was. by Diana M. Helm The weather was cloudy, almost threatening to rain. More and more cars arrived at the parking area. A…
Dear YouTube, You have done so much to enable creators to make and share exciting videos, whether that be mini series, cooking shows, films, music videos, news, podcasts, top 10s, documentaries, you name it. Many communities have spawned around channels and topics, with comment sections ranging from support, to fully-blown drama. And whilst there is quite a lot of trolling, the positive and…
Hello, it’s been a while, I know. Finally got around to publishing something new :) The EP is a short one (2 songs), based on Synthwave/Outrun. I composed it on the way to Iași in Romania (and on the way back). I’m currently working on a video for the first song. Trivia: What are the encoding for the names of the songs? Listen to the EP on any of these services: Spotify iTunes / Apple Music…
Here are a few thoughts and things I noticed while visiting Reykjavik, Iceland in 2016. Some of these might serve as travel tips if you are thinking about visiting soon. Hotdogs are absolutely epic . Someone on a tour mentioned they are actually a danish rip-off, but in Denmark they use red larger sausages apparently. I’ve seen similar variations in the north of Mexico, but also with larger…
New EP is out today! Available this week on Spotify, Apple Music, and most other popular streaming services. It’s a bit experimental so I don’t expect you too like it very much if you aren’t into both electro-funk and death metal. The preparation & inspiration Inspired by EDM, metal, psychedelic rock like Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, Snarky Puppy Took over half a year of fiddling around with ideas and…
After three months of work I’ve finally released #414749 , my 12th album. The album is a jamboree of genres, albeit not intentionally so. I just let each song take it’s style and route based on how it felt, kind of like when writers let the story go on it’s way without trying to strictly determine the fate of it’s subjects. The result is a bit strange obviously, I’ve received a few comments like…
Hey everyone! I’ve finally decided to post my latest EP here. It is a bit experimental (as usual) combining rock, metal, electronica, and new-age. Most of the comments I’ve heard are ‘this is too strange for me’, but I don’t mind :) Check it out on Spotify Enjoy!
On the 9th of April 2014, I closed my business, packed my bags, and flew to Belgium, after struggling with my startup for roughly 2 years. This is a story about shortcomings, failures, and personal mistakes I made during those years. There are plenty of articles about failed startups, describing postmortems in detail, so with this story I aim to take a more personal side, describing my feelings…
SAAS companies seem to fulfil almost every need lately; from VCS to mailing, from authentication to screen sharing, from image and video processing to caching and app hosting. Interestingly enough, a lot of these companies offer basic tiers for free, so it is becoming increasingly possible to launch a web application where most of the work is done by 3rd parties, with a minimal budget. I started…
My hard-drive crashed last Saturday, which kind of pissed me off as I was planning on spending Sunday playing online with one of my mates. So I spent Sunday and Monday formatting and re-installing everything. To my surprise : I didn’t actually loose anything. I hadn’t realised how much of my data actually lives on the cloud. It turns out 100% of my data lives “up there”. Over the years I guess…
I got stuck for hours the other day with this problem. I’ve used triggers for years in SQL Server without a problem, however, in MySQL the implementation is a bit iffy. One problem I ran into yesterday while trying to restore a database was error 1235: ERROR 1235 (42000) at line 1408: This version of MySQL doesn’t yet support ‘multiple triggers with the same action time and event for one table’ I…
. Just last week Glenn Greenwald was detained for 9 hours at Heathrow airport as being a “terrorism suspect”. What on earth is happening? A bug has been found , or more like hundreds of bugs, and they have been unfixed, even though the issues have been raised. Typically, socio-political changes occur on a massive scale. Democratic republics become dictatorships, whole countries become communist…
I was quite amused by a G+ post written by Google co-founder Sergey Brin today, which in summary, says the following: I must confess, I am dreading today’s elections. Not because of who might win or lose. But because no matter what the outcome, our government will still be a giant bonfire of partisanship. In fact, I have thought the same for some time now. Just before the Mexican elections, I had…
I wanted to upload a simple website based on HTML, CSS and JS files, with a few images, and a favicon. So I registered at Heroku, bought a domain name, followed the Heroku instructions on how to set up the “Toolbelt” and GIT. So I thought I was all set up: I created a folder with an index.html page, with the text “Coming Soon…”. I set up the repository, and tried to commit to Heroku, only to…
A couple of weeks ago I was asked to develop a mobile application with data access in ASP.NET. Naturally, I did a bit of research, tried out a few things, and finally came to the conclusion that .NET framework 4.0 was the best choice. So I got down straight to development, using Jquery Mobile Framework , ASP.NET with .NET 4.0, MVC3 , ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.1 , and ASPX (web forms). It was easy…
Over four years ago I started making plans to come to Edinburgh, UK, to study a master degree. Naturally, I did some research into the city beforehand and found out that one of the major local issues was the construction of a tram network that would run from the airport all the way to the city centre. I remember reading that a large percentage of the locals opposed the tram system, partly because…
Over the past few days we have seen violence escalate dramatically in different cities across England, with London being the primary location. Acts of violence, rioting, looting, and arson have taken place at night for several days. I have been attached to the BBC News coverage through their website and I saw an interesting tweet posted there: At first I thought. Pre-empt where the next bout would…