The most prescious moment is to make music!

The most prescious moment is to make music!

19 November, 2007 | 10.22AM

• Written by: chaishop
• Filed under: Music News : klangstrahler

Nowadays, it happens pretty often that you listen to 10 brand new releases and get the impression that everything sounds the same — it’s just like the artists copied each other.

And, in fact, many do…

Gero Bode, the founder of Klangstrahler Projekt, consequently developed his own individual style, which is unique on the one hand, and hard to copy on the other.

Sam met this very innovative guy for an interview.

Hi Gero! Klangstrahler Projekt has released very successful albums in 1999 and 2000 and now you are releasing your new album so I am wondering: What did you do in the past 7 years?

I was deejaying around for a long time and I didn’t learn to organize my time, so I lost time to produce music by doing my DJ thing.

I started with producing in 2001, but it took a very long time to finish this production.

You are different from most of the other progressive trance productions, and being different seems to be quite important these days, right?

I hope so.

That was one of the points I was trying to reach in my complete music career: to be original and have original sound that is not so easy to copy for others.

So when I look around, I can hear that someone has a new idea and 20 others are starting to copy this idea.

I had a very good teacher, Klaus Schulze, and he said to me, “If you don’t want to be copied, make it like George Gershwin — it’s not possible to copy this guy.”

It was also my first Cubase — you know, it was called Notator in the beginning — he gave it to me three months before it was released, and I was buying this Atari ST computer especially to use this program.

It’s a very nice story, but very long.

How do you try to be different? How do you achieve that?

This is the part of the story.

Klaus Schulze said to me, “Go home find your own style, and then you can come back.”

I did not know what this guy meant.

My own style… what is it?

It’s not so easy to find the result of this lesson.

I was first thinking I’d stop making music, because I had no idea to make this, but then I decided that it’s a lot of fun and joy to make music — not to sell it or however not to be famous.

It’s a lot of fun and joy to make it simply.

And a few years later the first people said to me, “Oh, when I listen to one of your tracks I realize that it’s from you!

I hear it from the first tones.”

And then I had the idea: Maybe this is my own style.

On your album, you collaborated with many other artists. Maybe some words about this?

The most joyful moment in making music is to make music with other people, together!

Sometimes tears are running down my face when I hear what these people are playing, and in most of the cases I have an idea and make a backing with music, and these guys are jamming to my backing.

This moment is the only time when I can listen to my own music without knowing what happens next.

This is a very joyful moment, I can tell you!

The most precious moment is not to release an album or to sell it or to be famous or something else — the most precious moment is to make the music.

There are a lot of musical genres on your album, which is unusual for progressive trance productions. Are you trying to reach other musical scenes with your album?

Yes, I’m trying, because I want to reach everyone, because there has to be something inside for everyone.

What I don’t like is to set borders and to say, “This may not be in this kind of music.”

It’s like a challenge to have things which may not be in this music, and for me it’s a challenge to make it possible to bring these things together with this music.

This challenge also exists for Theodora, this mezzo soprano singer.

For her, it was also a challenge to make something like I do, and she did it for the first time in her life and for her it was a very exciting experience like for me.

This time you founded your own label, Klangstrahler Records. Why did you start your own label?

For a lot of reasons.

I saw a lot of labels went down, a lot of distributions went down and they took the artists with them.

I have to protect myself if I want to go on with making music, and I have to make sure that when I sell music that I get the money for it and not other people sell the music, take the money and I get nothing.

The last releases were quite successful. How many pieces did you sell?

From the last two albums? Much more then 5,000 from each album.

How much do you want to sell this time?

As much as possible, I guess!

It’s kind of difficult, so we have some distributors around and they are close to a monopolistic situation.

They sell records very cheap, but my record is not such a cheap production, so it’s not possible for me to sell it very cheap.

We started our website where you can buy the album online, so this is a try.

This is a very interesting idea, so I can sell it a little cheaper to the people directly; they get the music cheaper and I make more money, and this is good for both sides.

Direct from the artist to the listener...

The problem is to tell the listener that the album is there.

From the whole production, 70% of the whole cost is only in promotion and making an internet site.

This is a high risk.

Maybe it’s interesting for the people: We had to pay only for the internet sites and the promotion and to press the CDs and so on, we had to pay 20.000 Euros for that stuff.

I hope that we will get the money back!

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