General update from Bjorn

Hi all! Thanks for reading my blog, here's a general update on my music, future projects, etc.

As many of you know, I relocated to Norway this summer after spending more than 10 years in the UK. I was afraid I wasn't going to have enough work after my relocation, but in fact the opposite has been the case. I have been so busy working on "music to order" that I've hardly had time for working on my own personal music project. In one way it's frustrating. I have so many musical ideas in my head, so many things I want to do. I want to finish my next CD, which is about 70% ready but let's face it -- the first music for that CD was written already back in 2002! Now I have to compose and produce maybe 3 or 4 more tracks for it, and then I plan to release it as a self-published CD, like I did with Colony, Return to Witchwood, etc.

Over the years, as my economic responsibilities have grown, I've had to face the fact that I have to do the regular paid audio jobs before I can have fun and do my own CDs. The fact of the matter is that I've never really made much money on my CDs. In most cases I've just covered the costs and earned a very small profit -- certainly not economically "worth it" for the months and years of work that go into producing a CD worth of music. So my solo albums has always been something I've done, not for the money, but for the enjoyment of it, and for the feedback from fans who buy them and support me. But I've always had as a minimum requirement that the costs are covered. If ever the time comes when I can't even recouperate my costs involved with making a CD, then I'm just packing it in. I hope that doesn't happen. :-)

I have just finished a work contract for the in-game music for the game "Worms" on Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. Right now I'm working on the synchronized music and sound effects for some funny cartoon "FMV" (full motion video) sequences for the same game. I plan to finish that in about 3 weeks from now.

In between I have also been doing some smaller contracts, producing General MIDI sound effects and music for a game company called Gamesys, who work a lot in online games and mobile games. Have you ever tried creating a "ball rolling" sound effect with General MIDI?! Let me tell you, it's no fun! :-). Additionally I have just delivered some voiceover (vocal recordings with pro voice actor) to Wildsnake Software for one of their upcoming games.

As always, I am using a lot of time maintaining, upgrading and accounting for my online royalty-free music site. (www.shockwave-sound.com). This is currently taking about half of my time. The rest of the time I am working on these contracted game music jobs, and finding very little time (okay, no time) to work on my "personal" music and my next CD. It's almost at the point where I wish I had a few weeks or months without any paid contract jobs, so that I could realize some of the many musical ideas and urges I have to write my own stuff and finish my next CD. Maybe after I finish my current jobs, eh?

In addition to finishing my current CD, I also want to start work on a planned CD with "classic" electronic music, more old-school retro electronica like Tangerine Dream, based on a lot of repeated sequences and ambient, pulsating synthesizers etc. This is something that I'm really feeling a strong urge to work with at the moment, so hopefully I can start to work on a CD with that kind of stuff... I just have to finish my current CD first! (And then see if anybody wants to buy it) ;-)

Well, thanks for reading, keep your eyes on my blog for future updates, and if you would like to be notified when my next CD is released, please make sure that you join my mailing list.

All the best,
- Bjorn