About
Thank you for visiting my website and for your interest in my services!
My name is Chris, and I've spent the past thirty years immersed in all kinds of digital productions. I'm excited to be a part of your creative projects – whatever you want to accomplish, let's talk about it and find a way to reach your goal! Whether you need help with music production, photography, videography, design, or image editing, I'm here to assist you.
My Activities
Music
Website | YouTube-Channel | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok
Photography
My Philosophy
Do I have a philosophy? I am not sure. But I can tell you I have values. When I work for you, I will put in my best effort, give you my honest opinions, and tell you what I can and cannot do. In the latter case, I will gladly bring suitable partners on board to accomplish the tasks.
I think that the so-called omnipresent AI tools might be helpful for some tasks, like finding that one word with three syllables, ending in “y,” to finally complete the lyrics of a verse. They help with recommending which frequencies to attenuate when mastering a song. They help with removing the annoying McDonald’s bag in the background of a street photo. This is what these tools are made for, in my opinion. But I can’t stand the style of AI tools when they write long texts. I am so fed up with these dull images created by AI being spilled all over the internet. My ears hurt when I have to listen to heartless, empty AI-created music. Unfortunately, much of modern-day pop music is as heartless as AI-created music, produced by huge teams putting out new music like on an assembly line. This will change one day in the future; music and art, in general, will become valuable and precious again like they were before. Very soon, many of us will be fed up with AI-generated stuff and the heartless assembly line type of art, and then the artists will rise again.
And no, I am not the candle salesman trying to condemn the light bulb. But I think creativity is a human capability. Works of creativity and art have to contain heart and emotions. No LLM (or AI) can do this right today, and I doubt they ever will. They will eventually surpass us humans in many tasks; they will calculate faster than we do, read and write texts faster than we do, and analyze photos and data faster than we do. But they will most likely never become as creative as we are in improvising, solving problems, and they will never replace creative geniuses like John Lennon or Andy Warhol.
My Production History
In the late 1980s, my dad bought a Commodore Amiga 500, an incredibly powerful computer for its time. It could do things that were previously only possible on machines costing as much as a car, a huge leap from the Commodore C64 I had been using. The Amiga 500 became my gateway to the digital world, shaping my passions for the decades to come.
Photography and Image Editing
My journey into image editing began with Deluxe Paint III, a bitmap editor that was groundbreaking in the late 1980s. Originally used by LucasArts for games like Monkey Island, DPaint captivated users like me with its advanced features—animation, stencils, brushes—tools we now take for granted in Photoshop.
Since then, a photo editor has been essential to my digital toolkit. I explored newer versions of DPaint on the Amiga, then transitioned to PaintShop and Corel PhotoPaint! on PC. In the early 2000s, I embraced Photoshop, the industry standard, which I continue to use alongside Adobe Lightroom for managing and processing the growing volume of photos from increasingly sophisticated digital cameras and RAW files.
Music Production
NoiseTracker, an early music tracker for the Amiga, sparked my passion for music creation. While I had a Casio keyboard with limited presets, the tracker offered a unique way to combine short samples and build complete songs, despite its technical limitations compared to modern tools.
The Amiga had a soundcard—something that was very expensive and uncommon in the PC world during those days—and thus was able to create somewhat realistic sounds and playback samples. On YouTube, you can check out what the geniuses of the tracker scene were able to create back then—electronic music that still sounds kind of impressive.
In the 1990s, music production was still largely done outside the computer. While Pro Tools existed for big studios, it was expensive and required specialized hardware, and Cubase for Atari ST was beyond my reach. I played in bands, recording on cassette tapes and sharing them at school. My first experience with software resembling modern DAWs came in 1997 with "Techno Maker." After a break from music in the early 2000s, I returned in 2011 to a transformed landscape of powerful DAWs and capable computer hardware. I started with GarageBand, progressed to Logic, and eventually discovered Ableton Live through a YouTube video. Ableton Live, coupled with Push, became my go-to DAW, although I also enjoy using FL Studio and occasionally Logic for larger recording projects.
Technology in General...
The Amiga also introduced me to programming through GFA Basic, which I continued to pursue on PC with various languages.
While not directly related to my studio work, this experience led me to found my first web development company in the late 1990s. Since then, even though I've received a degree in Mathematics, I've still mostly worked in IT-related jobs since then and still do today. Although my studio work is a side business, it's a passion I pursue with dedication and enthusiasm.
Personal Life
And yes, there's life beyond the studio! In my free time, I enjoy spending time with my family (two grown children and a younger one), reading, practicing Wing Chun, playing tennis, and traveling.