Exclusive Interview with Rudy Adrian!

Check out our Exclusive Interview with Rudy Adrian!

This is our 85th post in our Musician of the Day series.

Rudy Adrian is an atmospheric musician from New Zealand who has been creating his own unique style of music for years. His music style is peaceful and ethereal and something different every time you listen to it. His music truly feels like traveling without ever leaving home and there are no end to the beautiful pictures his music can create.



Click here to listen to an excerpt of "Distant Stars"
[audio http://fansiter.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/distantstarsexcerpt-rudyadrian.mp3]

Click here to listen to an excerpt of "Quest for Nostalgia"
[audio http://fansiter.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/questfornostaliaexcerpt-rudyadrian.mp3]

Stephanie: You first started to get into trance music when you were at university, did you start writing immediately after that? Were you already writing music at that time?

Rudy: As a child I think I was always interested in expressive electronic music, stuff written that evoked landscapes and the like. I recall at University in 1984 walking up the stairs to the hostel and hearing some wonderful electronic music and enquiring what it was to be informed it was Oxygene by Jean-Michel Jarre. I didn't have a clue how the music was made, but the idea of programming a machine or computer to do it and be able to tweek it to perfection was a very appealing idea. Once the University gave me access to their recording studios in 1986, I did a lot of dabbling and became a tutor in electronic music in 1988, but I didn't really create many complete pieces that were any good. It took quite a few years to come up with some good techniques and methods of using synthesizers to make the music I wanted to make. In the end it wasn't until 1990 when I loaned money from the bank and bought a very expensive computer (a 1-megabyte MacIntosh Plus) and equally expensive music software and an even more expensive synthesizer (the Yamaha SY77), that I could really start creating music at my own pace in my bedroom, with no worries about having to share the facility with others. I create "SubAntarctica - atmospheric works vol.1" at that time and then spent nearly a decade trying out new ideas before completing two other albums "the Healing Lake" and "Twilight" late in the 1990s. So it didn't happen quickly! After all those years, that equipment is still pretty much what I use today - call me arch-conservative perhaps! But for me the music is more and more just a quest for nostalgia and the creative feelings I felt back in the early days.


Stephanie: Your songs are all very very unique, where does the inspiration for them come from? Do you have a specific place in mind when you write?

Rudy: I think the main inspiration is imagining what a first time listener would make of it. I imagine them receiving the CD in the mail and putting it on their stereo and sitting back and listening to it whilst reading the liner notes. I recall purchasing some Michael Stearns and Steve Roach albums while traveling back to New Zealand from overseas in the mid-90s and listening to it for the first time once I got home. I try and create music for that sort of experience!

But as to what I'm trying to evoke - it's probably just trying to echo the ideas of traveling through various landscapes, pausing to take in the sights here and there. I spend a lot of time just noodling away without recording anything. So it's just little serendipitous discoveries of what a particular synthesizer sound might do that sounds nice that gets a piece started. After that, the piece creates itself, one idea hopefully suggests another accompanying or following idea. I never have any concept of how long the piece will be. This can of course lead to the piece losing focus quite easily. Luckily, over the years I have learned how to avoid many of the destructive cul-de-sacs in this "stream-of-conciousness" type of composing.


Stephanie: Your music was referred to by one fan as “Traveling without leaving home” is that your goal with your music to take people to another place?

Rudy:Yes, the idea of traveling in the mind, or "mind expanding music", as I sometime call it, is a pretty major factor in my music. My newest album is called "Distant Stars" and is coming out early 2010 and is very much about that. It is very much about the the traveling through deep space, with the scenery always evolving around you, sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly.


Stephanie: You are a successful planetarium soundtrack composer, that is an interesting title. What does it entail to write for a planetarium?

Rudy:Actually, I've only once written for a planetarium, and that was a temporary installation! An edited version of that came out on "Kinetic Flow - sequencer sketches vol.1", but the album is now out of print. So, the full-length version is included on the new album "Distant Stars". There normally is a script to follow detailing what scenes occur where and for how long, and you try and make subtle references to them. Things always change after you've made the music, so it does pay to stay subtle. For instance, what was to be a triumphant hero's return for the Apollo astronauts was changed to a whistful look back at Earth from the Moon. Fortunately, no one noticed the music as not being quite right for that scene!


Stephanie: Among your works do you have a favorite? Are any of them more personal than others?

Rudy: Nearly every piece has some nice qualities that I'm happy with, so they are all favourites in a way! There are few pieces I've regretted releasing, simply because on reflection they didn't work. "Secrets in Sahara Sands" on the compilation "Beyond Me" was particularly dire. "Circling Hawk" on "Desert Realms" doesn't quite gel either. "The Legend of Kristy Lynn" on MoonWater isn't my favourite either, but that track is one of the most popular for radio play from that album, so obviously I don't always have a good judge of the music! On the other hand there are a number of tracks that I made that were personal favourites to me that have never been released because they were unanimously disliked by my collection of listeners who "beta-test" my albums before release. I really depend on those guys to be frank in their opinions, and fortunately they usually are!




Stephanie: You used to do sound effects for television shows and movies, was that as fun as it sounds or did it get monotonous? Do you ever have to think of unique ways to create a specific sound?

Rudy: I still do work primarily as a sound designer, although I am more and more doing television camera work and video editing as well. It's never tedious - it's just the right balance between a little bit of creativity and a lot of just "painting by numbers". It's very satisfying work and I'm lucky to have had a job I love for 15 years now. Occasionally I have to create something from scratch. For instance, we didn't have a good sound of an espresso frothing machine, so I created one by filter-sweeping the sound of roaring surf. A lot of sound engineers wouldn't have been able to do that, but if you've fooled around with synthesizer as long as I have, it seemed a very easy and logical thing to do. At other times you end up using a library sound effect that really isn't quite right, and there's not enough time (or need) to make it better, and that can be a disappointment.

Stephanie: What do you do when not creating music?

Rudy: I've spent the last few years doing a lot of what is a popular past-time in New Zealand and that is "renovating" my house. I got builders to shift a number of walls around to make better use of space (we created a whole extra bedroom with the spare space!). That has meant a lot of plastering of holes and painting of walls for me. It's almost finished, but has filled in a lot of time I might otherwise have spent noodling away on the synthesizer keyboards. There's also a large garden outside can always benefit for more gardening! But for pure leisure, nothing beats a nice bike ride on a sunny day at the edge of the surf along the beach, or a walk in one of the nearby pine forests.

Stephanie: Your music is very peaceful and mellow, are you the same way or is your personality different from the music you create?

Rudy: I'm actually very active and always busily running around! Yes, I know some people imagine the music must be designed to get stoned to, or something like that. But that's not the objective. I listen to atmospheric music mainly just to relax for a little bit while reading a book or magazine in the evening before doing the next task ahead.


Stephanie: Do each of your albums have their own tone and feel to them or are they all about the same?

Rudy: I think there's three different styles in my music, and most albums are dedicated mostly to one of those styles. "Atmospheric Music" is well represented on "MoonWater" and "Desert Realms". "Sequencer Sketches" are more about percolating electronic rhythms and floating lead lines and the series of four albums I did for Groove in the Netherlands is representative of that. Then more recently I have interested in "Deep Space Journeys", of which there were two tracks on "Par Avion", and now "Distant Stars" is 76 minutes of just that. Many albums have a little bit of another style to "advertise" my range and give a bit of variation. The Sequencer Sketches albums are a mixture like that, as is "Twilight" The live album "Concerts in the USA" is a collection of original, live pieces not available on any other album, and that has a mixture of styles too.


Stephanie: What are your current projects?

Rudy: Now that I've finished "Distant Stars", I'm keen to start on "The Quest for Nostalgia" - a range of sequencer and atmospheric music created on two analog synthesizers from the mid-80s. So this is created on equipment I first started dabbling. It'll be all done as if created on an "affordable" home synth studio circa 1986. I did a test piece I'm quite pleased with which I've provided an excerpt of with this interview. So I'm looking forward to exploring the nostalgia of that era with the skills I have now!

Stephanie: Is your music different when you perform live?

Rudy: Yes, I don't believe in turning up with a laptop or CD or pre-recorded tracks and playing a simple melody live overtop. For me the satisfaction is in creating a complete sound with nearly every note played live on the keyboard. I've practiced this foe a long time and developed quite a good technique with delay pedals and just a few simple pre-recorded sequencer patterns and lots of adjustment of timbre with various knobs. I haven't played live since 2002, but I'm thinking of a doing a few small concerts for listeners in New Zealand after "Distant Stars" comes out early 2010. The music is similar in style to that of my albums, but is still unique and somewhat improvised on the spot, so nothing like, say Jean Michel Jarre who just plays his greatest hits live.

Click here to listen to an excerpt of "Distant Stars"
[audio http://fansiter.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/distantstarsexcerpt-rudyadrian.mp3]

Click here to listen to an excerpt of "Quest for Nostalgia"
[audio http://fansiter.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/questfornostaliaexcerpt-rudyadrian.mp3]

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