Travis Dickerson Recording Studio Forum

Hello Everyone.

Let me first of all introduce myself. My name is Niels Berndsen and I\'m from the Netherlands in Europe. I\'m not sure if there are more TDRS music fans from the Netherlands here... but that doesn\'t matter now.

My story starts when the TFTM (TransFormers, The Movie) came out in 1986. I was, long before that year, a huge fan of the series. But with this movie, I came to know the musician who made the score, Vince DiCola. I\'ve been always a big fan of Synthesizer and keyboard music because of it\'s versatily and endless possibilities. The artists that enspired me the most back then where Jan Hammer (Miami Vice theme), Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre. The two I just named last, are kinda in the retro style of synthesizer music. When Vince DiCola was... introduced to me with the score of TFTM, I found finally that specific kind of synthesizer/keyboard style of music that I was looking for... yet to discribe what type of genre it is... still leaves me with a question mark above my head... but I love this style of music.

At TDRS I had bought already the two albums "Falling Off a Clef" and "in - VINCE - ible". To me master pieces for sure. Although I\'ve heard about a double disc version of the entire score of the TFTM and have seen images of the cover of the CD case, I\'ve been unlucky to find it. Although I\'ve just bought two, very very valuable, CD\'s from Vince. " The Protoform Sessions" and "Artistic Transformations". With "The Protoform Sessions". I would like to say to Vince that for several pieces, that you mentioned not making it to the final recording, I was somewhat dissapointed that they did not make it... especially my favourite piece "Evil Decepticon Theme". That piece could have been a great add-on to the movie. After having seen the movie for several times now... it appears that the final result is somewhat rushed.

However... and for those that would like to buy the Album of "Artistic Transformations"... be prepared for a musical Shock.

Recently I\'ve bought a High-end sound System from NAD with DTS, Dolby Digital and THX in it and when I played this album... I can\'t express exactly what came over me, but you have to hear it. It\'s almost like you\'re sitting on the first row right in front of the stage where the music is being played... LIVE! That\'s how good this album sounds. I\'ve heard allot of piano music played by virtuoso\'s like \'Dream Theater\'s\' keyboard artist Jordan Rudess, Dutch Piano Virtuoso Wibi Surjadi and Toon Vijera and Kemal Ultanur who where responsible for several soundtracks made for movie\'s being shown in several Planetaria in Europe.

But non of them compare to the sound on "Artistic Transformations". The sound is pure and I would like to know, as a audio technician\'s point of view, what kind or brand/type of microphone was used in order to record this album. Low key\'s on the piano are purely coming from the Left-side and high notes are coming from the Right. It\'s almost like sitting inside of the Piano... better yet... I\'m feeling as if I\'m sitting in the Piano stool.

Well... this has become a very long Topic introduction so far. To Mister Vince DiCola I would like to wish you all the luck in the future with new projects and I hope that the, much awaited real-life movie of the Transformers in 2007, will have your name on the Movie Score.

To everyone else on this forum and at TDRS-Music I would like to give you my best wishes for 2006.

greetings from Niels Berndsen

Sorry I forgot to mention it, but to some of you this topic seems very the same as the one written by Synthesize. Wel.. maybe some of you had guessed it... I had forgotten my password and had to resign in seeing that I\'ve changed internet profiders a short while ago.

I hope this explains it.

I\'ve got one question for Vince about the "Legacy" song on the Protoform Sessions CD. I\'ve noticed 2 very unique robot like voices on this version. I would like to know which vocoder has been used for this, cause I\'ve heard about a vocoder made by Senheiser, that has only been produced a very short while and that this vocoder was one of the best ever build.

Well... thank you very much in advance for your answer.

Greetings from Niels aka Mixmaster