Henning Michael Velten

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MUSIC IS MY LIFE!

This is my message to the indabamusic family : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6akuvKUVOM

Soundminister Michael Velten (36) is born and raised in Norway. Music has always played a big part in his life. From early childhood he was surrounded by music his mom used to listen to a lot. When Mike was thirteen years old he got his first Yamaha synthesizer. From that day life changed. He started to build up his home studio with an Amiga 500 computer, Fostex four track tape machine, Alesis Midi Sequencer and a Kawai Drum Machine. He used his musician friends as test pilots to record and produce music. When he was sixteen years old he joined the local Radio stations in his birth town Kongsvinger. Working as a Radio-DJ gave him insight to a different world and techniques. It didn't take long before he had shown his skills and they gave him full responsibility for the broadcasts. He left the Radio scene after only two years. During this time he also became known to Radio commercial production. After some time they put him in charge to produce commercials.

Band

When Mike was 19 in 1992 he joined a band as a keyboard player. They soon realised his skills as a sound engineer and he produced a few demo tapes with the band. Back then he only had 4 tracks to work with. During the band period in his life he tried to play bass guitar and drums. He droped the bass guitar pretty quick and stayed with the Keyboard and the drums.

Studio

One thing that never changed in Mike's heart was the desire to record and mix music. A good friend had been for some time recording music on eight tracks. This opened Mike's eyes for more possibilities. His friend where using a larger mixer something Mike had only done during live performance.

The computer

Money was short and Mike had to wait before he upgrade his studio. Another friend told him about a computer program that would make recording more fun. The only problem was that the program would not let him use it on the Amiga. He had to make a choice to either save money for the mixer or another computer. One of Mike's friends had a PC he was going to sell cheap. This would give Mike a start. The only thing was that the Pc was missing was a sound card. He made a deal with his friend to pay the PC down over time. The sound card was easy to get. From this day everything changed.

The composer and producer

Mike's written songs for various artists including the group Picazzo from Norway and Ivor Krgo from Bosnia. He produced a 3 song cd for Christel (Norway) in 1999 and an album for a group named Kjagen & Atletene (Norway) in 2004. He also co-produced a cd single with colleague Tommy Michaelsen in 2006 for Raballder featuring Jorun Erdal.

Mastering

In the recording studio you record one song at a time, and the focus of the recording and the mixing engineer is to make each song great. The result, however, is generally a collection of songs that may peak at different levels and may have different EQs. In the post-production phase (called mastering), the mastering engineer unify the CD by using EQ, compression, and other dynamics processing to give it a consistent sound from track to track.

In 1999 Mike used a Mastering Studio in Oslo, Norway. But the price of mastering is extremely expensive. In Norway you have to pay around 1500 - 2000 US dollars to master an album. Only people with money and record companies can afford this. That's why he made up his mind to try and master the next project himself. From that they he has done almost all of the mastering himself. Fast internet connections has made it possible for him to work with people all over the world. His worked with artist from England, Switzerland, Norway, USA, Sri-Lanka, South-America and more.

E-Mastering

The sad truth is that the good old CD format is slowly dying out. The music industry doesn’t want to talk about this, but you can’t run away from the facts. More and more people bye their music online using websites like iTunes, amazone, emusic, y-music, Rhapsody and Napster. A lot of independent artist and small record companies are using online services like Tunecore and CD-baby to sell their music. Electronic Mastering or E-Mastering for short has become more popular the past couple of years. It’s easy and fast. No matter where you are in the world as long as you access to the web, you are good to go. Most of Mike's mastring is in fact E-Mastering.