The whole thing started back in 1979, when my parents bought me a hammond style "Yamaha"-organ for Christmas. Three months later, little "Rich" became 10 years old, and allready then it became very clear, that keyboards would change his life for ever. From now on, equiped with some headphones to save my mother's nerves, at least five hours every day were spent hammering on those two keyboards, resulting in quickly growing skills but also resulting in an early state of tinitus...
Two years later, Santa Claus struck again, and the first synthesizer had been lying under the Christmas tree. A "Roland JUNO-6", with a built in arppergiator, and some really fat acid styled filters. From now one, the organ played only the second part in my life, and ACID WAS BORN!
In the age of 13, I bought my first drumm machine (Roland Dr. Rhythm), and shortly after that, the organ was sold, and a "Tascam" 4-Track Recorder joined my modest equipment.
Inspired by records like "Pump-up the Volume" and the legendary "Blastmaster Radio"-album, I started to make my first little steps in "home-recording".
A lot of "lo-fi" shit, that I really don't want to publish here, had been "produced" during the next 4 years.
In the age of 17, I bought my first computer, an "ATARI ST". But with the lack of some music software, the ATARI couldn't be used in a reasonable way for the next 3 years, and it just served as a "dust-catcher"...
As I had been very busy learning for my final school examn these days, music didn't play e very big role, though...After finishing school, around my 21st birthday, I left home and got my first own appartment.
The interesting part of the story was now really ready to begin! But the turning point was definitely, that I bought STEINBERG's sequencer software "24", which enabeled me to compose my very first MIDI track, unrecorded though, but allready "hammering" like the music that would become my live for the next 10 years!
During the next 2 years, a new sequencer software (Steinberg's "Creator"), my first Sampler (a "Roland S-220" with 1Mb Ram...), a new synth ("Roland JD-800"), a drummachine ("Roland R-8") and a "Samick" 16-channel mixer joined me at my new appartment. The first techno parties in my home-town Basel inspired me to compose my first techno tracks in 1992 ("Beathoven", "Uboot", "Backdraft").
It was also in the year 1992 when I first met Matthias Schweizer, a local song writer, artist and composer. We quickly became friends, and it had been Matt's idea to realize a dance music project together.
With loads of nights of working and very little sleep, some 2 demo tracks have been handcrafted together in 10 days at my modest home-recording studio ("Beathoven"-remix, and "Endless Love"). With the swiss record label "Fresh Music" ("DJ Bobo"...), a producer was finally found, and our first commercial music project was ready to be launched: C.O.B - The Cult Of Bass
But "Gutze" Gautschi, our producer from Fresh Music wasn't very happy about these demo tracks... As the record had to be commercial, at least one track had to include vocals and Rap elements ("2Unlimtited", and "DJ Bobo" had charted with similar track that time...). Therefore we received the opportunity to go to a professional studio - Matthias Blauensteins "FunBox" Studio, in Basel.
Belive it or not, but we realized our first 22 minutes Maxi Single, consisting of 4 tracks, in only two days of studio work — with a budget of CHF 1200!
For the vocals, Matt's cousine (today a well known hard-rock singer...) was found the ideal voice of C.O.B, and a 40 yeard old native english studio technician, Dave, helped us out with the Rap sequences.
As most of the studio time had been spent on the track "Paradise", and time was running out, we just mixed-down the home-recorded demo tracks
"Beathoven, remix", "Endless Love, orig. version" and "Backdraft" and put it on the maxi single...what an ignorance, we thought!
But as the record was released 1993, the first edition of 700 Maxi-CDs was sold out in one week only! What a success!! If we had sold 1000 pieces in one week,
we would have entered the swiss Pop-Charts. But as FreshMusic hadn't been able to deliver some more 300 CD's within the next week, all our chances went down the drain very quickly.
Although, until today, some 6500 pieces of the record had been sold all over Europe — not that bad, for the first record!
In the year 1994, we released the vinyl album "Bakkdraft", with the songs "Bakkdraft (The Real Trauma Hardcore Remix)", "Paradise" and "Killing in the name of love". In the same year, we also had the opportunity to perform live in some clubs in Germany and Switzerland. But as our music had been quite to hard and fast for this time, disco people (used to dance to slow tracks from "Snap", "Haddaway", "DJ Bobo" etc.), didn't really know how to dance to our 160bmp tracks...
That time, we also spent a lot of time at "FunBox"-studio, to produce another commercial LP.
Several remix versions of the track "Endless Love" should have been produced. A rapper from London and e several singers were hired (among them Tania Dankner - today well known, but in these days a rookie...) , but with no usable results.
And so, after some heavy internal struggles, 3 weeks of studio work and CHF 12'000 later, the producer, Daniel Platisa from "Q-Lab Productions" decided to stop the whole project.
Matt and I didn't speak a single word from that day on for several years...
The Cult Of Bass was dead!
1994, separated from Matt, I restarted to work on my own again. Armed with some brandnew equipment, like a 48-Track mixer from "Behringer" and a new "MAC" computer, I created some quite nice tracks in these days: Trance, Hardcore, Experimental - tracks far away from any commerciality.
Two years later, I met for instance Daniel Platisa from Q-Lab, who had finally his own small semi-pro studio, located in the basement of Matt Schweizers Records- and Fashion-shop "Faro", in Basel. Daniel and me started to work together more often from that time on. The very first project of Daniel an me was the track "Brainscan". A song that was planned to be Goa-Trance styled, but after some very long and funny nightst, turned out to be a very hard progressive Acid Track, which was finally released on DJ Damien's EP "Vizdom".
I think it was in 1996, when Daniel took over the former "Fun-Box" studio and built his first own professional studio, the "Q-Lab Studio", in Basel. Meanwhile, House-Music had become "hip" in Switzerland. I never really liked House, but to be a "state of the art" producer, I had to compose some house stuff, I thought. So in 1997, some funky house shit was produced... The only released tracks in that time were a hard club mix of "Tony Davis's - Misterio" and Platisa/Schweizer's "What (the fuck) is sex".
Also in 1997, I moved to a new, huge appartment, where I had the possibility to finally build my own private semi-pro recording studio - "RichBitch Productions". But as it is often in live: The more you have, the less you use it. And exactly the same happened to me and my music. Where 1992 I only had a few synths and a old computer, but the tracks had been some how intelligent, unique, often very long an full of good ideas, in the new studio, filled with tons of equipment, the tracks became simpler an boring. It seemed, that my "carreer" had com to an end. Burned out, and without any good ideas for new tracks (house music was still in all clubs...), I decided to pause a little bit.
It was in the year 1999, when a good friend of mine, Torsten Resch aka "DJ Race Face", asked me wether I would be interested in a goa style live-act project, together with him. As we both liked to play hard and rhythmic tracks, and we both were using Rolands "MC-505", we decided to try to use as few equipment for our Project as possible: Were as most of the worlds celebrated Techno Live-Performances as "Juno Reactor", "Der Dritte Raum" a.o. use a rather huge equipment with tons of synthesizers, samplers, computers and mixers, Seelensee decided to show the rest of the world that one really can do miracles with much smaller and cheaper equipment! When you hear it, you won't belive that all of Seelensee's tracks are live performed using only two Roland "MC-505" and one "TB-303"!!
So, the project "Seelensee" started finally on the PSYCHEDELIC OPEN-AIR at the Langenerlen park in Basel 31.7.1999. First time together on the stage, the success was so big, that we decided to perform together also in the future. Some nice live performances in Clubs like the "Utopia" or on the huge open-air pool-party "Nautilus" followed, and three live albums have been released. Check out the special seelensee website at www.seelensee.ch for more details on this.
Like everything in nature, also the RichBitch aera had to come to an end. That happened on the day when I founded my own company "GRmedia GmbH", in the year 2001, and suddenly no time was left for music.
In consequence, I have sold nearly all my equipment, and my age had increased slowly towards 36. Only the Roland "MC-505", a new "MC-909" and a Sampler survived...just in case RichBitch returns one day and likes to kick some more beats...
It was in the year 2011, with the age of 42, when I bought the KORG "Electribes ESX-1" and "EMX-1".
In consequence, a first track ("Something strange is happening") was composed very quickly.
In February 2012, I've bought a "Mac Book PRO", and after more than 10 years, I started again composing my songs entirely in Logic PRO. Since then, I have composed almost 20 Tracks, and more will come for sure.