Adam Schneider

music, production, & sound design

https://soundcloud.com/adamschneidermusic/violator-instrumental-demo

Over the past few months I’ve been writing a lot of music and getting ready to launch a new music project/band.  One of the things I sought out to do was create some new and interesting guitar sounds that utilizes live glitching and effects work normally not heard on guitar.  I present this instrumental demo track as a first preview of a lot of exciting new music to come.

 

https://soundcloud.com/adamschneidermusic/hearts-on-fire-darkness-into

It was my Freshman year of college when I first heard Helen Marnie’s voice.  I was hanging out in a newly found friends dorm room when his randomized playlist landed upon Seventeen by Ladytron.  Her delicate and detached tone of voice added a whole new world of depth to song’s sparse lyrics, and ever since then I’ve been a big fan of Ladytron.  I remixed this track off of her debut solo album Crystal World and have made my first foray into the electropop genre.  The song makes heavy use of gigantic dance floor drums and retro-tinged synths (and also marks my first official recorded use of my new Korg Volca Keys).  Hope you have some nice subs because this one really kicks.

 

I embarked on my first tour ever earlier this month with indie rapper B Dolan.  The tour consisted of 10 shows and went from North Carolina all the way up the east coast and concluded in Maine.  Even though I’ve been playing music for a little more than a decade now, this was the first time I was able to perform on a stage every night of the week, and it was everything I hoped it would be.  I love composing and working in the studio, but for me there’s nothing quite like performing.  The thrill of being on stage with a guitar is what ultimately inspired me to pursue music for a living, and I hope I continue to develop that part of career further.

Speaking of which, I’ve been quietly working on a solo album over the past few months and will be wrapping up the demo phase soon and working on the final recordings (along with the live show!)  There are a couple of new editing and recording tricks I’ve been utilizing, so I hope to share some tracks soon so I can talk about what I did.

In other news, I created the alert tones for the recently released messaging app simply titled Emu.  It’s a great app with a lot of cool features, and I highly recommend checking it out.  You can check it out here: http://emu.is/

Been a little while since my last update.

After wrapping up my work on the upcoming Skylanders Swap Force game I took some well deserved time off to relax with my family.  Been getting back into the swing of things, wrapping up work on a series of videos for Kickin’ Kitchen and doing a lot of composition.

Hope to release some more synth patch presets soon.

 

 

Native Instrument’s Pro-53 was one of the first software synthesizers that I got my hands on, and to this day it has a special place in my synth arsenal.  While it’s obviously good for creating retro 80’s strings, basses, and leads; the architecture also lends itself for creating some  pretty wild and unique timbres.

Unfortunately the Pro-53 was discontinued a few years ago, but if you’re lucky enough to own a copy of it, I’ve created a bank of some of my favorite home-made presets as a free download.

Click here to download!

You can check out some examples of the patches in the Soundcloud player below. It’s 100% Pro-53, with no other audio effects or processing used in their creation. Enjoy!

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/98129226%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-uroiK” params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

 

 

I can’t believe it’s June already.  The past few months have been quite a blur, but I mean that in the best possible way.

I hit the ground running doing sound design for an upcoming AAA console game, took on some fun audio contract work for KickinKitchen.tv, and played guitar/synthesizer for two indie hip hop shows down in Rhode Island.  I’ve also been gearing up for the arrival of my second child, which should be happening any day now!

Once all the excitement settles down and I have some free time, I plan on putting up some of my custom-made synthesizer patches and sound libraries for people to download.

Yesterday was my first time going to PAX East.  It’s one of those things I had been meaning to do for a few years, but scheduling conflicts had always gotten in the way.

I got to check out a lot of great new indie games and met a whole bunch of great new people, and even got to jam out a bit to some video game music.  In short, it was awesome.

If you haven’t gone and have even the slightest interest in going, I can’t recommend it enough.

Hope to see you there next year!

The new website is now live!

Feel free to check out examples of my work by clicking on the Portfolio tab, or send me an email by clicking on Contact.

You can also follow me on Twitter to stay up to date with what I’m currently working on by clicking on the link at the bottom of this page.

Finally, an unfathomable amount of thanks goes out to the incredibly talented Jorge Rivera for developing this site.  I very literally couldn’t have done this without him.

What I do

  • Composition Icon

    Composition

    Original scoring and background music in a variety of styles and genres: Rock, Pop, Electronic, & more.

  • Sound Design Icon

    Sound Design

    Custom sound effects, ambiences, and foley for video games, television, and film.

  • Music Production Icon

    Music Production

    Mixing, editing, recording, arranging, and synthesizer programming.

  • Post-production Icon

    Post Production

    Audio editing, file cleaning, and voice-over direction, recording and mixing.

About Adam

Adam is a professional sound designer, composer, and producer based in the Boston area.

After graduating from the Berklee College of Music in 2007 with degrees in both Music Production and Engineering and Music Synthesis, he began to work alongside professional keyboardist David Rosenthal on projects including the broadway musical A Tale of Two Cities and the Billy Joel : Last Play at Shea concerts.

Adam landed his first video game role as an audio designer for Activision’s Guitar Hero handheld titles, and has worked both as a sound designer and composer for video game franchises that include XCOM 2, Marvel, Skylanders, and Transformers.

A self described ‘synthesizer geek’ with a passion for music technology, Adam has also worked in the music instrument industry doing sound design for products by Sonivox, Akai, and Alesis. He writes and performs music with his electronic rock band Big Time Kill and plays a wide variety of instruments including guitar, bass, keyboards, vibraphone, and mandolin.

Contact Me

I’d love to hear from you. If you have any questions or would like to discuss a project, you can contact me by email or use the form and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.