A small memorial for HG Fortune
Some infos and picture about HG Fortune:
www.hgf-synthesizer.com/aboutcontact.htmlwww.emportal.info/viewtopic.php?p=89294&sid=8ef9fe3b974b0b72d18b1356788c9af3Pic 1: HG Fortune live in Bevern/Forst 1976 with Aldebaran
Pic 2: HG Fortune with H2S+E live in Northeim 1984 with his dreamteam: SCI Pro One & Roland TR 808
Pic 3: HG Fortune in his home studio
He died way too early the age of just 60 after a short but severe desease
Some infos copied from his homepage which probably will be closed in the near future:
About HGF-Synthesizer as an enterprise:Basically this is a small one man enterprise being constantly active now for over 9 years.
In
fact I'm handling any business related stuff - besides creating plugins
and samples - such as maintining websites, public relation stuff,
processing orders and customer emails etc. all by myself. The only
helping hands are a few friends doing patches, demo tracks, and
occasionally some GUI graphics.
As I'm doing some
very special plugins which will only attract a certain and limited range
of users this is rather not going to be big business at all. But this
does have some advantages making it easier to stay in business. Thus one
can keep costs low which means you won't get into (financial) trouble
so easy. Big business means there are big expenses and the (fairly
constant) pressure to make big money so you have to ensure to serve the
taste of the masses. On the small level you don't have such pressure
instead you have far more creative freedom to do even some more
unconventional stuff like e.g. the HGF Music Machines.
Doing
fairly unconventional stuff together with the typical HGF sound has
become kinda trademark of HG Fortune. And, besides doing quality plugins
at reasonable i.e. moderate prices putting out fully usable free versions is making fame far bigger than actual business.
But each sale does count and does show some real support of my work and helps to carry on - thank you!
It all started in the early 70iesMy
first inspiration to do music myself came in 1971 when I listened to
the German band "Xhol". In that time they were doing long, floating
improvisations very good to drift into other dimensions. Further
Influences came from Hawkwind, Amon Düül II, Nektar, Tangerine Dream,
Klaus Schulze etc. just to mention only the better known.
From
1974 - 1977 we had a band called Aldebaran which started as a
Rock-combo but at the end of 1975 changed to an electronic formation
utilizing organs, synthesizer, e-guitars and a very little percussion.
There had been a few regional performances til mid 1979.
Aldebaran live in Bevern/Forst 1976:
HG Fortune - A. Tacke - M. EigelshovenIn 1983/84 the next project started together with Horst "Dorian"
Schaefer as H2S+E. Quite soon Mathias Eigelshoven from Ex-Aldebaran
joined on bass-guitar. We did some kind of experimental rockmusic as a
synthesis of rock and electronic. After several succesful performances
the band split due to Horst's moving to Vienna/Austria and this led
to my change of placeas well.
HG Fortune with H2S+E live in Northeim 1984 with his dreamteam: SCI Pro One & Roland TR 808About HG Fortune: Background of my musical and algorithmic work. Actually
all arose back in the early 90ies when I was developing some kind of
tool the "generate" music from horoscope-data. It was then when I
developed my very own system of algorithmic composition. This had been
working quite well. For the technical interested visitors: the music was
done with quite "simple means": Kawai K11, Kawai K4 & K4R, Peavey
DPM V2, some Juno 106 and JX8P, a Kawai RV4 as FX-Unit. In 1996 that
system was running fine and a release of 4 CDs was unfortunately
cancelled as the label quite unexpectedly stopped its activities.
Due
to different circumstances that system lay dormant for several years
and there was a slight change in profession leading me to work as a
freelance editor for some German mags (Fachblatt, Keyboards, PC &
Musik, Sound & Vision etc.) Next musical activities happened in
January 2000 with a solo-performance as "Sonic Sorcerer" in the
well known "Rheingarten" in Bonn.
In May 2003 I did some kind
of music for a good friend of mine as a help to get asleep and that led
my focus back to my old algorithmic system as I did use some material
from that work. As well I utilized some material from the VSTInstrument
"Sun Ra" by elogoxa which drew my attention to the program SynthEdit by
Jeff McClintock. Soon I realized the potential of SynthEdit so in June
2003 I started to "go forward to the roots" in reviving my old
algorithmic system. It took me until end of August til the "system" was
running to produce some more complex things. Later in 2003 I did my 1st
public free VSTi plugin "Wheel of Fortune" as a subset of my
algorithmic system.
Since then development
of VST-Instruments and Soundsets is taking most of my time there is
hardly space left to make music.
R.I.P.
Facebook memorial page:
www.facebook.com/groups/hgfsynthesizer
