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Peter Bosman

Oct 7 - by Freestyle FM

Prelude
Peter was born on Christmas day, December 25th, 1975. At the age of 12 he started playing the recorder and he started to learn how to read notes. Although Peter loved making music straight away, he became really enthusiastic when he saw and heard someone at his school play a keyboard. For his 13th birthday his parents gave him his first keyboard, a silver Yamaha SHS-10. After building serious interest in playing the keyboard, a decision to take music lessons was made. To be able to do so properly, he invested in a larger keyboard with large keys, a Roland E-10. Also at this time, Peter became inspired by some of the great synthesizer musicians like Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, Harold Faltermeyer and Jan Hammer. In the eight years that followed, he learned to play many different music styles. During this time, he upgraded his Roland E-10 to a Roland E-70.

Mysteries
In the last few years of his music lessons, Peter increasingly showed interest in composing music to express his feelings and tell stories with his music. To be able to give more shape to this interest, Peter bought a music workstation, a Roland XP-50, containing the latest sounds of that time. Inspired at the same time by the pop-music performers of the late eighties and the beginning of the nineties, Peter started to write and compose his first songs. One summer, Peter wrote “Mystery Girl”. The writing and composing of this song would later turn out to mark a defining moment in his music career. After finishing “Mystery Girl”, Peter wanted to continue writing and composing until he would have enough material to put on a CD. In the years that followed, Peter created the songs that are now on the “Mysteries” CD. Playing the keyboard and studying a variety of music styles led to a style of playing that allowed Peter to manipulate different sounds in a different way, using the same keys. He played the drums, bass, guitar, organ, strings, piano and lead sounds until all songs were completely arranged. With a background in instrumental music, Peter created a crossover between his interest in the popular music of that time and his initial background in synthesizer music. This crossover came about by replacing all parts that are typically sung in popular music by the playing of lead instruments by himself. At age 22 Peter took his music to a professional sound studio (New Road Studios), had Italian designer Cesare DeRossi design the covers for the booklet and the CD and so the dream called “Mysteries” became reality with a CD-launching concert on June 4, 1998, celebrating more than 10 years of making music.

Journey to Salvation
In the aftermath of “Mysteries”, much changed. Starting a full-time job kept Peter from regularly investing time in my music. After a few brief successes based on “Mysteries”, his music seemed to die a silent death. Still, in the seven years that followed, he kept investing in his music whenever possible, extending his library of available sounds with new sound modules (a Korg TR-RACK and a Roland M-BD1) and a new controller-keyboard with piano-like weighted keys, a Roland A-90. Peter always felt that “Mysteries” never became exactly what he wanted it to be. Although the people at New Road Studios delivered a professional piece of work, the sound that he had originally intended for the CD was not brought about, simply because it was too expensive to invest more studio time. Therefore, Peter wanted to expand his knowledge to include mixing, recording and mastering as well. Over time, Peter invested in high-end recording equipment to make way for the dormant dream in the back of his mind: to make a new CD, but this time with all the detail and the sound exactly like he wanted it. And so, Peter’s own recording studio was born: The Mysteries Studio. In the first seven years, Peter wrote only four new songs. It was with the last of these songs that he specifically started to write for a new CD. This time, Peter wanted to make all-instrumental synthesizer music only. Still, although the idea of making a new CD was now more alive than ever, the feeling wasn’t yet right. There was no sense of direction for the CD. Just when the entire project seemed to slowly fade away, after a hard period in his life, Peter found himself writing a song that would later turn out to mark a defining moment. The song, called “Journey to Salvation” was his first track in the style of the synthesizer music that originally inspired him. But much more than this, the emotions Peter put into the song provided him the direction he was waiting for. As time went by, the music under his hands matured and the new direction led him to come home to his original inspiration: synthesizer music. Peter wrote five songs the next year and six in the one following that, leading up to the total of 16 tracks on the new CD called “Journey to Salvation”. The final song Peter composed for this CD is called “Live Your Dreams”. That title was actually the first concept he thought of after “Mysteries”. Now it had become an important statement: live your dreams, never give them up, don’t ever stop. In his own home studio, The Mysteries Studio, Peter mixed, recorded and mastered “Journey to Salvation”. Celebrating yet another decade of making music gone past, this time the sound was much closer to what Peter always wanted his music to sound like.

YouTube
Finishing “Journey to Salvation” completely by himself was an important achievement in his life. He had closed the book on a hard period in his life and Peter felt he was now ready to move on to the next stage with his music and at the same time help others make their dreams come true. Peter had just moved house and had the opportunity to build a home studio just the way he wanted it. The only problem now was again time. Matters got worse when bad fortune befell his father around this time and a battle against an awful disease had begun. At the end of 2009, the severity of his situation reminded Peter that life is short, but it is never too late to live your dreams. Inspired by his dad’s will to go on, Peter started down a new path in music. A colleague of Peter once said to him:”Everything is on YouTube nowadays!”. Indeed, Internet has brought the world closer together and therefore it is a great opportunity to reach out across the globe. For starters, Peter had the idea to look for people on YouTube that sing (a-capella or acoustically) in a way that spoke to him. After arranging his own version of the song, he extracted the audio from the YouTube video and synchronized it with his own arrangement. This he did for the first three covers. With enough practice, Peter decided to start to really reach out and try to find talented singers to work with. The first person to respond was Geanie Jenkins, an incredibly talented singer with a dream, just like Peter. The fact that she lived in San Diego with 9 hours of time difference was testimony to the fact that the Internet indeed makes boundaries fade away. Peter and Geanie worked on a fully arranged cover and a live-performed cover very intensively over a few months. The results amazed them both and because Peter happened to be traveling there for his work, they even got to meet face to face in the summer of 2010; memories to last a lifetime… Peter knew he found himself at the start of a new, beautiful dream with hopefully many more successful collaborations to come, making music that brightens people’s day and opens up their hearts.

Infinite Singles
In the years that followed, Peter continued to invest in his music equipment, including an E-MU Proteus 2000, a Roland Fantom XR with 6 expansion boards and a Yamaha Motif-Rack XS. During that same time Peter got to collaborate with a variety of people, some of who he met via Internet only and some of who he met in real life. Working with different people and, especially for local talent, being able to give them the opportunity to get high-quality recordings and productions, proved to be an incredibly happy, fun and fulfilling experience. Next to producing covers with many people, Peter even got the opportunity to produce original songs written by other artists (Peter Francks, Nadine, Nic Honey). This then led him to take the next step and ask selected artists (who I believed to be a good match with a particular song) to perform songs that Peter had written himself. Because Peter’s network of collaborators and music friends kept growing, it now even included professional artists such as Broadway singer Tamra Hayden and local Dutch talent such as record-deal-winning Maaike Mae. And so it came to pass in the summer of 2012 that Peter met up with Tamra Hayden in the USA for the first recording ever of the vocals for one of Peter’s recent pop songs: “The Great Unknown”; a happening that moved him to tears. It was only a month later that Maaike came to Peter’s studio to sing another of his recent songs: “Broken”; another unforgettable day. Getting the chance to work with such talented artists and getting their vote of confidence has been an amazing experience. It marked the start of the realization of yet another beautiful dream: producing his own songs, both synthesizer music and pop music with selected vocalists and releasing them in this modern era via Internet in an infinite strand of singles.

Peter Bosman’s singles “Broken” and “The Great Unknown” can be requested here

iTunes Purchase Links:
Peter Bosman feat. Maaike Mae – Broken
Peter Bosman feat. Tamra Hayden – The Great Unknown

Youtube:
Peter Bosman feat. Maaike Mae – Broken
Peter Bosman feat. Tamra Hayden – The Great Unknown