EM♥A

New Song: Captain Gips - Hug Life (Emma Heartbeat Remix)

Sat, 22 Mar 2014 09:59:24 +0100

We are working on new tracks every day at the moment. And also we don’t show up around here very often, we will be back with a lot of new stuff later this year. For now we did a remix for Captain Gips that was released on Audiolith the other day. Captain Gips is a German rapper who is actually putting some sense into his lyrics but at the same time is funny. You might tell it from the name of the track already “Hug Life”. So we didn’t have to think about it, when we were asked to remix that song. Listen here:

US Tour 2013 - Day 8

Sun, 29 Sep 2013 06:42:00 +0200

After the day welcomed us with the first snow of the season, the sky cleared up at noon and we pulled out of the Highway to Provo for a bit of miniature golf and a baseball batting cage.

We were new to that game and we can tell even the softball feels very hard if you hit it the wrong way.

But being hurt wouldn’t keep us from performing at the AGB’s for the second time. We were really happy to return to this bar after two and a half years and share stage with Mark Dago again, also this time not with Numbs (who we feat. on the track Wanderlust ) but with his new group called “Rotten Musicians”.

Which was cool as the used a keytar and theremin Expectations were high as the 2011 Provo show was one of our favourite American shows that year and Provo wouldn’t let us down this time. No idea where they get all these crazy dancers from but they def. know how to move on the dancefloor. We had lots of fun seeing all our old friends, Jake (the designer of the Wanderlust cover), Dane and everyone. So we left the bar at 2am when it had to close down and were happy to head towards our beds as the next day we will spend seven hours on the road!

US Tour 2013 Day 6 & 7

Sat, 28 Sep 2013 19:38:24 +0200

Two days off in a row, with only a couple of miles to drive. First stop was Twin Falls, two and a half hours from Boise, where we relaxed at the Snake River Canyon.

We got to see the jump site, where Evel Knievel tried to jump the canyon in 1974 and took a hike at the beautiful Shoshone Falls Park.

The next day we drove to Salt Lake City. On the drive we saw a couple on antelope, which seem to live up here in 1600m hight and an eagle. Later we went shopping around and visited a mutiplex cinema with dolby atmospheres installed. Unfortunately the movie shown didn’t feature it, we would have loved to hear it. Non the less we are ready to be back on stage in Provo tomorrow!

US Tour 2013 - Day 5

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 06:15:00 +0200

Today we travelled to Boise, the capitol of Idaho. Five hours of true western romantic on the road incl. a coach with horses travelling on the highway.

Unfortunately we forgot we entered mountain time and were running one hour late when we arrived at tonights venue. (After we enjoyed some potatoes from Idaho, which Idaho is famous for.) But we still had some time to skate the venues own mini-ramp (well, Nils had) before we enjoyed Big O opening the night.

He is a great local artist who had his first show that night. We were glad to borrow his skateboard for the ramp and his hi-hat for our show. Other acts on the bill were Velvet Hook and Sword of Bad Speller before we went on. We really start enjoying the water-bottle-drum we are using to replace the regular tom and think about making it an essential to all our shows. After the show we rejected the kind invitation to a local strip-club by some girls from California and instead had a pizza with the two guys of Big O. Now we are enjoying the large and comfortable beds at the Safari Inn and are looking forward to another bagel / doughnut / cereals / toast breakfast.

US Tour 2013 - Day 3

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 18:54:00 +0200

Way too many doughnuts to blog. Becoming doughnuts ourselves.

Us Tour 2013 - Day 2

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 00:08:00 +0200

On our way down to Eugene we had a stop in Portland as we won’t get the chance to play there on this tour we wanted to take a look at least. We were able to redeem our voucher from VeggieGrill (we got it because a trainee at the VeggieGrill in Seattle spilled some dressing on Christoph) and got some more free food at a local farmers event, so there is plenty of argument to return with some more time another day (when we don’t have to copy cd’s on our motle room).

Eugene itself looked really cool as well. We arrived at the venue, which was able to provide a bit of home as it is called “The Black Forest”. We’ve been scheduled with another fantastic band, the “Cocky Pedestrians”, a comedy - hiphop act from Eugene. It was big fun watching their set (funny AND erotic)

and putting on a show for the people of Eugene.

Us Tour 2013 - Day 1

Sun, 22 Sep 2013 19:48:04 +0200

Guess who’s back. Our third US Tour is starting today. We entered the US from Canada with the AmTrak yesterday. A five hour train ride along the coast from Vancouver to Seattle. Today we picked-up our rental car, a brand new Hyunda and headed towards Hood River, OR.

Another scenic four hour drive. After passing by beautiful landscape which was changing every few meters we were getting afraid to arrive nowhere. We didn’t see anything except cows and horses for a long time. Finally the Columbia River came into sight and when we crossed the bridge we entered Oregeon.

Happily, Hood River turned out to be a real city, some kind of oasis up here, with lots of wakeboarding and snowboarding folks. At the Trillum, where the show took place at, the DJs (Marco & Israel of Zink Clothing) set up two big sub boxes which turned the cosy bar into a bass room. As we couldn’t bring all our drums, we were micing a big plastic bottle instead, which sounds pretty good. The crowd was dancing along the set, so it was a real fun show and really nice welcome to being back in the US.

Tech-Talk part 6 - DIY Mobile - Surfboard - Mount & Steady - Cam

Tue, 27 Aug 2013 15:53:00 +0200

We are currently preparing the new video-clip for our single “The Machine”. What, you didn’t listen yet? Check it here:

Emma Heartbeat - The Machine by EMMA HEARTBEAT (EM♥A)

As cameras we are using three Xperia Z by Sony. We decided on these weapon of choice as they are water resistant, small and good to handle. We flew to an island to shoot the video, so we were in need of the above qualities.
This blog-post is kind of a DIY, to deliver some background info on the steady-cam and the surfboard-cam we built and how you can do it yourself.
This is the steady-cam. It was built to save the mobile-camera from shaking while walking. It works for the Xperia Z very well but it also works for other sport-cameras (GoPro etc.). Everything we needed was found at a building supplies store for less than 10 EUR (Best-Buy, Hellweg,… wherever you live).

- a wheel (from a desk-chair)
- a handle (balcony-supply)
- a metal plate (with holes)
+ screws, screwdriver, hot-glue pistol

The metal-plate was brought into shape (kind of a “c” shape) with the use of raw power. The Xperia Z was mounted in a mobile-holder which we attached on the metal-plate (with hot-glue and lots of gaffa-tape). In the middle of the “c” we fixed the wheel with screws and and hot-glue and extended it with the handle. Feeling puzzled? Just have a look at the pictures.
At the end we put some extra weight on the bottom to balance the mobile. This part is try and error.
We were done and it worked very well! (Of course a “real” steady-cam for thousands of Euro with a ball-joint is probably going to be slightly better, so don’t expect a wonder to happen).

The other thing is this surfboard mount we built. It was even less work. We simply attached the mobile-holder to the surfboard. We used gaffa-tape to fix both, the mobile to the holder and the holder to the board. For safety reasons we knotted a fishing line to the mobile and the other end with the leash of the surfboard (cover in gaffa so we wont get trapped in the line). That’s it. Pretty simple, but it survived everything, from duck-diving, to cutbacks to the heaviest wipe-out.

Music I like - Bames

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 14:19:00 +0200

“Introducing remixers of my forthcoming single part II”

Bames are James Welch and Bryan Boutwell from Austin, Texas. You know how much we love Texas and Austin, so I am more than happy that they are placed in this funky town. We found out about them as they have a new and very refreshing approach to hip-hop music. The futuristic beats that they create using a lot of electronic looped and rewind sounds are relaxed and yet powerful.
I can’t wait to play their remix of “The Machine” to you, but in the meantime make sure to check out their current release “DRTY BWTY” on Fool’s Gold Records:

Tech-talk 6 - PSP Vintage Warmer 2 Plug-In

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:12:24 +0200

We were suggested getting hold of the Vintage Warmer 2 plug-in in a discussion and after checking a couple of tests on the net (for example this Video of Bonobo ) we decided to go for it. This is a very dangerous plug-in, as you tend to overuse it and kill all the transients, as it has this instant “wow” effect to it. You put it on any drum, a kick for example and right away you have the feeling it did something good to it. Using it a little or parallel it is genius! We are now also using it a lot on certain synth. Sometimes we edited a synth sound that is quite close to what we were looking for but sounds a bit cheap / plastic. Running it through the VW2 adds a bit of dirt to it that totally takes this away.
Another good thing about it is, it is not only one plug but three, The Micro-Warmer, Vintage Warmer & Vintage Warmer 2. Basically the first two are stripped down versions of the last. With our studio pc we rather use the Vintage Warmer 2 on groups only, as it is a plug that uses quite a lot of resource from our PC. If we want to use different setting on various instrument the two smaller plugs do really good work for us too!

When we faced some question before buying, we contacted the support of PSP Audio. As they have plenty of plugs we thought it might take some time for them to answer, but actually they got back really quick, helpful and gentle. So we suggest to check it out yourself. We got a free Piano Verb with ours, one more reason to try.

Music I like - Cadik

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:21:34 +0200

Just one step away from releasing a new Ep, I want to introduce the remixers of our forthcoming track “The Machine” to you.

You might have heard of Cadik (Chi Recordings)! He is one of the (if not the) best known producers and djs from Hungary. And definitely for a reason. His abstract HipHop productions are deep, have a lot of bass and there is always a cinematic touch to it. A very unique mixture which we like a lot and got him international features by the likes of Medaphoar & Blu. Check this free download to hear what I am talking about.

Cadik - All Soundz Soul ( Free Download ) by cadik

We first heard of him, when Nils brought his solo debut “Basic” back home from Amsterdam Dance Event in 2009. Some years went by since then, but we finally got in contact and we are more than happy to show the remix he made for us to you soon!

New Song - I do Bass (2012)

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:58:38 +0200

As the weekend is approaching we prepare to play a show at the Bassart Festival in Munich. Talking about that festival, we instantly had to think of a song you might know if you saw us live in 2012. So we didn’t waste any time and spent our weekend going through long forgotten Logic 5.5 files to import the stems in our Cubase and are happy to give to you a free donwload of the refurbished an never before released “I do bass (2012)”, enjoy:

I Do Bass (2012) by EMMA HEARTBEAT (EM♥A)

tech-talk 5 - Building our own contact-mic

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:05:02 +0200

We are recording sound fx and percussion for our new tracks at the moment. We took this opportunity to make something we were thinking about for quite some time already. We built our own contact mic. Actually it is pretty easy and cheap and we have no clue why we didn’t do this before.

We bought the following:
- a piezo plate - 0,40 EUR
- an instrument cabel 1m - 1,09 EUR
- a jack plug - 1,39 EUR

So we paid 2,88 EUR in total and I am not talking about net prices! Everything was available at our local electronic market (Conrad), so I am pretty sure you will find it at Best Buy and everywhere.

I totally forgot what kind of fun it is to solder things together. It is not only those nice little silver balls that melt and get hard again all the time, it is a fantastic smell!
Our piezo plate was a very small though and we had problems attaching the ground of the cable to the edge of the metal, but in the end it worked. We tried, and wonder what, it worked at the first try. We taped the mic to a rainmaker and it instantly sounded like a “thundermaker” through the amp.
We definitely will have a lot of fun using it!

live shows - four days of Paris

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 01:38:05 +0100

We just arrived in Germany from spending four amazing nights in Paris with our French family Yes S Club! We stayed at their apartments in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. As we were told and as we totally believe, though we obviously haven’t seen all of Paris, it is the nicest area to be in Paris. Two of the venues we played, 114 and L'international were located in this area around Rue Oberkampf (yep the name is German). For females it is a good place to be, as next to all the good bars, clubs and restaurants, a couple of fantastic women-clothing shops are located close to it - luckily our friends from Paris knew where to find the best to spent my fees on.
Nils fell in love with the French style of driving and didn’t mind to push cars away to arrange a parking-place. No wonder when you are really lucky to find a place to park your car in less than half an hour driving around in the streets. But we had too much stuff to use the metro as our new live set-up includes two stand-toms.
A really tough challenge was to find a parking-space at Gare du Nord, where our show on Saturday night took place at an fantastic private apartment just opposite of the train-station. During sound-check we met the wife of Carlos, the famous French terrorist, who is living in the same house and was telling us how to set-up a bass-box so it doesn’t affect the neighbours. You wouldn’t find a place like this, with such a nice ceiling and a fire-place, to set up a party for 80 people with two live concerts till six in the morning in Germany I bet. And I am talking about a really wild party.
Even our off-day on Sunday was very enjoyable, spending the night at Le Kitch, but the three shows totally blew us away. We experienced so much love, plenty of people shouting “Zugabe” (the German word for encore) and met plenty of new fans and friends. We never imagined so many people to show up on a Monday night and party like a weekend. As we were told it is not usual to be like this, so we felt very honoured and welcome. We had a last beer with our friends from Yes S Club in typical French Bar and were very sad knowing we had to leave the next day, when we went to bed at 5am on Monday morning.
Maybe it is because Feliks will miss his favourite food, the cheese, or we miss the beautiful buildings and the flair of the city, but I think the real reason we want to be back in Paris right now is, that we miss the talks, the party and the long drives (if you want to call the inner-city traffic-jams “driving”) with our friends of Yes S Club and all their fantastic friends. A bientôt et merci!

(Sorry we took only very few pics - but try to get hold of some more and will post them here soon)

load-in on saturday with yes s club

yes s club at the flat at gare du nord

Tech-talk 4 - Free Software Synth

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:33:27 +0100

I just came across a new freebie. As christmas is coming closer, I thought it is the right time to share. I used the first version of Podolski on one track of our album.

Just downloading the new version of U-he’s “Podolski” right now, you can do so as well. Just click here! (http://www.u-he.com/cms/podolski)

New Song - Freakatronic - Haare (Emma Heartbeat Remix)

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:00:54 +0100

(on the pic it is Strotzky (Freakatronic), me, and Jason (Goldielocks) a couple of years ago.)

This time we didn’t deliver the original song, instead a remix. Three years back in time we played our first live ever with Freakatronic in Muenster and made first contact with the intergalactic robots who settled down in our home-town Essen.

Now we were honoured to remix their new song Haare next to such outstanding producers as Joshimixu who was already rewarded with a gold record for his production for Casper.

The original remix we produced contained a glitchy - noisy - sound we removed at the day of the deadline, because it was too annoying, so the remix ended up rather minimal, which is good as it gives room to the heavy drums and bass and the distorted vocals. Listen yourself, download for free or buy the whole EP at Beatport.

Freakatronic - Haare (Emma Heartbeat Remix) by EMMA HEARTBEAT (EM♥A)

Live Shows - Rattenloch (Rat-hole) Herdorf

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 00:31:59 +0200

Hard to tell…

Let’s start with the positive, the venue was very close to the hotel and to get there we drove through a beautiful landscape - it’s fall at the Westerwald.

The “venue” …, they didn’t have any cables, mics, di boxes etc. and wouldn’t move the foh-mixer so we could have connected with a quarter inch plug. We weren’t able to perform, at least we didn’t have to sleep at the “hotel” -Schwarze Meer-.

The name says it all.

New Song - Across The Staates

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:57:00 +0200

Oups. Half a year past already since we toured the US of A the last time. While we are looking forward to our next US tour, we prepared a new song with material we recorded in the States. We used a Zoom mobile recording device and collected more than 170 field recordings while on tour! Out of these samples, and we mean ONLY out of these samples we edited the track you are about to hear.

Since the four of us had a cold, one after the other or at the same time from all the air conditioning and the lack of sleep, we had to use a sneeze as a crash cymbal. The car door was used as a kick and mardy grass chains as hihats. The Tennessee forest was turned into a open hihat, the NYC subway into sweeps and a broken Missouri faucet into a bassline.

On this tour we met millions of cool people and some of them contributed to our song. Hillary Capps from NYC for the hook, Mr. Dark $cide from Austin & Desert Voices from Dallas for the verse and Max Reynolds (of Social Bliss) from Lufkin fot the guitar riff kicking in at appr. 0:42.

Listen to the track and download for free:

Across The Staates feat. Hillary Capps, Max Reynolds (Social Bliss), Desert Voices & Mr. Dark $cide by EMMA HEARTBEAT (EM♥A)

Some pics we took of the featured musicians:

½ of Desert Voices:

Hillary Capps:

Max Reynolds & Social Bliss:

Mr. Dark $cide (half of him, behind Nils on the left):

Music I like - Baauer

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:01:52 +0200

I might be a bit late with this one, but still I got to share the EP.

Baauer is that kind of HipHop, that I’d expect from a year called 2012. The tracks are simple and jiggy and yet each of the three tracks has wired sounds or synth you wouldn’t expect on a track like this. Baauer first caught my attention with lion roaring on one of his tracks.

Hello Baauer, please send me a beat to rap on!

No lion on this ep, but three track that are really worth listening (track three kind of reminds me of Flosstradamus if you need to compare), but have a listen yourself:

full ep: http://soundcloud.com/abeano/sets/baauer-dum-dum-ep

New Song - Better Better Better

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 12:45:00 +0200

On Friday (July 20th) we will release the new single “Better Better Better” digital around the world!

Some of you may already know the song - if they attended any live-show over the past four month. We wrote the song during a songwriting weekend we spent at the lovely Edersee. It got rythm & message. We like it, hope you too!

We are giving away 100 free downloads here:

Emma Heartbeat - Better Better Better by EMMA HEARTBEAT (EM♥A)

And on KickKickSnare, Oh Fancy, Noiseporn and other blogs. If you like it, please also buy the song at Amazon, iTunes, Juno or Beatport!

Looking forward to hear the song on the streets!