Hi, I’m Stefan alias SONINATE.
I’ve been making music for more than 30 years and as a professional for almost 20 years.
With my synesthesia based ColorSongs I offer custom-tailored highly personal compositions/songs & productions in various musical styles.
After quite a long musical journey through various genres and styles – from rock guitar player to professional opera singer (countertenor) and many steps in between – I finally discovered that writing music is what I can do best.
I am a synesthete, which means that I am able to combine two senses, in my case my hearing and my visual sense. That is why for me music has a lot to do with colors and I love “painting” in many different colors and shades, which is why my approach to composing might be a bit different.
My main purpose is to touch people on a deeper level with my music and thereby deepen their connection to themselves and others.
With my music I want to encourage & empower people, give comfort, hope & confidence, show understanding and just create connection.
Though I had been influenced by a plethora of musicians I’d say there are some musicians that influenced and inspired the style of my songwriting and composing the most. Those are Queen, Steve Vai, Chris Cornell and the music of the baroque period (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Caccini etc.).
However, I have absorbed diverse music almost like a sponge and merged it into my own style – whereby the music of the Beatles, Pat Metheny, Sting, C. Debussy, A. Schoenberg and countless other musicians from various genres, as well as diverse world music, should not remain unmentioned.
My musical journey started with being a guitar player and went quite soon pretty zig zag, which gave me the opportunity to get in touch with many different genres such as:
• hard rock, metal, grunge and progressive rock
• classic rock and pop
• chart music (especially of the 90s and early 2000s)
• big band jazz, fusion and many other jazz styles
• classical music (renaissance to contemporary music, specialized in baroque music)
• world music of all continents
• traditional Alpine folk music
• improvised music and completely free improvisation
I studied classical guitar at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich and my guitar professor encouraged me to also study composing. But it came different.
My countertenor voice was discovered and I moved to Leipzig to study opera singing at the Music University Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
During that time I started playing baroque songs with my guitar and accompanied myself. I also wrote arrangements of some traditional folk songs for guitar and countertenor, which I got the opportunity to professionally record a few years later for my CD “Folksongs”.
After my exam I moved to Berlin and started working as a freelance countertenor, as soloist as well as in professional vocal ensembles.
I had been lucky to sing at some renown music festivals such as the Handel festival in Halle, the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, the Styriate festival in Graz and the Salzburg Aspekte festival. I even had the honor to sing and perform a few world premieres, some of them especially written for my voice.
But the more I sang the more I realized that being just a singer and just a countertenor – although I enjoyed being on stage of concert and opera productions – was not enough for me.
Thus I created a few solo programs for guitar and countertenor and later also for an additional loop station and I began to use more and more my not that classical sounding chest voice as well.
Yet writing arrangements for already existing music still wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to write my own music again.
I had been writing music throughout my whole life, mostly instrumental but stopped when I became a professional singer.
A few years ago I couldn’t hold back any longer and I re-started writing songs, first with lyrics that had been written for me, later with my own lyrics.
After a long musical journey I finally realized that writing music is what I can do best and what my heart is telling me to do.
As I wanted to be able to make my music sound as I could hear it in my head I began to learn as much as I could about music production. Thanks to our wonderful digital world I had been able to learn from some of the top music producers such as Fab Dupont, Warren Huart, Michael White and many others and I’m constantly learning.
To learn more about my ColorSongs and the process, and to find out if a ColorSong might be the right unique and unforgettable gift for your loved ones, please book a free call.