Hi my music loving fans! It's been a while and I don't want to send a newsletter just for the sake of it. I'd rather wait until I have something that's worth telling you, we get spammed enough these days. But I have news for you. I've probably never told you guys this but I've been chronically ill for 14 years now. During an unnecessary surgery to my shoulder 14 years ago, a lot of things went horribly wrong. I will not bore you with a list of the errors that were made but it could have been a good Stephen King horror novel. LOL! In the end I left the hospital with a frozen shoulder and dystrophy syndrome. That last illness I had to Google because I never heard of it. But to put it bluntly, all my nerves and blood cells in my left arm do the opposite of what they supposed to do and this causes extreme pain 24/7 and there is no cure. Not in combination with that frozen shoulder anyway. So the only thing I can do is take painkillers, the very nasty kind. It's not a surprise that I lost my job, my income, 80% of the things I was used to do were not possible anymore, and this may sound over dramatic, I lost all my friends (somehow people have a problem with long term illnesses, they just don't know how to handle it and in the end it's easier to forget about you). To biggest blow was the fact I couldn't provide for my family anymore. When you're 29 years old you have a certain outlook on life but that outlook went down the drain when I left the hospital. It's not something you really want to talk about, because I see it as a negative thing in my past but if I want it or not, it's a part of me. 6 years after the surgery I was finally able to put the whole thing somehow behind me and I was trying to focus on something else: life! I decided to start making music again, something I already had done in the past when I was 10 years old, with a Commodore 64 and later a Commodore Amiga, the first let's say PCs. People liked my music and I was making music for all kinds of folks. First computer groups but later artists who wanted music during their exposition and I even made music for a fashion show! But at a certain point I had to stop because I had to work to pay the rent, etc. So music it was, I was still incredibly limited but with an old PC and sound card I started making music. Bit by bit saving money I was able to buy a real synthesizer and it took me more than 8 years to build the studio I own now. And now, I'm only inches away from the production quality I need to release that professional sound that I want, the only things missing are these plugins. After being ill for such a long time and with producing music being the only thing I still can do, there is still a sparkle of hope inside of me that tells me, maybe I can do this as a freelancer for documentaries, movies, games or just create albums people really enjoy. I got in contact with an A&R executive via Facebook and she loves my music and told me to go on creating more music and when the time was there I should get in contact with people who work in the film and game industry. Like I said in the last newsletter I started working on a soundtrack album about Alaska, the Northern territories in Canada and the North Pole and all the things you find up north. I almost finished the first song of the album and it sounds great. I decided to re-master Shoreview Meditation by a professional studio and put it on iTunes! So now you can enjoy Shoreview Meditation on your mp3 player whenever you want and it sounds awesome! Just follow this link: https://itunes.apple.com/nl/album/shoreview-meditation-single/id702811971 and you see the track. I released it via CDBbaby because they distribute your music to a lot of digital resellers (e.g. iTunes, Amazon, etc) but they can also release albums on CD. They encourage me to ask people who buy the track to write a review so other people can get an idea of how my music sounds, so if you're in a good mood and want to buy the re-mastered version of Shoreview Meditation, please take a minute to write a review. I already got a review from fans of this song from Japan (you can see the screenshot on my Facebook page)and that was totally awesome! I haven't got a clue what it says but I got a 5 out of 5 so that can't be bad, ;-) The other songs The Dark Prophecy and Solar Eclipse Kyoto 2012 you can download for free at Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/zwoekie-music I want to thank you all for supporting me all this time, I am fortunate to have you guys always motivating me and like I said the first track is on ITunes!! I really hope I can invest in those plugins so you can enjoy the future music even better. Thanks everybody for your support, I wish you a great week. Peace to you all, Zwoekie website: www.zwoekie.com CDBaby: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/zwoekie Twitter: http://twitter.com/Zwoekie_Music Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/zwoekiemusic Soundcloud http://soundcloud.com/zwoekie-music