ABOUT

>> WHO & WHAT

Hello darksiders!

Wecome to the dark side! You know I had to write that...

My name is Stefano, an Italian guy who loves music in all its genres. I love synths and technology in general but also piano and guitar.

I started studying music when I was 9 or 10 until around 14, briefly studying music theory, solfege, clarinet and piano for a while.

Then, I took many long breaks until a few years ago when I picked up playing and making music more and more every day.

Although I have stopped playing for very long periods, I’ve never stopped listening and appreciating the wide range of good artists our there – from the famous legends to the underdog.

There is only one genre of music I really care for: GOOD MUSIC – whatever that means;)

Although, broadly speaking, I am more into pop & rock, I listen to a wide range of stuff: from classical to jazz, blues, house, trance, techno as well as good old ‘70s and ‘80s music, from electronica to metal and everything in between, including synthwave, synthpop, italo disco, retrowave, and all the new and old names you want to define this kind of electronic music by.

I am not a purist. I simply love making noise, making sounds, no matter what tools I use: acoustic, analogue, digital, hardware, software, drum machines or cooking pots, samplers or eletric guitars...

Therefore, for me, it's not just about music but sound design as well, whether for musical purposes or otherwise.

As you can see on my YouTube channel, I like performing short as well as long synth jams, sometimes also including piano, electric bass or guitar, and jam away in several styles and types of music ‒ from droney ambient soundscapes to heavy rock, from upbeat italo disco to dark synthpop, from trance and techno to cinematic and orchestral stuff, as well as darksynth, synthwave and things that have no name ;)

>> THE NAME

Why the name Dark Side of Synth? Because it’s cool and it sums up my fascination with the dark side and with synthesizers. Because, unlike at a younger age, I am now more into dark tunes and tones. I’ve always liked horror music but liked very little “dark” electronic or rock music. I have come to appreciate it and enjoy it more and more as times goes by, though.

You could think it is related to Star Wars, Pink Floyd Or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide and… you would be right. I do have a dark side, my dark half, too. You've been warned... The dark side is the only cool side ;) Join the dark side!

It is not by chance that many, many moons ago I did my thesis on the figure of the double in American literuature & culture, including - of course, Stephen King's The Dark Half. Everything comes full circle.

At the end of the day, though – it is just a name I like and I think it sounds good and it fits me, no need to play Herr Doktor Freud too much ;)

Don’t worry, you won’t be finding only darksynth, heavy, scary and sad tunes and tones here but quite a wide range and lots of happy, upbeat things too. Again, it is just a name – not a mission statement set in stone forever.

>> THE LOGO

The logo tries to live up to the name “Dark Side of Synth” and somehow convey it through an image. The triangle comes – of course – from the famous album sleeve of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon – a masterpiece of modern music, and takes care of the “dark side” part of the name. The zig-zag line is a classical ADSR (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release) envelope slope, typical of a synthesizer’s settings, so it takes care of the “synth” part of the name.

The typeface is a free font called Audiowire Regular. I was looking for something modern and with a retro, 80’s vibe but without falling into cliches like typical futuristic computer fonts or some calculator-LCD characters which we have seen thousands of times. It had to be fancy but also quite legible and readable, slick and a bit rough at the edges, spikey yet also smooth to go well with the logo but also lend itself to be used elsewhere – titles etc. I happened to like that font, it has “Audio” in its name - so there’s that – and it was free, which never hurts.