Soul Carrier

Soul Carrier is one of several music projects from and blends gritty old school funk with the smoothness of modern beats and production technology. Being the driving force behind the project, I'm responsible for composing, recording and producing all Soul Carrier material. Occasionally I'm joined by guest musicians, mostly my brother Oliver Schröder (who did most of the guitars on our current album). You can find a lot more information about Soul Carrier and our other projects on the .Born and raised in the time of groovy Motown soul and gritty 70s-cop-show funk, my main musical inspiration has been defined very early on. When I started playing keyboard at age 9, I was instantly fascinated with the opportunities of electronic instruments. After several years of keyboard and organ lessons, I eventually switched to the piano and chose the autodidactic route. In the late 80s, I bought an which was the first computer to feature integrated MIDI connects. Eager to produce my own music, I bought my first synthesizer, a , and started being my own band :) The 90s for me was my "band decade". I started with some school friends in a hardrock band jumping the Sleaze Rock bandwagon, only to make us feel extraordinarily embarrassed watching videos and photos of that time today :) My next band was a rock cover band (), which was a step back creatively speaking. However, learning to play songs from famous artists and touring the entire country definitely broadened my horizon. In the mid 90s, I switched back to self composed rock music with a Kravitz/Black Crowes-inspired band (). In the late 90s, university and part time jobs demanded too much attention, so I dumped my band career and started recording my own songs again in my freetime. With the foundation of the Mindmotor.Studios, I started composing and recording more music again, which eventually led to the release of a first album in 2003, titled "Mastermind". The album was made available as a free download and still is today, in a stripped down and remastered EP version (available on the ). The Mindmotor.Studios move to a , which fueled my interest in producing a 2nd funk album. Production began, but had to be kept pretty much on the back burner due to a lot of real life happenings, mainly my time consuming job. This year finally marks the release of the 2nd album "Runway Two Zero" and the accompanying launch of bandsites on all known music networks. I'm looking forward to meet interesting musicians from all over the world and already started to work on new material.

While still being in bands, I toured a lot throughout the 90s. I love the aspect of traveling and meeting all kinds of people, especially other bands and musicians. But nowadays, being self-employed and all, I just don't have the time for band music and live gigs anymore, so that's why I chose to unleash my creativity in homerecording projects. Lately I began DJing at parties (if you want to call that "playing live"), that's something I'd definitely like to do more often.

My main influence is the funk and soul of the 60s & 70s with legendary artists like Curtis Mayfield, Herbie Hancock or Stevie Wonder. I also draw a lot of inspiration out of contemporary funk/jazz artists like Jamiroquai, Incognito or Down To The Bone. Mixing these influences and adding my own creativity is what makes Soul Carrier.

Desktop PC, Vaio Notebook, Fatar Studio 800 Masterkeyboard, E-MU Xboard Midikeyboard, Korg M1 Keyboard, Roland XV5050 Synthesizer, Behringer Eurorack UB1622FX Mixer, ESI 2.1 Monitoring Soundsystem, AKG-141 Headphones. Reason 3, Cubase SX, Sony Soundforge, Adobe Audition and tons of plugins, virtual instruments and sample libraries.