After a successful start in 2011 I wanted to take the Cleartones project to the next level. It became clear that people actually like having clean and unobtrusive ringtones, but how to create new Cleartones without having it sound too similar to the ones I already made?

To really set the new Cleartones apart from the original ones which were created using electronically generated sounds, I decided to record sets of solely acoustic sounds. Bells, chimes, woodblocks, vibraphone and marimba's. And what is a better place to find sounds like that than a studio of a professional percussionist?

So I asked Marijn Korff de Gidts to spend some time with me and my recording gear. His studio is filled with percussion instruments. We recorded everything that fits into the category 'clear, elegant, simple, pleasant', and is suitable to be used as a ringtone or a notification tone for text messages, voicemail or email: glass bowls, glockenspiel, Tibetan bells, even an Indonesian gamelan as shown in the pictures above.  I decided only to do a little editing on the material to keep it as pure as possible and preserve the character of the sounds. This resulted in a beautiful new pack of minimalist ringtones: Cleartones Organic.