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Goose Fair, Nottingham, 2012

The Maypole. If you can figure out why I called the track this you win bonus points. The feel of the track called to mind Celtic; ritualistic. 

Constructing this was an interesting process. I had the beats and basic rhythm working early on. Then I found that magical, dancing, skipping idea that floats in during the middle breakdown. The challenge was how to harmonise the two: in its raw form it felt like it came out of nowhere. Much of the time this week was spent working out how to gently introduce it so that you feel like it’s been there all along, but still quite work out what it is until it really hits you. 

For the critical or inquisitive listener, I ended up achieving this by:

  • Bouncing a short loop of the line to audio and re-importing it;
  • Passing it through a heavy reverb, 100% wet – i.e. all reverb, no original sound, so it’s more of a wash;
  • Gently turning up the dry signal so that the articulation starts to progressively poke through. 
  • Fading the articulation back out again as the ‘real’, live version of the part comes through.

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Cafe Mambo, San Antonio, Ibiza, 2012

This week’s track is ‘late’ (but uploaded nearly on time – I had emotionally-sapping, and so-far-not-completely-resolved) computer issues over the weekend) for a couple of reasons:

  1. It’s well past Ibiza season, with it’s summer sun and stylish pool-side music.
  2. Although it feels like I was there only yesterday, I haven’t been for over 6 years. (The photo was taken in 2012 but I returned the following year.)

It’s a wonderful place.

I don’t normally try too hard to produce music to a particular style, but I do hope this one brightens up a cloudy (and here in the UK, a very damp) time, and encourages you to yearn for the next time you’re able to don the Ray-Bans®.

Reco Des Sol, San Antonio, Ibiza, 2012

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Week 7 was a different experience for me. Very often production is more fun in the early phases of making a track: there isn’t much going on – competing, overlapping, muddying – and the sound has a purity. Bit by bit this seems to erode as the track becomes more fully formed, and before you know it, you’re fighting to bring back the clarity you started out with.

This week was the other way around: I spent the first half of the week wondering whether things would come together in the end. Then I spent the remaining few days discovering that they did! If repeatable this would be concrete progress, and a direct consequence of this website and quest.

Perhaps finishing a piece of art is, itself, and art (and a science): distinctive, and a sheer discipline in its own right.

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Something a little different this week, with a more modern feeling, especially to the bassline. This was an interesting piece to produce, and in one way, a totally opposite experience from normal. Read about the experience here.

This is also the first week where I haven’t mastered the track and then run it through Landr anyway (albeit on the low intensity setting) just to feel safe. This one’s all me!

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Drumcode, Tobacco Docks London, October 26 2019

Following on from last week, a second techno track. To my ears this track sits better in the genre. 

I experimented a lot and found a pretty novel technique for making the rumbling bassline, and hopefully have arrived at a stronger foundation for the track. 

I also used significantly fewer different parts in this track than I normally would; this is, after all, a minimal genre. 

This is also the first track I’ve created from start to finish within the week. That’s not the rule; I sure allow myself to finish work that I’ve started before hand (especially because I have too many tracks lying fallow and in need of a final push). But it was informative to create in this way, with all the pressure it created. It had to make decisions faster, and was less prone to agonising over decisions that few people will ever actually notice (possibly including me, if I listen to the track in a few months’ time).