I love and care for all the work I do here, but perhaps for this one especially.

Drum & Bass: one of the first genres of dance music I learnt to really love and appreciate. Actually, I was in to it before it even was drum and bass; before rave music split down the middle, forking into jungle on the one hand, and happy hardcore on the other.

Musically, I have retained many things from those early days – perhaps most of all the love of the harmonic structures that defined hardcore. They’re still there in lots of my work.

I’ve really enjoyed paying homage to the club nights in the Sanctuary, Milton Keynes, and have this week is influenced more than a little by the work of LTJ Bukem.

I’ll also tell you a story. Last year when I went to Drumcode Halloween in London (the music that inspired week 5 and week 6), some guy from Japan shouted loudly in my ear – for there was no other way – that he didn’t think people my age like this sort of music.

In the UK for University, perhaps his eastern upbringing lent him a deference to people older than him; he asked pleasantly enough, and perhaps clubbing in Japan is more geared towards those in their 20’s. I’ve no idea.

In turn, I asked him how old he was. When he told me, I was pleased to let him know that I’d been into this sort of music since before he was born.

And back to the present, it’s taken me nearly as long to get good enough to do justice to the early jungle pioneers.

I’m a little nervous about this one: I’ve finished it whilst away from home, with my folks for Christmas. This makes it the first track I’ve done for the site that’s not mastered on my studio monitors. It sounds ok on the systems I’m using, but as Pooh Bear once said, one never can tell [with bees, in his case].

Still: I love the track. Often by the time I’ve finished writing, I’ve listened to the piece so many times that it’s lost its edge – my brain has adjusted to where the notes go. But for this one, I still can’t get enough of the main hook that, like the rays of the sun soars over the top and makes everything better.

For those who don’t know the ins and outs of what every dance music genre is, this is uplifting trance, and I hope that if uplifts you day as much as it did mine when creating it.

Have a wonderful Christmas – lots more music and fun planned for the site in 2020.

Darjeeling is a wonderful place, but the drive to get to it forms my most abiding memory. There may be other, easier ways, but I did it by jeep. There’s no public transport as such, but the Mahindra Jeeps come close. They’re very distinctive, with their headlights very close together. I did the 4 hour journey very early, and it looked like a long line of ants snaking up the ever-bending hill.

Not mine, but here’s a youtube video of the type of thing.

It was an evocative journey and I can still remember the Deep House music I was listening to. This week’s track is inspired by that journey.

A little something from the 80s this week. Something joyful before I take us in to darker, harder territory next week.

You very, very rarely catch me writing in the major key, and this is no exception. I love the soulful minor keys, and they can still bring joy to the heart. Please enjoy this one!

A huge and warm shout out to the mighty Patrick Fridth from Bitley sounds. He works tirelessly to sample the very best sounds from so many early synthesisers so that producers who don’t have all the fancy hardware can experience just a little of their magic. The sound banks he produces are a source of endless treasure and inspiration. They’re also immaculately produced and my pleasure to work with.

“Melody and harmony to me is a musical language. The more vocabulary you learn the more you can express it.” – Jaytech. 

To celebrate week 10 here’s something special. Last year I made a track called the Jig. At the time it was one of my better productions and I thought it sounded decent. I didn’t know whether it had reached its full potential though. Here’s my original version:

To answer that mystery I asked someone far more accomplished than me to do a second mix and master – to polish it, correct any issues, and bring out the best sound possible. 

I asked Jaytech to work his magic on the Jig. Jaytech is one of the most respected producers in dance music today (and he’s also a really fun and inspiring guy). 

Any secret hopes I had that his version wouldn’t sound too much better than mine were dispelled – decisively – the moment I heard the first cut of his version. After a little back and forth to get everything just right, we ended up with a finished version that sounds quite superb. It’s absolutely crystal clear and sounds both more massive and refined than my version. 

You can see in this picture that he has a few more pieces of gear than I do, but this is utterly beside the point: it was the way he listened; the cumulative small changes he made, and his careful use of a small set of tools that made the difference. 

The experience reminded me how much I have to learn (although I rarely forget…), but it also inspired me greatly. After all, you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. 

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.

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®.

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!

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). 

I have found this week quite a challenge. Techno is an exacting art form. Melody is stripped away; chords are gone. What’s left behind is rhythm, some power, and a fundamental drive. Producing techno is like looking into a microscope: the effect of every little change seems magnified; the timing of each sound demands much more scrupulous attention, and the accumulation of the composition has to be be tightly managed. 

I feel nervous about uploading this track because I feel like I haven’t done a good enough job in some of these areas. That though is the purpose of the website and why I have taken on this project. I could (and probably would have) spend hours refining the track, but perhaps I’m better off taking what I’ve learned and putting it into the next techno track. There are, after all, plenty of weeks to go! 

In that spirit then, here is what I’ve learned:

*I almost certainly used too many drum elements. 

*The timing of many sounds, and in particular several of the drums, is not tight enough, reminding me of looking through a dirty pair of glasses. 

*The low end rumble also needed some more work. 

*The overall musical message isn’t clear – many different parts competing for attention. 

*On a more technical note, although I’m not a fan of the loudness wars, and making everything sound as loud as possible, a track can’t be ridiculously quiet either. For some reason the way I mixed this track meant that in order to bring the track up to an acceptable loudness level I had to squash far too much dynamic range, which did suck a little life an breath from th production.

I’ll leave you with an irony: although you don’t hear it as much now as you used to, there can still be a perception that writing dance music is easy, and perhaps even that a computer could do it. Techno, with harmonies and melodies stripped away, should, those folk might say, be the easiest form to write. Just slap a few drums into a track, add a little repeating bassline, some enharmonic tones up top and you’re done. 

Right? 

Damn wrong.