Club music – it’s the music that makes my heart beat the loudest.
It’s an immense experience actually being there – in a nightclub, and I’ve well and truly served my time.
I am immensely impressed by the scores of DJs who have been in the game since the start and are still just about rocking the scene. Carl Cox is a prize example. He’s now 57, and still playing to a few adoring crowds, and up until 2017 held a yearly residency at Space in Ibiza. Here he is in 2016, in a mighty impressive open-to-close set. (I bet no-one I direct to this video will watch it all the way through, but know that he – of course – played the music all the way through, continuously for 9 hours.)
I’ve also a soft spot for the portrayal of club scenes in movies, where they often manage to capture at least something of the vibe and atmosphere of being there. Here’s a good one from Collateral, scored by Paul Okenfold’s Ready Steady Go.
The inspiration for this week’s track was the infamous ‘disco scene’ from Basic Instinct. Here it is:
So for the 26th week – half way through this year, I’m dusting off a track that I wrote over 20 years ago. It’s so old that I can’t even open the file anymore – I wrote it on software that no longer exists. But I still have the file, so I’ve dusted it off and remastered it.
For the technically curious, here is the original, which suffered from a few issues, including:
EQ curve way too smiley – too much bass and treble, with little life in the midrange.
A very dry breakdown section (I didn’t even have a reverb back then!)
Jerome Isma Ae is a German producer who reaches heartbreaking levels of simplicity in his productions. Whilst some producers rejoice in having upwards of 50 tracks in a song, Jerome often deploys less than 10.
I was given the opportunity to remix one of his more recent tracks: Tiger. Here’s the original:
I chose to keep most of the original structure but create a more organic atmosphere to compliment the stricture in the original.
To my ear, producers who use less tracks end up with a cleaner, more satisfying sound. Jerome Isma Ae gets a very clean sound indeed. I tried very hard to keep to the same track sound as him, but I didn’t manage it: I added a couple more. But I loved working in his environment of minimal set up, and peeking behind the curtain of greatness.
This is possibly his most famous work (and that’s him in the photo):
Hold that Sucker Down
Finally, just as a thought, I am intrigued by whether the country a producer comes from has any effect on the way they produce music (as a distinct question from whether it effects the sound they ultimately achieve).
Do producers from some countries produce in a laid back way, whilst others adopt a more structured approach? This depends entirely on whether country-wide stereo-types even reflect reality in the first place. I won’t comment further on this, other to say that I really don’t think I’m sitting here producing with a stiff upper lip. If anything, seeing the way Jerome pulled things together made me smile nearly the entire way through the week.
I love the production quality of my tracks on site variously. I hope they all reach a certain standard. More importantly, I really hope that this standard is increasing over time. (Lots of people provide great feedback about sound I’m getting, and I’m ever so grateful for that.)
Still: some are stronger than others – tighter, more crisp, and more imparting of an emotion.
This week the circle completes. Having done two quite different mixes of the same track, I wanted to dust off the original version. I first made this around 10 years ago. I’ve done my best this week to improve the overall sound and bring out the best in the music. I’m not perfect, but to my ears the new version sounds much better than the previous one.
I’d love to know whether you agree! Do get in touch.
Here’s the untouched version from a decade ago.
If you’re in the mood but don’t quite know what you’re listening for, consider:Â
Is there more of less separation between the different instruments? Is the bass (for example) now more or less distinct?
At the same time, do the instruments sit together as a whole?Â
How’s the balance? (The right amount of bass? Treble?)Â
Do you feel close to the music, or is there, for example, a huge layer of mud standing in your way?Â
Striding Edge, approach to Helvellyn, Lake District 2006
This follows on from last week, and presents an uplifting version of I Want to be Free.
This is much closer in spirit to the original that I made so long ago, with the full melody and ear candy.
The original track holds special memories for me. I created it back in 2006, on a laptop, whilst staying in an empty (and particularly cold) house that belonged to a friend of a friend. . In between writing music, I found some wonderful places to explore. The Lake District has some amazing walks and mountains, and my favourite of these is Helvellyn. You can approach the peak in a few different ways – some easier than others. The hardest and easily the most magical is across the Striding Edge, which you’re looking back out over in the photograph.
It was crisp and cold and beautiful, and as I traversed along the icy ridge, I was haunted by little snippets of the melody in this track.
Brand new – created start to finish in the preceding week, or
The fulfilment of ideas I’d had but, formed into a complete piece. (Anyone familiar with producing dance music will be familiar with 8-bar loops: snippets of music that may well sound great, but where all the hard work lies ahead of them. Many will have more of these than they could ever hope to complete. I am no exception.)
This track is one a few that stem from a track I already completed. In this case I wrote I want to be Free well over 10 years ago. The production isn’t great, but I did love the idea and always wanted to make it shine a little more.
For this week I have taken some of its ideas and created a new, progressive, stripped back version.
In a future week I’d also like to produce a more uplifting version, with all the original arpeggios and melody.
Re-shaping old ground
I’m also tempted to have another go at mixing the original version but keeping all the same elements. It would be interesting to see whether I can improve it.
I’ve actually tried something like this before on a different track, and confess that it was a profound disappointment. I approached in an arrogant and overly confident fashion: of course I’m a stronger producer now; I’ll lick this into shape in no time. I was unimpressed by both the finish result, which managed to sound worse than the original, and my attitude. If I do it again it will be with love, care and humility.
Psytrance. If you’re not familiar with all the ins and outs of different dance music genres, you may wonder what psytrance is, and whether it is distinctive enough to earn its own sub-genre.
I actually don’t think it’s a sub-genre at all: it’s sound, heritage, ethos and followers don’t tend to overlap massively with trance. It is unique in these ways:
Although overlapping, psytrance runs a bit fast than trance (136bpm+ compared with 135-138bpm)
Psytrance sounds much tighter – the drums in particular are very clean and snappy.
Psytrance is less varied and therefore more distinctive than trance (which does indeed have a number of different styles)
Psytrance shuns commerciality as much as possible
It has somewhat more of a cult following
Is psychedelic rather than uplifting
Has roots in India, and on the beaches of Thailand.
Varkala is a small place on the Southern coast of India. It is not populated and attracts few mainstream Western visitors. It has long been a stopping point for travellers though. Despite being nearly 1000kms away from Goa, it shares a similar vibe, and is a wonderful place to visit.
I didn’t attend any beach parties when I went, so this picture isn’t mine.
It was a lovely place.
And – being India – one morning we found ourselves amongst the guests of honour at a wedding that we simply happened upon whilst visiting a temple. The array of food spread on a banana leaf below is the finest form of dining I can imagine.
Finishing a new track every week requires a certain amount of discipline. Creating musis is a creative act, and there is a sense in which the possibilities are limitless. This applies to every stage of the process: not just the creation of melodies, but the sculping of the overall sound [mixing] and to the final act of polishing that allows you to say that the track is finished [mastering].
Many people say that mastering is a dark art. It is true that there are – and will remain – extremely dedicated and talented people who have specialised into mastering alone. Mastering engineers do this for a living, focussing exclusively on bringing out the best in other people’s music, and the best ones achieve levels of fame on the basis of this particular practice alone. They take tracks that are fully mixed, and already complete from the perspective of the musician, and add the finishing touches.Â
On the other hand, not everyone can afford to have all their tracks mastered by a dedicated professional. Even if they do, many dance producers will still do an initial master themselves – think of a producer working in Ibiza who wants to play one of their tracks that evening in a club to test it out. Ultimately, they may pass the track to a mastering engineer before releasing the track on a label, but the first cut will likely the theirs.Â
When I am mastering tracks for this site, I am typically looking to achieve these things:
Loudness – making sure the track plays at the right volume, whilst retaining a decent dynamic range. (I aim for -12db as a rough target).
Balance –Â ensuring that there is harmony between the different frequencies of the sound.Â
Musicality – bringing out the best of the track and helping it to fulfil its potential.
Coherence – dance music consists of many different instruments which must work together.
To work accurately and quickly, though, I find it works best to constrain some aspects of the process. At this point my mastering chaing tends to have these elements as staple:
This is the simplest of tools and sits, untouched and infallible, in the first slot in the chain. I use it to convert all the stereo info in the very low end (below around 70hz) to mono.
A quite superb EQ. It is not known for having its own sound or character; rather for its ease and joy of use. I’d have to have a particular reason to use anything else, and whilst I will occassionally use other EQs whilst mixing tracks, for mastering, it’s Pro-Q3.
I don’t go overboard with this, but it does add a sense of overall cohesion to the track, encouraging its different elements to feel like they are working together.
Any decent Bus Compressor is fine – I just find this one sounds great without having a load of distracting options.
The final element of the mastering chain that has an affect on the sound. Again, I don’t apply massive amounts of limiting, and don’t aim for my music to be very loud. Still: as you’re clicking through the different music on the site and don’t hear massive differences between the volume of each track, you have Pro-L2 to thank.
I use this to compare the sound of the track I’m working on with other tracks – both other people’s music and tracks from previous weeks. Using other music as a reference helps me to calibrate, so I can use the tools above more effectively. Metric AB allows for effortless switching between the track I’m working on and the reference material to which I am comparing. It also provides visual comparisons, such as the frequency balance between the respective tracks, their dynamic range or stereo spread.
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