Derrick May Interview after Beatport Live

An Interview With Jacob Korn

last week jacob korn was the first of dresden’s uncanny valley crew to release a full length album. you & me is a wholly non-standard house record, with varying moods from deep and dark to bright and industrial. no doubt in park to thank for it being such an undulating ride is that fact each track was made with a collaborator, from chris rau to cuthead via san soda and many more. korn’s fingerprints are still all over it, though the gauzy house aesthetics he’s honed on labels like running back, dolly and of course uc here seem even more complete. not bad for someone who only turned his attention back to electronic music a few years ago, and who spends quite a lot of his time instructing the youth in his local city. find out more about the man in this interview and check thew stream at the end for a taster of what to expect from you & me.

how are you? what’s been keeping you busy?

good thanks. the album is done, some remixes finished, new remixes are in the pipeline as well as the liveset for the album-tour and different workshops.

am i right in thinking you only turned to electronic music in 2007-ish? what brought about the change in direction?

it’s not true, no. in 2007 i came back to the techno/house sound i was beginning in the mid 90´s while having different digressions into more leftfield electronica in the 00´s. the change was inspired by a lot of good house music around that time.

what were you doing/into before then? what music did you grow up around and does that still influence you now?

when a friend and me were starting back then after homework, we were doing hardcore techno which changed to more detroit inspired techno. we went to our first parties which were techno in the first place, but had often several floors with house, electro, drum´n´bass, chillout and even hip hop. later during my studies labels like warp, morr, fatcat, ninja tunes or musical styles like nujazz and broken beat were interesting for me. some are still influential to me.

so how did you enjoy the album writing process now you look back? was it fun, are you totally happy?

in general making music is fun, especially when you are jamming around with other people. so this is the fun part. later things need to be „finished“ which is 70% of the work for such an album. in this time you are quite isolated and things need to be done. barley nobody can help. except for the mixing part i always ask my friends at www.blockstudio.de for their opinion. now it sounds really good to me, especially after pole was mastering it and you listening to it with the little extra warmth on vinyl.

was there a plan for it from the start? did you know what you wanted to do?

not really a master plan from the beginning. i was just collecting works of the last 5 years and discovered that most tracks i liked best, had people collaborating with it. while i never missed the opportunity to jam with people in the studio once they are in town it did not take long to have the top candidates for the album together.

how hard was it working with so many collaborators to make sure the whole album fit together as a whole from start to finish, and wasn’t just a collection of tracks?

as i said before i really enjoy working with different people. so i needed to take care of the whole communication overhead which takes a while but i have had assistance from the label guys as well. to get together kind of a consistent album it needs a special sound-stamp that i was trying to put on top of all that jams. maybe i am not able to do it in a different way so that’s why it sounds kind of the same even when working together with a lot of different artists.

why do you favour collaborating so much? what do you like about it? think you’ll ever go solo on an album?

after several years having spent producing on my own i felt the wish to work with other musicians again. maybe because that’s what music is really about, to create it in interaction with other people? so, over time i started to work with different musicians and i often judged the results as more valuable than my solo work. the reason for that is probably the difference in the process of creation. there are compromises to be made, yes. but at the same time you try out things that you wouldn’t have tried on your own. it’s just so exciting when the result is more than the sum of its parts!

a solo album? possibly yes. probably not. laughs

and it seems to ebb and flow like a club set overall – was that the intention?

maybe. i think it is good to have different tempos and varied styles on an album. it makes the experience for listening more rich. thats what i like in club-sets as well.

was it made with the dancing floor in mind? do your dj sets inform your productions would you say?

i dont dj too much to be honest. i play my own music mostly for livesets. but sure this needs new music all the time and as i said the tracks were collected the past 5 years – it was also the time i was quite active doing livesets in clubs.

it seems an album influenced by lots outside dance music – almost a bit industrial and gritty – i wonder what music you listened to whilst making it and if i am in any way right?

i love dance music for 15 years now. it used to be rougher in the beginning. i still got this i mind when switching the machines on today. beside this you are not able to listen just to dance music all day. i listened a lot to electronica and it turned out from the love for hiphop that i discovered good music from the 60´s and 70´s era, mostly jazz and soul.

how much do you think your location in dresden is an influence on the music you make? its an industrial city i think?

the nickname „florence on the elbe“ would not imply that i quess:) here you are surrounded more by beautiful nature, baroque buildings, history all over, theatres, fine arts, classical music, jazz and some media arts. not really heavy industry, noise and smoking chimneys.

you’re going on tour now, right? what should people expect from you in live-mode?

as i said i am just able to play my own stuff so people would know some tunes but still be able to be surprised hopefully.

what else have you got coming up/are you looking forward to?

i am doing some workshops with school-kids which is really really challenging but also fun. working also with a dance-company on a piece. finishing an diy modular synth and of course more music music music:)

what do you like to do outside of music?

music is everywhere. to escape that i like cycling or hiking. spending time with people, you know. exhibitions, movies, soldering, the usual suspects:)

Chris Liebing Interview: How I Play (Ableton, Traktor, Maschine)

For me if you play live or play with out actually physically putting records together and beat matching. THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD ASPIRE TO.

At soundcheck before his recent San Francisco show, we had a chance to get German techno producer and DJ Chris Liebing to walk you through his entire workflow including: two laptops running Traktor, Ableton, and Maschine, two Allen and Heath K2s, a Faderfox and more. Check out his extremely modular setup and hear how he uses all four channels on his Xone:92 mixer at the same time to great success. 

HI TECH SOUL: THE CREATION OF TECHNO MUSIC

This account of Detroit techno’s origins and evolution is close to definitive, thanks to the impressive array of talking aheads assembled – among them Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May, Richie Hawtin, Keith Tucker, Kenny Larkin, Electrifyin’ Mojo, Jeff Mills, Carl Craig and Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir.

Frankie Knuckles Red Bull Music Academy Lecture

Lecture: Frankie Knuckles (Madrid 2011) from Red Bull Music Academy on Vimeo.

Thursdays Tech: Ableton Live Tutorial - Techno Fundamentals

Detroit The Blueprint Of Techno

Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins, Terrence Parker, Mike Huckaby, Richie Hawtin and Carl Craig all feature in this rare late '90s documentary on the history of techno in Detroit.

Resident Advisor Podcast: RA.278 Mike Huckaby

A Detroit favourite plays his favourite house records. 

Mike Huckaby is one of electronic music's teachers. Here's a man that recently told usthat he'd prefer to stay in his home city of Detroit tutoring kids on music production at the city's Youthville centre than playing festivals in Europe. A deep house producer who spent years honing his synthesis and programming skills only to publish his knowledge in the form of a sample CD. ("I just have a sense of compassion to help others not to be stuck regarding the music making process like I was in the past," he told LWE last year.)

Our Machine Love feature with him last year was full of anecdotes concerning this struggle to succeed in music making, yet it always ran parallel with his desire to share all he'd unearthed. If this is all beginning to sound a little too feel-good then we should also emphasise that Huckaby is pretty badass DJ and producer in his own right. He's been releasing grade-a deep house since 1995 and despite his statement to the contrary regularly finds himself touring throughout Europe among other worldwide destinations like the upcoming Decibel festival in Washington state.

As for Huckaby's mix for us? "These are the records that I want to hear for the rest of my life."
What have you been up to recently?

I'm quite busy these days. I've just finished Tresor's 20th Anniversary mix CD; remixes for Vladislav Delay and Pole; a limited release for Sushitech; Sun Ra Edits Vol 2; a sample CD for Red Bull Music Academy in Australia; a lecture and workshop there; the Decibel Festival in Seattle; as well as a European tour that starts in October. In addition to that I have several workshops in Europe and Russia too. So yeah, I'm quite busy these days.
How and where was the mix recorded?

At home in Detroit with vinyl and turntables.
Can you tell us about the idea behind the mix?

These are the records that I want to hear for the rest of my life. This is also my last podcast for 2011. So the best has been saved for the last, so to speak. I found an old reel tape when I was on the Electrifying Mojo's show, so I crafted a nice little intro, and mixed from there. That was one thing my reel-to-reel came in handy for.
It's impossible to capture a city in a film. What did we miss that you think is important about Detroit in Real Scenes?

I think coverage of Ron Murphy's contribution to Detroit should have been discussed, as well as Archer's vinyl pressing plant in Detroit. Those things should have been included. J. Dilla's influence and popularity in Detroit could also have been discussed.
Has there been much of an upsurge in interest in Youthville since its premiere?

Absolutely. I am overwhelmed by the amount of feedback I have received about the documentary. People from all over the world have begun to contact me and make contributions towards my Ableton and Reaktor classes at Youthville. People have donated computers to students in need, and as well as financial donations to help students in need of purchasing software for the classes.

But the greatest thing that has been achieved after the documentary's premiere has been landing a sound design opportunity for the two students featured in the video. Being able to do sound design for Reaktor at 11 and 14 years old is mindblowing!

When the concept of the Detroit / Berlin connection is being discussed, Tresor and Hardwax is often the source of the conversation. But the next Detroit / Berlin connection beyond the millennium is a technological one that exists between Native Instruments, Ableton and the work that I'm doing at Youthville. Those companies have lent a tremendous amount of support.
What are you up to next?

I'm trying to get My Life with the Wave Vol. 2 done, and I'm soon on my way to Russia.
Photo credit: Walter Wasacz

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From Detroit to Berlin and Back: In-depth Interviews with Pioneering Artists

Pour some port, find a comfy spot on the couch, and fire up the YouTubes. A surprisingly-rich raft of terrific documentary video for synth and electronic music enthusiasts has been making the rounds.

In our queue: Analog Suicide interviews a legendary vintage synth spot in Berlin, an hourlong documentary features not only Richie Hawtin but a range of techno pioneers, as well as other shorts from T-Mobile (yes, the phone company), and the BBC scores more history of the British side of the synth revolution in music. Sit down and get ready, because here we go.

Production Tips: Helpful all-round...

Saw This article over at nodoughmusic and thought of all the aspiring producers I know....... Heres some dope tips guys.... :-)

It’s the little things that matter most.

This week’s No Dough Music Blog focuses on the small things in a track, the little changes, instabilities and accidental mistakes which make some music great, and how extra attention to detail can really benefit your production.

Velocity & Modulation

These are both about movement, I touched on velocity in my previous blog and made quite a contentious point: that good music is "believable". I would like to clarify and expand on that idea a little.
When I referred to making your music more believable, I referred to the way our minds imagine and expect little traits found in the real world and in the way real things sound. I was not suggesting for example that all music should be comparable to something that could be done with instruments and a band.
In fact a better way of putting it would be to say, that even in the most fantastically unreal piece of music, whose sole intent is to take you to another world and sound like nothing else, even in that music we still look for the subtle variations in movement and tone that makes it sound alive and believable to us. Think of it as like the smaller details in a storybook that make the whole book's world come to life in our imagination.

Working in finer detail in terms of Velocity and Modulation can help foster an organic and fluid nature to your music. Songs that live forever as classics that you never get bored of are ALL about the small things, with an often obsessive attention to detail.

Playing Things In & Jamming.

If you have a midi keyboard this is a must, if you don’t then you must buy one. Getting your groove on and playing things in is one of the more fun ways of getting some humanity into your tracks. It Doesn't matter if you’re a virtuoso and it comes really easy to you (although that can help) or you’re new to the whole game and you find the whole concept daunting, don’t worry, even the most ham-fisted of us will find a lot of value in having a go.

Play in your percussive parts using a midi keyboard or some drum pads, record in your FX automation rather than program it in by hand. If you set up your project and your controllers in a sensible way, so as to give you hands on access to things like Delay Sends, Filter Cut-offs and Resonance, you will find things flowing more musically and just working out a lot easier and a lot quicker too, even if you do have to do some tidying up of the midi you recorded. What’s more, this improvisation can really help you stamp some individuality on your song and make it stand out. It's easy to get sucked into programming all your beats, and sometimes it’s impossible not to program them... but do take every opportunity to stamp your name on things where you can.

When working like this you will find that you automatically do a lot of things naturally without thinking, things that are incredibly musical, like varying the velocity of your percussion with the groove or subtle filter sweeps. A lot of stuff you do automatically would be incredibly complex to program from scratch. It's this you’re capturing, and it will translate directly into your music.

VINYL UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

Groove & Humanisation tools

Even on the earliest of Drum Machines there were always controls to add swing or shuffle and to Accent certain hits. It’s important to have a nice tight kick drum to drive the tracks on, but there’s something off-putting if everything is too straight and too static. Off-putting is probably the wrong word, boring is probably more apt. Even in the most industrial techno it is all about the groove, and often the groove is brought alive by some well-placed off-grid notes. Modern sequencers are a treasure trove when it comes to groove tools, often providing many different options to play around with. Do not under-use these tools. A touch of swing to your beats can be the difference between boring and engrossing, it’s as simple as that. Don’t be afraid to move notes by hand off the snap grid, or even play stuff in to find where the groove really comes together.

If you look at Abletons groove system each pre-set groove also features Velocity movements and the ability to add a little bit of Random movement in, which can be great to loosen things up a little. These controls are once again a way of replicating the things us humans do naturally.

But remember if a dead straight groove is part of your artistic direction, and you spend the time to make it sound interesting and work in your song then that’s not a crime either.

Variations & Repetitions

We all have shorter attention spans than we care to admit, and long unchanging, unemotional sections can make people literally stop listening. When listening to a demo, one of the first decisions a label's A&R guy will make is to ask himself is this interesting enough to continue listening.

Now there are a lot of elements that come together in the answer to that question, one of the main ones is the quantity and quality of variations in what’s going on in your track. Sometimes just changing one or two hits in your beat is enough; sometimes you will need to have a more extensive change in the form of a fill or a break to keep it going. Whatever you do, keep it changing, altering and moving, as the effect that change can have on how engrossing your music is can be powerful. Sometimes just moving away from the strong beat for a couple of bars and then coming back to that same beat can sound like a whole new section in itself. The best repetitive & hypnotic tracks are built on the suspense and tension built when going away from, and coming back to its main repetitive elements in subtle and less than subtle ways, or having the actual repeating element morph and change over time.

Layering

Layering is a very powerful tool if you want to build up a dense and interesting sonic "landscape" with your music. The subtle interactions and differences between 2 sounds when played together can add a bespoke sound to your music. Use filters and eq to allow different sounds to dominate different frequencies in your layered sound and create something much more complex and fresh.

Record, Jam & Improvise

As I mentioned earlier having a jam with your music, putting yourself in the position where you perform more of your music, is a great way to really add musicality and individuality to it. Sometimes once I have some basic ideas down, I will start by hitting record and doing a little performance with the Faders and the mutes, to see what kind of ideas I can get going for the arrangement. Some modern software even allows you to trigger specific elements or patterns.
By recording 30 minutes of pure improvisation in a rough form, you can often listen back and hear sections with good ideas that help you get a good foothold on your arrangement, and the ideas once again flow very naturally and musically compared to when you program things in.

The “Lucky Mistake”.

One thing that’s probably THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in music

“The Lucky Mistake”

We have all sat there, having worked for hours without much inspiration, and then suddenly we are enjoying an amazing sound coming from our speakers after accidentally knocking over a keyboard or hit the wrong key. Not really knowing how we made it but just enjoying it and then comes the flood of new ideas, buzzing around our minds.

Every single musician in the world has a story about some part in some track they made by accident and how it’s one of the parts they enjoy the most. The more you work and perform in little bits of your music, the more often you will have these inspiring little musical mistakes, if you are ever stuck on a song or you have started to feel jaded about it that’s the time to start ripping it apart and jamming with it...with record firmly switched on.
If you can't seem to find the right rhythm for your hats, record in a few minutes of you playing them in or if your breakdown and main section are not really cutting the mustard get playing with the faders and muting some parts and somewhere in there, you will find the answer...of that I am certain.

Roy Matthews (Vinyl Factory) Interview

After I had a lot of good feedback on my how vinyl is made post, I thought I'd hit you with a little knowledge. I found this interview by Chris Tubbs with Roy Mattews on vinyl plants....

Roy Matthews is a legend in the field of vinyl record production, an engineer who’s spirited passion for vinyl is literally mapped into the tireless, steaming presses that produce the finest records in the UK at Vinyl Factory, the ex EMI pressing plant just outside London.

Roy’s been working in his field for 45 years; it’s probably fair to say that what the man doesn’t know about vinyl production isn’t worth knowing. Here we talk about what makes a great pressing, Roy dispenses some great advice to young label upstarts and I get a tour of the factory. Enjoy!

Roy Matthews (Vinyl Factory) Interview from Christopher Tubbs on Vimeo.