Music and gear reviews, industry thoughts and grumbles…
The wonderfully excellent Red Dog Music is throwing what is sure to be a wonderfully excellent night of tunes at the equally wonderfully excellent City Cafe in Edinburgh, from 7pm on Thursday 18th April. Full line up TBC, but I’ll be there spinning some deep grooves.
Get this one in your diary folks!
Red Dog Music presents Groove Terrierism
Where- The City Cafe, 19 Blair Street, Edinburgh
When- 7pm-12.30am, Thursday 18th April
Entry- Free
More details will undoubtedly follow!
If it was Slash who made me first pick up a guitar, it was Noel Gallagher who made me want to join a band. In a recent interview, Noel was heard to say “any f*cker can make dance music”. This quote led to some major activity on Twitter, with the consensus being that he was probably right, but that there is a difference to making dance music, and making good dance music, which is probably fair. Tim Exile put it well when he tweeted that “making dance music is the new gaming”. I have to say, I think it’s great; it means that electronic music is one step closer to becoming the purest, most egalitarian and democratic art form.
You can now have more studio power with a cheap PC and a Computer Music cover disc than The Beatles had. Even if you go back to perhaps one of the last big shifts in accessible recording, the Tascam Portastudio, you were still looking at a sizeable investment, particularly once you added microphones and effects units etc. Now, even with freeware VSTs, you can make some professional quality tracks. I spent significantly more money than I had on my Virus TI, but my freeware Juno and SH-101 still see frequent use.
Everyone has always had the ability to make music, even if that was just banging out a beat on a rock and a bit of old bone. Now though, nearly anyone can not only make music, but also record it and distribute it to the world. You’ve got to admit, that’s a pretty impressive step forward. The issue now though has become, not making your music, but getting people to listen to it.
I’m glad that electronic music production is more accessible. If you’re willing to put the hours in searching Soundcloud, you can find some outstanding tunes, some of the experimental electronica can be fantastic, but, for the dj, you might find that one track that differentiates you from the Beatport top ten-playing crowd…
This post first appeared as a news article for Now Then Records.
There are a lot of music blogs around, why should you be spending your time reading this one? Well, first of all, I’m not a pro. I’m not a professional musician/producer/engineer/music writer etc. I’ve never even taken a music technology course; I’m a scientist. Music and production is a hobby for me; perhaps that gives me a different perspective.
I’ll admit, it’s a hobby I take pretty seriously. I enjoy spending time on it, and I’ve certainly spent enough on it over the years! I’ve seen, used and owned my fair share of hardware and software over the last wee while. I’ve sold a few tracks and CDs in my time as well and, while I’ve never had a formal production course, I’ve picked up quite a lot over the last fifteen years from various sources and I hope that at least some of my thoughts and advice might be helpful, or at least interesting! If I don’t know it, then I think I at least know where to go looking for it!
I’m going to try and keep this blog interesting and fairly diverse: a combination of gear reviews, tutorials, new music reviews and my reviews of the classic albums in my collection that have influenced me, as well as my general thoughts and feelings about music technology, production and the industry world; all from the perspective of this enthusiastic hobbyist! Should you be interested, you can check out my tracks here.
So, with that, I’ll leave it for the first post and just wrap up by giving kudos to Benwaa for setting up the free-to-download group on Soundcloud: hopefully this will develop into a great source for free house, techno and edm tracks.
‘Till next time y’all, fc.
Fynn's House and Audio Tech Notes 