There are some things that touches me more then other. One of them is modular synthism. Im not going to go deep into nerd talks today before i give you all a taste of the cake :) First of, the AHNE (Analogue Heaven North East) is a annual meet up for analog synth fans around the Boston area. In this video we will see a couple of beauty's that included the "Enabler" controles for the rhodes chroma, a rack of Eurorack modules, Doepfer's Dark Energy sequencer and many many more cute little things!
Im pretty sure most of my followers will say "Sure, its fantastic but do we really need this gear? Why not just use a VST". Well, its becuase these machines does not only represent a certain sound, but also the feeling, sitting deep into the night twisting those knobs is something that a VST never ever will be able to give you. But sure, i agree, its an expensive hobby!
When i got the request from BBC Radio1 to mix the essential mix, my biggest question to myself was: "How on earth will i pull this together?"
You see, its not easy to mix an essential mix, you gotta have a clear "go" from all label & producers and at the same time to have as much as exclusive material as possible that's not released yet, a little big of a paradox. Easy? Not a chance.
Iv got a small list of producers that i respect & follow, the first thing i did was to give them a call and see if there was something new in the pipeline about 4-5 weeks before the mix. I realized that i hadn't much time to wait for unfinished project's that wasn't finished yet as i need to rely on that the material was done in time. So after creating a little mind map inside my head on how to build the mix i started to add my own finished projects and then looking for the material that was missing. I went through beatport.com a couple of million of times and i did only found 3 tracks that really impressed me and fit into this mix. After a couple of weeks of searching under every rock for all tracks i started to complete the tracklist inside my head. it wasnt easy as i wanted to make a mix that represent all my sound's im playing without becoming a huge mess, not easy at all as its all key mixed aswell in the end.... With 5 days left i started to make a winamp playlist with all the tunes i collected and already had, there was about 270 tracks that i had to select from, not easy! It actually took longer time to select each single track and the placement in the mix then actually mixing the mix itself..... I was also quite sad since i had to leave out soooo many good tunes that there wasnt time for in the mix. So if you are a producer and you sent me some awesome material and i said i really liked it but i didnt play it, well, it wasnt becuase i was lying, it was becuase there was no time for everything. And ofcourse, own material always goes first in such a mix. Mixing the mix itself took about 7 hours in total, all done i Ableton Live 8 with a couple of millions of edits and automation lanes here and there! Once im back home im going to post a picture of how the mix looks in ableton :) Im really greatful for all the fantastic feedback that iv had from this mix and iv also heard that BBC Radio1 was really really happy about it :) So that warms my heart to hear! You can listen to my mix here:
