Schlagwort-Archive: DJing

Drei Dinge, die Sie schon immer über die Melancholie wissen wollten.

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Erstens: Sie ist eine Gemütsstimmung, die durch Schwermut, Schmerz, Traurigkeit oder Nachdenklichkeit geprägt wird.

Zweitens: die englische Übersetzung lautet Melancholia

Drittens: dies ist der Name meines ersten Tracks.

Ableton Live Arrangement-Ansicht Produktion des Titels #melancholiaWarum habe ich diesen Namen genommen? Nachdem ich die zentrale Akkordfolge geschrieben habe, hat sich diese sich mit dem entsprechenden Synthesizer eben ruhig, getragen und etwas traurig – eben melancholisch – angehört.

Dazu ist mir dann auch noch ein entsprechender Text eingefallen, der in Form eines Techno-Poems diese Stimmung in wenigen Sätzen beschreibt. Am Wochenende stelle ich dann diejenige Figur vor, um die es in diesem Techno-Poem geht, Auntie Techno, mit Ihr habe ich schon mal einen Tanztee gefeiert. Ich werde mich zusammen mit Auntie Techno kreativ austoben, d.h. der Track wird ein professorales (haha) Gesamtkunstwerk werden und bekommt irgendwann mal eine extra Landing-Page. Denn ich habe festgestellt, dass man diese Geschichten nicht mehr so ganz gut in meinem normalen Blog unterbringt.

Gestern Abend jedenfalls bin ich noch 2,5 Stunden gesessen und habe ein paar Hausaufgaben aus der Session mit Vincent und Charnaux erledigt und dann einen kurzen Schnipsel auf Soundcloud hochgeladen (siehe unten). Viel Spaß beim reinhören.

Wenn ich die Hausaufgaben Stück für Stück erledigt habe, lade ich noch ein paar andere Schnipsel, diesmal länger hoch. Stay tuned.

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Was kaum einer wusste oder wie ich mir einen Wunschtraum erfüllte.

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#melancholia Bild zum Techno-TrackGestern Abend um 19:11 Uhr hatte ich einen meiner erhebensten Momente in den letzten paar Jahren. Ableton spuckte genau um diese Uhrzeit die erste Rohversion meines allerersten Tracks mit dem Namen „Melancholia“ aus. Nach über einem dreiviertel Jahr Anlauf. Stop. Der Anlauf war 3 Jahre lang. Nochmal Stop. Genau genommen träume ich seit meinem 16. Lebensjahr davon, ein Stück Musik (Was auch immer.) zu produzieren.

Aber zurück zum Anstoß der ganzen Geschichte. Wie eifrige Leser meines Blogs sicher wissen, habe ich am 13.5.2013 meine alte Leidenschaft – das DJing – wieder aufleben lassen. Dies habe ich – auch das ist nichts Neues – meinem Lehrmeister Charnaux zu verdanken. Er war im dafür verantwortlich, dass ich jetzt die Übergänge und das Beatmatching beherrsche. Darüber hinaus verdanke ich ihm auch noch die Leidenschaft für eine Richtung der elektronischen Musik, die mir in der Vergangenheit gar nicht so gut gefallen hat, Techno. Ich war ganz überrascht, nachdem er mir ein paar Tracks vorgespielt hat, wie sehr sich doch diese Richtung im Verlaufe der Jahre geändert hat. Weiterlesen →

Hey DJ, do you want to be famous in an overcrowded business? Part five, Dubspeeka – interesting artist covering many segments of the positioning matrix.

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Dubspeeka, DJ and ProducerDuring the past few weeks I was extremely busy, therefore I had not enough time to write an article about DJing, positioning and marketing. Today I will have a closer look at the positioning strategy of Dubspeeka, one of my favorite artists.

Compared to Len Faki and Matthew Jay that artist covers more than one segment.Dubspeeka is an interesting producer, offering not an aggressive sound like the two DJs mentioned in the last articles, but they are still very energetic. On the primary EP you will find tracks that could be assigned to the low aggressive/rhythm-based techno segment, Outland 1.2 on the other side is a really calm and nearly melodic piece of music touching the low aggressive/melody based segment. Fargo – last but not least – is a typical pad-based song belonging to the segment in the middle. The diversity of Dubspeeka’s tracks is remarkable. You could build up a set with his songs starting with calm warm-up tracks and ending with driving peak tracks. Great. It might be clear to everybody that an artist offering such a diversity of different songs and sounds will be not as boring as the guys focusing on just one Segment. More next week, now listen to Dubspeeka.

Next week the short analysis of Alan Fitzpatrick’s positioning strategy. Stay tuned and enjoy your Weekend.

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Hey DJ, do you want to be famous in an overcrowded business? Part four, the overcrowded segment

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Positioning Matrix for Producers and DJsLast week we had a closer look at Joseph Capriati and his strategic positioning. But of course focusing on only one artist doesn´t bring us anywhere near to understanding the full potential of the positioning matrix.

So – let´s have a look at two of his competitors, Len Faki and Mattew Javes. Both stand for hard and driving techno tracks: rythm based, few synthy sounds, crashes, sharp high hats, no melody. Now in our marketing language that is the segment they cover – which, unfortunately, is quite overcrowded! Why is that so? Well, this certain kind of techno is not too difficult to produce, all you need is a kick drum, a few synthesizer chords and some stylistic devices (see above).

Is it a good idea to do what zillions of others do, or would you rather differentiate yourself from the „mass“, other DJs and producers that is? Well, you won´t be surprised Weiterlesen →

Hey DJ, do you want to be famous in an overcrowded business? Part three, Joseph Capriati in the Matrix

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Capriati - Positioning MatrixThe focus of this weeks´analysis of positioning strategy will be Joseph Capriati. „The Gallery“ is one of my favorites, the perfect pick for setting the peak in your life set: reduced to pure rythm, a few sharp and aggressive synthesizer sounds, pushing and fast paced.

If you listen to his other tracks you will find many of them to be fairly similar to „The Gallery“, i.e. pretty aggressive. Referring to our matrix this means he has aquired a clearly defined position (left upper side of matrix).

On the other hand – have you ever listened to his remix of Pan Pots „Fugitives“? It´s Weiterlesen →

New Live-Set! December last year: outside christmas music, inside Techno.

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Hey DJ, do you want to be famous in an overcrowded business? Part three, the Positioning Matrix

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Techno Music PortfolioLast week I promised to show you a systematic approach to develop your very own positioning strategy – to make you outstanding beside all your competitors. And so here we are with a positioning matrix for the techno genre! This two dimensional matrix allows you to…

  1. get an overview over your entire music business
  2. understand your competitors´ business strategies
  3. identify the „white spots“ you might want to cover (boost musical creativity).

To make it possible to characterize and assess techno music/tracks I suggest two aspects, namely aggressiveness of tracks plus complexity of instrumentation. The first distinguishes between highly aggressive tracks, fast and pushing, ideal to mark a peak in your set, and smooth ones, more ambient and calm.

The latter aspect, complexity of instrumentation, needs a little more looking into. We Weiterlesen →

Hey DJ, do you want to be famous in an overcrowded business? Part two, Positioning

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DJing and MarketingHey DJ, you still want to be famous in a crowded business? This is part two on how to adopt management technics to DJing/music production. The most important decision stands at the very beginning of your career: positioning. What’s that? Lets have a look at the business dictionary: “

„Positioning is a marketing strategy that aims to make a brand occupy a distinct position, relative to competing brands, in the mind of the customer. Companies apply this strategy either by emphasizing the distinguishing features of their brand (what it is, what it does and how, etc.) or they may try to create a suitable image (inexpensive or premium, utilitarian or luxurious, entry-level or high-end, etc.) through advertising. Once a brand is positioned, it is very difficult to reposition it without destroying its credibility.“ (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/positioning.html)

Does this sound weird? Only at first glance! Positioning is a marketing strategy to give you as a DJ/producer a distinct position relative to your competitors – and in the eyes of Weiterlesen →

Hey DJ, do you want to be famous in an overcrowded business? Part one

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DJing and MarketingWhen you’re imagining your future career you are full of ideas, you want it all and now, and you see endless possibilities! Your aim is to stage as often as possible, maybe you’re planning events, and you are getting familiar with your DAW.

But, sooner or later, you will very likely come to the point you’re feeling stressed by too many activities, and unhappy with an output not fully satisfying. Still so much to do, so little time! Not to mention all those younger guys, competitors waiting for THEIR chance…

Going back to the 80’s, the entire music business was completely different: House Music was scarcely invented, and DJ’s and producers were creating a new market. Audience was fed up with Disco and craving a new dance music style. A dream situation! How very different today: when you go on soundcloud or mixcloud, DJs and their sets/tracks count by the thousands, many of them creating very similar sound. Just because they give no thoughts on how to differentiate their style from all the others!

Quite often these potential future stars are just helpless and feel it’s too difficult, they have no idea how to make themselves unique. This is a challenge that many a big company has faced thanks to globalization, and they have developed some very interesting ways out of it. Why not look at these aproaches and learn how to adapt them for DJing/producing Business?

Part two following, stay tuned!

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Hey structured DJ, where is your spirit?

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DJing and MarketingThat’s the right time to say sorry. Last year I promised you to write a few articles about DJing and marketing. Unfortunately I was so busy during the last few months of 2015, especially with my new teaching project (music production with Ableton Live), that I didn’t have enough time for these articles.

Now the good News. The most important outcome of that subject is the structure behind DJing and music production. I developed a concept for my students to make their search for the right musical focus a bit easier. When discussing these concepts with the students, an interesting question arised: if you apply these methodologies, where is the spirit? My answer was really simple: if you don’t have the right spirit, you don’t need a methodology. If you have the right spirit, the right methodology helps you to reduce the amount of „trial-and-error-cycles“. Stay tuned.

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