Mixtape Diary
14 December 2024
I’ve got three new tracks today, some have been a couple of months in the making and it’s time I stop fiddling with it. Here for You is inspired by Miguel Migs, one of my favourite house producers. It’s no where near what he does, but has a bit of the same feel, I think. I’m getting more and more into what the Defected label releases and went to see Sam Divine play in Bristol recently too. No Connection was inspired by that.
8 December 2024
I’ve been trying to get my Maschine sampler to work in Ableton for a while and finally figured out a way to do it. So I found this sample on Splice, chopped it up and made new sequences using these chops. I also wanted to use more of a breakbeat for a change and the result can be found below in a track called ‘Beautiful Dreamer’.
8 October 2024
A little while ago I shot a short dance film on.a beach in Somerset and made a track for it. This is the one minute version. More trip hop than house this time.
21 september 2024
I had these tracks for a while now, but hadn’t had an opportunity to post them because of work. I’ve been learning how to use Xfer Record’s Serum synth. I’m going to have more time to work on new things soon, so I thought this would be a good time to post these. I’m particularly happy with Adore April. Purple Inferno is the most disco track I’ve made so far.
17 July 2024
One of my favourites from the last few months. This one got the random title ‘Shabby Chic’.
2 July 2024
Two new tracks I’m quite happy with. All Ableton Live 12. Found a Greek vocal hook for Road House, so dedicated that to my youngest daughter who’s going to spend two weeks in Crete in August.
21 june 2024
Playing around with a new synth plug-in I got I ended up making a dark pop song. This is Paranoid Sonata. Timings are fluid, I admit. May delete later.
20 JUNE 2024
I still really like using Maschine for sketching, but I’m moving more and more onto Ableton Live, often sending stems from Maschine to Live and finishing everything there. I wish the Maschine MK3 would integrate with Live better.
I haven’t managed to record the tracks I wrote the vocals for yet, but I did collaborate with a vocalist called Shae. We recorded a track called Just Bounce, new vocals for a track I previously used royalty free vocals for (Wind Me Up) and a spoken word track with one of Shae’s poems (Unfound Lover).
8 April 2024
I’ve been working on several projects the past couple of months, some of which are with vocalists. I’ve also written my first two tracks with vocals. Another steep learning curve! They’ll be on my site when they’re done.
I finished a new track yesterday, so I thought I’d post this short update and put the track up on this page as well.
3 February 2024
A long long time ago, in The Netherlands in the late eighties and early nineties, I DJ’d, made mixtapes and produced some basic tracks in my bedroom. I had turntables, a tape deck, a sampler and drum machine. One of my mixes got played on national radio. Then life happened and I only got back to DJing for a bit when I lived in Lisbon in 2004. I had some piano lessons in 2006, but never had the patience to practice enough. So although I really wanted to be able to make music, I never got around it.
But in February last year I saw Fred Again’s interview with Zane Lowe where he demo’d a Maschine (about 37 minutes in the video) and I was blown away and super-inspired. So, after a a couple of weeks of thinking about it I got a Maschine and started to learn how to use it and make music again. There was (and is!) a super steep learning curve. Not only was there the hardware, the DAW/digital audio workstation software and all its plugins, it was music theory, producing and then mixing and mastering too.
In the last few months I managed to write and produce some tracks and I’ve put them on this page and called it Mixtape 01. They’re basically sketches and learning projects. I’m experimenting and making tracks to learn how to do it and find my sound. Home mixes and masters, so bear with me on this. I’m not even sure about putting these online. I don’t know if they’re any good. I might take them down again soon. There’s still a long way to go, but I’d like to test the waters and see if people are up for collaborating too. See what you think…