What time of day do you work best?
In the morning or early afternoon. I'd love to work at night but just can't help getting sleepy unless I have to mixdown or do something that doesn't require too much creativity.
Where do you get your inspiration / motivation from?Not too sure myself to be honest. Sometimes I might just hear something I like that inspires me - most of the times I end up doing the total opposite though. Other times it might be something really random, just a situation or something that puts me in a certain mood and makes me want to sit down and write a track. What do you do when you're not feeling inspired?
Sometimes I try harder and I manage to get motivated again. I am very easily distractable so I know it's ok for me to try a couple of times, but if I realise I'm just pushing it too much I just leave it and try again a few days later, otherwise I'd just end up just not enjoying it at all and probably making a track I'd totally hate.
Do you start a tune from scratch, or do you usually have a drumset/template/etc to work from?
I always start them from scratch... I made a few drum kits in the past after being advised to eventually get a bit more organised, which totally makes sense but I forgot about them anyway and probably used them not more than two or three times.
Lately I've been doing a sort of mix of both though: I would start a tune - and take a lot of time to get the kits, sounds ready etc but then the actual tune would end up being something I generally don't really like at all. So I would start a new one with the same sounds and drums a day or two later and manage to make something out of it.
If you got a chance would you write pop stuff for a major label (if the money was good?)
Three years ago I would have probably said no, now I think I would, yep. I think trying to do something so different than what I'm used to - with a specific purpose, might actually end up being quite inspiring / enjoyable. What's the boring, workhorse plugin/piece of kit that you use all the time?
Pretty much all the plug ins I use. The hopeless one though is definitely battery.
What's the coolest bit of kit you've got and do you actually use it much?
I've got a couple, but there's one I recently found out, a synth called Circle which is quite cool. Do you mixdown your own stuff? Reckon there's a stigma around this?
Yea I mix down my own stuff. I try and make the best I can even though it doesn't always quite sound the way I'd want it to, heh.
I really appreciate good mixdowns and I'm always happy to learn more and improve them but on the other hand I think sometimes some people get too stuck on getting loud and crispy mixdowns than focusing on the actual tracks...
It's obviously a shame when a good track sounds bad mixdown-wise but then again, you can fix that; while tracks which are not special or which are slightly boring but sound good can't go much further in my opinion.What production technique do you think is really overused / annoying?
It really varies quickly. I think every genre when it hits the peak moment brings one or two elements that get overdone. Like that midrange wobbly bass some time ago, or that kind of extreme sidechaining that was very obvious after a few producers used it a lot.
It's a shame when it happens too often because there's so much room still to try and experiment rather than just repeating formulas.
What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started out?
Hmm.. Production-wise probably just the basics of mixing down or small structural things. As for the rest somehow related to music such as label running, publishing, promoting etc - too long - I'd end up writing a poem. Not to sound pretentious, because I don't think I know much nowadays anyway and there's plenty of things to learn and find out about, but now it's definitely better than earlier.
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i.d.
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