House is house

House is house. It can be jazzy, it can be soulful, it can be funky, it can even have rapping on it, but at the end of the day it's still house. Even when it contains elements of other forms of music, it doesn't try to be something it isn't. That's the beauty of it. It's not pretentious, it is what it is. Not everyone loves it, not everyone understands it. Some of the best house tracks are deceptively simple. There's a kick, a clap or a snare, some hihats. A simple bassline, a few chords, maybe a bit of a piano or an organ. And that's often it. On the surface, it's something a child could make after a little training. Right and wrong! While it's true that making a mediocre house track is relatively easy, making something that stands out is remarkably difficult. There are literally millions of house tracks made every year these days, thanks to cheap or sometime even free computer software. Out of those millions, only a handful gets released and even less end up on vinyl. Out of that handful very few tracks have any kind of staying power.

And that exactly is my goal. To make a track with staying power. Not necessarily a bona fide classic, but something that I can listen to 10 years from now and think that it still sounds good and relevant. Quite a mountain to climb, considering my current level doesn't even produce music that would break the release barrier, even digitally.

Some might wonder how exactly can I  pull it off then? 3,5 months is nothing. Even if I work on it 8 hours a day on average, it's still only a bit over 800 hours. Nowhere near the usual requirement of 10 000 hours. The answer is hard work, dedication, motivation and analysis. The last part is of  especial importance. All my life I've made music on my own terms. Even though I've of course listened to music a lot, I've never really analysed it as such. That's one thing that has to change. I have to chop the kind of house that I like into smaller, more manageable pieces and learn to duplicate what I'm hearing, without actually ripping off anyone. At the same time, I have to learn to understand how fragile house is. It's simple and minimalistic, so even a really small detail that is off can make or break a tune. So, knowing how to write great drums or a great bassline or a great chord progression is not enough, I have to learn how to arrange it all together, to form a coherent whole and not just a hodge podge collection of good bits.


And that's it for now. Next time I will try to post an example of where I am now musically, to paint some kind of a picture of the amount of hard, sweatty work I have to go through to reach my ultimate goal.