I got that feelin'

Another day, another post!

I'm still trying to recover from the last behemoth of a post, so I'll keep this one brief.

While nowadays many people concentrate on the more technical side of making music, house is still about emotion  and feeling. Even if you make instrumental music, you still have to have something to say and emotions you want to convey. It could be something simple such as I love you, I hate you, I miss you. The actual emotion is not important, the point is that if you're dead and cold inside you can't make proper house.

However, even if you're full of life, soul and emotion, it's not easy to make a track that showcases that. Expressing emotions in a musical form is something that can be practiced as well. It's a skill just like any other aspect of music making. It's also a skill that I've struggled with for a long time. My music has been quite hollow and artificial, kinda like being a picture of a thing instead of the thing itself.

When I listen to music, I often get very emotional. It's strange, especially when you listen to a fairly minimal, instrumental house track.  I often wonder how do they do it? There's not much in a track, yet it conveys tons of emotion. A typical example would be this track from the man itself:

Analysing it is quite difficult! The chord progression is so simple, yet conveys tons of emotion. I could listen to just the chords all day long. I wish I knew how to make it or to be precise, how to make a track like it, I'm not interested in a cover version. Now, I know the chord sound is sampled from Summer Madness by Kool & The Gang and I could of course just use the same sample myself, but I don't really like using samples with melodic or harmonic content. I know, sampling from disco, funk, soul and jazz records is very common in house music, but I have a stubborn spirit and I'd like to learn how to make everything I can the DIY way.

In contrast, here's my latest track:




Not bad (I hope...), but also quite not there yet. It has that housey feel to it, but it's still lacking any real depth. The chords also resemble Kerri's House Is House a tad too much I think. It wasn't intentional,  I only realized it after the track was almost ready. Sorry.


Different forms of music have different learning curves. In house music it's relatively easy to get 90% there, it's the remaining 10% that is extremely difficult, to the point of being unachievable to most. Of course, 90% can get you a release, especially a digital one. Lots of, putting it politely, released house music is somewhat lacklustre. The production might be there, but it lacks any real depth and substance and will thus be soon forgotten. To reach my goal, I need to learn both the production chops (so it's playable in a club) and the more musical aspects. I need to dig deep in my soul and really put everything I got into this, else I will fail.