Do it your way

Personality. Having your own sound. How do you achieve those in such an old and well-defined genre like house?

Even if I might come through as someone who just wants to be a Kerri copycat, that's not my intention. My plan has many phases. The first phase involves learning the necessary production tricks to be able to make release quality house tracks and as I'm not a genius who can just invent everything on my own I have to study the masters, learn to copy them as well as I can. Kinda like the painters of yore who spent years and years copying paintings before finding their own artistic vision. That's what I'm currently doing. I study Kerri, MAW, Mood II Swing, Chez Damier, Larry Heard, Theo Parrish, Moodymann and so on. That's phase one. Phase two, if I ever reach that far, is to find my own inner voice and vision. I want it to be recognizable as house, but with a little Barfunkel twist. Only time will tell what that twist could be. Maybe something a bit humorous or tongue in cheek, as I'm a big fan of absurd, borderline random humour. But, for the time being, I would be extremely satisfied to reach even the minimum standards, both musically and production-wise, so that I could get my music out there. Even that is a dream far away, as I do realize I'm not much of a musician or a producer.

How does one find his own voice then? Unless you're a singer who writes his own lyrics it isn't going to be easy, particularly if you want to work within the framework of  a relatively restricted genre. While production skills are important, it would be extremely difficult (but not entirely impossible) to be so good that your music would be instantly recognizable because of the production. If your music is up to it, good enough production skills are, well, good enough. Many house classics aren't that great technically. There might not be amateurish mistakes in them as such, but they often aren't polished to perfection (in a pop music sense) either. They have what it takes, the magic lies in the music.

While I've made some fairly unique music in the past, I think I'm struggling a bit in this project. Trying to keep it housey while making something that stands out is a daunting task. House has been around a few decades now and many ideas have been used, re-used and recycled several times already. I also don't want to make a novelty song, something that's different just for the sake of it. Sure, I could make a house track with scatting, yodling, bagpipes and panflutes. Then again, there's a good reason no one has ever tried such a combination as far as I know. Genre conventions are there for a reason, they are things that have been tried and tested again and again on the dancefloors over the years. They work, that's why they are used.

To be honest, I'm a bit torn here. As I have only about a month left and time is thus limited (especially now, with the slave labour thing I talked about in the previous post), should I aim for uniqueness at  the expense of making something that is more likely to work on the dancefloor? Or should I aim for a banger and forget about finding my own voice in house music? I don't have the time for both.

While I haven't made up my mind quite yet, I did make this track:




Definitely not a very original track. More like a cheesy disco house banger. It's even called the Cheesy Disco House Banger! Yeah I know,  naming tracks ain't an easy job. To my defense, I made the whole thing in about 3,5 hours, of which naming it took about 3 seconds.

Oh, and the track I made a remix of a few posts back is finally online in all it's original glory! Comparing the two, you'll probably notice that my remix doesn't bear much resemblance to the original.  I didn't want to make a remix where you just change a few drum hits, maybe write a new bassline and that's it. It's a bona fide Barfunkel remix treatment!




And to refresh your memory, here's my remix:





And that's it for now. See you next time!