Phew, that was quite a ride!
What was initially going to be a three and a half month journey turned out to be a month longer due to the postponement of Kerri's gig here in Finland. I made tons of tracks, some bad, some good, some mediocre, some yet unfinished. I learned a whole new bag of tricks about producing house music, about myself and life in general. Got to know some lovely new people. I also learned that making music on a deadline with strict quality criteria is not an easy task! While the first month or two was relatively easy due to all the exciment of it, the latter half of the journey was a lot rougher. The forced labour thing, health issues, lost faith, ever decreasing amount of time available, me getting sidetracked with all kinds of track that Kerri probably wouldn't play no matter the quality as well as a million other things that kept me from making music eight hours a day, including my own laziness.
But in the end everything turned out to be perfect and by perfect I mean much more than I had even hoped for. I failed at getting my tracks to Kerri's attention pre-gig, which would've been ideal as he could've properly auditioned the tracks before his gig. But, by sheer luck, I ran into him just before his gig in a quiet spot of the club, managed to exchange a few words and give him my memory stick containing the track I had finished literally two hours before I left home to the club that night. I didn't have my hopes up, as a loud club is not an ideal place to check out fresh tracks. I also didn't have the chance to check out the final version of the track on any kind of speakers, so all I could hope was that my humble DIY mixing and mastering skills were up to par and the track wouldn't sound awful next to professional productions, for which there was a huge possibility considering I make music with just headphones and mostly freeware plugins.
Thankfully, it didn't sound awful. Much better than I had expected actually! It didn't seem to clear the dancefloor either and it didn't sound out of place in Kerri's set. So, as I said, things went much better than I had ever even dreamed of.
Despite the rather pompous subtitle of this blog I don't think I became a world class house producer, but I learned so much both about music as well as about other important things that I can safely say that I reached another level entirely. I'm not quite at the level of Theo Parrish, Moodymann, Larry Heard or Kerri Chandler himself, but at the very least I'm amongst the top 10 house producers of Maunula now!
I could go on for all day as I'm still very excited about that special night, but I'll just keep it (relatively) short.
I'd also like to thank the following people who helped me a lot during my journey:
Pasi Savoranta for providing me with some useful samples as well as giving some feedback for my tunes.
George Jackson for letting me remix his tracks and learn a thing or two during the process.
Panu Antero Posti and Matti Stenman for releasing one of the tracks I made during the project, which will come out on their compilation on Mean Seed Records in about a month from now.
Ronny Pries, for helping me with finding some very useful, yet free plugins. It saved me tons of time, thanks!
Miikka Hasari for making a DJ mix out of some of the tracks I made during this project.
Mikko Noranta for borrowing me some money so I could renew my DAW license.
Toni Rantanen for booking Kerri to play.
Everybody on the Gearslutz message forum. Despite some occasional and rather heated
arguments, I received some valuable advice. I'd especially like to thank
Karloff70 for providing me with his wonderful kick drum collection,
which proved to be invaluable. Go buy it now, it's great!
http://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/2-keyboards-worth-of-kicks/pid167/
Everybody on the Subsekt message forum and especially the chat room associated with it.
Everybody on the Elektronauts message forum and the Elektron IRC chat room. I don't currently have any Elektron gear but will definitely have in the future!
The following friends of mine for having the patience to listen to my (occasionally terrible) tracks and giving some valuable feedback: Tuomas Nieminen, Ville Aarnikko, Mikko Silventoinen, Johannes Haapala, Sami Keskikallio, Pirkka Esko, Tommi Partanen, Pasi Kyönsaari, Marc Fred, Juho Ylitalo, Janne Nevalainen, Tapani Tunturi, Ilkka Vuorinen, Riku Kivilinna, Pietu Korhonen, Janne Juopperi, Seppo Louhimies, Jarno Ruusuvuori, Olli Ahvenlampi and Stelios Kirtselis. In the (likely) case of me forgetting your name from this list, just drop me a note and I'll add you!
Everybody who listened to my tracks, regardless of whether you hated or loved them.
And last but definitely not least I'd like to especially thank the man himself Kerri Chandler for being kind enough to play my track in Kaiku. I will be eternally grateful for giving me a shot!
PS. I have a new blog project coming in the future as well. The working title is "How to (not) start a record label". More about that later.
Barfunkel out!
