NOTE: This interview was conducted via Facebook's messaging service.
Nick Hall - Music Producer & Professional DJ
How did you learn digital music performance and production?
Digital music production and digital music performance are two vastly different crafts of the modern DJ and certainly more and more performers are veering away from that term to claim rights as genuine musicians. Performing I came to through my own change in musical tastes, away from the often self-righteous or deprecating rock scene to a far less egotistical genre. Once I was aware of my preference for these types of music I soon began to look into how they are "performed"
A local DJ equipment and record store brought me into contact with my first Junglist record and soon I was hooked on every type of music I came across in movies about DJing and culture. From Human Traffic's drug-addled party-pushers to Scratch's insanely talented turntablists and mixers.
It wasn't long before I was learning all I could from DVDs by Jam Master Jay and Qbert. Juggling, scratching and all the methods for manipulating vinyl became like a kind of bizarre percussion-style method of production or perhaps conduction.
Is there a culture of mentorship in dance music culture?
My move to House music was fostered by a DJing mentor DJ Patsan of Newcastle NSW. I say mentor but really he was more like the Vinyl-selling version of the worlds best crack-pusher. This guy could make me buy absolutely anything and at 17 I was saving all the money I could scrape together just to go buy that latest imported vinyl before anyone else did.
So I suppose there is a culture of mentoreship, but in my experience it is rarely for the sake of helping the student. Most Digital music performers and producers are happy to shre tips and show tricks but usually fail to seriously take someone under the wing and show them everything in a true apprenticeship style
Then again after becomming an experienced DJ and meeting others who were interested in methods that I knew for performing I accidentally became a mentor myself teaching people about key based mixing, beat juggling, proper vinyl manipulation. This was all done for free and always to just show someone something new because I enjoyed being the mentor however briefly
So I don't know really, there is a mentoring culture but it's not very well developed and the infamous "DJ ego" always takes precedent over the ability of the teacher or the willingness of the student.
How strong is the population of female dance producers?
wow female is a good question, unlicke most musical genres female performers and producers are substantially under represented in the digital world. This isn't necessarily an industry ideal, after all every big australian DJ/Digital group to hit chat success in the past 10 years has had either a female vocalist or incorporated live female vocalists into their production (with the exception of Hip-hop which is a uniquely masculine genre). Rogue traders were amazing DJs/Producers but were never recognised outside of the dance music world until their sudden change into a live performing band with Ms Bassingthwaite fronting up. Sneaky Sound System made it huge within the community with "Uncomplicated Lovin" but it wasn't for another 18 months that they were to make it big on every Australian chart and tour with a female vocalist and a decidedly band-like appearance.
so as "performers" women are very strong indeed, they seem to be a key to success for many groups.
but as "producers" ? well that's a tough one. The only recognised female producer from Australia in the past 10 years has actually only ever been recognised in Ibiza and lives there for 9 months of the year. Also when you consider her boyfriend one of the potbeleez (may need to double check but its either potbeleez or freestylers) it's not necessarily due to her own merit that she's earned this recognition, moreso due to the old adage who you know not what you know
As for DJs? Well most female DJs are either swimsuit models that needed another job and rarely get booked for anything more than their looks. Or underground ravers who only play to a specific crowd whose preference of DJ tends to be swayed more by the amount of drugs they are on than any descernible talent
Many of the seriously talented female DJs are playing "lounges" and "funk" sets which slowly phased out in 2009 but may be making a comeback this year.
which is to say they will never be a "known" act simply because it isn't a popular music style at the moment
Also there hasn't been a regularly successful female-djs-only night in any Australian city, nor has there been a female headliner since Bexxsta went off the map (and she received scathing reviews from every fellow DJ that went to see her)
So I think the female population has talent but networks poorly and struggles to be taken seriously as individuals
that and as a personal observation I have only ever seen one female DJ put the sort of energy into a performance that sets apart your weekly push-button juke-box from your seriously talented crowd-rocking performer
If buying your own gear was not an option, how would you have become a producer?
If there was no cost barrier to equipment? I wouldn't have become a producer full-time. I would have a room at home filled with gear that only gets used when I have nothing else to do. This isn't because I don't love DJing but because producing is something that requires high levels of implementation quotient which I just don't have. Nothing is harder than sitting down and makinga song from start to finish so it's never more than a hobby. By the same token my understanding of how music works in a performance is what makes my production technique effective, my partner creates most of the track and I visit his studio and tell him when to add more cowbell (or in serious terms why sidechaining the compression to a muted fractionally off-beat kick creates a more effective "whaaaamp" and will let a DJ mix more easily into the break).
I would however have spent all that money on performance based equipment and experimental midi set-ups
so that produciton and performance can meld into one seamless concept through the use of stupid things like kitchen utensils or painted bodies or road signs
How important is feedback to your education as a DJ and producer?
Feedback offers almost no real benefit to me personally, this isn't the DJ Ego speaking out it's just how I came to think about DJing and producing. I honestly don't take it seriously enough to want to make things perfect for the one person that knows enough to point it out (rarely someone with as much experience and far too much enthusiasm). I learnt about mixing through lots of personal research and practice, I organise sets based around a performance brief that I develop after talking to the event organiser and seeing the venue. I don't just put it together on the spot and hope it works unless it's just going so well that some random 70's beachboys hit will actually send people insane with enjoyment
I don't care enough about producing and all of my production efforts are based around "fun" rather than "good"
so feedback on songs is usually hard to see as anyhting but pretentious wank, the songs aren't serious. It's like telling Weird Al Yankovich he should do an original song once in a while.
Mixing and producing should be about fun, about making music for an audience and getting them to enjoy it, not about making music for people to seriously listen to
that's why you buy mix-cds from ministry of sound, not unmixed full-length tracks. a set is a journey and if its good or bad it doesn't matter, you went on it and you should take what you can from your experience.
All of that being said, the response of the crowd, the number of people dancing and the number of people teling you "this track is awesome!!!" or wanting your picture or loving the set is fundamental to making every gig worth doing again
I go out of my way to perform in venues where I had a good nigth and received positive crowd response
but crowd response and critical feedback are two vastly different things
Is the availability of singers prohibitive to the inclusion of vocals in dance music?
singers are on every street corner in any given city, good, bad, indifferent. Nothing shows how unnecessary singers are like the artist Muscles. He cannot hold key for all the coke his young brain can handle. Yet still he was an absolute giant for over a year on Australia's burgeoning electro performance scene. With the right production techniques, any voice can fit in with your music, my vocals are on every single track by Dum DJs, warped to hit on the beat and with so many effects it almost sounds like part of the music
With regards to making "good" music well that's different
making music that big labels will want to buy usually needs vocals (happy mondays thank you for changing this and at the same time screw you for making it harder for the rest of us)
as such you need decent singers
finding them isn't really an issue, its more apathy and poor networking skills that leaves DJs and producers without vocals. An add on Gumtree will get enough results that you can at least make a demo to pitch to a better vocalist's agent with
Also the culture of remixing in electronic music will forever mean that vocalists can be replaced with samples if you spend 2 minutes watching a youtube video on gating
How have you distributed mixes, remixes and original material in past?
Yes my digital distribution network became a fulltime occupation for the month leading upto our first serious gig as Dum DJs. I used everyhitng from oldschool email to soundcloud links to twitter linked facebook posts with specific content allowing for profile sharing. I even made sure to target the mavens with the releases
Digital distribution turned profitless-unauthorised remixes into the most openly downloaded, blogged and tweeted australian dancemusic EP release in any one month of 2010. We became huge overnight and would have moved into the more legal royalty approved format were it not for the relocation of my partner due to his commitment in the Royal Australian Navy and my own commitment in purchasing a bar and starting a new business from scratch. We were getting videos of our track making crowds of over 10,000 people jump up and down in Europe within one month of releasing the free EP to soundcloud and blogs
There is no way we could have gotten that response by taking our tracks to every DJ and radio staion in town, asking them to play us and begging them to pass us on to their agents
Oh and to clarify that claim of ebing the most downloaded tweeted etc, Totally true in terms of "lableless" releases. We had now label and no publicists to get our tracks played on the radio or distributed to their DJs or added to their Mix CDs
If we had've been able to make money off of our tracks, well we may have used a most sustainable method but digital distribution would still have been the best means
Could your work have easily reached the audience it did without those channels?
as for it reaching the audience it did without digital distribution??? hell no
China would enver have gotten it
LA wouldn't have touched it
Chicago not a chance
UK Ibiza france germany??? no hope in hell
digital gave us a chance to find every dance music maven out there and potentially have them listen to our track
it worked, and it worked so well because there were no "quality controls" no quotas and no royalty restrictions. just an audience that liked what they heard
Digital music production and digital music performance are two vastly different crafts of the modern DJ and certainly more and more performers are veering away from that term to claim rights as genuine musicians. Performing I came to through my own change in musical tastes, away from the often self-righteous or deprecating rock scene to a far less egotistical genre. Once I was aware of my preference for these types of music I soon began to look into how they are "performed"
A local DJ equipment and record store brought me into contact with my first Junglist record and soon I was hooked on every type of music I came across in movies about DJing and culture. From Human Traffic's drug-addled party-pushers to Scratch's insanely talented turntablists and mixers.
It wasn't long before I was learning all I could from DVDs by Jam Master Jay and Qbert. Juggling, scratching and all the methods for manipulating vinyl became like a kind of bizarre percussion-style method of production or perhaps conduction.
Is there a culture of mentorship in dance music culture?
My move to House music was fostered by a DJing mentor DJ Patsan of Newcastle NSW. I say mentor but really he was more like the Vinyl-selling version of the worlds best crack-pusher. This guy could make me buy absolutely anything and at 17 I was saving all the money I could scrape together just to go buy that latest imported vinyl before anyone else did.
So I suppose there is a culture of mentoreship, but in my experience it is rarely for the sake of helping the student. Most Digital music performers and producers are happy to shre tips and show tricks but usually fail to seriously take someone under the wing and show them everything in a true apprenticeship style
Then again after becomming an experienced DJ and meeting others who were interested in methods that I knew for performing I accidentally became a mentor myself teaching people about key based mixing, beat juggling, proper vinyl manipulation. This was all done for free and always to just show someone something new because I enjoyed being the mentor however briefly
So I don't know really, there is a mentoring culture but it's not very well developed and the infamous "DJ ego" always takes precedent over the ability of the teacher or the willingness of the student.
How strong is the population of female dance producers?
wow female is a good question, unlicke most musical genres female performers and producers are substantially under represented in the digital world. This isn't necessarily an industry ideal, after all every big australian DJ/Digital group to hit chat success in the past 10 years has had either a female vocalist or incorporated live female vocalists into their production (with the exception of Hip-hop which is a uniquely masculine genre). Rogue traders were amazing DJs/Producers but were never recognised outside of the dance music world until their sudden change into a live performing band with Ms Bassingthwaite fronting up. Sneaky Sound System made it huge within the community with "Uncomplicated Lovin" but it wasn't for another 18 months that they were to make it big on every Australian chart and tour with a female vocalist and a decidedly band-like appearance.
so as "performers" women are very strong indeed, they seem to be a key to success for many groups.
but as "producers" ? well that's a tough one. The only recognised female producer from Australia in the past 10 years has actually only ever been recognised in Ibiza and lives there for 9 months of the year. Also when you consider her boyfriend one of the potbeleez (may need to double check but its either potbeleez or freestylers) it's not necessarily due to her own merit that she's earned this recognition, moreso due to the old adage who you know not what you know
As for DJs? Well most female DJs are either swimsuit models that needed another job and rarely get booked for anything more than their looks. Or underground ravers who only play to a specific crowd whose preference of DJ tends to be swayed more by the amount of drugs they are on than any descernible talent
Many of the seriously talented female DJs are playing "lounges" and "funk" sets which slowly phased out in 2009 but may be making a comeback this year.
which is to say they will never be a "known" act simply because it isn't a popular music style at the moment
Also there hasn't been a regularly successful female-djs-only night in any Australian city, nor has there been a female headliner since Bexxsta went off the map (and she received scathing reviews from every fellow DJ that went to see her)
So I think the female population has talent but networks poorly and struggles to be taken seriously as individuals
that and as a personal observation I have only ever seen one female DJ put the sort of energy into a performance that sets apart your weekly push-button juke-box from your seriously talented crowd-rocking performer
If buying your own gear was not an option, how would you have become a producer?
If there was no cost barrier to equipment? I wouldn't have become a producer full-time. I would have a room at home filled with gear that only gets used when I have nothing else to do. This isn't because I don't love DJing but because producing is something that requires high levels of implementation quotient which I just don't have. Nothing is harder than sitting down and makinga song from start to finish so it's never more than a hobby. By the same token my understanding of how music works in a performance is what makes my production technique effective, my partner creates most of the track and I visit his studio and tell him when to add more cowbell (or in serious terms why sidechaining the compression to a muted fractionally off-beat kick creates a more effective "whaaaamp" and will let a DJ mix more easily into the break).
I would however have spent all that money on performance based equipment and experimental midi set-ups
so that produciton and performance can meld into one seamless concept through the use of stupid things like kitchen utensils or painted bodies or road signs
How important is feedback to your education as a DJ and producer?
Feedback offers almost no real benefit to me personally, this isn't the DJ Ego speaking out it's just how I came to think about DJing and producing. I honestly don't take it seriously enough to want to make things perfect for the one person that knows enough to point it out (rarely someone with as much experience and far too much enthusiasm). I learnt about mixing through lots of personal research and practice, I organise sets based around a performance brief that I develop after talking to the event organiser and seeing the venue. I don't just put it together on the spot and hope it works unless it's just going so well that some random 70's beachboys hit will actually send people insane with enjoyment
I don't care enough about producing and all of my production efforts are based around "fun" rather than "good"
so feedback on songs is usually hard to see as anyhting but pretentious wank, the songs aren't serious. It's like telling Weird Al Yankovich he should do an original song once in a while.
Mixing and producing should be about fun, about making music for an audience and getting them to enjoy it, not about making music for people to seriously listen to
that's why you buy mix-cds from ministry of sound, not unmixed full-length tracks. a set is a journey and if its good or bad it doesn't matter, you went on it and you should take what you can from your experience.
All of that being said, the response of the crowd, the number of people dancing and the number of people teling you "this track is awesome!!!" or wanting your picture or loving the set is fundamental to making every gig worth doing again
I go out of my way to perform in venues where I had a good nigth and received positive crowd response
but crowd response and critical feedback are two vastly different things
Is the availability of singers prohibitive to the inclusion of vocals in dance music?
singers are on every street corner in any given city, good, bad, indifferent. Nothing shows how unnecessary singers are like the artist Muscles. He cannot hold key for all the coke his young brain can handle. Yet still he was an absolute giant for over a year on Australia's burgeoning electro performance scene. With the right production techniques, any voice can fit in with your music, my vocals are on every single track by Dum DJs, warped to hit on the beat and with so many effects it almost sounds like part of the music
With regards to making "good" music well that's different
making music that big labels will want to buy usually needs vocals (happy mondays thank you for changing this and at the same time screw you for making it harder for the rest of us)
as such you need decent singers
finding them isn't really an issue, its more apathy and poor networking skills that leaves DJs and producers without vocals. An add on Gumtree will get enough results that you can at least make a demo to pitch to a better vocalist's agent with
Also the culture of remixing in electronic music will forever mean that vocalists can be replaced with samples if you spend 2 minutes watching a youtube video on gating
How have you distributed mixes, remixes and original material in past?
Yes my digital distribution network became a fulltime occupation for the month leading upto our first serious gig as Dum DJs. I used everyhitng from oldschool email to soundcloud links to twitter linked facebook posts with specific content allowing for profile sharing. I even made sure to target the mavens with the releases
Digital distribution turned profitless-unauthorised remixes into the most openly downloaded, blogged and tweeted australian dancemusic EP release in any one month of 2010. We became huge overnight and would have moved into the more legal royalty approved format were it not for the relocation of my partner due to his commitment in the Royal Australian Navy and my own commitment in purchasing a bar and starting a new business from scratch. We were getting videos of our track making crowds of over 10,000 people jump up and down in Europe within one month of releasing the free EP to soundcloud and blogs
There is no way we could have gotten that response by taking our tracks to every DJ and radio staion in town, asking them to play us and begging them to pass us on to their agents
Oh and to clarify that claim of ebing the most downloaded tweeted etc, Totally true in terms of "lableless" releases. We had now label and no publicists to get our tracks played on the radio or distributed to their DJs or added to their Mix CDs
If we had've been able to make money off of our tracks, well we may have used a most sustainable method but digital distribution would still have been the best means
Could your work have easily reached the audience it did without those channels?
as for it reaching the audience it did without digital distribution??? hell no
China would enver have gotten it
LA wouldn't have touched it
Chicago not a chance
UK Ibiza france germany??? no hope in hell
digital gave us a chance to find every dance music maven out there and potentially have them listen to our track
it worked, and it worked so well because there were no "quality controls" no quotas and no royalty restrictions. just an audience that liked what they heard
