Music Talk is a blog that features exclusive interviews, reviews, and other interesting tidbits from artists who are part of the Electronic Dance Music world. Writer Kostas Voulgaris reviewed Surreal, released earlier this year on JOOF Recordings.

Daniel has been on a mission to infect each and every one of our minds with his unique blend of sounds and ethereal soundscapes. In his latest endeavour on JOOF Recordings, he has presented us with the magnificent Surreal EP.

Torn between a torrent of ideas and vast inspiration he decided that one track to showcase all this was simply not enough. The answer was wide and clear and so he has presented us two different sides of the same coin.

Part 1

Part 1 is spacey, trippy and full of forgotten sounds reimbursed for the 21st Century. A journey through the deepest depths and chasms of unknown planets beyond our solar system. In search of the unknown, like modern-day crusaders, we press on entranced by all we see and hear.

Surreal in every measure, this is truly an EP that every dance music fan should have in his collection.

Part 2

Part 2 retains most of the elements of the previous track, including extra progression to heighten our senses as we delve deeper into the essence and core of the track itself.

Surreal in every measure, this is truly an EP that every dance music fan should have in his collection. Waste no time and grab your copy now!

Link to the original post
Text — Kostas Voulgaris

A huge update for mobile users

I’ve been in the music business for 5 years and know for certain that I will continue pursuing the passion for music production for the rest of my life. For me, this is a journey, not a destination.

People keep asking why I care about my website so much and spend hours tweaking and improving it. Well, it’s quite simple: I want to have a perfect place to log all of my career accomplishments while giving the visitors and the fans the best user experience. And the same as with my music, I’m doing my best in this field.

Website 4.5
Website 4.0
Website 3.0
Website 2.0

Today, I’m excited to introduce the new 4.5 version of the website with huge improvements for mobile users. It’s not just desktop and mobile templates, it so much bigger than that. The whole website adapts and changes its layout to help you focus on the content, whether you’re using a large desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or a smartphone. It almost as if the website is alive and it’s absolutely fantastic.

I would also like to highlight some important changes in the «Advice» section. Every week I answer the questions you send me on various topics, from music production to music industry insights — basically, that’s how the «Advice» works. I sincerely want you to find these blogs useful for years to come. The problem was, each time new posts came out, the older ones would go down, blocking new users from discovering useful articles.

From now on “Advice” section has spotlights — fixed places for the most important articles, grouped by topics: music production, DJ’ing, marketing, music industry, and the special «Getting started spotlight» for newcomers. But no worries, all other posts are still there and available as usual.

It should help you find relevant articles much easier, whether you are a first-time visitor or a follower. I think it’s a nice little feature. Do you?

There are more cool little updates across the whole website, but I’ll leave them for you to discover.

Welcome here: daniellesden.com

I use standard “A440” pitch in my productions, so, to be honest, I don’t know much about 432 Hz tuning. As far as I know, there is no built-in way to change global pitch in Ableton, unlike Logic. However, there are some tricks that might you find useful.

A440 standard pitch

First things off, there is a Max For Live plugin called “Microtuner”. I haven’t used it myself, but according to its description and user comments, it should work exactly as you need — just put it on a MIDI channel, and your synthesizer’s pitch will be tuned to 432 Hertz automatically.

Max for Live allows to build instruments and effects for use within Ableton Live, and it comes bundled with Live Suite edition

Method number two requires some preparations, but in my opinion it is even better.

Open a synthesizer or plugin you’re using, find the oscillator pitch section, and tune it down to -32 cents in Fine tuning knob. I’m using Sylenth1 in this particular example:

Cent is a 1/100th of semitone

Do this for all other plugins, including Ableton built-in devices like Sampler, Simpler, Operator and more.

Then from here, you have two options. You can either save it as device preset by clicking on the disk icon on the top right:

... or just save as default preset for this particular device:

Let’s say, if you save a tuned Simpler as a default preset, every next time you add a new instance of Simpler, it will come already with 432 Hz, i.e. with -32 cents. As easy as possible! I would advise sticking with that option.

Default presets in Ableton Reference Manual

Fellow producers out there! How do you tune your plugins? And what do you think about 432 Hz tuning in general as an alternative to the standard pitch? Share it in the comments box below.

Harley, I could tell you something like “your name as a brand should have enough value to other producers, otherwise there is no point for them to work with you” and other stuff from the business side of things. And essentially, this is true.

But instead, I’d like to tell you something different and more important. The principle which I use for years now. Here are those magic words:

As long as people can’t read other people’s minds, we have to talk or write in order to convey our thoughts and ideas. And most weird is that many people are afraid to say what they want! I guess the fear of failure is a reason for that. Do you want to remix or to collaborate with some famous artist? Tell him this! Do you want to get a promotion at your job? Say it to your boss! As simple as that.

Of course, other people can say “no” to you, and most likely they will. But think of the worst-ever-possible scenario. What would happen if you get “no”? Well, you’ll get upset, and probably will feel awkward. What else?

Now think of the opposite: what would happen if don’t ask what you want? The answer is simple: you miss the opportunity. The opportunity to change your life for the good. That famous artist would never collaborate with you, and your boss would never know that you actually want a promotion, giving that position to one of your colleagues.

This principle goes far beyond the music industry as it can be applied to pretty much everything in your life. You ask—you get it!

On cover image: Stevie Wonder during a rehearsal session in Los Angeles in 1974 © Jazzinphoto. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get” is one of the famous quotes from Stevie Wonder. Source: IMDb.

To answer your question, let’s see what kind of audience would visit your website, and what they will look for:

Everything above is my guess, I can be wrong. Just like in any marketing strategy, there is no axioms or the only one right path. But it could be a good starting point for your experiments.

I advise to start small and make website bigger only upon needs. A smaller website is easier to launch and manage, it’s cheaper, and allows you to focus on what is really important, rather than spend a huge amount of resources for some messy and clunky website that eventually becomes abandoned. Keep it simple.

How to run successful web projects by Mirai Art Studio blog on Medium

I would also recommend starting a blog, as a part of your website or separately. It is great to have a place where you can share your thoughts and opinion. Blogging helps you get a stronger connection with the audience on a more personal level and boosts your own skills in many aspects.

10 reasons why you should run a blog

And at last but not least, I strongly recommend to add a signup form to your mailing list. Having contact emails of your fans and industry professionals is great not only for marketing communication but it also gives you a sort of backup. Twitter can go bankrupt and Facebook may block your profile, how will you speak to your audience? Right, via emails.

MailChimp is a great email marketing service. I’ll put here my signup form just to give an example

I’m not hiding the fact that at the moment I work at a 9 to 6 job too, so we’re in the same boat, Gary! And yes, I have a couple of tricks that probably will work for you.

You don’t have to re-energize yourself literally, but having the right mindset is the key. A tired mind can come up with dozens of excuses why you shouldn’t do something, but don’t listen to that voice. Let’s see at some common excuses, and how we can trick ourselves for the good.

“This problem is too big”

“Make a new track after getting back home tired from work? Or an album? No way! There is too much work to do, and I’m too tired for that!” — that is how I was thinking until I realized that I actually don’t need to write the whole track or an album at once.

I recommend to divide big project (such making a new track) into smaller tasks and keep divide until it becomes an easy do-able thing. For instance, make a kick drum, or make a bassline, or EQ it. Or write a melody, or make a timbre for that lead. Or make a 16-bars progression, then another 16-bars progression. You get the point.

2×2 is better than 4

Even writing this very blog would be impossible for me if I’d tried to make it at once, so I’ve done it by doing smaller separate tasks: add basic headlines, write key points, find and edit illustrations, write down one paragraph, then another one. Then structure all text together, clean it, check spelling, re-write it again, publish and share.

You see, although formally you doing the same things, it’s a totally different mindset, and it works great for a tired mind: “Make a kick drum? — yeah, I can do it tonight!”.

“I’ll just quickly check the Facebook”

Okay, finally you put yourself in the chair, you open DAW, load project and press the play button. “Oh wait, someone mentioned me on Twitter, I have to reply ASAP”. “A new friend request on Facebook? Let’s check who is that”. “Wow John shared a nice blog, I have to read it”. Eventually, you end up with surfing some random article on Wikipedia about emperor penguins. Does it sound familiar?

Tim Urban’s TED Talk on procrastination

Well, no surprise. The more tired you feel, the harder to focus on doing only one particular thing. And here comes the procrastination. I found the best way to dealing with procrastination is using the Pomodoro Technique Francesco Cirillo. After using it for almost 2 years now I... well, still procrastinate, but definitely much less :-) Really recommend to check this technique out.

Dealing with procrastination using Pomodoro Technique

“Wait, what? Penguins? How did I end up here?!”

“I can do it tomorrow, no need to rush”

Ah, this is probably the worst excuse! You see, it’s relatively easy to do some things when you have a deadline given for these tasks. Let’s say, a label that you dream on offers you a release if you’ll manage to deliver an EP within the next two weeks. And it works; tired and exhausted, but eventually you made it. That’s the magic power of deadlines (or social factor, I would say).

But what happens when you’re the boss? You have no one in charge up there, that’s your own project. No pressure, no deadline. Here comes the worst excuse: “I can do it tomorrow”.

Based on my own skin, I advise having two things that are crucial: internal deadline and release schedule. I won’t go deeper into details now otherwise this blog will be as twice as long, but the titles themselves are pretty self-explanatory.

Having internal deadlines and release schedule are not only keeps you in good rhythm and shape but also motivates to actually do things, rather than just dream about your success lying on a couch.

I’ll write about it in details someday

And a little bonus.

A “year” sounds long, right? But let’s make a simple calculation, assuming that you can afford 2 hours per day for the music. That’s 14 hours per week or 56 hours per month. Multiply it for 12 months and then divide for 24 hours per day, and you’ll get 28 days of total time per year. Think about it. You have only 28 days per year to make something great, how do you’re gonna spend it?

timestripe.com

I hope it helps.