Hello friend,

I am late this week, I missed my Tuesday appointment.

I played on Sunday a 5am-7am set and this messed up with my sleeping and working schedule.

Well, if I’d be more organized that wouldn’t have happened but I hope you’ll understand.

This weekend I had the pleasure to host Swoy in my studio for a chat, befor his gig in Padova. Maxim is an extremely talented music producer who has been making music and living off music for 20 years.

First with his organic house music project Makebo, releasing music on labels like All Day I Dream and Anjunadeep and which took him to tour all around the world, and now, in parallel, with the mentioned minimal house project Swoy.

We had the chance to listen to each other’s music, talk about inspirations, interesting YT channels, plug-ins and more.

Continuing my past week thought, about club music being art or not, I think Swoy is one of those who considers it art.

Each track of him has very characteristic elements. If we consider his track “Illusion” from his homonym EP, for example, that melody sticks to your mind and never goes away.

Making tracks, or making art, I think it depends on what is your purpose. There is nothing right or wrong about both ways.

In my opinion, making art means having the time to be with myself and use music as a form of expression, something that is not purely made to work on the dancefloor, but something that can inspire emotions, and stay longer.

The house music industry is not so friendly with the concept of art, as unfortunately artists are pushed to keep releasing music.

In other musical genres it is ok to release an album every 2 years.

In this industry, in 2 years you can be forgotten. This forces music producers to keep releasing “dancefloor bombs”, while forgetting to listen to their soul and express types of emotions which are different from the excitement that a good dancefloor track can give.

That being said, I don’t know if my music is art, but still that’s the goal I have when I sit to make music.

If you can relate, let me know your experience.

Being able to express yourself through music, requires also technicals skills that are not easy to learn.

Being part of a community of like minded people and learning from in depth music production tutorials can help.

Go check our Minimal Improvements community on Patreon and accelerate the process!

FROM THE WEB

1 – Four simple basses in Ableton Live (+ Free Ableton Live Project)

Great video about sound designing for bass sounds with Ableton stock Instruments. My favorite are the 3rd and 4th ones. (YT video here)

2 – Generating Infinite Melodies with Ableton Live’s MIDI Effects

Are you stuck with melodies? try these techniques. (YT video here)

MUSIC OF THE WEEK

Here I share what I’ve been listening to lately both from the house music world and from every other genre.

I will keep feeding this section of my newsletter, with the hope you enjoy it.

1 – HOUSE/MINIMAL HOUSE MUSIC

“I can’t stop” by Sloth. (Bandcamp link)

2 – OTHER GENRES

A playlist called Modular Synth, which mainly includes ambient tracks made with modular synthesizer. (Spotify link)

Always be curious towards new music, you never know where inspiration comes from.