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One of my early problems when making EDM was the learning process that went with it. You can listen to Avicii, David Guetta, Armin van Buuren, Skrillex, etc., but how exactly do you go about creating the music and the sounds that you associate with them.

I started off by reading the appropriate books. Two books that I would highly recommend are “Dance Music Manual” by Rick Snoman and “The Secrets of Dance Music Production” by Dave Felton et al. The latter features tips and tricks by several authors at “Attack Magazine” which specialises in EDM. If the philosophy behind EDM music is of interest then “The Creative Electronic Music Producer” by Thomas Brett is well worth a read.

There are also many tutorials on producing EDM on YouTube; indeed the Thomas Brett book has a whole chapter on them. These days, most involve some sort of financial commitment. I have used YouTube tutorials extensively but generally to solve problems or find out how to do certain tasks such as side-chaining and resampling. Watching an expert create a masterpiece was something that I eschewed until recently. This was a conscious decision as I wanted to create my own style and not follow anyone elses.

I recently felt tempted to try watching a master at work but was discouraged by the multitude of so-called experts who wanted to make me become an overnight sensation. I was looking for someone who could help me become competent in a genre of my choosing. I narrowed it down to two genres that I found appealing: trance, especially uplifting trance, and chill-out EDM. The latter is somewhat ill-defined in the literature, so trance it was.

Finding an approriate teacher, even in a specified genre, is not easy. As I looked around, the name Luke Bond kept cropping up. Luke had worked with and produced a single with Armin van Buuren and had good reviews as a teacher, so I thought I would give him a try. I downloaded a set of Serum 2 presets which Luke had designed and found them to be excellent. Luke offers two courses, a comprehensive trance course and a shorter course on uplifting trance. I had no wish to be sitting watching YouTube for hours on end, so I settled for the shorter course which I have just finished. I have since purchased a second set of Serum 2 presets from Luke.

The main problem I had with the course is that Luke uses Ableton Live to make his track. This was not unexpected as most EDM producers use Live these days. I have tried but never really managed to get my head around Live, much preferring to stay in my comfort zone with Cubase. One of the things that attracted me to Luke’s course was that he stated that his methods could easily be transferred to other DAWS like Logic, FL Studio and Cubase and, so far, I believe that to be the case.

I didn’t intend this blog to be an advert for Luke’s course but rather to be a record of my journey in finding a suitable course and managing to avoid the pitfalls of not-so-reliable offers that you find on social media. It is not always clear which are scams or even well-intentioned but sub-standard and it is always wise to do a bit of background on the teacher and to make sure that he/she is the person actually delivering the course.

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When you release a single, you often have to choose one or more genres. This request can come from a variety of sources including your performing rights and performance organisations, your distributor, and the platforms streaming or selling your music. If you are on platforms like Bandcamp and SoundCloud, as well as the standard streaming platforms like Spotify and Amazon Music, this can involve doing this several times.

There are several problems with these lists. For one, they are extensive and involve a great deal of scrolling, which means that your preferred choice is easy to miss. They are also pretty inconsistent. What you choose on one list is often unavailable on the others. There are also many genres that you have never heard of previously, e.g. Antideutsche, Atmospheric Doom, Arunachal Indie. Some of the lists suggest that you choose multiple genres which adds to the confusion. There are also genres that you feel you should avoid such as “Easy Listening”. Surely, your latest release is better than that.

I am old enough to remember when there was classical, pop, rock, folk, country, R&B, gospel, jazz and show music – and little else. Then, subgenres such as ska, glam rock, and disco started to appear before the start of the explosion somewhere around the late seventies and early eighties. This explosion continued through the intervening years until now, when you have to be aware of at least some of the new genres that keep appearing. Electronic music, for example, gave us subgenres such as EDM, which in turn had subgenres such as Trance, which again had subgenres such as Uplifting Trance. I am sure that Uplifting Trance, itself, has many subgenres, although I am not aware of any.

The burning question is how important is your choice of genre on these platforms. I imagine that Spotify wouldn’t put your track anywhere near an EDM playlist if you answered “Easy Listening” as your choice, but how much more it matters is not exactly clear. As such, you might spend two minutes or an entire morning deciding without realising that you should have spent more or less time on it.

Which brings us to the next question. Given that there appears to be a near-infinite number of choices, should you start a genre of your own? It certainly won’t help you answer the question, but it might give you a new-found credibility. Unfortunately, “Other – please specify” is not usually a category.

Oh well, for our new release on this particular platform let’s just choose, say, these three genres, as they are roughly appropriate, and just hope that at least one of them will appear on the list of the next platform.

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With several medical procedures and tests for both Roberta and me and a week-long visit from our son’s family who live in the south of England, it has been quite a month that has seen the usual blog date being considerably delayed; at least I made it before the end of the month.

From the music point of view, things have accordingly remained fairly static, although I have managed to get my hands on a few gems in the shape of plug-ins to add to my Christmas upgrade purchases of Cubase 14 Pro and Kontakt 8, as well as the synthesizer, Massive X. These more recent purchases have included another synthesizer, Serum 2, the EQ plug-in, FabFilter Pro-Q 4, as well as the long-awaited upgrade to the chord arranger plug-in, Scaler 3. All of these are upgrades which have been released recently although the Serum and FabFilter plug-ins are first time purchases for me. The things you can do with these software items are truly mindboggling.

With more medical tests in the offing, it may be mid-May before I start to reap the benefits of my new software; however I cannot wait to get started. My big drive will be the creation of new sounds which I hope will be original and exciting. I will also be using the ROLI Seaboard RISE 2 keyboard and Lightpad Block to include MPE in my creations. Health permitting, the future is indeed bright.

With all that’s been happening, this month’s blog is, of necessity, shorter than usual, but hopefully this will be a one-off.

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Following the release of my CD, “Aestas”, I suspect that most people expected me to continue churning out EDM tracks. While I haven’t excluded the possibility of future EDM singles – in fact it’s more of a probability – I have taken a wee break to do other stuff. That began with my Christmas single “Rainbow’s End” which was geared towards children. On Friday my latest release “Jukebox In My Head” sees me venture into the world of novelty music.

Where this track is concerned, I have to give a shout out to my wife, Roberta, who not only came up with the concept, but also wrote the original lyric and designed the art for the cover. Initially I only wrote the music but, as the track developed, the lyric changed quite a bit. It also gave me the opportunity to sing. I’m no Frank Sinatra but I reckon I can match Joe Dolce, Sheb Woolley and Napoleon XIV for vocal ability. “Who?”, you might ask; then check out their novelty hits “Shaddap You Face”, “The Purple People Eater” and “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa” and you will see what I mean.

The great thing about being an indie artist, whose life doesn’t depend on musical success, is that you can choose whichever direction you wish to take. I am currently working on a Bowie-style song about outer space, an orchestral piece which flirts with EDM, a show song which could be from a children’s musical, and a traditional Scottish melody which currently sounds like loads of others. We’ll see where these songs take me.

What actually excites me most is the creation of new sounds and the use of synthesizers. I particularly like the use of MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) and have a ROLI Seaboard RISE 2 keyboard and a ROLI Lightpad Block and my synths include ROLI Equator 2, Native Instruments’ MASSIVE X (as part of Kontakt 8), and Arturia’s CS-80. I’m hoping that 2025 is the year when I stumble on an entirely new sound but guess that I am far from alone in this quest.

We shall see.

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I have delayed the issue of this month’s blog by one day to see if my PRO (Performing Rights Organisation), PRS for Music, had managed to get its act together with regard to registering songs. In December, they announced that they were working on upgrading their registration process with a view to accelerating the process and improving the accuracy of royalty payments. They promised that this would be completed by the end of January. It is now well into February and the process is still incomplete. While it is still possible to submit new works and amendments to current works, it is not possible to receive or view relevant codes which are necessary for releasing new tracks.

PRS for Music, which is the sole PRO for songwriters in the UK, consists of two bodies, PRS and MCPS. Both societies, which are for composers and lyricists, cost £100 to join. When you write a song, you are advised to register it on the PRS database. PRS then issues you with codes, such as a Tunecode and ISWC code, which are unique to that song. Your composition rights are then protected by PRS, while MCPS looks after your mechanical rights, e.g. for releasing on CD.

If you are a recording artist, you should register with PPL, which is free to join and looks after your performing rights. When you make a recording of a song, you should register that recording on PPL and link it to the appropriate composition on the PRS database. When you release that recording through your distributor, in my case Songtradr, you need to inform PPL and give them what is known as the ISRC code, which is unique to the recording and also identifies the composer. At the time of release of your track, you should inform PRS of the release and provide the ISRC code. You also receive a UPC code from your distributor which serves as a bar code.

Basically, if you want to get paid, you need all of these codes to release a track. While PRS is not issuing Tunecodes or ISWC codes, you cannot perform the linking process with PPL if the version of the song you are releasing needs registering or updating on the PRS database. I do not record other people’s music or the whole thing could become even more complex.

I am not aware how others are coping but, in my case, I wanted to update details on the database of the song “Jukebox in My Head” prior to its release as my next single. It now seems that, for my next release, I will have to use another track, “Through the Darkness”, which still needs a little work but has a relevant registration on the PRS database.

Who said that all of this was going to be easy.

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First of all, Happy New Year to everyone who reads this.

So what can we expect in the music scene in 2025 and how does this affect my music? According to music pro and author, Bobby Owsinski, successful songs in 2024 were slower than before and contained a high rhyming density with multiple rhymes including internal rhyming, i.e. rhymes within single lines of lyric. AI is taking a foothold in music, as well as in everything else, but is expected to become more regulated in the coming year.

Having read Bobby’s book “The Musician’s Ai Handbook”, I developed my own strategy on the use of AI in music. Firstly, I feel that it’s best to totally avoid AI in areas which involve, or in time will involve, copyright. Examples of this include melody, lyrics and some aspects of performance such as vocals. This is both from a legal and moral viewpoint as you are ripping off the work of other people who may well seek litigation. I also firmly believe that you should stay in total control of your own work using AI only to offer you suggestions. I use a software tool called Scaler 2 to help me create chord sequences, which are not subject to copyright issues, and the Mastering Assistant in Ozone 11 to help me produce a final master of my recording. When I feel that these AI tools produce something I like, I try to investigate why it appears to be working with a view to learning from it. Some song pitches now state that they will not accept tracks involving any use of AI, although I think that in 2025 this is becoming increasingly hard to achieve. Even a singer/songwriter with only an acoustic guitar for accompaniment is probably using a microphone with AI noise reduction.

Of the other trends that Bobby raises, I feel that the song which will probably be my next release, “Jukebox in My Head”, scores highly on rhyming density but, at 120 bpm, cannot be reasonably described as slow – or fast for that matter. Personally, I don’t bother too much with trends, although I believe it’s good to be aware of them. I am more concerned with the fact that Roberta wrote the lyric for this song and, since she has not written any other lyrics, has not joined PRS. I am not sure how that affects any royalty payments but will endeavour to find out.

Lastly, I believe that I have purchased the software upgrades I need to progress, Cubase 14 Pro and Kontakt 8, and look forward to producing much more music in the coming year.

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It is always interesting when you see something which makes you think about going in a different direction. I recently attended a couple of classes on cinematic composing and professional music production. Although they were interesting, I didn’t really want to commit to a subscription model for either, although I may purchase a book recommended by one of them. Which brings me onto a new direction which has come out of the blue.

A friend of mine, Jon Oates, who has purchased both my “Aestas” CD and the download of my Christmas single “Rainbow’s End”, has approached me about having my music performed on draairogel, which is a Dutch barrel organ, and is even having one built. Examples of how this sounds can be found on the YouTube channel of one of Jon’s friends.

https://www.youtube.com/@matssijnesael9987/videos

I am always open to interesting suggestions and this is certainly one of them. I have sent Jon some MIDI files to see how he gets on.

The above mentioned Christmas single, which was released on 29th November, is quite an old track and was featured in an AV sequence produced by Roberta and me. The sequence was awarded a “Highly Commended” at the nationwide “New Horizons” competition in 2018 and can be viewed on the AV page of our website. Another of our old AV sequences, “The Iconoclast”, featuring the song “Titanium” by David Guetta and Sia, went down very well when shown by Roberta at Stirling and District Camera Club, so maybe there is still some future for us in AV.

Currently I am working very hard on a new version of “Tempora Mutantur” which may be my next single for release in 2025.

In the meantime, have a great Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

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Well, that’s the visuals done. I’ve just completed the promotional short videos or reels for each of the tracks on the “Aestas” album. While they are called reels on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, they are called shorts on YouTube and canvases on Spotify. I’m not doing much on Twitter/X these days as I am not so keen on it as a promotional tool and all I seem to be getting are tweets from Elon Musk that annoy me. Anyway, the visuals on the other social media platforms took a long time and I feel that the main promotional drive for the album is finished and it is time to move on.

My single release in time for Christmas will be “Rainbow’s End”, a children’s song in complete contrast to the album which was predominantly EDM. It should be on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music and the other music platforms by the end of November. Our AV sequence “Rainbow’s End”, which featured the song, won an award in 2018, so we already have a video for the song and creating reels from the video should be relatively easy.

I also need to get back to playing the piano and my MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression) keyboard (ROLI Seaboard RISE 2). Playing the MPE keyboard is quite a learning curve but it is great for composing using the associated software (Equator 2). That’s the fun part of all of this and something that I haven’t had time to do while creating and promoting the album. I am really looking forward to getting back to it.

So what does 2025 hold for me. I have three songs which I hope to release: “Jukebox in My Head” (written with Roberta), “Through the Darkness” and “Tempora Mutantur”. I just need to work a bit more to improve the production on these. Also, composing is an unpredictable skill, so who knows what can be achieved when I get back to it.

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Well, it’s two months since the release of my “Aestas” album and the time has flown. I’ve had a two-page spread in the Alloa Advertiser, had a track, “Rebirth of Venus”, played on Forth Valley Radio and been a guest on one of their shows.

One thing that I have discovered in promoting the album is the need for visuals to accompany the music if you want to promote it properly. Spotify want what they call canvases, which are short looping videos (3-8 seconds), to accompany the tracks; Meta (Facebook/Instagram) likes reels, which can be up to 90 seconds; while YouTube is best served with full videos or AVs (audio-visual sequences).

In order to supply the needs of social media, I have gone back to my AV days with PTE (Pictures-To-Exe) and am currently relearning animation with CTA (Crazy Talk Animator). In addition, Roberta’s camera club, Stirling and District Camera Club, for which we once chaired the AV group, have redeveloped an interest in AV and our sequence, “The Iconoclast”, went down very well when shown there last week. This AV uses “Titanium” by David Guetta featuring Sia as the musical background rather than one of my own compositions. For those who are interested, the copyright for using such music in a non-profit making AV is covered by joining and purchasing the appropriate licences from the IAC (Institute of Amateur Cinematographers). We are both members of Leeds AV group which, since it now operates purely using Zoom, has extended its membership well outside Leeds.

I already have several videos to accompany my music on YouTube and a couple of reels on Facebook. Look out in the near future for more of the same plus a few canvases on Spotify.

On the music front, I am slowly getting back into composing and looking at improving and releasing a couple of older songs. “Through the Darkness” and “Rainbow’s End” are already on YouTube and SoundCloud and the latter, being primarily a children’s song, might be suitable for a release just before Christmas. I’m also working on a song called “Jukebox in My Head” for which Roberta wrote the lyrics. Watch this space!