By |

It is virtually impossible to achieve anything in life without help from others. Reading books and watching YouTube videos are great for learning, but feedback and some sort of teaching and/or mentoring is essential to get you started and keep you progressing. Composing and producing music is no exception. If, like me, you are interested in producing EDM instrumentals, you need to know where to look.

When I started producing my own songs, I found song contests a good place to start. In particular, the UK Songwriting Contest was where I first tentatively entered a couple of the songs. The outcome was encouraging if not outstanding. One of the prizes for entering a song was a free trial of the songwriting teaching facility, SongU. I started my trial and found SongU so useful that I am still a member some fifteen years later.

SongU is based in Nashville and is entirely on-line. It caters for all types of ability and genres but is more suitable if you write country music. At the time, I was writing in various genres; however, when I strayed into EDM, I managed to find a couple of mentors on SongU with expertise in that genre. The one downside of SongU is that many of its pitching opportunities are for country artists, so I had to look elsewhere as well. I came across Songtradr, another on-line facility, which had both EDM pitching opportunities and the ability to release members’ music to on-line stores such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. Although pitching opportunities on Songtradr are much reduced these days for some reason, I still use it as a distributor for my music.

About a year ago, I decided that I needed to improve my EDM sounds, so I bought some from an English EDM creator and music producer called Luke Bond. Not only were the sounds excellent, but, by purchasing them, you became a member of his Discord group which included some top EDM DJ’s. I have received some excellent feedback from these guys which has been very helpful.

So far, I have only discussed on-line networking. I was also interested in meeting with some local people who shared my passion. Unfortunately, I live in Clackmannashire and, when I entered “Clackmannanshire electronic dance music” into the Co-Pilot AI system, the first thing that appeared was “Electronic Octagenarian”, which is the title of this series of blogs. There was also a bit on the album I released in 2024 but little else. There is a minor music festival called ‘Tilly in the Park’ held annually in Tillicoutry (about three miles from where I live) and a couple of night clubs in Stirling (five miles away) and Falkirk (15 miles away).

Separately, I came across GLOSS (Glasgow Library of Synthetic Sound) and attended a session there hosted by Lewis Cook, who is one half of the synth group Free Love. It was an interesting experience playing with hardware synthesisers and drum machines; however Glasgow is more than thirty miles from where I live and, as such, is not exactly local. I am still considering whether or not I should become more involved with GLOSS.

Having said all that, I am still on the lookout for networking opportunities. There are plenty of them out there, especially on-line, but it is important to choose the right ones which fit your needs.

By |

First of all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to anyone who reads this. This year has been a busy one, although I managed to avoid the mayhem of releasing a 12-track CD, which I achieved last year.

For the first time, I was able to get two songs through to the Semi-Final stage of the UK Songwriting Contest and am still waiting to hear if either has been selected as a Finalist. The songs, “Classical Trance” and “Trance Mission”, are both entered in the Instrumental category and, as such, are up against opposition from classical, jazz, blues, orchestral and pop instrumentals, among others. For this reason, the Instrumental category is considered to be one of the most difficult to win. Becoming a Finalist is also considered to be very difficult in any category with less than two percent of songs making it through. I wasn’t aware of this in 2020 when “To Andromeda and Beyond” was a Finalist in the EDM category, which sadly doesn’t exist anymore.

“Trance Mission” also gave me my first track which was accepted on Beatport, which claims to be the world’s largest DJ store for electronic dance music, so that aspect of my journey appears to be going in the right direction. I am also in contact with other EDM producers in the Luke Bond group on the social media platform, Discord, where we exchange feedback on each other’s music.

I am currently working on an orchestral track, “Tempora Mutantur (Changing Times)”, which morphs into EDM and back in just over three minutes. The time signature changes from 6/8 to 4/4 and back and this represents a new direction for me. I have received some encouraging feedback for the piece on SongU, so hopefully you will like it when it is released, probably in January.

My aim for 2026 is to carry on with the EDM theme, probably in the Trance genre, but I want to include contributions from my ROLI Seaboard 2 keyboard, with its emphasis on MIDI Polyphonic Expression, and from my Kontakt 8 library, with particular emphasis on sampled orchestral instruments. That combination, which I believe to be unique, should give me something different on which to work. Watch this space.

By |

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.

By |

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.