Mixtape Diary
8 April 2024
I’ve been working on several projects the past couple of months, some of which are with vocalists. I’ve also written my first two tracks with vocals. Another steep learning curve! They’ll be on my site when they’re done.
I finished a new track yesterday, so I thought I’d post this short update and put the track up on this page as well.
3 February 2024
A long long time ago, in The Netherlands in the late eighties and early nineties, I DJ’d, made mixtapes and produced some basic tracks in my bedroom. I had turntables, a tape deck, a sampler and drum machine. One of my mixes got played on national radio. Then life happened and I only got back to DJing for a bit when I lived in Lisbon in 2004. I had some piano lessons in 2006, but never had the patience to practice enough. So although I really wanted to be able to make music, I never got around it.
But in February last year I saw Fred Again’s interview with Zane Lowe where he demo’d a Maschine (about 37 minutes in the video) and I was blown away and super-inspired. So, after a a couple of weeks of thinking about it I got a Maschine and started to learn how to use it and make music again. There was (and is!) a super steep learning curve. Not only was there the hardware, the DAW/digital audio workstation software and all its plugins, it was music theory, producing and then mixing and mastering too.
In the last few months I managed to write and produce some tracks and I’ve put them on this page and called it Mixtape 01. They’re basically sketches and learning projects. I’m experimenting and making tracks to learn how to do it and find my sound. Home mixes and masters, so bear with me on this. I’m not even sure about putting these online. I don’t know if they’re any good. I might take them down again soon. There’s still a long way to go, but I’d like to test the waters and see if people are up for collaborating too. See what you think…