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After last week's more artistic publication, I went back to work for a brandnew 1 hour Elektron Live Set that I need for a show in 2 weeks. This is the 5th track, it has no name yet but I really like that I managed to make a song NOT with a 4 to the floor groove haha (It's actually a live dub remix of a friends track). The track has a pretty aggressive stab that I really love. And as usual, all effects coming from the onboard sections of the Analog Rytm MKII and the Analog Four MKII. Checkout my brand-new Samplepack with great and mesmerizing textures for Dubtechno and Electronic productions:

Hey hey my guys, it took me a long time but I'm finally back with a lot of fresh ideas and news that I will share with you very soon. But first of all, I have to tell you, I really missed you guys, the live sessions and the music during the past 2 months and I'm so excited to get things finally rolling again! While there's so much more to tell you, I want to share some news about my upcoming EP "Home" first! It drops August 20 and I'm pretty excited about it. Embedded below is a first preview of one of the tracks that I performed some months ago titled "Glacier". My friend Alpha Mound produced a totally fantastic remix out of it. He added some extra spices to the track and on top we hear his super chilled guitar play. What a combination, I'm super proud of this song and I think you will love it too. If you don't know Alpha Mound yet, I suggest to checkout his blog at alphamound.blogspot.com and If you want to pre-save the EP, I'd really apprechiate your love. Happy Weekend y'all and I look forward to tell you more about my future plans very soon!

I posted a lot about this important project on Instagram and also on my blog. And now here's finally the complete performance "Shopping Bag" for you. While we had a camera guy who was filming with different gear, I was only able to use a GoPro recording for this video which angle is focussed especially on me. In the 2nd half you can see the dancers who performed to my music. They move through the church during the whole installation - if you want to see the full version with focus on the dance performance, you have to wait until the end of September when the official video premiere of "Shopping Bag" will take place. Unfortunately, the audio recording is not perfect. The reason is the acoustics of the church - I use a lot of reverb in my music, but the room already has that by nature. Which is the reason why we had to massively reduce the amount of effects. And that's why the audio track we recorded with a Zoom recorder sounded extremely dry as a result. Not to say it sounded shitty ;D We then placed several iPhones in the church room, and mixed these recordings with the dry mixer output to get a more or less wet simulation. Now that doesn't sound bad, but it's still not the best in some places. I hope you can still enjoy the performance :) If you want to know more about the setup that I'm using, you can read all about it here Gallery Photos by Anke U. Neumeister Chapters 1. Swim 00:00 2. Under water 07:25 3. Poolparty 27:30 4. Outerspace 41:10 About SHOPPING BAG "We swim in an ocean of a thousand shopping bags in search of happiness. The unbearable lightness of being changes our body, our behavior and our environment until we are forced to leave this place called earth." Supported by the NATIONALE PERFORMANCE NETZ - STEPPING OUT, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR. Hilfsprogramm Tanz." The performance took place in Stralsund, Germany on August 12 and August 13 2022. Director: Bernardo San Rafael

Happy weekend guys! I thought it's finally time to upload the pure & fun jam session I had with my Digitakt and Digitone last night. It has been a while I did this and I had a lot of joy with this pattern. Maybe it will make it into my upcoming streaming set DUST which airs Saturday November 6. Stylistically, my idea was to create a track that goes into a more reduced direction. That's why I only play it on the Elektron Digitakt and Digitone gear, no other hardware is involved. Do you like the groove? Then I gonna invite to to the premiere of the music video of my upcoming EP "Made Of Dust" - premiering October 30. Learn how to make your own house music with the Digitakt! Have a look on my Digitakt Online Class! It's a video course focussed on creating tracks with the Digitakt. It covers LFOs, Arrangement, Performing, Digitakt FX and many other interesting topics!

I started working on a new project this week, a score for a new installation of dancer and artist Bernardo San Rafael. The performance is titled "MUTTER!" and takes place on June 15 and 16 in Stralsund, Germany (check my Gig calendar here). This is a composition that I created for the entrance scene, enriched with some sounds just for the YouTube version (which is also much shorter than the actual score). It's a fairly simple arrangement that makes use of lots of random plays and LFO modulation. Need help arranging your own tracks? Book a free session and we can see what I can do for you!

This blog series takes care of a problem faced by many musicians: the jump from developing a single loop to a complete track. I compiled some best practices from my own workflow that you can use for your own process. In the first part, I'll cover a number of tips to help you gather inspiration before moving on to idea generation, arrangements and the subsequent mixing and mastering. These topics will be covered in future parts of the series and they build up the production process I usually go through. Create a template for your setup To start with, lets talk about templates. I know, this is not a super exciting area, but on the long run, you will be thankful for it because you can rapidly start music making whenever you want. Whether you work purely DAW-based or use a hardware setup, it's essential to be prepared when inspiration lurks around the corner. And templates can be a huge time saver too. When I talk about templates, i mean an empty song or project file that's pre-configured with all the settings you typically need in your productions. For example, an Ableton template could hold your favourite send effects ready to go, a mastering chain, a track with a sampler holding your most frequently used kick samples, tracks for your favourite synths, and so on. A template for a hardware rig, such as mine, could have pre-defined MIDI channels of your gear, effects could be configured and much more. The aim of a template is that you can start producing without having to make the same settings over and over again. Plus a template is also ideal for keeping a specific style consistent within a set of tracks. Search for Samples Samples are the backbone of most music productions. At the same time, a lot of inspiration can be drawn from them. Therefore, I recommend paying special attention to their selection and investing some research and time. Especially if you are planning to produce several connected tracks in the form of an EP or an album, it offers the advantage that the individual songs form a unit by using audio snippets that belong together. You should get into the habit of pre-"mixing" and paying attention to the quality already during the selection process. That means, that you should keep the Audiospectrum on your mind and choose samples wisely to fill the spectrum in the most balanced way. Gather Sounds and Ideas and create your "Moodboard" Sources of sounds are many, and one preparatory work to find inspiration is to collect and compile samples with a specific goal on your mind. This can be thematic, for example, or genre-specific sample packs, holiday field recordings, sampled synth loops or files from free sound archives. A great way of collecting sounds is a field recorder that can help you snapshot your environment. Read this article for more information about field recording. Field recordings are a fantastic way to make your music unique and develop a signature. I also believe that this brings in a lot of feeling to your work as well. Another great source of ideas is to browse your existing samples. Pretty often, I find stuff that I've almost forgotten! I'm using a software called XO for this task. It automatically sorts audio material, categorizes them, suggests similar samples and makes it easy to create kits that I then can export as single WAV files. It's also greatly integrated with DAWs. I could dive into my library for hours! When listening and selecting some of the gathered sounds - your "Moodboard" - you often get ideas and at the same time they give your music that unique flavor. Process your Samples Another interesting approach to gather inspiration is to "process" existing material in some way. For example, you could time-stretch your recordings. "PaulStretch" is an algorythm that's included in Audacity, a free audio editor for Windows, Linux and Mac. It allows lossless stretching of samples up to a factor of 1000, ideal for creating drones and textures that you can use with each DAW or hardware sampler. Another idea to breathe life back into existing material are the numerous plug-ins of modern DAWs. For example I've had great results with Ableton's "Harmonizer", which pitches the original audio material with several layers in chords. It's definitely worth playing around with the Plugins your DAW offers. Make a shopping list This is a tool I use pretty often for planning a release! Most of the time I have an idea in my head of how i want a new song should be. That could be a reference track I like, for instance. I listen to that track a couple of times and write down some notes - Speed of the track, length, elements, effects and so on. I also draw a sctructure (build up, break, drop, main part, outro). In other words, I describe the track with a couple of adjectives. Then, I make a to-do list out of my notes and start researching. Each time I found one of the items on this list during my inspiration phase, I check it as done. This really feels like "Shopping" my sample library :D This way, you can turn the track creation around and start working from a different perspective (which can be pretty refreshing). How do you get inspired? Let us know in the comments below. In the next post, we will start putting your inspiration into concrete ideas!

This week's jam is a direct continuation of last week's track "Swim". It's about an underwater landscape and part of my upcoming performances on August 12 & August 13 in Stralsund, Germany. While "Swim" is a pretty cinematic composition, this one is a very experimental track and divided into 3 sections. In the 1st part whales play the main role. All sounds you hear are played with 1 track. For the first time, I used the special FX LFOs from the Analog Rytm to modulate the global delay time. Really cool! On the Digitakt, I had to use the Midi Loopback to do that. On top, the regular track LFO changes the pitch of the whale sounds and the trigs are played by a random value only every now and then. This results in an extremely variant and generative composition that plays automatically so I can focus on the synths meanwhile. In the 2nd part the Vermona Perfourmer comes into play, supplemented by the Big Sky Reverb with its Plate Machine. The sounds are sequenced by the Squarp Pyramid using a lot of randomization effects on the note octaves and lengths. In the 3rd part it gets a bit chaotic, here the Novation Peak gives its best. I configured the touchpad of the Pyramid to control some effect parameters. Slowly but surely all the elements are coming together for the performance! I'm so excited to see everything together soon. The tracks are ready, and in the coming week I have to practice, practice, practice. Especially with the transitions and the settings of the Vermona I have to get much faster!

Fancy a cool refreshment? Then dive with me into the endless depths of the Vermona PerfourMer! This new track will most likely be part of my upcoming performance in August as well. Its title is "Swim" and I tried to capture the waves, the ups and downs and the depth of the water with the synthesizers. The focus of this performance is clearly on the Vermona PerFourMer Its 4 synth strips play single legato notes independently of each other, floating back and forth with the maximum glide feature. They are sequenced by the Pyramid, which modulates the octaves with its randomizers. Behind the Vermona hangs of course an effect pedal to spice it up. This time its the Strymon Big Sky again with the Spring Reverb Machine. I set up the reverb to play the first modulation 1 octave higher and the second modulation the 5th pitch. Thus, the entire sound gets varied and multi-layered. The arrangement is accompanied by a super deep analog sounding bass played by the Novation Peak. The sample section is fairly simple in this song, delivered by the Elektron Analog Rytm MKII. As a special feature some of its FX parameters - delay HPF for example - are kept in motion by the Pyramids LFO. Need help building your own hardware setup? Check out my private 1:1 Coaching and book a free trial session to find out what I can do for you!

Yeah!!! Finally, I'm back on the YT stage with a brandnew Jam and I'm super excited to present you this sweet track! It's titled "Out There" - a pretty spacy and slow journey; it will be a part of my upcoming autumn live event. For the very first time ever, I'm using Elektron Digitakt for drums, ambiences and vocals, Digitone for bass, FX and arps and Octatrack for sequencing the Novation Peak and syncing the other 2 boxes. You know how I struggled with the Octatrack, but I slowly get int the hang with it and I use it more and more to spice up my jams. If you want to know how I made this pattern, I suggest to watch the studio session where I broke down the arrangement! Learn how to make your own house tracks with the Elektron Digitakt! Have a look on my Digitakt Online Class! It's a video course focussed on creating tracks with the Digitakt. It covers LFOs, Arrangement, Performing, Digitakt FX and many other interesting topics, plus it's upgraded with new lectures frequently.

Dawless gear heaven I love 3D scans and so I did with the impressive pile of gear build up by the performers

learning: Keep the live setup simple I often mentioned that the "logistics" factor played a big role for dawless

This week's jam is titled "We Need A Decision" and it has become a super chilled and fluffy track, performed with the Digitakt. I really want to listen to it after work with a cool beer in my favorite bar. You can download and stream it here. A slightly modulated pad plays the main role and builds the foundation of the vibe, a voice sample provides the title and some low stabs bring groove into the pattern. I had played around with this track during my live session last Wednesday (check it out for a track breakdown!) and I must confess that I exceptionally added a reverb in my DAW after the recording. Only through this the pad got an extremely light way, which I simply couldn't leave out, as it gives the whole track an extreme lightness. The video is the first one I made with Final Cut X (previously I used a Adobe Premiere Pro). I really like the default effect (which is actually super simple to make but looks awesome). What you think? Does it work? Learn how to make your own house music with the Digitakt! Have a look on my Digitakt Online Class! It's a video course focussed on creating tracks with the Digitakt. It covers LFOs, Arrangement, Performing, Digitakt FX and many other interesting topics!