The latest EP.
Rust Belt Beats.
An ode to old manufacturing hubs, dilapidated steel mills, abandoned coal mines, and forgotten tanneries. An attempt to resurrect the influences of my past. Places: Worcester. Pittsburgh. Philadelphia. Athens, Ohio. The Poconos.
Cities, towns, locations once bursting with opportunities and approaching horizons only to be shipped overseas for pennies on the dollar.
No denying the impact abandoned infrastructure, bitter winters, and warehouse raves have on my production. I tend to focus on the gritty, raw, and boom bap energy of the east coast compared to the west coast’s sunny day squelches. This EP relates more to The Ford F150 than a Corvette Convertible. Think four wheel drive. Oversized rims. Industrial machinery. Leather hands. Beer belly. Burger King bag. And don’t forget the MAGA hat. The cherry on top.
I wrote the majority of these songs in one day; in fact. NEURO STORM, Red Bull Beatdown, and MADE IN THE USA were produced together in one day after consuming, yes, a Red Bull energy drink. I recorded one of my favorite tracks to date, NEURO STORM, completely caffeinated. I don’t usually drink caffeine. But decided to try it on this rare occasion.
I’m not going to become a regular consumer of Red Bull or energy drinks, or caffeine in general. But honestly I was pleased with the results. Until my anxiety attack around 10 PM. Whoops.
I’m tired of recording crappy beats.
The past year I’ve gone to lengths recording as much music as possible and it never seems like enough. I always need better sound design, better arrangement, better mixing, better mastering, better promotion, less social self destruction. It’s not an easy task, becoming a music producer.
I keep hearing it takes seven years or so.
Reflecting on my music journey….
I spent roughly six months playing around with Maschine from Native Instruments. This was after I saw tsuruda, and he dropped internet slaps vol.1. Another key moment… catching Flying Lotus at Moog Festival. Lotus played classics like “Zodiac Shit”, Aphex Twin’s Mt. Saint Michel, and captivated the crowd with recent releases from Little Snake – a game changer in experimental bass music. Somebody was gracious enough to catch the moment I wanted to become a music producer on camera.
After a music festival run and continued practice with Maschine, I moved to Ableton and bought a Microbrute analog synthesizer. I wanted to learn sound design, and continued collecting pedals and synths until realizing I spent the past five-six years accumulating instruments and never writing any music.
I thought collecting a Make Noise 0-Coast, Microbrute, or Drumbrute would capture the sound of G Jones or Bleep Bloop, after all, both mentioned the impact of analog synthesizers on their releases.
I thought buying hardware was a must after reading the Bleep Bloop and G Jones AMA on reddit.
As my sound deign skills progressed, I realized the majority of my Ableton music production revolved around sampling and resampling. Which doesn’t require a five hundred dollar synthesizer. In fact, the expensive software synthesizers work great! Or even Vital, which is free. After years of staring at two desks full of equipment, I decided to slim down the studio. Not to mention moving into a cockroach ridden apartment, which helped ease the burden of letting items go.
I sold guitar pedals, synthesizers, drum machines, midi controllers, and began leaning into the “ethos” of production I learned from one of my favorite artists “woulg”.
In this YouTube video, woulg ( or Greg) explains why he uses limited plugins and no hardware. By staying inside a box of limitations one works their way outside of the box to stay creative. With the tools provided, you become a master of your workspace instead of branching out and buying something new every month.
Learning how to create a bassline from an “amen break”, risers from any sample, percussion from foley. It’s about staying creative and providing NO BARRIERS TO ENTRY. You don’t need a five hundred dollar synthesizer to create worthwhile bass music. You just need copy of Ableton or DAW. Hell, O-Prime Delta uses Audacity to create the wonkiest track’s you’ve ever heard.
It can be off-putting when you scroll upon your favorite producer’s multi-screen, multi-instrument, analog recording equipment while you’re sitting with a MacBook Pro. But honestly. It’s everything you need and more, says Richard Devine himself.
Skrillex, Little Snake, Woulg. Just a few prodigies who changes electronic music with consumer products. An Apple laptop and some headphones.
Little Snake often quotes limitations as a source for inspiration:
“I pretty much wrote the entire body of it on a wired pair of Apple earbuds and mixed the tracks down when I could plug it into my television, which happened to be even older. It was about halfway through the writing process when I started to reference the tracks at studios belonging to those around me, and it became heart wrenchingly audible that I just didn’t have the skill to make anything well off of any sort of speaker I had around me…. Throughout this whole process, I was strictly working within the box in Ableton. On the first laptop, I worked in Ableton 8 to the best of my ability. It really didn’t have a lot of features Ableton has today, so if there was some sort of production technique I wanted to learn, I had to find some loophole that would fit the software version. And because I was unable to conventionally achieve a lot of modern practices, I ended up working in very experimental ways in order to create any sound at all.”
Gear makes a difference, sure, but so does your technical ability and know how. I’d rather be fluent in my technical skill than fumbling with a new machine all the time. Not to mention, I enjoy woulg’s barrier to entry argument. It’s not “punk rock” to require expensive items when expressing yourself. However, using what you have at your disposal is DIY energy.
Punk energy.
Using nothing but a laptop? Sick. Easy. No wires, cords, maintenance, routing.
No more screaming,
“Why won’t this fucking instrument make a sound?”
I skipped a lot of the bullshit moving to a digital setup, and instead of searching empty project files, my time is now spent organizing finished projects. I don’t spend hours jerking off cords and arranging synthesizers. I open my laptop and start making music. Seriously, you should see my beginning Ableton folders. Blank, all of them. I didn’t create shit except when Goldfacemoneywatch asked for album noises.
Then for maybe a week, I’d pull myself together and start making sound effects, only to never open Ableton for the remainder of the year.
2023 was the year I started writing music again.
After only recording two songs in Maschine and eight or so finished tracks in Ableton, I was determined to write an actual discography.
I’ve since released 111 songs.
The trick was selling my hardware synthesizers and learning how to make mud-pies, resampling, and OTT.
I’m going to continue with my limited setup: Headphones and a MacBook Air. I want to show people you don’t need all the fancy gear and equipment. It’s computer music after all.
THE BADBOOB 