Tell us how you got into DJ’ing and producing? Ever since I was a child I had always been involved with music. Before I got into production I was a pretty keen piano player, and used to play in competitions back in Australia. They were pretty nerve wracking at the time, but they also helped me get over any kind of stage fright quite early on. When I was 14 I had already been writing scores for more traditional music on computers, and then one day I discovered that I could hook my parents’ old hi-fi speakers up through the sound card and play around with a broader range of sounds. From that point on I was mad about electronic music. Where do you get your inspiration from? Things I see, mostly, also I guess from my friends. Sometimes from architecture or art and sometimes just seeing a cool building or place will conjure up lots of ideas in my head. Also from other producers! When other people ask for good ways to get inspired, I usually tell them to go and find some new sounds to play with, whether it be a new synth or a new sample pack. Places like musicradar.com have loads of royalty-free sample packs that you can download for free. Having tons of new material to play around with is always fun, and having fun is usually a good start to writing a track. How would you describe your own sound? I would describe my sound as melodic house music for the trance crowd. I take influence from all kinds of house music, however it’s trance parties where my sound gets the best reaction. As everybody is floating around the 128BPM mark nowadays, it works well having my kind of music followed by a harder-edged trance act. Your music has a tight sound and a colorful melody, which artists have influenced you? Well I started listening to dance music in about 1996, and I was buying lots of Paul Van Dyk CD’s and lots of trance. Between 96 and 2000 lots and lots of trance, I went to my first dance event in 1999, and as soon as I been out and seen it all in action I wanted to go out and write trance music, but over the next five years I got opened up to artists like Andy Paige, BT, Hybrid and things like that, people who were just really pushing the sound back then, really pushing the boundaries. I think Andy Paige is one artist I have a lot of respect for. He’s an Australian artist who never really I think got the recognition he deserved. Some of his production values are just amazing and that’s something I aspire to. Do you start your tracks from a live instrumentation background or do you just start messing around with your computer? I try to make the approach different for every type of track. In the past the sort of standout records that I've had had a different process of making the track every time. The software that I used was very different as I'm always back and forth between different programs. At the moment I'm leaning more towards Ableton Live but I also use Logic quite a bit. Some of the idea that I do have been floating around in my head for quite a long time. Musical the tracks for my next album are just complete in my head before I'm even putting down my first notes. With the clubber tracks I tend to start it with the kick drums and beats, and just go from there. I think it's good to mix it up as well because it lets people see different sides of your artistic imprint. I think it's good to have a very different approaches because it makes for more variety in the tracks. How do you think electronic music compares to other genres of music?Were you trained in other genres before moving into electronic composition? What differences have you observed? I was classically trained to begin with. I was originally going for a piano performance and piano composition career. I was doing that at university but I dropped out to follow the electronic side of things, because I feel like electronic music is the next evolution of music. You’re manipulating any kind of sound that there is in order to make your music. You’re no longer limited to certain kinds of instruments. In making your way around the world, for several different festivals and club gigs alike, have you noticed any lack of humility in some of the more overnight success stories? Yes. But to be honest, most of the artists out there are usually humble, down-to-earth people who are grateful to be where they are. Some are more difficult than others, but ultimately an artist's worth isn't really about their personality, unless it's so destructive as to cause issues. If you're insanely musically talented and put on a great show then people are ultimately going to put up with you no matter what, I guess. Not being an ass to people isn't really that hard, though."The best thing you can do is just sit down and write whatever comes out because it tends to be the best music that you make."
You're going to be touring North America with Super8 & Tab on the Code Red tour, is this the first time you're touring with them?
Yeah. I've done one-off gigs with them around the world a bunch of times but this is the first time that we decided to pair it up and do the tour together. We got a collaboration track called “Code Red” where the tour name actually comes from, and it also symbolizes us joining forces for this tour. Creating “Code Red” was a load of fun as we sent back the project back and forth between our studios about 20-30 times and just kept on chipping away at it. It turned a bit into a trance monster and in fact it's probably transience than the tunes I've done in the past. I'm really impressed with those guys did with the track as the real production value came from them as I came up with the melodies and chords – things like that. They took those ideas and turned it into an epic track with big lead synths, and stuff like that. It's a really cool fusion of our styles I think. They played it out for the first time at a gig that we were playing at the Ministry of Sound in London a couple of weeks ago and the response was really really good. Definitely looking forward to playing it out some more on this tour. https://soundcloud.com/jaytechmusic/jaytech-music-podcast-125-with-hexlogic