James Lawrie's Blog

Music is awesome and so is the internet. We all know where the internet comes from (the clouds duh) but music's origins are still up for debate.There is a clue though and one which those ethnomusicologists their ukuleles have missed.

Dance music with all it's futurisms and emphasis on innovation is still a genre which likes to pay homage to it's past. Until now though the furthest anyone has travelled back in time from the comfort of their studio's is the 1920's. Yeah I'm talking about electro swing in a UK footwork blog piece- Bite me and don't be a hater (Vice magazine if you are reading this I'm talking to you) Any new genre of dance music always seems to call home to its parents or grand parents or ancestors once in a while although (ignoring tribal psy-trance and other lame hippie music) dance music has been disconnected from it's roots in cradle of humanity. I partly blame this on blame on 'Mumford and sons' but also on the 440hz consort tuning (A above middle C on the piano) becoming the standard in the 19th century. It replaced 432hz tuning which makes much more sense as it uses the earths natural vibration of 8hz or as physicist Winfried Otto Schumann eloquently put it - the heart beat of the planet. Some believe that the change to 440 hz tuning has even produced negative changes in our brains as the left hand side responsible for rational resonates at 14hz where as the right hand side (the one that deals with creative activities such as dancing) resonates at yep you guessed it 8hz. The beat of our spherical blue home is why we walk in steps of 2 or four if you are a horse. It is why the brain will place an accent on every second beat of a ticking clock. It is also why dance music's 8 16 or 32 bar phrasing sounds so good and why odd time signatures with the obvious exception (take 5) just sound plain wrong! (yeah I said it, if your are at all cultured stop reading now this blog or scene isn't for you) Most dance and popular music is constructed using phrases of 8 or 16 bars 32 bars in some cases. but it's all based on the golden ratio based on the number 8. Still paying attention? You'll need to pay extra attention for this bit. I know nothing about maths, for most of my GCSE math exam I wrote "I am a fish" in homage to Arnold Rimmer from Sci-fi sit-com red dwarf (although for some reason i still got an F, weird?). This probably goes some way to expelling why I'have nothing better to do than make, listen, and attempt to write music about it in way way which isn't too technical for people who don't produce bass music in dark attic rooms at 3am!

Anyways I digress If you have ever had problems putting orchestral harmonies on your tracks or wandered why the clean bandit's music sucks so much it is because we have imposed a format of tuning on our music which is at odds with the rhythms or phrasing of most electronic music and the Beat of planet earth. Slowly though we are making steps back towards music which is in perfect harmony with our surroundings. I'm not just talking about the phrasing or patterns of music but also our bodies and acoustic spaces which are often built using the "golden ratio". Things are slowly moving back towards the ancient ways of music and with the wanders of software we can easily bring the harmonies in music back in line with the beats we make. Just by reducing the frequencies by 8 percent try putting a micro tuner on your mastering track and tune it down by 8 cent's (it's best not to do leave this till post production as you want to get a good feel for the vibrations. If you play the guitar get a micro tuning app from the app store, if your a pianist good luck to you and if your a logic user you are have probably been to institutionalised by music tech courses and are hereby band from reading any further! Anyways what does this have to do with a UK footwork record? Well the poly rhythms, triplet rhythms and hypnotic nature of footwork which is basically an abstract genre of chicago house with a tempo of 160bpm (160 is related to 120bpm) have you ever wandered why when you are playing a triplet based footwork track by the likes of say 'JLin' and your beat counter reads 120 BPM well that's why. It's confusing but look on the bright side you can mix footwork with into by hitting play or letting go of the record 4 bars later than usual sound sound like a DMC champion by seamlessly dropping in some old school house record.Word of warning make sure you practice this first before trying it in front of an audience! Anyways I digress again.

In 2015 Two brave UK footwork producers by the names of BLK MRKs and Brand new with help from the Little Big Africa (a clean water charity) made a journey back to the origins of dance music with a collaboration using original recordings of ancient and sacred tribal ceremonies from uganda. These mainly consist of drumming, chanting and words of ancient wisdom. Together these two producers demonstrated the link between footwork's frenetic hypnotic rhythms and dance music's roots in africa venturing much further back than any electro swing producer would dare! Their noir EP was one of the most innovative UK footwork releases of 2015 and I was very excited when they asked me to remix a track for their project. When I got to work though I found the samples sounded slightly flat when played next to my own instruments. However when I tuned them up but just 8cents they harmonised perfectly.The rest of my remix was mainly mostly sound designed based using one of my favourite virtual synthesisers Sub Boom Bass by software wizard Rob Papen. It features just two oscillators but the interesting thing about this plug in is that, as well as having the usual saw tooth and sine waves as it's sound sources. It also has a array of sampled sounds including lots of rich drum sounds. So after a bit of searching through these and a little bit of the usual oscillator and LFO fiddling I managed to create a sound which was a close enough approximation of the drums from the stems I chose to use. I then drew some pretty shapes on the midi piano role and messed around with the automation so hopefully it would't sound the same all the way through! There was one more thing though, blending the grove from the tribal drums with my own drums(Well technically an 808 simulation on the drum machine "punch" by yep you guessed it Rob Papen who must have been able to put his kids through college with the amount of money i have spent on his software! Luckily I use Ableton Live which has a lovely function which lets you sample just the groove (beat placements) from any piece of audio you like transforming your robotic drums into a cornucopia of grooviness. (sorry for using such a ridiculous word! I dared myself to use the word cornucopia in every blog I write from this day forth, I get very bored out here in the shropshire hills and have to do this stuff to amuse myself). So,with my virtual 808 dancing away to the funky Ugandan grooves. All that was left was to play around with the tune so I decorated it with some words of tribal wisdom, I chose the phrase "bad is bad". I always find it great fun to speed up or slow down drum samples, which I did to make some nice double time drum breaks to mark the 8 and 16 bar phrases keeping it in time with the earths pulse.

I learned a lot from remixing this track, my only regret is not paying attention in GCSE maths then I might have tuned everything down by 8 cents. I will use this knowledge to improve my future productions.

The Brand New and BLK MRK'S EP was a highly ambitious undertaking but they pulled it off with a release which is inspiring and work on any levels. The follow up remix EP features some highly talented beatsmiths and is one of Good street's best offerings yet!

.Anyways why are you still reading my nerdy ramblings! Switch your speakers on turn your bass up and get groovy with good street!

https://soundcloud.com/goodstreetrecords/sets/gstr056