Category: Stories

Artist name J-MOX/rayn – Latest track Talk To My Body/gone – City London, UK

 What is the one thing that we should make sure to listen for in your latest track?

For ’Talk To My Body’ I choose a chord-progression which jumps between the minor & major scale all the time, which I personally really love, as it brings a great feel and variety to the tune. 

On my track, ‘gone’, one of my favourite parts is the breakdown (starting at minute 01:04), where you get the feel, that everything stands still and is on hold for a second.

What is the sound of your childhood and youth?

The sound of my childhood varies a lot – from Heavy Metal to Jazz. As a drummer and pianist these genres have always been extremely interesting and useful to study. It challenged me to develop and understand complex musicality, broadening my horizon by just learning by doing, or let’s say, listening. My father has a great passion for classical music and operas, which he tried bringing me into many times, but wasn’t too successful 😉 Overall, I took inspiration from a lot of different styles whilst growing up, which I implement in my compositions today.

Which software do you use and how does this impact your strategy for making music?

I work with Logic Pro X, which allows me to work fast and creative, as I’m used to the system and multifarious tools since many years. 

What is the biggest hurdle to get over from idea to a released track?

It depends on each project. An idea/a hook is created very fast. To finish a whole track, with all the little details and fine sound-design, can take some time though. The last 5% of finalising a production, including mixing – which I do myself mostly – take up the majority of the time. However, from then onwards, it goes pretty smooth & super quick. I just upload my final mixes to masterchannel.ai and my tracks are release-ready five minutes later.

What drives you to use Masterchannel?

It’s such a fine AI, getting my tracks release-ready in no time, super fast and easy. I most likely will never need a human mastering engineer ever again, as the process is just reliable and the outcome fantastic. I can highly recommend using Masterchannel to every musician – no matter what level – from beginner to professional!

Artist name Alaris – Latest track Lie to Me – City Frankfurt

What is the one thing that we should make sure to listen for in your latest track?

Lots of atmospheric elements that help elevate the track more. I spend some time finding the right sounds. You can hear a sample from a train passing by in the intro for example. 

What is the sound of your childhood and youth? Artists? Genres? Your surroundings?

My dad used to listen to a lot of jazz. I remember listening to Nora Jones, Leonard Cohen, Keith Jarrett and later Gregory Porter and Jamie Cullum. I didn’t grow up around a lot of the classic pop tunes from the 80s & 90s. When I got older I listened to a lot film scores, which still love today. My favourite to day is The Dark Knight Rises score. 

Which DAW do you use and how does this impact your strategy for making music?

I use Ableton Live 11. For me it is important to work fast and Ableton allows me to lay down musical ideas in a short time. I have certain plugins to increase my workflow, templates and saved instrument racks to save my favourite sounds I created for other projects. 

What is the biggest hurdle to get over from idea to a released track?

For me it is refining the idea over and over again and mixing. It is a constant process of refining, changing small things and assessing if you actually improved the idea or made it worse. The biggest help is to show the progressing idea to friends and people that I trust and that give honest feedback. 

Why did you use Masterchannel to master your track?

For me, mastering is the last step before putting my music out into the world, and Masterchannel makes this process very easy and convenient at a low cost while keeping the quality high. So for me it is a no brainer in the process of releasing music.