Electronica Dance Music Programming Secrets [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Another of the London dance scene's best kept secrets is Newtronic, an expert band of programmers beavering away producing beats and basslines which are sold as building block kits. Many professional Electronica musicians use Newtronic's building blocks and I am proud to collaborate with them on this second edition to bring their secrets to you.

The power of sequencing lies in its empowerment of the individual to produce professional quality music from a modest home set-up. Musical tricks and secrets, previously the preserve of professionals with huge budgets and the time necessary to learn them, become easily understood through a sequencer's graphic displays, paving a much smoother path from musical novice to explorer and innovator. Who hasn't played around on a friend's guitar or keyboard and heard something in their untutored ramblings that sounded great but which they lacked the skill to replicate? With a sequencer your moment of musical genius can be captured, isolated from the dross surrounding it and replicated to form the basis of a new groove.

Beyond the simple process of recording and replaying, sequencers offer a wealth of music processing options that allow you to take your original idea and experiment or generate harmony parts which in the past would have required a studio full of expensive session musicians and years of learning music theory. This opens new avenues of musical exploration and is the driving force behind the continuing development of Electronica. No longer does a composer have to patiently explain to a bass player or drummer just the feel he has in mind and await their understanding of his concept before they can hear their own musical idea - now you can try out the juxtaposition of patterns you had in mind and adjust the results yourself until the required feel is obtained. Once achieved it is there to be replayed perfectly at any time, not just when the musicians are in the right mood. Using the power of computers to capture those precious moments of inspiration leads to faster working and a freedom to experiment which was previously only enjoyed by the classical or jazz musician with years of training and practice behind him.

Electronica Dance Music Programming Secrets is organised so you can simply dip into those areas of Electronica which you are most interested in. There are stylistic links and similarities between the various styles and I hope this book will lead you to explore those links and thus evolve your own, original, style. Along the way, sequencers' music processing features are introduced in context, where they make the most sense. Too often instruction manuals assume you have a degree in computer science and the musical knowledge of a classical musician, introducing powerful features out of context, bewildering novice and expert alike.

Introducing features from sequencer tricks through to sample manipulation and sound effects as they are required will help you unravel many of the mysteries surrounding Electronica music-making. This will free you to create the music we all hear in our head but which most of us have been unable to realise until now. Ultimately the magic that is music depends on that indefinable something that makes a chord sequence or riff transcendental and it would be foolish to say that simply reading this book will make a Derrick May or Goldie of you. What I hope it will do is allow you to discover the magic that is making music and uncover the hidden musician that beats in everyone's breast.

Nothing in this book about the different styles of Electronica is true of course. The very act of creating electronic music denies the existence of formulas. Take the patterns for Garage drums and make a Jungle track with them, try writing a Trip Hop bassline in a Techno style or mash together patterns from all the different styles. Above all else, remember, there are no rules, anything is possible.