"House Sucks" & "Greatest Composer" Released w/ Notes

FroBot - House Sucks (Original Mix) by FroBot

Hey everyone! I released 2 new tracks today! Awwww yea! The first one is called "House Sucks" and is an ironic electro house track. "I hate house music...I hate techno, I hate house, I hate electronica, whatever the FUCK you call it...it SUCKS". What a great line! I actually scarfed this clip from a youtube video -


 Funny hey! I thought you guys would like to know where I am picking up my samples from...and I thought this guy was just perfect. Thanks youtube...and the "I hate techno guy".

Anyway, from a technical stand point, I was trying to do some different things in this track. I was using a much rounder kick and no real bass line for part of it. Hoping to see if I could create a different feel on the dance floor with that little change. That is why the track is short, because its more of a crowd-switcher-upper. Also, I tried doing some weird things with swing placement and clap placement. At the beginning of the track, the claps are not on the 2 & 4...I was just looking for a different kind of swing. I then switch back to the stand 2 & 4 soon after and it makes the swing really heavy. I also tried really taking things off time during the breakdown...and I just kind of triggered in what I wanted. Also, bringing the vocals and kick back in on the 7th beat instead of 8 worked out nicely with the audio samples.

FroBot & Flirtphonic - Greatest Composer (Original Mix) by FroBot

The 2nd track I am releasing is a collaboration I did with a new friend. This is a really cool story. Living in Osaka, Japan...which is right dead-center between Kyoto, Nara, Kobe (and is the 2nd biggest city in Japan)...there are tons of tourist and backpackers who come through. So, as you might guess, my couchsurfing.org account is pretty active. I dont usually have time to host people...but I leave it up there in case any producers or musicians are rolling through. I always have time to make some music with people...and since I have a nice studio here...its nice to collaborate with international musicians. I can usually throw together a drum circle, or sit around and produce...so I leave my account up there stating just that. Anyway, a guy named Jasper (Flirtphonic) messaged me saying he was a dj/producer in South Korea...and we should make some tunes. So, long story short, he came to my place...and we put together this track. It came together in 2 days. It is actually the same track I talk about in one of my youtube tutorials -


 This was a little bit more of an experimental track with some darker sounds. We also used a lot of Nintendo low-fi glitches all during the 2nd half. We really played around with panning, autopan, and removing record quantization. When you put headphones on, the low-fi glitchy sounds want to bounce through your brain. The vocal samples were from some random youtube video which I have since lost...a guy speaking at a music conference. Sounded nice and the audio was already in a HQ format.

If you want to listen to some of "Flirtphonic's" music, his soundcloud is here - FLIRTPHONIC SOUNDCLOUD.

Also...for those of you who have been reading my blog a while...I tossed 1 extra track up that I am not promoting. Its the first track I ever made...so I thought you guys might get a kick out of it. It has a lot of problems...but at least you can see where I came from. You gotta go to my soundcloud account to get it - FroBot SoundCloud.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy! I am still working on new tracks now...and each time getting a little bit technically better than before as I learn all this. I am still learning ableton just like the rest of you...and learning what works well on bigger speakers.

The only real problem I am having recently is with producers GAIN SMASHING their tracks just to sell more online. Some people like to smash or over compress so it sounds louder when compared to other tracks. They do this at a cost of removing dynamics from the tracks. I have asked my mastering engineer to slightly gain smash all my tracks....so I can test them in the club and see which sound better. I dont release there, they are just for testing. Obviously, ruining dynamics of a track is not a good thing, and something I dont really want to do...but, I still want to test how the club speakers feel about them. So, my tracks mastered volume sometimes feels a smidge lower than some other producers tracks right now. But since I am not in a huge hurry to SELL to tons of people at the expense of lower sound quality....for the time being, I will just use Tarekith's Guide to Metering idea where checking the average RMS of a track, and bringing other tracks down to that level...then pumping the master volume on the club mixer up....will keep all my tracks at the same volume. This way, I can still get equal volume on MY tracks, without ruining dynamics. I still have a lot of decisions to make later on about this topic.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy! Comment if you feel it! Thanks!

Peace!

FroBot

Soundcloud - A DJ's Best Friend

By now, im sure many of you are familiar with soundcloud. It has become the industry standard for sharing your audio productions to record labels, internet radio stations, & fans. It enables you (depending on your account) to upload full DJ mixes, your tracks, make playlists, and even have direct links to buy your tracks from beatport, itunes, or where ever you want to direct your traffic. This is great for producers, and soundcloud specifically has high quality streaming audio. I am finding soundcloud is the best place to direct my audio listening traffic because I can offer free tracks, and pay tracks all in the same location.

But what I want to talk about today is how soundcloud can be DJs best friend...especially when on a tight schedule and you NEED to get some HOT tracks fast! Since soundcloud kind of works like a social network in a way that you can FOLLOW certain artists, its really easy to find the newest releases from your favorite artists. After clicking FOLLOW your favorite artists page, you then have a nice little tab at the top of the page to check all the tracks (newest - oldest) that have been released by your favorite artists.

This is a GREAT feature. What I really like about DJing, is finding nice underground tracks that no one has heard yet. Since a lot of small time (and kind of popular) artists use soundcloud for promotion, you can find tracks even before they are released. Now, this doesnt mean you can download them, but most of the time you can. Sometimes, when you are really lucky, artists will release FREE tracks....so when REALLY in a jam, and no credit card around, you can still find some rockin HOT tracks.

What I did, is went through all the tracks that I use when DJing...and picked out ALL of my favorite artists. Clicked FOLLOW. And now I have a huge list of all my favorite producers.

No longer do I have to search trackitdown, beatport, junodownload, when trying to gather new tracks quickly before a gig. Just log in to my soundcloud, and check whats new.

I really think this is the future of music finding. It enables you to stay up-to-date with TONS of artist's releases, and also lets you know MORE about them (location, website, remixes, label info, etc). It is really hard staying up-to-date with the thousands of different artists out there per genre...and this makes it really easy. Also, many of the BIG artists are not really using soundcloud....so it keeps me from playing tracks that everyone else is. I can also comment on the tracks, and send my love when I really think a track is bangin. I can also check out other artists who they follow, and find similar sounding artists. This is much better than surfing beatport...which only really features the BIG artists....and leaves the small ones to drown at the bottom of the flood.

This feature of soundcloud is great...and is my new favorite way to stay on top of whats new, and find NEW tracks. With paypal accounts set up at beatport, trackitdown, itunes, and junodownload...you can buy tracks quickly from the soundcloud link (which will direct you to a place to download). I can support artists that I like, and get tracks that are released within the week.

Peace!

FroBot

Trackitdown.net (My Fav Music Download Website)

Recently, without naming names, I know a lot of people are getting fed up with certain electronic music download websites. Either they are run by sort of "elitist" groups who only display the same featured artists...or seem to hide all the good, undiscovered artists deep within a pile of tracks. One website, in my opinion, that is standing out on top of all the rest, is Trackitdown.net

This website is run by a group of level headed musicians and is based out of LONDON. Their website is easy to navigate, has nice top chart selections, and seems to have those tracks by a few undiscovered artists and labels that will def make your set stand out on the dance floor. Help support this website and and some of the less known artists who are coming out of it.