Since I’m living in Sweden, I don’t get the privilege of experiencing the scene like they do over there. Say what you will about the music from a technical point-of-view, but what this scene doesn’t deliver in musical complexity, it makes up for in community.

Here’s a quick summary of the documentary:

VBS correspondent Jamie Hedgeson goes to the desolate factory town of Bolton in the UK (think Detroit) to report on the music phenomenon called Donk.

Since the advent of acid house in the late 80s, British techno music has been in a long, baffling search for some sort of universal lowest common denominator. Breakbeat, digital hardcore, and gabber all made strong efforts in the race for the bottom, but none of them holds a candle to Donk.

Combining the 150bpm madness of happy hardcore with indecipherable North English rap and then overlaying the whole mess with a single, infuriating “donk” sound, Donk may well be the apotheosis of all ridiculous dance music to date. It is also the only local thing going for an entire population of working-class kids with dwindling outside prospects.

We meet up with Black Out Crew, commonly referred to as the Beatles of the Donk scene. Their video “Put a Donk On It!” has almost 4 million views on YouTube. So come along for ecstasy fueled all nighters into the bizarre scene that is Donk.

Here’s the link: http://www.vbs.tv/watch/music-world/donk.

Hope you guys enjoy

Let me know what you thought of it!

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Phenex – Coreby

The gold metal went to D-Linquiants (Facebook fanpage) with their remix of Mortal Kombat. A very well produced track which definitely was worthy of winning!

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1. Re-uploaded some free tracks

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1. Phenex Phreebie: Coreby

I will also have some new free bits up very soon, too, so keep checking back or subscribe to get updated.

Without further ado, here they are in full length 320kbps quality and all their glory for enthusiasts and DJs alike:

Phenex – Captivity
Phenex – Filling Me With Desire
Phenex – Liquid Future
Phenex – Techno Bass
Phenex – Satellite
Phenex feat. Le Kat – So Naive

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1. Phenex Phreebie: Coreby

The new year will provide a new revelation to the hardcore scene, as we’ll be pushing the envelope even further with new releases, gigs, events, tracks and artists. I can’t say too much at the moment, because everything is still very secret, but suffice to say, when the year has passed, you will look back at this post and understand what I was on about!

I’ll see you again in 2010, stronger than before.

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• Threshold: Say you put a sample in your compressor which peaks at –9dB, the threshold will determine when the compressor should kick in. So if you set the threshold to anything higher than –9dB, it won’t do anything (since the drum will never be louder). If you for example set it to –10dB, then it WILL kick in at any peaks above –10dB.
• Ratio: Now the ratio will determine how much to lower the volume. If you set your compressor to 2:1 it will turn down every 2dB that’s over your threshold to 1dB, this means that if it’s 4dB over the threshold, the compressor will make it 2dB and so on. With a compression of 3:1 it would turn down every 3dB that’s over your threshold to 1dB and likewise if it’s 6dB over the threshold, the compressor will make it 2dB and so on. In other words, ratio determines how much it will squash of the signal that’s louder than we allow (with the threshold).
• Attack: The attack will determine how much time should have passed where the signal is over the threshold, until it compresses the signal according to the ratio.
• Release: This will determine how long it should compress the signal before letting the signal be uncompressed again.
• Gain: Gain will only let you change the volume after compression, so there’s nothing special about that.

As you can see, this is relatively straightforward, but some people may be confused as to when and where to use compression. The saying usually goes “don’t compress unless you need it,” but it’s non-trivial to know when you need it. A good tip is to apply it on things that should cut through the mix or should be snappy (like a snare for example).

A simple way to see how compression affects your sound is to do the following:

• Set the threshold to as low as you can (like –80dB).
• Set the ratio to as high as you can (approx 10:1).
• Set the attack to 0ms and the release to maximum (maybe 300ms).
• Now you should only hear a small click on whatever sample you are using. This is a prime example of the compressor working. Tweak your settings from here to see how much compression you want.

Good things to bear in mind:

• Gentle compression can give a nice touch to things. In order to be gentle, have a fairly high threshold and a fairly low ratio.
• The attack should be fairly short if you want it snappy. Less than 10ms usually.
• The release should be adjusted to the speed of the song, so don’t leave it at maximum.
• Compression alters the transients of your sounds, so be careful with what you compress.
• If your compressor has automatic make-up gain, turn it off. The reason for this is that it will seem like the threshold will turn the volume up, rather than down, because the compressor will make up for the volume that’s lost to compression, by gaining it. Only enable this if you know what you’re doing or else it will be counter-productive.
• Don’t let the loudness fool you. Even though your compressed signal will be quieter than the original (and therefor probably subjectively sound worse), you should remember that you can use the gain.
• Hard compression hurts! go easy on the ratio-meter.
• Don’t overcompress! It kills the transients and causes listener fatigue.

That’s all there is to it! Now go on and experiment!

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What follows are a few tips for experienced producers, so the language may be a bit too challenging for those just starting out. I’ve written this tutorial so that it applies to any genre, in the hopes of making it as useful as possible.

Folders
When making your tracks, make good use of folders. Personally, I use 5 folders: effects, vocals, drums, synths, unused.
In the effects-folder I’ll have anything that I consider to be an effect (except for vocal effects), like sweeps, risers, hallkicks, oneshots, etc. In the vocals folder I’ll have a different track for main vocal, harmony, effect-tracks (i.e. a track with a delay with feedback or any other “special” effect). In the drums folder I’ll have any percussive sound. In the synths folder I’ll have any synthesized/tonal sound. In the unused folder I’ll have anything that I may not want to use for this particular project, but may use in other projects (such as 303s or samplers).

Buses
Buses are a godsend since you can cut down a lot of CPU-power by using them and they give you even more control over the overall level of the mix.
With basses, I’ll usually have one bass-layer and one or more other layers with the lows cut out, so as not to interfere with the bass frequencies of the first layer. This I usually do by having all additional bass-layers routed to a bus called “Bass Layer” which uses one EQ to cut out all the lows which in turn is routed to the “Bass” bus where my first bass is routed to. That way, any additional bass-layer will be low-cut and added into the mix at the right volume (most of the time). I’ll do the same with pads, because I don’t want the bass-layer of the pad (or subpad) to play at all times. The subpad is also bused and narrowed so that the subpads are in mono. In the end, all my tracks are routed into a bus of some sort.

Melodies
Melodies are quite easy to calculate, in case you ever get stuck. You can reverse engineer most melodies and see that there’s a pattern to it. Most melodies revolve around a 1 or 2 bar pattern and make use of root, 3rd and 5th notes with the odd step or skip note. Find this pattern and you can use it in any key that you want by transposing it. Simple, yet extremely effective and guarantees results. Once you have your basic pattern for the melody laid out, you can spice it up by introducing step and skip notes.

Sounds
The most important thing in the mix is the sounds that you use. Every single sound you use should be carefully selected and serve a purpose. If you can, recreate the sounds from your favourite tracks or ask for help on forums, if not, try to rip the sound directly from the track. If you can’t do that either, try finding a sound that comes as close as possible to it and EQ it to make it fit. A/B all the sounds you use to the track you’re trying to learn from.
A word of warning, because legally, you’re not allowed to rip the sounds. There’s also the moral aspect to it, but ask yourself if you really want to sacrifice the quality of your music because of morals.

Effects
Delays are often very short lasting and usually will only be heard once or twice to fill up the space, so using a preset like MegaFeedbackDelay may not be the best decision for your mix. Remember: The goal of mixing a track is to have 100% control over each element.
Use at least 2 reverbs. One short and one long. You can use the short one on shorter, less improtant elements (like claps, closed hihats) to give them depth and the long one on things like vocals, leads, pads, etc.
A lot of people will cite “If you can hear the reverb, you’re using too much” which I used to believe myself, but if you listen to your favourite tracks, you’ll notice that they use quite a lot of reverb and it sounds really good!
Put the reverbs on their own send-channels and put the delays directly on the channels where you need them. You don’t need to put delays on a send channel.

Filters
Filters work wonders for transitions. You can choose to filter-sweep a sound n² bars before the next part and it is guaranteed to sound great. Using resonance can help the sound to be louder through the filter and using different steepness on cutoffs will help your resonance to be more prominent, so experiment with those. You don’t have to have your filters going from absolute minimum to absolute maximum. In fact, I never do this. The trick is to have the filtered sound clearly audible, but obviously filtered. Experiment with it and see what sounds right for your specific track, in your specific mix at that specific moment.
Delays can often interfere with the original sound. This is not uncommon in vocals and leads. A trick to get it to melt better with the original sound is to use a filter. Many delays offer a high-pass and low-pass frequency knob, which you can tweak to your liking.

Equalization
While having the best possible sound to start off with is the best approach, sometimes you’ll find that for example your kick doesn’t have enough bass or too much mids. You will only be able to learn this by doing and referencing to other professional tracks, but try to keep the changes subtle. There’s plenty of guides on how to EQ on the net, so make use of those, but remember that extreme settings will most likely only cloud your mix and make you lose control over it. I tend not to go above or below 9dB, but prefer to keep it between –3 and +3dB.
Use a low cut on everything that you don’t want in the bass-frequencies. Use a slight lower mid cut wherever you can to make space for the mids as these parts will get filled quickly anyway.

Stereo Image
Try to keep focal sounds in the middle but wide. You can do this by using delays, reverbs and unison. Always check how your mono-image sounds.
Sometimes you really can’t centre the bass-frequencies of a sound (for example, when using a reverb on a kick), but to aid this, you can use plugins which centre your bass-frequencies or split the sound into two buses, one with a low cut and one with a high cut and narrow the high cut channel.
Panning non-critical sounds will also help free up space in your mix, which would be much better used for vocals, kicks, basses and leads. When you do, try to keep both sides equally busy (preferably at all times). Don’t hard pan your sounds unless it’s as a special effect. The trick is to make it sound centred but actually being panned.

Master Channel
A lot of the time you’ll hear that you’re not supposed to have anything on your master channel, which I see as a half-truth. It is true that the uninformed producer shouldn’t process the master-mix, but rather go back into the mix in order to fix what’s causing problems. In reality, I have my master bus jammed with plugins, but those are merely there for analysis.
A lowpass-filter to hear if I have any instruments interfering with the bass-frequencies.
A stereo imaging-plugin to be able to monitor my mono and stereo field quickly. If I hear any bass frequencies in my stereo field, I know I missed something and can go back to fix it. If my focal sounds are too weak in the mono field, I know I have to go back and fix it.
A limiter after that to get my songs as loud as commercial tracks, so I can get a feel for what the end product will be like.
A mastering suite which I will turn on once I’m done with mixing.
A spectral analyser to see what my waveforms look like. Especially helpful when trying to get the balance between the kick and the bass right.
A frequency and stereo analyser to see how my stereo field is behaving and to make sure I get a good frequency distribution.

Arrangement
If your song is too hard to mix into other tracks, it won’t get played by untrained DJs. Therefore, always, always, always make your intros and outros the same amount of bars that other current tracks are.
Introduce your basses only after the amount of bars that are common for the genre. The trick is to make the track so that the next DJ theoretically shouldn’t have to EQ. Don’t introduce melodic elements before the previous track’s outro is finished, otherwise your keys may clash and the DJ ends up with a horrible sounding mix.
Make your intros as interesting as possible without breaking those rules. The reason for this is that it shows the DJ AND the audience quality immediately. A lazy intro won’t be recognizable and home-listeners are likely to skip it, unless you have something good to offer, which makes you seem lazy. If you want to sound like a pro, you have to be a pro.
Apart from the intro and outro, you have your usual structure of breakdown (pads, pianos, textures), buildup (rolling drums, filtersweeps, sound effects), drop (chorus with lead vocal, drums, bass), breakdown, buildup, drop.
Make sure that your second breakdown is as interesting as possible, because if it isn’t, it’s likely to be cut short. This holds true for DJs AND compilations. If the DJ only has 60 minutes and tries to cram as many songs into it as possible, he’s likely to cut your track short unless there’s something special about it.

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I’ve now updated the homepage in order to connect better with my fans. You can now catch me on Facebook, Twitter, RSS or by subscribing! Soon, I will be uploading some MP3s for you all to download. In the mean time, why don’t you head over to my YouTube–page and leave a comment?

I hope this change will give me a new opportunity in reaching out to all of you.

In the meantime, stay hardcore!

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