Words of wisdom
James puts much more thought into workflow and the philosophy behind his music making than the average producer, and it’s clear that these subjects are very close to his heart…
“I’m quite emotional, and that’s always why I’ve made melodic music. But it also come with a degree of... not stress exactly, but anxiety.” James admits. “I’ve seen YouTube comments totally disintegrate into something where someone just braindumps about how stressed they are in life as well as music, and you realise that a lot of this can be about anxiety. Anything you can do to make your life easier from that is really important.”
DIY attitudes
“A few months ago, I had an argument with a producer who was ten or fifteen years younger than me, and he was convinced the only way to make records was if he did everything himself, and if he didn’t that everyone was going to think he was a fraud. In the end, I took out the album covers to 70s records. He was a DnB producer, and he loved old funk and disco, because that’s where all those beats and rhythms were from. I showed him how many names were on each sleeve – on some of them there are like 25 people making the record! – and you could just see him soften a little bit. I said ‘look, the reason these records sounded so great is because you had a load of guys in a room hammering it out together, not one person in a room trying to sort everything out!’ The only person that we know of he did that in the golden age of recording was Prince – but those people are few and far between!”
Dream team
“I noticed this culture started online where people in forums, quite big producers sometimes, are saying to other smaller producers that you have to do everything. Now that’s fine if you are a genius, but the average producer is going to find it incredibly overwhelming to actually do that. My view is, go back to the old days: collaborate. If you aren’t great at doing beats, find someone who’s good at doing beats. If you’re not a keyboard player but you want some nice keys, find a keyboard player and work together. The best records are made by people coming together and actually putting stuff down, as opposed to everyone sitting in a room individually. If you get four guys in a room and feed them enough Red Bull (!) and give them some music technology, they’ll come up with something that will be better than any one of them sitting in a room doing it alone. Everyone is now centred on the screen, whereas with the best records, everyone was talking to each other. Even in the 90s, we look at Massive Attack and how many members of Massive Attack there were when they made Protection… it was like 7 or 8! And everyone had their own input and own little way of doing it.”
Theory test
James is also keen for computer musicians to bone up on the basics of music theory.
“Producers are shunning learning to play an instrument over the production side of things, because production is more fun! Mucking around with Serum is a darn sight more interesting than doing your scales… but people don’t remember a wobble bass, a hi-hat pattern, or the tracks of automation you tweaked for hours. They remember the notes. The brain is monophonic – even if that’s just the groove of the one-note bassline that you played, the brain remembers that part. I’m worried the musical side of things is going to get forgotten. Sometimes I see a situation where things are just poured into a track, then slammed, hoping that it’s all going to work out in the end. 99% of electronic music (and most ‘band’ music) is minor key; with just a simple bit of knowledge about the basics of a minor scale, what you can get out of the minor key, and which rules you can actually break, you’ll make better compositions which will help you get better mixdowns and a more individual sound way down the line.”
“People don’t remember a ‘wobble bass’, a hi-hat pattern or automation… they remember the notes!”