A Manifesto For The Original Art Form Of Electronic Dance Music Production.
A Manifesto For The True School.My Art is the production of music, predominantly music for dancing, using technology.
One of my goals is to encourage inventiveness in a medium that has no boundaries.What is the “True School”?
True School is respecting the old and embracing the NEW – new melodies, new beats, new sounds, new rhythms, new harmonies, new textures.
True School is Deep Attention.
True School is pushing your Art forward.
True School is being true to yourself which encourages others to be true to themselves.
True School is dancing only when you feel it.
True School is knowing louder is not necessarily better.
True School is knowing bigger is not necessarily better.
True School is respecting your audience.
True School is knowing the roots of the music you’re producing.
True School is knowing that the music and the dance floor is more important than the DJ. This is not a spectator sport.
True School is demanding good sound.
True School is not ripping off the Old School.
True School is not remixing without permission and putting it out into public domain.
True School is not faking it but making it.
True School is not fetishizing the machines or the format. This just distracts from the content.
True School is taking yourself seriously and having fun. If you really feel the music, you feel serious about it and what you feel is pure, unadulterated fun.
True School is not going through the motions with hands-in-the-air fake fuckery.
True School is not being afraid to play original tracks.
True School is not trying to make fast cash out of old hit records or borrowing other people’s names to make yourself known.I openly discourage throwaway DJ-based music production as it stands today i.e. taking large chunks of other people’s music, illegally or not, looping it, and adding a few beats / percussion / vocals over the top and calling it your own track without crediting the original artist and THEN swearing vinyl is the saviour of music meanwhile they starve the original artist.
One Example. Searchin’ – 33 1/3 Queen vs Blow Your House Down – A Guy Called Gerald
There are many, many more.It seems to me that the dance music industry, when it comes to inventiveness, is stuck in it’s own loop and the groove is getting very tired.
This Art is being lost to money grabbers and fakers. I welcome comments and discussion.
I welcome you to the True School.
A Guy Called Gerald
Breaking beats since 1988.
Respect G. Always been a dirty business and a beautiful art. Alot of it’s become easy – dedication is not required for now, but the ‘rewards’ that the fool school think are there are not there. Once that lesson is learned and they move on with their fuckery, maybe the deeply attentive (cha!) can come again. You and many other architects are still there, and there are kids who know the differences that you know too. They’re just being drowned out or rolled on, waiting for their time. Too many of us earthlings running round the planet now! Don’t worry man, the fakers will all be into unicycling in a few years if it gets them laid, and good luck to them. I can’t hate on those who don’t know no better. Thanks for your own example, it isn’t a small thing. Peace.
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nuff rispek King Gerald,
true big words.. link up soon
blessings & love
Amazing manifesto… I am getting it printed in BOLD and hanging it in my studio!!!!
much love from montreal,
greg
Thank you for this post !!!
I feel exactly the same, well I’m not a producer but it’s good to read somthing like that.
Keep it true
over produced, under skilled, and sterile sounding music is putting the business style sports coat onto the grittiness and soul that was electronic music. I think your true school motto is all that matters, yet its being forgotten. I struggle with my production sound because of that sterile sounding shit i hear these days. It’s like when ‘txt’ language came out. I fucking parasite to a refined language. Just gotta stop listening to it, and start with the fundamental soul and feeling that INSPIRES people to move.
I meant to comment on this before but got sidetracked by the RatHead post.
This is so true that it’s painful. It seems like its becoming an eternal cycle that music goes through, I’ve previously tried to describe it as the way that copyists and money lovers jump on anew music and rip out the soul till we’re left with cold sterile genre-for-the-sake-of-it music by numbers. I felt it happen to Jungle, techno, Dubstep which was originally a reaction against the loss of the dub ethic and vibe got turned into savage midrange nonsense lacking in the very Bass that is the soul of dub (!). As a producer it feels like you’re constantly being chased away from the music you love to make.
Thank you for this manifesto, it will help.
(funnily enough, anyone who has read this post will completely understand your reaction to what was said by Deadmaus)
Please define “large chunks” in bars.
it was never for you
I cannot stand being born in an era where being true to ones self is looked down upon. Where immersing yourself in the history of the music that you make is viewed as a waste of time, and a backwards way of thinking. To be shunned for being yourself. I used to think that maybe the place where I live was backwards, but it’s a global phenomena. Dance music, and especially more popular mainstream dance music, has no soul. No heart, no nothing.
I ask anyone of my generation who has a free will, to fight back, To look deep into your mind and let your true colors show in every detail. It’s time to fight back against this soul less monster we have created.
I have given up my computers for sequencers, synths, and drum machines. And I’m making the best of what I have.
I appreciate your wisdom and passion. I am on a path of discovery and recovery from a 13 year crack cocaine addiction I have 3 months clean and am passionate about all styles of music but most of all electronic music production. I am learning everything I can about the art of mixing, producing, theory, History. You are a true hero in my eyes and i appreciate your honesty. Thank you for all the great music you have released over the years.
Caught you at Basing House the other week, Gerald, the first time I’d been out dancing for a very long time. I’d been getting sick of the scene (though not the music) for a lot of the reasons you outline here, and I read the flyer with the manifesto on the bus home, cheering inwardly with every line! And I loved the music, too, as I knew I would; the way you snaked it up from acid to jungle and back again left me wanting lots more.
There’s lots here about the music. I was thinking about venue and promotion too. I’ve been to enough nights with dreadful aggro security, and where they let in too many people, and past a certain point it does have an effect. I’m not much of a socialiser when I’m out, I come to dance, and when it’s as crowded as it was the other week at Basing House, it does affect your enjoyment – you can dance only if you feel it, but also only if there’s space around you.
So I just wondered what you think about the way the venue and the promotion contributes, or do you come at this mainly from a music and production perspective?