Electropolis: It's All About The Production – Skrillex, Rusko, and Deadmau5
posted in: Features
Here’s some video footage, analysis and commentary on the three biggest EDM producers in the business. They should give you some pro insight and hopefully inspire you get up and make some music. Enjoy.
The clip above demonstrates Skrillex‘s live performance setup, but as you can see”there isn’t much going on. Despite this, he and the most successful masterminds behind popular music (a.k.a producers) are now “socially accepted” to perform anywhere around the world. And even though this has broadened the scope of entertainment for you, the fan, tremendously”there’s still a lot of high school drama within the EDM scene as “traditional” DJs complain about being categorized amongst similar live setups. However, it’s obvious that the EDM culture has been quite lazy at defining the word “DJ” for quite some time now. FYI: The official definition of discjockey is “a person who plays popular recorded music on the radio or at a party or nightclub”. So, since there are literally hundreds of uses for the word “DJ” in EDM that don’t abide by this definition, there’s no reason to be hatin’ on Mr. Skrillex because he isn’t turning a few knobs, pressing a couple of buttons or scratching a few records. By the way, it’s pretty rare to find a bad review regarding his shows.
As the founder of “modernized” dubstep, or brostep, Rusko has denounced the genre as becoming non-musical. He previously associated it, especially its rise in America, to the post-introduction of “heavy metal””claiming that the newest fans of dubstep seem to be interested in the extreme noise, not the music. Despite this claim, it has been hard for Rusko to completely step away from the WOMP WOMP. Nevertheless, his popularity and musicianship has successfully landed him gigs such as producing music for Britney Spears. In regards to his production process, it’s similar to most modern producers. You can see in the above documentation of his production, he composes and records his music in DAWs similar to Ableton. And evidently, the popular rumor that he always creates his drums first is true (see video).
This video demonstrates Rusko’s ability to mix, introduce FX and create dynamic alterations live using mappable MIDI DJ software such as Traktor. For the most part, Rusko doesn’t need to include much “flash” to make-up for a lack of performance”it’s all there.
One of the masters of EDM production is Deadmau5. Due to his diverse understanding of analog modular synthesis, as well as the digital technology, this nerd takes home the trophy as one of the most knowledgeable EDM producers. Although he has converted to DAWs for recording, Mau5 continues to produce music by capturing live sounds from the modular synthesizers and other devices he’s hand-built. Live, his performance setup is pretty similar to Skrillex”consisting of almost no live mixing or improvisation triggering. However the EDM culture has given him a bit more leeway because of his “old school” production methods. As mentioned in the video above, Deadmau5 spends hours painstakingly adjusting his synths’ parameters, while recording, in hopes of finding useable sound that he can loop. Although monotonousness, this is why his sound is unique.
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