back in 2001 a friend of mine, Michael MacBride, had a one-man electronica band called MFT. He produced some pretty inspired songs in those days, and the two of us did a pretty good job of inspiring each other to create techno music in our free time (which, back then, we had quite a bit more of).

one of the things we did back in those days was remix each others songs; he created a remix of Mindwipe, long since lost… and I made a remix of his Ahhhh Mix, a 12 minute ambient tune featuring some chunky beats.

here I have included my remix (the top link – I went by the moniker soundlord back then), and below that, the original Ahhhh Mix. By listening to them both you can tell that the remix is not a whole lot like the original; it was fun remixing the song using my own style (which, even back in 2001, veered toward melodic trance), with sounds from my principal synth at the time, my E-mu E-Synth sampler and synthesizer.

an interesting piece of trivia is that this remix was created using Cubase VST on a Windows machine. Currently the songs I have been creating have been produced using Ableton Live 8 on a newer Windows machine; however, just Friday I received in the mail my new machine – an Apple Macbook Pro. I also received the latest version of Logic Studio in the mail, so I’m going to be experimenting with that. Cubase, then Ableton, then Logic – by the time I’m done I’ll have completed a pretty thorough tour of DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software.

well okay, maybe it took a bit longer than two minutes. But, I did crank this song out in a single day.

yesterday afternoon I headed to the local Barnes & Noble, got myself a venti coffee (1/3 caffeine, 2/3 decaf), sat down in the café, put on my headphones (Sony MDR-7506 for the curious) and started cranking out this tune. While I was working I must admit I frequently checked the Carolina/Clemson game on ESPN, but it didn’t slow me down too much. I got most of the song done there; the rest I finished after dinner. I put a few finishing touches on it just now.

I was going for a dark, pounding club tune with a relentlessly driving beat, which is pretty much what I ended up with. I asked my good friend Brian, a DJ and producer from Detroit, to help me classify it, and was surprised when he said “Techno” – there are so gosh darn many different varieties of techno out there these days that I suppose I expected it to be something fancier – but he’s right, it’s pretty much techno. Granted, after he said that, he did add, “with Electro influences”!

so here it is. It may not be Freedom Rock, but… turn it up!