The f0nk archive: yet another producer's blog

Big-beat extravaganza

2009-03-02T13:17:00.002+02:00

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EPISODE 002: Big-beat extravaganza
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So here we go, my first actual blog entry. Exciting, isn't it?

Now what would be a better way to start off a producer's blog than talk about big-beat, one of my favorite genres ever. Fatboy Slim, Cirrus, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy... just to name a few. I've been *secretly* working with a big-beat album for several years now and I'm still nowhere near the finish line. So instead, I'm just going to share you guys with some of the stuff I've got so far. It's all WIP (work in progress) so hold your pants up. ..wait, what?

1. Tamone feat. en5ca

Let's start with this old piece of a tune. A friend of mine en5ca recorded the basslines and guitars years ago, when we first started making the song. I've got at least a few versions of this song lying around, but not until last week I decided to dig this one up and start mixing it.
It's quite the tribute to Fatboy Slim in every way, from start and all the way to the silly reverbed chaos ending (which is pretty dull at the moment, but I'll add more chaos to it later). Definitely coming onto the album once finished.
Oh, guest vocal appearance from mr Jordy Timmermans, aka Benefit of the Boomerang aka botb aka Vivace.

2. Sunny

I was going through with my grandmother's old vinyl collection (yes, I'm a collector) and stumbled upon a funny sounding 7" called Donovan - Mellow Yellow / Sunny South Kensington (EPIC S-10098), which sounded just like Bob Dylan's older material. The B-side was Sunny South Kensington and while I was listening to it, I was planning to make a new big-beat track. Then it hit me, the ultimate big-beat sample! The pianos and vocals in this piece are from this specific record and they truly inspired me. This one's a very raw mixdown, so don't expect much.

3. Stock Marketing Beatz

All hail The Chemical Brothers. I was listening to their second album during the time I wrote this, so you might hear a little Block Rockin' Beats in there. And my title sounds awfully familiar as well.
I recorded some silly scratches from a Mickey Mouse vinyl called Mickey and Goofy in No-No land (only that my version is in finnish) and you'll hear Mickey say "tule sitten nopeasti" which translates to "come quickly now". And yes, all of this is very important data.

4. Electrobonk

Oh yeah, my time to shine as a bass player. The bass is played by me throughout the whole song, ran through some harsh distortion and other plugin adventures.
This is sort of a mashup of The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up and The Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole. I also made a version with Beastie Boys' Intergalactic vocals. You want to hear that one as well? HERE!

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Alright, that should wrap my first entry in the wonders of f0nk. Any questions about the sounds, techniques or such? Want to remix? How's my grammar? Want to go out with me? Comment.

- Harry aka D Fast

D Fast - that's-a-me!

2009-02-11T16:20:00.000+02:00

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EPISODE 001: D Fast - that's-a-me!
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So here we go, my first actual blog entry. Exciting, isn't it? And I start things by telling about myself. Quite the egotrip.

What is f0nk? It's just a way to say I love funk - and it's also the title of my personal music archive (http://www.f0nk.com), where I store most of my songs in mp3 form and it's basically just a personal stash of various things. And since I "accidentally" broke the MySQL database at my main website and not able to update it without any major issues, I thought I'd finally start writing this blog thing.

I'm so lazy that I'll just copy/paste my brief history from my main website:

1985: year of birth.
1990: first piano lessons that lasted for a year.
1994: got interested in playing the drums.
1995: experiments with Macintosh Power PC's E-Jay like software.
1997: obtained Yamaha's Clavinova and made my first full compositions.
1998: took piano lessons every now and then.
1999: friend introduced me to a tracker music software (Fast Tracker 2).
2001: started to play with Yamaha's MOTIF8 synthesizer.
2004: slight experiments with Cubase and Fruity Loops.
2005: switched from FT2 to Renoise and ended up studying music business and audio engineering in a polytechnic school.
2006: started working on my first more or less official release.
2007: my first CD release and lots of new music gear at my disposal.
2008: music being played on finnish TV channels Nelonen and JimTV, lots of on-going music projects.
2009: (hopefully) graduating and moving back to Helsinki.

Here's a big bunch of websites where you can find me doing this and that, but mostly just stuff concerning music:

dfastmusic.net - my main website.
mikseri.net/dfast - my oldest artist profile in the web, a finnish mp3 site.
myspace.com/dfast - my MySpace profile.
last.fm/music/D+Fast - my last.fm artist page.
f0nk.com - my personal meadow and an archive of all sorts.
D Fast @ Facebook - artist profile, be a fan!
D Fast @ Facebook - artist group, didn't know how to create the artist page so this came first. My bad...
Harry @ Facebook - my personal profile, don't bother adding me if I don't know you.
twitter.com/dfast - the latest addition to the ever growing link mayhem.
D Fast @ The ModArchive - some of my earlier music can be found from here, mostly in .xm format.

That's quite about it. And me. Glad we got that out of the way. Coming up next: something about music.

- Harry aka D Fast

Introduction to f0nk

2009-02-11T12:29:00.000+02:00

Hello, whoever you might be!

I'm a Finnish musician/producer/composer hailing from Helsinki and that's already more than you'd want to know.

This blog will be about my music, the way I make the songs and sounds, what projects I'm working on and I will also write about things that inspire, move or get my attention in any way.
I'll be sharing a lot of song clips, sound examples, hopefully photos/screenshots and my techniques through this blog. This blog is a continuation to my ever growing personal music archive, only this time I'm going to make it more public than before.

Gotz tha b f0nkeh!

- Harry aka D Fast