Mentor My Mix Episode 003 – Jaytech

In this episode of Mentor My Mix, world-class producer and performer Jaytech shares his story coming up, some wisdom he learned along the way, and some brand new music. After a quick intro discussing his newest artist moniker Waveluxe and how he’s dealing with Covid-19, Jaytech delves deep into process, touring, home studios, festivals, live sets and so much more.

At Pyramind we’re constantly helping students level up by connecting them with mentors and you’ll hear in the episode that he credits much of his success to finding his own mentors. Make sure you book a session with Jaytech to start developing a mentorship relationship with one of the greats.

Here’s a bit more information on what’s in this episode:

  • Jamming in Ableton to produce new music as Waveluxe.
  • Dealing with canceled tours and making the most of being given “a break from the road”.
  • The high-pressure lifestyle of the DJ and getting “a year off of Raves”.
  • Starting out as a young promoter as 17 and moving quickly to touring as a DJ.
  • First big break with “mentors” willing to take him under their wing in the studio and the clubs.
  • From small hits on Hope Recordings with help from Nick Warren from Way Out West to getting noticed by Anjunadeep from self-released tracks put out on vinyl.
  • Being invited to Goa, India to play the first-ever Sunburn festival at Anjuna Beach.
  • Being invited to the UK by the team at the Anjunadeep label.
  • From home studio to “legit”: Above & Beyond’s studio.
  • Piano from 6 to 16 years old with the same teacher. Computer nerd from a young age.
  • Being completely “aural” with perfect pitch. Learning by ear.
  • No formal training in music production but an early adopter of computers & music.
  • Started with Acid Pro then moved to Logic & Ableton.
  • Falling out of love with finishing tracks in Ableton and now using Studio One for a more transparent sound.
  • Live PA tour with tons of gear and realizing that it went over most people’s heads and made his set too uncompromising vs DJ’ing with a USB stick that made it easier to play to the crowd.
  • Re-designing his sets for live performance with fail-safe backup systems.
  • Pre-lease Jaytech track: The Axis. Influenced by Nile Rogers “Every track that needs to have a deep hidden meeting just for you and an outer meaning for everybody else”.
  • Being a Progressive Trance Producer & existing squarely between those two worlds: Progressive & Trance.
  • Making that big arena feel.
  • Figuring the track out as you go along vs. mapping it all out first.
  • Notes that linger and float into the atmosphere with 10 second decay times. Using Slate digital Reverb suites and Native Instruments Raum.
  • Layered sub-basses at different frequencies with different roll-offs to make sure they don’t cancel each other out.
  • Dedicated sub-bass, the main bass at 80-100 HZ, and a supporting bass at 200 HZ and up.
  • Using a duck bus that runs to an LFO tool for everything that’s ducking (side-chaining effect) so long as the kick is playing and switching it off when there’s no kick.
  • Steering clear of sidechain compression in favor of the LFO tool.
  • Sound bites made from vocal samples giving people who can’t live without vocals something to latch on to.
  • Sidechaining the reverb tails to the original vocal sample to create room when using long reverb tails.
  • When and where to use loops.
  • Finishing a new Jaytech album.
  • Not the same Jaytech coming out on the other side of 2020.
  • Not being just a DJ and using that to adjust to the changes during 2020.
  • Mentoring with Jaytech as a “judgment-free zone”.
  • Creating a blueprint to work from.
  • Creating his own corner of the music world weather with other labels or on his own.
  • Collaborating with Steve Smith of Dirty Vegas.

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