SUNCHASE JOINS SEASON 4 TEAM!

We are absolutely over the moon about this addition to the new season’s team! Alex Pavlenko is a true artist and one that crosses over genres, as well as sub genres, being able to masterfully turn his hand to a huge variety of sounds. As well as releasing music on his own high quality label 22:22 Recordings, he’s graced the back catalogs of many of the big labels including: Med School, Invisible, Metalheadz & Horizons. He’s known for a deep, musical yet minimal feeling to his work and has been pushing his own flavour of Drum & Bass for over 16 years. Based in the Ukraine this is the first artist we’ve had from this mysterious country and we really look forward to hosting arguably it’s finest electronic music producer to provide you with high quality samples and tutorials over the coming year. With such a prolific release history it was virtually impossible to slim this down to less than five tracks, but below is our fav’s including a blast from the past with the stunning piece of music ‘Remember Me Feat Yana Kay’ – over 12 years old but still just as amazing as it ever was, showing Alex not only has the technical’s nailed, but understands what makes awesome music. Aside from daily writing of D&B he works as a mastering engineer for many top labels and has a deep understanding of what the final processes of polishing a track are… something we can’t wait to hear about!

 

 

 

 

We asked him a few questions ahead of next season…

How long have you been involved with D&B?

I think its around 18 years for now. 16 years of producing dnb.

How did you move into production, were friends around you learning or was it something you did by yourself?

It was around 1995-1996. Got The Prodigy – music for the Jilted generation tape from my friend and I was really interested in that sound in general. I Was wondering how they do that? How to make those kinda sounds, these arrangements..

What was your first production set up and how is it different from what you have now?

My first production setup was on one of my friends pc with no monitors or anything. We had lots of fun playing around with Rebirth and Dance Machine. A bit later my aunts pc and playstation 1 with “MUSIC” sequencer. Now its totally different. Now we have 22:22 studio with my friends in Kiev with a lot of hardware, good monitors and stuff.

How much time do you spend each day / week on making music?

Around 5-8 hours a day. Sometimes its not about making music, but still music is involved. I do mastering services for Triple Vision distrubution and other guys, sometimes mixing down other artists tracks. As for the non music side I like tennis love to play and watch it. Usually I play 2-3 times a week and even now can’t wait for the next training. + I’m a computer games addict. Just finished uncharted 4, and it was an incredible experience.

Can you give a rough outline of your creative process?

Its all depends. If I’m making a drum and bass track I’d rather go more with samples. Usually I start from the drums. Then I can use synths (Virus TI, Roland sh 201, Roland jp 08) to make basses, leads, pads, whatever. Then re-sample them in the kontakt 5. So it’s then more like drawing the track.
But if I make an electronic or techno track I can start to work on some groove’s without the kick and main drum part. Just using jp’s 08 sequencer for example to make some arp melodies, then some textures and pads with the percussion’s from virus ti. So its all goes in the loop for 6-8 minutes for example, and then I can work on drums in roland tr 8 + samples. In this case you can play this track kinda live, so you can feel the arrangement on the fly, and its a pretty quick way to finish the track.

What’s three of your favorite older dnb tracks??

Optical – The Shining (Ed Rush & Optical Remix)
Konflict – Gene Sequence
Dom & Roland – Can’t Punish Me

Have you learned much from online tutorials? Or Have other people helped you too?

I learned alot from online tutorials recently. It was cool to learn NI FM8 for example. Pretty fast way. So ye, definitely online tutorials help, if you are not a lazy and impatient person you can learn a lot from that. And I always try to exchange experience with producers I know. Experience here is a very important thing.

Do you use Sample Packs, do you think they are helpful if so?

Yep, I use them. I came from hip-hop so never was ashamed of something when sampled  from an old song. I use loads of samples from old CD’s for AKAI samplers for example. In drum and bass music I think its a common thing. You can hear the same drum break in loads of tracks.

What area of expertise do you think you can bring to sample genie and to help its members with samples and tutorials?

I think here I can show and share my experience on how to work with samples and synths.
Then how to create a track from scratch.

SO YOU HEARD IT FIRST! SAMPLE GENIE SEASON #4 KICKS OF FROM 1-7-16

MORE ANNOUNCEMENTS TO FOLLOW 😀

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