My Creativity and its Inspiration

I am a very crazy creative person. I like operating outside of the box. Music is my passion, so i would consider myself an acoustically creative person. Normal people watch TV, but I listen to it. I like finding new ways of doing things. While I often arrive at the same answer, I like finding different ways of getting there. This opens up new doors that I would have otherwise not discovered.

It takes a lot of creativity to create music. Anyone can go outside and use a video camera, but it takes a lot of patience and out-of-the-box thinking to create music. For example, I spend roughly 1 hour modifying a snare drum for my productions. There are so many things you can do to that snare drum, and so many different ways you can do it. It is easy to get frustrated and just give up. But often, the solution just requires taking a different approach.

The people I admire the most are the duo know as Noiscontrollers. This is a group of electronic music DJ/producers; Bas Oskam and Arjan Terpstra. They joined forces in 2005, releasing their first EP in 2007, and have since become one of the top hard-dance groups. Both members help in production, as well as performance.

This song is from their first official release in 2007.

The reason I admire them is because of their creativity and innovation. You can easily hear the progression of their early work, and their work of today. The sounds they produce keep becoming clearer and more innovative. I see innovation as something that I have never heard before, and it sounds good. This definition can be slightly altered to define innovation in TV, movies, painting, etc.

The Noisecontrollers have also just begun a track in their career that I too hope to someday accomplish. Along with Wildstylez, another hard-dance producer, they have started their own record label; Digital:age. Their mindset is to create sounds that no one has heard before, but to keep the essence of hard-dance music faintly visible for the more 'traditional' audience.

This song is a good example of Tension and Release. The tension is built up starting at 1:25. This part lacks the kick and bass that the intended audience is waiting for. The song builds up and is is finally released at the climax at 1:50. This is almost what the hard-dance culture considers an anti-climax, as the music becomes more simplistic, but is still very danceable.

After listening to both songs, you can clearly see that the Contrast and Affinity are well at work. The first song is dark and scary. This is probably due to the fact that it is easiest to make hard-dance music that is dark. Thus it is harder to make hard-dance music about subjects like love. Creating different sounds and using them in different ways creates the contrast, but the genre is still held together by its structure and basic percussive features. This is the affinity.

I do believe, however, that there are many things to consider with the Text and Subtext of hard-dance music. Unless you know about hard-dance music and how it has progressed, you might think, "It's techno, and it all sounds the same." Which is not at all accurate, but I am aware that this is how many people view the subject.

This music is very influential to me. In order to keep becoming innovative and stay within the realms of a genre, you have to listen to music that was created before you, adding your own twist on things. I turn to the Noisecontrollers when I need inspiration for sounds I need to produce. Listening to the ways their music is progressively changing helps me alter alter my own sounds. This is how I become innovative with my music.

I'm ending my blog entry with a video showing that the Noisecontrollers are just regular people. They take you through the production of one of their tracks, and you can get an idea of how much creativity is put into their music.