As I mentioned in my December’s article about the dance music scene, there is more going on in Seattle in terms of electronic dance music, than many know. That is why I will have an occasional interview with a Seattle dance music producer. This time around, I spent some time with MarQ in his Seattle home/studio. MarQ is an emerging DJ/Producer. He works with the EDM and Fiberline record labels. MarQ has 5 released tracks and half dozen waiting to be released.

What’s your typical day like as a dance producer?

“I wake up at about 10am, make and eat some breakfast, check e-mail and I head down to the office… during the day I work at a video game company, where I write tracks of various genres for games. I get home at around 6 or 7pm, eat some grub, then start working on music again till 1 or 2am. At night I work on my dance music tracks.  You really got to be making music all day if you really want to be successful at it.”

Does you day job influence your personal productions?

“It sure does. If it was for me I’d be writing trance and progressive tracks all day, but the exposure to other genres expands my horizons. I also get a chance to borrow ideas from other genres. I could be at work writing a track that has nothing to do with progressive nor trance, but reach a portion of a track where I go… huh, I could really use this on a track I am working at home.”

What would you say your music style is?

“Progressive and trance… I also like getting into the hard techno and hard trance side of things just for fun… you know, 155BPM hard stuff.”

What are the challenges, endemic to Seattle, which you’ve found as producer?

“The lack of a scene really. There are no labels, and people don’t really get respect for being producers. Club promoters don’t care if the DJs they’re hiring are producers or not.”

Do you usually play your own tracks when you’re playing a DJ set?

“Not as much as I should. The thing is that when you’re working on a track you hear it so many times that you get sick of it. That’s why when I DJ, I like to play other tracks by other people that I really like. When I work on a track, sometimes I’ll take a piece of it, and maybe listen to it for about an hour… until I really get a feel for whether it works or not. Sometimes I do play my own tracks to see what people’s reaction to them is, and to then figure out what I have to tweak. I also like to hear the track on a large club sound system, just to see if it sounds how it’s supposed to sound.”

How long would you say it takes you to write a track?

“It could take a day or up to 8 months, it really varies. Sometimes I start on a track and put it away, work on another track and realize that some ideas of the track I put away could actually work on the new track.”

What do you focus more on nowadays remixing or writing original tracks?

“Remixing right now, because it is a new thing for me. It’s fun because you get the good portions of a track and combine it with your own ideas. When I say good parts I really mean the parts that are good to me and not good universally. Sometimes you remix a track and you end up with something very, very different from the original. It’s fun to make a track yours with hints from others.”

What’s your creative process like?

“I really go by feeling… One time I went to a psychic and she told me… I close my eyes and I hear the song of the universe… that phrase stuck with me. That’s what I try to do… I close my eyes and hear my thoughts and feelings. Sound ideas come from various places, sometimes I am at work and come across a sound and realize it will work on a track I am working on at home.”

Software based synths have become very popular nowadays, do you like them?

“I don’t really like them. Specially the all in one packages like Reason or Fruity Loops. I mean, those packages are great to get idea down if you’re on the road or in a hotel room somewhere, but I can’t see them being used for a final production. Nowadays, these packages make everyone think they can be a producer.”

What do you think makes a producer?

“Being a producer in dance music is weird, because you’re the artist and the producer. In any other genre you have the artist (band for example) and then the producer takes the artists ideas and polishes the sound. For me the producer is the person higher up, who has the talent of polishing the sound to make it right.”

What can you tell somebody that wants to get started in production?

“Learn a good program… Cubase, Logic or Pro Tools. They’re harder to learn than packages like Reason, but the long term results are far superior.”