Dance music didn’t drift onto the radio by accident. Specific people carried it there, one record or one oversized gig at a time. This is my short list of who did the carrying, in rough order, and what I’ve taken from each of them as a producer.
I started making loops in FruityLoops in 1998, in college, so the middle of this story was happening while I was still working out what a kick drum was for.
Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox and the rave years
House came out of Chicago and techno out of Detroit in the 1980s. I’ve covered the clubs, cities and festivals dance music passed through in another post, so here I’ll stick to the people. In Britain, the ones who turned an American import into a movement were DJs.
In 1987 Paul Oakenfold spent a week in Ibiza with a group of friends. Back in London he started Spectrum at the club Heaven, which became one of the country’s main acid house nights. By 1990 he was co-producing Happy Mondays, and in 1993 U2 hired him as the warm-up DJ on their Zoo TV tour. A club DJ opening for a stadium rock band tells you how far the music had already travelled.
Carl Cox came up through the same British rave scene and made his name mixing on three decks instead of two. He’s known for his sets more than for any one record, and that’s what I take from him: the set is the real piece of work, and a track is one part of it. When I arrange a track, I try to picture where it would sit in a set like his.
Tiësto, Armin van Buuren and the trance years
These two are the main reason my own tracks sound the way they do.
Tiësto showed how big one DJ could get. In 2003 he played a solo concert in a stadium in Arnhem. A year later he performed at the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympics, the first DJ to play live on stage at a Games. His In Search of Sunrise mix series, which started in 1999, is still where I’d send anyone who wants to hear melodic trance at its most confident. He later left trance for house. The trance records hold up anyway.
Armin van Buuren took the slower route. A State of Trance, his weekly radio show, first aired in June 2001 and gave the genre a regular meeting place. In 2013 his single “This Is What It Feels Like” was nominated for a Grammy, and he got there without walking away from trance. What I hear in both of them is patience. The breakdown takes its time, and the lead melody has to earn its entrance.
David Guetta, Calvin Harris and pop radio
These two got dance music onto daytime radio.
David Guetta started out DJing in Paris clubs in the 1980s. In 2009 he released “When Love Takes Over” with Kelly Rowland and produced “I Gotta Feeling” for the Black Eyed Peas. To my ears, that’s the year a house kick drum started to sound normal on American pop radio.
Calvin Harris is a Scottish producer who was discovered on Myspace and put out his first album in 2007. In 2011 he wrote and produced “We Found Love” for Rihanna, which went to number one in both the UK and the US. His 2012 album 18 Months followed with a long run of UK top ten singles.
What I take from them is songwriting discipline. A Calvin Harris record is a pop song first. The hook shows up early, every part has a job, and nothing overstays. I don’t write vocal pop, but I hold my instrumentals to that standard, because a seven-minute progressive track can hide a lot of indecision.
Avicii, Skrillex and the next wave
By the early 2010s the door was open and a younger group walked through it. Avicii released “Levels” in 2011. In March 2013 he premiered “Wake Me Up” at Ultra in Miami with a live band, and part of the crowd booed the bluegrass turn. The single came out that June and became a worldwide hit. It’s the example I come back to whenever I’m tempted to play it safe.
Skrillex took a different road. He’d sung in a post-hardcore band before releasing the Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites EP in 2010, and he won three Grammys in 2012 with a harsh, bass-heavy take on dubstep.
Then came Martin Garrix, who had a UK number one with “Animals” at 17. I’ve written separately about what producers can learn from Martin Garrix, and about how the sound of EDM changed through the 2010s.
Where my own music sits
I came back to production seriously in 2016, after everything above had already happened. I make progressive house, trance and melodic electronic music in Los Angeles and release it on Spotify and YouTube. I’m not on this list. I’m one of the many producers who learned from it, mostly from the trance side, with some pop impatience borrowed from Harris and Guetta.
I also play live sets, festivals included, and that’s where these lessons get tested. A crowd will tell you quickly whether a breakdown is patient or just long.
If you want to judge how well I’ve been paying attention, my releases are here.