{ "version": "https:\/\/jsonfeed.org\/version\/1.1", "title": "Блоги: заметки с тегом JOOF", "_rss_description": "Автоматически собираемая лента заметок, написанных в блогах на Эгее", "_rss_language": "ru", "_itunes_email": "", "_itunes_categories_xml": "", "_itunes_image": false, "_itunes_explicit": "no", "home_page_url": "https:\/\/blogengine.me\/blogs\/tags\/joof\/", "feed_url": "https:\/\/blogengine.me\/blogs\/tags\/joof\/json\/", "icon": false, "authors": [ { "name": "Илья Бирман", "url": "https:\/\/blogengine.me\/blogs\/", "avatar": false } ], "items": [ { "id": "125003", "url": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/all\/my-label-duties\/", "title": "My A&R duties", "content_html": "

“Please tell us about your duties in the position you have at the label: is your pay fixed, do you get paid a lot, how do you combine it with other things and how do you do it remotely, and how did you get the job? Maybe you can tell something else interesting that I didn’t ask?”<\/p>\n

Konstantin Karpachev<\/p>\n<\/div>

About the label<\/h2>\n
The label I work for is called JOOF, an acronym of its founder, John ‘00’ Fleming. The label was founded in 1998 (celebrating its 20th anniversary this year!) and today is highly respected among fans of underground trance music.<\/p>\n
JOOF consists of three sub-labels: JOOF Recordings, JOOF Mantra and JOOF Aura. Each one has its own style. I’ll throw a couple of examples below to make it clear what we are talking about.<\/p>\n
On JOOF Recordings we release progressive, trance, sometimes a little bit of techno:<\/p>\n
\n\n\n\n
Eeemus – Dunes Of Kaatrah<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Facade – Vuohi<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
On JOOF Mantra we have psytrance with a non-mainstream sound (secretly, Mantra will have a little rebranding, I’ll write more later):<\/p>\n
\n\n\n\n
Amygdala – Soaring Flux<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Robert Elster – Recrystallization<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
On JOOF Aura we have progressive house:<\/p>\n
\n\n\n\n
Tim Penner – So Far From Here<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Rick Pier O’Neil – Throaty<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
My role<\/h2>\n
My position at the label is formally called A&R-manager, and I’m in charge of artists and repertoire.<\/p>\n
Since the label is quite famous, a lot of artists want to release music here and send us their demos – a hundred emails a week. My main task is to listen to all the incoming demos and decide what fits and what doesn’t.<\/p>\n
If the track fits our labels, I add it to Trello and we discuss it with the team there. The final decision on each track is made by the boss, John Fleming. In this sense, I act as a “filter”, first passing everything through myself, and only putting the best demos up for discussion. From my experience, it’s about 1 out of 200~300 demos.<\/p>\n
Managing a record label duties with Trello<\/a><\/p>\n
In addition to that, I also communicate with the artists on the label and help with internal communication. In a nutshell, that’s it.<\/p>\n
How I got the job<\/h2>\n
I got the job almost by chance: I just received an invitation letter and I took it. I hadn’t even thought about such a job before.<\/p>\n
I had already released a few of my own releases on JOOF Recordings, so I had a trusting relationship with the label. I don’t know what criteria I was qualified for the position, but later the general manager said that he liked my writing and blogging.<\/p>\n
I won’t tell you about the pay – that’s confidential information between me and the label, which I’m not going to disclose. And as for the how to manage everything, that a whole another topic.<\/p>\n
How I use to-do lists<\/a><\/p>\n
In the end, I will share an experience about what all this has given me. Working as an A&R allowed me to look at the industry “on the other side of the border”, gain new experience, reputation, and acquire hundreds of new contacts. If you are a musician and have an opportunity to work for a record label, I recommend you to take this chance.<\/p>\n
All in all, I don’t know how such stories can be useful to anyone, but if you are interested in anything else about labels or the music industry, feel free to comment below and I’ll do my best to answer.<\/p>\n", "date_published": "2018-01-16T21:15:40+05:00", "date_modified": "2023-12-19T00:01:45+05:00", "tags": [ "JOOF", "JOOF Recordings", "Music industry", "Record labels" ], "author": { "name": "Daniel Sokolovskiy", "url": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/", "avatar": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic@2x.jpg?1732048793" }, "_date_published_rfc2822": "Tue, 16 Jan 2018 21:15:40 +0500", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "125003", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": false, "links_required": null, "og_images": [] } }, { "id": "125235", "url": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/all\/the-benefits-of-no\/", "title": "The benefits of “no”", "content_html": "
Success story: Tim Bourne’s behind the scenes on reaching out goal through rejections<\/p>\n
\n $\"\"$ \n
“Per aspera ad astra”, 1894<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One of my daily duties as an A&R at JOOF Recordings is listening to incoming demos we receive on a regular basis. And whether I like it or not, I have to say a “no” as an answer very often. Artists react to rejection differently: some of them never reply back, some others get angry. Well, no surprise: getting a “no” answer is tough, I know it myself perfectly.<\/p>\n
But one guy stood out: every time I told him “no”, he came back with the updated track asking for new feedback. Four months later, he managed to make an amazing track that I was happy to sign on the label.<\/p>\n
The guy I’m talking about is Tim Bourne<\/b>, a 22-year-old aspiring music producer from Indonesia. I invited Tim to share his progression in this blog and I hope other up-and-coming producers will find his experience useful and motivating.<\/p>\n
From there, Tim tells:<\/p>\n
“To me, this drive of wanting to get accepted into JOOF started two and a half years ago when my friend introduced me to the label, ever since then my perception towards electronic music completely changed (in the best way possible). Since that it was something that I had to do, it was more than just a goal for me to make a track that lives up to the standards of the label.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know where I sit when it comes to producing, am I really making something that is up to par — quality wise — or am i just making tracks that only sound good to my own ears, even then, my ears wasn’t really catching the small details of music production, I was missing out on so many essential parts of production.<\/p>\n
I knew that it was going to be very tough because in my country there is very limited access to production courses or even Psytrance producers, so I had no one to really guide me on what to do technically or musically.<\/p>\n
I would have never evolved with my music production if it wasn’t for no’s and rejections.<\/p>\n
I started sending out demos to the label since 2015 — 20 years old by that time — and it was just no’s after no’s after no’s. In total, I’ve probably sent over ten tracks and one of the tracks I had to re-do and re-edit over five times due to song length, sound design, not enough variations, you name it... and it was still a big ‘no’. It actually got to a point where I was so pessimistic about myself and my music that after a couple of days after sending ‘The Wounded Healer’ I emailed to Daniel again and assumed that the track got rejected.<\/p>\n
But alongside the no’s, Daniel was kind enough to actually give me very useful feedbacks, he gave me constructive criticism that was essential for my learning. And to be completely honest, I would have never evolved with my music production if it wasn’t for no’s and rejections. It was through this that I was able to learn and not just force any kind of sound into a track.<\/p>\n
Here are some of the conversation we had on the track:<\/p>\n
\n $\"\"$ \n<\/div>\n\n $\"\"$ \n<\/div>\n
\n $\"\"$ \n<\/div>\n
\n $\"\"$ \n<\/div>\n
Of course, it was really hard to accept the fact that my music wasn’t quite cutting it, but either I stop and give up or just push through and make a track that I would have never imagined I’d be able to make a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n
It started with this very flat sounding bassline loop with no melodies at all, just a pitched down FX:<\/p>\n
\n
0. Flat Bassline Loop<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Then I played around with the sound, added a little bit of processing, added hats and a clap and i played around with the notes because my ears were so exhausted of hearing the same note playing over and over again. Came up with this kind of groovy bassline:<\/p>\n
\n
1. Groovy Baseline<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
As I was trying to fiddle around with the bass, I found a vocal sample that was perfect for creating anticipation for the groovy bassline. So I decided to add the vocal alongside a drum fill. I also added more processing to the kick and bass to make it sound thicker:<\/p>\n
\n
2. Vocal Entry<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
After creating what I thought was a strong body to the track, I know I have to accompany it with also a strong melody:<\/p>\n
\n
3. Rough Melody<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
But i was not pleased because it felt like it was forced and it didn’t go smoothly with the track, so I changed the sound and came up with these two melodies:<\/p>\n
\n
4. Better, Smooth Melody<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Then comes the breakdown which I really enjoyed creating. I always have a thing for breakdowns, to me, it creates the emotion of a track. This was the very first version of the breakdown, very empty and the arp melody just didn’t feel right:<\/p>\n
\n
5. Empty Breakdown<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
So I decided to completely change the arp melody because turns out that it was the melody that made it sound a bit weird. I changed the arp melody, brought back the FX’s and i added some ethnic percussion which drew the breakdown more into the theme of the song:<\/p>\n
\n
6. Final Breakdown<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
I created this melody as a draft but It just didn’t sound right to my ears, I was okay with it but I wasn’t happy with it:<\/p>\n
\n
7. Draft Melody<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
I tweaked the notes of the melody a little bit, got rid of the acid and added more saw’ish sounding synths to layer. And this is what i came up with:<\/p>\n
\n
8. Final Melody<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
And alas, ‘The Wounded Healer’ was born:<\/p>\n
\n
9. The Wounded Healer (pre-master demo)<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
I want to say thank you to Daniel who has given me the opportunity to tell a little bit about my upcoming EP, The Wounded Healer and also the story of how I managed to pull through after so many ‘rejections’ and ‘no’s’. ”<\/p>\n
Download the EP on Beatport<\/a><\/p>\n", "date_published": "2017-04-04T13:19:59+05:00", "date_modified": "2019-05-11T16:00:03+05:00", "tags": [ "Behind the scenes", "JOOF", "Production" ], "author": { "name": "Daniel Sokolovskiy", "url": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/", "avatar": "https:\/\/dsokolovskiy.com\/blog\/pictures\/userpic\/userpic@2x.jpg?1732048793" }, "_date_published_rfc2822": "Tue, 04 Apr 2017 13:19:59 +0500", "_rss_guid_is_permalink": "false", "_rss_guid": "125235", "_rss_enclosures": [], "_e2_data": { "is_favourite": false, "links_required": null, "og_images": [] } } ], "_e2_version": 4079, "_e2_ua_string": "Aegea 11.0 (v4079e)" }