Guest Blogs

Sampling has been a part of the music-sphere since the eighties, where snippets of forgotten gems or stone-cold classics are spliced into new tracks. Whether it’s a snatched bit of the vocals, melody, bass line or drum beat, sampling has boosted the feel of some pretty big hits. Some purists see it as stealing, but our Guestblogger Marlies sees it as a smart and creative way of recycling fragments of music and even introducing old smashers to a new audience. Here, she presents the top 10 most sampled songs of all time and lines up her own sample-heavy favourites.

Flipping back through the tomes of music history, the so-called ‘British invasion’ has happened more than once. In the ‘60s, of course, we exported the likes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. In the early 2000s, it was names like Coldplay, Adele and Sam Smith who managed to break beyond the shores of our wee islands. But in the ‘90s, emerging from buzz-words like ‘Cool Britannia’, we had Britpop – which, if you believed the music rags of the time, was dominated by two giants of guitar-driven pop: Blur and Oasis. Here, Guestbloggers Nick and Martin have a quick look at the short-lived but oh-so impacting phenomenon that was Britpop.

Podcasts have long transcended their status as being nothing more than roughly 30 minutes of chitchat at a roundtable. They’re big business these days, with big-name PR agencies launching one after the other. Thankfully, not every podcast has to be a huge project that involves years of research.

An extensive hardware-based set-up versus a laptop-and-DAW rig: what’s better when it comes producing tracks? It’s an endless discussion and guest-blogger Michiel Buisman knows that he couldn’t possibly settle it once and for all here. But, like he says, he’s smug enough to think he has something to add to the debate. Here goes.

Busy making music on a computer in your living room or bedroom simply because there’s nowhere else you can do it? Why not make something that’s more in keeping with the interior design and build yourself a stylish production studio? Here, Guestblogger Michiel Buisman takes an old and battered upright acoustic piano, empties it out and adds some extreme mods to turn it into a fully equipped studio workstation.

Guestblogger Niels Winter compares his experience of recording in a fully decked out professional studio and at home. Both options come with their advantages and disadvantages, but one thing is certain: recording your own songs – especially if you’re working on a complete album – is a big job that takes a big investment.

Ever wonder how some producers churn out a track a day while it takes you months to finish just one? Guest-blogger Melvin Rijlaarsdam shares his top ten tips for speeding up your music production workflow without compromising the quality of your tracks.

Guest-blogger Hens Zimmerman returns to show you how you can draft up tracks with Ableton Note before turning them into fully-fledged songs in Ableton Live.

The imaginative power of a podcast is a great way to take your audience on a journey in their own head. Step by step, you evoke mental images through storytelling, but what’s the best way to tell that story? Guest-blogger and radio DJ Sander de Heer is here to explain the nitty-gritty.

When it comes to figuring out who to ask to be on your podcast, the answer is simple if you ask guest-blogger and radio DJ Sander de Heer: anyone who’s got a story to tell and can tell it well. Of course, that story does have to be relevant to the subject of your podcast. You’re the one who’s in charge of the format, prepares the interview or conversation, and takes your listeners by the hand.

Guestblogger Rob Brummans (AKA Mindru) shares five simple tips to help live-streaming DJs to make things more interesting for themselves and their viewers and listeners. He also gives us a look inside the kitchen where he preps his live streams.

An epic guitar riff, a majestic drum solo or a piano recital worthy of a virtuoso… To really know how to play a musical instrument inside and out, you’ll need at least a few years. Luckily, there are also instruments that have a really flat learning curve, meaning that pretty much anyone can pick one up and play.