“We are going to see the gap close more between a DJ and a producer.”
DJ Pippins (Pinaki Ghatak) started his affair with trance music at Gatecrasher in the UK in the late-90s, and though his style has evolved over time, one thing remains constant- his focus is getting a good feeling on the dance floor.
His current genre of music is progressive trance, and he creates almost all of his own tracks from original samples and beats. Progressive trance, DJ Pippins says, has a lot of melodic changes over a fairly rhythmic beat, to create continuity and yet dynamic interest at the same time. “The rule I follow is to create a continuous flow without the listener noting the change in transitions.” Trance music, he notes, originated in India, his home country, where it served a similar purpose- people danced long hours, driven on by the repetitive beats, in a trance that was transcendent and ecstatic.
While in school in Mumbai, he and his friends picked up break dancing, and were listening to RUN/DMC and Rock Steady Crew and all kinds of scratch mixes. He started getting ideas about how to make their own beats, creating their own music, practicing DJing, and creating a customized dancing style. But perhaps the biggest influence came when he went to the UK in late 90’s, when the clubs were playing techno and there was a vibrant dance community. Now he looks back on that time and says the music was a great influence, and remembers listening to Paul Oakenfold.
A devoted technician to the creation of electronic dance music, DJ Pippins started with vinyl in the late 90s but quickly found that “there was a limitation; I could only manipulate music so much because it’s already recorded. There is much better flexibility with digital. Initially I used Reason sequencer software, and then switched to Ableton Live, which gives me the flexibility to change any element within the track and manipulate it to have a nice flow of music and also helps me to have music that is not just static loops. “
Pinaki currently resides in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where he moved in 2006 from New York, in part to be closer to a strong community of electronic music. He is always making new tracks and looking for new opportunities to play.
He has played small gigs in the US, UK, Netherlands. His first gig was in Sheffield, UK. Recalling the event, he smiles: “You know, I was not nervous at all, just excited, no stage fright. I couldn’t wait to play for everyone. The first track I ever tried remixing was a mix of Unchained Melody, by the Righteous Brothers. DJ Pippins has chosen to focus on progressive trance, which is a more melodic variety of dance music, with less hard elements and less repetition than techno. It has a warm up, with a slow progression, and a focus on a positive vibe. “I’m not just interested in trance music, however, it is also nice to take mixes and other influences, for example Latin music, which has always had a dance presence, is something I am working with right now.” It is not surprising that he names his favorite DJs as Paul van Dyk (who is known for manipulation of tracks and changing musical elements on the fly) and Ferry Corsten: “No matter where he is playing and what he is playing, it his amazing to see his busy hands on the mixer, not just twiddling the EQ knobs.”
Pinaki’s current demo set is called Dance in Peace: “The message is that dance can be a unifying force, and create a space for people to get together in a happy way- he wants to create that amazing dance floor feeling – a state of mind, euphoric, energetic trance.”
“Dance in Peace used many elements and samples- the bass line progresses gradually, bringing different elements together, there is a flow from one track to the other. And I am playing some synth midi keyboard, a lot of virtual instruments, lots of atmospheric samples- wind, rain… By the way, I am not pirating music, all my samples are purchased, or played myself, royalty free samples, small little clips of vocals, and then I manipulate them a lot before I they go into a track.”
Pinaki says that a track usually starts with some melodic pads along with drum beats. He uses Logic Studio 8, running on a Macbook Pro, and sets down a bass line first, with some synth pad elements. After the track is created, and mastered, it is transported into Ableton Live for slicing and manipulating. In the club he uses Abelton Live to play, with around 4 to 5 tracks on each side. It runs on a Macbook Pro connected to a Allen and Heath XONE:4D digital Midi mixer- via USB. Sound from mixer then goes out to club PA thought XLR audio. Sometimes he brings a midi synth EMU keyboard live on stage as well.
In the home studio, he uses 2 Macbook Pro, running Logic Studio rewired to Ableton live. It is connected to the mixer, and the midi synth keyboard is connected to one of the laptops using USB. Pinaki is a serious technician, and his songs take a long time to construct. He uses a calculation for the progression of his tracks, which is based on the Camelot Scale: a theory for harmonic mixing based on the song’s key and beats per minute, which is used by some DJs in the electronic dance community as a guide to raising and lowering energy levels in the music while maintaining a smooth transition between tracks. He is open to new technology, as a way to improve the sound, and the connection with the dance floor: “In the near future, on the DJ level, console mixers are modernizing, they now have touch controls, for example, Lemur and Dexter mixers… this keeps DJs from looking at the computer screen too much, and creative behind the decks.
“EDM has progressed and changed a lot through the years, I’ve noticed that DJs tend to focus on one genre. It’s very essential to change your genre a little bit so people can find it interesting, for example, put in some salsa beat within a breakbeat set. More people are turning to digital music for more flexibility within tracks. Ableton Live and Logic have evolved a lot. In the future we’re going to see that the gap will close more between a DJ and a producer.”