Maarten Vorwerk - Vorwerk Tip of the Week: The Ultimate Handbook to Become a Succesfull Dance Music Producer

Background story

Hi Producers and welcome to my studio.

My name is Maarten Vorwerk, I live in Aruba but I was born in The Netherlands.

I started producing Electronic music back in 1996.

At first I was producing Dutch hardcore music, then made my way into Trance, followed on into Jump/Hardstyle and after that I started making Commercial Club/Pop Music.

In 2001 I finished my degree at the SAE (school of audio engineering)

I see myself as a producer with a very broad set of producing skills instead of a producer being really good in one particular style.

At the start of my producing career I was working at a recordcompany. During the daytime I was picking orders for cd and vinyl shops across the world. I always had my hands on the latest releases and by the amount they were leaving the warehouse I could clearly tell what was working on the dancefloor and what was not.

At night I used that knowledge to my advantage and started producing every day after work until midnight. Sleeping was never an option. And I committed all my time to this.

Finally I got good enough to start releasing tracks for the recordcompany I worked for. Which was pretty cool cause I was able to sell and pack my own cds and vinyls. In 2005 I got the opportunity to work fulltime in the studio at that same recordcompany. From thereon out I really started building out my career. I produced a great amount of tracks under a lot of different aliases. Most of them became vinyl and cd-single releases and some tracks just winded up on the compilation cds the recordcompany put out. In 2006 I scored the first big hit in Holland under my alias Jeckyll & Hyde. The track Frozen Flame ended up in the top ten of the Dutch top 40 and paved the way for the followup single Freefall which reached the coveted number one spot and became one of the most sold singles in Holland in 2007. It started a massive dance hype in Holland and big parts of Europe, called Jumpstyle. I won several awards, including the TMF award (dutch mtv).

In 2009 the recordcompany closed his doors. Severe mismanagement and not figuring out the digital side of business quick enough caused them to go bankrupt.

That was the time I started out for myself. I rented an office and build two studios in them.

The musicindustry was changing at a rapid pace and vinyls and cds disappeared from the market. At that time I struggled quite a bit. I got approached to do some production work for another DJ, which I gladly took on. I started to produce more and more for other DJs and it didnt take long for the word to get out. I stopped releasing music under my own aliases and decided to fully focus on Ghost Producing. Between 2009 and 2014 I produced a lot of tracks. I combined the harder Dutch genres with more clubmusic and pulled the bpm back to 128 instead of 140-150.

This was the time when the Bigroom sound evolved to its current popular genre.

In 2011 the second number one hit in Holland was a fact with the track Epic by Quintino & Sandro Silva. Both of the number one tracks were instrumentals, which is a one-of-a-kind achievement. In that timeframe I scored several top ten hits under many different names and was really helping to boost DJ careers.

Because I was always producing for other people and in the background it gave me an unique perspective on the music industry.

In 2014 I decided to leave everything behind in Holland and start over again in Aruba.

So I moved with my girl to Aruba and continued my production work over there.

#Vorwerk #TipOfTheWeek

In March 2014 I started my weekly blog on Facebook.

The #Vorwerk #TipOfTheWeek series.

With these tips I want to provide everybody the knowledge they need to become a better producer and give them a better view of the music industry.

My path was far from easy and if I knew then what I know now then it would have saved me a lot of headaches.

Back when I started producing we didnt have Youtube or the internet to look up theory or practical tips. So most of the stuff, I learned from trial and error, life lessons and some from books.

For the last three years Ive written down 156 Tips and bundled them all together in this book.

All the tips in here are meant to help you underway. To form your mindset towards your own practical approach. To improve your mixing skills, to see different approaches for the same problem, to make you a better producer and to make you aware of some of the business things you should know.

While producing and mixing you tend to forget some of the tricks over time and by having this book in your studio it will keep you sharp and inventive to keep trying out new things.

So it doesnt matter if you are a beginner or a seasoned veteran, this will be your ultimate handbook.

If you like to follow my future #Vorwerk #TipOfTheWeeks you can visit my facebook page at: www.facebook.com/vorwerkmaarten

Tip 1

Sidechain Effect

Try to sidechain a gate on your lead sound to get more control on the tail of your sound.

Keep your attack short and start playing around with the release of the gate. You will notice that the tails of the reverb will be cut off nicely without loosing the reverb feel. This will prevent your mix from clogging up.

Tip 2

Subboom Effect

Take a sub kick. Stretch it by half the tempo, 4 times over.

Add a down pitchbend. Theres your subboom.

Reverse it to get a low sweep riser type effect. Adjust the sound with filters, EQs and fade-ins to your liking.

Tip 3

Reverb & Delays

If you use reverbs & delay.

Try to make 2 or 3 good ones and only use those for your track

Try to mute the effects from your vst synthesizers.

This will make the track less blurry.