Day One – Concept, Brand and Briefs

The first step in the professional release journey was to determine my brand, the Pedro Anelsis brand. There were a few pieces already in place here from my already established brand, I am a electronic dance music producer and DJ, but without a clear subgenre to attach as I like producing a variety of different styles and when I DJ I usually spin a lot of different styles too. My message has always been pretty subtle in my work and branding, I just want to make dance music that gets people on the dance floor and channel vibes of the oldschool rave and acid house days in my productions and branding.

After putting these initial ideas and concepts under a microcope, I decided I could use my genre fluid style as a selling point, I produce no holds-barred-electronica, thats my brand. I can produce any genre of electronic music I want, the connection between all these styles that I will be what I consider to be the core value and feature of the Pedro Anelsis sound is authenticity, dance music that regognises and ackowledges the culture and ethos laid down by the oldschool days, a culture of rebellion, hedonism and unity. ‘No-holds-barred electronica. Real dance music from the streets to the clubs. Peace, Unity, Love and Respect.’ This statement is my core message, sonically it will capture the nostalgic energy of the past whilst rooted securely in the now, with lots of sonic call backs – 303 baslines, 808 drums, Korg M1 piano, chopped up and pitched up vocal samples, – all the good stuff that screams oldschool.

Visually I want to tap into that oldschool early days acid house vibe.. Hacienda, Factory Records, Peter Saville, Black and Yellow colour schemes, smiley face etc.

Once I had defined my brand and message it was time to create my anthem. I had never written to a brief before and in the past have normally started writing to pretty a blank canvas, with inspiration of course but never a clear idea, so using a brief as a means to start the ball rolling and to give me a clearer vision from the off of what my track should be, was a different way for me start this track. I was supplied an extensive list of project brief examples from Hen Hoose , to use as a jumping off point. This was an initial struggle, as a lot of the briefs didn’t seem to match my brand or I could find a way to work these into what I do, but I then came across a brief that made sense to me and also really sparked something inside.

This brief felt like something that suited my brand, but I was also drawn to the fact that The Prodigy – Timebomb Zone was on this list of creative references.. Liam Howlett is my music hero and The Prodigy are the reason I started making electronic music, I bought my first synth, the NovationXIO for my 17th Birthday to make music like this and was specifically drawn to that synth in the shop because of a particular detuned/ravey style patch that sounded like The Prodigy.

I never made any tracks with that patch, nor have any of my tracks sounded Prodigy’esk, this was my time to do this now. Make an adrenaline fuelled rave banger, use that synth patch and finally be the producer that 17 year Pedro wanted to be. Timebomb Zone was my favourite track on the last Prodigy album, alongside We Live Forever, as these both seemed to champion that oldschool early 90s rave Prodigy style but within their modern production sound present in their post 2005 resurgance.

This vibe is what Pedro Anelsis is all about, the vibes and raw energy of the oldschool in the context of today. I would use those two Prodigy tracks as a guide to work from.

Craigyhouse or the studio?

This first songwriting day took place at Craigyhouse, a really nice building with good acoustics for conventional singer songwriters to work… not for me personally I need to be in the studio to create, be it my home studio, uni studio, my work’s studios at NCL.. I need to be surrounded with technology and studio equipment to write my music, even if I am working ‘in the box’ `I still need controllers, decent speakers a desk with mouse, etc.. I did give it a try for the first day to compose at Craigyhouse but this just wasn’t for me, it was hindering my creativity rather than feeding it.. so decided to spend the next songwriting days at home in my studio, surrounded by all my synths and shiney toys to produce this banger.

I had managed to create a breakbeat drum track whilst at Craigyhouse and a basic tb303 basline using the Arturia software emulator and when I started producing at home, I used used my hardware 303 clone and my Novation synth with The Prodigy style synth to create the first sketch of my track, I named this Adrenaline, to match the high intensity.

Here is the initial demo from this first sonwriting week.

Developing the Demo -The Voice Note Days

This initial demo fit the vibe of what I was after and incorporated the The Prodigy style synth alongside the 303, but I struggled to get this moving beyond this demo and anything I tried to add just didn’t work. I knew it needed vocals so thought the best step to figure out the hook for this track and create an anchor for this track was to write some lyrics and a vcoal melody. I used the word ‘adrenline’ to try and create lyrics and a few things seemed to work, but it wasn’t until I started to pronounce adrenaline as ‘adrena-line’ that things started to make sense.. it semed easier to make this rhyme with other words and it fit the melody I had in my head better, I quickly grabbed my phone and sang this melody with some mumbled lyrics and the phrase ‘adrena-line’

With this initial voice note on my phone I was able to listen back to this over the next few days to both inspire lyrical content and for me to build ideas of what this track should sound like. The phrase ‘adrena-line’ made me think of a train speeding and someone wanting to take a ride on this, treating it like a high, wanting to take another hit of this adrenline… the use and emphasis of the word line was intentional, I don’t intend on getting into details but there’s something else that provides adrenline and operates in lines… This next voice note was the point were I feel like this track started to really make sense in my head and would act as the jumping off point to get back into the studio to develop this track. Inspiration came here whilst out for a jog, this tends to be a good way for me to get ideas, I think the dopemine from running combined with listening to music whilst out running acts as a perfect cocktail for creativity.. this is why I sound out of breath at points in this audio.

Developing The Demo – The Studio Days

After recording that voice note I felt inspired and knew what In wanted this track to sound like, it was time to step back into the studio.

I messed around with a few sounds but it wasn’t until I experimented and hit the arpeggiator on the Novation synth that i found my main hook, the Prodigy style synth sounded insanely cool with the arp on and added the energy I needed, reminded of Narayan from the Prodigy Fat of the Land Album.

I decided to use the non-arp version of the synth for the intro and break sections and then use the arp version of the patch for the main hook/lead in the ‘drop’ sections. I went more subtle with the 303, using it to compliment the main synth rather than the 303 taking the lead, like in the demo.

The song needed a change up after the big break section and in my voice note I had visions of a big piano sections with the classic Korg M1 piano sound (Using the official Korg M1 VST). The oldschool rave piano sound from the early 90s breakbeat hardcore scene had a more percussive style of playing the keys, so tried this out here. I was working in Cmin but found that the last chord didn’t fit within this scale but that chords within Cmin scale didn’t work with what I had in my mind.. I’m not musically trained or really that clued up on theory but knew what I wanted the piano to sound like… I’ve heard this is how Liam Howlett works and when you listen to some of the early Prodigy stuff like ‘Your Love’ that heavily uses piano, the chords progression he plays doesn’t conform to tradition, its a progession that you can tell has come straight from his head without any major knowledge of what the scale is supposed to do. I take a bit of comfort knowing my writing style bares some similarity to him.

This is the initial demo of the ‘new’ Adrena-line’, I would also start to label this as ‘AdrenaLine’ from this point on.

I felt now that I had the blueprints for a belter, I knew that with a few extra synth elements to create more excitement in the drop section, some more chopped up vocal samples and the lead vocals, to be perfomed by a guest female vocalist and a good mix n master and this could be a really good track.

On the note of samples, I should state her that all the samples I have used on this track have come from sources were the copyright has been cleared.. the pitched up hip hop samples were taken from two seperate samples from Loopmasters packs that I have paid for and in doing so have paid for the rights to use the samples for commercial release..

in the past I have used samples from copyrighted material and as such couldn’t release commercially, I now avoid this mistake and restrict myself to using only samples that are cleared either though sample packs or material that is in public domain.

Beefing up the Drop

As mentioned, I felt that the drop section in the first part of the track needed more elements, I felt that a ‘hoover’ or ‘siren’ style synth was needed, thinking The Chemical Brothers – Setting Sun or The Prodigy – Smack My Bitch Up.. wanted this to beef up the drop and as a reference to the mentioned tracks but also as a sort of sonic representaion of the train on the ‘adrena-line’ speeding past, doppler effect style.I ended up going for the classic hoover synth sound form the old Roland Alpha Juno, sometimes referred to as ‘The Dominator’ synth after the oldschool track Dominator by Human Resource. I used Lennar Digital Sylenth, and the pitch modulation feature on this synth to create a patch like the Alpha Juno ‘hoover’ and layered this with a sample from the orginal Alpha Juno via the Rave Generator VST sampler/synth plus an extra ‘secret’ layer with a sound that I sampled from another track, it’s detuned and buried in the mix so unnoticable to be picked up as infringment, I recall Paul Mcgeechan mentioning he uses a sound from Bladerunner in a simlar way in his productions.

Another element I used was a beatbox style sample, this was actually a sample from the Ravegenerator VST, Liam Howett used the same sample on The Prodigy’s first single Charly.. this is feeling like a love letter to The Prodigy. I added a few other snth sounds and chopped up some movie dialogue here, trying to create that Bomb The Bass, MARRS, Coldcut style sampling combined with record scratches… I recorded these scratches on my turntable, I’m by no means a turntablist but can throw dpown a decent baby scratch during a set when the vibe vcalls for it. The movie dialogue is from old sci-fi films that have entered public domain, I created some DIY sample packs by going through a bunch of these movies and recording segments to sample with… it feels like you have to be more creative with sampling in this world of copyright but feels satisfying when you can still ‘crate dig’ like DJ Shadow but just in a different way.

The Vocals – Who sang that?

I finalised the lyrics, the vocals for this track are really simple only consists of an 8 bar hook that is used almost like a sample, kinda like how Liam Howett used the vocals on Timebomb Zone.

I wanted a female vocal for this, similar to Timebomb Zone and other Prodigy tracks with female vocal hooks ‘No Good’, ‘Warriors Dance’, ‘Girls’, ‘Music Reach’. Time was running out on my calender and with juggling work, other module dealines and dealing with plumbing issues and flooding at home, I felt that I was up against it to get a vocalist but to get the ball rolling and to put together a demo with vocals for a potential vocalist to follow, I decided to use an AI voice profile to change my recorded voice to a female vocalist… I was really impressed with the results of SoundID Voice AI and really felt like the vocals this produced were exactly what I was looking for.. I was in a tricky spot, on one hand I had a vocal that sounded exaclty like what I was after, didn’t need to pay for a session vocalist, organise studio time and deal with the potentail of a guest voclaist not delievring what I needed… but on the other hand is this ethically sound.. it is only a small 8 bars of vocals and treated more like a sample, is it really any different from using a Kontakt Library for a horn section rather than hiring a brass band… I decided to stick with the AI.. it adds to my DIY ethos. Below is the before and after of the vocals from my voice to AI,

I did have to heavily tune my vocals and process my voice with compression and EQ to get the best source material to send to the AI profile and there was a deal of processing post AI, I tuned the processed vocals again and routed through chorus, saturation and other effects and colourisation processes to get the vocals how I wanted.

Mixing The Track

With all the elements in place I began the mixing process. before getting into the nitty gritty EQing, Compression, leveling, balancing etc I had to take care of a few creative mixing techniques. I routed the final ‘AdrenaLine’ phrase in the vocals through a vocoder.. 90% of my productions have included a vocoder vocal at some point, I use this as my calling card… yeah I know Daft Punk did it, they weren’t the first Aftrika Bambaataa, Kraftwerk, Egyptian Lover.. no one has monopoly over this, It’s my calling card, for the record I do love Daft Punk.

Another calling card I like to use is the reverse reverb technique leading up to a vocal clip, once again present in Prodigy production, Keth Flint’s vocals on Firestarter heavily feature this effect. It’s a really simple process but when done right just helps build the vocals. Just need to reverse the vocal, apply a reverb with a long enough tail (decay), print this wet reversed vocal, then reverse this back to normal and you get the reverb tail in reverse, chop this and stich it to the start of the vocals and you’ve got a cool reverse reverb effect.

The final creative piece of mixing I’ll mention here is my heavy utalisation of sidechain compression.. when I teach electronic music production classes at the college I work at I always love it when I show students sidechain compression, you can literally see their eye’s light up.. it makes a good dance track great, it adds that pumping feeling. The main method is to sidechain elements of the track to the kick drum so that when the kick hits it triggers the compression and ducks the sound on the affected tracks in rhythmically, this is good way to let the kick drum stick out better in the mix. A trick that works well if done subtly is to apply a sidechain to any elements that are clashing and masking the vocals and use the vocal as the trigger so that affected elements duck as the vocal hits, the ratio and amount of compression here is more sublte than the pumping kick drum styule sidechain otherwise it ducks too noticable and vocals aren’t as rhythmically regimented as a kick drum so feels more off putting if done too heavily.

I then applied necessary EQ moves to let each element sit in their spots in the frequency spectrum nicely with their own space, and compression moves to tame any level inconsistancies and peaks, this is presnent even in programmed sounds.. I critically mixed this in one of the mixing booths at NCL after performing a speaker callibration with Sonarworks to ensure this was an accurate playback system for mixing.

A side note – producer allocation and agreements/pre-production

At this stage I release i haven’t mentioned the assigned producer for this project. I was assigned Paul Mcgeechan as a producer but came to an agreement with Paul that In would take on all the production duties of this track and would call upon Paul more as an advisor and extra set of ears for advice epecially at the final mixing and mastering stage. We agreed that the best option would be for Paul to attend a session at the recording studios at New College Lanarkshire Cumbenrauld campus, this is were I work as a technician and Paul knows these studios well. Prior to this session I sent Paul over some pre-production notes, demo version of the track, and reference playist.

We arranaged for paul to come during the Easter break to spend a few hours in the studio with me to get the final mix and master over the line.

Stem Mastering – My new thing?

I don’t usually master my music as stems but as Paul was coming to help with this Master I thought it would be best to provide him with access to a session with some flexibilty to listen to elements on their own. I bounced a Kick, Drum, Bass, Vocal, Sample stem, alongside two stems with the synth leads split and two effects stems for Ableton and imprted these into a Pro Tools session. I liked this as it meant I could still adjust some elements to a degree but these was already a level of comitment made in the mxing stage. It means if I’m mastering using stems and i find that the kick is maybe a tad too high in the mix I can just drop the level on this stem, whereas with a standaard stereo master I would have to perform some special multi-band compression moves or go back to the mix session to fix.

On the main master chain I did I bit of EQ work, multiband compression, and limiting. I kept it really simple, I had did most of the work in the mxing stage, the master is just there to get it to the next level in a subtle way. It was at this stage that Paul joined me in the studio and had several listens to the track through headphones and studio speakers. After a few listens, we discussed the track and a few things that jumped out to Paul were also things that I had thought myself but wasn’t sure of, first being that the hi-hats mmay have been a bit to loud in the mix and a bit harsh in the high end, also that the vocals could come up a bit more in the mix. These were all little changes a dB here and there that needed adjusted. Paul also showed me a useful website that allows you to import your mastered ttrack to see what loudness penalty will be applied by each steaming service. I had aimed for -14Lufs as this is what more platforms (Apple aside) use. I was sitting at around -13.7 Lufs and when imprted to the site it showed that most platforms, Spotify in particular, would only reduce my track by 0.3 dB, it’s good to have that extra source to check your master against, I ususally use YouLean Master Meter on my master chain to monitor this with in real time when mastering.

Paul was happy with how my master was sounding in the studio and through his headphones but wanted to make sure it translated well on his system, so took a copy of my bounce to test there later on. After doing so he was more convinced that the hi-hats were too loud and recommended I dip 1 dB or 2 in the 7KHz area on my drum stem in the stem master or to go back into the session and bing the hats down there. I was able to do this within the master, using Fabfilter ProQ to make that dip at 7K on the drum stem and feel this made a good difference, less harsh in the mix. I also brought the vocals up a little in the mix along with the hip hop samples for this final master. Once bounced, I uploaded to Soundcloud so I could easily listen on my heeadphones when out and about and through smart speakers etc, I like to sit on a master for a while to check if I’ve missed anything and even though there was a dealine for this I still felt it was best to sit with this for a little longer before sending to the distributor, but knowing there was a dealine helped me call it, without a dealine I could be sitting on this master still.

Artwork and Visuals

I had an idea of what I wanted to artwork to look like for this track. A black, blocky, clipart style , modern looking train and a yellow backgrounf with the name of the text ‘Pedro Anelsis – AdrenaLine’ in the left corner. I was insprired by two album covers for this, Hard-Fi – Stars of CCTV which had the overall vibe and colour scheme I was after but with blocky black CCTV camera as the main focal element on the yellow backround. The other album art that inspired me was Trans-Europe Express by Kraftwerk, this featured a blocky minimal train.. I was kinda after a mashup of the both, with the classic Peter Saville Factory Records visuals in mind.

I searched online for a clipart, minimal blocky style train and found this image

I have a graphic designer I usually work with for my artwork and wanted to have a clear vision for him to work with, so I edited the imaged in Photopshop to look how I envisioned the artwork looking.

I sent the orginal image, my edit and the references to my graphic designer and arranged for a day that I could sit down with him and design this professionally.

My graphic designer, John, was able to vectorise the image and make this train much more smother and cleaner than my attempt using the magic wand tool in Photoshop, he also designed a custom font for me and we made a decision to make the word ‘line’ bigger than the rest of the word ‘adrenaline’ to emphazise that the track is pronounced adrena-line rather than adrenaline.

I’m really happy with how this turned out, John helped my vision come to life.. I feel it fits my brand and the track perfectly. Now that I had a fully mastered track and artwork I could upload this to a distributer for releasing on streaming platforms.

Distribution – Who to go for?

Now that the master was complete and I was happy with this after sitting on it for while, it was time to distribute this to platforms. First step was deciding which service to use for this. A big deciding factor for me was the ability to distribute to Beatbort, this platform is important for my track being an electronic dance track, Beatport is a platform designed for this type of music and a place were DJs go to procure tracks for their sets, they also have genre specific charts that I could potential climb. The two main option I could find that distributed to Beatport were Ditto and Distrokid, after doing more digging I found that distrokid would charge a fee monthly for this Beatport distribution and that my music would be released on a generic distrokid brand label, which looks a bit amature to me seeing and act and the label on their track as ‘Distrokid’. Ditto on the other hand allows you to create a label to release your music through on the platform and only charges a one off fee to create this label and add Beatport to your stores when distributing, this is why I chose Ditto as my distributor, they also offered the first month for free here. Uploading to a distributor like this and releasing my music on streaming platforms was a new process for me, once the track was uploaded and all the information and metadata complete I could feel a sense pf relief… I don’t know why but throughout the module up until this point I have a vision of me not having this track complete and ready on time, I think this is down to the pace I have worked at in the past with my productions.. this is easily the fastest I have got a track from idea/concept to finished, mastered track.. I’m actually really proud of myself for this looking back, just wish I was more optimistic in the moment, I’m naturally very pessimistic and this is an issue I have battled throughout my time making music, often suffering from imposter syndrome through the creative process.

The Promotion Journey

With the track uploaded to Ditto and in the review process and a release date set (9th May), I felt more confident to really start promoting this and getting my act together with my artist social media pages. My first move was to update my pages with new banner/covers and new profile pics. I decided to go all out with the ‘AdrenaLine’ artwork and to push this imagery out as much as possible. I did a little bit of research lloking at some artists pages on Facebook to see how they laid out their cover images/banners relating to releases. I particularly like the way Boys Noize had one of his banners set for a pervious release.

I really liked the minimal way this was presented and the format for the release date, then by looking at the banner after the release, they simply added an ‘Out Now’ label over the top of the date

I really liked this style and decided to copy this but with my own visuals.

and literally grabbed the ‘Out Now’ part from the Boy Noize banner and added it to mine for post release, changing the colour.. I could have made a new ‘Out Now’ label myself but kinda like this way, like visual sampling.

I also used the arwork as my profile pic on all social media pages, but rearranged it to so that information would fit the circular croping that most pages have. (original on the left, rearranged on the right).

To start teasing the track on social media I decided to make a few short promo/tease videos that I could on Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok. I thought it would be cool to make the train move and speed out of the still.. my thinking was train on it own without the track text, speeds out of the frame, the the next appears on the screen and then the date appears. I had attended an AI graphic designa nd video workshop session at the University and was shown how you can use an AI image to video generator to make animations. I uploaded a still of the train on the yellow background to Vidu AI generator and gave it a prompt asking it to move the train move.

I managed to get a few attempts at this with the free trial and one of them worked really well, I added this short clip to a watermark remover and boom, free animation, I then stitched this together with a still of the text and then a still of the release date in Adobe Premier and used so transitions to amke it look like they were speeding along like the train. I then synced this up to a few different parts od the track so I had a few versions of the promo video with different audio snippets. I tried to to use parts of the track that have the ‘hoover’ synth as this synced up well with the speeding motions in the video.

As well as the promo videos I also made a bootleg remix of Kendrick Lamar – squabble up, my thinking being that if I made a remix of a track by a well known and trending artist, like Kendrick, and create a post with the remix but also with a mention of my upcoming release, and to boost this with a paid post. My hope was for folk to see this, and with it being a remix of a familar act they would listen to it and then if they liked it would be interested in my other content.

This wasn’t as succesful as I had hoped and actaully caused a bit of unecessary stress, as I recieved a message shortly after this post from Meta (or so I thought) flagging that I had beached their policies and my accounts were due for permanant deletion.. with this being an unoffical remix using copyrighted material and with it being an explicit version (which included the use of the ‘N’ word) I thought this was a genuine message and I had to pleed my case for the account not to be shut down… it turns out its just a scam and that you recieve a lot of these spam messages saying this after you boost a post or reel on Meta.

I have a few ‘in the studio’ snippets and other short videos that I will be sharing and posting on social media over the next week in the run up to my release on the 9th of May.

I wanted to do a lot more promo for this and still have time to do some extra stuff in the run up to release, I have sent it to Sunny Govan radio, Cumbernauld FM, and I am in contact with DJ Mash from Groove City to try and get some plays or features. I have also uploaded my track to BBC Introducing. I was useful having a press release and artist bio and EPK in my EPK and at the ready for stuff like this. I am still at this moment in time waiting for Spotify to grant me my artist profile after requesting this via the Spofify Artist claim page. Since I don’t have access to my artist account yet I am unable to submit for playists, this is on me for not having my track uploaded and ready earlier, I never realsed how many steps and how long it would take for my music to get to stores and to then even get access to the pre-save links.. this was with me paying extra for priority distro on Ditto, if I hadn’t paid for this my track might still be under review by Ditto and not even sent to stores yet.

As I did at least have my pre-save links I have tried to incorporate this as much as possible anywhere I can, in posts, in my social media bio, on my Linktree, on my website etc. On the note of website I designed an official website for my Pedro Anelsis brand/artist and tried to make this look like a proper established artist page, which meant no mention of uni projects or anything that makes this student look like student work. https://www.pedroanelsis.com/ I hosted my EPK and press release on this site but made it hidden so only those with lionks could access, this is how I was told artsts/labels usually host this content so that average fans don’t see this content when vewing their pages. https://www.pedroanelsis.com/epk-1 also, as the press release is sent out prior to the release and likely to contain pre-release access to the track, as mine does, it makes sense to keep this private. https://www.pedroanelsis.com/press-release-adrenaline

Overall Conclusions and Reflection

This is the first time I have released music to this scale and I am really happy with how the track has turned out, to write, compose, produce, mix and master this track and then release this on all platforms, creating a professional artsist web site and posting content again to my pages was a massive step for me. This is also a great stepping stone for the future, I already have the Ditto acount now and Beatport label setup, know the process and have some momentum on social media again, I have a follow up track that is in the mastering stage and hope to release this around mid to late June so know that I should have this finished soon and uploaded to Ditto super early, I will have my Spotify artist account and will be able to pitch for playlists. I feel there is still lots I can do to promote this track and still have another solid week of pre release promo, followed by post release promo.

Another aspect of this project that I haven’t touched upon that might be noticable is the lack of press photos and new photos, I have mainly used slightly older photos for the website, EPK etc and even then are more candit action shots opf me in the studio/DJing and have added filters that obscure the clarity. This is confidence thing, I don’t really like the shape that I am in right now.. I’ve gained a but of stress rekated weight over the past couple of years and don’t want the images of how I look right now being what is associated with me and my brand.. I am working on my weight right now, hitting the gym and keeping an eye on my macros and when I feel confident again I will get some proper photo done, this is only temporary as I used to be pretty confident in myself in this sense.