As promised yesterday, here's the third part of a series of posts, providing you with insights on how "Deep Discoveries" finally made it to the download stores. In case you missed them, here are part 1 and part 2.

So, I had the master recordings from the artists and the cover artwork was done. Next on the list were mastering the files, determining the final tracklist/track order, setting up the promo and uploading the finalized release to my distributor.

As every artist has a different setup, a different skill level and (hopefully) a very unique signature sound, it makes sense to group a bunch of tracks in a meaningful order. Some tunes are deep, some are percussive, some are a bit heavy on the treble portion and so on. Once I had made my mind up which tracks Pesto EP001 should consist of, I tried to arrange them in a way that they would feature a nice dramaturgy when listening to them in a row. Similar to a DJ mix or a tune itself, you would have one tune with an intro function (most supposedly the deepest of the bunch), to be followed by the tunes that have higher energy levels. You would also make sure that the tunes were not too far off from each other soundwise, adding bass or treble on one tune while cutting them on another one, for instance.

One could argue that this approach does not make much sense in times of single-track downloads but that's part of the philosophy on Pesto - I want it that way. I'm not offering a collection of tunes that were thrown together in one place indifferently. I want to offer a product that makes sense, that creates a certain atmosphere and evokes certain emotions - a compilation of music I enjoy and think you as a customer would enjoy, as well. I do things with love and dedication and compiling such an EP is no different.

Mastering the tracks

After I had the playlist set, I went to adjust the files soundwise. "In Pieces", the lovely opener of this EP by "Deep In Calm" was well-produced but very low in volume. On the other hand, the solid "One Night Stand" by "Processing Vessel" had already seen a mastering engineer and arrived here in its final state. The term "mastering" (or postproduction) here refers to a process that - very roughly speaking - irons out those differences and gets all tunes on a similar level volume- und soundwise. There are other meanings to that word but that will be a different post here soon.

These days, "mastering" is often misunderstood as "make it as loud as possible" or "make it sound like the big tunes on Beatport". Making a tune screaming loud is no problem from a technical point of view. Seeing it from a musical angle though, you'd still want all those little details to be hearable. This is what gives life to a tune and makes it breathe. When going through 300 new tracks on Beatport though, you are likely to skip those that are lower in volume. Since this is not only limited to electronic music but to recorded music in general (with the exception of classical music and Jazz), a phenomenon called "loudness war" is being encountered since the 1980ies. If you're familiar with Metallica's "Death Magnetic" album, you've just found one of the infamous and questionable "winners" of said war.

What I'm usually aiming at is an RMS level of -6dB but that also highly depends on the source material. Even for somebody who is not familiar with "RMS", "peak level" or "decibel (dB)", it's obvious that a chilled Lounge track has different requirements than a club banger. Keeping this in mind, I started to process the files, listening to and comparing against reference tunes every now and then. When I re-imported the mastered tunes into my "Pesto EP001" playlist, I noticed the tracks would not match when listening in one go. I did a second mastering session, now not paying attention to the EP as a whole rather than individually adjusting the tunes and consequently running into the "Beatport sound" trap: the tunes were loud now but sounded like dog poo - flat and lifeless but in your face like the smell of the former. I suddenly also noticed clicks and pops that hadn't been there before, so I double-checked the source files and they were all fine. The unwanted artefacts were due to beginner mistakes such as wrong settings on my mastering equipment.

I was undecided if I should cry, smash my fist on my keyboard, kick the computer under my desk or do all three things at once. I chose a different option though. After smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, I decided to master the tunes a third time. After all, neither the keyboard nor the computer were to blame - it was solely my fault. As it showed a few days later, this was the right decision and when the artists returned their thoughts on the master, I knew everything was fine.

Reading the above can easily give you the impression that this process takes just minutes. It's not: depending on the source material, finding the right processors and settings may take 15 minutes or more, rendering the files takes some time, cropping them to remove unwanted silence or applying fades takes some more.
As I'm located in a residential area though, I can do these kind of tasks only during daytime when my neighbours are at work. Furthermore, my ears aren't good for mastering in the morning (they are too sensitive then) nor are they late at night. In the end, I'm not a dedicated mastering engineer rather than some kind of one-trick pony. So there's a timeframe of maybe three or four hours in the early afternoon when my hearing is just perfect for mastering duties.

It's also important to work on something totally different when you're stuck since trying to make it happen when the surrounding isn't right is like running against a wall. On top of that, I cannot spend my afternoons with mastering only. I have remix jobs to finish on time, reply to emails, maintain my social networks, buy food and drinks, etc. I had informed the artists of "Deep Discoveries" of the new release date (8th September 2010) and I was determined to not delay it one more time.

Connecting with the world outside

The thing is: there are good points in time to put out a release and there are dates being suboptimal. Beginning of the month would usually be considered a good occasion: people have money to buy music, DJ charts are being compiled, podcasts and mixes are being made, magazines are being printed. If you want your release to develop the most possible friction while keeping an eye on your marketing budget (or while having zero budget except your workforce), these are all points to keep track of.

It's not enough to just put out a great release though. A person I've used to make music with for a couple of years said "good music will sell by itself" or more generalized "a good product will sell by itself". If that actually was true, Coca Cola, Porsche or Apple wouldn't have an advertising budget at all. Nearly everybody knows these brands, yet still, these companies spend millions on advertising and marketing year by year. People will need to know that they can buy your product, they need to know you exist, they need good reasons why they should give you their hard-earned money.

In this niche of the music business Pesto Music operates in, a lot of marketing and actions of "to get known and raise awareness" is done by so-called tastemakers. These can be club and radio DJs, podcasts, blogs, magazines, celebrities (nobody would care about Ke$ha if she had not been supported by - please forgive me - Paris Hilton) and other multiplicators. The more often you come across "Deep Discoveries", the more often you hear people you trust talk about it, the more likely you will go and find out more about this issue and eventually end up buying the music. It's how we humans work - we're following the herd.

What I am doing to achieve this is sending out free copies of the release to the group of people mentioned above prior to the offical release date. It's part of a process called "promotion" and the free copies are therefore called "promos". These guys will listen to the music and reply with their thoughts: if they like it or not (and which track or version is their favourite), if they will use it for their mixes or chart it in their monthly DJ charts.
One DJ including one of the tunes in his or her chart makes a statement to his or her fans: "These 10 tracks are what I think is the best music this month (and this Pesto tune is one of them)". Given that DJ has 1.000 fans in his network, charting a tune equals to 1.000 possible contacts with people who would not have known Pesto before (highly simplified, of course). Do you remember the word "multiplicator" from above? You've just read a possible definition. This goes even further if a couple of DJs start charting a tune on a website such as Resident Advisor: RA compiles monthly charts that compute all contributed Top10s, reaching even more people beyond the group of followers of a certain DJ.

Push that button

Those of you knowing me in person are aware of the fact that Sundays are sacred for me, even though I'm not religious. It's the only day I can spend with my wife, leave the computer off and do something totally different. For you though, dear readers of pesto.de who have waded through this admittedly more technical and geeky part of our behind-the-scenes, I will make an exception.

Tomorrow, you will find here part 4, dealing with the odds of promo mailouts such as messing up background info on artists and being considered a spammer, why I need to convert WAV files to 320kBits and 64kBits, how Pesto saves money by having built a custom promo system and how my narcisstic needs are being satisfied. I will also post some nude pictures of me (I won't and you would not want to see that, but it maintains the tension, doesn't it?).

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Following up on part 1 of my little piece on how Pesto releases are made, here's the second part with more gory details and more classified information you won't even find on Wikileaks.

So, after the name was set, I was still undecided about it - I found it a bit too cheap and too obvious. Surely, it was better than simply "Deep Tunes" but it also wasn't something to blow my mind, to get me excited. When I shared my concern with others, they told me they liked many of my concepts - just after I had explained it to them. Apparently, when developing new ideas, I'm usually digging too deep. I'm trying to make up associations and deep links between items that only a person would understand who had gone as deep into the matter as myself.

That's not how marketing works though. Sophisticated concepts are great and can be jaw-dropping but very often, they won't work in the first second. And this very second is crucial when trying to get the attention of fans, listeners and possible customers of Pesto Music. "Deep Discoveries" remained therefore.

Up next was creating the cover artwork and a general identity for the Pesto EP. The graphics should be timeless so that nobody would be tired seeing it after one year. The cover design should look great in fullscreen mode as well as on shops' web pages. While my distributor demands the artwork to be 1440 pixels wide, Beatport displays them at only 80 pixels wide when browsing through their catalogue in list view. To put it differently and to make you imagine better: think of a road sign that's approx. 60cm in diameter such as a speed limit sign (they look like this at least here in Europe):

And now imagine the same sign 18 times smaller. That's the size cover artworks are displayed in Beatport's list view in relation. It's this size (yes, there is a picture below):

Back in the good ol' days of 12" covers, designers could go fully creative on huge areas of carton. Quite obviously, this is not the case with covers for digital downloads. So far, I've designed the digital cover artwork for Pesto myself. You will find that the artwork for the first releases look quite awful, changing for the better beginning with Pesto 005 by Babak Shayan, our very first digital-only release. You can see I wasn't satisfied with the look still and that's why the covers for Pesto singles kept changing until I came to a design that I found functional and decent looking, first introduced with Pesto 013 by Replika.

As much as I love doing as many things myself as I can, I surely also recognized that I'm not a graphic designer. I know a few things about colour rooms, CMYK, contour trapping and the likes but graphics are not my profession. I needed to hire a designer.

As I knew a couple of great creatives, I thought I'd make a contest among some designers (it's called "pitch") and let the best one win. In order to draw more attention to the Pesto EP and the label in general, I had in mind to publish the designers' sketches on the Pesto Music fanpage on Facebook, embed a poll there and let you, the fans and Pesto followers decide. I thought "if 7 designers enter the pitch and each of them sends all their friends to /welikepesto in order to cast their votes, I have countless new fans, raise awareness for both the label and the designers' work, fans are part of the whole process (say crowdsourcing light) and I'll have the best possible design meeting the consent of a majority, the producers get exposed to people who would otherwise have never heard of them - everybody's happy, I will be a millionaire and retire".

Well, those were not exactly my thoughts - but except for the millionaire part, that's how I imagined the whole thing. Wrong!

One of them never got back after sending a reminder when the deadline had passed. Another one went on holidays just to send me a few sketches after returning that did meet not any of the criteria I had written down. The next one suddenly had too many clients (I really want to meet your sales rep - somebody who's able to acquire clients for weeks of work in just a few days, wow!), another one suggested pink covers for housier releases, even though the first drafts hadn't been that bad and another one found the deadline too close (which actually was a proper excuse - I had intended to release the first Pesto EP in early June and the deadline was just two weeks ahead then). Remember the part from above dealing with great concepts that are too difficult to catch up with? Yeah, this pitch was a great idea - it just did not work out.

So eventually, I found the right guy for the job - or better put, he was recommended by one of my buddies here from Cologne (hvala Danilo!). David van Stephold (you will read more about him and find some samples of his work here soon) was the only guy who actually got back with a sketch, explaining what he had in mind and why he designed the artwork the way he did. He's living just around the corner so what could I wish more for?

To be honest, I did not like the artwork that much in the beginning. But the more people I showed it and got great response, the more I understood that again, my concepts (and expectations therefore) were simply too complicated. David's design just made "boom", it clicked with people, they liked it lots.

While all this was in the works, I mailed the artists from the release, announcing release dates that would be delayed again and again. I revised the tracklist, changed the track order, asked the artists for final master recordings (while one of them was writing his university exams at that very moment) until I finally got the artwork and the master recordings.

Next on my list was mastering the tunes, entering them into the distributor's system and into my label software, setting up the promo campaign and making some buzz on my social networks so that people would become aware of our new baby, the Pesto EP. As you can imagine, again, this did not go without minor hiccups and in part 3 of this behind-the-scenes, we will finally arrive at what I'm currently doing for the release that will be out on Beatport excl. the 8th September 2010 if nothing goes wrong (fingers crossed). Tomorrow, you will read why I was mastering "Deep Discoveries" three times, how I messed up some info on an artist and why I nearly smashed my computer but eventually felt very content. Stay tuned.



speed limit sign picture source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maxima_velocidad.png

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Remember when we announced a new release format, the Pesto EP? That was end of April, in other words - four months ago. Quite a long time in this business. You might be wondering what took us so long and I have the great pleasure to give you some behind-the-scenes insight, straight from Jon Silva's desk. Taking Pesto EP001 - Deep Discoveries as an example, let me explain the steps required to make such a product.

Everything starts with the artists: I know a couple of people whose music I like and whom I'm in touch with on a regular basis. These guys do send me their unreleased music and if I like it, I'll try to sign it to Pesto.

The second group are producers that I haven't been in contact with before and who send me demos. My task here is being a filter: not to judge between good or bad music but to tell if I like a tune or if I don't. Tracks that I'm rejecting might be the favourite of the next A&R or label manager so it's not automatically a sign they're bad ones - I just don't feel them, I don't feel they belong to Pesto, I don't see them on the horizon I envision for the label.

When signing such tunes, I mostly do not have a specific release in mind. Very often, I'm saying to myself "this could be a good one for the next 2.0 compilation" or "this one has great remix potential but does not feel like a Pesto single, let's put it in the 'Pesto EP inbox' playlist".

The third group are producers that start following me on Soundcloud, for instance and I'm checking their profile and listen to their tunes - just to discover true pearls of (mostly) young talents. I will then try to license these tunes for Pesto, as well - usually also not with any specific product in mind.



This is a constant process throughout the year, it's part of my daily business so to say. Another constant in my daily routine is - believe it or not - listening to music. When answering emails, doing administrative things, reading news and blogs, I have music running in the background. Very often, I listen to podcasts and DJ mixes I get sent. On other occasions, I listen to the "inbox" playlist mentioned above in loop mode. Some subconscient process starts then and my mind begins to associate one tune with another, virtually compiling playlists of tunes that match a certain vibe or otherwise belong to each other.

I would then start grouping these tunes in new playlists and try to develop a product that eventually can be bought on all major download stores.

Back in April, I already had a playlist for the first Pesto EP. The playlist consisted of raw tunes - some of them unmastered WAV files, some of them crappy MP3s (that's still good enough to get the picture). I listened to that playlist repeatedly and tried to find a catchy term for what I was listening to. Sure, they all were deep but "Deep Tunes" is not much of a good EP title, now is it? I'm also a fan of twists with language (I'm much better at it in german, believe me) so I went searching for a nice alliteration. Since all of these tunes were not by artists I was already working with, rather than new discoveries, "Deep Discoveries" was the way to go. I asked my wife how she liked the name and a couple of other people, doing market research if you will. They all liked it.

The next steps were designing the cover artwork to give an easily recognizable face to this music and the Pesto EP itself. I would exchange all the paperwork with the artists, asking them to send hi-resolution files of their tracks, infos about themselves so I could use it for promotion, mastering the tracks, speaking with my distribution about the best strategy to place the Pesto EP, and so on. And this is where the trouble started, but that's another story which you will read here tomorrow in part 2 of this little behind-the-scenes write-up.

related tags: pep001 deep in calm norman creed patryk molinari yamil colucci processing vessel christos fourkis behind the scenes

If your musical preferences reach beyond Deep House, into the realm of more clubby, proggy sounds and the name "Fady Ferraye" doesn't ring a bell, you're doing something very wrong.

Beirut-born and Amsterdam-based Fady is one of the hottest producers at the moment with his tunes being regularly showcased on BBC's infamous Radio One, frequent guest in the world's DJ charts, mixes and playlists. His standing is definitely not due to being the usual "hyping myself on social networks" guy - far from that! Fady Ferraye has been constantly building his career since he began contributing to the world of club music in 1990.

Yes kids, that's 20 years in the business - long before Beatport, let alone the MP3 file format, was invented. That may be one of the reasons why Fady is still sticking to the "black gold" and spins vinyl-only sets to this day. He has been playing a major role in the Middle East's club scene not only by putting out oriental-injected music but also by being the only DJ who held residencies in all three Lebanon's super-clubs at the same time (namely B018, Strange Fruit and the Basement, two of which were voted best clubs worldwide in DJ Mag's annual Top100). For more than 5 years, he has been a resident at Amsterdam's renowned NL Club.
Glamorous nights have included performing at an afterhours party for P Diddy and headlining Fashion TV's Black Diamond Boat, while DJ bookings over the years have seen him perform alongside Tiesto, Paul Oakenfold, Deep Dish, Sander Kleinenberg, Above & Beyond, Judge Jules, Dave Seaman, Marco V and many more.

Fady Ferraye also runs his own show "Goosebumped" on Frisky Radio and I had the great honour to be his guest (here's a free download of my Goosebumped set).

When searching his name on YouTube, besides Fady's own channel, you will find numerous clips from his gigs all over west asian countries. Pay attention to the euphoric crowd with their hands in the air and shouting "Fady, Fady, Fady" und you will get an idea of the vibe Fady Ferraye brings to a club. If there is a term for uniting people in the name of music, regardless of their origin, the colour of their skin or their religion - if there are words for the bridge between the western hemisphere, its tradition in electronic music and clubbing and the rich culture of young Lebanese, Jordans, Arabs and many more - these words must be Fady Ferraye.

As a label owner, you could only dream of having such an artist in your roster. Well, the dream came true for Pesto Music when Fady signed his outstanding "Amman" tune to our label. "Amman" got released via our 2.0 compilation "A Jar Of Fresh Pesto" (the name was Fady's idea, too by the way!) in 2009. Pretty soon, we will release the single with more classy remixes here on Pesto.

As an artist, you feel just very proud when being approached by Fady asking you to remix one of his tunes. You cannot deliver anything that's below superior. That's what I just tried with "She Bounces", released on the italian Presslab imprint. I tried to come up with the most energetic vibe, doing the original tune and Fady himself the justice they deserve. I'm quite happy with the mix and hope you like it as much as I enjoyed making it!

You can do Fady a big favour by buying the tune(s) below and also by voting for him in DJ Mag's Top 100 poll: www.top100djs.net

related tags: fady ferraye Jon Silva remix beatport

As a regular visitor of pesto.de (or pestomusic.com), you've surely come across the name "The Disclosure Project" a couple of times. The two UK-based deepheads Paul Jones and JP Phillipe did not only a lovely remix for our Pesto 012 release by Cloudsteppers - we also had the honour to release an exclusive PestoMix by Mr. Jones not so long ago.
Besides that, "The Disclosure Project" and their equally-named label have been a constant of the Deep House scene for many years, loved by many including us here at Pesto for their highly musical output that not only claims to be according to quality but proves that claim by putting out one killer release after another.

"Sleep Cycle 5" is one of those tunes I immediately fell in love with when I heard it for the first time a few months ago. Deep, lush and with amazing chord progressions of that kind that will make shivers running down your spine. When speaking with Paul about a possible remix for that tune, I told him it would be hard to come up with a decent remix unless I would not destroy the intense feeling of "Sleep Cycle 5". I've tried a couple of options until I eventually decided to go with just the chord progressions, speed the whole thing up and give it a totally new vibe.

The hot July here in Cologne put me in 100% summer mode and so I tried to transform "Sleep Cycle 5" into a summer hymn, good for all outdoor occasions when great music with a positive vibe is needed and pushing the energy levels will raise an audience's arms.

I hope to have accomplished this mission but hear and judge yourself.

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If you're a DeepHouse-only person, please ignore this post and the attached DJ mix. PestoMix 012 by Nick Fay is far from deep - it's bouncing, shaking, sexy, clubby and will make you go oooh. If you don't feel like shaking your pelvis after approx. 3mins or at around 15:38 latest, please see a doctor - something is probably very wrong with you.

Nick Fay is a young talent based in Strumica, Macedonia/FYROM. When Jon Silva played the "Select" venue in Strumica on his 5-weeks tour all over the Balkans, he had the great pleasure to meet Nick there and with the help of Jovan Gligorov of RDC in Sofia, Bulgaria a deeper connection was established. Jon remixed Nick Fay's "Progression", a release on USB (Underground Sound of Bulgaria), Nick started working on a remix for Fady Ferraye's "Amman" single on Pesto and the two were sending lots of messages on Facebook, sharing DJ mixes and tracks. It was inevitable that Nick Fay had to be a guest on our PestoMix series and we're more than happy to present you this awesome DJ mix.

Enjoy pure summer madness - we've been listening to this mix all afternoon and it brought us back the sweaty summer vibe, even though it's rainy, grey and cold in Cologne today (as usual). Nick's mix also contains "Your Love", an original track by Nick to be released on Pesto EP002 in October. Here's the track list:

01. Jay C & Felix Baumgartner - Souk (Original Mix) [Toolroom Records]
02. Full Intention, Marco Demark, Dave Manna - America (LYS Remix) [Full Intention Records]
03. Patrick M - You Got (Original Mix) [Stereo Productions]
04. Nick Fay - Your Love (Original Mix) [pesto.de]
05. Kaiserdisco - Pitaya (Original Mix) [MBF]
06. Florian Kruse & Nils Nurnberg - Lovers N Fighters (DJ Madskillz Remix) [Noir Musc]
07. Damon Jee - Shimo (Original Mix) [Definitive Recordings]
08. Tiger Stripes - Together Forever (Make It House) (Dub Mix) [Toolroom Records]
09. Joris Voorn - The Secret (Original Mix) [Cocoon Recordings]
10. Samuel L Session - Preach on feat Elbee Bad (Modular Mix) [Flying Donkey]
11. Samuel L Session - Can You Relate (Joris Voorn Remix) [Soma Records]

click here to be transferred to iTunes
click here for the direct MP3 link or right-click and choose "save as"

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Better late than never, here are our service links for our current release "Delicia" by Bruno From Ibiza on Pesto 014.

Buy this release from:
Beatport
Juno Download
iTunes
Traxsource
Amazon MP3

For more news related to Bruno From Ibiza - Delicia, please click here.

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