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Calvin rockin' the decks

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Ask chart-topping, multiplatinum producer Calvin Harris for the secret behind all of his recent success and he'll answer you with remarkable honesty. "Luck! Pure and simple," he says with a grin. "I'd been sending out demos and CDs for years. I knew my stuff was good enough, but I was getting nowhere. Then, three people – my future manager and two publishers – happened to send one of my tracks to EMI publishing in the same week. All of a sudden, they were interested!

"Had those three people not sent the track at the same time, I'd probably still be Nobby No-Mates, pissing around in my bedroom. That was my one bit of luck and it allowed me to get my foot in the door."

The 27-year-old has certainly made the most of his limited luck. Currently one of the UK's biggest pop names, he conquered both the album and singles charts, and even managed to reintroduce cheesy '80s synth sounds and euphoric trance hooks into the mainstream with tunes like Acceptable In The '80s and I'm Not Alone.

He's also a regular reader of Future Music, as they found out a few months ago when they received a Tweet from him, following their Calvin Harris Get That Synth Sound feature.

So, were Future Music Magazine close to cracking the secret of your sound?
[Laughing] "Not really. I had a go at setting it up… following the instructions in the mag. Yeah, I suppose it sort of sounded like it, but the approach was far more scientific than I could ever attempt. I'll readily admit that I'm not a full-blown tech-head. I love my gear and I love being in the studio, but I tend to work in a far more ad hoc kind of way.

"From what I remember, they started with a sine wave, but I usually start with a preset. I know some people get really snooty if you talk about preset sounds, but, personally, I can't see anything wrong with using them as a starting point."

"I can honestly say that I didn't set out to make a trance tune."

Seeing as we're on the subject, can we go into a bit more synth sound detail?
"Not a problem at all. As you'll see, they are quite difficult to replicate, so if someone really does want to have a go, good luck to 'em!

"OK, let's take the I'm Not Alone main hook. It was actually made up of two different synth sounds and… well, first of all, I should tell you that I don't always play a sound from its original source. I'll often sample a synth sound through the mixer and turn it into a new instrument in Logic's EXS24, because that gives me a lot more control over it.

"I started off with the new Roland Juno-G and found a lovely preset called something like 'Trance Keys'. I started playing around with it and thought,

'This is a bit of all right'. As usual, I decided to sample a few notes around middle C into the EXS. Immediately, that will change the feel of a sound, because you're not sampling right across the whole keyboard. As soon as you move away from middle C, the new sound starts to take on an interesting character. Like I said, there seems to be loads of control over it in the EXS and I'm very used to working in that environment. When it's all coming from that particular sampler, I seem to understand the sound a lot more.

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