TECHNEWS IN ASSOCIATION WITH POINT BLANK’S PRODUCTION TIP OF THE WEEK MIKE KOGLIN DECONSTRUCTS HIS TRACK ‘DYNO’ IN LOGIC


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This week trance producer Mike Koglin stopped by...


Mike debuted back in ‘98 with UK Top 20 hit ‘The Silence’. Since then he has had releases on Anjunabeats, Ministry Of Sound, Spinnin, Positiva, Ultra, Water Music, Intuition and his own Noys Music. The song ‘When Will You Learn’ that he wrote and produced for Boy George received a Grammy nomination in 1999 as Best Dance Recording. We chatted to him about how he works in the studio, based around a deconstruction of his recent track ‘Dyno’. Check the full interview out in the video above and some key extracts below.


INITIAL IDEAS “I’m a big fan of working with another producer, in this case I collaborated with Genix. The idea started as a little midi fi le of the riff which Genix emailed to me… I built the whole track around that midi fi le.


TEMPO “Years ago trance was around 140 bpm, this track is 132… It means you have more room to play better bassline patterns, make


it a bit more funky. ‘Dyno’ is a good example of new trance with the infl uence of house, progressive and electro… I’m a big fan of combining elements from different styles, even dubstep!


INTRO AND DRUMS ”As a general rule, you need 32 bars of intro and outro to give the DJ time to mix the track. I start with drums and gradually build up the track, fi ltering in the riff. I like combining two kick-drums and merging them together, one with a nice treble and one with the sub that you need underneath. I used a bit of the percussion from my last release ‘Helium’ for some continuity. I bus together anything like hats, claps and snares so I can easily add a low- or high-pass fi lter on all of them. I’ve used the PSP vintage warmer plugin here which adds a nice analogue ‘recorded to tape’ sound making it sound less digital.


BASS ”I like using a few interlinked layers. In this case the ES2 with a couple of saw waves and some white noise on the third oscillator, giving it a more dirty sound. Sylenth’s a great synth & I also use a few samples.


RIFF “I sampled the fi rst chord, bounced it down, made a copy and reversed it, using a combination of the two to gradually introduce the riff over the course of 64 bars. There’s a lot of work with fi lters in this track, elements being processed either with low or high pass fi lters.


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