Session Transcript:
Mark de Clive-Lowe
Red Bull Music Academy, Rome 2004

The video stream for this lecture can be watched here.

Flippin’ themes, switchin’ between scenes, countries and time signatures, Mark de Clive-Lowe has come a long way – and we’re not only referring to his journey from New Zealand to NYC and Cuba, which somehow got halted in West London. Elevating contemporary jazz concepts between hip stances, swinging on the corner amidst competition to thrive on – here’s to the musicians not afraid to adapt to beat culture.

RBMA: »Well, good morning everybody. It's with great pleasure that I welcome Mark De Clive-Lowe, famously described as: “The man behind a million tunes.” A musical journeyman, worldwide troubadour, son of New Zealand and Japan, welcome (applause). Mark, lovely to have you here.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Lovely to be here, definitely.«

RBMA: »We're going to get to all of this setup, your trade and stuff, a bit later on. But, I'd like to, first of all, start with right back at the beginning.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »The beginning.«

RBMA: »When little Mark tinkled over to the keys. When did that happen?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Well, I remember. I grew up in New Zealand. My older brother, my eldest brother, he always played piano. And I remember, my earliest memories of that kind of thing, would be, he'd be practicing or playing. I don't know how old I was, but I'd just go and tinkle on the high notes, you know? I couldn't see them, but I'd be up there, playing a few high notes and that. And I guess my parents thought, 'Well, that's the time to get you on the piano.' So I ended up, studying piano from age four, through to high school pretty much. And that was predominantly classical music. And then in my teens I got interested in jazz. I never had that thing where it's like: “Yeah, I want to be a concert pianist,” or, “I want to, just, be the don classical pianist.” And consequently, when I hit my teens, and started to think about things which I had be raised to think, and how I wanted to do them differently, the first thing I did was like: “I'm not doing anymore classical music.” So I dived into jazz at that point. And also, about the same time, came across that whole Native Tongues sound. It was a combination of that, like, hip hop at that time, and jazz, like Miles, Herbie Hancock, Coltrane. Together that was my bread-and-butter diet of music around that time. That was about when I was 16. And about that time, I remember, I had a Roland R8 drummachine. I don't know if anyone remembers that one? But when that came out, that was pretty special. That and a few keyboards. I'd just mess about, try to make a few beats. Try to sequence stuff up, not having a clue what I was doing, trying to find sounds. And it was funny ‘cause I viewed that very separately from my piano. ‘Cause when I grew up, growing up playing formal classical music. But when I was in my bedroom, with my drummachine and my keys, I couldn't bring the two together. Which is great, because it means, I found my own way to deal with the electronic stuff, and then a more formal way to deal with the piano. Then I woke up one day, and thought, 'All this loop stuff, it's rubbish.' (laughter) Sold all my records, sold my drummachine, sold my keyboards. I regret a lot of that now. But, I kind of turned my back on all that, and just got with the piano, got with my jazz records, and dived deep into that for about, six, seven, eight years. And that was great, that was a great learning experience. I mean, someone who's a great turntablist, they've really dedicated a lot of time to that as an art form. No matter what you do, you put in your time. And that was what I felt was my calling. So I chased that for a while, and... Sorry I'm just going to go through the whole biog, yeah?«

RBMA: »Ha ha! Well, I'll stop you before we get through that. What was it about the loop-based stuff that...?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Well, at the time, because I didn't understand it – and like now I understand that, if you listen to a Jay Dee beat, then it might be a two bar loop, but it's so heavy that you could have that on for an hour, two hours, three hours. Like now, I'll sit at home, working on a loop, and if it's happening, I might just take a little chill, sit on the couch, listening to it. Next thing I know, five hours have passed and the loop's still playing. It's only a two bar loop, but you know you've nailed something then, right? So I understand that now. But at the time, when I was like, 16 or so, I was like: “It's only loops.” I'd spend my time trying to create four bars, and then I'll just loop it. What's the point? And "what's the point” was, as someone who's grown up playing a lot of more tradtional music, which is through-composed, meaning that the whole composition is composed from start to end. And it's not like, someone like, who? Well, Mozart or someone. It's not they're like: “Yeah man, I'm going to loop my first two bars. Wicked.” And in a way, they did loop. You know, they had very similar ideas to contemporary composition, in that they had themes and motifs. They'd come back to them, they'd flip them up. You know, Bach would do that. He'd take a little melody, and then he'd bring it back in a different key, or upside-down or some shit. And you do that with samples all the time. But he was doing that in a properly, hands-on, kind of note-by-note basis. So at that time, I just thought, 'Well, it's not for me.' I imagine that a lot of people experience this with different things. You start to get into something, and then you think, there's something in my heart which, it's just not quite fulfilling, and I know what it is I've got to follow. And for me, it was going back to the piano, and just that instrument, and trying to find out how music works. Like, from a really fundamental perspective. And it wasn't till years later actually, till I heard early jungle, that I got hit back to electronic music. And what I heard in jungle was something that I'd never heard. I mean, admittedly – sorry, I'm jumping back and forth – but I grew up in Auckland, in New Zealand. And it's only recently that the music scene has developed there into, for me, what's more soulful and more organic and more expressive, basically. I think then it was driven by rave music basically, which in it's various forms, it just wasn't something I related to. So I'd go into a club, its just banging, banging, banging music and not like great techno, just banging, in not the best way. I was like: "I don't want to hear that." Then I heard some jungle. It's like: “Oh my lord!” This is like, some late 20th century jazz music, that was always meant to happen. I never thought it would happen, and now it's happened. Is it fast, is it slow? What's happening with those breaks? The harmonies, all the implications, it reminded me of albums like Bitches Brew, one of Miles [Davis] albums in the '70s. And a lot of that whole '70s fusion movement, which brought rock and funk into jazz music, and also brought the whole nature of improvisation into rock music and pop and soul, and that whole thing. So to hear jungle, and yeah, like I said, that was a pretty big awakening. And then, what people like Roni Size through to Ed Rush and Optical and all sorts of guys went on to do, and it became drum 'n' bass. That was super interesting too, you know? It really caught my ear. And that got me thinking again about, 'How can I make my music, how can I express myself in a contemporary sense?' ‘Cause when you're sitting at the piano, you got piano, bass, drums, it's all acoustic, and you're trying to play a style of music, which for me was jazz, acoustic jazz. It's like, how far can you go, how contemporary can you be? When we live in a society, which is predominantly electronic-based, we've got samplers, we've got beats, we've got hip hop, we've got all sorts. I just kind of, felt drawn back to that whole thing. And through DJ friends, we ended up doing gigs where they'd be beat-juggling breaks back to back, I'd have the Rhodes and some effects, and we'd be jamming over it, real freestyle vibe. And then I'd be doing Afro-Cuban gigs where it'll be all live, but again, very loop-based. If you've heard a lot of Latin music, where it's montuno-based, with the piano, playing the 'goh-gi-goh-gi-gong-gi-gong-ga'(sings montuno melody line), it loops, you know? It's all played live but the mentality is, you get in the groove, you just create the groove that way. So those kind of things just kept pushing me forward, to more and more groove-based music, and bringing in more electronics. I mean the Rhodes is an instrument, which came about before I was born. I presume it was conceptualized in the late '60s and came into being in the early '70. And still, for me as a piano player, it gave me a whole sound, like you can hear all these colours and harmonics and textures that you can't actually hear on a piano. So that was my entry into what now developed to synth, drummachines, samplers, Logic, whatever else. What was the question? Babbling! (laughter)«

RBMA: »Not at all! In what way did the classical training... I mean, was there, I imagine, a conflict between that and jazz? But then also, within jazz there's certainly a conflict between groove-based and improvising.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Definitely, yeah«

RBMA: »What was your relation to those issues? «

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »I didn't really know what I was doing, ever. I mean, with classical music, I probably turned my back on it. I think it's one of those things where your parents push you into something, you get to an age where you're like: “Nahh man, that's... I didn't chose to do that, you choose that for me!” So I fully turned my back on that. It wasn't till my early twenties, I started to hear music like Scriabin and Messian, Shostakovich that I hadn't checked before. Like a lot more Russian composers, who were making contemporary classical music, which harmonically, melodically, rhythmically is mindblowing. It's a point where music transcends genre, it doesn't matter what style it is, it's incredible music. So for me, that was later on, that kind of brought me back to checking for classical music. And then in jazz, like in any form, you've got a lot of purists. Whether it's house, or hip hop, or jazz or rock or whatever, you've got purists. People who represent for the right wing. It's got to be this way, and if you come with some development of the genre, they're like: “Nah, that's not hip hop.” “That's not drum 'n' bass,” or whatever. And so, that's always been a contentious point for me, in that, I like the idea that music is an evolving form. It's a creative expression by a human being, whether using electronic instruments, or a couple of bongos. It's a creative expression. So to not allow yourself to develop and evolve that expression, you know, I'm not really down with that at all. So for me it was a constant, “I need to find something new, I need to find something fresh," right? But I didn't know what that was. Until I thought I was going to New York, but that trip went via London a few times, for various reasons, which had nothing to do with music. And so, I ended up in London, this is in early '98. I was in London, I'd just been in Cuba for a few months. Having always loved Cuban music, I felt I had to go there and check it out. And I went to London on the way to New York. And the first person I hooked up with was Dave Angel. I met him in New Zealand about four or five years earlier. He was like: “Dude, if you're ever in London, give me a call.” One of those things where you're like: “Yeah, whatever!” So four or five years later, I was in London, didn't know a single person there. Called him up, so hooked up, did a track. And I didn't know what I was doing, it's like: “Damn, interesting beats, techno vibe.” And his style, he just let me do whatever I wanted to. And that was interesting to me, like: "Hey something's up here. There's something organic going on here, something I haven't really heard or experienced before." Then, as my London experience went on, I hooked up with the whole West London community. I'm not sure if a lot of you know the cats. But people like Phil Asher from Restless Soul, Bugz In The Attic, IG Culture, Dego from 4 Hero. And meeting all those cats, hearing their music firstly, and then going in the studio with them, making music, I really couldn't believe it. To oversimplify it, for me it was like, they were bringing together the entire history of mainly, predominantly, black music. The entire history of black music, bringing it together and moving forward, without just biting the shit and copying it. There's a spirit in that music which for me, I hadn't come across since a long time. I heard it in jazz music, and then I heard it in the Native Tongues style, and then it got lost for a while. I heard it in early jungle. But then, to meet a community of music makers who were really progressively moving forward; they're coming from house, they're coming from breaks, coming from hip hop, dancehall, soca, Latin, jazz, soul, funk. It was all in there, just mashed up. And then each person in that community has a different sound. Like, if you put an IG Culture record next to a 4 Hero record, they're completely different. Completely different. But there's something very similar about them in their ethic, behind how they make the music, the whole concept, for me there's a lot of honesty and a lack of pretention in there. And that just, it just rocked my world.«

RBMA: »Imagine the situation if you'd stayed in New Zealand. I'm interested in the contrast there. You're based in New Zealand, and I know you've traveled in Japan, and obviously you mentioned, you've been to Cuba and stuff. To what extent has London been important in that way? Is it now your home?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »At the moment it's my home. I mean, in my heart, my home is in New Zealand, and it's taken me 30 years to realize, that for me, the place where you're born, you can't escape it. I tried my whole life to find somewhere else, and I realized, home's home. It helps that New Zealand is incredibly beautiful, and I really relate to the surroundings there. Somewhere like London, I miss the water, I miss the food, I miss the weather, I miss the smiling people walking down the street. All sorts of things. But once I'd come across that community, I couldn't not go back there. I went from London to New York and caught up with a few of my old Jazz mates who were there. Did a bit of work with Joe Claussell and Francois K, and just checked out the scene. It was great, I had a great time. But I just felt like, 'I want to get back to London, there's something going on there.' I didn't know what it was and it's a community, really.«

RBMA: »Is that like, a sense of obligation? A musician's thing or...?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Quite possibly. I mean, if you love music, which I know every person in this room does, otherwise you wouldn't have come half-way 'round the world to be here. If you love something, you can't help but do it. If someone's like: “Your girlfriend or your music?” Tough call, but music's important, if that's your thing, you know? So, I just felt, I did feel a compulsion to follow that. And I did feel that in New Zealand, the music I – especially after having been to London and having come back to New Zealand – the music I wanted to make, the music I heard, the direction I wanted to go, I just didn't really feel a strong support network for that. I didn't feel that people were kind of hip to – not in a condescending way – but they were just into their shit, and I was into my thing. And there were two or three people who understood it. But as far as progressing in music, you have to work with people who are better than you. It just has to be done. If you're a live musician, if you're a programmer, producer, DJ, whatever. If you're with people who are better than you, you will up your game, every time. If you're playing tennis, and your opponent is a beginner, and you play tennis, you're going to have a lousy time and a lousy game. And if you get hip to it, you'll play the game at their level, so at least...«

RBMA: »You have a game.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »You have a game. So you can do that with music, but if you want to challenge yourself and progress, and grow and evolve, we can all do that individually. But it's a creative act, and I think we feed off each other as creative beings. So it's important that people around you are really, really good. I've seen a great musician, and I relate to something in their music. I'm the first person to approach them. Earlier on I was like: “Hey yeah, I'm a piano player. Can we jam?” These days it's like: "I make music. I'm not going to describe it to you, because I'd rather play it to you. But I think we can get something going, and I'd love to do that." And if that musician can come to the session, and they hear what I'm doing, and they're like: “Yeah, and if you did this and this and this.” I'm like: "Yeah, and that's interesting and that's challenging." But it's upped the whole thing. And gets more and – not necessarily complex - but what I feel is pretty naturally creative.«

RBMA: »And I mean, a lot of this that [you're speaking about] is collaboration. And I mentioned that in the little introduction “the man behind a million tunes”. And OK, that's a nice handy little quote. If you go onto Mark's website, you'll see a list of records that he's worked on. It's a huge list.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »It's pretty big, yeah!«

RBMA: »One of the things is that collaboration isn't necessarily, actually, a natural condition, is it? For music, I mean. It's not as simple as – and particularly I'm interested in, as a musician coming to the table. And obviously, you've explained that you've had some experience at machines and loops. You're aware of what the producer does. But I think it was yesterday, Claudio Coccoluto was here, he was playing some heavy old Detroit tune, and he was like: “A musician could never make this track. Because a musician spends his entire life, trying to put notes in the right place.”«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »I wasn't at that lecture so… (laughs)«

RBMA: »I mean, in the context, his point was very clear.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »I understand that point. But...«

RBMA: »I mean, you kind of straddle those worlds maybe. Maybe that's...?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Just on what you were saying there. And I'm going back to the West London community again, because thats people who I had my mind blown by. When I first saw IG Culture, rocking an SP, I've never seen anything like it. The guy was playing, like, Lenny White doing a drum solo. He was rocking it on the SP drop it in record, playing mental beats. What I've heard Phil Asher do, just cutting up samples in the MP and flipping it up, I mean, they're all musicians! There's just no question about it. And then, when I hear some musicians play, they're not necessarily musicians. A musician for me is someone who uses their creative energy, they channel that to make music. I don't care what you use and I understand what Claudio was saying, in the sense that you can do some beats, you might have a banging beat and you think, 'Yeah man, this beat is great with a trumpet solo', for whatever reason. So you call your trumpet player friend, and he blows, and he can blow, but you're like: “It's not really happening.” It's difficult for a musician to adapt to beat culture. It's difficult, when you spend your whole life playing with live musicians, with a live groove feel, a live interaction, and then suddenly you feel like you're talking with a machine. And you're not actually talking with a machine, but I think some of you can appreciate that mentality. If you've always played live, and you go in the studio, and this dude's sitting there with a laptop, kicks off a beat: “Yeah man, come on! Banging beat, yeah!” And the muso's going: “What's going on?” So I understand that mentality, but for me it's the great musicians who can come into any situation, and they can play with machines, with people, with different people's concepts. You know, you mention Detroit. Moodymann is a ridiculous musician. Ridiculous musician. And then the way he gets people like Norma Jean Bell. He gets her to really... They work together. There's no question about it. You could put Norma on one of my records, and it might not work. It might work, it might not work. But they have a thing going, a synergy going. So I think the whole question of whether, it's a producer, a beatmaker, a trained musician or whatever, I think it's kind of irrelevant.«

RBMA: »What about playing us a tune, like from when you landed down in London, something from...?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Some early stuff?«

RBMA: »Some early thing, that either, you played on, or that impressed you greatly.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »I've got some early stuff. Let me play you something which impressed me greatly because...«

RBMA: »And before you do, I mean I think the term people are most familiar with is 'broken beat'. But there's another word floating about now, which is 'bruk'. B-R-U-K. What's that all about?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »It's the same as saying broken beat, just one syllable, bruk. (laughs) I mean, I think everyone, that whole community in West London, everyone was making music, and that was it. It wasn't like: “We're going to make broken beat.” It wasn't like: “We're going to create a new genre.” It's just: “We're making music.” And then, it's like acid jazz. One day some cat was like: “Yeah man, it's acid jazz.” One day, some cat said: “It's broken beat.” Or maybe a journalist said: “What do you call this music?” And someone said: “Well, it's like house, but it's a bit... broken.” I don’t know what was said, but for whatever reason, that term evolved. And it's kind of apt, except that, there's nothing broken about the beats. They work fine (laughter)! So I think the word, I mean, I don't really care what it's called. But if you're talking about the word 'bruk', 'bruk' to me has got a quality, it's got a swagger to it, and a bit of a grimy edge. Which is what, I find broken music predominantly very soulful. But the general kind of beat aesthetic, bruk is kind of onomatopoeic to what it is. It's bruk! Yeah. Yeah man. I was looking for a tune, wasn't I?«

Participant: »Play some bruk!«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Play some bruk? I'll play you some classic bruk. Some classic bruk. This is a tune, which was done just before I actually met that whole crew. And it's, to this day, a classic.«

(music: Afronaught's - Transcend Me / applause)

»Big up to Afronaught from Bugz In The Attic! With Kaidi Tatham and Melissa Brown. So that kind of music, when I first got to London, that would come on the dancefloor, and you'd see the dancefloor go 'pssssh' (clears the dancefloor with his hands). And there would be just three or four of us going: “What the fuck is this music? I've never heard anything like this! Oh my god!” Which to me is what music's about. I like to hear new music. And it wasn't immediate with the crowds. If there was a gig at a club, which was promoted as that kind of music, you brought a specialist audience, and they'd be up for it. But, you play it at a commercial club, you'd probably get fired. And then over like, three or four years, you'd start to see those tunes – whether the same tunes or new tunes in a similar vein or whatever – you'd see that the dancefloor would actually start to bubble. Certain tunes, the dancefloor would just get rammed. And I started to think, 'Wow, people are actually up for this! My faith in the listener and the audience is restored!' Praise god! It's wicked!«

RBMA: »Praise the lord!«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »But then you speak to some people, it's like: “Nah man, I can't dance to that! How do you dance to that? Where's the one? Where's the beat? Why can't it be in 4/4?” And anyone who knows anything about music, that questions is a little bit banal: “Why isn't it in 4/4?” I don't know why house is called 4/4. But, anyway, most of you know that most music is in 4/4. As to: “Why can't I dance to this?”, I'm like: “Well, if you go to Africa, and you check out some tribal stuff where they're all dancing in 15/8, and they change to like 7/9, and then someone's singing in [3/4], and someone's clapping in [5/4], and they're all dancing and having a great time, and not even thinking about it. And you're telling me you can't dance to that? And you like music?" (cheers/applause) I'm glad someone's feeling that, yeah. And so for me, coming across that whole crew, it was an epiphany, and it was, the shackles were off. It's like: "OK, there's no rules, let's make music." And that's not anarchy, you know? There are rules, there are rules in music. Music works – I was saying to some of you I was working with yesterday, it's mathematical. And it is mathematical, you can break it down formulaically, and things work for a reason. You can go back to like; you know that picture Leonardo Da Vinci did, of the perfect man? Everyone familiar with that? That is perfect for a reason, for a mathematical reason. Pythagoras works for a reason, trigonometry works for a reason. Colours work for a reason. Everything is on frequencies and cycles, music's the same thing. So it's, yeah man. It's all good (laughs).«

RBMA: »We'll go back to the London thing in a second. You mentioned the influence of New Zealand, but the other big part, also, is Japan, obviously.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Sure.«

RBMA: »And I think your earliest recordings are actually working with Japanese musicians. Jazz, right?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »I've done a few recordings with Japanese musicians. My mum's Japanese. So I went up and down from there from when I was ten or eleven years old. And it became like a second home. And for anyone that's been to Japan, you know they love their music. There's 150 million people there, in a country the size of New Zealand, and there's enough people to support any type of music. They're into their Elvis as much as their reggae as much as their...«

Participant: »Jazz?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Jazz is ridiculously huge there. I get people coming up to me at gigs in Japan, like: “You know that track you did with such-and-such, in such-and-such year.” I'm like: "But there were only five hundred copies ever sold and they were all in New Zealand, how do you know about that?" (laughter) I'm sure that everyone here, [within] whatever is your specialist genre, you like to know a lot about that, right? And we're talking about a country of people who, they don't make music, but they do that ‘cause they love it. And yeah, it's amazing up there. So that, being able to play… There's a club in London called Co-Op, which is pretty much the home of broken beat and West London music. And that room is a room, you know you can hear new music, and you'll be with an audience who wants to hear new music, and wants to go on that journey. Japan is one of the only other places on earth that I've found that. You can play anything, at any venue, to any audience, and if it's good, if it's qualitively good, you're really, genuinely honestly into it, they're going to respond. And that's how it should be. I'm kind of over those gigs where, you know, everyone is standing there (crosses arms and adopts b-boy pose, nods head / laughter). "It's like, why are you fronting, come on?"«

RBMA: »On the way over here on the bus, you went to see Wayne Shorter.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Last night!«

RBMA: »And you made a comment that you felt it should have been an obligation for everyone in the room to go to that gig last night!«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »(laughs) It's true.«

RBMA: »Why is that?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »There's a little school teacher in me for sure! Compulsory school trip. Well, Wayne Shorter, for anyone who doesn't know, he's a saxophonist. His main thing is that he played with Miles Davis through the '60s. He was on Blue Note, doing his own albums. He formed a band with Joe Zawinul called Weather Report, which I imagine most people in this room have sampled on at least a dozen occasions. If you haven't, jump to it, lots of great sounds. He's one of the great composers and musicians of our time, there's no question about it. Incidentally, he started playing saxophone, apparently, when he was about 20 or something. Or 17 or late teens. And that's a bit of an anomaly. Like, a lot of non-musicians are like: “How can I play, when I didn't start when I was five?” But he renders that obsolete and off. But last night, it was one of the best jazz gigs I've ever seen. And that's not to say jazz like the old boys in the corner of the restaurant playing some swing. It was really creative music, it was the pinnacle of musicianship. It was four people on stage having the most ridiculously intense conversation with each other you've ever heard in your life. And if you've never heard anything like that, like if you haven't checked a lot of really deep contemporary jazz, it's the kind of thing, which you might hate. Which is good because at least it gets a reaction out of you. And alternatively, you might just be like 'wow!'. Which I think is, for all three of us, we left the concert and just didn't really speak to each other for a couple of minutes, it was just like, "Wow! Incredible." But if you get a chance to check Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, any of those cats, check them, because that's the history of our music. And when I say our music, I'm talking about, what we're all into predominantly from a more electronic perspective. Hip hop, dance music, rave culture, none of that would exist if not for what happened in, amongst a few other forms, jazz music. I mean, some of you might have heard the tune that was playing when you came in the room. Had no beats, crazy kind of random arpeggiated synthesizer, Rhodes solo. That was a Herbie Hancock gig from 1977 in Japan. He did a solo show, one man on stage, he just rocked that like no-ones business. For me, that was the first techno track I ever heard. Recorded three years after I was born. Crazy. So that whole – I mean, I'm not to kind of say: “Do this, don't do that,” but if your listening scope is basically the shit you're really into, that's great, but check everything out. Because I'll tell you, everyone I've worked with who I really dig, cat like Lemon D, who some of you will know, he's a drum 'n' bass producer, go 'round to his yard. Do you think he listens to drum 'n' bass? I mean, get real. He listens to everything but his creative forms, creative expression, is through that. It's not like I go home and listen to broken beat all day. It would just drive me insane, you know? I make the music that I want to hear in that genre, but then, I'd rather listen to... Imagine if you knew how many albums have been made in the history of man. If you just try and think about it for a second, you'd think there's a fair bit of music out there you might want to check (laughter). I know there's a lot of vinyl junkies and crate diggers here, so I know you're on to it. But just don't miss any opportunity like that. If the Berlin Philharmonic had been playing last night, I would have been there, it would have probably been just as sick as Wayne Shorter, but in a slightly different way. Know what I mean?«

RBMA: »So, back to London.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Back to London.«

RBMA: »And you start working with this crew, and we're talking, like, from ‘98 on. How did the earliest collaborations with them work, like in terms of you coming into the studio? I suppose I'm interested in to what extent is it formal structure versus jamming and how do you know that you're jamming with a point or a purpose in mind or just farting away all day? (laughter)«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »You know, you're farting away all day when everyone starts getting the hump! And they're just like: “Come on Mark, what's happening? Where's the track?” (laughs) But more to the point, one of my first sessions in London, once I'd kind of hooked up with that whole crew, was with Phil Asher. And it was a remix of a unit called Fini Dolo, a tune called Blow. And Phil, for people who haven't heard his stuff, I consider him kind of like the Masters At Work of the UK. That's not saying he sounds like Masters At Work, but that kind of soulful, predominantly house-based music, which has a real sense of musicality and arrangement, but dancefloor as well, that's his bag. So we went into the studio to do this remix, and he had beats and a vocal, and I was messing around on the Wurlitzer and I think I played, like, three chords, it's like: “Yeah that's it. OK, let's record them.” So we recorded these three chords, and I was thinking, 'What's next?' “That's it.” I was like: "What, that's it? You don't want any more?" And that kind of lesson, that's pretty important. The whole idea of space in music. You know, a musician tends to, especially if you're not too deep into beats culture, you tend to hear it as being really simple. It's like: “It's so simple, where's the rest of it?” If you played hip hop instrumentals to some musicians, they'd really be saying that. It's like: “Where is it?” And until they get into that music, which might be the producers' head space or just get into the music in general, they may not understand it. So for me that was a real learning curve, you know, working with Phil especially. I think with house music, there's not a lot of room for real exploration, unless that's a concept within the track. If it's a remix, and no matter what genre you're in, you're delivering a professional product. Someone wants a remix 'cause they want to sell their record more, they want to get other people playing it, and they don't really want you to give them a piece of art. Unless you're really known as an art producer, and hundreds of thousands of people buy your music based on that. But then when it comes to the more broken stuff, the idea is, it's concept from the off. It's just: “Come with it and let's see where it goes.” And in the early days, we just jammed. Like when I first met IG Culture, we spent four days at his studio, did four tracks, just jammed them out each day. And it would get structured. It's like, you hear an idea, and this is a great thing if you're working in a group especially: one person might have an idea ‘cause that might be looping, and then, the other person hears it, and kind of, it's flipping up over here and changing over there (illustrates arrangement with hands). Another person kind of hears it, changing key there and another person hears it changing whatever there. Just bouncing off each other like that, kind of brings a structure to a jam, which can be a bit aimless.«

RBMA: »Yeah.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »But the more you jam as well, the more you find your sound. Whether you're jamming on beats or whatever, the more you find your sound, the more confident you are and that. And you can just sit down, you can bang out a beat, you can bang out some chords, you can bang out whatever. And from there you have a minimum level of quality. Let the creative process take over.«

RBMA: »Play us something else, I suppose, from your...«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »From the early days?«

RBMA: »From something you've been working on with people and I'll change your [microphone] batteries.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Oh right, my battery's running out? Thank you. Sorry, my iTunes is super unorganized. All right, now I'll play you a track by Mustang/Alex Attias. This is actually the first time I met him, we did a little session. This is quite a mad tune. Again, MPC3000.«

(music: Mustang - Give A Little Love / applause)

»I mean, a guy like Mustang, Alex Attias, he's always been into different stuff. And it's a pleasure working with people who are into different stuff. And they know what they're into as well, as opposed to: “Yeah man, I'm into some crazy shit!” Someone's got a vision, and, whether you're collaborating as a beat maker or whatever, if you know what you're about and what they're about, that's when you can really come together and get something happening.«

RBMA: »We've got all this stuff here looming. It's framing you from where I'm sitting. Before we get up on that, I mean, where is that sound heading now, do you think? What's going on? These are earlier examples.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »These are much earlier. Personally I think the sounds have become a lot more stylised. Like, we didn't care so much before. Just, bang out music, which is a great way to find a sound. It's like: “I don't care, I just want to make beats.” And the music just comes out. And then I think as DJs, artists or producers, as you develop a career, a rep, and you survive off it basically, you get your income off it, then there can be that temptation to lock into something, and lock into a formula, and feel like you're locking into what people want from you. But I like to hope that no matter what kind of music you make, that when that point comes, everyone's got the balls to keep doing what they want to do. And for that kind of thing, I constantly cite Miles Davis. And if you check through Miles' catalogue of music, from 1945 or so to when he died, every few years, his sound changed completely. Completely! And he was so ahead of the curve, critics would be coming out and saying; “That's utter rubbish. What's Miles on now?” And then, just you watch, a few years later, everyone's doing the same thing. And suddenly it's cool, by which time, Miles is on the next thing. And had he decided to cater to his audience, that would never have happened. And we wouldn't have had a body of work which progressed so much that it actually changed the face of contemporary western, American music, probably a dozen times in a few decades. And that's balls to me.«

RBMA: »Who's your favourite piano player or keyboardist?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Keyboard player? I'm into a lot of people. I mean, growing up I was really heavily into the original jazz pianists. People like Bud Powell, Ahmad Jamal, Oscar Peterson, then McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, all those cats. I mean, then looking at keyboards particularly, Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Joe Zawinul. Predominantly Herbie and George Duke. I mean, I think what they did, and what George Duke did, especially, was bring soul music into jazz fusion, in a way which no one else did. I mean, Herbie brought all the stuff together in a very clever way that everytime I hear almost any Herbie record, I get tingles up my spine. George Duke did something, he brought like a commercial accessibility, which is not a bad thing or a dirty word. People felt it, it was soul music.«

RBMA: »Recently, you did a show in Amsterdam. I think it was called Legends Of The Underground?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Legends Of The Underground.«

RBMA: »And it was, I think, originally conceived by a jazz dance crew. The IDJ people.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Yeah.«

RBMA: »But you composed the music for this?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Yeah, it's probably one of the craziest things I've heard of in my life. When the guy came to us with the concepts, two years earlier…You know, like when one of your mates says: “Yeah man, what if we did this?” And you're going: “No, you're smoking too much,” or whatever. It was a bit like that. And two years later, it happened. The project was basically, it's a epic trilogy of good versus evil. It's your classic trilogy, I guess. And the concept is that, on stage you've got 30 dancers. Classical, breakers, poppers, jazz dancers. Like, UK jazz dancers, and kids. You've got 3-D CGI animation, so the whole audience is wearing 3-D glasses, which is great because I haven't seen that in years (laughter). Wicked. And you're watching these dancers dancing in the middle of this 3-D animation. And we did a soundtrack for that. We being, Domu, Seiji, myself and Bembe Segue on vocals. And that project was, that was pretty special because I think when you make music especially for – if it's a radio single, if it's a club single, I mean, those are the main ones. It's radio and club. You tend to stylise them a bit, and hold back certain things, if I know it's for a very particular kind of market. And then I'd also just finished making what is my next album. If anyone's ever made an album in here, you know that's a bit of a head twist. I mean, it's hard. It's not hard, but it is hard, it's a really odd thing. So I got to the end of making this album, and this Legends Of The Underground project came up. And that was a chance to have a real creative carthasis, you know? It wasn't for DJs, it wasn't for radio, it was half an hour long, and the only brief was, this is the story. And it's for dancers, who basically want to use broken [beat] as their medium for the whole thing. So that was a pretty special project, and we made a half an hour soundtrack. I mean, Domu sent me all the beats. We've all got Emu samplers. So, we all had the same drum kit, and we were just emailing around the midi files of the beats. And that kind of thing was great. When I do, I'd just write all the music, and then send Domu an mp3 of just the music, so he could put it onto Logic and redo the beat programming, just a bit, and get the fills in or whatever. And then, he'd send me back the midi file for the beat programming, that was dope. That was the first time I'd done a project, working in that kind of way. And yeah, it was pretty special.«

RBMA: »Did you play live then, on the show?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »On the show, the soundtrack was printed onto the animation. ‘Cause I mean, you can imagine you've got 3-D animation, 30 dancers, everything's arranged. You kind of want the soundtrack to be secure, especially when it's pretty progressive music. I mean, you've got guys who are, breakers from Korea, and they're proper b-boys. And suddenly they're dancing to like, 120 to 150 bpm music, which they heard three days before the performance and that kind of thing. So that was kind of mad. That's a project I hope continues, because if you're really pushing progressive music and you want to bring in the elements of art and culture, as opposed to making music purely for DJing - and I'm not saying one is better than the other - I'm saying, if you're doing that, then, when people can bring together different mediums; this was dance, visual, and audio, in a proper multimedia experience. I think that's where you can really get away with murder. You can come with some pretty interesting music, some pretty crazy animation, some pretty out there dance, and when it's put all together, the people are going to dig that. So that was a good opportunity.«

RBMA: »Before we get up on the keyboards, has anyone got any questions? No? All the answers are here I think.«

Participant: »What was the project you were working on [called]?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »It's called Legends Of The Underground. Unfortunately, the Legends project, that was a pilot, and they want to get funding for it. And when you do something of that scale, you got to have backing. And there are people who will give you that backing, but that takes time. The biggest thing about this business, you'll find, is that when you want money for something, unless you can source it through a friend or a private investor, it takes time. So, one day.«

Participant: »So how many projects are you working on at the moment? You've got your theatre project, you've got your… Do you feel that there's a lot more freedom now that you've got your…?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »I don't know!«

Participant: »Do you find that there's a lot more freedom now that there is a crossover happening between the theatre, the animation? Do you find now as a musician, you're having a lot more work, because you've got a lot more opportunity to show your work?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »I think it makes me think out of the box. And given the time we live in, with the music industry kind of on its head, thinking out of the box is the way you're going to survive. Shit, Tony Nwachukwu and I were just talking about this the other night. We were saying how for me, I've got a live unit, which is based around the MPC. But then there's also live drums and percussion. Sometimes a live bass player, singers, sometimes a guitar player, sometimes a flute player. And you want to tour a seven, eight or nine piece band, it's pretty difficult. If you've got record label tour support, you're lucky. I don't know many people who've got that now. And just even on that front, like I was saying the other day, just thinking out of the box, and looking at how I can do a cut down thing, and have a two man thing, and have a one man thing, and have a four man thing. ‘Cause it's hard to get shit out there.«

Participant: »So you're living in London now?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Yes.«

Participant: »And how many projects...?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »That's right, how many projects? I really don't know.«

Participant: »Do you work with a whole variety of things, like…?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Yeah, I do. I'm constantly writing music and I've just been working on Alma Horton. I don't know if you know her? From Philadelphia, great singer, working on her album. And that was great, because I've got a catalogue of music, which I've demoed up but I haven't necessarily used for anything yet. And she came by and just, you know, pillaged my beat reel. That's great. So, yeah, keep writing and save all your beats, ‘cause someone will want them one day.«

Participant: »London is renowned for its live performance and basically its music industry. What do you think about the music industry in London at the moment?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »I think the music industry everywhere is just a mess right now. It's a proper mess.«

Participant: »Do you have any solutions?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »If I had solutions, I wouldn't be saying it's a mess. I'd be saying: “Yeah, it's great!” If you find people, who want to support what you do, then don't have a high horse about it. Just take the opportunity and make the most of it. Whether it's in London or anywhere. In London you've got record shops closing down, in UK and Europe, distributors closing down. You've got people getting dropped from record labels and all sorts of stuff. For me, I kind of view that as a time when, it's a great time to get interesting music and hit the people as hard as you can with that. It's not the time to churn out generic, same old, same old, sounds like that. Which is what people try and do, because they want to feel safe and keep in the pocket with that. I'm not really answering the question directly, but that's my thought on that.«

RBMA: »So, Mark.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Shall we make use of this stuff?«

RBMA: »I mean, maybe, you could just explain. You've got the MPC3000 up there.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »OK, so essentially this is almost my setup. I like to use a Korg MS2000 keyboard. This is a Yamaha Motif, which I haven't actually used before. The Rhodes, as I was saying earlier, it's a 'board which I think, it's got a wonderful sound. Whatever you play, it sounds good.«

(plays chords on the Fender Rhodes keyboard)

»You can just play chords, and there's an instant vibe there, which doesn't happen on many instruments. I know, sometimes when Dego's writing music, he'll just go to the Rhodes and... (plays chord at random) Proper random, you know? And then it's like: “Ah yeah, nice sound, how can I use that for something?” Similarly with people like Domu and IG Culture, when I met them, they didn't play a note of keyboards. But now, they're playing some stuff.«

RBMA: »You've been teaching them stuff.«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »I haven't been teaching them nothing, but I remember going recently to IG's studio, he's got his Rhodes just as you walk in the door. Walking in the door, he's sitting at his Rhodes, and we're just talking, and he's playing some crazy, just a little vibe. Just chords and off key rhythms and just things I hadn't heard him do before. He's not a trained musician, he's not a trained pianist. And that's something, I think, if anyone has any kind of phobia about instruments, then get on the keyboards. Just get on there and mess around with it. The worst it's going to do is sound bad. And the next time you do it, it'll sound better. Next time you do it, it will sound better. If you never get better at it, and you're actually spending time with it, you are probably getting better at it, and you're getting more self-critical. Which for me is kind of a cool thing. So like I said, I love the Rhodes, it's got a whole sound. People like Herbie Hancock and George Duke, Stevie Wonder rinsed it! You can pull out any A Tribe Called Quest record, it's all over there. You put on...«

RBMA: »Madlib and...«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Anything! Everyone knows the sound, right? It's a pretty special sound. And then, the MP[C]. I like to use the MP as my main beat box. I use the EXS sampler on Logic as well. I used to use the Emu sampler a lot, but since I got the EXS, I've hardly turned the Emu on. The EXS is dope. Contrary to that first track I played, Transcend Me by Afronaught. He did that whole thing on the MPC 3000, and it takes a very brave man to put a break in here, chop it up and reprogram it. It's primarily a one-shot sound machine. Which means that, sounds are basically one-hit. (plays kick, snare, hi-hat) And very little else. You can use it however you want to. If you've got a hi-hat break, you might keep two or three hi-hats, that's your sound. But to actually get into a break, I don't know if many of you have actually chopped up a break and reprogrammed it on midi? That's pretty difficult to do on an MPC. Takes a lot of time and a lot of inclination. But I like it, 'cause it's kind of instant, it's got a real sonic character of its own, and yeah, it just works for me. So this is my basic live and studio setup at the moment. I mean, live I'd have a couple more keyboards, I'd have a Kaoss pad linked up to the MPC for filters, I'd have a delay unit for the keys. And in the studio similarly, but just more keyboards, and everything's going via Logic, so I can just record and capture what I need to capture. So, on this tip. Check, we've got enough volume. (plays drum sounds) So basically, what I've got here is, I've recently started an improv-project, which we call the Freesoul Sessions, which kind of incapsulates what it's all about. But the vibe of that is that, it's a rotating band line-up, so there's always different musicians, different singers involved. But the first thing the audience hears is the MPC metronome. There's sounds in here, there's no beats. So the gig is improvised, and to me that's one of the great things in music you can do is just make shit up on the spot.«

(starts metronome on MPC and creates a hi-hat pattern by pressing the pads)

RBMA: »So you just recorded that in?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Yeah, just. If you've used an MP before, I think there's a 4000 in the studio, just drop it into record and play some shit.«

(adds kickdrum, open hi-hat, rimshot, clap into the pattern. Gradually the pattern grows into a Afro/Latin groove. He adds Rhodes chords and a Motif bassline, taking the audience on a tour of his sound / applause)

»The thing about this song, a few of you have copped it already, Stevie Wonder is one of the greatest. We talked about Wayne Shorter before, we mentioned Miles. Stevie's just bananas! And I hope that everyone in this room knows that for real. No one brought everything together in a way that had never been done before like Stevie did. And when I hear Michael Jackson singing that song, I love it but I'm thinking, 'OK, so Stevie obviously sang it to send it to Michael to learn it. Can I please hear the Stevie Wonder version?' I mean, dude's a don, dude's a don. And what came before him, with someone like Ray Charles, who... I just want to touch on this quickly ‘cause it came to mind, thinking of Stevie. That is, what Ray Charles did, was brought together the music from the church with the music from the street. And he brought together gospel, and he brought together the blues. And it's a semi-esoteric idea, but he brought together spirituality and earthiness. Which is what, for me, human beings are here for and that became soul music. So that's what it's all about, really. Channeling energy, being aware of those things, but it's how you express it, on this planet, as a human being. That if you, if it doesn't sound like Stevie or Marvin [Gaye] or Curtis [Mayfield] or whatever, that doesn't make it not soul music. I'm just saying, I like that, it's a nice kind of perspective. Any questions before we rock another beat?«

Participant: »You were talking about CoOp in London, in West London. From where did the word ‘broken beat’ start? From that place that area in London?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »I think it came about through journalists. Around '99, 2000, in the press, people wanted to talk about it in the press, and they wanted to give it a name. Because you can't spent the first half of every article describing the music and all it's influences. So it kind of got encapsulated into one term. And for whatever reason, that term stuck. And at first a lot of us... A journalist would say: “Oh, so you make broken beat?” And we'd be like: “No we don't, what do you mean broken beat?” But then we were just, kind of, wasting time. To talk about the music is important, to get it out to people, so the name tag sticks.«

Participant: »And who do you think are the people or the pioneers in that music?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »It's the cats I've been talking about. It's IG Culture, it's Dego McFarlane, Mark Mac from 4hero, Phil Asher, Bugz In The Attic. Within Bugz, Seiji, Kaidi Tatham, Afronaught, Daz I Kue, G-Force, there's a lot of people. And then in Europe, around the same time, something kind of, quite synchronous happened. Jazzanova really hit their stride. Like, '98, '99, I was hearing tunes coming out of Jazzanova that I was inspired [by], you know? You hear things, which to me, you put a classic Jazzanova song side by side with a classic IG Culture tune. To me, one sounds like it was made in London, one sounds like it was made in Germany. That's a good thing. If the one from Germany sounded like it was made in London, and the one in London sounded like it was made in Germany, I wouldn't know what was up. There's some interesting stuff happening there. And Detroit – Recloose came through with some stuff, different guys came through with some stuff. Japan – a cat called Shinichi Osawa, who had a project called Mondo Grosso. That album, I mean, if you're interested in the MPC, and you want to here what an absolute master can do with an MPC, check out the Mondo Grosso album MG4. It's a soul jazz album, kind of syphoned through speed garage and 2-step, but not in a way where, the champagne and bling sense of speed garage and 2-step. But yeah, there's a global movement happening and that's something we all really appeciate. I hear that sound in broken beat or nujazz or whatever you want to call it, I hear that sound developing from people like Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd, the Mizell Brothers. Various people in the '70s, who brought a production concept to jazz they developed a sound. I don't know that it was necessarily, you could say: “It's minor,” as a blanket statement. I think there's a fair amount of it that is. And maybe, there's an element of us that comes from music like drum ‘n' bass and breakbeat. Music that's sensed to be darker. When you really [simplify] it, right down to a major chord. (plays major triad on Rhodes) There's not a lot going on sometimes. But then, Stevie would take that stuff and just, kill it anyway. Like we were looking at that thing before, I Can't Help It. (plays track on Rhodes) He's playing like, this is harmonic terminology, he's playing a dominant 7, sharp 11 chord. Here (plays the changes), this is the key the tune's in, which is a major chord. And that song is uplifting. If I Can't Help It was in a minor key, how would it go? (works out chords and plays them) See to me, that sounds quite uplifting, too. There's this thing, when I was growing up, people would say: “Major is happy, minor is sad.” If the world was that simple, it would be a very different world. I mean, you can take… This is a C Major triad. ( plays chord ) C, E, G, which is a pretty normal sound. You put C in the bass, and it sounds like C major. ( adds C bass note on the motif) You put A in the bass, it sounds like A minor (plays the chord with an A in the bass). You put a D in the bass, it sounds like D-Sus, which adds a fourth to the sound (plays chord). You put an F in the bass, it sounds like F Major 7 (plays chord). I could go on and on. You put a B flat in the bass, it sounds out! (experiments with chord) So it's just colours, you know? If you're going to make music based on samples, taking your harmony from samples, your ear is going to gravitate to certain harmonic sounds. And you might end up cutting up a whole load of stuff and the way you put it together, it ends up being major, like, predominantly 'cause you might hear it like that. Guy next to you might put all the samples together and it might sound minor. I'm not saying you're necessarily darker in mood than her, I'm just saying, everyone hears it a bit different. And then, for me, because harmonic theory is something I've checked out, and everyone should check it out, it's about how pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit together. And if every piece is the same shape, it makes for a bit of a monotonous thing. However, does anyone know a tune by Roy Ayers called Third Eye? Third Eye is four minor chords (plays Third Eye). They're all minor. And the lyric is: “Baby, baby, baby, look to the sky, baby baby baby, the third eye.” Actually, there's a lot of theories as to what it's about, but he's going for third eye, he's going for consciousness. But it's drenched in minor chords! If he'd done it major (plays Third Eye with major chords), as opposed to: (plays Third Eye with the original chords) Hear the difference? So it's horses for courses. The question? That's as well as I'm going to answer it (laughter). Alright? Let's get the metronome going!«

Participant: »95!«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »95? OK, let's play that game then (laughter).«

RBMA: »What game is that?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »The first one was at 107. You sure you want 95?«

Participant: »Different tempo!«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »Alright! There's something particular about the 3000 – well, there are a few things particular to the MPC3000, which make it not good as a live machine. It's not that subtle. By that I mean, with a 2000XL, you can use these pads to mute certain instruments on the fly. If I'm playing some shit, and I want to cut the kick and the snare, bang, they're gone, right? On the 3000, I've got to find the kick track, mute that, the snare track, mute that. There's a few other things, like, I mean, you all know about quantize and groove? The MPC has its own groove templates. On the 3000, I can't change groove templates while it's playing. On the 2000, I can, which is great for downtempo, because the beauty of downtempo for me, is when the groove is different on different parts of the kit and different parts of the beat. So I'm going to do some stop/start business I think, on this one. We'll see what happens. Hear that? (plays a breakbeat off the MPC) Breaks, too. We'll get to that. (browses sound library on MPC, chooses a hi-hat) Let's start there. (composes a hi-hat groove with the sound, gradually building a hip hop beat on the MPC) So I can't actually lay that in right now, how I'm playing it, 'cause it's got a groove template on. I'll turn that off. What's happened there? Ah, right! (plays kicks and snares over the pattern / makes a mistake and plays a double clap) The other thing with the MP is, if you hear it in your head first, like any instrument, and then you play it, it's going to make more sense than playing randomly, and hoping it turns out how you hear it in your head. (lays down kick and clap pattern / builds drum layers) Find another bass sound. (records bass line into MPC / adds Rhodes) You know what? Someone's get on the mic.«

(Jneiro Jarel freestyles over Mark's beats. Mark plays a Rhodes solo, and they improvise a song)

»Now, you know what? What I've got in here is a conga break that I grabbed one time. Partly with the improvised band, sometimes it's nice to have the odd thing in there that I know I can rely on to be a starting point. A catalyst of an idea. So there's a couple of hi-hat breaks, a couple of conga breaks, an afrobeat break, that I might pull out in a gig, if that's the direction I want to go. Happens to be a conga in here, happens to be at 130, so we'll see what happens with it. (plays conga break sample on MPC, adds kickdrum, then a hi-hat, then rimshot, and builds another driving, fractured drum groove. Adds a bassline on the Motif and Rhodes chords over the top) So with the bassline, yeah? If you're not sure, that's going in midi into the MPC. It's hooked up on one channel on the MPC, instead of a right channel for the bass, midi channel 1. And I can go to that track on the MPC, drop into a chord, and it'll just play. So it means I can drop switch it on the fly, and I'll just keep playing. Great. If I had a full setup, I'd probably have one more keyboard, lead sounds, atmospheric sounds, arpeggiators, freaky effects or whatevers (points to equipment). Super limited, so I'm on the Rhodes basically. But that's all good.«

(Mark continues playing the song on the Rhodes / modifiying the bassline on the fly and adding a snare sound evolving the song)

»And then, if I was working with a singer, if it's a track we'd be working on in the studio, we might be looking at how, obviously, build the arrangement. When I'm building in this way, it's not like I can just flick to a different section instantly, unless it's preprogrammed. It's a much more organic process. But hopefully, you get to see a lot more in that because of that. So with this beat, just started with a ‘boom – clack, boom-clack, boom – clack’. Then the bassline doubled up, and the kickdrum doubled up with that. So without changing the harmony, without changing key or nothing, there's a progression and an arrangement. You take that back to the studio, you can get that tight as you like. If it was for a vocal track, me being me, I'd probably have a change somewhere. Meaning, move the key to a different key, so you get a lift in it, which is also what you were talking about before with the harmony thing. If I'm working on a house remix, and it's more of a soulful thing, more music, if I'm doing that, and there's a blatant verse and a blatant chorus, then the chorus, the harmony can really lift there. It can really lift there. And a dud remix can kill the chorus as well. You might know the song inside out, you might here a mix you've never heard before, hits the chorus, it's like: "What's going on there?" And for me, that’s often harmonic. For me, I can't overstate the importance of harmony. And I don't mean, I want you to use it a lot. I just mean, be aware of it. And learn more about it, so you can choose what you do or don't use. What's the difference between harmony and melody? I'll put that to the floor. Anyone? ‘Cause I'm going to have a little drink of water. Come on, someone help me out here. Alright, I've got a microphone, I'll do it. Harmony? There are three things, which make up music. I don't care what kind of music you're dealing: Rhythm, harmony and melody, in no particular order. If you've got a track, and it's just beats and bleeps, as far as I'm concerned, there's rhythm, harmony and melody. And if there isn't, then it's probably not sounding too hot. But just because there's no melody, like, an instrument playing a lead line, or a singer singing a lead line, that doesn't mean that there's no melody. Melody can be implicit. Often, when someone brings some beats to me, and they're like: “Can you build some music?”, it sounds a bit mad, but the music's already there. And it's a matter of me finding where it is, and how to put my creative imprint on that. It's like, if you're a drummer playing a drum groove, all the parts are already there aren't they? You just got to play them, and they'll be there. That's the beauty of music. When you master an instrument, or a programming technique or whatever, when you master that, you hear something and you make it. Which is, what I think as music makers, everyone should aspire to. Jneiro gets some rhymes in his head, they come out. He's not stutterinh, he's not saying some other thing which he didn't mean to say. That's what I mean. So that's melody. Harmony is also implicit, especially when you're dealing with the kind of music we're dealing with. When you sample a whole load of kicks and snares and whatevers, and you tune them. I have been getting in the tuning on this with each beat, I've just been knocking up with whatever's there. But when you get into the tuning, the harmonics, the overtones – everyone know what harmonics are? The harmonics and overtones, which are in every bit of kit that you sample, create a key, a tonality, and a harmony, even if there are no chords. Chances are the kickdrum and the snaredrum, they might be from different tracks. And no matter how clean you get them, especially if they are off a live recording, there's a resonance in the kickdrum, that comes from the rest of the music, which was present when it was made. When you sample that kick drum, there's a note to it. The drum is tuned for starters, but there's a whole load of issues which bring in harmonics. So you put all this together, and you're essentially arranging notes. So just for argument's sake, and this is totally inconsistent with reality, but for argument's sake, say this is your kick drum (plays low note on Rhodes), this is your snare drum (playing middle note), this is your hi-hat and this is your shaker (plays two higher notes on rhodes). Does that make kind of sense, what I'm saying? Just stretch the imagination. So when you play those together (plays notes as a chord), which in the case of those instruments, they wouldn't be playing in unison, but they'd be playing a whole kit together, it's going to create a harmony, and a harmony is more than one note coming together to create a union. And that creates for me warmth and mood. Vibe, direction, pretty much everything. And if a track is devoid of harmony, that's a pretty sterling effort, ‘cause it's pretty difficult to do. If you go and get a 909 drummachine, and just do a beat, don't detune or retune anything, you might be getting close to it being devoid of harmony. But it's all coming out of one sound engine. But chances are, once you add on your bassline, the bassline implies harmony. And that's something, which, if you're interested in it, like I said before, get on a keyboard. If you don't have a keyboard, get a keyboard. Is there anyone in the room, who doesn't have a keyboard? Who doesn't own a keyboard? Just two? That's not bad, get a keyboard! Three? Get a keyboard. And if nothing else, so amongst other things, you can get your ear working. So you get a singer in, or a sax player in, or a guitar player in they're a bit out of tune. When you're playing, sometimes you get lost in the vibe and you might just be vibing and not really notice. But as a producer, as an engineer you need to know. You need to know those things, and your ear will grow to know those things. If you lift weights, if it's for two or three years, you're probably going to build some muscles. The ear is a muscle like any other. So, I can't really stress that enough. And then, get on your keyboard and just mess around with shapes and colours. Like I was saying with the triad, start with C, E, G (plays chord). And then, just play different bass notes. See how they sound and feel (tries different bass notes with the same chord), add notes and see how they feel. And then you start to develop formulas and things which you know work. And you can flip that up and adapt it. If you really want to check out harmony, there's a book called The Jazz Piano Book, by Mark Levine. It's sounds a bit intimidating. It's not really for people who want to become Herbie Hancock, it starts with the absolute basics.«

Participant: »What's it called?«

Mark De Clive-Lowe: »The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine. Chapter by chapter. If you do that, you're going to know a lot of stuff at the end. At the end of every chapter he's like: “You need to hear these tracks, these records as references." And now we've all got broadband and Limewire, there's no excuse. Check that out. Rhythm, again, I'm not saying just harmony. You got to check rhythm, you've got to check what makes a pulse. Everything for me in music and in life is a circle, a cycle. And a beat is no different. In a circle there's tension and release, that whole thing of going 'round and going back up again, there's tension and release. If it's tai-chi, aikido, you know? Whatever. Ten pin bowling. Tension and release. So if you can get that in your beat, and that's the ulimate two-bar loop. That's a Jay Dee beat. Two bars, that's all. It goes 'round and 'round and 'round but you never get sick of it because the push and pull of it, the tension and release works. So rhythm, melody and harmony, whichever, bear that in mind, and try and keep aware of that. The more you do it, the easier it will get and the better you'll get at it. The less you do it, the harder it will be to do, and you'll be very frustrated.«

RBMA: »Well, ladies and gentlemen, the sonic world of Mark De Clive-Lowe.«

(applause / cheers)