Step inside Jamie Jones' tech-filled studio

The first version was created as a way to play out the melody I liked from a d’n’b song [Nookie’s 1995 classic ‘The Sound Of Music’]. I wanted to make a house version and there are sections where it’s just the chords and the vocal, so I used them as the basis of the song. I programmed some drums and followed the route notes of the chords with a sustained bass sound. As I was on the road and it was just before a gig, I used the Novation V Station and with some tweaking and EQing I got a fat bass sound that worked well with the chords and drums. I made a quick edit focusing on the chords and the vocal in the breaks, and the bassline in between. I road-tested it many times as the last song in my sets, and it worked so well I thought I’d make it into a song I could release.

The original’s ‘chipmunk’-sounding vocals don’t really work in house and techno today, so I approached Katy B. She came back with the chorus re-sung at a good pitch, and with a bunch of other vocals and lyrics. The song was still very stripped-back with only a few elements, so I started working on some sounds to fill it up. The main new additions in my studio in LA were the chord stabs. I used one of the chord settings on the Komplete Kontrol midi keyboard to play some pads from my Roland Jupiter 8. I wrote a few different pad parts that were good, but they made it too dreamy. Once I found a really cool pad sound on the JP8, I recorded a few minutes of me opening and closing the cut-off and length on the JP8 and ended up with really cool stabs. Then I added a few more trippy sounds and melodic parts from an NI plug-in and my Korg Minilogue.

After sitting with this full vocal version for a few months I decided to re-edit it and keep it more in tune with the rough version I had made and played out many times. I love the full vocal, but it didn’t work as well in my sets and I wanted to be able to play it out. By then I had moved to Ibiza for the summer, so I added a few melodic parts using my Juno 60 in my Ibiza studio, did some more mixing and finally I felt it was great with Katy B’s vocal on the chorus and with the extra melodic parts to fill the space between.

Check out Jamie's equipment in the gallery above and see what's what below.

'The Sound of Music is out now on the 'Kooky Music' EP on Hot Creations

[Photo: Chie Soga Kim]

01. Korg Mono/Poly 02. Arturia Matrix Brute 03. Roland JX-3P 04. Elektron Analog RYTM 05. Korg Monologue 06. Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol 07. Native Instruments Maschine Studio 08. Barefoot Micro Main 27 monitors 09. Pioneer Toraiz SP-16 10. Roland JP-08 11. Patchbay 12. ATC SCM 110ASL Pro 13. Yamaha NS-10M 14. Trackball mouse 15. API 1608 mixing console 16. Logic X 17. Decibel Meter 18. MacBook Pro 19. AVID Artist Control 20. Dell 4K monitor 21. Yamaha NS-10M 22. iPad 23. Bose Bluetooth speaker 24. Vintage MOOG Model-D 25. Furman power conditioner 26. Oberheim Matrix-6R 27. Eventide H3000 SE 28. Motu MIDI Express 128