CHRIS COWIE SPEAKING OUT!

my sound and in a way I did succeed at that. I now know that I shouldn’t have gone quite so far in another direction in an attempt to re-invent a new sound for myself. Having your own sound is not easy to achieve and I would even say you either have a sound or you don’t. I don’t believe it’s possible to manufacture your own sound.

"When I moved back to the UK I took about six months off writing music. I even contemplated jacking it in all together because for the past five years I tried very hard to be accepted into the Techno Club but I didn’t seem to get anywhere. What I mean is there is a club and that club is very heavily protected. I have written and produced countless techno tracks played by most techno DJs on the planet at some time or another, but for some reason the name Chris Cowie and Techno just doesn’t seem to open up any doors for me. In light of all this I have began to write in my natural Tech House sound again. It was a stupid thing trying to get rid of it.

"Without blowing a trumpet I guess my Tech House sound was quite influential and cutting edge. I can’t really think of any DJ who didn’t play some of that. It seemed to cross many genres where someone like Laurent Garnier and Judge Jules would play the same track of mine.

"The only DJ I know of who hasn’t played one of my releases is Dave Clarke. I had a laugh with him about it once and he was very honest and upfront he didn’t like my stuff. I very much like Dave Clarke’s attitude. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly and is one of the very few in this industry who will speak his mind."

While moving across Europe, at some time you switched from an Apple/Pro-tools setup to a PC based Ableton based recording system. Why?

"I used Pro Tools for a number of years and while it's a great piece of software I became tired of Digidesign’s constant and very expensive upgrade paths. I think in the three years I used Pro Tools I spent around 25,000 pounds due to the upgrading and eventually I realized it was all a bit of a con. The only negative thing about the PC I'm using now is that I run out of processor power with nearly every track and the latency is something I will always hate. For sure Pro Tools HD systems don’t suffer from that and I never had to give it a second thought.

"Ableton Live is a great piece of software but I wish they would stop trying to re-invent the recording process. Mixing a track in Live is a chore due to a lack of basic mixing essentials. Also I would really like to see them add in some mute and scissor tools for faster arranging in linear mode. I may have to give up on Live because the software has become so mouse intensive I get a sore wrist from using it. I'm starting to use Cubase SX again and may get the new SX4."



More questions and anwers are pending. You can expect Chris to speak out again very soon :)

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