Photo Credit: Menno van der Meulen
With a career spanning well over two decades, Argentina-born, Netherlands-based artist Luke Santos has enchanted crowds all over the globe, from ADE to WMC, The Love Parade, and more, while amplifying his sound through some of the most revered imprints on the scene, including Replug Records, GU, and Plattenbank among others. Now, following a nearly 5-year hiatus, Luke Santos is back with the much-anticipated ‘I Am Everything’ concept album via Musique de Lune Noire.
To celebrate the release of ‘I Am Everything’, Luke Santos invited EG into his studio to share 5 production tips in order to create the best conceptual album of your life:
1. Have a Strong Story To Tell
Whether this is a real-life story, a fiction, or a mix of both, you need to have a visual foundation. Start writing it as a text with chapters and titles (just like a book), with clear characters and a simple background. The more cinematic you have it in black and white, the easier will be at the moment you have to “translate” it into music. If the cover art has already all the elements I’m talking about, the listener will have a big part of the story in his psyche, even before he has listened to the first track!; A very defined concept, connecting this invisible thread title after title, will later connect musically as “one whole story”, no matter how many different genres, styles, or sounds you will want to explore and include!
2. Know Beforehand Which Genres And Styles You Are Going To Use In Each Track
Using different styles and genres in your album can be based on your music taste as a DJ, Producer or as a general listener; knowing and defining the music styles you are going to use will help you to know your target and which will be the most accurate. Still don’t be afraid to have complete different genres, as long as you can maintain this connecting thread between the track you are working on, with the previous track and the next one! You can do this by keeping a similar key, knowing wich sounds to re-use and most important, with the right sound design to have a correlation track after track.
3. The Best Musical Collabs Will Help Elaborate The Best Of Your Story
Having a great team and knowing how to select them is key. You know better who and how they can collaborate, if they can be your close friends great, and if not then at least have them being referred by people you know in the music industry. Knowing that their styles also match yours.
4. Maintaining Your Musical Identity, Be Original In Your Sound Design
There is always a strong temptation to copy successful artists, hoping that this will lead to equal success for oneself. Resist it. Truly try to access the kind of music within you that is uniquely “you”. Carve your own niche. You will have to challenge your existing habits and break a few rules. But at the end of the day, there is far more upside to being a unique, instantly recognizable artist.
5. Invest In Your Mixdown
90% of the sound quality of a track is decided in the mixing stage, not the mastering stage. Create the best possible circumstances for a good mixdown – find a sonically great studio, or even better, hire a world-class mixing engineer. The results can lift your record to a totally new level and deliver your vision with far more confidence.
Luke Santos’ ‘I Am Everything’ is out now via Musique de Lune Noire. Purchase your copy here.
Follow Luke Santos: Facebook | Soundcloud | Instagram | Spotify
