Steve Haines

Time for another interview, this time we move to England to get some news from a truly talented guy in the business, both with his own productions but also with the work he does on others productions since he is a well established guy on the remix scene also. This time we bring you the one and only Steve Haines!

Thanks for going through with this interview, it’s our pleasure to have you with us. First of all, introduce yourself to our viewers, tell them the story behind Steve Haines, who are you and how did you end up on the electronic dance music scene?

I discovered dance music in the mid 90’s. A group of friends and I were heavily into Drum & Bass music at the time and we all saved up to buy our own decks. Vinyl shopping soon became an addiction and we would spend nearly every Saturday visiting all the different record shops in the area. In the late 90’s I discovered Progressive House and Trance after listening to many Paul Oakenfold essential mixes, I was hooked! His sets were a big influence on me. I also soon became a fan of Sasha too, listening to his Global Underground Ibiza CD all the time. In 1999, I enrolled on a two-year music technology course at a college in Coventry. At the time I couldn’t afford to buy much equipment, as it required expensive hardware back then. I didn’t do much production and carried on with the dj’ing, I was playing funky house in bars and clubs around my local area from the early to mid 2000’s. It was in 2005 when I invested in a new PC for music production, I found it fairly easy to get into as I had some background knowledge of sequencing from college a few years earlier. After playing around with reason for a few months I produced a couple of house tracks that ended up being pressed to vinyl and distributed to record stores. After that I decided that production is what I want to do and carried on learning more and more about it.

So tell us a little about your productions, you are pretty busy it seems, a lot of originals along with a huge amount of remixes. How do you get time for everything, full time work with the music? To us it seems like you don’t say no to anything since you are pretty much everywhere. Tell us a bit of the differences in the way of thinking when you work with your own productions vs. remix work.

I still have a regular job during the week so I am spending as much time as possible in the evenings and weekends working in the studio. My aim is to turn music into a full time job eventually. I’m very busy at the moment, main focus for this year is on my original tracks as I’ve been so busy with the remixes over the last few months. I find it very different working on remixes as opposed to original tracks. When you work on a remix I have the sample pack there and I then manipulate the samples and get an idea going. Making original tracks can be time consuming as I spend a lot of time working on ideas before I really get going with a track. The idea has to be good as there is so much competition out there now.

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Any secrets with the producing part? What programs & equipment do you work with? Any specific vsti’s you prefer to work with? Are you using both hardware and software?

I use a quad core PC from Inta-Audio, Focusrite Pro 24 audio interface, pair of Genelec 8040 monitors and a E-MU midi keyboard. I’m completely software based. I have been using Ableton for the last 4 years. Before that I used Reason and have also tried using Cubase and Logic but I find Ableton is the best one for me. VST synths I use include Sylenth, Predator, Minimoog, Nexus and Omnisphere. I use the built in Ableton effects processing tools as much as possible but I ‘m also a fan of plug-ins like Camelphat 3, the Sonalksis pack and T-Racks 3. The Sylenth is definitely my ‘go to’ synth at the moment, its great to use and its really easy to make great sounds from scratch with it.

How would you describe the music you produce? Is it one style or is it a mix of elements from a lot of the sub genres on the house scene? Could you try and define what you listen to when you decide what to remix or not remix?

I would describe most of my music as progressive with elements of techno, I like to make music that has energy and can be played at peak time in a club. When deciding to do a remix I usually listen for good elements in the track, such as a nice synth hook, a cool vocal or both. I need to be able to hear something that has potential in the original which I can do something with.

What would you say about the house music scene in general, is it possible to grow bigger or is it at it’s peak? if you get the chance to say something in general that you want to change on the electronic dance music scene, what would you say then?

I think the scene is really good in terms of the quality of music that’s being released but there is just so much music being released, I think this is both good and bad as it makes people work harder to produce better music so it stands out and gets noticed but then some great tracks can get overlooked and not get the recognition they deserve due to the high volume of releases every week.

A lot of the music today is not sold, it’s spread through Internet and musicians hardly make any money at all on their productions. What are your thoughts about the sharing through blogspots, forums and all other ways for illegal sharing of music?

Its not good, producers spend a lot of time working on their tracks and then find them for free on the net the day after release. I’ve heard that some bigger labels have people working for them whose jobs are specifically to get the links removed from the net, this is good as it will force people to start buying the tracks and support the artists and labels.

You live in England, how would you describe the club scene/progressive scene in your country?

Its good, clubs like Ministry of Sound have great line-ups every week and during the summer there are of excellent festivals like Global Gathering and Creamfields which have some of the biggest DJ’s in the world playing at them.

Biggest gig so far?

Its hard to pick one, I recently played at the first Lowbit records label night in London which was an amazing party, people were dancing on the tables!! I also played at a great night last year in Ireland called Kinetic, really enjoyed that one.

If we look in to the future, what can we expect in the coming months from you?

I have a few remixes due out over the coming months but I am focusing mainly on my original tracks so you can expect some new single and EP releases over the coming months.

If we move further, were do you see yourself and the name Steve Haines in a couple of years?

Over the next couple of years I am going to work hard at getting my music signed to major labels in the scene. Although I have had recognition for the work I have done so far, I am going to continue to aim high. I would like to see myself playing gigs in different countries around the world.

Any final words to our PHWW viewers?

Thanks for checking out this interview and a big thanks to everyone who supports my music, its much appreciated. Keep an eye on my Facebook page for info on forthcoming tracks and remixes. Thanks again for going through with this interview, it is much appriciated by us. Hope to speak soon again and hear more stories!

Thanks again for going through with this interview, it is much appriciated by us. Hope to speak soon again and hear more stories!

Links:
►FACEBOOK ARTIST PAGE: http://www.facebook.com/stevehainesmusic
►MYSPACE: http://www.myspace.com/djstevehaines
►PODCAST: http://djstevehaines.podomatic.com/
►YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/djstevehaines
►TWITTER: http://twitter.com/djstevehaines
►SOUNDCLOUD: http://soundcloud.com/steve-haines
►BEATPORT CHART: http://bit.ly/e9vhHX