"Once 'the internet' taught me how to hook my computer up to my synthesizer, I couldn't get a song recorded and up on mp3.com fast enough. Every artist, of course, needs a first track -- a spring board for their musical journey, too. 'Transmission 2 6 01' was that song for me. Looking back, I know for sure my production quality wasn't nearly up to par, but in this case posting the song up on the internet was the best thing I could do. Not for the reasons that I thought, of course, but for all that I would learn from doing so. I emailed a few musically inclined friends for their opinions and their feedback was very encouraging, especially on the composition side. Later, after I had started using Orion as my virtual studio software (see the Rave me (pure ambient mix) page for the background on this), I took a chance and emailed a bunch of Orionauts who also had artist pages on mp3.com. Again, the reviews were encouraging on the compositional side, but I just failed miserably on the production end. In this search for song reviews, I was introduced to a techno king who went by several aliases, but I came to know him best as STEVE PENDULUM. He really became my musical mentor and took his time out to introduce me to the world of audio production. He really demistified the concepts of compression, eq, and limiting as well as a myriad of other tips. They were lessons that I still use and am still building on to this day.

The song itself was terribly fun to write! The synth riff that starts the song is a preset off of the XP-30 called, 'Transmission,' which is part of the reason the song is named so. It was one of the first loops on the synth that I had heard after I bought it, and it immediately inspired this song. Once I triggered the sound from the keyboard, the 5 note build up melody that kicks in at about 00:17 naturally revealed itself. I liked the sound of the patch so much, it was actually the first sound I ever tried to manipulate with my synth as well. In doing so, I created the little string-sounding synth that first kicks in at 00:36. Cool synth.

The baseline was something new for me. I had heard that base that hits on the upbeat in other trance songs of the time, so I thought I'd give it a shot. After the intro of the track was finished and I started into the body, it just didn't seem to hold. As you hear, the baseline evolved into something not so bouncy as the track progressed, but it's just what I felt when I played along with the rest of the instruments.

The percussion was really simple, but it fit the track I thought. The real crux of this track, though, came with that screaming synth melody that starts at 01:50. There was definitely no constructive composition going on when I came up with that. It just naturally came out as I was playing with the C minor key for the track.

Of course, I can't go without commenting on the explosion and the vocoded 'Dance, da-dance!' vocals in the track. I like having big transitions in my music, and no matter what new ones I come up with I will always love the explosion! I even had a friend say, 'Now there's a guy who likes explosions!' after listening to my second track 'Rave me.' lol...pretty funny. The vocoded vox in the track just came from me experimenting for the first time with the vocoder created by Analog X. The minute I discovered what it could do, I knew I just had to put something in the track using it. The dance vox that I used seemed to keep the energy and the dance rhythm pretty solid so I went with it.

I guess looking back, this track was the nidus of a lot of firsts for me. I listen to it today and chuckle a bit at all the production mistakes, but overall I'm always pleased with the way it drives my emotions and energy way up, and I really love the melodies and rhythms in the track. I still remember that day, too. The day that I was sitting at my PC connected via dial-up to mp3.com waiting for the track to upload to their site. It was my first musical transmission to the world -- a transmission on 2/6/01."

e-effect, 11-18-07