Not Just Music

Music isn’t the only thing that people enjoy at festivals. The atmosphere is half of the experience. There are so many cool different flow arts that people do, and you can just sit down, relax and watch someone hoop, glove, or do poi. Honestly, gloving is my favorite. Probably because it’s all about your hands and reminds me of the sleight of hand skill that people have when it comes to performing magic tricks. While at Electric Forest I got my own pair and started learning how to glove after I got home. It’s pretty cool and I picked it up pretty quickly, but ever since the festival I haven’t had anyone to perform for, so I don’t always glove whenever I’m at home.

 If you aren’t feeling the whole up in your face style of flow art then you’d probably like hooping or poi. They both are really fun to just sit down on a blanket and watch someone perform. It’s really relaxing. Hooping is more of a girl thing to do, but if you’re a guy who wants to hoop, don’t let anyone stop you. 

Poi isn’t a single gendered art and is really cool when the performer is really good at contact poi. 

When we were at Electric Forest we had at least one person for each art. So it was really cool because we got to sit around camp and watch them practice. Everyone was really supportive. I, for one, am really shy when it comes to performing or doing something in front of a group. When I wasn’t really good at gloving, I didn’t want to try to do it in front of people at camp. I just thought I was bad and that what I did didn’t look good. Eventually I got the hang of it when I got home and watch some tutorial videos. Now I think it’s really fun and can’t wait to go to more festivals so I can show off some of the skill I have. Sometime soon my brother wants to get his own poi set so he can learn. This atmosphere compares to what I’ve been told Woodstock was like. That is pretty cool to me because my dad was growing up during that time so it just feels like I’m going back to my dad’s age. So the music is pretty great and all, but relaxing and watching flow art really adds to the experience.

Freaky Deaky

So almost everyone likes Halloween. A lot of people are going trick or treating or passing out candy. Some of the young adults are going to go to parties and be with friends. All of that sounds fun, but what I’d prefer to do is go to Freaky Deaky in Detroit at the Masonic Temple.

Excision, one of the first EDM artists I listened to is performing alongside Doctor P and Sound Remedy. I am not quite sure if I will be going. I would love to, but unfortunately I will probably have plans with my girlfriend and our family’s. Excision’s song Bass Cannon is probably my favorite. It starts out with what sounds like a Decepticon from Transformers. It sounds pretty demonic and it is really fun playing it pretty loud at night with some friends who haven’t heard it. They start to hear the voice and just look at you like it’s the weirdest thing they’ve heard. I love listening to the song in my car where I can really feel the bass right after he says “Fire!” It just hits so hard and it’s awesome. Another good song by Excision that I like is called Robo Kitty.

I know that sounds weird, but his performance in Dallas was awesome for this song. I saw a video of it on YouTube, no I didn’t actually go see him in Dallas. Plus it is cats, who doesn’t like cats and dubstep? I mean come on! Now other than those two, I don’t really know a lot more songs. I do know some of his mixes though, which are really good and I always enjoy a car ride listening to them, or putting them on when I have something to do that will take a while. My favorite mix has to be Shambhala Mix 2015.

Shambhala Mix 2015 link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6drOUeqEoT0

 It is just so original compared to the other mixes out there. The beginning is sweet. It’s a phone call to this “Electronic Dance Music Generator” and he’s picking a category of what type of song he wants it to make. After the call ends, he just drops fire. Obviously it wasn’t an actual generator that made his song, he’s just that amazing. I know I said in the last blog that Animals by Martin Garrix was one of the first real experiences with EDM, but I’ve had a lot more experiences before that. Animals was just a song that became a memory of my hockey team. Excision takes me back to my early high school days. Jamming out to some weird sounding voice that fires a bass cannon. For a while I didn’t really listen to Excision because I wasn’t really looking for EDM music, but I’m glad that he’s still out there producing some amazing sounding dubstep. He’s one of the first main EDM artists I listened to and it’s amazing getting to hear his old shit and some of his new.

First Real EDM Experience

I’m in the locker room before a big game. I was playing for Midland High School varsity hockey and the team was trying to get jacked up. Out of nowhere, my teammate, Nolan Nowak, starts asking about this song. He keeps making all these weird noises and none of us know what he is talking about. “Come on! Think!” he yells at us. After a while of us laughing at Nolan looking like a fool, dancing around and making weird noises, Garrett Kraut figures out what song he was talking about. Animals by Martin Garrix.

Eureka! Except Nolan sounded nothing like that song, though he tried. Garrett plugs in his phone to our stereo system in the locker room and we all start jamming out to it. It was my first real experience with EDM music. Then the bass drops and Nowak starts dancing around softly hitting his fists against the side of his head to the beat. Jacob Coffey throws off his gloves and starts doing finger guns to the bass. People are banging on the wooden lockers and dancing around. It was a mad house. Suddenly, Coach Brown walks in, and he is the type of guy that listens to old classic rock and can’t stand the new age music or when a song swears. “What the hell is this?” he asks. “It’s dubstep coach.” Nowak replied, luckily. “Doob-steep?” Brown questions while stuttering to say it. We don’t try to correct him, we just let him call it whatever he wants to call it. Luckily for us, he didn’t care and walked out of the locker room to talk with the other coaches about whatever they talk about before a game. He left us to get focused on our own, which I enjoy more than a coach making us sit there in silence. I still play with some of the guys from that team every now and then and whenever we have a game I will play that song for shits and giggles. I still listen to it every now and then if it pops up in my playlist. It always brings me back to good memories with great friends and the best sport on Earth. It not only reminds me of that, the song helped me get into EDM which has changed my music spectrum drastically. It led me to find other artists that I like to listen to now a days.

Best Weekend of My Life. Day Three

The third morning was the only morning not like the other. It wasn’t stifling hot in the tent when I woke up. Matt and one of our friends, Ryan, had stayed up all night talking, and when I woke up around seven in the morning, they were sitting around the campsite in chairs and didn’t look tired at all. I was so confused, but I didn’t question it and just got a pop-tart. Another late start for the gang concert wise as we decided to walk around the market and shop for a bit. The earliest concert that we wanted to go see was Lindsey Stirling and she didn’t play until 6:30. Lindsey isn’t like the other EDM artists that I’ve been listening to for the past couple days. She is a ballerina dancing, violin playing, performer and her concerts are a must see. Not just the music that she plays, which is beautiful, but her actual performance is always enchanting.

One way that she describes her music is “melodic enough for her grandma to like, but electric enough for the young adult generation.” She played all the songs I knew by her and many more. Still to this day I think her performance is my favorite of the whole festival and it was perfect that she played a Jubilee, basically a circus tent stage. So after Stirling, we headed next door to listen to The Werks who are more of a jam band that really didn’t suit my fancy, but luckily, tonight was the main event over at Ranch Arena. The String Cheese Incident perform three nights for three and a half hours each time. Saturday Night Cheese, which is what they call it, is the most amazing and chaotic event that you’ll ever see at Electric Forest. About half of our group was there at the beginning and was saving our spots. Matt, a couple others, and I were walking up to the stage and what my eyes witnessed blew my mind.

Multiple small blimps flying around with neon, flashing colors. Big, blooming fireworks. Gigantic purplish, pinkish, reddish balls bouncing around the crowd. A medium sized hot air balloon over the crowd with an acrobat hanging from it. All of this while String Cheese was jamming out. We made our way through the thick, hot crowd as I called Josh Deschaine on my phone to figure out where they were. Eventually both groups met up and we waited for the artist we were all super excited to see, Bassnectar. 

After twenty minutes of technical difficulties, Lorin marched on stage. He was amazing. His set was like sitting in a chair in the water at the beach and the waves that surface is the tempo of his music. Fast, slow, fast, slow. The multiple stacks of twenty some speakers rippled as his bass was emitted into the crowd and made the hairs all over your arms and legs stand up. Nectar was the biggest artist there and had almost all of the 55,000 people listening to his music. After Lorin completely blew everyone’s mind, my brother and I headed into the forest to listen to this new guy named Russ Liquid. He is a DJ who also plays the trumpet, flute, and saxophone. He’s got some funky music to listen to and I can see this guy getting bigger and performing on the main stage instead of the little forest stage. Half way through his set Matt and I got tired and we both headed back to camp. Unfortunately, we only had one more day of this paradise.

Best Weekend of My Life. Day Two

Day two and another hot morning. I was up and out of the tent right as I awoke. We all did our basic daily routine, eat, get dressed, shower, all that jazz. Today was when the real fun started. The first day the music doesn’t start until four, but today, it starts at one in the afternoon. Looking back on it, I wish I went and did yoga at noon at Trip-O-Lee, but I guess I’ll have to do that next year. Everyone at camp was still acclimating to everything. We were all tired and there weren’t any big names that we wanted to hear that were early in the day so we all took our time before heading into the venue for the day. It’s about a ten minute walk from camp to the entrance. A couple of our group members wanted to go see Everyone Orchestra at the stage Jubilee. Jubilee is basically, a giant, pink circus tent that you walk into and there is a decent sized stage in the back. Everyone Orchestra is a group made up of musicians from all different groups. Just a hodgepodge of different instruments. It was pretty interesting to listen to. So, before I was really into EDM music, like I am now, I listened to rap. G-Eazy was performing after Everyone Orchestra so I was really interested in seeing him perform. He was incredible!

 You could feel the different vibe of the crowd compared to all of the EDM groups. Everyone was just jamming out to some rap for once. He really interacted with the crowd. “I want to be here for the whole week, not just today!” he said mid performance. After G-Eazy, there wasn’t anyone big that I wanted to see for a while so I ventured through the forest for a while with my brother. There is some trippy stuff in the forest. Clouds that flash and change colors, a dragon statue made out of CD’s that emits smoke, a ten by ten square of LED light poles that change color and do different effects. You can get lost in there just looking at everything. There are also two stages in there as well. So after some time, I wanted to go back to camp to change into something warmer because it was almost nine at night and the temp had spiked downward. When we got back into the venue we waited around and met up with the rest of the group. Some of them wanted to go see the band Lettuce and Lotus over at Sherwood Court, but those artists are more jam bands and I’m not that into that type of music. Instead a couple of us went and saw the one artist I’ve been looking forward to, Skrillex. He killed it! I still watch the video of his set on YouTube. 

Apparently the first time Skrillex performed at Electric Forest he got so messed up that he couldn’t go on stage, so I guess this year he wanted to make up for it. I got pretty lucky. So many flashing lights and fog machines and confetti and fireworks. Oh my gosh was his set amazing! After my mind was completely blown, my brother headed back to camp because he was pretty tired and I went to Trip-O-Lee to see Flux Pavilion. Flux doesn’t have as much bass as Skrillex, but his drops are ridiculous. 

I recorded my favorite song on my phone, but I too got really tired like my brother and ended up leaving before the set was over and I went back to camp and went to bed “early” a.k.a. three in the morning.

Best Weekend of My Life. Day One

Wednesday, June 24^th was here. It was time to say goodbye to my mom and dad and venture to Electric Forest with my brother and our friends for my first festival. I was very excited and super nervous at the same time. I had heard stories about it, but I still didn’t know what to fully expect. Matt, my brother, and I packed up the car and headed over to our buddies’, Chandler and Nate, apartment. The crew was meeting up there before caravanning to Rothbury, Michigan where the amount of people in Rothbury was about to grow by fifty-five thousand within the next twelve hours.

 Everyone that was driving with us had arrived at the apartment and the time had come. Everyone pooled into their cars and made the two and a half hour trek to Electric Forest. It was so crazy there, we had arrived around ten p.m. that night. All of the cars file into about ten different lines to go through the vehicle search. That took a couple hours and was the longest part of the trip. Finally when we got to our camp site we started getting our tents all set up. Luckily Matt and I bought one of the tents that sets up in thirty seconds. While I was filling up our blow up mattress everyone else was struggling trying to put their tent together. Eventually everything was set up and we all just sat around the campsite until everyone passed out. You could not sleep past nine a.m. It got so hot inside that tent that you had to have a fan on high and nothing on top of you. So we all get up and out of the tent and get ready for the first day. We all get dressed, eat some breakfast, brush our teeth, and shower. To walk into the venue, you have to wait in a long line that winds back and forth until you reach a bag check and pat down area. While walking through the line, everyone high fives and celebrates the first day of Forest. Inside there are seven different stages. Three big ones and four small ones. Two of the smaller stages are inside the actual forest. When we first showed up we went past the first stage to the second one called Ranch Arena and I got to see my very first EDM concert.

 The artist was named Galantis and he was pretty good, but not my favorite. Afterwards we headed through the Forest and looked at all the cool things in there as we made our way back to Sherwood Court which is another one of the bigger stages. Mr. Carmack was playing back there and he had some pretty good songs, and some of them I have on my SoundCloud. We were just wasting time until the main event for the day was on. So after a while we headed back to Ranch Arena to listen to Borgeous for a bit until, one of my favorite artists, Shpongle played. Shpongle has a weird, trippy sound. The type of music you would see some people take acid to. I, personally, do not do drugs or drink, but I do enjoy Shpongle’s music because it’s so interesting. After Shpongle, Odesza was due up. Odesza is a music group of two brothers that DJ and play the drums. They have a lot of cool, chiller music that you could lay out in a hammock and just star gaze to. I really enjoyed their set they played and still enjoy driving around listening to some Odesza.

So after they were done, it was almost midnight and Matt and I were really tired. The first day is usually the worst for trying to stay up for all the concerts. So he and I headed back to camp and got ready for bed. Personally, it was kind of hard falling asleep that night because at our campsite you can still hear the first stage, Trip-O-Lee. Eventually I drifted off into a deep sleep until, of course, 9 a.m. the next morning. Unfortunately, that story is for my next blog post.

Inside The EDM Mind

Why did I choose EDM music? It has been a major factor in my life for the past year or so. I never really saw the entire beauty of it until my brother, Matt, took me to a festival here in Michigan called Electric Forest. The festival itself is more widely known than I thought it would be.

This genre of music has blown up the past couple of years and has really blossomed. It has become very influential on modern day music industries. It is more than just rappers that you can’t even understand what they are saying. The industry has a brand new type of talent. It still involves some of the jazz type instruments, the flute, trumpet, and saxophone. It also involves some percussion, there are many artists that are really good drummers as well. There is so much talent that is involved with the making of EDM music. So, time to get back on track with the reasoning for EDM music being my choice for this blog. I have really gotten into mixing music and taking my favorite songs and making a mix of them. I just recently made my first mix that I posted on SoundCloud and to my surprise I had gotten five likes in the first day. That doesn’t sound like much, but to someone who posted their first mix ever getting almost immediate attention for it feels amazing. It lets me know that there are other people out there who appreciate my taste of music and the way I put different pieces together.

Whenever I am in the car I have SoundCloud up on my phone playing my playlist of my favorite EDM songs through the stereo. Listening to the music in my car, blasting it with my nice speakers where I can feel the bass, is so much fun. However, being at a festival where there are forty thousand plus people all waiting for that one artist to step on stage so they can completely blow your mind with their creativity is one moment you will never forget. The risers, the drops, the waves of bass that make you feel your hairs vibrate.

All of that is one experience that I will cherish and hope to be a part of again. To whoever is reading this, if you are into or get into EDM music in the future and have the chance to go to any festival, I want to tell you that it is a life changing event. Going to Electric Forest this past year has turned me into that modern day hippie kind of guy. I still have my old self, the more stay at home and play games or go play sports guy, but if I get a chance to go see some of my favorite artists in concert, I will take that opportunity in a heartbeat. So, to basically sum up why I chose EDM as my blog, I have always enjoyed listening to this genre, I really enjoy making my own mixes, and lastly, I just recently got into going to festivals and they have forever changed my life.