The Producertech community has been growing steadily over the last few years, and we’re thrilled to see new faces popping up in our forum, in our remix competitions and our various other assignments. We have a wide range of budding producers from all over the world, and it’s always a pleasure to see familiar names popping up, coming back to try their luck in our prize-winning assignments.
If you'd like to join our community, get access to hundreds of hours of content, and participate in our competitions, then you can become an All-Access Member.
We therefore thought it was high time we reached out to our community and got to know them better. ‘Meet the Members’ is a new series from Producertech, via the medium of interviews and conversations conducted by our Head Tutor Rob (and potentially other tutors in the future), where we can get to the root of our community member’s musical ideas, their background and where they’re heading next! It’s always a pleasure to see the progress our members have made over time.
So we kicked proceedings off with our recent Henge Remix Competition winner Jez Harris. Jez discussed his musical roots, his journey so far with production and his experience of getting involved in Producertech competitions!
Jez is currently a member of Lazy Susan, a Brighton-based DJ collective - vinyl only- that plays House & Disco shows around the city and has a residency on Code South - one of the South Coast’s most prestigious independent stations.
Jez, like many other dance aficionados, started his musical journey not twiddling knobs and spinning vinyls, but on the strings of a guitar. Originating in a Rock band household, he naturally took up the world’s most popular instrument and ran with it. But an experience at Glasto in the early 90s introduced Jez to a new world - a world of breakbeats, arpeggiated synth lines and earth-shaking bass!
Having worked with computers professionally, Jez discovered Propellerhead Rebirth, an early software synth containing Roland 303 and 808 emulators, with additional 909 add ons available. This was the beginning of his electronic production journey - and leads us to this day.
Having experimented with Propellerhead’s DAW (now called Reason Studios), Jez eventually switched over to Ableton, having acquired a deal on their flagship MIDI controller: the Ableton Push.
A fantastic piece of hardware, granted, but not the easiest thing to just pick up and go, so Jez discovered Producertech, who have provided leading Ableton Push tutorials for years. He was impressed by the course, and has been a loyal PT fan ever since!
He’s entered 4 Remix competitions so far and has been shortlisted in each one, finally (and deservedly) winning our most recent competition. His first competition was remixing our tutor Ruckspin’s track ‘Over You’. Providing a bouncy house track, Jez’s inaugural entry impressed the judges and put him on the Producertech radar. He also provided a smooth, liquid-y D&B remix for Hello4AM’s ‘Somewhere With You’ which almost made it to the shortlist in that one.
Next up was ‘Ecstasy’, a track by Jafunk that Jez put a funky disco spin on, and there was a noted improvement in structure, progression and mixdown. He also premiered his bass playing skills, the first time he had used an instrument in his electronic music.
He credits these competitions as a way to focus in on skill building, and his Henge remix was a real sum of all the previous parts. In case you missed the livestream, both Rob and the Henge chaps were enthusiastically head bopping, and the scores reflected this - Jez’s remix was the highest scorer for both sets of judges. As Rob put it succinctly - a breaks banger can never go wrong!
So following on from these recent successes, Jez has highlighted what he wants his next steps to be in his musical journey. His bucket list includes releasing on vinyl, setting up a heavy disco record label with his collective, and to learn how to self master. All achievable and great goals!
If you'd like to join our community, get access to hundreds of hours of content, and participate in our competitions, then you can become an All-Access Member.