Artist Interviews

Artist Stories: simondrago

This week we had an opportunity to catch up with Simon Freston, also known as, simondrago. We asked him to tell us about his release “Get It On” and to show us how Splice fits into his production workflow.

What inspired you to share this track with the Splice community?

I think Splice is an awesome way for musicians to collaborate and share music. I haven’t seen that many festival or big room trap songs on Splice so I thought it would be a good project to share to help other people write in this style.
Tell us about your approach to writing and production. Any favorite sample packs or plugins?
 Ableton Project
I always follow the same steps when producing. Start with a catchy melody, then add a bass line, then drums. Once these three elements are working well together the rest is just a case of arranging, automating and adding extra melodic elements. I try to keep things very simple so I use Maschine for drums, Sylenth and Massive for synths, and Ableton for all the effects and mastering. I think there are loads of great sample packs out now, I really like the packs by Cr2 records and Sample Magic.

You’re primarily a Ableton Live user. What is it about Live that makes it your DAW of choice?

I use Ableton and I think its the most intuitive of all the DAWs for dance music. The factory effects are very powerful and I love how you can easily save all the files within one project file.

How has Splice had an impact on your production process or workflow?

Studio

Splice has helped me organize my projects and forced me to keep things simple. I have tried to download other users’ projects in the past only to find that I don’t have all the plugins or that the project is a bit of a mess with audio files all over the place. I try to clearly label the structure of all my songs and group channels. I also try to keep the project file very small meaning I have to be quite strict about which element is important and to include.

What are your influences at the moment?

Right now I’m interested in trap although I also fancy hip hop and deep house. I’m currently focusing on getting big trap drops while keeping things melodic. A couple of producers I like at the moment are Nghtmare, Jauz, and Marshmello.

You’ve had quite a few users in the community Splice the project file for “Get It On” – what do you hope that they’ll do with it?

I hope they can use the project to enhance their own productions or to remix it and come up with something interesting.

Where do you think that you music is headed next? 

I live in Thailand at the moment so I’m working on tracks with a few Thai rappers, as for Splice I am gonna upload a deep house song called ‘Destroy the Party’ and another trap song called ‘Point and Shoot’ in the next couple of days.
We’d like to thank Simon  for taking the time to chat with us and for offering us some insight into his process. We’re looking forward to hearing many more tracks from him! Be sure to keep an eye on his Splice profile at simondrago for all of his latest projects and upcoming releases.

May 18, 2016

Reuben Raman Product Marketing Manager at Splice