Years & Years
EMRE TÜRKMEN CREATING BEATS & DRUMBRUTE IMPACT
We caught up with one of our idols, songwriter and producer Emre Türkmen of the British synth-pop act Years & Years, to chat about his songwriting methods and inspiration. Sometimes, it can all start with a beat...
"I got into music through The Beatles and then I wanted to become a guitar player, so I bought myself a Les Paul knockoff which weighed a ton, and started learning guitar. I learned the Nirvana MTV Unplugged album back to front."
"I just made music in my room. I was too shy, but that meant that I had to learn how to do everything myself, so by the time I got to a place where I was like ‘I’m getting bored, I want to do something with other people,’ I was sort of ready."
Don't Panic
"I generally start with beats, I could sit around making beats all day.""
While software instruments can give you almost unlimited choice and flexibility with your sound, sometimes the overwhelming number of options can stifle your creativity. This is where hardware can really help. An analog instrument like DrumBrute Impact gives its users a unique “voice” and soundset, and just enough limitations to keep you creative, and not endlessly searching for the right sound. When DrumBrute Impact was released, one if its first adopters was Emre: a true pioneer!
"You can audition a kick sample for 5 hours instead of writing a song. When you have a DrumBrute Impact you’ll be surprised by how much variation and opportunity you have. You’ll be ten times more creative than if you have ten times more options."
"DrumBrute Impact has a monster kick!""
DrumBrute Impact features 10 high-energy sounds, a tasty drum-optimized distortion on the master bus to add some grungy crunch, and a seriously powerful sequencer that makes complex, polyrhythmic patterns as easy as A-B-C.
"The cool thing is you can also enter your steps unquantized. The distortion is just great!” If you want to have all the options, you can; feed the outputs separately through their own external effects."
All for you
We were incredibly grateful to chat with Emre, and wondered if he had any parting advice to musicians out there who are struggling to find, or keep their musical inspiration going.
"Doing something is better than thinking about ‘what’s the right thing to do,’ because coming up with ideas isn’t easy, but that’s the fun bit. But finishing stuff is the difficult part, and what you’ll find is if you finish things you’ll be absolutely shocked as to where it leads. Even if it’s something I think Years & Years won’t like, I finish it.
A) You’ll feel better.
B) You’ll likely end up with something that’s great.
C) You’ll end up learning something."
"If I was going to have a t-shirt with a slogan about recording, it would be ‘FINISH IT."
Years & Years are currently on their Palo Santo 2018-19 World Tour, so be sure to catch them in a city near you!
If you’d like to find out more about Emre’s latest beat-making flame, check out our dedicated DrumBrute Impact page.