Dance D.I.Y. For Beginners

The dance revolution, and the strong DIY ethic that it has engendered, have largely been fuelled by advances in digital technology and easier access to home recording equipment. Many successful artists operating in the dance arena today started out experimenting with basic keyboard/drum machine and home computer set-ups, before upgrading to more advanced equipment.

Alan O'Boyle is the driving force behind Dublin dance outfit dEcal whose most recent album Lo-lite impressed many. He's a firm believer in the DIY philosophy as a starting point - and that means getting your own studio set-up together. Obviously if you have the cash to go for a completely pristine state-of-the-art room, you can do that - but it isn't essential. On occasion, there's good second-hand gear knocking about that you can get your hands on.

"Get Buy And Sell regularly for about six months," Alan says. "You can pick up some amazing stuff that way without breaking the bank. A Roland MC303 which is a cross between a drum machine and a keyboard can be had for about £450 second-hand. You can do a lot of stuff with just a basic tape recorder too. The early Prodigy and Bomb The Bass stuff was just tape loops."

He also advises anyone starting out to keep things as simple as possible. "Make music from as little equipment as you can," he advises, "the most important thing is the sound. Massive Attack are a perfect example of an act who keep things relatively simple and achieve brilliant results.

So what kind of home studio should someone who's starting out go for?

"It all depends on what kind of sound you`re going after," he reflects. "We did a complete album once on a Commodore Amiga computer. We just sampled stuff off records, put it all together and it sounded great. And they're ridiculously cheap - you can pick one up for £80 second-hand, and you can get programmes such as Octamed, that let you sample and sequence everything and you can even add effects to your samples. It's really powerful. You can use your Amiga to MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) - sequence drums for example. You can get more or less the same software for home PCs as well."

There is often an understandable impatience among younger musicians and DJs to get on with it - but Alan cautions against going too fast, too soon. In particular he suggests that it's a mistake for the newcomer to home recording to purchase too many different pieces of equipment together.

"Get just one thing at a time, whatever it is," he urges. "There's no point in buying tons of new stuff at the same time. It'll take six months to get used to all the pre-sets for a start. If you have them all the same day you'll end up getting confused."

One source of new software that is becoming increasingly important for the dance practitioner is the World Wide Web. According to O'Boyle it is a handy source of ideas, especially for the newcomer. "Future Music magazine lists loads of web sites as well as giving out sample CDs every month and they do retro reviews of older gear. It's brilliant for people who are starting off and the web sites can come in handy.

"For example, a computer simulation of a Roland 808 drum machine can be downloaded (from http://www.propellorheads.se) It's also got two Roland TB303s which are kind of analogue bass keyboards. It only takes up about 2mgs of disc space, though the downloaded version won't let you save anything digitally."

Finally, O'Boyle warns those beginning in the dance world against getting caught up too much in the rapidly changing fashions that the music seems to thrive on.

"The truth is there hasn't been all that much of a change over the years," he says. "Techno and House have always stayed popular despite all the new styles that seem to come and go, such as drum `n' bass and big beat. So stick with the classic sounds and you won't go too far wrong."

• dEcal will be holding a workshop in MIDI technology on the 28th of August At the City Arts Centre Moss St Dublin.