Interview with Giuseppe Ottaviani

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

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Grand welcome on Trance Hub, Giuseppe! The booklet on your album, ‘GO!’ showcases a very cool turbine engine of a plane. The title and the visual already gave us ideas on what we were going to go through in the album – a journey, perhaps?

Yes it’s a journey through the music and through my world. I tried to make a wide range of music to show to the people what’s my vision of music in general. It took over a year to get it finished and each single track tells a story of my life and is connected to a specific experience. Each track gives me a particular emotion and the goal was to share all those emotions with other people through this album.

After more than a month of your debut album release, which is the best compliment you’ve received on it, so far?

Not really a compliment, but I noticed that if you ask people which one is the favorite track on the album, everyone answers differently and tells a different track name. This is great for me because I reached my goal. The album includes more than just one genre and everyone can find something interesting in it.

Being Vandit’s blue-eyed boy, we’d love to know your thoughts on the label, people and what it means to you after your first’ever release on it?

It means everything for me. My journey started with them back in 2001 and I can’t see myself without all those guys. First of all Paul van Dyk always gave me a big support since the beginning and also the great job that all the guys at the Vandit office did so far really helped me to make my career. I couldn’t ask for more.

The world’s talking about your vocal bounty "Fallen" with Faith. Does this inspire you to make more vocal tracks in future, something other than your hi-energetic style?

Yes absolutely. "Fallen" was one of my first vocal experiments and I had so much fun working with vocalists so I will definitely make something more in the future. Don’t get me wrong, I will not move to only vocal tracks but I’ll keep my hi-energetic style on as always.

While producing, what are the key factors you keep in mind? It’s almost certain, you’d be very detailed on the break down and other parts of the tune. But what is it that makes a tune a true Giuseppe Ottaviani product?

The melody I guess. You know I come from classical music and it’s all about melody for me, it’s the part where I put more attention and that gives me the strongest emotions. I also use some of my typical sounds coming from keyboards that nobody else uses. That’s why when you hear my tracks you can always recognize elements that are strongly connected to my studio; it’s kind of a "signature".

How far would you agree with people who label you as a trance producer?

I agree, I mean why not? Mainly I’m a trance producer even if I always like to experiment with different things. My album ‘GO‘ proves this; there is not only trance on it in its strict meaning.

With production, comes DJing, or vice versa in some cases; it would be interesting to know how you juggle with your tour dates and production deadlines.

Sometimes it is not easy because traveling all around the world for my shows takes me out of the studio. For example I worked for over a year on the album because I didn’t have much time to spend in the studio. Sometimes it can be stressful but on the other hand traveling inspires me a lot helping me to make new productions. To respect all deadlines I have to plan them very well, despite that sometimes I have to work 24 hours to get a remix finished on time for example.

What do you do just before playing a set?

I like to stay on the stage watching the crowd. I enjoy the music being played from the DJ before me and I think about how to start or what to play and so on. Very normal things.

The production tools of producers cast a mysterious presence for the inquisitive ones. Some do so much with just software, and some like producing with mammoth setups. So, where do you think does the secret of hit tunes lie?

Besides the kind of gear that you use to make music the most important thing is the creativity that you put into your productions. Getting a good idea is the first thing but then you need to translate what you have in mind into a track using your gear trying to keep the quality as high as possible. It doesn’t make sense to make a good track, which is unplayable just because it sounds like a washing machine, and believe me sometime it happens. That’s why I always suggest to spend a decent amount of money for a good quality setup and to avoid producing with just free / cracked software on a laptop.

What drives you to produce a particular tune?

All life experiences; each track tells a story of my life and is connected to a specific experience. As I said traveling but also listening to the music in general really inspires me.

Majority of top DJs are supporting trance music. From analog sounds to the new digitized styles of music, do you think EDM has finally arrived to match the levels of other popular genres?

It depends what other genres you are talking about. If you mean popular music in general well I don’t think we can compare EDM with pop music at all.

Okay Giuseppe, what’s fresh in your music basket?

Right now I’m working on a couple of remixes which are very very good. I cannot tell you more at the moment so please check www.giuseppeottaviani.com for further news.

What’s Giuseppe’s future like? Are you concentrating on music, music and only music now?

I’m completely focused on music of course and I’m working to improve my live appearances as well with much more music. I’m also looking for new collaborations… so as I always say, the best is yet to come :)