EDM Voice Work
During the pandemic, among my other projects I hired a voice coach to help me with speaking, breathing and singing. This was all to be able to control my voice a little better for every day and public speaking mostly. This was in 2020 when I worked at ASML and a colleague of mine was managing his friend’s studio in Eindhoven, as well as using it do do some of his own work as an EDM and house DJ. He’d heard my voice and thought that it might be good for some of the type of tracks his friend produced, so I went down to the studio and worked with Sjoerd, one of the two brothers known collectively as Showtek. We worked on three tracks where I did the voice and rewrote some lyrics to go better with my voice and cadence. I also did an advert for another company and voiced the inPhocal company movie at about the same time, writing the full script and storyboard for it. I made tracks for Skink Records, a record company owned by the Showtek duo.
Watch the inPhocal Company Movie 2020 to learn about our vision.
The Studio and the creator
I worked with Sjoerd over a couple of weeks in total as ideas and opportunities came up that fitted with both our schedules. I still worked at ASML and he was living between the Netherlands and Canada, having come home for a minor knee surgery if I recall correctly. He and his brother started in a studio in a small town south of Eindhoven, next door to the village I lived in when first arriving. From there the two had made it to global fame so I came to find out. When I worked with Sjoerd and watched him work, the pleasure he took in his work and the amount of time he put in, staying in the studio late into the night gave me a big clue into how he had become successful in the first place and why they maintain their success. He experimented with a lot of tracks, some of which were great and might never be released if there was something else that his intuition told him could fit the zeitgeist better. This opportunity was due to the random fact I work with his old friend and DJ buddy, and yet I got to see a master at work.
The studio itself was impressive and there were three or four recording rooms. The main studio pictured above was very well done, with a quality of sound proofing I'd yet to experience to that point in my life. The image below is of the studio's office and some of the multiple plaques won as Showtek. A quote below on mastery.
“If you know the way broadly you will see it in everything.” ― Miyamoto Musashi
