Music Producer — If It Doesn't Exist, Make It Yourself
SoundCloud: Electronic Cat Foundation · SW0T
Spotify: Electronic Cat Foundation
PRE — Idea · Setup · Build
Goal: Become a music producer. Make the music I love, because the world stopped making it.
I've been in electronic music since the beginning. Blue Monday. Prodigy. Chemical Brothers. The KLF. 2 Unlimited. I was there when it started. Went to raves through the 1990s. Collected over 1,000 vinyl records. Did my own DJ mixes. Lived inside Ministry of Sound compilations. Emotional, melodic trance music was my world.
Then came the golden era. Avicii. Swedish House Mafia. Melodic, creative, emotional, beautiful. I followed Avicii's career from his early YouTube videos — he was something like a producer idol. Made it a tradition to fly to Ibiza every year on my birthday. Ushuaia. The works.
And then it disappeared. The melodic stuff either became pop music (Calvin Harris selling out to radio) or devolved into Bigroom noise. The emotional core was gone. Nobody was making what I wanted to hear anymore.
So: if it doesn't exist, I have to make it myself. The pattern continues.
Signed up at Point Blank London music school for a music producer course. Bought a keyboard. Studio monitors. A proper studio desk. Cleared space in my home. Added acoustic absorbers, bass traps, DSP room optimization. Basically built a home studio from scratch.
I had some foundation: played organ and piano as a child, had perfect pitch when I was younger, knew music theory. But production is a different beast. Learned Ableton. Logic Pro X. Took multiple courses (finished few — the pattern continues). Bought sample packs for thousands of euros. Loved the ones with ambient sounds and ear candy — texture, atmosphere, the stuff between the beats.
Two artist projects emerged:
1. Master Seka → SW0T — Trance, 4/4, energy, emotional, Avicii-style. Started as "Master Seka" (named after the Amiga assembler — because of course it was), later renamed to SW0T. (The name is a joke nobody ever got.)
2. Electronic Cat Foundation (ECF) — Old school vibes. Prodigy. Leftfield. Massive Attack. Breakbeats, moody chords, nice vocals. Found a local singer and produced songs together.
Stack:
- Ableton Live, Logic Pro X
- Point Blank London (online music production courses)
- Keyboard, sample libraries, thousands in sample packs
- Studio monitors: upgraded path ending at Neumann KH310
- Room treatment: acoustic absorbers, bass traps, DSP
- Headphones: the escalation that would later birth a DAC
(HD650 → AKG K812 → HD800, DT770, DT1990,
LCD-i4, Audeze LCD-X, LCD-4z, and more)
- Mastering engineer (for ECF — the reason the released
tracks don't sound like garbage)
The Highlights
KLASSIK RADIO — "NIGHTFLIGHT": The Electronic Cat Foundation made it onto Klassik Radio's "Nightflight" show, curated by DJ Nartak. The first time I heard my own music on the radio — goosebumps. Actual, real goosebumps. That moment alone was worth every euro spent on sample packs and courses.
SPOTIFY + SOUNDCLOUD: ECF tracks are on Spotify and SoundCloud. Published. Real. Streams from actual strangers. I still listen to some of those tracks occasionally. The mastering engineer deserves credit — he took my rough mixes and made them sound like proper releases.
THE DÜSSELDORF DJ GIG: Had a DJ gig at a Beerfest-style event in Düsseldorf. My grand plan: slowly ramp up the energy over the set, building from chill to 128 BPM euphoria. In theory, beautiful. In practice: by the time I finally reached the energy peak, people were already annoyed, and one person literally asked me to play something slower. Lesson learned: Beerfest crowds want Schlager, not progressive energy curves.
THE HEADPHONE SPIRAL: The pursuit of better monitoring headphones spiraled into a full audiophile obsession: Sennheiser HD650, AKG K812, HD800, Beyerdynamic DT770, DT1990, Audeze LCD-i4, LCD-X, LCD-4z... each one revealing flaws in the previous one. Each one making me more obsessive about sound quality.
This is the direct prequel to ChordKiller. The headphone collection demanded better amplification. Better amplification demanded a better DAC. A better DAC demanded building one from scratch on an FPGA. The rabbit hole has no bottom.
(See: ChordKiller — where the headphone obsession ends up.)
The Discography
SW0T — 7 tracks · 169 followers
Melodic trance, progressive house, 4/4 energy.
Hamburg, Germany.
1. Käthe (Demo Cut) Progressive Trance
Released on Loudnuff Records.
2. Beauty Within (Original Mix) Deep Trance
4,741 plays. The big one.
3. Beachboy (Instrumental Mix) House
1,758 plays. Summer vibes.
4. Stadiumx - Mombasa (Sw0t Remix) Dance & EDM
5. Journey feat. Lilian (Original Mix) House
6. Now (Original Mix) Trance
7. Joachim Garraud & Chris Willis -
Don't Cry (Sw0t Remix) House
Bio: "Producer of melodic electronic dance music.
Piano addict. Melody junkie. Genuine music nerd."
ELECTRONIC CAT FOUNDATION — 13 tracks · 71 followers
Downtempo, breakbeat, electronica. Moody, melodic, vocal.
Paphos, Cyprus.
1. Golden Cage (Original Mix) Downtempo
2. Feelin' Lost Downtempo
3. For Otto and Clyde (R.I.P.) Downtempo
4. Close to me (feat. Jute) Downtempo
7,492 plays. The sleeper hit. Jute on vocals.
5. Prime (Introducing Jute) Breakbeat
6. Thoughts (ft. vocals from Keti) Electronica
7. David Guetta - Hey Mama
(ECF Back To The Oldskool Remix) Breakbeat
8. Piano In Love Downtempo
9. Hope Downtempo
10. Moon Downtempo
11. Sadness Pt. 1 Downtempo
494 plays. The emotional gut-punch.
12. Mandala Downtempo
13. Blue J Downtempo
Bio: "Downtempo. Electronica. Melodic. Emotional. Deep.
Dark. Happy. Smart. Awesome. Enjoy the ride!"
Combined: 20 tracks across two aliases. ~17,000 total
plays. One Klassik Radio feature. One Loudnuff Records
release. Zero marketing budget. All organic.
POST — Learnings · Afterthoughts · Timeline
What happened:
I figured out how music works. Track structures. Chord progressions. Melody writing. Sound design. The creative 10% of music production — the part where you have an idea, hear it in your head, and bring it to life.
Then I hit the other 90%.
Mixing. Polishing a high hat for two hours. "Carving out space" for a lead synth in the frequency spectrum. EQ cuts at 2.4kHz because the vocal and the pad are fighting. Sidechain compression. Bus processing. Gain staging. The tedious, surgical, deeply technical work of making a track sound like a finished record instead of a bedroom demo.
I hated it. My perfectionism made it worse — I couldn't let go of a mix that wasn't right, but I also couldn't spend 40 hours polishing something I'd composed in 2. The mastering engineer saved the ECF tracks. Without him, nothing would have been released at all.
The composing was magic. The mixing was misery. And mixing is 90% of the job. So I stopped.
Learnings:
- The creative part of music production (composing, sound
design, arrangement) is 10% of the work. The other 90%
is mixing and polishing. You have to love the 90% to
survive as a producer. I loved the 10%.
- Hearing your own music on the radio is one of the most
surreal experiences possible. Worth the entire journey
just for that moment.
- DJ energy management at a Beerfest: read the room, not
your tracklist. Some crowds want Schlager at 100 BPM,
not a progressive trance build.
- The audiophile rabbit hole that started with studio
monitoring headphones eventually led to building a DAC
on an FPGA. One obsession is just the bootstrap for the
next one.
- 1,000+ vinyl records, Point Blank London, Neumann KH310s,
Audeze LCD-4z, thousands in sample packs — the financial
commitment to "figuring it out" is always significant.
The learning is always worth it. The money is never
recovered.
- Avicii was right. Melodic, emotional, creative electronic
music is the highest form of the genre. The world lost
something when it chose Bigroom over beauty.
Timeline:
- 1990s: Raving. Vinyl collecting. 1,000+ records. Ministry
of Sound era. The foundation.
- 2000s-2010s: Avicii, Swedish House Mafia. Peak emotional
electronic music. Annual Ibiza birthday trips. Ushuaia.
- ~2015: The music I love disappears. Signed up at Point
Blank London. Built the home studio. The mission begins.
- 2016-2017: SW0T (trance) and Electronic Cat Foundation
(breakbeat/downtempo) born. Production, vocals, releases.
- 2017: ECF on Klassik Radio "Nightflight" (DJ Nartak).
Goosebumps.
- 2017: DJ gig in Düsseldorf. The Beerfest incident.
- 2017-2018: Released tracks on Spotify and SoundCloud.
Mastering engineer saves the day.
- 2018+: Interest fading. Mixing is hell. The headphone
collection keeps growing though. That part never stops.
- 2025: The headphones demand a better DAC. ChordKiller
is born. The music producer era feeds the next obsession.
Status: Retired from production. The tracks live on Spotify
and SoundCloud. The Neumann KH310s were sold after years of
collecting dust. The headphone collection is still growing.
The 1,000+ vinyl records were sold to a local collector
before the move to Cyprus — heavy heart, heavier boxes.
The 1990s were better.
