My main influences at the moment are mostly dance music, such as garage, house, techno & breaks. Somehow I think dance music was injected into my soul 14/15 years ago, but I've yet to harness the true idiotic power of this disability
Right now I'm getting a lot of enjoyment & satisfaction from programming the basic groove of a track on the Elektron MachineDrum. I'll often include a baseline or reference to one in this initial groove/sound creation.
The MachineDrum is just amazing for fast step sequencing. With 16 parts, global & per part shuffle, live mutes, advanced parameter locks including the ability to slide between several locked parameters etc etc etc. It's the best hardware drum machine ever made & with the sort of synth & bass tones it's capable of, it's just a stunningly inspirational start point for making dance music & electronic beats.
Beyond that, a good start point for me is chopping my own breaks into varying sized loops for further mangling elsewhere.
On the occassions when I've got a decent vibe going, I'll often play with synths bouncing around the groove, but as I like the minimal approach to electronic music, I usually end up ditching standard sounding synth patches (familiar sounding) in favour of odd blips, bleeps, weird noise & more bass.
I get so pissed off at the TV being so important to others around me, that it inspires me to make music or even just start a groove.
It won't be too long before we're all jacked in & our creativity is sucked into cyberspace for a price (call it work)
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Shroomz on 2006-05-23 04:30 ]</font>