Mitch
Walcott
It was the 4th of
July in 1994 around 4am that Mitch Walcott started writing his first
track. He had been going to nightclubs and buying electronic music for
a solid two years and was ready to create music of his own. Later that
summer, he met Josh Grubb, who was also looking to start producing his
own tracks.
During the fall of 1994 and the winter of 1995, Mitch and Josh began
working together on their first EP. They went to a studio several times
to record their tracks. This was before Pro Tools was readily
available. They had to record everything on a 16 track reel-to-reel
machine. The process was long and expensive, but the knowledge gained
from it was very good.
In January of 1995, Mitch began taking his first MIDI class at a
community college. This was a valuable learning experience for him.
Programs like Acid and FruityLoops were not around back then. Also, he
did not own a drum machine that had pre-programmed beats. Mitch learned
how to program his own percussion and melodies on a piece of software
named Trax, which is now available as Master Tracks Pro.
During his time at Central Michigan University in 1996 and 1997, he
took an additional MIDI class and two audio production classes. The
audio production classes gave him the knowledge to produce his own
tracks better.
Throughout 1994 to 2000, Mitch would write tracks and record the ones
that he liked the best. When the first Detroit Electronic Music
Festival (DEMF) happened in 2000, he became motivated to get his work
more widely heard.
A demo was sent in for DEMF 2001. Carl Craig was the artistic director
at the time. Carl liked what he heard and asked Mitch to perform on the
Underground Stage for an hour. Although the crowd was small during
Mitch’s performance, he gained experience in doing a live show. The
ironic thing was that this was his first live show ever and it happened
to be at the largest free electronic music festival in the world.
Needless to say, it was a great way to become known in the electronic
music community.
Jeff Mills was someone that Mitch admired very much. Mitch believed
that Jeff would relate to some tracks that dealt with outer space. In
2002, Jeff released Mitch’s debut album “Europa” on Tomorrow, a
sub-label of Axis Records. Mitch was very fortunate that his first
album was released on a well known record label. Around the same time,
Mitch also helped co-invent an analog synthesizer for the German
manufacturer, Vermona.
From 2002 to 2005, Mitch focused more on live shows and less on
recording. His thought was that each audience would experience his
music differently than anyone else, because it was not pre-recorded and
because the sound was being manipulated live. His current goal is to
travel to cities that he was never been to before in order to
experience the culture and let the people experience his music.