25 Tracks in 25 Days (Part 1)

In January 2025, I produced 25 tracks in 25 days = 25/25/25

This essay part 1 of a two-part series about this project:

1. [This post] An in-depth account of the what/why/how of this project
2. [Coming soon] A technical overview of my biggest learnings

I hope you’ll enjoy it ✌️

The What, Why, How of 25/25/25

Let's take it step by step.

What: Produce 25 Tracks in 25 Days

As the end of 2024 rolled around, I tried to figure out what to do next.

For reasons that I cannot disclose yet (but certainly will in a future essay), I was blocked from working on entrepreneurial ideas - my usual bread and butter. So, I turned to one of my favorite creative outlets: Music

The goal for January was simple: Produce and publish a track for each day of the month.

You can listen to all of the tracks here 👇 (maybe even while reading this essay)

The tracks cover styles from jazz to techno - and tons of styles in between.

Why: Inch Towards My Personal Style

Music has always been part of my life:

• My dad is a conductor and composer.
• When I was seven years old, I joined the Vienna Conservatory of Music to train in their Solo Violin program under Professor Dora Schwarzberg. I dropped out at age 14 because I was frankly not as talented as some of the other kids in the cohort and I couldn’t see myself making a career in classical music. I still stand by that decision.
• After high school, I dove head deep into electronic music and started DJing. This led to a residency at the Humboldthain Club in Berlin and even some international gigs in Istanbul, New York, and San Francisco.
• In 2020, I started writing my own music and produced a film score for my friend’s feature-length documentary.

I wanted to improve my production skills but life got in the way. Until now.

With this January’25 project, I had the following objectives:

1. Master Ableton Live: I had previously produced with Apple’s Logic Pro production software and wanted to switch onto the standard production software for electronic music.
2. Improve My Workflow: Create a reusable template. Figure out which elements I need in my productions. Understand out how I want to architect the signal routing in my tracks.
3. Find My Sound: Develop a better understanding of what I like and don’t like. Find and/or create signature sounds that can be reused in future productions.

The only thing left to do was to do the actual thing.

How: Eat, Sleep, Produce, Repeat

Honestly, the how was straight forward. I had one rule: Each day, I had to create something, and then share it with a couple of my friends. This helped me stay accountable.

At this point, I have to give a massive shout-out to my friends and fam who supported me along this journey:

• My wife Sara (aka Chinita Mami)
• My Berlin crew Bore (aka Ritual Cycles) & Davide (aka Surt)
• My other Berlin homie Lukas (aka Fermat)
• My Hamburg crew Finn and Kilian (aka KIÐ IN ARMS)
• My vocalist friend Iva (aka Diva International)
• and many more…

One thing I can say for sure is that working on music production for 25 days straight is really taxing.

There were many moments throughout the month where I considered stopping the project because it was getting too straining. Mentally, physically, and creatively.

But then there were messages like these that helped me to keep the ball rolling.

Surprisingly, my best output came right after moments of doubt. Not sure if this a Creative Law of sorts but that's the way it was 🤷‍♂️

All tracks had to go through the various steps of a production (ideation; composition; instrumentation; arrangement; mixing; automation; didn't really do mastering; publishing).

I didn’t have a set schedule. It highly depended on what else I had going on that day (e.g. friends visiting; trips to IKEA; etc.)

Most of the days though, I would start producing in the afternoon and struggle as long as was needed until I could render the track and upload it to Soundcloud.

The fastest production time start-to-finish was an hour. The longest was 14 hours. Most would fall somewhere in between.

My only wish: Having had a better chair than that little wooden Ikea fold-up one.

Q&A: You Ask, I Answer

My friend Lukas asked me a few questions that I might answer publicly.

Q: Which track is your personal favorite?

I like track 21 “RRosebud” the most.

Reason #1: End-to-end, it's my best-produced track.

Best arrangement, best instrumentation, best balance.

Reason #2: It’s the most interesting/challenging track production-technique-wise.

All sounds are made from 3 audio files:

1. 1 kick sample
2. 1 breakbeat sample that I chopped up and turned into all percussive elements
3. 1 vocal stem

Big shoutout to Bore for (a) providing me with his Rhythm Research sample pack for this track and (b) for pointing me to oklou’s album stems that I used for the vocals.

Reason #3: Vibe-wise I like it the most because - if you listen closely - you’ll notice that the vocals are a bit off-tilt up until the final drop.

Right at this drop, the vocals click in place and it carries and pushes the song with new energy until the very end. It has a nice resolution to it.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Q: Which “unlocks” did you have at which track?

For this, I think it’s easiest to list all tracks and write a few shorthand words/keywords of what I learned. I’ll highlight the main unlocks.

1. Athena Sky: construction of Melodic House tracks; repetitive melodic elements; how to build white noise risers.
2. Hinyeah: construction of Afro House/Tech tracks; vocal processing; Beat the Bass synth for low-end/sub bass; build-up energy (FX; volume auto; arrangement)
3. Hubava: collab with a vocal artist (via whatsapp voice memo); slow tempo and embracing the weird; sample chops between VOX for more interesting arrangement
4. Bossa Jam: bossa nova drum programming; ∂ arpeggiator rates for different instruments (guitar & upright bass); arp rate automation in breaks; horn samples
5. Fourmat: creating a track with only four elements (kick; clap; snare; synth) and create movement/variance through FX/mixer automation; polymeter concept; noise & distortion risers; LFO everything
6. Flatline: quick production due to time constraint; sampling rate issues (→ turns out it’s a playback issue on MacOS preview)
7. Feeling Loved: pop vocal sample; vocal processing chain and airy-ness; bass line is boring 🥱; instrumentation getting more interesting; beat repeat plugin on PERC
8. Dub Dub: horrible low end 🫤 → really didn’t like it; PERC automation via microfillz/beatrepeat & LFOs; chord-writing + vocal sampling; low point #1 😭
9. Ripni Kalinke: polyrhythm the living Christ out of everything (2 different off-kick toms; PERC; VOX + VOX_support); flute/sax sample; figured out the groove
10. Signal: figured out the right low-pass setting on Ableton compressor for kick/bass sidechain; figured out the low-end; bass space after kick transient
11. Foul Play: inherited low-end; v1 of my personal template → I cannot stress how much of an unlock this was ⚠️ (this started saving me 1-2 hours of signal routing work on every track); buildup automation; groovy drop
12. Clip: construction of a Hip Hop beat/track; samples, samples, samples; chord magic
13. Heavy Rain: ambient track; quick and dirty production; inspired by the rain on that day; percussive elements are based on a rain recording from that day
14. Layers: synth automation (cutoff frequency; resonance; etc.); layers, layers, layers; drop not as smooth 👎; low point #2 😭
15. safs2: solid low end; samples from Bore; polyrhythmic build
16. 💛 Gold: my breakthrough song → something changed with this track; bass line automation w/ Sting 64! device; learned from a fantastic tutorial by Westend; nail 2-bar loop → nail 4-bar loop → start arranging; Bass Kleph's WashOut! plugin on PERC builds & breaks
17. 💛 Dream: samples + percussive magic; Finn & Lukas gave thumbs up; Finn: “something started to click, right?!”; arrangement much more organic; instrumentation more interesting
18. 💛 Perc Dance: percussive magic; simple but dope 👍
19. 💛 Tygers: Bore samples; Kilian liked the arrangement; my own vocal sample before the drop
20. 💛 Nanza: extremely weird and wonky instrumentation; my friend who plays world & afro music liked it a lot
21. 💛 RRosebud: see my comments above; this is my favorite track and I think it was the “top production output” of this month
22. Stress: time constraint since we started having guests from this day onwards and my schedule was way less flexible
23. Calma: very simple call & response arrangement; made in one hour
24. Saw: built my own Justice-style saw synth
25. Ping: cerative juices ran out and I wanted to bring this project to an end; I learned that it’s ok to stop

I believe that tracks 16-21 brought the biggest unlocks.

I felt it and other people heard it. Not sure what happened but my guess is that quantity eventually produced emergent quality.

Q: Which track is the most popular?

As of me writing this post on 2/4/2025, Track 11 (Foul Play) has 900+ plays on Soundcloud. This makes it the most listened song of this series (yet). My guess is that it also has something to do with Soundcloud's algorithm and how it recommends certain tracks to its users.

My bigger takeaway is that different people have different tastes. Some like slower and more melodic tracks. Others prefer hard boom boom stuff.

I'm excited to try the various tracks in my upcoming DJ sets.

I hope all of this gave you a peek behind the curtain.

In Part 2 (coming soon) of this series, I'll go into all the technical details of my production process and methods:

• My Production Template
• Signal Routing
• Modulation of Parameters
• etc.

If you liked this essay, please say hi to me. Even if you didn't like it, say hi... let's be homies.

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