Xavier Capdepon is a native of the Dominican Republic. He was born in Santo Domingo. His father is Dominican and his mother Jamaican. Xavier was the middle child out of seven children. The entire family was an extremely talented musical family from the beginning. There was not much in their house growing up other than musical instruments and an old record player. Xavier’s parents could not afford schooling, so the kids spent their time at home listening to old records and playing music. Music is how the family would bond, and they became quite good after years of playing around on various instruments around the house.
They were known in their small neighborhood for playing music. Neighbors from blocks away would sometimes come and listen to the children play. The siblings would also occasionally play in town squares to make a little extra cash to feed the family. Xavier Capdepon was a little more social than the rest. He would make friends with other local artist and DJs around the city. Eventually, Xavier was invited to the local studios to try his hand at mixing songs. Xavier immediately fell in love with the digital feel of music and began playing around town sets when he was 14 years old.
Xavier Capdepon became fairly well known in the Santo Domingo DJ community, as him and his DJ troupe would play frequently at the biggest nightclubs and venues in the area. Eventually, Xavier’s interest expanded towards more than just mixing. He wanted to learn how to create his own music. His DJ friends told him to buy a music production software, Ableton Live, if he really wanted to pursue making music as a career. Xavier bought the software when he was 16 and never turned back. Sound engineering and music quality became Xavier’s new passion in the scope of music.
Xavier Capdepon moved to New York City when he was 21 years old. His mother’s sister, lived in Queens and allowed for Xavier to stay with her until he was able to move out and afford his own place. Today, Xavier is still living in Queens and studying music production. He plays DJ sets all around the city, and focuses on learning everything that he can about music production in his free time. This blog will be devoted to tips and tricks in music production, as well as projects that Xavier Capdepon has created himself. Xavier will post tutorials as to how to engineer certain sounds and combine them with other sounds.
Xavier’s music taste is heading towards the electronic dance music realm as technology and digital production software such as Ableton guide the music industry towards electronic dance music. He has influences in Latin and Jamaican music coming from his background.
Xavier Capdepon Production Update:
Xavier Capdepon started his music production with ableton live because he loved the interface and thought that his live performances really improved with ableton’s looping feature. Xavier has been playing and producing music with a lot of different people that he’s met up with in NYC who are interested in pursuing the same career path. He has found that a lot of producers like ableton for creativity purposes, remixes, and live shows; but when it comes down to production quality, they prefer logic X.
What logic X lacks that ableton excels in is a live performance feature. Ableton’s session view allows for a producer to compile infinite loops and play them at their leisure throughout a song. Logic X sound quality simply sounds better. Some producers ever suggest starting out in ableton, gather loops and arrange them in the desired order, then take those stems and transfer them to Logic X for mastering.
Producers like Deadmau5 are super focused on live sound quality, as it is definitely an area of improvement in the music industry. Sounds change according to the venue that you play in as well as the speakers that you play them out of. What Deadmau5 is focusing on is to create sounds that are sonically optimized for any room and coming out of any speaker. While this is optimal, there are multiple factors that go into a sound, and creating a space to fit around the sound is a whole other level of music production.
Xavier Capdepon is a student of music. Everyday, he is keeping up with his music production blogs as well as experimenting with sound design and techniques. He has recently ReWired his ableton live with his Logic X to create melodies and loops in ableton, and have them come out in Logic for final mastering purposes.
Xavier loves to talk music production strategy and techniques, so if anyone feels like talking shop, please go to his contact page and send him an email. Along with reading blogs and experimenting himself, he feels like peer to peer discussion is one of the best ways to become a better music producer.
Copyright: Xavier Capdepon
