House Shoes - The Right Fit
Updated: Dec 29, 2021
Bread & Beats Music might be new to some of you. Music making isn’t new to us. That said though, making music as Bread & Beats, is new to us. When we decided to take a more assertive effort to share our music as artists, we initially wanted to take the “traditional” and “old-school” approach. At first, we thought that we could produce a demo so-to-speak, and then shop that demo to labels that seemed to fit us best. That’s what we did, but didn’t get the results we expected. We got better results! We got clear direction, peace of mind, and amazing support. Here’s how it all went down…
We have a lot of experience in music as DJ’s. We’ve been playing music professionally in venues all over the country for decades. The problem is, we’ve played Hip Hop, Downtempo, House Music, Jungle, Drum & Bass, and Trip Hop for all those decades. If we’re going to take the “traditional” route, with such a diverse array styles and influences, what should our demo sound like? You’d think that this was a question we would have asked ourselves. We didn’t. Our demo didn’t include all of those genres, but it definitely didn’t focus on one particular avenue either.
We decided to showcase our love for house music. But have you ever looked on a site like Beatport or Traxsource to see how many sub-genres of house music there are? We have. Our last count, said that there’s at least 16 different kinds of house music out there.
SIXTEEN!
When it comes to house music, our taste is pretty diverse in terms of sub-genre, but very specific in terms of feel. We like the funky stuff. We like the groovy stuff. We like the kind of stuff that our heroes and peers have been playing since the 90’s – guys like Mark Farina, DJ Sneak, Mousse T, Tony Humphries, Masters At Work, and so forth.
Our Demo...
When we took our shot at a house music demo, we didn’t aim at one specific sub-genre. We just made house music that we thought would rock a set that we would play. We made three tracks that felt like tracks that those guys might play. We made one type of song at one point, because it felt good at that time. The next track was different, because we were feeling a slightly different style at that point. Still, we felt like those tracks would mesh at different points of the same set. The same was true of the third track. It wasn’t like the others, but would be dope as an end-of-set type track. We put them all on the same EP, and sent them out to the labels we thought would be a fit.
That’s where we ran into a problem. We didn’t get any push back from some of the labels. People dug the tracks. The problem was, of the three, some labels felt that only one actually fit their style. We had put a jackin’ house track on the EP, a nu-disco type track on there, and a melodic-style deep house track. Some labels like the jackin’ track, not the others. The nu-disco track fit some labels, but not others. The issue was, there wasn’t a label we knew of (and we know a lot) that had the resources to back us, and were putting out that diverse array of sub-genres of house music.
We had a problem, and we had a decision to make. Were we going to simplify our packaging and just stick to one style of music, and roll with that? Probably not. We are pretty restless when it comes to music. That’s why we’re DJ’s. We like variety. We like dynamic, but purposeful change. We don’t like doing just one thing all of the time. We take that approach with music too. That meant that we weren’t going to be able to take the old-school approach to being music artists. We were going to have to do things the new school way. Make the music ourselves, and do the best we can to make it available to y’all. And so here we are… breadandbeatsmusic.com.
Making The Most Of It
For a moment, it seemed like the House Shoes EP was an immediate failure. We didn’t get any bites that produced profit. That didn’t mean the tracks were bad. It just meant that, as artists that don’t like sticking to one type of music, we were going to have to do things on our own if we wanted to keep making all of the types of music we wanted. The House Shoes EP was actually the right fit for us. It was good for us that we did three different sub-genres of house music on one record, because it showed us that, even though it might be harder to survive this way, we’ll have a lot more fun, and be way more satisfied, making all of the types of music we want. With that said, we hope y’all enjoy it. The House Shoes EP has jackin’ house, nu-disco, and deep house on it. We also make electronic beats with hip hop, trip hop, and drum & bass music. We do trap music. If you’ve read our About Us bio, you’ll see we come from a very diverse place in terms of musical influences. Those influences come through all of the time, and if you’re like us, and like all types of good things, then you can count on us, working as hard as we can, to provide you with great tunes of all kinds on this site, from now on!
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