Yanave

Fascinated by melodic synthesizer music with a more danceable feeling to it at an early age, it was obvious I would get involved in trance scene at a later stage. At primary school, I listened to artists like 2 Unlimited - don't bash me for this, kids loved it ;) - and got carried into the happy hardcore trend around the 5th grade. However, I wasn't into the senseless monotone banging, but more into the melodic and vocal happy hardcore (for easy listening). After this scene lost its popularity quickly and I went to high school, I started listening to the mainstream club music. My Saturday night became a traditional "Van Diepen's Dance Department" night on the dutch radio station Radio 538, listening to DJ's like Kross and Emjay. From here, I was introduced to the 'vinyl sound' and figured out this was a whole different scene than the commercial stuff I've always heard before.

Should have been photo 1... Around the end of 1998, still listening to Dance Department, trance became my thing. After Gouryella - Gouryella was spun, I knew I wanted to hear more tracks like this and bought myself a compilation called "The Year of Trance 1998". I developed my taste to the bit harder melodic trance. Around the summer of 1999, I bought a few more compilations with extended versions of club/trance tracks and wanted to give it a try mixing live, after experimenting some years on the computer. My dad, working at the Chasse theatre downtown, showed me the pitch-controlled CD players in their audio equipment storage. For the next couple of days, I was practicing my mixing there, bumping into some of my dad's surprised colleagues... I enjoyed this mixing so much that I decided to go for my first pair of budget (so... belt drived) turntables and a simple mixer. But first, I went on a vacation to Ireland and bought my first two vinyls at a Virgin store in Dublin, (DJ Tiesto - Theme from Norefjell and Paul van Dyk - For an angel, one of his favourites at that time). I was surprised they actually sold vinyl in the music section, especially in a 'common' warehouse, perhaps it's just me but they don't do that in Holland. Back in my hometown, Breda, DJ Tiesto's record store, the Magik, had just opened its doors and it was just the right place for me to buy the next pieces of vinyl.

These were also the years I became friends with my classmate Paul Moelands and together we switched out our own mixed compilation CD's or passed it on to other classmates. After some years of practise with Magix Music Maker v2000 (yup, a true dummy package with ready to use loops and sounds), the producing began. Through internet contacts, I got told about Fruity Loops 2.7 and it's freedom to create your own sound patterns and to use some simple build-in synths. As Fruity Loops evolved, so did Jan's producing skills. After working just with samples and no pianorolls (to play whole chords), I learned about the existence of VST's (software synthesizers) and tweaking the knobs freely. It still took some years to reach a descent sound quality, but I always enjoyed producing new tracks as I learned from my experiences. In the meantime I bought new (direct drive) turntables, a better mixer and a new PC to catch up with the working load from Fruity Loops and the VSTs. All this time, most of the time went to producing and not spinning.

Should have been photo 2... I extended my online contacts by joining sites like the forum www.trance.nu and free mp3 hosting sites for starting artists like www.beatmaka.com and the former mp3.com. Around the summer of 2003, DJ's like Misja Helsloot, Precision and Niklas Harding, all well known DJ's and producers in the trance/progressive scene, added my tracks to their playlists. Giorgio Ponticelli's "Subtraxx" show on Digitally Imported radio aired several submitted tracks. Thanks to the promoting by Niklas Harding, I signed my first track to the label Afterglow Records, runned by Plastic Angel, which was released in February 2004. I also participated in a remix contest for Solarstone vs. Scott Bond's "Naked Angel" for Made In England Records and became a runner up, resulting in my second release and support by more big jocks such as Armin van Buuren. Solarstone's label Deep Blue Records became a long term connection; I remixed Bobina's "Lazy World", released in September 2004, reaching a #3 position at the Dutch IDP charts. Since that release, I have chosen a new alias for my trance productions: Yanave. It's kind of a long story how I came up with this, but I wanted to ditch the name Son of a Pitch, because it didn't sound very professional to me and I had the feeling too many people thought about hardstyle when reading the name. From this period, I also worked on my spinning and changed my style to building up from progressive trance to uplifting/melodic trance. I mostly played for online radio stations such as the already mentioned Digitally Imported, RiseFm, and Trancesphere, now known as ETN.FM. Thanks to Menno de Jong, I got the opportunity to spin at the Trance.nu Winterevent (November 2004) in the Asta, The Hague. For the rest, I have spun a few times at the Spock in Breda.