The Fearless Few

The Fearless Few is a collective of electronic music producers - a crew if you like - who regularly tackle simple, time restricted production challenges. Always developed with an eye to adding strings to the naturally restricted artistic bow most of us default to, our challenges aim to take producers out of their respective comfort zones where the relentless ticking of the clock leaves no alternative but fearlessness. Results aren't always pretty - some might even think of them as failures - but for us the process is far more important than the end product. What's important is that each challenge is approached fearlessly and without hesitation. Presently there's only a few of us, but if you're fearless, we want you on board. Feel free to pick up one of the challenges below and submit what you come up with. Similarly, if you want to throw a challenge our way - say, get the crew to remix your track - we’d love to hear from you. Be brave. Be bold. Be fearless.

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The Fearless Few - 8th December 2017

Listen to The Fearless Few - 8th December 2017 by Netil Radio

On the 8th of December, a day prior to four of us heading to South West England to play the first Fearless Few gigs in Bath and Bristol respectively, Sam Holloway (GREYFIELD WOODS, Two Silhouettes) and Mike Mikkelsen (Michael son of Michael, Mikkelsen) presented a two hour Fearless Few special on Netil Radio. Lots of talk about the collective and the thinking behind it, but most importantly lots of music submitted by the members over the past year and a half / 20 challenges. Tune in!  

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Production Challenge #20

Spending no more than 180 minutes on the piece, you are to put together a track on the basis of a sequence of chords generated by the random chord generator pasted below [www.richmanmusicschool.com/articles/ra…d-generator] Style, tempo, length, timbre, feel is totally up to you."

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Challenge #19 - drums for Planet Mu released artist

Quick fire round - a Planet Mu released artist I used to work with in the past has set the following brief to anyone who'd care to tackle it (i.e. not just us): "Let's collab - add some drums to this track". https://we.tl/YOAiLbRy90

I suspect many will respond, so the deadline is up to you, but I'd try and do something quickly to maximise the chance of being considered.

To ensure you let the music inspire you rather than what you think the artist would like to hear, I will not reveal the artist in question, so if you want to submit a track on this one, send your version to me by 23.59 on Sunday the 8th and I will add it to the Fearless Few dossier and submit for us all.

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TheFearlessFew

TheFearlessFew is on Mixcloud. Listen for free to their radio shows, DJ mix sets and Podcasts

Production Challenge #18 - MIXTAPE.

The challenge for our round 18 is for you to put together a mixtape of no longer than 30 minutes duration. I'd like this to be an opportunity for us all to get to know the music you look to for inspiration, the artists whose sound you admire, the stuff that gets you going basically.

BUT ... rather than simply putting together 30 minutes worth of your faves, it is a requirement in this challenge to 1) mix in at least one of your tracks and 2) add some additional layers (could be anything really, so this is where you can get really creative) on top of the mix wherever you think this makes sense.

I'm going to setup a mixcloud account for us so we can collate all the hopefully many mixes in one place.

As always, I'd advocate keeping time spend to a minimum, but as long as you're reasonably transparent about how much time you end up spending, you can go as nuts as you'd like as far as I'm concerned.

Any questions re the challenge, post them here so that we keep everyone on the same page.

DEADLINE: 1st October 23:59 GMT

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A collection of tracks celebrating the consistent fearlessness of our Sam Holloway aka Greyfield Woods. Rest assured that he's still alive and kicking!

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Fearless Few / CDR production challenge #16 - Sarah Walk Remix

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 Fearless Few Challenge #15

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The latest batch of fearless tracks created by the crew-members in no more than 180 minutes using only the excellent TAL UNO -X plugin. Lots of lovely Roland Juno 60 sounds all over these tracks!     

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Latest round of the fearless few challenges resulted in these four tracks being submitted to the Brenmar samplebank competition. Some nicely varied stuff here - check it out! 

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Shapeshifter from Sam Holloway on Vimeo. Fearless Few Production Challenge #12

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Fearless Few Production Challenge #12

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Fearless Few Production Challenge #12

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbIAEkFjvSg)

Fearless Few Production Challenge #12

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Fearless Few production challenge #11

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The Fearless Few production challenge #10

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The Fearless Few Production Challenge #9 was set by Mikkelsen - basically create better versions in less than 3 hours using the vocals referenced below:

I got a HD full of samples when I did a weeks worth of interning at a studio here in London. I gather that one of the CDs they'd ripped has been ripped by a lot of other hopeful producers out there. Certainly, the pretty vocals I have uploaded to the wetransfer link below are featured on a fair few trance tracks out there. One pretty bad example is this one: youtu.be/3wZb86OGV_o

In the zipped folder you'll find what I think might be the original track, which is certainly a lot better than any trance remixes I've come across. So our challenge #9 is simple: make use of the vocal stems to create your own version of the song. Go pretty, weird, in your face, chilled, whatever. No rules, really. The only restriction is that you must spend no more than 3 hours putting your version together.

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Lars Erik Fjøsne spent 30 minutes pulling together this submission, which will give Nils Frahm a run for his money. Excellent! Here’s what Lars had to say about it all: 

I did mine in 30 minutes, and used 4 tracks (Piano, Ambient whispery Pad, Strings and a plucky wooden synth). I wanted to have the song progress and get bigger and wider throughout with the same theme repeating itself.