A Sit Down With DJ Beltek

Beltek (AKA Martin Bijelic), the eclectic DJ/Producer from Slovenia, has just joined the Morgan Page 3D experience tour bus last week and is ready to start the 2nd Canadian leg of the tour starting tomorrow in Calgary. Beltek’s first big break happened in 2007 when he won the Producer of the Year competition organized by Pete Tong.

Although he’s one of the hottest young artists on the scene and seriously considered the next big thing in the global EDM milieu by some of the leading opinion makers on the scene, Martin Beltek Bijeli isn’t just another kid becoming international DJ based merely on heavy brand management and promotion. His success rests upon unique ability to turn everything he touches into gold, a decade of hard labor as well his string of chart topping artists releases and remixes championed by the deejays such as Armin van Buuren, Tiësto, Sander van Doorn, Gareth Emery, Dada Life, Thomas Gold, Mark Knight, Umek and many others. It’s been only four years since his first international release and he became darling producer of leading EDM labels in a very short time.

 

“I’m never satisfied with my work as I always try to evolve and discover new things and better myself. It’s a struggle but that’s what keeps me going.”

 

Describe the Beltek style.

My main goal is to always evolve. My current style is a mixture between electro and progressive house. So something in between and everything out of the box as well. I like all sorts of music and not just EDM. Sometimes I’d mix in some drum and bass track at the end of my set so I’m not bound to just one genre. A good track is a good track, right?

At the very beginning did you feel that your parents were supportive of you in pursuing your musical career as DJ and producer?
My parents didn’t ever learn to play an instrument or take any musical lessons, so I’m the only one in my family who has something to do with music. At first, my parents weren’t very supportive of my music production beginnings, but later on, as the electronic music got more popular, and I was played more and more on the radio, they started to understand and support what I’m doing.

Tell about your first-ever experience of Ultra Music Festival.

Ultra was mind-blowing. This year I played 3 Ultra Music Festivals actually. One in Argentina, one in Chile and of course the big daddy of them all, Miami in US. All of them were a huge experience for me. I’ve never played before for more than 15.000 people like I did at these festivals. It was also cool to meet a lot the big guys from the music industry.

How did you get started as a DJ/Producer? Did you become a DJ or Producer First?

It all started maybe 10 years ago when my brother brought home mixtapes from various DJs. At first I didn’t understand electronic music because it all sounded the same to me. Back in the day it wasn’t so much vocal or melodic, it was pretty harsh in Europe as it was more techno and hard house. After a while I started picking it up, especially hard house and progressive from the UK. So I started listening to that and checking out all sorts of DJs. I also wanted to produce but at the beginning it was really a hard struggle especially because at that time I was still in school and later on I had gotten a job so I wasn’t a full time producer. I would say that I’ve been a professional producer for the last 4-5 years. At first I had become a producer and secondly I became a DJ when I started with vinyl at that time.

Did you have the opportunity to get through any professional training in music, or are you totally self-taught? Do you think its very important and crucial for a young producer to attend music composition courses?
Well I started making my first beats when there weren’t many YouTube music production tutorials around haha. So yes, I’m self-taught. Regarding music composition courses, I think it depends on what music you are making. If you are producing more or less melodic stuff, you should definitely take some musical lessons. I think they can improve, or make it a bit easier for you to make good melodies in your tracks. If you want to make more percussive music, like tech house, techno, etc… then I think you really don’t need any music lessons.

What you can say about the moment of making the album “Eric Goes To Disco”?

It’s always an amazing feeling to produce a track that you love so much and then get huge support from the big guys.

You have a lot of diversity in your discography from trance, techno, electro house, and progressive house – have you purposely tried to create different styled tracks or have you created them based on inspiration at the time?

Just based on inspiration. When I start to produce a track in my studio it’s never like “oh wow this style is popular or this guy is popular, let’s do a copy of that track!”, it’s not like that at all as I create tracks based on what I feel. I like to play some melodic tracks, hard tracks, breaks, so it all depends on my current inspiration. Techno was a big part of my life, especially in the beginning. I am Slovenian and we have a very successful techno DJ named UMEK. He was one of the biggest influences when I started.

Please take us on a virtual tour in your home studio and tell the kind of hardware and software that you use to produce your club bombs. Do you have any favourite music composition software that you like to use and experiment with that you can recommend wholeheartedly to other artists?
My studio is mainly software based. I just moved my studio to a new location, and I’m rebuilding it at the moment. Currently it only consists of my Adam monitors, RME Foreface sound card, CM6 midi keyboard, and a bunch of midi controllers from Evolution, Akai, Korg and Native Instruments. My music production software is FL Studio. I have been using it now for many years, and its an amazing piece of software, very easy to use and has a lot of unique features. I can really recommend FL to all producer-beginners to try and buy it.
Can you please choose for us the Top 5 of your original productions, and Top 5 of your remixes for other artists?
My top 5 originals would be:
1. Par
2. Party Voice
3. Go!
4. Belina
5. Running Backwards

My top 5 remixes would be:

1. Morgan Page – Fight For You (Beltek Remix)
2. Faithless – Tweak Your Nipple (Beltek Remix)
3. Gareth Emery – Full Tilt (Beltek Remix)
4. Alan Connor & Mike Melange – I Love The Sunshine (Beltek Remix)
5. The Henchmen feat. Tiff Lacey – As We Ride (Beltek Disco Remix)

Questions? Comments? We want to know:@djfollower