SoundX : Workshops × Madverse Music Group  ·  Begins Sept 19

First Take: make a record with Dhruv. Five places. Dubai.

Dhruv Agarwala has engineered Grammy-nominated and multi-platinum records, produced and mixed for global artists and major labels, and votes in the Recording Academy. This September he is taking five young artists into the studio with him.

First Take is four Saturdays at Dr. Head in Business Central Towers. Each artist writes a song, produces it and records it with Dhruv in the room, and leaves with a finished track. The strongest song of the five gets a real release with Madverse Music Group on Spotify and Apple Music, and the artist keeps all of it.

There is nowhere else in Dubai to do this. Applications open with a short call. The programme guide and the call link are at soundxbase.com/first-take. If you'd rather talk first, reply to [email protected] and a team member will be in touch.

SoundX : Code  ·  Update

Control 1.0.1 is out.

Control 1.0.1 is an optimised build and sets the base for future updates. If you already have Control, download 1.0.1 and install it; it takes the place of the version you have.

New here? Your laptop camera is a controller now: gestures become effects, throws and DAW controllers, and it works in any VST3/AU plugin host. No hardware. Free for 14 days, $49 to keep, and the 14 days don't start until first use.

Watch the setup guides: Ableton  ·  Logic  ·  FL Studio coming soon

Segment One

Artist You Should Be Following

See It Live

Drum and bass, by hand. In Dubai.

We brought Spaven to Dubai for a SoundX : Live Pop-Up Show: a drum and bass night he curated himself, with Fatty Bassman on the bill and every beat played from the kit. Watch him live and you stop thinking of drum and bass as a genre made on a computer. Watch →

Segment Two

Things Worth Your Time

— 01 of 02

The Chorus Is Not the Hook Any More

Music Culture

On TikTok the hook is whichever ten seconds the feed decides on, and it is often not the chorus. Fleetwood Mac's “Dreams” came back in 2020 on a skateboard and a bottle of cranberry juice, and the clip was the opening verse. Lizzy McAlpine's “ceilings” reached the charts on a sped-up final verse, used in over 200,000 videos. “Cruel Summer” became a stadium moment on its bridge four years after the album came out; the crowd shouts “I'm drunk in the back of the car” louder than any chorus. K Camp's “Lottery” is known to millions as “Renegade”, a section that isn't even the title. The chorus was built for radio, where the song plays from the top. On a feed it starts anywhere, so every eight bars has to be able to carry the song alone. That is a writing brief, not a marketing one: the songs that travelled furthest these last few years are the ones with no dead weight, where the verse, the bridge and the last line each earn the clip. Write the whole thing like it's the hook — because somewhere, for someone, it is.

— 02 of 02

The Sped-Up Version Is the Single Now

Music Culture

“ceilings” reached the charts on a fan's sped-up cut, three years after it came out. “Bloody Mary” climbed the charts eleven years after release on a pitched-up edit Lady Gaga never made. “Escapism.” went to number one in the UK on a fast version before the original caught up. Somewhere in the last few years the listener stopped waiting for the remix and started making it, and the version that travelled was theirs, not the label's. The industry has noticed. Hook, a remix app founded by Gaurav Sharma, lets fans speed up, slow down and mash up songs legally, with the rights holder paid on every one; it launched in 2025 with Universal Music Group on board, Downtown, Too Lost and Primary Wave behind it, twenty million licensed songs, and a $10 million round led by Khosla Ventures this February. Read that as a signal, not a gimmick: the record you release is now a starting point, and the fastest way to lose control of your song is to pretend nobody will touch it. Release the 1.2x yourself. Cut the eight bars that work alone. Put the stems where fans can reach them. The remix is not what happens to a song after it's finished — it's part of finishing it.

Segment Three

From The Studio

Craft  ·  01 of 03

Reference at conversation level.

Loud flatters everything. Mix at the volume you'd hold a conversation over and check the balance there: if the vocal sits, the low end holds and the hook still lands when it's quiet, it will do all of that when it's loud. Turn it up for the last pass, not the first. The records you love were balanced by someone who could hear the room.

Process  ·  02 of 03

Bounce the rough. Don't live with it.

Export a full bounce the day the song stands, and listen once somewhere that isn't the studio: the car, a walk, the kitchen speaker. Write down what's wrong and go back in. That is the whole exercise. The trap is playing the rough for a week until your ears learn it and every improvement starts to sound like a loss. That's demoitis. Bounce to find the problems, not to fall in love.

Songwriting  ·  03 of 03

Sing it back, or it's not the one.

If you're writing as you record and a melody comes in, sing it back before you touch anything. If you can't sing it a minute later, it's probably not the one, and if you can't remember it, nobody else will. Put it down on your phone the moment it lands, walk away, and try it again cold. The ones that come back on their own are the ones worth building a record around.