Name: DJ Honesty
Nationality: German
Occupation: Producer
Current release: DJ Honesty's Unknown Pleasures EP, featuring a remix by Arkajos, is out via No Speakers.
Hometown Recommendation: One thing I can absolutely recommend in Lisbon is Reservatório da Mãe d'Água das Amoreiras. It's a water reservoir, open for public visitors. Amazing architecture and acoustics to experience!
Things that I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: My biggest passion are music and sound. There are a few misconceptions about certain technical aspects, especially when it comes to the discussion Analog vs Digital or Vinyl DJ vs CDJ. Many of these discussions are mostly based on myth, limited knowledge, social bias, emotions etc. From my experience as sound engineer and DJ i would love to throw in some "truth."
I am also passionate about mental health, especially regarding the effects on society. Absolutely not an expert in this field but trying to learn and understand every day.  

If you enjoyed this DJ Honesty interview and would like to find out more about his music, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, Soundcloud, and bandcamp



What was your first encounter with very deep basses or low frequencies like?

There is only one situation I can remember that was actually before I was going to raves.

In the early 80s in Cologne I went to a Reggae party a friend told me about. It was the first one of a monthly series. The DJs were playing mostly versions and dubs, the sound system was tuned for low frequencies, a classic dub setup. At that time I had no idea that this culture existed, only knowing the common stuff from artists like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh etc.

How the music was presented and celebrated at those parties opened up my mind to dig deeper. The first album I bought right after that first party was by Augustus Pablo - Ital Dub, produced by King Tubby.

This was the ignition! It became very clear to me that I needed bigger bass speakers at home.

How would you describe the physical sensation of being submitted to very low frequencies? [Where do you feel the music, do you have a visual sensation/representation, is there a sense of release or tension etc …]

It's a common fact that very low frequencies are more felt than heard.

At the times when humans had no sound systems, they were encountering low frequencies during earthquakes and avalanches or when big drums were played. It seems logical to me that we are conditioned to feel tension but also to tune in into a ritual mindset as soon as there is the rumble.

There is this urban legend about the Demutspfeife (Humility Pipe). It is the lowest C on a few church organs, one of them is in the Cologne Cathedral. This pipe has a frequency of 16.35 Hz which is below the normal hearing range. These pipes are so powerful,they can make church benches shake.

The legend is that it was used to humiliate the crowd during worship. Like when the priest was speaking about Armageddon the organ player pressed the lowest C to give it a stronger impact. Although there is no real proof, I like to believe that this is absolutely possible.

I personally love both ends of the spectrum - very deep and very high frequencies. How about yourself and what is the effect that they have on you?

Well, give me just a bassline and I am happy.

From my experience as producer and engineer low and high frequencies are influencing each other. Sometimes there is this effect when mixing a track, when you find the sweet spot level for the highs like high hats, suddenly the bassline starts to shine and becomes more prominent.

I can't explain why that exactly happens. It's like Yin Yang, like finding the right balance.

What were some of the performances, records, spaces and naturally occurring phenomena that intrigued you for their deep frequencies?

One very special track that I like to mention is "How Much Are They" by Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebezeit and the legendary Jah Wobble.



This one intrigued me not just because of the bassline, it was also the massive low end of the drums, yeah and they whole track of course.

Again a piece of music opening doors for a lot of things I found after listening to that one.

There appear to significant cultural differences in the appreciation of the bass region of the music, with Jamaica obviously coming out on top. Do you have an explanation for the reasons behind these differences? Did you visit any countries/cultures with a preference for powerful basses?

Regarding Jamaica I can't explain why that is. Possibly it is the influence of African culture … don't know.

Since I started travelling as a musician/DJ I recognized that in all countries there are subcultures celebrating low frequencies these days. Mostly it is the electronic music scene throwing parties and raves, but also others.

Like people pimping their car soundsystems with powerful subs which is probably mainly about the physical sensation. And then it also became a subgenre of music and provided the soundtrack for it.

Tell me when and how you started integrating deeper and heavier basses into your music, please. Did you also learn to play the bass as an instrument?

Yes, I was playing bass guitar for some time until I switched to synthesizers. The Korg MS 20 was the first synth I played, it went so much lower. That was all just experimentation with other people during the 80’s, nothing really serious.

Only at the beginning of the 90s did I start to produce electronic dance music more seriously. Deep bass was already a must at that time. So I was not even thinking about integrating sub bass, it had to be there.

What is a great bass sound, to you and what were some of the most successful production and performance strategies to achieve it?

For me one of the greatest bass sounds in electronic music is the Reese bass.

It's pretty unique and also fulfills two purposes of a bassline. It fills the very low end and at the same time you hear the melody very well. In general for me that's always the two things I have in mind when it comes to creating basslines.

There are many ways to achieve that, like proper composition, use of distortion, layering of oscillators etc. Very important I.M.H.O is to tune the low end drums like kick and toms in accordance with the bass.

Tell me about the production of the Unknown Pleasures EP on No Speakers, please, and what role the bass plays in it.

The Unknown Pleasures EP features the track “Noneties.”

I was struggling to find the right bassline. First it even didn't have a bass, the kick did that part. After some weeks of not touching it, I felt it needed a bassline. I tried many different melodies and bass sounds until I ended up with what is on it now. A call and response kind of Reesebass sound where the call is a 16th note arpeggio and the response a quarter note melody.

It felt right to me because the sound fits the genre and the call and response thing drives the groove while telling a story at the same time.

How are drums and bass connected in your creative process, would you say?

They are the fundamental elements of electronic dance music. Once you get that right everything else can fall into place. There are countless tracks where drums and bass are just enough.

It doesn't mean that I always start with drums and bass, it can be anything actually. However when I start a track, when it comes to drums and bass some imagined dancefloor becomes the reference.

What makes for a great bass line that can stand on its own? From your own work, what are some of the lines that you are most satisfied with?

A great bassline that can stand on its own has a more or less complex melody. Just a simple offbeat one note bassline that might work in a complete track will not do much on its own.

From my own work I like to mention the track "Moment" released on Bass Culture Records.



I started the track by composing the bassline first. Pretty simple track, not sure if the bassline could stand on its own, but for sure it defined for me what other elements to choose when i made that track.

It seems that, as the bass becomes more prominent, the music becomes more minimal. What’s your perspective on that?

Yes sure, again the bassline is the fundamental of the harmonic content of music.

It can be just enough giving space to imagine what else could be there.

At the outer limits of both very high and very low frequencies, sound becomes inaudible to the ear. When it comes to its effect on our body and mind, what do you think happens just shortly before and beyond that point?

I was always interested in unusual sounds. Long before I started to make music. There are many situations I can think of. Here are a few that are remarkable for me:

One thing I will never forget was when my older brother came home with a new 7" single by the Beatles, “Come Together.” I was just 6 years old and  that intro and blew me away. It sounded alien to me, never heard anything like that before, but I was totally enjoying it. It was probably that moment that made me curious about unusual sounds in music.



Another thing I enjoyed as a kid was scanning FM radio and moving the frequency dial. Jumping around from one radio station to another, like creating a cut-up soundtrack of different music styles with noise and bleeps and blops in between. I did this for hours on headphones, my mother was a bit concerned but let me do it anyway.

Sometimes I stayed on a certain stations for longer because the music interested me. That, by the way, is how I discovered John Peels' radio show that was broadcast on BFBS Radio in Germany. It was a huge influence on my life with music.

And then there were these so-called Zahlensender, secret services broadcasting secret messages as sequences of numbers and melodies made with synthesized voices and frequency generators, absolutely fascinating for my curious child mind.



A strong physical sensation from frequencies I had as a child was the rumble of big propeller airplanes flying over our house in the night. Kind of scary, made me think of wartime.

Bass heavy music and low frequencies are often used for physical therapy / healing. What makes them particularly suitable tools for this?

I had never heard about the usage of very low frequencies in therapy, so nothing I can say to that. But I know and have had the experience that certain frequencies can have a positive effect on physical and mental health.

I always wanted to dig deeper into it after I had this amazing experience lying on a "massage harp" made by a German inventor in Heidelberg. He showed it to me and we had a short session. It was like a table where the tabletop is a resonant body, like a guitar body, with strings underneath tuned to certain frequencies. The person who gets treated lies on that table and the therapist would play the strings.

The frequencies go directly to the body in such a strong way that it's hard to focus on anything else. Very impressive!

High and low frequencies carry specific information about our world, just like all other frequencies. As many of us are losing their ability to hear higher and sometimes also lower frequencies – what do you think we are loosing on a larger scale?

I don't think we lose too much having a limited bandwidth on what we hear, especially regarding high frequencies. The brain can adapt to it to a certain degree.

More important in my opinion is that we are able to understand language, so we can communicate. This happens mostly in the midrange between 125 Hz and 8.000 Hz.

Low frequencies we still can perceive although we don't hear them. Even deaf people can perceive low frequencies with the body.