Today, we have the pleasure of chatting with the creator of our Energy Tech House Sample Pack, the incredibly talented That Jimmy Person. 

Hailing from a former coal mining town with deep roots in house music heritage, Mansfield’s 'That Jimmy Person' is a house music producer who’s had tracks filling dance floors worldwide.

What have you been up to recently?

Can you tell us about your background in House music?

So, my background in music production was producing hardcore trance and that sort of stuff. Later on I moved into electro and harder styles like the wonky stuff and the heavier bass sound that was coming out at the time. These were really pioneering years so I was getting a lot of tracks that were really exciting.

Everything was changing at any insane pace and there were a lot of producers doing things differently. The heavy electro sound began to get dirtier and heavier and evolved into fidget / bass house - all that sort of stuff kind of came together.

For me, house music is all about the groove. I kind of like having the groove with a bit of bass, I guess.

How would you describe your sound?

My sound, I guess it's a combination of things that I like really? So, you know, high energy upfront house music with some nice, low end heavy bass.

I do like to be pretty experimental in production, but that doesn't always get heard!

Tell us a bit about your creative process when making your Energy Tech House Sample Pack.

I wanted to capture the energetic styles of tech house. I started out synthesising kick drums and crafting the full drums from scratch. 

It was more about engineering those sounds and then building up the drums and percussion from that.

I didn't want to create too many samples that were already available elsewhere - There's a lot of stuff on the market.

What advice would you give to a young producer that wants to make house music? 

Enjoy it! Make sure you enjoy the process! Don’t worry too much about the final result or where that's going to go.

Do you use sample packs in your own music? If so, What role do they play?

I'd say things have changed a lot over the last few years. I still make a lot of my own sounds and export them into my own folders.

I really like sound design and creating new sounds on a whole, but yeah, sample packs are great if you're needing something specific that you don't have. That could be a specific instrument that you need or anything like that.

I'm always on the lookout for something that's a bit weird, something that I can re-sample or something that I can do something different with. That usually sparks a bit of inspiration.

Also, I do a lot of tutoring and work with new producers. Nowadays, there's so many packs that are just so good compared to how they were years ago. I think they can make a massive difference in helping get producers to make music much faster.

I think there's also an aspect of 'crate digging' nowadays. You can find some real gems. I'm hearing tracks in sample packs that, you know, I end up hearing on the radio!

Could you tell us about some of your favourite plugins/ what they do?

First of all, my go to stuff is always just nice Compressors and EQ's - FabFilter’s stuff is amazing.

I use a lot of the Ableton stock plugins as well. I also use a free plugin called Youlean. I use that for measuring loudness plus, I also load up another free plugin called SPAN - That's an awesome spectrum analyser. 

I'd say my number one synth for sound design, percussive sounds and lead lines, it's got to be Serum. Serum is definitely my number one VST.

I know Serum really well! I can create a whole host of different sounds ranging from percussive elements to amazing lead lines - It's just so versatile. 

Which artists would you like to collaborate? 

There's seriously too many to mention that I'd love to work with. I guess I'm still learning my stripes, so that's a bit of a difficult one!

What are you listening to these days?

 I listen to a lot of house music across various styles, but outside of house music, I listen to a lot of electronica and contemporary classical.

I've just been listening to Bonobo's latest live set, which is pretty interesting.

Is there anything else you would like to tell us about?

I've got some interesting collaborations coming up at the moment that I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about yet, but they’re on their way!