Baptiste Bacot

• Charles Ballester, Baptiste Bacot, Louis Bigo, Vanessa Nina Borsan, Louis Couturier & Ken Déguernel [Vis alle 23 forfattere av denne artikkelen] (2025). Interacting with Annotated and Synchronized Music Corpora on the Dezrann Web Platform. Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval. 8(1), s. 121–139. doi: 10.5334/tismir.212. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

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• Baptiste Bacot (2026). A corpus-based exploration of Bass music production techniques. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  “Bass music” is an umbrella term that refers to bass-driven EDM hardcore and experimental subgenres, such as dubstep, glitch-hop or neurofunk. While the stylistic codes of EDM are foundational in Bass music, they coexist with disruptive sonic attributes that are directly related to producers’ exploratory interactions with digital audio workstations (Brett 2021). DAWs have profoundly influenced popular music aesthetics and reconfigured genre boundaries; they also enable new takes on groove through the manipulation of time, timbre and dynamics of sounds. How do Bass music producers precisely leverage the DAW environment to create tracks at the intersection of genre conventions and experimentation? To address these questions, I investigate a corpus of DAW source files by professional Bass music producer, DJ and educator Mr. Bill, a well-established figure in the Bass music community. This collection of Ableton Live Sets (ALS) comprises over eighty unique tracks and spans nine years of music production. Having access to the source files offers unparalleled insights on professionally produced music. Building on recent studies that examine DAW production (Brøvig-Hanssen et al. 2022; Smith 2024), this presentation highlights recurring techniques in the corpus, such as sampling and resampling, parameter automation, sequencing (grid-aligned vs. off-grid events), and the use of noise and distortion. The firsthand account of these techniques reveals the way temporality is shaped at different scales through production decisions. This paper sheds light on DAW-based EDM production of the 2010s, which contributes to enrich the scope of music production research. It concludes that bass music seeks to directly engage with listener’s attention and expectations by shaping time through sound production tools, and not merely make people dance–despite what the “EDM” label suggests.

• Baptiste Bacot (2026). A corpus of Ableton Live Sets: theoretical and methodological challenges in the study of DAW creativity. doi: https:/vimeo.com/1197805588. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  DAWs aggregate tools to generate, process, sequence and arrange sounds. Inherited from the hardware studio ecosystem, they have profoundly influenced popular music aesthetics and reconfigured genre boundaries (Reuter 2022). Akin to a musical laboratory that encourages sonic exploration and experimentation (Brett 2021), the DAW nonetheless remains a “genre-specific medium” (Marrington 2019) that maintains strong ties with the aesthetics of electronic music. From the 1990s onwards, particularly in groove-based genres and EDM, DAWs have reconfigured approaches to rhythm—"the raison d’être of electronic dance music” (Butler 2006)— through various sound manipulations and transformations (Danielsen 2020; Brøvig-Hanssen et al. 2020, 2022). Although these evolutions in digital music production have been confirmed in the abovementioned works, the particulars of EDM production remain seldom studied. How do electronic music producers precisely leverage the DAW environment to design grooves and tracks, at the intersection of genre conventions and experimentation? This paper represents an effort to engage with these issues by approaching DAW-based EDM production at the closest level: it explores a corpus of eighty Ableton Live Sets (ALS, that are DAW source files) from Mr. Bill, a professional electronic music producer, DJ, and educator. The corpus spans over nine years and gives a valuable access to the producer’s workflow and creative process (Brett 2019), and serves as a case study for Bass music—an umbrella term for bass-driven, hardcore EDM subgenres with prominent experimental attributes. However, due to their volume and complexity, these files also pose a series of theoretical and methodological challenges, that are also discussed. The paper demonstrates three ways of engaging with the corpus, which open new paths in the study of DAW creativity. First, the ALS are scrutinized as XML files in which production information is retrieved by a bespoke analytical tool. Second, as tracks or buses can conveniently be rendered, grouped tracks are examined with a signal analysis tool, which reveals the rhythmic role of timbre and dynamics in Bass music. In turn, and third, these quantitative approaches lead back to the original ALS files with a qualitative perspective. Ultimately, this corpus study supports the idea that Bass music creation is as much about sequencing sounds (organising events on the grid) as it is about shaping rhythm through production decisions (designing spectral and dynamic properties of musical sounds). In addition, the innovative methods introduced in this paper pave the way for future research on EDM production based on the analysis of DAW source files, or any other genre that uses such music production tools.

• Baptiste Bacot (2025). Mr. Bill: a case study of the entangled platforms of electronic music production. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Mr. Bill is a professional producer and educator who has been publishing content for over fifteen years. As an Ableton Live expert user, he regularly livestreams his music production sessions on Twitch. This content—the video files, the Ableton Live sets, and other resources as well—is available on his website (mrbillstunes.com). Additionally, Mr. Bill is the founder of Billegal Beats, a music and sample pack label that publishes material on music streaming platforms and Splice, respectively. These activities, along with music releases, touring, merchandising sales, are promoted and discussed on a dedicated Discord server. Mr. Bill is therefore serves as a perfect case for questioning the entangled platforms that support electronic music production on various levels. By exploring the material Mr. Bill has generated over the last decade, this paper addresses two questions regarding research methodology and musical creativity. Firstly, it examines the issues surrounding the value of music platformization data: how can the wealth of digital information generated be leveraged for empirical musicology and popular music studies? Secondly, it engages with the impacts of platformization on musical creativity: whereas music production has always been a covert activity, it is now conducted in semi-public and interactive formats where viewers can watch and comment. What is the weight of this new setting on the creativity of the producers and eventually, on the final product? Concluding remarks will highlight the layered and interdependent structure of platforms as key factor for building a successful career, while also reassessing the so-called “democratization” that companies claim to bring through their digital products.

• Baptiste Bacot (2025). Sampling and resampling in Bass music. A musicological perspective from the DAW. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This presentation explores sampling practices in EDM production. Sampling involves extracting audio fragments from preexisting records and using them in new musical contexts. Though rooted in post-WW2 avant-garde music, sampling is now ubiquitous across numerous musical genres. Despite its longstanding use, it is most often examined from a legal and copyright perspective (Demers 2006; Brøvig 2023), whereas musicological aspects—more complex than they appear at first glance—are often overlooked. Although detailed accounts of sampling are scarce, they do exist (Butler 2014; Déon 2020; Harkins 2020) and encourage conceptualization at the intersection of creativity and technology. Following this route, and leveraging Ratcliffe’s (2014) typology of sampled material within EDM, as well as drawing inspiration from sketch studies (Sallis 2015), this paper examines a collection of Ableton Live projects (.als files) and video live streams by senior producer, DJ, and educator Mr. Bill. Analyzing this material reveals the sampling stages clearly, along with the digital processing that follows the import of sounds into the project. This investigation highlights various sampling techniques, particularly resampling, which involves sampling sounds from within the DAW. This self-sampling approach allows producers to create new sounds from existing materials within the current project through the signal routing capabilities of the software. Consequently, sampling becomes an internal process for generating new sonic material without needing external sounds. This study contributes to a better understanding of the technological practices in hyper-contemporary popular music by shedding light on the micro-level implications of recording as a technology.

• Baptiste Bacot, Benoît navarret & Louis Bigo (2025). “Intabula rasa”: An exploratory user study of tablature software and perspectives on popular music creativity with algorithmic tools. doi: https:/vimeo.com/1094106619. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  What are the affordances of music notation software (MNS), and how do they impact musical creativity? This paper specifically examines tablature software (TS); seldom studied, they are a good entry point to question the weight digital notation has on the creative process in popular music. Do TS design and features influence creativity? How does a new composition begin in these environments, and how is it subsequently built? Can a better understanding of these processes inspire the development of user-centered algorithms that could foster new beginnings at different stages of composition? Results from a mixed-method study (a questionnaire, interviews and TS tasks) provide a deeper understanding of the perception and use of tablature software, and reveal salient topics of TS creativity. Then, in an effort to bridge the gap between musicology, music practices and computer science, these findings are harnessed to conceptualize algorithmic tools for composition. A set of research and development tracks that could potentially improve guitarists’ experience when composing music with a TS is proposed, and two prototypes are presented, paving the way for new beginnings in music technology and creativity.

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