Author: dankew

A Look Back At Epee Fencing in 2023

As 2023 comes to an end, I thought it would be interesting to looks at some of the key stats from the last 12 months. Although entries are still down on pre-covid times, there was a significant increase in competition participation when compared with 2022. Domestic competition activity for 2023 rose from 1619 fencers in 2022 to 2288 – this is very much in line with the numbers we were seeing in 2019. That being said, the number of competitions being entered has not recovered, finishing at 6812 which is significantly down from 7918 in 2017.

For more stats and competition results see – https://dankew.me/epee

Largest International Event 2023
713 – Challenge Wratislavia
589 – Coupe du Danube – Bratislava (EFC Cadet)
541 – Budapest Cadet Circuit (EFC Cadet)
470 – Osijek Fencing Cup (EFC U14)
464 – Colmar U23 European Circuit

Largest Domestic Event 2023
481 – Public Schools’ Fencing Championships
424 – British Youth Championships
264 – England Youth Championships
214 – Cocks Moors Woods Epee
190 – BUCS Individuals

Most Active Fencers Male 2023
30 – Solu Ngoka (Salle Paul North London Fencing Club)
29 – Vladimir Kukharev (The Chelsea Fencing Club)
21 – Casey Jones (Salle Paul North London Fencing Club)
21 – Lev Pyurbeev (The Chelsea Fencing Club)
20 – Ernesto Chiappini (The Chelsea Fencing Club)

Most Active Fencers Female 2023
27 – Eloise Russell (Malvern Hills Sword Club)
27 – Kira Grahamslaw (TMFC Fencing)
27 – Katy Hawthorne (TMFC Fencing)
26 – Lea Panyandee-Cappelli (Knightsbridge Fencing Club)
25 – Isabella Howser (OPS Epee Club)

Most Active Domestic Clubs 2023
333 – Salle Paul North London Fencing Club
235 – OPS Epee Club
223 – Knightsbridge Fencing Club
213 – Malvern Hills Sword Club
207 – Brixton Fencing Club

Most Wins Male 2023
7 – Solu Ngoka (Salle Paul North London Fencing Club)
4 – Oghenegaren Esiovwa-Thompson (Haverstock Fencing Club)
4 – Winston Fung (Dream Fencing Club)
4 – Lucas Farlam (Dacorum Fencing Club)
4 – Sameer Sunder-Rajan (Brixton Fencing Club)

Most Wins Female 2023
8 – Zoia Hinzhuk (Dacorum Fencing Club)
7 – Isabella Howser (OPS Epee Club)
6 – Reya Farlam (Dacorum Fencing Club)
5 – Lea Panyandee-Cappelli (Knightsbridge Fencing Club)
4 – Thea Tchalenko (Brixton Fencing Club)

Most Podiums Male 2023
13 – Dylan Helme (Wingerworth Fencing Club)
12 – Solu Ngoka (Salle Paul North London Fencing Club)
9 – Winston Fung (Dream Fencing Club)
9 – Tristan Lumineau (Salle Paul North London Fencing Club)
7 – James Dunmall (Royal Tunbridge Wells Fencing Club)

Most Podiums Female 2023
12 – Lea Panyandee-Cappelli (Knightsbridge Fencing Club)
11 – Isabella Howser (OPS Epee Club)
11 – Reya Farlam (Dacorum Fencing Club)
11 – Eleanor Scott (The Chelsea Fencing Club)
10 – Zoia Hinzhuk (Dacorum Fencing Club)


How To Make Music Like – Michael Bibi (Part 5 – Sai Lika)

Making Tech House sound like Michael Bibi – Ableton 10 Free Template

It’s a video from another small channel with just 348 subscribers and 21 videos, but this particular tutorial has had 3,223 views since it was published on the 21st May 2020. Fair play to Sai Lika here as he’s given away his template for free rather than sticking behind a patreon link.

Although this is described as a template, it’s not a full track – essentially it’s just an intro and a drop, 16 bars of each. He’s used a couple of VSTs that I don’t have, Sylenth1 for the laser FX and 808 WRLD for the bass. There is no talking during the video, so I’ve not got any thought process to go on, but here are my observations;

Kick – Very, very distorted. He’s combined VEC1 BD Distortion 56 & VEC1 BD Clubby 04 from Vengeance Essential Club Vol1. It’s a bit too much in my opinion – I imagine the distorted kick from Hanging Tree was the inspiration for this.
Bass – Repeating 2 bar patterm with variation in the 2nd bar.
Drums & Percs – Layered claps, 909 open hat, shaker, crashes, top loop – all pretty standard, but also a cow bell, which is good to see as I think elements like that are more prevalent in later Michael Bibi productions.
Sample – Taken from LL Cool J – Jack The Ripper (“Party people let me see if you can dance“) pitched up 3 semi-tones
Textures & FX – Laser shots, crowd noise and background ambience to fill out the track

Here is my take on what Sai Lika was suggesting. I toned down the kick drum considerably, and switched out the vocal sample, but apart, from that I used exactly the same cow bells, top loop and clap samples plus used my own crowd noise, lasers and additional percussions.

It’s not exactly breaking any new ground, but it’s solid enough. I really hooked on to the use of cow bells and went for a more latin feel with a repeating conga groove and lots of different percussion hits sitting in the background. Initially I wrote a custom trumpet motif with the Kotg M1 but decided not use it as it didn’t sound natural enough. I instead used a random sample from the Jungle Jungle – 1989 to 1999 Samplepack and layered it with a SoftString pad from the M1. The “C’mon” sample I lifted from Lil’ Louis & The World ‎– Club Lonely (Latin Groove Mix) and the rest, as usual, come from the Zero-G – Datafiles.

Full arrangement

Next up will be Dennis 97 – Tech House tutorial Ableton Live | Estilo Michael Bibi 😎 | Libreria +Template | 2021

How To Make Music Like – Michael Bibi (Part 4 – CAPONNE)

Ableton Tutorial 2 : Como fazer um drop estilo Michael Bibi & Pawsa do zero

It’s a small channel with just 3 videos and 110 subscribers, but this particular video has had 3,333 views since its release in March 2020 so it’s worth looking it. CAPONNE offers up 16 bars of his take on how to make a track like Michael Bibi & Pawsa, and whilst there is more than what Julien offers in many of his videos, it’s not really sufficiently in depth enough to be much use – especially as stuttered rap vocals aren’t what I’d consider to be synonymous with Michael Bibi. That being said, let’s dive in.

What we are prestented with here is a standard 4/4 kick pattern with the obligatory skippy extra hits at the end of each 2nd bar. The bassline is unusually very simple and CAPONNE relies on the hats and tambourine mostly for the groove. One real positive I picked up from this was his use of a stuttered white noise effect at the start of each 8 bar segment. I’d not seen or noticed that before, and then I saw it again a few days later being used by James Hype in one of his remix videos (this one I think), so I had to use that in my track.

Here is my track based on what CAPONNE was doing;

The main takeaway here is that I thought this was more Dennis Cruz than Michael Bibi so I used his track My Fellas as and inspiration. I couldn’t find a good rap vocal to sit with the drums I’d created and then Sir Mix-A-Lot turned up in a search of popular TikTok music. The decision made itself, even though it’s been used thousands of times before.

stuttered white noise

I kept the bassline simple and focused on using percussive hits to provide groove and variation, including using the stuttered white noise. For the previous 3 tracks I went with the skippy drums, but here I stuck firmly with a standard 4/4 pattern.

To keep the track in keeping with sound of Dennis Cruz I purchased his sample pack from samplesoundmusic.com. It’s not a great pack to be honest and you’re probably better off spending your £15.99 elsewhere.

Here is the full arrangement of my track – it looks fairly complex at first glance, but it’s mostly different percussive fills dotted around to create variation.

Full arrangement

Four down and plenty more to go! The next one will be Sai Lika – Making Tech House sound like Michael Bibi – Ableton 10 Free Template

If you’re reading this and want to hear the previous 3 tracks I’ve made, then I have a playlist on youtube that groups everything I’ve made so far together – you can find that here.

How To Make Music Like – Michael Bibi (Part 3 – Julien Earle)

Making A FULL Tech House Track Like Michael Bibi & PAWSA From Start To Finish [+Samples]

Julien around this time tended to put out short videos with just 8 bar loops, but this one promises a full tech house track. In reality it’s not quite that as it’s just 48 bars and is basically an intro, build and short drop, but it’s the best starting point of the three videos I’ve looked at so far. This is reinforced by its popularity, having had 46,225 views since its release in June 2019. I would guess a fair few producers have followed along with this

Now, my first observation about this video is that although aspects of it remind me of the style of music Michael Bibi was making in 2019, but it actiually reminded me of a tune that featured in sets played by Michael. Check out Michael Bibi | Set [Lost City] [Lost Beach] [Quito, Ecuador 2019] and at approximately 4 minutes into the video he drops Roger That – How Does It Feel which I think is the inspiration for Juliens video.

As with his first video, which I covered here, Julien focuses on similar traits – bouncy kick drum pattern, groove from the hats & percs and of course, lots of saturation. What seemed out of place was the dominant white noise sweeps, but they make sense when you listen to Roger That – along with the synth stab call and response.

So with that in mind, this is my interpretation of this tutorial (obviously without using the same Blue Monday vocal as the Roger That tune).

For the previous two tracks I’ve made I used bass samples, but for this track to remain in keeping with what Julien suggests in his video, I used Operator to create an FM Bass along with CamelCrusher to give it some distortion.

Main bass

To give the bass some extra width and weight I created a second channel using exactly the same Operator patch but this time I used a different distortion, EQ’d out the lows and then widened it with Ozone Imager.

Wide top bass

And this is the full arrangement.

Is Juliens tutorial any good? Well, it’s not bad to be fair. If you follow along and apply some simple arrangement to extend the track beyond 48 bars, you’ll end up with something reasonable I would imagine – just go easy on the white noise sweeps!

Now at this point I will note that Julien put out a lot of very similar videos;
How To Michael Bibi Style Tech House [+Samples]
How To Tech House Basslines Like Patrick Topping, Fisher, Michael Bibi & Toolroom [+Samples]
How To Make Tech House Drums Like Michael Bibi, Fisher & Hot Since 82 [+Samples]
Tech House Tutorial Like Cloonee, Michael Bibi & Fisher [+Samples]
… and so on

For the most part these are focused on his sample pack and how it can be used to create tracks similar to the artists mentioned in the titles. I won’t spend any time on these as there isn’t much new ground covered, so next up it will be CAPONNE – Como fazer um drop estilo Michael Bibi & Pawsa do zero

How To Make Music Like – Michael Bibi (Part 2 – Djbods)

How To Make Tech House Like Michael Bibi & Pawsa: Part 1

Despite me wanting to avoid Hanging Tree, in this video Djbods uses it as his reference track and attempts to combine it with elements from the Michael Bibi Remix of Eyes on Fire by Blue Foundation. Personally I’ve never really liked guitars in tech house, so this was going to be a challenge for me from the outset. This video has had 5,310 views at the time of writing and the comments are generally positive.

The video was released on the 19th Sept 2019 and is an analysis of an unfinished, and incomplete, track that Djbods was intending to release. The following key features of a Michael Bibi track he identifies as follows;

Kick – beefy with a lot of drum bus/saturation. Considers that it may be a heavily processed 909 kick but can’t replicate it
Bass – created a sub bass with Serum. Has a lot of dirt grit & ‘low end shit’
Clap – wide & splashy. He creates a rhythm clap pattern very similar to what’s in Hanging Tree
Hats – considers these to be very important and that each hat should be identifiable and clear in the mix – layering is important
Snare builds – unusual placing in what seems like random parts of track
Vocals – samples obtained from Splice and creates chops that have a call & response

He also identified the use of a hi-string synth in the background to build tension, some white noise shots that have stereo width and lastly a short snare roll fill.

Like Julien Earle did in my previous post, Djbods places a lot of focus on saturation and the use of Drum Bus in Ableton. Unfortunately the second part to this video was never made and, from what I can see, the track was never completed and released.

To follow along with this jist of this video, the only option really was to go with a track in the style of Hanging Tree (but without using the same vocal). This is what I came up with.

There is a reason why appalachian ballads aren’t used in tech house – the whole vibe just doesn’t sit right, unless of course you have the inspiration to use the Jennifer Lawrence performance of Hanging Tree. With over 20 million hits on youtube and 6 million on Spotify (I think it’s been removed from this platform due to a copyright infringement) that definitely was a recipe for success. For my track, rather than using the same vocal I looked for an alternative, which wasn’t easy. The final choice was ‘Calling Me Home‘ by Kathy Mattea.

Essentially with what Djbods is covering in his video, I feel isn’t a recipe for success. Although he makes some good observations about clarity of drums in the mix and also points out the not so obvious placement of snare rolls (and other FX) by Michael Bibi, the fact that part 2 was never published leads me to think he abandoned this track – or at least considered the end result not to be good enough to release.

From the advice given, here are some of the ways I implemented them in my track.

Beefy kick with heavy saturation
Gritty bass (from sample)
Call & response vocal

And this is the full arrangement which also shows the use of layered claps and open hats

It’s a country mile away from Hanging Tree and I used the guitar very sparingly without making it the focus of the track – instead I used it just to accent the vocal in places and as a dub like stab for ear candy.

Next up it’s another Julien Earle tutorial, but this one is a track from start to finish – Making A FULL Tech House Track Like Michael Bibi & PAWSA From Start To Finish [+Samples]

How To Make Music Like – Michael Bibi

I started thinking about the usefulness of the ‘how to’ music production videos on youtube after, somewhat ironically, watching something on youtube that wasn’t particularly complimentary about this style of content. Essentially the premise was that most, but not all, of these videos exist solely to sell a sample pack or a patreon subscription, which is fair enough I think, but does this make them any less useful? Lets see. I’ve picked an artist I listen to a fair bit and whose style of music is very close to what I make and, more importantly, there are a fair few ‘how to make music like’ videos to be followed.

How to make music like – Michael Bibi

Before I crack on with this, I would like to mention that Michael has been battling cancer and it was great to see him post recently on Instagram that he’s responded well to treatment and he’s on the path to recovery. 💪

How To Tech House Like Michael Bibi & Pawsa

I’ve decided to start with the oldest and work my way through to the most recent. Although there is a remake of Hanging Tree from 4 years ago I decided to skip over this as it’s somewhat reliant on the excellent Jennifer Lawrence vocals. Next on the list is this from Julien Earle, and it’s a popular one with over 10k views.

The video was released on the 14th Jun 2019 and is just an 8 bar loop. Julien has been very prolific with this style of video covering a lot of different artists and genres. Here he identifies the following key features of a Michael Bibi track;

Kick – beefy, low mid range heavy kick, powerful, saturated (skippy kick pattern noted)
Bass – FM sine wave bass playing notes E and A, warm and round (he subtly widens highs with chorus).
Tambourine/Hi-Hat – 2 different patterns. 16 hats and the tambourine on different pattern
Clap – punchy and fat, sits on top of the mix
Open Hat – Sharp tight hat (shuffles at the end of 2nd bar)

Overall Julien places a lot of focus on saturation. He also notes there should be too much stereo width as club system playback is often mono.

There is not a lot to go on here for anyone to make a full track, but it’s a start. I looked at what Michael was releasing 4 years ago to try and establish what the inspiration was;

Skream & Michael Bibi – Otto’s Chant (Original Mix)
Michael Bibi – Frequency (Original Mix)
Michael Bibi – Got The Fire (Original Mix)

I decided to use Got The Fire as the reference for my own track and to use Juliens advice in my production decisions. This is what I came up with.

There isn’t a great deal of complexity to this tune so it worked quite well for this particular example. Starting with the kick, I chose one very similar to Juliens

My Kick
Juliens Kick

I also used exactly the same hi-hat as Julien for the accent hat pattern. For the other drum and percussion samples I chose similar sounds from various free sample packs. I decided against a tambourine and went for a shaker instead.

There is one issue I have with the advice given by Julien here, and that’s the bass. To my ears it has too much mid range and not enough thump in the lows and it doesn’t sit nicely with the kick. It’s a short tutorial, and just an 8 bar loop, but I think it’s worth noting that there are no velocity changes and no groove applied to the drums. Essentially, it’s very basic. If I was relativelty new to music production I think I’d struggle to make a full length track from this.

This is my finished arrangement. It is very simple – kick, bass, clap, open hat, skippy hat, seed shaker, snare roll, a short fill, some background ambience, the motif from Got The Fire, a handful of FX, a hi-pitched string sound and the all important vocal chop, which I sampled from Common – The Corner ft. The Last Poets.

Next up, djbods – How To Make Tech House Like Michael Bibi & Pawsa: Part 1

Finishing Tracks Is Its Own Practice

Late last night I was catching up on my youtube subscriptions and this vid appeared on my feed from Bthelick. Now, I make a lot of music and I also publish a lot of it on Soundcloud, but I also sit on a lot and probably 1 in every 5 tracks I start, I don’t finish.

When I first started to get into music production, I spent a lot of time watching videos which claimed to help improve my music production. They can be useful to a certain extent (and I still and will continue to watch them) but in real life, to get better, I believe t’s simply a case of putting in the hours making music – the Malcolm Gladwell ten thousand hours assertion.

I’m roughly now 3 years in and have 264 tracks released on SoundCloud. I’ve had the odd success like 40 Degree Heatwave with over 4000 listens on youtube and more recently Let Me Hear You Say… on Soundcloud with over 1000 plays. These little blips are nice when they happen, and there really seems to be no indicator when they will. I’ve put out what I think are some great tracks only for them to be played a handful of times and then to disappear into the depths of my profile feed.

So, I scrolled back through my private tracks and found this. I made it around 3 or 4 months ago. I’m not sure why I didn’t release it at the time – I’m was probably unhappy with something minor so never considered it to be finished. It’s finished now as it’s public! Maybe this is ‘the one’ that makes me a superstar producer 😂

Sussex County Youth Championships 2023

A competition I’ve not been involved with before, so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes and if we can build this up to be comparable to the Surrey Youth Championships. Two weapons only, foil and epee, as there are no acutal sabre clubs in Sussex. 17th December at Longhill Sports Centre just on the outskirts of Brighton. Entry is through Sport80 – https://bf.sport80.com/

South East Youth Fencing Championships 2024

I don’t remember what year exactly it was that I became involved in running this event – possibly 2020 or maybe earlier. In that time though it had changed significantly (for the better). The venue is now settled at the excellent Triangle Leisure Centre in Burgess Hill after we lost Whitgift School due to a change in policy relating to external organisations hiring their facilities. There is an amazing team of people involved in putting together this competition, and it has now become one of the largest youth fencing competitions in the country. Last year we over 300 entries across all the weapons, up from just over 200 in 2020.

Entry for the 2024 event is now open on Sport80 – https://bf.sport80.com/v/3308/e/events

Fencing Club Profiles & Recent Results

I thought of this a few years ago but never got around to coding it – essentially if you’re running a fencing club social media account, website news page or maybe you announce the recent results at club nights, it’s very easy to miss who competed in what competition.

Fast forward to now, several years after thinking about creating a page to help with this, I believe there still isn’t any place you can visit that can easily present that information. Well, there is now. I’ve expanded the Club Profile page to include all results by fencers from the selected club.

Crawley Sword Club – https://dankew.me/epee/club.php?c=61