Hearing Ron Hardy in Chicago gave May a goal: make music worth playing, not music that sounds like anything

When visiting his mother in Chicago, May heard Ron Hardy DJing at The Music Box and was transformed. He returned to Detroit with one ambition: make a piece of music that they will play. Crucially, he did not want to sound like Chicago house — he wanted to make something so compelling that Hardy would choose to play it. This goal-shaped production practice: the target is a response in a specific listener or crowd, not a genre template. Hardy’s technique — using tape editing and ‘punching in and out’ — also shaped the DJ aesthetics that May built into ‘Strings of Life’. Hardy died before seeing the influence he had on Detroit techno.

Examples

Ron Hardy’s residency at The Music Box in Chicago was the epicentre of early house music. May describes the crowd as ‘animalistic — just too much’. The ‘punch in and out’ editing technique Hardy used is referenced in how ‘Strings of Life’ was constructed.

Assessment

What production goal did Ron Hardy’s DJing give Derrick May? What does that goal reveal about how to set creative targets when making music for a specific context?