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French producer JC Concato has spent the past twenty years immersed in music. He started out big; cutting his teeth crafting soundscapes for French pop royalty, Vanessa Paradis and went on to twiddle knobs for the comfortingly retro Oasis and everybody's favorite trip-hop pixie, Björk. He's witnessed the development of production technology such as MIDI programming, which revolutionized music production in the eighties and remains an industry standard today. His name litters the liner notes of releases by acid jazz dignitaries such as Incognito due to his work with Gilles Peterson's Talkin' Loud imprint. Armed with decades worth of engineering and music production experience, JC Concato currently teaches online production courses at London's Point Blank Music School. JC chats about how a producer with his hand in some of the more memorable grooves in recent history approaches teaching, imparts wisdom to his students, and discusses what still motivates him to create.

How did you get started in the music industry?
My dad was a drummer in the seventies so I was basically with him on tour since the age of 3 or 4. I made my first band when I was about 8 or 7 then I decided to go into production. I started in a recording studio in London as soon as I moved [there] in the early nineties. I 've basically done music all the time. I started programming in the eighties, doing programming at the beginning of MIDI. So I kind of followed the beginning of MIDI and got into technology the more I discovered synths and sampling and sequencing.

Who are some artists that you've worked with?
In France I started working with Vanessa Paradis. Then in England I started in the nineties and I've worked with artists like Omar at the time of the acid jazz [movement] in London that was really big. I've done a lot of stuff on a label that was called Talkin' Loud. And then I was in a studio called Matrix and then I started working with artists such as Bjork, Oasis and Blur. I started as an assistant and then moved up as an engineer. I started to engineer with these guys and working with a lot of producers and that was a great experience, actually. The early nineties in London [was] such a great time musically; there was so much going on. I had the luxury and the chance to work on a lot of different projects, which was great.

What are some of your more memorable moments in making music?
I had the luxury of [recording in] an old seventies studio, an historical studio where the Sex Pistols recorded and that was really quite a big moment for me. Working with Bjork was a great experience; she's a great artist. She's purely creative...and she gives herself every chance to be creative. As a person, on a human level, she's really, really nice as well. She's just got this amazing creativity. That, I think, would be the highlight in terms of how much fun I had in the studio and it [was with] somebody I admire anyway as an artist. When I had the chance to spend a couple of weeks in the studio recording [with] her, that kind of confirmed what I thought she was.

How do you translate music production into an actual course?
The way we do it here at Point Blank Music School is based around a lot of practice. There are some general ideas that you can put forward from basic theories but after that it's only when you practice that you realize what sort of problem you have to face and how you solve the problem. We're really trying to give [students] hands-on practice. And with the online [courses] we're doing the same. [When I give feedback] I work on the project and I send it back to them so they can see what I actually have done on it and why.

Do you have a lot of interaction with your students?
Yes, absolutely, I'm pretty much in touch nearly every day with them. I encourage them; I really encourage them because for me that's the key to the online success. I believe, that we have a degree of interactivity [greater] than [other music production schools] and I really want to encourage that. I feel as though the technology will allow us to get more interactive via video conferencing and we will implement it as soon as we can. I have conversations on the phone with [students] sometimes if we feel that we can't solve some problems just [via] email.

What has been one of the hardest things in developing an online music course?
Until you put it into practice with students actually using it you don't really know how well it's going to work. I would say that's probably the hardest...to try to anticipate and try to find interactive ways so it's as exciting for the students who are taking the course. You don't want it to be like a website where you're simply reading pages of text telling you some theory or some topic. We've worked on it now for six, eight months and the students seem to be happy so far. The feedback we've had has been really good, so I hope we have a found a formula that's going to work.

What is some of the best career advice you've ever received, either technical or personal?
The best advice I've received is from a friend of mine who was a really successful songwriter in France. The first advice he gave me, I think I was about 18 or 19 and I still wasn't sure exactly how to approach [a music career] and the advice from more reasonable people [was], "you should maybe get a job and do the music on the side." The advice he gave me was the total opposite. He was like, "look, you're only 19, if you want to go for it you're gonna have to basically commit to it 125, 200 percent really. I think if you want to give yourself the proper chance to do it, you have to have this dedication to it." And it turned out be true. I think it was the best advice. There is a lot of competition out there [and] the music business has changed so much but I think it's the dedication and commitment [that makes musicians successful].

What are some of your personal music goals?
Nowadays it's really about transmitting the knowledge. I have developed the chance to experiment along the years. On a personal level I'm still writing music for media, and it gives me that sort of freedom where I don't have...to comply with [deadlines] and certain aspects of commercial projects. Now my goal is more just being happy making music. I think the danger when you become professional is that you can suddenly get [distracted] by the pressures of...having commercial success and I've known some people who have forgotten it's about fun and enjoying making music and I want to get that feeling back. For me, that's what it's all about now.