Rhythmic Elements remains untouchable

When the duo from Pretoria surfaced, very few people had faith in what they were up to. But within a short period of time, Rhythmic Element were all over and irresistible.Those who love urban dance have been jiving to these boy's tunes for quite some time now. But how did the duo's musical journey erupt? The group is comprised of a DJ/producer and musician that go by the name of Master T and McKenzie.It was at the end of 2005 when McKenzie approached Master T for a demo recording. Master T then poured his heart out to McKenzie about his desire to put together a project for a group and asked the brother to join him on his mission. Being given such an opportunity, even though the future didn't promise anything, McKenzie jumped in.Come the beginning of 2006, the duo hit the studio and started putting down a Rhythmic Elements project - an album that only got released in 2008. "We take raw African indigenous sounds and fuse them with dance music - which ultimately gives us a platform to easily perform our music live."With one member coming from a DJing and music production background and the other from song writing and live instrumentation, it is interesting how the duo fuse their skills together. McKenzie said, "Master T is a DJ and producer, while I am a song writer and vocalist. So Master T channels me with what he needs to make something work and I bring my influence as a songwriter, being on point so that the song becomes successful."Getting into production, the guys say before they start touching the piano or writing lyrics, they first talk about the kind of a song they want to compose and the type of musical instruments they want to use.Coming to the duo's hit song, ‘2 By 2' from their first release, ‘The Offering', McKenzie said before they could write the song, they had to accept that what they were about to get down to was humorous. "When we started with the lyrics, every part of it had to be humorous, produce facts that people can easily relate to and overall had to make ‘2 By 2' a party song".Revealing how the song came about, McKenzie said Master T had for too long begged him to bring the song lyrics to the studio. He said that initially when he wrote the lyrics, he felt like they were not so in line with how they wanted to be perceived. But on the other hand, Master T believed that the song would work regardless. "When McKenzie sang the song to me, I immediately told him that we had to go on with it. I told him that besides being a DJ and producer, I am a business man and on the release, we needed something that would hook people to buy our album and discover what Rhythmic Elements has to offer" said Master T.Getting to the melody of the song, McKenzie said ‘2 By 2' is made out of intense research. According to him, the duo sat down and looked at songs that were hits in a period of five years. He then looked at the key elements, melodies and harmonies, as well as the overall vibe within the song that they reckoned would attract the right market. After pin pointing major elements that influenced the song, they then picked up those elements and used that as their guideline when coming up with ‘2 By 2'. "When you are working on a song, you need to realize that all the elements in a song need to be on par so that the song can rock the dance floor. And the biggest mistake we didn't want to make was to take all the beautiful elements we had and put them on bad instrumentals", said Master T