Swedish producer Ken Bauer is currently pushing his way into the spotlight with a string of House & EDM releases. You can find his music here.
1. What do you do in the world of music?
I produce EDM & Electro House music and I also teach music production classes.
2. Tell us about your history with synthesizers
My first synth was an Ensoniq ESQ-1. I was having a lot of fun with the synthesiser mainly because it had a built in sequencer letting me create simple songs. Back then I only played the synth for fun and didn’t really know how to program my own sounds. When I left home and started my first job I didn’t play the keyboard or synth for many years. However a few years ago I picked up my interest for music and started producing again. I bought a Virus TI but to be honest I am barely using it as I mainly use software synthesisers today. My favourite synths is Serum, Sylenth, Sprire and Avenger.
3. Tell us about a project you worked on or a piece of music you created, in which you found the process particularly interesting.
It was actually a project when I was not producing EDM. I was asked by a friend of mine to produce music for a video commercial for his company. When asked about which genre he wanted. He told me that I could do whatever I wanted as long as it wasn’t EDM. Too make sure I wasn’t falling into my old habits and sounding the same as my EDM tracks I told myself that I was only allowed to use stock plugins in my DAW. It was really refreshing to narrow down my choices and the result turned out great. So it is really true that less is more.
4. How has Syntorial helped you in your sound design process?
Massively. Before finding out about Syntorial I have mainly used presets with small tweaks. This has been a very time consuming process and often made me loose inspiration as I spent many hours searching for the right presets instead of actually being creative, producing music. I have watched a lot of videos on youtube as well as purchased many online training courses but it was Syntorial that truly opened my eyes and gave me that Eureka moment. The interactive training is just fantastic. Getting the opportunity to try to recreate sounds after getting a explanation on what to listen for is great. I also really appreciate the addons that maps your new knowledge to 3rd party synths such as Sylenth and Serum. If you want to learn how to program a synth I don’t know of a better or more fun way than using Syntorial.
5. Who have you been listening to lately?
Believe it or not but I am actually listening to Jean-Michel Jarre a lot right now to get some inspiration for retro sound design and arrangement.
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