When the Coronavirus shut us down, clubs and festivals ceased, and everyone was essentially forced inside with no definitive end in sight, DJ Times wondered: How is our tribe coping? How are DJs getting by? So, we sent out our “Coronavirus Questionnaire” to DJ/producers from all musical genres to find out.
During this period, DJ Times will continue presenting the questionnaire responses from talented music-makers from all over the world. Here’s our latest entry, this time from Sweden, the Stockholm-based future-house talent Ken Bauer.
What’s it like where you’re living? How did you spend most of your time? I live in Sweden and there has been a lot of debate in the world whether or not Sweden had the right strategy – time will tell. The recommendations from the government have been to stay home and work from home whenever possible. Personally, I have been working from home for over six months. This means that I have been able to spend a lot of extra time in the studio. I have a ton of new music coming out and I have also spent a lot of time on crafting my upcoming preset bank for the Vengeance Avenger soft synth.
Did you lose important gigs, or income-producing work? No, I haven’t. I decided to take a break from playing gigs a few years ago, so nothing has really changed for me.
Are you doing anything now that can or will produce music-related income? Have you learned anything in the downtime? Yes, I am doing a lot of mentoring and teaching. I have also written posts for a few music blogs including PreSonus and NextLevelSound.com.
What are you doing now that’s ultimately constructive to your music life/career? For example, any releases during this period? I am launching two new labels, Dance Rising and Future Rave Music. I am producing a couple of solo tracks, as well as doing some really interesting collaborations. My recent release, “Lone,” on Future House Cloud is doing very well at the moment, too. I also just released “Pill of Love,” a collab with Sonny Bass on SHKDWN Recordings.
What’s your DJ platform? I use Traktor and the Native Instruments S4 controller and the reason simply being that it was the first platform I ever used when starting DJing.
What’s in your studio? I use PreSonus Studio One. I own almost every DAW in the market, but I always end up using Studio One. Nothing beats the workflow, stability and sound quality, in my opinion. I do realize that everyone else in my genre is using FL Studio or Ableton Live, but I don’t care. I just love to produce and mix in Studio One. I love FabFilter plug-ins due to the simplicity and sound quality. My go-to synth is Avenger from Vengeance, even though I do use Serum and Sylenth1 a lot as well. I own an Access Virus TI, but to be honest I never use it. I bought it and used it on a couple of tracks, but I really prefer the workflow of using soft synths.
What’s the most surprising thing you’ve realized during this period of social distancing? How easy it is to take life for granted! I don’t think that society will ever be the same. But, hopefully, we will be more appreciative to each other and treat everyone with kindness and respect.
Have you done anything online recently? Have you seen any DJ video streams that impressed you? I am hosting a monthly user-group meeting for PreSonus Studio One users at nextlevelsound.com, and that is about it when it comes to online streaming for me. I do really enjoy the videos from Zen World and Olly James. Olly James is actually helping me with a track right now and I am really curious as to what he comes up with.
Any advice on staying sane & relatively positive through this situation? Always look on the bright side of life… I spend more time with my family. I play more videogames with my son and I try to learn more stuff with regards to music production. I try to keep busy learning new things to keep myself from thinking too much about the current situation.
To check out more Life in Lockdown interviews, click here.
