15 years experience as a composer, producer and sounddesigner.

When did you start as a composer/producing music?

I started to work for a radio station as a producer right after finishing school, and shortly after that, I started producing music on my own. First, it was just a hobby, and it took me around 6 years to build a profession out of composing for commercials and short movies and even more years to finally release some music under the alias "spank.au" and "bring your friends. "


What were your main production-challenges in the beginning,and how have they changed over time?

The main challenge was and still is - finishing my projects. For the commercial part of my work, I got deadlines and not much time to overthink compositions and tracks, but I get mad with my stuff regularly. 

To solve this problem, I'm making a quick arrangement and mixing while jamming to see if the idea could work for me as a track or not. This helps me a lot to avoid wasting time on a dead end. Structuring my workflow and giving myself a deadline for a track or an EP sometimes works too. 

What was your first studio like? How and for what reasons has your setup evolved over the years, and what are currently some essential pieces of gear for you?

My first studio was just a MacBook with Ableton 7, speakers, and some midi controllers. I liked touching the knobs, but I quickly got tired of midi mapping. So I bought my first hardware synth, an Arturia micro brute. I immediately fell in love with the raw sound and the way to work outside the box. Shortly after that,I got another synth.. and another ..and one more … and so on. 

In 2015 the Moog mother32 was released, and it introduced me to the eurorack world. The possibility of extending this lovely synth with other modules got me to buy a doepfer case, and my modular journey started. More Modules, bigger case, more modules, another case ….

At some point, I just had too much hardware, and it was hard for me actually to make music and not just to noodle around with all the gear. I decided to sell a lot and focus on a smaller setup. Right now, the most important pieces in my studio are a 9U 104HP Case, Mother 32, and a Subharmonicon. 

Can you take us through a few of your favorite Modules?

  • ALM Pam’s New Workout for clocked modulations and sending different clocks to my sequencers

  • Instruo Arbhar processed through Happy Nerding fxaidXL for granular textures and ambiance

  • Square Rample and Erica Sample Drum processed through Qu-Bit Data Bender for glitchy drums and weird percussions

  • Mutable Instruments Braids processed through Make Noise Mimeophon for dubby stabs

BASTI’S STUDIO IN BERLIN


It is remarkable, in a way, that we have arrived in the 21st century with the basic concept of music still intact. Do you have a vision of music, an idea of what music could be beyond its current form? 

I don’t think the concept of music will change dramatically in the future, but how we create music will evolve with the possibilities of the current technology, like AI-based stuff. We will have to consider if or how we want to use those tools in our creation process. I will not let AI compose music for me, but intelligent mixing&mastering tools get me excited.

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