For this edition of In the Studio, we’re catching up with Cy Kosis, an LA-based dance and EDM producer who’s been making beats since his high school days. What started as messing around on GarageBand turned into a full-blown career, shaped by hands-on learning, mentorship, and a love for electronic music. In this interview, he talks about his journey from making “terrible beats” to mastering his craft, and how the connections he made along the way helped him level up.
I’ve been producing since I was 15 years old. I’ve been DJing since I was 20. I initially started making really terrible beats on GarageBand on the iMacs at my high school and I would record my friends rapping on them. Eventually when I went to Wesleyan University in 2007 I discovered a program called Mixcraft and that was when I started making more electronic music, the samples in that program were amazing. I was also still really terrible at making beats, but because I was surrounded by so many creatives and musicians that I improved significantly.
College was extremely difficult for me, and honestly, my heart really wasn’t in the Liberal Arts education. So in the summer of 2010 I bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles to visit my mom for a two-week vacation. What was supposed to be only two weeks ended up with me staying here for good! I joined this apprenticeship program called Recording Connection where I studied under a phenomenal music producer/engineer named Drew Kapner.
He taught me A LOT of small tips and tricks about music production that only come from the level of experience he’s had in the music industry. After completing that program I had officially left Wesleyan and went on a job hunt. The certification from them I had received didn’t prove enough to get gigs in the engineering world, and obviously my lack of experience wasn’t helping.
So I went to The Los Angeles Recording School and I received my Associate’s Degree in Recording Arts. There wasn’t much taught about music production but I learned a lot about the science of sound, psychoacoustics, how to get great recordings, how to mix and master songs to a professional level, and plenty more. I also met a lot of some of the best friends I have on earth there. It was the place I was able to basically start my career as a sound engineer. A lot of the work I’ve gotten in the industry was from the relationships I built at that school. I think if nothing else school is the best place to network because you’re surrounded by like-minded people who are learning and growing along with you.
Ableton is definitely my favourite DAW. Although Ableton doesn’t sponsor people, I'm an Ableton Artist, and I also have been teaching Ableton (at various Ableton Certified schools including Dubspot and Garnish Music) and doing personal lessons for the past 12 years.
I’m also extremely adept in Pro Tools, and I prefer to record vocals just because the workflow is so fast, although Ableton has stepped up with their new vocal comping system. I also love working in Logic Pro, it’s one of the most intricate and customisable DAW’s on the market. I’m also very capable in FL Studio, although not quite as much as the others. All the DAW’s have their pros and cons, but Ableton just works with my brain the best.
Right now my two favorite pieces of gear that I own and use everyday are my Ableton Push 2, my Alesis 3630, and my Korg Minilogue XD. The Push honestly makes the song starting process so much faster and more intuitive. And the 3630 is the same compressor that Daft Punk used on their earlier work, and even though it’s a cheaper piece of gear the noise and punch that comes out of it sounds really nice to me, there’s something that’s more low fidelity and gritty that comes out of it. The Minilogue is a beast of an outboard synth, it’s very versatile, and although I’m very in the box, whenever creativity is running low playing with sounds on the Minilogue helps pull me out of a creative lull very easily.
Analog Lab, it’s basically every amazing analog synth in digital form. Serum, because it’s great for making insane bass music sounds (and it’s capable of making almost anything). Ableton’s Wavetable because it has a really nice warmth to it, whereas Serum can be kind of brittle (even though they’re similar synths). Kontakt, because it’s great for getting real instruments that I can’t play while still in the box, because they’re literally real instruments just painstakingly sampled.
Also everything from iZotope because it’s wonderful for mixing and mastering.
Whether it’s drums, or a melody, or a sound I hear in my head, I usually like to start with some sort of inspiration that gets me motivated to work on a track. However, I’m not always inspired, but I sit down everyday for at least two hours inside of Ableton and when I’m uninspired I usually start with a simple drum pattern. Then I spend a while working on the chord structure, then build a melody from the notes in the chords, and then I move on to arranging the sounds into something more recognisable as a song. Usually I’ve put about an hour in at this point and from there I usually decide whether or not I love the song enough to keep working on it.
With my more electronic music the inspiration almost nine times out of 10 is a sound in my head. I usually centre the song around the main idea/theme of that sound I heard. I usually spend anywhere from a couple days to a couple months working on sound design to get the sound just right.
Overall I think I take a holistic approach: one cool bass sound or one cool snare does not make a cool song, so I often take the time to vibe with a song as a whole after I’ve had time to detach from specific things.
I watch Andrew Huang a lot, I also watch Ahee’s videos a lot as well. Especially as an electronic musician his tutorials are really useful.
It’s ok for everything to be quiet! Headroom is so useful in getting a good mixdown. In the beginning, I was trying to make everything louder, pushing my sounds too hard, distorting things I didn’t want distorted, recording things too loud, when in reality I just wanted to hear everything louder. I ruined a lot of mixes by over compressing and generally making things too loud. If you want things to be louder, then turn your volume up on your speakers/headphones. But don’t obsess over getting loudness, that’s much easier to do than you think.
I find I’ve had problems with writer’s block and time constraints in the past. I’ve found they’re connected to each other. I have a daughter and often finding the time to be creative is hard, but also when I have the time to be creative, often I’m just too tired to come up with anything of substance.
I’ve figured out the key is to just keep going. Just open Ableton everyday, even if it’s for five minutes. I think it’s more beneficial to spend a year opening Ableton once everyday than it is to open once every month for 10 hours. Sitting down and doing one task, like sound design one day, or study music marketing, or maybe another day is music theory, it keeps the writer’s block away. That way I still feel like I accomplished something, even if a whole song doesn’t come out.
Best killer tip I can share is learn how to gain stage properly. This will take your mixes to the next level. Also, I think a lot of people could use more intentional sample choice.
I use Splice for samples and rent-to-own plugins. I also use Google Drive to share files and sessions. It’s not perfect but it’s easier to use than most programs.
I have a group of friends that are producers and I often will send them stuff I’m working on to get their opinions on it. It’s good to have producers and engineers to play songs to because they often give the most technical advice, which is super valuable because when you’ve become familiar with a song you become immune to the problems in it, and that fresh pair of veteran ears is very helpful.
I also will play songs for my daughter, my parents, and my girlfriend and get their feedback. My daughter is probably the most honest, and will say she doesn’t like something. Getting feedback from people who aren’t technical, and just say whether or not they like it is super helpful, because I don’t only make music for myself. Also, my girlfriend has impeccable taste in music so I always take what she says into consideration.
I think Dragonfly is the track I’m most proud of. That song has over 500,000 streams on Spotify and when I made that song I had just graduated from college and wasn’t really sure I could make it as an artist and that was the first song that really showed me that people like my music and I belonged in the music space as an artist.
It’s definitely changed how I market myself on Soundcloud. Over the years I’ve built up an organic following on Soundcloud, and it’s nice to be able to connect to a larger community of like-minded music creators that are willing to share my music.
Top left to right: Alesis 3630, Ableton Push 3
Middle: Macbook Pro
Bottom left to right: Ableton Live Suite, , Motu 828x,
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This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity
