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33 - Lawrencerandom

33 - Lawrencerandom

Giannis Kampiotis
December 13, 2022

Hello music people 👋

Today in the spotlight, Lawrencerandom

He is a music producer and educator based in Jakarta. He is an Ableton Certified trainer and a SAE Jakarta educator.

He’s been into the music scene since 1998 so he knows about the highs and lows that comes when involved in the music industry.

Let’s see what he has to say 🎶

Read Time: 6 minutes 📰

Studio

Gear List

ASM - Hydrasynth Desktop
Behringer - TD-3
Behringer - 2600
Behringer - Neutron
Arturia - Microfeak
Arturia - Microbrute
Arturia - Drumbrute Impact
Akai - MPC1000
Ableton - Push 2
Roland - Juno 106
Roland - JU-06A
Monome - 64 Grid
Alesis - QS6.1

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Interview

Who are you and what is your relationship with music?

My name is Lawrence Philip and I go by the name Lawrencerandom.

I'm an educator and music producer based in Jakarta, Indonesia. I started as a DJ all the way back in 1998. In 1999 I started dabbling in some music production and eventually got my first release on a small independent Drum & Bass label in 2000. I've been calling myself a music producer since then.

For a while I was making a living as both DJ and producer, producing music for my self and pop artists in Indonesia. Then I got kinda burned out.

Relying on music as my main source of income put a lot of pressure and that completely killed my creativity. During this time, SAE just opened in Jakarta and I thought teaching music production can be a good source of steady income. I never thought that teaching would actually rejuvenate my passion for music making. Now, with steady income from teaching I no longer feel the pressure of needing to make music. The result is I've been able to enjoy the creative process of music making again.

What's the one thing in your studio you can't live without?

I don't think I can live without Ableton Live.

Everything in my studio is centered around it. From music making to live performance. I've tried to go the dawless route. That's also a lot of fun. However, the inability to save your patch on a synth and micro editing means there are a lot of doing things more than once. With Ableton Live I can start producing then turn into live performance in 1 go.

What is the least expensive piece of gear that gave you the most results?

This definitely the Microfreak. This thing can do everything.

What's your process?

I usually start messing around with my synths to create an interesting sound. From there, I create a mini jam in Ableton Live, combining both hardware and software.

If it's interesting, then I will film it for my social media content. Then, I will collect and save all recorded audio into the Ableton Project and archive it.

By doing this routine, I collect lots of song ideas. Then I will visit all these ideas, chose the one that I like and finish it into a song.

How would you explain your style?

I started as a drum and bass producer so I get really meticulous with my drum processing. I know Drum & Bass is not the coolest music at the moment, however I did learn a lot from it.

About 3 years I kinda fell in love with hardware synth again and I've been making music that is heavily influenced by music from the 80s (not Synthwave). I still make drum & bass but it has an 80's vibe to it.

What’s your biggest struggle?

My biggest struggle has been about finding the balance between full time job, being a parent, grad school, and music creation time. After all, there is only 24 hrs in a day.

At the moment, the music creation part has been taking a back seat. However, as soon as I'm done with grad school, I'm hoping to be able to dedicate more time to music creation.

Has this journey of building a hardware setup changed the way you think about music or life in general?

Hardware completely rewired the way I tackle a project.

When I was 100% software, if I'd hit a wall, I would just open another plug-in. With hardware, some times that's all there is and you have to find a workaround to solve it. And this makes me become a better producer. That is because when I apply this to software, the sky is the limit.