If you’re watching Kenny Beats on Twitch chances are that you’re also familiar with Spain born and now UK based FEZE, since one his beats submitted to the regularly held beat battles became viral live on stream. We had the chance to catch up with him to do a quick Q&A:
Please sum up some personal milestones in your music career?
- Levis Music Project with ALIZZZ in 2019
- DJ for LEVIS in various private parties
- Produce with Warner Chappell composers and be able to learn from them
- Release songs on major labels as a producer, mixing and mastering engineer (Universal music Spain, Universal music Norway, Caroline International, …)
- Move to a foreign country and find my place as a producer and DJ
- Work and being able to do what I love for living.
- 24 million overall streams in my productions in 2021
Can you tell us the whole Kenny beats story?
All of this started in my bed with a huge hangover. I was watching videos on Youtube and just getting lost in the recommendations till an Oksami video appeared. He was explaining how we won the Kenny Beats beat battle for the second time. From there I watched some more videos and discovered that Kenny was still doing these beat battles. (I already knew who Kenny Beats was but never really followed him, I just listened to his music since he is one of the producers I draw inspiration from a lot). I participated in the beat battles for 2 weeks. The third week I arrived 40 minutes late to the battle. I made a beat as fast as I could and sent it. The idea for the beat was good but the general sound was trash (I made the beat in 15-20 mins). Surprisingly I made it to the top 4 with the votes and Kenny reacted to the beat. That was where it all started. Kenny’s reaction was so funny, he first hated the beat but with every listen the beat just stuck with him. He roasted and praised the beat at the same time. Shortly after he asked me to please make a beat breakdown and so I did. I used all the attention to make a fun video with a sample pack of the weird saxophone plugin I used. From there a chain of video reactions started, me reacting to Kenny, Kenny reacting to me, … By the end of this chain reaction, he told me if I ever go to LA he will be down to hang out and even started following me on Instagram.
After that some personal things happened in my life and I had to stop streaming. In December, my discord server started notifying me that Kenny invited me to the beat battle season 2 semi finals, and after that to the finals. I did my best and ended up at top 7 in the finals. Was a great time despite the personal problems happening around that time.
I really appreciate what he has done for me and what he’ doing for the community everyday. Not only producers, singers, art designers, engineers… During his streams he He doesn’t focus on himself, but rather uses it as a showcase of talents of his fans. That’s a thing that I really appreciate, big artists trying to help small artists. This does not happen in Spain (my home country). Big artists don’t care about you if they can’t take advantage of you. The USA, England and Latin American music industry has a different mentality. I that’s why London, Miami and LA are the places where the music business happens, because they help each other. Kenny is a very good example of this way of thinking. Just in case he is reading this, Thanks once again <3
How do you think the role of a music producer or artist will evolve over the next 5 years?
The role of the music producer is not very well defined nowadays. We call a producer someone that is making songs from a laptop in his room getting millions of plays as well as we call another one that brings artists to a studio to make songs together (I’m not saying one is better than the other). As long as technology evolves the role of a producer will expand even more. The traditional role will always be there, but I’m sure the AI will take over at some point. Complex songs will be done in minutes. I really think this will happen in the next 5 to 10 years.
When you start a new track – what are the first steps?
The first step is having a clear idea in my head of what I want to do. If It’s a song for me I usually have the melody already in my head / voice notes. From there, I usually produce the chorus first and make the verses a simpler version of the chorus, deleting layers and changing the chord progression a bit. If I’m in a session, I usually ask the artist for 2-4 reference songs to get in the mood and after that I follow the same process, chorus first and then verses second. Once the beat is done I change the key if necessary to fit the artists that will sing or rap on it.
A funny thing is that I don’t know the key I’m using while I produce the song. I create the whole instrumental by ear and then analyze what I have done. I know not everybody can do this but since I have classical music and singing training my ear just knows what sounds good or bad.
If you could only work with 3 plugins for the rest of your life, which ones would they be and why?
Omnisphere, Xpand2: Two of the VSTs with the biggest variety of good sounds I have ever used.
Soothe 2: It is almost unreal how good this VST is. I save a lot of time deleting resonances and annoying frequencies since I have it. Apart from being a producer, I’m a mixing and mastering engineer and it’s a must have in all my mixes.
Name one major mistake you made as a producer which other musicians could learn from.
I used to think I didn’t need help and do it all DIY. It’s super important to have people you trust and collaborate with local artists in order to grow. If you don’t get involved in the community it doesn’t matter if you are good or bad, because nobody will listen to you. Also, in collaborating you always learn something new about the workflow others have. You should always try be around people that know more than you.
How important are data insights for your (strategic) decisions?
I like data insights to see how my work is performing, but I don’t make decisions by data. I do whatever feels the best, because I’m trying to keep it as real as possible. People listen to all kinds of music, but what they become fans of and love are REAL things, music that is timeless.
What’s next for FEZE?
I really want to rent a place and open a proper studio to continue working with even more people and put the South of UK on the map. In last years I’ve been working from home. During that time I felt the urge to be in the studio with the artist and create something from scratch. Apart from that, 2021 was a bad year and I made an EP to just express my feelings. I’m really looking forward to make some new songs.
Apart from that, I’m now DJing in various Southampton clubs discovering another side of music to fall in love with. So I really hope I can expand, grow and eventually play in London and have my own event in town.
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