Name: Will Hofbauer
Nationality: Australian
Occupation: Producer, DJ, publicist
Current Release: Will Hofbauer's LKX004 EP is out via Local Knowledge.
Gear and Software Recommendations: I’ve had some fun with Echobode, which is like a delay and frequency shifter combined, and any Space Echo emulator always goes down well with me. Bonus shout out to the Ableton built in plugins, which are generally the ones I use the most haha.
One other thing I always like to recommend is this book called Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers by Dennis DeSantis. I think it's quite well known but I like it a lot and try to reference it whenever I get a bit stuck.

If you enjoyed this Will Hofbauer interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit him on Instagram, Soundcloud, and bandcamp.



The views of society towards technology are subject to constant change. How would you describe yours?

Wowee straight in with the big questions haha. Hello!

Overall I think I’m quite pro technology. I mean, I make all my music using screens and things that use batteries so I guess it is a good thing in my life on balance. I have a Netflix account. I probably couldn’t function very well as a human without Google Maps.

But in other aspects of my life, I’ve felt a bit against technology recently, or maybe just against certain technologies. I’m way too addicted to my phone and I’m trying (and failing, really) to use it less. It’s quite a romantic idea to just launch it in the bin and be a hermit but I’m a coward.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist/producer?

My first steps in music were, like everyone else I guess, from just hearing it when I was a kid, haha. We’d have the radio on in the house a lot, and my mum had plenty of dance music CDs like Ministry of Sound etc in the car.

More specifically, I started making music when I was quite young: my brother and I would muck around in GarageBand just making shit for fun. Then I worked my way through a few different styles I guess, made some 8Bit music on Gameboy cartridges, bad noisy dubstep, hip hop beats, etc etc.

I’m not sure exactly what you mean by gains through experience, but the stuff I’m putting out now is probably better than what I was making 10-15 years ago, and it definitely is on a technical level at least. So experience has been a good thing for me, and I’m glad I’ve played around in a few different styles.

Whether or not I agree that experience is always good is a-whole-nother thing, there’s so much great music that’s been made with a healthy dollop of naivety. To answer the last part: sure, someone could train and learn to be a producer, if they threw enough time at it.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and then becomes increasingly professionalised. How important is playfulness for you today and if it is important, how do, concretely, you retain it?

I think anyone reading this who has checked out any of my stuff before is probably aware that I’m quite into playfulness, haha. It’s really important to me for a lot of reasons, but I find it a bit difficult to verbalise why. It might be because I struggle to do things the ‘right’ way, but to be honest I think it just boils down to the fact that I enjoy silly things and place as much importance on this as more ’serious’ stuff.

I don’t find it too difficult to retain, and I don’t put too much pressure on myself about that either. This is a hobby and it should be fun, right? In more concrete terms, my approach to production can vary but usually I try to just get a vibe going, thinking about it as little as possible. Basically I’m just trying to throw stuff into the computer really quickly and hope something sticks.

Once there’s enough in the project file it becomes a bit more of a problem solving process for me. That’s also fun for me in its own way sometimes, like how do I get from this pile of trash to a playable / listenable track?

Which other producers were important for your development and what did you learn from them?

Some that I think were probably important formatively, and maybe even before I could really appreciate it, were mostly hip hop / pop producers. Timbaland and Pharrell spring to mind. Basically anyone who was injecting anything slightly strange or interesting into popular music I heard when I was younger.

I mean, how good is the beat on “Drop It Like It’s Hot?” It’s almost unbelievable that a production that weird is behind such a big track.  



I’m also always inspired musically and personally by my friends, especially Jim who makes amazing music as Sangre Voss. Fearless approaches to weird dance music - so fresh!



There’s too many other producers to mention them all really.  

How and for what reasons has your music set-up evolved over the years and what are currently some of the most important pieces of gear and software for you?

I’m currently rocking Ableton 11 on a MacBook Pro, which is sadly reaching the end of its life, a pair of Focal A65s, an SSL2+ soundcard, and Beyerdynamic DT880’s. I also have a pair of smaller monitors, Genelec 8020Ds, which are great too. Ideally I’d have both speakers set up to A/B between them but I don’t have the space right now. I also recently moved all my samples onto an external HD, which is boring me even as I type this, but I suppose it’s also important.

My AirPods are also probably one of the most important things I use too. I often listen to stuff I’m working on away from the computer and make notes about things that I should change - I really recommend this.

That’s pretty much my bread & butter. I’ve flirted with bits and pieces of physical gear in the past, and some has even made it into tracks, but it’s never really become a key part of my set up.

Have there been technologies which have profoundly influenced, changed or questioned the way you make music?

Technology wise, nothing has helped me more than a laptop, Ableton, and a decent set of monitors tbh!

What is the relation between innovative tools and "innovative music"?

I don’t really know, haha. These questions are pretty punchy hey. I guess you just know innovative music when you hear it, because it feels like there are no existing boxes that you can put it into, or it’s just really fresh and exciting.

I guess it’s quite subjective.

Late producer SOPHIE said: “You have the possibility with electronic music to generate any texture, and any sound. So why would any musician want to limit themselves?” What's your take on that and the relevance of limitations in your set-up and process?

RIP SOPHIE, what a genuinely tragic loss.

I’d love to have unlimited time to just spend on making new sounds and trying out crazy things, but I have to set some sort of limits for myself, otherwise I’d never make any tunes and would just spend a whole week putting phasers on fart samples or whatever.

I suppose limitations can be a helpful way of forcing yourself to do a lot with a little, which could be a nice of squeezing something out, but it’s also good to know that you can always do the opposite and get some new samples or download a new plugin or whatever to get new ideas going too.

From the earliest sketches to the finished piece, what does your current production workflow/process look like?

I mentioned a bit about my usual approach earlier, so here are some screenshots of a track I more or less finished up recently. The first pic is the initial save file, ...



... and the second is it pretty much finished and fleshed out :)



From your experience, are there things you're doing differently than most or many other artists when it comes to gear and production?

I don’t think so. I reckon a lot of other bedroom producers are probably using really similar setups to me!

In relation to sound, one often reads words like “material”, “sculpting”, and “design”. Do you feel these terms have a relationship to your own work of and approach towards sound? Do you find using presets lazy?

Not really, I’m not usually heavy on detailed sound design, and I like using samples a lot. Sure, sometimes I play around with a sample to make it fit in a bit better, but I don’t view a lot of what I do as particularly complicated.

Presets are great starting points, and if I’m using one I’ll probably tweak it a bit to fit in better, but if it sounds good for the track as is then I don’t see why you would change it. I don’t care, I’m not the preset police :)

Production tools can already suggest compositional ideas on their own. Which of these have proven particularly fruitful in this regard?

I’ve played around with setting some parameters in Ableton’s built in MIDI FX and letting it make music for me just by picking some samples for it to manipulate. It was quite fun. I like using randomness sometimes too.

There's a great video here where Batu and Simo Cell go into this a bit. Worth a watch, and I’ve definitely had some fruitful moments with similar techniques in Reaktor.



To some, the advent of AI and 'intelligent' composing tools offers potential for machines to contribute to the creative process. What are your hopes, fears, expectations and possible concrete plans in this regard?

To be honest I don’t really have a hot take on this one, I don’t know enough about it.

I copied this question into Chat GPT for a laugh, but the answer was way too long to paste here lol.

If you could make a wish for the future directly to a product developer at a Hard- or Software company – what are developments in tools/instruments you would like to see and hear?  

@Pioneer - please please please make it possible to duplicate intelligent playlists in Rekordbox!

@Ableton - tabs in the browser would be amazing please and thank you :)