Why we built coproducer

By DJ Rapid & Quench

Founders, coproducer

We're two DJs who ended up on opposite sides of the same console (one in the booth, one behind the desk), and we both kept running into the same frustration. So we built the co-producer we each wished we'd had. Here's who we are and why this exists.

From DJ Rapid

I came up in the early 2000s, playing clubs and events like Pharmacy, @mosphere, Hard Kandy, Advent*Jah, Sublime in Sydney and Rise in Perth, and a lot of rooms in between. I ran Hardcore Bizness and toured artists over from the UK. The dancefloor taught me exactly what a record has to do to a room.

What it never taught me was production. And here's the thing nobody warns you about: the distance between the track playing in your head and getting it out of the machine is enormous, and mostly it's time. I've got the ears. What I don't have, as a busy professional, is a free night that happens to line up with a mate who can sit at the desk with me. I wanted a co-producer who's there at 11pm on a Tuesday when the idea actually shows up.

I wanted a co-producer who's there at 11pm on a Tuesday, when the idea actually shows up.

From Quench

I've spent a lot of years on the other side of that console. I produced Dreams back in 1993 (a track that went on to do far more than I ever expected) and a stack of records since, including Hope. Over the years plenty of friends have come to me to help them write.

The sessions that worked were always the ones where they turned up prepared: a clear idea, a reference, a shape to react to. The ones that stalled were the two of us staring at a blank screen while the clock ran. coproducer is the thing I wish everyone had before they walked in. Turn up with a sketch you built just by talking to it, and now we're arranging and finishing, instead of starting from nothing.

What we're actually trying to do

We're not here to replace producers, and we're definitely not building another button that spits out a finished song you had no part in. The fully-automated generators make something that sounds like music but carries none of you: none of the soul, the emotion, the feeling that makes a record land.

We think the next generation of producers should learn to write real music, and the fastest way to learn is to keep making the decisions yourself, just with someone who knows the craft sitting next to you. That's coproducer. Say it, hear it, change it, play it out, and learn how records actually get made along the way.