Interview with Todd Helder about producing music and inspiration

This week we had the honor to interview Todd Helder. Todd is an upcoming producer from The Netherlands releasing music on STMPD Records by Martin Garrix. He’s quickly developing his own production and visual style, which is interesting!

In this interview, we will dive deeper into some productional questions and the start of his music career!

How did you get into producing music?

I started making music when I was around 15 years old. At the beginning, I wasn’t taking it too seriously, but when I entered the Marshmello remix competition and later found out I had won, things started to get more serious, however, I still have a lot of fun :)

If you had to choose between producing or DJing - What would it be and why?

To be honest, I love producing a lot! 24/7 locked down in the basement! why not haha? But I prefer DJing because I can test out my upcoming or ID tracks and see the crowd's reaction which gets me super motivated and inspired to work even harder.

How did you come up with the idea to use the pixel visual aspects as part of your branding?

Playing video games has always been a big part of my life and influenced my music & visuals a lot! What I like the most about gaming is the immersive experience: you can escape the reality of everyday life and explore new worlds and adventures! 

Your music and production style is unique. How did you come up with this?

Thank you that means a lot to me! To be honest, I’ve been producing over 6 years now and the way I did it was to just sit down and make music which you would love to listen to or play as a DJ. Artists such as Travis Scott, Michael Jackson and Marshmello definitely inspired me a lot!

How do you approach the process of a new song? Are there specific steps/rules that you follow?

I always like to enter a studio with an idea, which could be from a random loop or Splice, a vocal from a rap sample pack that I downloaded from a random website or even new songs on Soundcloud. I’ve made for myself a sample pack with all the todd sounds which I often use in my tracks for example: strummed piano, ambiance loops, drum samples and weird stuff such as alien sounds Ahah.

Name your three favorite hardware studio picks

KRK Rokit 6, Sennheiser 6XX (to anyone who is reading this! this headphone is a MUST!) and final my LG 27-inch!

Name your three favorite software studio picks

I’ll name a few: ALL the plugins from Kilohearts & Soundtoys!! I can’t live without all these haha! 

Do you have a favorite plugin that you use in all of your tracks?

I like to put Fruity Waveshaper on everything!! This can add a pleasant distortion or soft saturation to my tracks! (make it pop & give it more power)

Do you have any tips for aspiring music producers?

I don’t believe that I’m in the best position yet to give advice to others as I am still an aspiring DJ and producer myself. But if someone does ask me, I would tell them to watch tutorials on Youtube and check out: Jonas Aden & Zen World.

THANK U so much for having me <3