Studio Updates #1

Snapshots of building my studio-workflow. And why it's important for me to let you in even when it's messy.

Hello to the one person likely to read this today. And Merry Christmas :)

I know that growing my audience out here is a slow build… You might also just be fatigued by the volume of Substack updates in your inbox or feed right?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about this noise. The saturation or surplus of perspectives just good enough to publish here on Substack… Don’t get me wrong: less editorial gatekeeping out here is awesome. I especially love this for artists like me: Substack is an opportunity to rely less on major music publications to share our stories and thought processes behind creative work (and the work itself).

That said, there’s also an increasingly lower bar for what we write and read and it’s pretty overwhelming.

What This Means For Artists Like Me

This noise involves an increasing amount of artists like myself writing good-enough pieces to market ourselves routinely to a broader audience away from Instagram. Fair enough —music is a tough industry right now. But personally this makes me wary of losing my purpose and jumping on yet another hamster wheel of musical self-promotion. I want to remember to write enough but slowly, to ensure genuine snapshots of my creative life.

For me, Substack opens a window to my creative process. It allows you to look in, while giving me a little air and ventilation (for ideas to maybe cross-pollinate). Letting the window down means inviting you into where I am in my journey, amidst its messiness. Ultimately, the only way to keep our relationship honest is to show you exactly where I am in this moment of time — even if it’s a moment most artists wouldn’t share to project marketable competence, effortless ease, or creative flow.

A Glimpse of My Studio Right Now

My studio (above) is a sometimes-chaotic 100 sq ft box in Greenpoint that I’ve rented since 2020. In late 2025, I continue to go here almost every day. Since COVID I shared this space with a good friend named Noah, but he moved out last year. This shift allowed me to really embrace solo-studio-ownership, and start rebuilding it around my own workflow aspirations.

I say “workflow aspirations” because I’ve been a DAW-immersed producer since I started making music in 2015. As a result, it’s been a slow and steady process deciding what to fill this box with, often informed by how I see myself making music in the future. I’m building a studio with the vision of how I ideally want to work: playfully and curiously. However, this process isn’t as much about the physical space of the studio — it’s more about committing to finding a music workflow that’s exciting and has room for growth (sustainability).

After a few years of working solely on Ableton I wanted a bigger challenge. So in 2021 I started tracking Noah’s machines to explore how hardware could fit into my DAW-workflow. I learnt the basics of modular synthesis and drum machine programming, and thanks to my shared studio’s many machines, I sampled a lot of incredible gear, including a large Eurorack you can hear on 2020 releases like Natural Phenomena (love you Noah — thank you especially for Elements and the Rainmaker).

During this time I also had a pretty stark insight : I stopped experiencing the routine creative blocks that would pop up when previously working solely in the DAW. I realized quickly that I needed to build what I now call a hybrid-workflow — the dialog between purist hardware workflows and those in-the-box. This middleground really works for me, allowing me to embrace the thrill of hardware while honoring how I work on Ableton. If you listen to my music, every track I’ve released since 2020 somehow involves this approach.

Studio-Building Updates You Can Expect From Me

Today while I’ve sampled a lot of hardware, I’m yet to get all my machines talking to each other seamlessly — in a way that ensures I can walk into my studio, turn every piece on and they’re ready to go — routed in a logical way to start recording and creating. I hope to share my journey getting to this place (and maybe you might have thoughts too and we can talk).

If helpful, I’ll also go over the basic steps of tracking hardware and designing it in the DAW. I’ve also built a giant sample library as a result of this process that I use in live sets.

Of course you’ll also learn more about the machines on this shelf and how I like to work with them (sometimes strangely) … And I’ll keep sharing little moments of progress — here’s one from last week’s session :

The video above is me getting my acid-oriented Erica Synths DB-01 talking to my Elektron Machinedrum. I’m not compelled by what I’m hearing yet but I’m very curious to build on this exploration.

Through Studio Updates I ultimately want to share my experience building this space back up — and the creativity that arises from this process; the music that emerges from connecting the dots. This studio is nowhere near ready, but I’m already making and finishing tracks as I re-build it. So: expect snapshots of a workflow informing future records to come.

Till then, I hope there’s something in here that was helpful. Happy 2026!

Ayesha