Myd is still donning the sporty, dark Ray-Bans he wore during his seven-day live stream in his LED-lit recording studio. With these sunglasses on, Myd recorded music, collaborated with friends, cooked meals, attended 1-to-1 yoga and massage sessions, hosted DJ parties, spoke with fans on the phone, and triggered smoke machines, all within the walls of his studio in France. Only when he was asleep, still streaming via a night vision camera, could the tens of thousands of Twitch viewers see him without his shades — it was the only time those LED lights weren’t completely destroying his eyes, he says.
What drove Myd, real name Quentin Lepoutre, to document these seven days so intimately? Aside from obvious reasons, like marketing and fan engagement, the French producer was really just trying to hit a deadline set by his label, Ed Banger, for his upcoming album All that Glitters Is Not Gold.
“I mean, it was pretty simple,” he says, chuckling. “I lost the two songs I was about to release [The Wizard and Song For You]. In an album campaign, you have key dates to hit — luckily, I had the backup of the unfinished songs, but I needed to get in the studio and finish them again. But I was like, ‘How can I make that process more fun and special?’”
The jokester producer has been a promising act in the indie dance scene since signing to Ed Banger in 2017. Tracks like 2017’s The Sun and 2021’s Moving Men (feat Mac DeMarco) have racked up millions of streams and helped propel him onto stages like the Paralympics Paris 2024 opening ceremony. He’s also had some less conventional performances, like the time he played a tour around Paris in a truck with label boss Busy P, and his successful series of weekly CoMyd-19 sets, which saw Lepoutre DJ’ing and speaking with viewers on a hotline during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lepoutre has a knack for engaging with his fans. But before this 168-hour live stream, the artist hadn’t given his audience much of a look at his studio process and the work he puts into it.
“I wanted to show the real me,” he says. “I wanted you to see who I am, day and night. And also show what inspires me, who my friends are, who I like to DJ with — but, also, it could be watching videos, getting inspired by video games. It was part of all that. And sleeping, too. People know I love to sleep now.”
Lepoutre delivered big time on his promise. As mentioned, the streams (all available on Twitch) went way beyond just watching him play synths and click around on Ableton Live; they helped Lepoutre break down the “fantasy” he once had that music-makers are more productive when they spend more time in front of their DAW, he says. “I discovered little by little that it’s not the solution; it’s about having your brain in good condition, taking care of your health, and seeing people getting inspired. It’s as important as what you will do when you are in front of your computer or in front of your synths or drum machines, because the spark that makes a good song.”
Myd’s ideal is four to six hours of studio time a day, not at night, and not placing any pressure on himself while he’s in there. He says that opening a blank DAW project can be daunting — what are you supposed to make? The only way to get over that “frightening” feeling, he adds, is to get into a routine of being in the studio and constantly flexing your creative muscles. Lepoutre thanks the enigmatic Gesaffelstein for helping him realise this lesson.
“We used to be on the same label,” explains Lepoutre. One day he told me, ‘I’m starting my new album’ – I don’t remember which one, maybe his second album — and I was like, ‘Oh, that must be so cool’. And he said, ‘No, that’s not cool. That’s frightening as fuck.’ And he was already big [at this point] and had a thing going, so I’ve never forgotten that — it made me realise that it’s part of [being creative]. And a lot of artists, especially young ones, need to understand that it’s just part of music production.”
Was being locked in the studio for 168 hours a frightening experience for Lepoutre, then? Not exactly.
Although he was relatively isolated from the outside world — he left his smartphone, Twitch comments and social media outside of the studio — Lepoutre was more creative than usual. He was working faster, more efficiently, and was feeling more inspired to finish the two tracks. In lieu of a smartphone, he hooked up a hotline (as seen in the CoMyd-19 series) and a makeshift fax machine to receive messages from viewers, and was inviting friends over every day to jam and keep ideas fresh. Such friends included Pedro Winter aka Busy P, Canblaster, Antoine Bourachot and more.
Each collaborator joined Myd, not necessarily to finish a part of the song, but to bring new ideas to his growing bank of sounds. “That’s really how I make music and start albums,” Lepoutre says. “I create the palette. My studio is made for happy accidents to happen; I can plug anything into an amp and record it and pass it through a pedal — any instrument and sound that I like. So I invited Canblaster with his modular synthesiser, and the way it sounds here…It sounds like my album, but it brings his perspective. I also invited a percussionist and we made ambient sounds with percussion and flutes. It was really good.”
Lepoutre is inspired by the tactile gear in his studio, too. For his upcoming album, including the tracks The Wizard and Song For You, the producer often reached for his Sequential Prophet-5, which he calls the “weird cousin” of the Roland Juno synths and with a more futuristic sound — “it’s important for me to have something sharper and colder to add to the weirdness.” For drums, Myd can’t stay away from the Roland TR-909‘s groove and unmistakable sound — “it always sounds like a 909, but it can make a track so special.”
A new addition to his studio is the Rupert Neve Designs‘ Shelford Channel — a “wonderful” compressor, EQ and preamp that Lepoutre now uses on all his recordings. His “last essential piece” is the Lexicon PCM91 reverb, which he says gives him the “sweaty” sounds that he relates to being in nightclubs, where he’s been performing and DJing a lot recently.
The footage from the stream and the way Lepoutre talks about the 7-day lock-in make it sound like a breeze. But, frankly, it didn’t come without its challenges. The biggest challenge for him is finishing music, which he points out is probably the same for many musicians. Even without the cameras, Lepoutre would’ve struggled, but the first day or so of the stream was unnerving — he received no calls, no messages and no feedback. “It was only later that people joined the live and understood what was happening,” he explains. “Nowadays, when you send a message or post on social media, you expect a response really quickly. And it sounds weird, but the mindfuck for me was not getting any feedback.”
“But did it help my music? Maybe, because I was not thinking at all about the classic feedback. Like, ‘If I use this synth, it’s not cool because it’s a Behringer and not a Moog’. I was just doing music because I was doing music, so it was pretty interesting to detach totally from feedback. Also, yeah, it was also hard living in the same place and people spamming the smoke machine from Twitch,” he laughs.
In the end, Myd finished those tracks ahead of time. And, at the time of writing, he’ll be dropping his new album in less than a month, with a new single, All that Glitters is not Gold (feat. Channel Tres, Trueno), out now. Does he recommend that other artists lock themselves in a studio for a week, too?
“Definitely, yes…But lock yourself in an inspiring environment. You have to find yours — that’s maybe the most complicated part. But I think getting a bit away from social media, not listening to too much of other people’s music…Find what inspires you as an artist and get surrounded by it.”
Sign up for Myd’s new album info at allthatglittersisnot.gold
The post Myd locked himself in the studio for 168 hours and livestreamed every minute — but did it really help him finish an album? appeared first on MusicTech.
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