There was no Bandcamp, Facebook, or Instagram when Atlanta-based producer STLNDRMS (Stolen Drums) started making beats back in 2001. In a different landscape with far fewer avenues for sharing work, much of his music was made in isolation during his early years. “As a dude just kind of sitting in your room making music, nobody cares,” he tells me.
Without an audience to get consistent feedback from, his drive to make music waned — in 2011 there was an extended low point where he almost stepped away for good. “I got super depressed for a bit and was like, ‘Man, I don’t even want to do this no more,’” he says. “I took a five year hiatus, worked a regular job and all of that. Just kind of pushed it to the left.”
Despite his best attempts to put his samplers aside and embrace the 9-to-5 lifestyle, he couldn’t keep his ideas bottled up for long. A year-and-a-half ago his creative spark reignited and he started making music again. At first it was “the same thing, just sitting in my room,” but before long STLNDRMS was texting beats and beat videos to friends. Wary of their escalating data consumption, they encouraged him to find a different avenue to share his work.
So he launched a Facebook live video series called Beats+Chill where he posts extended takes of him cooking up lo-fi tunes in his home studio. He also uploads an endless supply of mini beatmaking videos on Instagram. The audience on both platforms grows by the week, with his most recent Facebook posts closing in on 2,000 views in a matter of days.
“I got two boys at the house. I’m trying to be a living lesson for those guys.”
STLNDRMS has a simple reason for sharing so much of his process with fans. “I try to give value,” he explains. And just as STLNDRMS gives value to aspiring beat heads all over the world, they also give return the favor with their feedback. “I’ve been able to find out what people like and don’t like in real time vs. trying to figure out after a release, ‘Was that a good record or bad record?’” he says.
Another benefit of regular posting is it helps maintain consistency, a crucial element to the STLNDRMS’ creative process. Balancing music with an engineering day job, daily beatmaking involves an hour or two of practice on weekdays with the potential for more on weekends. “I call it push ups. I make sure I get some in everyday. Trying to keep the muscles good,” he says.
And just as much as daily reps and consistency are important aspects of his own career, he also wants to model those good habits for his sons. “I got two boys at the house. I’m trying to be a living lesson for those guys and fully illustrate that you can do whatever you feel like doing as long as you’re consistent day to day,” he says.
Such prolific output has led to increased audience engagement, which sometimes wields surprising results. “My most popular record is a song called ‘lifestyle’. I literally made it in five minutes and added some extra drums later on. It was the quickest beat I ever made,” he admits.
In addition to coming together in record time, the sample “was like three keys that I sampled off of some jazz record and pitched down and played,” he says. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is cool,’ and that was it. And I pushed play and everybody went bananas. Still to this day I’m like, ‘How?’”
“I don’t care what I’m doing, it has to go through the 303 before I’m finished.”
Whether making “lifestyle” or his latest project Veggie tacos, STLNDRMS uses the same work flow for all of his material. “I chop directly into the MPC,” he explains. “My drums are in there too. I really got one drum kit, and it has 15 drums in it, and that’s it. Half of those 15 are just variations of the same one,” he says.
The kit is a hodge podge of kicks, snares, and hi-hats sourced from disco, rock, and break records. “I just found these little pieces and I was like, ‘These are the pieces. I’m good,’” he says. So good that STLNDRMS still uses almost the exact same kit that he started out with 16 years ago.
Once he has his drums and samples lined up, he goes to work. “I construct it in the MPC, then it comes out through the mixer and I can EQ it and put some more FX on it. I got eight outputs, I use four. I use two for the sample and two for the drums. It’s the simplest stuff ever,” he says.
Though he uses a bit of EQ and FX, he tries not to overdo it. “It’s all on a board, it’s within each individual channel. I’m not using plugins or anything fancy,” he says. “It’s an old school hundred dollar or two hundred dollar mixer.”
“My most popular record is a song called ‘lifestyle’. I literally made it in five minutes.”
Not done yet, STLNDRMS then runes his tracks through an SP-404 for stutters and dropouts and then a 303 for the vinyl sim FX. “The 303 smashes everything ‘cause I use the world-famous vinyl sim compressor. I don’t care what I’m doing, it has to go through the 303 before I’m finished,” he says. “After that it goes straight to the camera or straight to the computer depending on what I’m doing, then out into the world.”
With Veggie tacos now wrapped and released, STLNDRMS is already hard at work on his next project. As he continues to hone his craft, he strives for continued consistency, interacting with his fans, and living his life by a simple mantra — “Life is good, time is precious, make people smile.” Based on his creative output from the past year and a half, it looks like he’s following his own advice.
Connect with STLNDRMS on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, and on Twitter @stlndrms.
Want more engaging narrative non-fiction music journalism and curated playlists? Sign up for the Micro-Chop Substack newsletter.
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider following my Micro-Chop publication.
