How I Play: Stimming Interview + Setup

Hamburg-based producer and live performer Stimming is a fantastic studio artist, but he goes above and beyond when playing gigs out on the road. With three powerful tools from Akai, Teenage Engineering, and Moog, he’s able to craft a live show that allows him to build on his tracks and create something new in a fun way. Watch our exclusive behind-the-DJ-booth Stimming interview now.

Stimming Interview: The Gear

As mentioned in the interview, Martin’s current live setup consists of three main pieces of gear that all are routed through/controlling Ableton Live. The two synths act as layered elements on top of his tracks, which he has mixed down to three busses in an Ableton project. Each track has the key written right next to it in the clip label, so he can quickly check and play overtop of it with his synthesizer gear.

For quick reference, here’s the three pieces of gear that Martin uses:

  • Moog Minimoog Voyager – difficult to travel with, so he actually requests it on his rider when traveling overseas.
  • Teenage Engineering OP-1 – the tiny but powerful synth that he takes everywhere with him.
  • Akai APC 40 MK2 – More ideal than a Push for Martin because he’s already doing a lot of performance aspects on the synths, leaving just clip launching and effects control as the primary Ableton control needs. Plus, having faders to mix the entire setup is key as he’s not using a hardware mixer.

Want to hear more of Stimming’s work? Check out his latest Soundcloud releases below:

Watch next: Max Cooper explaining his work with the 4D soundsystem (which Stimming has done work on as well!)

Special thanks to Amir Mirzaee for helping connect DJTT for this interview, and to the Monarch staff in San Francisco for allowing us to film there during soundcheck. 

akaiapc 40 mk2How I Playinterviewminimoog voyagerop-1stimmingteenage engineering
Comments (17)
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  • Forvernow

    best in this series.. great insight into a great mind..more please.

  • Moon Motel

    How is it that he doesnt listen to any other dance music but his sound is clearly mnml/tech house?

    • Pitch Twit

      Yeah I’d like to know that too.

  • here_comes_the_sheik

    Any idea which audio interface he is using?

    • düde

      there is a RME Babyface in front of the APC. So it could be possible that he is using it ;).

  • Ed David

    fuck yeah, what a legend. killing it!

  • Unreallystic

    oh man the animoog sounded so good the way he was using it. Made me want to buy one until I did a quick price search. Nope going to have to hold off for a while hahaha.

    • Daniel Discoshaman Andersen

      its not a animoog .. animoog i an ipad app ..its the minimoog voyager

      • Unreallystic

        You’re right, animoog is just on the brain, but regardless, its still pretty much almost a used car. But MAN thats a good sounding car…

  • André Agi

    this man is fantastic

  • thundercat

    Great vid.

    I question the assertion that his ‘version 3’ future setup will be somehow more intuitive and instrument like using an Octatrack in place of Ableton. As much as I love my OT it is in no way easier to use than Ableton and adding a Analog Rythm will prob just increase the ‘spinning plates’ effect of trying to keep a handle on so many different things

    His views on using 3 tracks versus 5+ for a track that you intend to mix seem very sensible though. The whole ableton stem djing paradigm has always suffered from giving one too much possibilities when playing live.

  • Damin Hansford

    what a legend

  • darrin bisson

    Great vid – actually felt like I had a sense for the thought process he put into his set up and really cool to see him moving away from ableton in the future

  • Kobos

    Fantastic!