The Echio Quiz with Henrik Schwarz

How did you learn music and did you have mentors?

I never had a teacher only until around ten years ago when I started learning the piano a little bit. But before that, when computers came up, I thought this could be my instrument. Since day one, I'm trying to find out what's going on in music and learning every day.

If you were not making music what would you do?

I could be an architect. Actually, I studied graphic design, so I was working in that field for a long time. Maybe I would do pottery. Maybe I will do that in the future. So there's a lot of things. I would love to be a captain of a boat.

If you could spend a day in the studio with one of your heroes, who would it be?

If I could spend a day with one of my heroes. It's actually too late. It nearly happened one time, but it's very long ago. It would be Pharoah Sanders, always super fascinated by his playing, and he opened my mind.

What is your secret weapon ?

My secret weapon is Melodyne and I guess I'm using it since version one. I'm using it not only to pitch correct or tune things, but also to make sounds and change harmonies for remixes or for old productions. I use to synthesize function that it has. Change transients change formants Yeah, Melodyne and I really love that.

A special object in your studio you can't live without ?

A special object in my studio I can't live without are my speakers. I love speakers. I change them from time to time, so sometimes I build own ones. I'm really into that.

Any ritual before creating music?

I'm very strict when an idea comes up, so it doesn't matter what I actually do in that moment. So it might be in the middle of the night. I wake up and there is a melody in my head because I dreamed about it. So you can sleep on or you just get up and save it.

What would you say to your younger self?

Well, if I meet my younger self, I would say, get a teacher and learn. Learn the piano. This is something I realized when I got a teacher and started to learn the piano ten years ago. I realized I should have done that much earlier because I was always investigating about harmonies and notes and how they fit together. And and this took a lot of time. And I think if I had some basic knowledge, things would be much faster. I would have created different stuff, probably because I think making things without knowledge, that's also a feature, so you should not forget about that.