“To find community, you need to put yourself and your creations out into the world” - An Interview with Your Cousin Avi

We speak with Your Cousin Avi, the New York-based musician, producer, and game audio designer about his career, why Ableton Live works for him, and the importance of community.

For many creatives, a successful career isn’t achieved by being in one place and doing one thing. Rather, by being omnipresent across a range of related fields, and having the skillset required to excel at all of them. Your Cousin Avi is a stellar example of this.

Having started out in the world of music by learning a range of instruments and playing in bands, Avi found himself exploring solo music-making after starting college. It was here that he discovered Ableton Live, the technical side of music production, and later, sound design. In this interview, we discuss how his journey shaped his musical tastes, process, and career.

Would you mind introducing yourself and what you do? 

Sure! Thanks so much for talking with me. It’s a pleasure to be able to talk about cool things. My name is Avi. I make audio creations for various purposes, including music and sound design. It really varies from day to day. I like creating things with instruments, on a computer, and with recordings from out in the world.

While doing our research before this interview, we discovered that you’re a multi-instrumentalist. So how many is multi?

More than one! But in terms of my actual proficiency, bass and drums are my two main instruments. I also play guitar and piano, and can kind of diddle on percussion instruments and other things.

The main piece of hardware I use these days is the Teenage Engineering OP-1, and I have some software emulations of various instruments too. I also use my voice a lot, whether that’s singing on my own material or trying to create a sound based on an idea I’ve had in my head.

So which of those came first?

The first instrument I really learned was the piano. My parents were hobby musicians, and were like “you’re going to learn music whether you like it or not”. I got started with piano when I was young, but my dad grew up playing Rock and Roll guitar in the 70s and 80s, so he got me onto the Bass when I was about 11.

It turned out to be the first instrument that really felt like mine. I was putting a lot of time into it, and was developing my own personality through it. Shortly after that, I started learning drums. I had a couple of amazing teachers in my hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. Shout out Jake Wolf and River Guerguerian!

What were your musical influences around this time?

It was distinctly Pop Punk and Metal, and I guess just Punk as well. My iPod was packed with stuff like The Misfits, Slipknot, System of a Down, Killswitch Engage, and Avenged Sevenfold. When I eventually got a drum kit, the first thing I wanted to add was a double bass pedal!

At the same time, I was playing the bass guitar in a youth Blues band. We were playing B.B. King, Susan Tedeschi, Bonnie Raitt, Koko Taylor and stuff like that, so my musical experiences were pretty varied. It was funny playing these Blues gigs and then listening to Slipknot on the way home.

Today, my influences include D'Angelo, J Dilla, James Blake, Snarky Puppy and Corinne Bailey Rae. All of these artists have published music that has really struck me, and felt so new and innovative when I first listened to them. That’s the kind of music I listen out for, and is the effect I try to recreate when I make music.

When did you start to explore making music with software?

When I went to college to study computer science, I wasn’t playing as much, but towards the end of my studies, I got my hands on a NI Maschine MK2. I started making beats and doing some basic sampling. It reminded me how much I missed playing and making music.

"I realised that if I wanted to make music, I’d need to do it all myself."

Up until that point, making music was sitting down with a guitar or bass, and writing songs to play as a band. After college, I got a job in Washington DC where I didn’t really know anyone to play music with, and I realised that if I wanted to make music, I’d need to do it all myself.

I got Ableton Live and started writing and recording songs on my own, but quickly realized they all sounded like s**t. The music itself was good, but the mix sounded like it was coming out of a tin can. Slowly, I learned that there was much more to making music than just recording it.

At what point did it feel like you could establish a viable career in music?

It was a very gradual process. When I first started producing, I had this vision of becoming a big artist and performing on big stages. I’ve always loved performing, but I also wanted to have a secure lifestyle, so touring all the time wasn’t appealing.

While I was working in software engineering, I was constantly going back and forth, debating whether I should make the jump into music full-time. When I eventually moved to New York, I felt that my skill set and network had reached a certain point, and I took a leap of faith. It was a now-or-never kind of moment. That was two years ago, and it’s been a really interesting journey since then.

Like many career musicians, it seems like you’ve diversified your skillset and services. We noticed on your socials that you make audio for games, too. How does your creative process differ for different formats?

My journey into creating audio for games is pretty recent. When I jumped into music full-time, I wasn’t sure what direction that was going to take me in, but I knew I needed to reach lots of different areas of the industry and grow a client base.

Social media seemed like the obvious path to achieving this, so I started a series of videos where I went around New York with a microphone, asking random people to give me a sound. Then I’d take that sound, go really heavy on processing and sound design, and craft musical elements from those recordings. Posting this process really helped with social media engagement, and it took me right down the sound design and game audio rabbit hole, too.

"I’m learning a lot about the game audio universe..."

To answer your actual question, whether I’m making music or audio for games, I’m still working in the box, tweaking knobs and making sounds. But there are definitely some stylistic differences when making audio for games. I’m learning a lot about the game audio universe. Lots of games contain this low rumble effect, which is often subtle but adds a lot of atmosphere to the experience.

Aside from the creative aspect, there’s also more of an organizational aspect to making audio for games. You often need to make several iterations and variations of a particular sound, and figuring out the most efficient ways to do that is a big part of the process.

You mentioned that you’re an Ableton Live user. What drew you to that DAW, and are there any particular features that are a big part of your workflow?

I was following a few people on socials who were using Ableton, people like dnksaus and Andrew Huang, so I didn’t really dig much deeper than that. I’ve also been getting into Reaper, which is a popular DAW in the game audio space. It’s pretty flexible thanks to its scripting functionality, but for me, I just love the way Ableton is set up for effects processing. I can be really creative, really quickly. 

Ableton’s MIDI functionality is really good, and I’ve been getting more into that side of the program, particularly after the version 12 update. But I do tend to work mostly with audio. I’ll often record a synth or piano straight to audio, then chop and process that into a new idea. Often, that requires some level of transposition, and Ableton’s great for that thanks to its various Warp modes.

You’ve also shared some Ableton Audio Effect Racks you’ve made. Could you tell us a bit about that?

Sure! Like I mentioned, the effects processing in Ableton is a big part of my workflow, and Audio Effect Racks make it easy to save and share specific processing chains. There’s also an aspect of me that craves community, and I feel like to find that, you need to put yourself and your creations out into the world. So I put some of my favourite racks on Gumroad.

The most recent rack I’ve shared is the Rhythm Tremolo. I wanted to create a tremolo effect with syncopation and accents using Ableton stock devices only.

You recently made a couple of videos to showcase how you used ELASTIQUE PITCH. They were some of the most unique use cases we’ve seen for the plugin!

Yeah! When I was playing around with ELASTIQUE PITCH, the delay was what really appealed to me, and the fact that each repeat was run back through the pitch and formant-transposition algorithms. I really enjoyed messing with it to see what kind of tones and textures I could come up with.

Whenever I use a new plugin, I’m always looking for ways of breaking it, or using it in a way it’s not typically used and seeing what happens (inspired by dnksaus). I think it’s a really cool and inspiring way of finding things — it forces you to try to understand what you’re working with.

Aside from making Audio Effect Racks and videos about zplane products, are you working on any music at the moment?

I’m very fortunate to be producing an album for a good friend of mine, summer syndrome, who lives over here in Brooklyn. This particular album takes influence from Indie, Emo and Pop, and involves a lot of live instrumentation. I’m not sure on the release timeline just yet, but it’s been really fun to work on.

In terms of solo music, I’ve been sharing a lot of snippets of unreleased music on social media. Some of it has done really well, so I’ve just released one of those tracks, entitled SHH.

I’ve also been working on another project, called Slow the Funk Down, which is basically Funk music at a slower tempo. Some of that might be coming out later this year! And aside from that, an idea might strike me on any given day, and that can become a whole new project. So we’ll see!

Thanks so much to Your Cousin Avi for delving into his career and creative process. You can keep up with him on his Instagram, YouTube and Spotify pages.