Something of a Renaissance man on YouTube, Twitch, and in life, Tefty operates three channels, each with a different focus. There’s Tefty Music Tech, dedicated to gear reviews and instructional videos on using synths, samplers, and other recording tools. Then there’s Tefty & Meems, which features the music he and his wife create together. And then there’s his most-followed channel, simply called Tefty, where he streams himself playing video games and discussing gaming tech and gear.
I sat down to chat with Tefty about life as a creator, his strategies for creating content and growing a following, and general thoughts on hardware synths, samplers, and gear. Plus there’s a little bit of gaming talk! Watch the entire interview in the video above, or read the transcript below.
Keep up with Tefty Music Tech on YouTube and Twitch, and follow Tefty and Meems on Instagram.
If you’re in the market for some new gear and have found Tefty’s videos helpful, why not shop his personal gear list on zZounds? Creators earn a small commission on gear sold through that link, so it’s a great way to show your support! Plus, you get all the zZounds-exclusive perks like interest-free payment plans and fast, free shipping!
zZounds: Can you tell me a little bit about your musical background and What kind of projects you were doing before you started your YouTube channel?
Tefty: Yeah, for sure. So I basically got into music in high school. I was in choir, and then I wanted to play guitar. My parents were like, “We’re not going to buy you a guitar. You’re going to leave that thing and not play it.” But I found a guitar and started playing, getting better within a couple of months. They were like, “Oh, you’re serious about this. OK.”
I started teaching myself music theory in high school, and that’s kind of where the seeds of interest in production were planted. I thought, “I should record this.” This was around 20-something years ago. I graduated in 2001, so that was the beginning of my interest in music and music production. At the time, I was using a free copy of Logic on Windows, which was owned by Emagic before Apple bought Logic. I was a big Logic fan, so that was kind of the beginning.
There wasn’t much information online back then, aside from a few forum posts. I was just trying to figure out the best way to make noise and write songs. My mom was interested in it as well. At that time, my girlfriend (now wife), Mimi, and I started writing songs together. My mom was interested in writing lyrics, so we kind of formed a writing team. We began writing pop music and figuring out how to make songs happen.
Those early projects were definitely amateur, in my opinion, but you have to start somewhere. They ended up making us money, which is pretty wild. We ended up making money through sync licensing. We got our songs featured on several TV shows, including Pretty Little Liars, The L Word, and Parenthood.
Then in 2010, we moved to LA and set up a project studio in North Hollywood. We ran that for about four and a half years, recording bands and learning a lot about music production, working with people. That’s kind of the nutshell version. There were a lot of projects and phases, but that was the genesis before I got into content creation.
zZounds: It sounds like a logical progression—learning guitar, then learning theory, and then learning production to actually put your stuff out there. And then working with your then-girlfriend, now wife, to get your music out there.
Tefty: I was always interested in the mathematical side of things, so music theory came to me really fast. As soon as I realized there was a reason why things sound a certain way, I thought, “Oh, this is amazing!” I latched onto it.
I have a lot of friends who say, “I’m not using any music theory; I’m only using chords or something like that.” But theory just tells you why things sound a certain way. It’s not trying to guide you in any direction—it’s just explaining why.
By the time I got into college, I was already an advanced theory student because of what I had studied in high school.
zZounds: You kind of teed me up for this next one. You left off right before you said you started your channel. So tell me—what was the impetus for getting on YouTube and making videos?
Tefty: Oh man, this is going to be a detour. I actually started my first YouTube channel in 2014, and it was for gaming. The reason is because I had gotten burnt out on recording people in LA and making fast cues. I think in our last year in LA, we made something like 300 cues. It was an insane amount, and it burned me out.
So I wanted to deviate, and I started a gaming channel. I got interest on the game Destiny, became known for playing it, and started streaming. I did that for five or six years, but then I got burnt out on that too.
At the same time, I decided to start posting about music production. I hadn’t realized that communities were growing around production. Back then, in 2014, YouTube was still relatively new. The idea of making money on YouTube was kind of unheard of. People were just starting to realize, “Oh, you can actually make money from this?”
It did work out for me, but only on the Twitch side. That’s where I ended up spending a lot of my time.
Then, around 2017 or 2018, I started getting back into hardware for music production. I saw the potential for an online community and that’s when we started posting gear content.
zZounds: What kind of gear were you starting with? What was your approach in the early days?
Tefty: DigiTakt. I was a big fan of what the DigiTakt was offering. I basically wanted to recreate the experience of having a live band in the studio. Obviously, that’s not possible when you’re by yourself or just working with two people and some gear.
I had walked away from recording bands fully live — setting up all the drum mics, capturing everything live, then overdubbing vocals. When I started doing that kind of production in North Hollywood, it was eye-opening. I realized what kind of cohesion happens when everything is being recorded live. Something clicked in my brain. I thought, “Oh, this is what some of those records feel like!” There’s a certain magic when everything is happening at the same time.
So I wanted to recreate that, and at the time, the DigiTakt was a great option. It had eight MIDI tracks, drum tracks, and all that stuff. We did a couple of records using it as the main brain.
I ended up using as much hardware as I could find—lots of Behringer stuff. I also had a Peak, a Minilogue, and a few other pieces.
zZounds: Did you feel comfortable with the Elektron workflow? I know it’s kind of unique among manufacturers.
Tefty: Yes, but my brain is wired a little more programmatically. I had done software engineering in the early 2000s, so it made sense to me. Like I said, I love music theory, and I feel like if you enjoy music theory, Elektron is just one step away from the music theory side of things.
It wasn’t too difficult for me to figure out, but I can definitely see how it could be a hurdle for some people.
zZounds: What kind of gear would you recommend for someone just getting into this, if not Elektron?
Tefty: If we’re talking hardware, I’d honestly say the MPC is great. It’s funny—depending on your perspective, the MPC can either seem super convoluted or really straightforward. But if you’re new and you take the time to learn it, the MPC is like a DAW in a box. It gives you hands-on control while still offering a lot of conveniences.
With the DigiTakt, you’ll run into walls pretty quickly of what you can’t do. And while that’s part of the creativity of it — those limitations push you in new directions — for a lot of people starting out, that could cause too many roadblocks that make them what to quit.
For someone new, I feel like the MPC is more straightforward in that sense.
zZounds: Any particular model of MPC?
Tefty: There are a lot of great ones. I’m a big fan of the MPC Live II because of the built-in battery and speakers.
zZounds: I’m just curious because the previous spotlight I did was on a guy called Bolo Da Producer.
Tefty: Oh yeah, Bolo!
zZounds: I think he owns every current MPC that they make right now. And he’s obsessed, too.
Tefty: I own a lot of them. I don’t own the X yet, and I was considering picking up the XSE, but there might be something new around the corner. So I’m like, “Ah,” and I don’t really need it just yet. The ones I have are working great.
zZounds: Yeah. I guess a lot of times it gets pigeonholed into being a hip-hop thing, but you’re able to do all sorts of music with it.
Tefty: Oh, yeah. From a community perspective, a lot of people go, “MPC? Oh, you’re doing hip-hop or trap music.” But we’ve done so much different music with it. Things that are grungy band stuff, things that are ambient, no drums. It’s a great platform.
I think people have a perception of what type of music you’re going to make with it and never think to try something else. Maybe the DigiTakt falls into that box too, where people think it’s going to be highly programmed type of stuff. But one of my favorite things to do with the DigiTakt is just play stuff into it via keyboard.
zZounds: I want to talk about your second channel too, Tefty and Meems, which is your collaboration with your wife. You have a lot of ambient mixes and different instrumental mixes there. What’s your process like for making those?
Tefty: Oh, complicated. For the past few years, we’ve been trying to figure out the best way to record everything visually and sonically and have it all sync up. And yeah, it’s not easy. I really need to do a setup video because we have timecode involved. I have a whole patch bay off to my side that can split out audio, so I can send a mix of what I’m hearing in Ableton directly into a capture unit. We use the Zoom F6 and the Zoom F8 Pro, depending on the project. That way, we can get a quality stereo pair of the signal plus a microphone and any other additional things we want to capture. It all syncs up with timecode.
The timecode goes out through a headphone amp, and I send aux cables into the cameras to create a hacked timecode setup. A lot of times, we’re using five or six different cameras for different angles because when you’re in the middle of recording, you don’t know which angle will work best. So the more angles, the better—you can always throw away the ones you don’t use.
And when it comes to the music, sometimes we have things that are pre-baked, you know like a full idea that we’re then gonna perform and other times we’re capturing the process of creating it and I never know what it’s gonna be.
zZounds: Do you approach these as if each one is an album, since they’re long mixes with different tracks? Or is it just about putting together ideas from the last few months into something?
Tefty: Usually, it’s about what gear we’re using. We’ll set up an MPC, grab a few synths, and start making jams. If we hear something that feels like something we want to finish, that becomes the kickstart to turn it into five or six different tracks. I like doing it that way because it keeps the perspective different. Even though I’m making similar stuff, it feels different between projects.
It always goes into Ableton, by the way. That’s my DAW of choice for post-production. I’ve been an Ableton user since 1.0. I switched from Logic when I started my gaming channel because I left Mac, but now I’m back on Mac. I could go back to Logic, but at this point, I’ve used Ableton for so many years that I’m just like, Ableton is fine.
zZounds: By the way, any games that you’re into lately?
Tefty: Been playing Call of Duty—a lot of Call of Duty lately. Monster Hunter Wilds is coming out, and I’m very interested in that. Still playing Destiny as well.
zZounds: Of course, of course. Yeah, Monster Hunter popped on my radar because Fender released a limited edition guitar based on Rathalos, one of the monsters. Monster Hunter looks very cool. I’ve just never checked it out.
Tefty: You should! It’s a great game. It can be a little complicated at first with how everything works, but once you get into it, it’s really fun.
zZounds: I saw a video, probably a few years back, where you and Meems were talking about wanting to record a soundtrack to the hikes and walks you take around your area. I’m just curious, what other things inspire you two to create music?
Tefty: I feel like we’re constantly waking up with inspirations. It’s kind of crazy. Our biggest issue is figuring out how to finish things and release them because we’re never at a loss for inspiration. And maybe that’s partly because we use a bunch of hardware. Switching out hardware and trying a different setup always leads to different things for us. So when it comes to inspiration, yeah, it’s never really been an issue for us in terms of wanting to create.
We’ve always been creatives. Actually, we met in college—she was studying opera voice, and I was in the same program as well to be a bass opera singer. We left that, obviously, but we’re creatives, you know? It’s like a muscle — you’re always writing something new, and something happens. She uses the MPC Key 61 and basically writes between three to four beats a week on that. We’ll compare stuff and be like, “Oh, maybe we should work on that and turn it into a song.” So, yeah.
zZounds: You’ve been doing this for a while, looking at gear not critically, but closely. What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen, especially in hardware with synths and samplers, over the last decade or so?
Tefty: Accessibility. A crazy amount of accessibility and options. When I started out, there was mostly vintage stuff and a few new pieces, but nothing like today. The consumer side of things has exploded with the internet, YouTube, and all that. But there’s also an insane number of manufacturers that want to make really cool stuff.
That’s probably the biggest change—manufacturing, the market, and the ability to get products out there, you know, like with Kickstarter projects—that’s all within the past five to ten years, right? It’s amazing to see all these different products coming out. And some of them suck, some of them are incredible, you know?
It’s amazing to see, but sometimes it’s disappointing too. Some manufacturers tend to rely on the old thing; just rehashing the same software for each product. It’s disappointing because you think, “You’re the king of synths, but you aren’t releasing anything new.”
But outside of that, so many new synth manufacturers are doing amazing things—like the UDO stuff, which looks amazing. Arturia started with software and then moved into hardware, and now they make amazing hardware options.
zZounds: It does seem like there’s so much more out there, which can be overwhelming for new people. How do you recommend they find their niche?
Tefty: Write, write, write. Create, create, create. Mess around, make mistakes, make stuff you don’t like. The fastest way to find what you like is to make stuff you don’t like. You make a bunch of fertilizer, and something grows out of it. Early on, I made so many crap beats — stuff I thought was good at the time. Looking back, I had no idea what I was doing. But that’s ultimately the journey every artist has to go through. You have to be excited to do it, and then realize ‘maybe I’m not so good at this,’ but keep going and it keeps fueling interest to want to make stuff.
One of the weirdest things is that the stuff I think is good, people go, “It’s okay.” And the things I’m unsure about often become people’s favorite thing. It’s so weird.
zZounds: What about new YouTubers looking to start their own channel, whether it’s gear-related or not. Any advice for creating content?
Tefty: The reason we have two music channels now: Tefty and Meems and Tefty Music Tech — is because early on, I combined my musical output and talking-about-gear content. I didn’t realize they were technically different markets. That’s something you have to learn and be OK with when going into any content creation — you have to serve the audience specifically.
It’s a little soul-crushing because, as an artist, you just want to make and share. But in order to put it out there, it has to fit into certain boxes and you have to find a balance. If you’re releasing music, make your platforms all about your music. Don’t focus on educating people on how to make the music, because it’s going to be two separate audiences. The people who are interested in your music specifically are probably not musicians — some are going to be musicians but there’s going to be a big audience that are just listeners, so focus on that. If you want to educate people on making beats or chord progressions, lean into that as hard as possible. Make the algorithm, know that that’s what your channel is about and it will reward you. YouTube now is easier than ever if you know these things. If you throw everything onto one channel, it won’t work. If I were to start putting gaming content on the music channel, it would be a wet fart.
So understanding this stuff on all social media platforms is just incredibly important. There are some people who say ‘build a brand and the brand is you,’ and while that does work within reason, it still stands that you need to focus your brand around something and that usually is your musical out put or the fact that you review gear. Ultimately you do have to pick these boxes.
zZounds: Any gear that has surprised you recently—something you didn’t expect to like as much as you do?
Tefty: Pittsburgh Modular Voltage Lab 2. That thing is fun. I haven’t made content on it yet, but it’s a fun piece of gear, I love it. I don’t know if it’s getting the attention it deserves but I think it’s awesome. It’s a little confusing at times. A lot of modular gear is that way. But that thing is a creative toolbox that feels really organic.
I’m always looking for electronic music that feels like it could have been recorded as a band in the ’70s but is modern, those
zZounds: Is there anything else you want to mention? Any upcoming projects or videos you’d like to promote?
Tefty: Just looking forward to 2025. We have a lot of stuff in the works, but some of it we can’t talk about with for certain embargoes. Right now, we’re just focusing on making art for ourselves which has been great. If it finds a home later, that’s even better.
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