Ryan Farish is an American artist, composer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentist. Hailing from Norfolk, Virginia, and based in Los Angeles, California, Ryan is known for his downtempo electronica, chillout, and uplifting dance music.
Farish's achievements include five albums on Billboard Top Ten Charts, 70 million views from fan-created videos on YouTube, 218 million plays on Pandora Radio, Amazon Cloud, Apple Music, and Spotify, performance at Neon Carnival at Coachella sponsored by Google Play, T-Mobile, and Armani Exchange, music licenses to corporations such as: Audi, Chevrolet, MTV, VH1, Sony, Google, T-Mobile, and the 2013 film Despicable Me 2, as well as a series of feature videos that Farish makes a personal appearance in, with Audi North America and Bang & Olufsen.
Talk us through your favorite features in bx_oberhausen?
My favorite feature is the sound, and how it's very conducive to starting from scratch, and really building out your own sounds. It's so big sounding when you want it to be, and also with the added FX like the Maag EQ and the provided delay, allows me to dial in or experiment with sounds right within the synth, instead of having to load separate instances of plugins for effects.
Can you give us a rundown of your favorite piece of vintage analog gear?
For me, my favorite piece of analog gear I own is the Avalon 747sp compressor & EQ. I purchased it in 2004, and it's just a piece that has been a part of many of my most favorite songs I've recorded. The compressor to me gives things just a sweet glue and the simple 6 band EQ delivers that silky Avalon top end. I hope there’s a plugin version someday because my current unit needs tubes, and a good dusting off.
You’ve done presets for bx_oberhausen, tell us a little bit about them?
Thank you, it was a real pleasure for me to work with you guys on some of these sounds. The presets I've included are more geared towards a Chill, Ambient or Chill Wave sound. I wanted to create sounds that would really highlight the tone of this synth, which is incredible. There are two patches though in particular that are my favorites, Ambient 4 (Zen Game) and Ambient 5 (Soon it will be cold). The Ambient 4 patch reminds me of pure analog bliss.
Tell us about your new album?
My new album Wonder marks my 17th studio album. It's on my label RYTONE Entertainment. It's music that really follows no scene or trends, but is music that moved me during the recording process. There's more guitar and live bass than any record I've ever recorded, and it was a lot of fun starting songs from my Fender Bass or Les Paul vs starting with synths, keys or drums which is usually where a song begins for me. For recording the live guitar I pretty much used a UA 6176 and for bass a Noble pre amp. The Noble is really something, that's another piece like the Avalon 747 that would be amazing if it were also available in plug-in form someday, so that more producers around the world could explore the tone of these two pieces and have access to them.
How do you define a finished track?
One of two ways... sometimes it just feels right and I don’t want to continue to work with it and mess it up... and other times I labor over the details and the mix to a point that I just have to abandon the song, and move on. There really is a golden, sweet spot during the production and mixing of a track, when it's feeling magical, if you spend too much time with a song, it can move away from giving you that feeling... and in the end I try to work really hard on a track while it's still fresh, and has that magical feeling to it... I find for me, my best work comes out of this workflow.
Thank you!- Ryan
Ryan Farish took some time to create presets for bx_oberhausen, here’s a little demo of some of the sounds: https://soundcloud.com/pluginalliance/bx_oberhausen-ft-ryan-farish
Stay up to date with Ryan’s music here: https://www.facebook.com/ryanfarish/