“Do I really believe that at the end, I have a result that justifies the effort?” Inside the strict decision-making process of Ableton founder and Monolake musician Robert Henke

As one of the founders of Ableton – and a successful solo artist in his own right under the moniker Monolake – German musician and pioneer Robert Henke has to be specific about where he spends his time and effort.

Growing up in a family of engineers and raised in the iconic Berlin club scene, Henke bleeds electronic music, and created Ableton in 1999 alongside current CEO Gerhard Behles and software engineer Bernd Roggendorf.

So as a musician with such a stacked resume, he has learned to scrutinise the decisions he makes when it comes to both building products and music composition.

“There is a quality in the decision-making process that is involved here,” he tells MusicTech in the latest episode of the My Forever Studio podcast.

“Every decision for something is a massive decision against a lot of other options because it takes time to build stuff. And that means I scrutinise my ideas a lot before I start building.

“I have a whole notebook full of ideas and sketches of things, but only a tiny fraction of those things I finally decide to throw my energy on, and that means I think a lot about, ‘Does this specific thing I’m attempting to do really help me? Do I really believe that at the end, I have a result that justifies the effort?’”

Elsewhere in the episode, Robert Henke takes us through his creative process when it comes to making his own sample packs, and goes deep on his love for expressive hardware and his fascination with sound technology.

MusicTech’s My Forever Studio podcast – created in partnership with Audient – finds artists, producers and engineers designing their fantasy Forever Studio, in which they can select six items with no regard for cost or limitation to build their dream creative environment.

However, hosts Chris Barker and Will Betts impose some strict rules: they must only choose six items for their studio, and must do so wisely. There will be nostalgia. There will be anecdotes. There may be gags. But there will be no bundles!

Subscribe to My Forever Studio on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and check out all episodes so far via MusicTech.

Sam is the Associate News Editor for Guitar.com and MusicTech. Thoroughly immersed in music culture for the majority of his life, Sam has played guitar for 20 years, studied music technology and production at university, and also written for the likes of MusicRadar, Guitar World, Total Guitar and Metal Hammer.