Hello there and welcome to the Studio 21:05 #DirectAccess. I hope you are all staying safe at home, washing your hands frequently, taking good care of your personal hygiene and practicing social distancing.
My name is JD and I’m the founder and owner of Studio 21:05 here in Kuala Lumpur. I’m a full-time musician, producer and recording engineer and have been doing this for nearly 20 years now. Some of you may also know me from a little rap-rock band called Pop Shuvit but more of that in another video.
We are living in strange times under a global pandemic that is and has changed the way we live our lives, how we interact with our fellow human beings and for many of us deprived us of our usual ways of making a living. All manner of events from the big concerts, festivals and conferences down to the smaller gigs have been canceled and almost every musician, engineer, technician and crew member I know are out of work.
The Malaysian government has also imposed a Restricted Movement Order, an as the name implies is a partial lockdown to help bring the spread of the Covid-19 virus under control via strict social distancing practices. Any non-essential services have to close and unfortunately, this means that we in the studio and music production industry are severely affected since recording sessions and song projects have to either postponed, put on hold or canceled altogether.
These difficult times call for new and innovative methods to earn a living both for the primary arts creators; the songwriters, singers, musicians, bands and those of us who serve them i.e. producers, arrangers, engineers, mixers etc. like myself and many fellow colleagues working in studios all over the country.