Oculis Sound

Ryan Schwartz is a close DJ and producer friend of mine who goes by the name Oculis Sound and was born and raised in Colorado Springs. In the past, he has had the opportunity to play at some of the largest clubs in the Denver area and recently has begun producing his own original music. He continues to grow his fanbase and has his sights set on a full time career in the EDM music industry.

EDM, or Electronic Dance Music, is a huge genre that has gained heavy popularity in the last decade. It has become a staple at music festivals and now the genre boasts an abundance of festivals dedicated solely to it. As EDM producers have reached superstar status, one place has both created and attracted a number of them. Denver, Colorado, aka, “The Bass Capitol of the World”. There are a couple of reasons that Denver and Colorado as a whole are so big in the EDM community. One is the producers who call this state home.

Included in this list are big names like Illenium, Pretty Lights, Dabin, Said the Sky, GRiZ, Dirt Monkey, Big Gigantic and more due to Denver’s thriving rave scene. Starting at the bottom, many bars and smaller night clubs offer avenues for those who are just starting out to mix in front of an audience and experience being on stage. Moving up from here, Denver is home to a large number of energetic nightclubs, many of which focus more on EDM music. From Church to Vinyl to Temple to Beta, Denver clubs are heavily sought after for those looking to party and rave. In 2013, Rolling Stone Magazine even rated Beta as the number 1 dance club in the country. These places are the next step for producers looking to get big, and many of the people I listed above did in fact play these venues before becoming a household name in the genre.

Denver and Colorado’s EDM scene rounds out with the festivals and large venues that make this place a destination for people around the country. Here we have Global Dance, a two-day festival at Empower Field at Mile High where the Broncos play and Decadence NYE, a two-day festival where attendees ring in the new year to the biggest names in EDM. Denver is also home to several large-scale venues capable of hosting thousands and pumping out enormous amounts of bass like The First Bank Center and Mission Ballroom. To crown this extensive list, Denver is home to the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheater. People will fly in just to see a one-night show here (trust me, I have multiple friends who have done so and met countless others at the Rocks doing just that).

There is something that can be said for the crowds here as well. The rave community has a reputation of loving one another and accepting everyone and Colorado makes sure you feel this unconditional love at almost every show. I have made lifelong friends simply by ending up next to someone when the doors open and we rush to get to the front. My phone is now full of people around Colorado who still reach out to me to this day to see how things are, what show am I planning on going to next, and when the next time we will get to see each other is. The positive energy in this community is unlike anything I have ever experienced before.

Ryan knows this sentiment all too well. He has been going to shows for the majority of his life and it is what has inspired him to pursue a career producing music and playing for these incredible crowds. When I asked him about the EDM scene here, he put it better than I ever could have. “Colorado is a place for beauty, positivity, and bass. We come, we rave, we love. Bass capitol of the World unite”.

Ryan has been a gateway for me to see into the Colorado EDM scene from a producer’s perspective. When he was 14 years old, his brother took him to a show at the First Bank Center in Broomfield, Colorado. Ryan says that this concert is what really got him into the genre, and he was completely hooked. He began spending more time with a friend of his who owned a mixing board and learning the basics of how to DJ. As he learned more, he developed a deep passion for the hobby until finally buying his first board and starting his journey.

Ryan started playing at college parties throughout the Fort Collins area in 2018 until he gained the eye of several promoters through social media. From here, he went on to play his first venue show in a small underground club in Colorado Springs. He has continued to move his way up, playing multiple shows in clubs around Denver including several at Church Nightclub, one of the more popular spots in the city. Ryan says that the biggest show he has gotten to play so far was Carter Lake Fest, a two-day, one-night festival in the woods around Carter Lake in Loveland, Colorado.

For a long time, Ryan wasn’t making any original music. He loved playing shows and continued to work on mixing and improving his live performance skills. In the last year however, his routine has done a complete 180. COVID-19 has forced him and the music industry as a whole to put a pause on live performances in the interest of public safety. While performing live is his favorite aspect of being in a DJ, he said that quarantine has given him the opportunity to really discover what he is capable when it comes to creating and producing his own music.

 “I started at a bad time, because of COVID, but it was also a good time because I can sit inside and open up my creativity”

This time at home has also opened up a new avenue for Ryan to gain exposure through the use of the live streaming platform twitch. He now does a show about once a month so that he can still play for people and they can get a sliver of the live show experience. It also makes it easy for viewers to share the stream info and get more people to see his name in a matter of seconds. He has set up his studio with a green screen behind him for visuals and a microphone so that he can interact with those leaving comments in the chat during the show. A lot of artists have moved to this format to keep bringing their fans a personal experience and keep the music flowing.

As of November 2020, Ryan is in a comprehensive program for sound engineering, sound design, and music production with Ableton. He has already released one song called “BRICKED” with his friend Brandon Becker, aka EZOS. He says that he has a number of new songs that he is currently sitting on waiting to release so that he can perfect them and make them sound exactly how he wants. Ryan has been experimenting with making music in many of the different subgenres that exist within EDM but has set his sights on two distinct ones. He loves to go through the process of making sad/happy melodies that come with future bass. This more emotional side of EDM is one that he has always liked to mix into his sets and now that he has the tools to do so, he wants to create his own songs that encapsulate it. He has also been playing with the classic heavy dubstep that shakes venues and gets people moving. This is how he got into mixing and he says that it is incredibly fun to make music that gets himself and others rowdy. Moving forward, Ryan said he is going to continue improving his production skills and making music that speaks to him to share with the world.

To keep up to date on Oculis Sound and his music, follow him on Instagram and SoundCloud.