Steve Duda is an American DJ, record producer, audio engineer, manager and software engineer from

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park ( ) is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, California, San Mateo County in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, California, Eas ...

. He is best known for his mid-2000s collaborative

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

projects with Canadian record producer and DJ

Deadmau5 Joel Thomas Zimmerman (born January 5, 1981), known professionally as deadmau5 (pronounced "dead-mouse"), is a Canadian electronic music producer and disc jockey, DJ. His musical style mostly includes progressive house and electro house music, ...

under the names "BSOD" and "WTF?" (also with DJ Aero and

Tommy Lee Thomas Lee (born Thomas Lee Bass; October 3, 1962) is an American musician who co-founded and plays drums for the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe. He also founded rap metal band Methods of Mayhem and has pursued solo musical projects. Early ...

) and owning the

record label "Big Three" music labels A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of Sound recording and reproduction, music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a Music publisher, ...

and digital music software company Xfer Records. He is also known for creating the VST plugin Serum and Serum 2.

Career

1990s: Beginnings

Duda studied

music composition Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called ...

at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...

. He later became a member of the Santa Cruz

rock band ''Rock Band'' is a series of rhythm games first released in 2007 and developed by Harmonix. Based on their previous development work from the Guitar Hero, ''Guitar Hero'' series, the main ''Rock Band'' games have players use game controllers mod ...

s named The Brothers of Other and Razorface. He later left the bands, and went on to work for the American

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

company AVID. In 1997, Duda left Santa Cruz to become an engineer and programmer for the American

industrial rock Industrial rock is a fusion genre that fuses industrial music and rock music. It initially originated in the 1970s, and drew influence from early experimental and industrial acts such as Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten and Chrom ...

band

Nine Inch Nails Nine Inch Nails, commonly abbreviated as NIN (stylized as NIИ), is an American industrial rock band formed in Cleveland, Ohio in 1988. Its members are the singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Trent Reznor and his frequent col ...

, for which he was a programmer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist on their third studio album '' The Fragile''. In 1999, Duda moved to

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

to further pursue a career in music.

2000s: BSOD, Xfer Records, and WTF?

In 2005, Duda and Canadian record producer Joel Zimmerman (Deadmau5) formed the

electro house Electro house is a genre of electronic dance music and a subgenre of house music characterized by heavy bass and a tempo around 125–135 beats per minute. The term has been used to describe the music of many ''DJ Mag'' Top 100 DJs, including ...

group BSOD and released their debut single "This Is The Hook" a year later. The song topped the Beatport Top 100 chart, and went on to feature on Deadmau5's 2008 compilation album '' At Play''. Later that year, the group self-released their debut album titled ''Pay Here To Click''. Earlier that year, Duda also made several uncredited collaborations with Deadmau5. Most notably, he performed vocals for "Porcelain" and co-wrote "Bitches" from Zimmerman's 2006 album '' A Little Oblique''. In 2007, Duda and Zimmerman founded Xfer Records to continue to release music as BSOD, with the releases of ''Played Out EP'' and ''Last Life EP'' on Xfer. In 2008, Duda, Zimmerman, DJ Aero and

formed the

group named WTF?. Later that year, they released their debut EP ''Chicken'' on Xfer Records.

2010s: Serum and Xfer, Inc.

In 2014, Duda programmed, created and release
Serum
a VST plugin to be used by DJs and producers in the

electronic dance music Electronic dance music (EDM), also referred to as dance music or club music, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and List of electronic dance music festivals, festivals. It is generally ...

scene. Its GUI was designed by Lance Thackeray. Serum later won multiple awards. In 2016, Xfer partnered with Splice and announced a "rent-to-own" plan for Serum, allowing producers to own the plugin at a monthly cost. In 2017, Duda announced that Xfer Records would be renamed Xfer, Inc. In 2025, Duda released Serum 2.

Discography

As solo artist

EPs

* ''Fish'' (2011) * ''Generation'' (2012) * ''Cell By Cell'' (2013)

Remixes

* BSOD - Milton (Steve Duda Remix) * Moguai - ZYVOX (Steve Duda Remix) * Boom Jinx - Quadcore (Steve Duda Remix) * Nonplus - Playdate (Steve Duda Remix)

With BSOD

Studio albums

* ''Pay Here To Click'' (2006)

EPs

* ''Played Out'' (2007) * ''Last Life'' (2008) * ''No Way, Get Real'' (2020)

Singles

* "This Is The Hook" (2006) * "Milton" (2008)

With WTF?

EPs

* ''Chicken'' (2008) * ''Redic / CEABA55555'' (2008)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Duda, Steve American DJs Living people Mau5trap artists Year of birth missing (living people)