Hey, it is so good to talk to you again. How are you doing?
I'm alright. I just started working in April, so I wake up
early, go to work, come back home, and go to sleep.
Are you working on anything right now?
So right now I am not working on anything because simply I just
don't have the time. But before I started my job I was working
on a new song. I think the instrumental is done and I got stuck
in the vocals. We have like a week off from like the 29th so
I'll try to do the vocals then.
You have been releasing music pretty consistently recently, a
single every month or so. Are these tracks you have been sitting
on from various points in your life, or have you been releasing
them as you make them?
I have a stock of songs and I just pick the ones that I want to
produce. The ones that I feel like are, you know, hot in me
right now. And I if they're not finished, I finish them and then
I start producing. Yeah. That's that's that's the way it goes.
Putting out new songs so regularly must take a lot of work. Do
you plan on sticking to this or slowing down, especially now
that you have a full-time job?
Yeah, I definitely can't do that. I actually wanted to last
year. My first song was [released] October 10th, second song was
was November 11th and then I skipped December because I couldn't
finished my third song and I released it on I think it was the
11th of January. And then I skipped another month and I released
my fourth on March. Hopefully my my fifth song is going to be in
May.
Your releases have all been singles. Are you interested in
creating a full length album?
I am super interested in that. It's just obviously a lot of
work. If I try to release an album, I want to do 10 songs. I
don't know how long that would take me. I have enough song ideas
for an album and I really really want to do that. I've
categorized my songs depending on genre and what they mean to
me. I just don't have the time or the skill to [produce] it
quickly.
Do you hope to turn your music into a career, or is it more of a
hobby for you?
For now it's something that I'm doing on the side because it has
to be. But if something blows up or I keep on doing this and
little by little and it eventually accumulates to something
bigger then I would I would quit my job, probably.Wait, but
maybe that shouldn't be on record. [laughs]
Of course, a lot goes into making music. What is your favourite
part of the process?
Writing it definitely. The instrumentals usually come with the
lyrics. It's sort of a process of sitting down playing with the
instruments and adding words. So yeah, it's all it's all like a
set. There's some people that start off with a demo by someone
else or they sample something and that's totally fine. It's
adding your creativity to something else that already exists. I
just like to start everything from scratch.
You write all your own lyrics too. What inspires you and what
themes do you find yourself most drawn to?
I have two main themes. One would be heartbreak and the other
would probably be about really generally speaking life and
wasting your time. Trying to live your life. And the inspiration
behind heartbreak, it's usually obviously a heartbreak. Or I
watch a movie and I get inspired by the story of the characters
and when I can relate to them. Then after I watch the movie, I
just sit down by the piano or with the guitar and I just strum
chords or play chords or arpeggios and if I find something that
resonates in my heart, then I add a melody and then the lyrics.
I have to think of the lyrics because you know I don't read, so
my vocabulary is limited [he's joking here... I think] but
eventually it comes to me. Yeah, if you're just writing lyrics
about your own life it is really limited. Especially if you're
doing music, then you're in your house a lot of the time. So,
you need to grab inspiration from somewhere else and I think
movies are probably the best way to do that.
Can you tell me more about a film that has inspired your music?
Yeah. There was this movie called A Beautiful Life. So, it's
this guy that you know starts off as a fisherman and he just
does gigs for fun with his friend, but then eventually, someone
finds him and he starts to record music. The stereotypical music
movie that people like because the character goes from nothing
to someone. It touches on the aspect of getting drunk on fame
and losing people you love. And there was the last scene where
he plays a song for his wife that now had had a baby. And
something about his story sort of stuck with me. And I just came
up with chords for that and that would actually be the second
song I released. The lyrics don't really have to do too much
with the character and it doesn't have to do with me either. But
I wanted to write a story about someone else. I think it's
actually about someone cheating on you. The story isn't based on
the movie. It's just the feeling that I got from the movie. And
it's not even my story, but I think it's a feeling that I had
when I was dating my ex. This feeling of being scared that the
other person's going to cheat on you. And I sort of just gave
that feeling a shape.
Like you said with your ex, you put a lot of your personal
experience into your music as well. Has there been a specific
situation or moment in your life that's inspired any of your
songs that you would be willing to talk about?
I think most of my songs are inspired by events in my life. But
one song, it's not released, is about when I was job hunting
like you are right now [ouch], and I had this feeling that I
wanted to leave home and just earn money and be independent, but
then I was thinking, well, after I do that, I'm probably going
to be extremely extremely homesick and just defeated by life and
by social conventions around work and this expectation that I
have from society. And I'm just going to go. I'm just going to
want to go back home. And it's that thought that I had during
job hunting and I wrote the song when I was in my room and I was
just really comfortable and I wrote a song about going back to
my room. Yeah, I really really want to release that song. It's
one of the most sentimental songs that I've written so I'm
really looking forward to actually finishing this song and
producing and releasing it.
I think with most art, especially music, creatives want it to be
shared, but I know it can be hard to feel seen, especially in
this fast-paced era of mass production and consumption. How have
you been dealing with this, especially since you do not have a
team, and would you say you have managed to connect with the
audience you want?
That's something that I have trouble with. I post mainly on Tik
Tok and it just throws your content to random people. You just
hope and pray that it's that it resonates with them. But if it
doesn't then your content doesn't get spread. For the first
month that I was releasing content on Tik Tok it obviously
started slow. Not many people commented and I still released my
song. Yeah. But I was trying to kind of invoke this feeling
through visuals, not that much the music. And I don't know if
that really worked. Some people liked it.
But it's hard because I don't really have the audience yet.
People have been commenting more and more and I think they like
the content that I put out, but my content isn't really focused
on hitting people in the heart. It's more of trying to get a
mass just to get involved with my content.
I think
in earlier days people would just go out and play their songs
and that's how people gained recognition and I think it takes
the same amount of time and effort to do that. It's just the way
that it is now feels a bit more evil because you're in your
house alone doing it and you're just staring at a screen and it
feels so unhealthy. You're just repeating every single day,
editing the same thing every single day. But if you look at it
the other way you know as people would do back in the days they
would just go out and people would you know they would play and
people just walk around them really not caring about them so the
feeling that we get is probably sort of similar.
I think it all comes with being consistent, but actually putting
out something that's valuable to other people because you have
to put yourself in the audience's shoes. And obviously if the
music isn't good, you're not going to want to listen to it. The
evil part is that you have to grab people's attention in the
first like two seconds. And that's really hard and then
maintaining the retention is even harder. It's become much more
strategic.
I look at the analytics for my Tik Tok
videos and my Spotify listeners, and a lot of them are in the
Philippines and some in Japan. But if it's Tik Tok, then for
some reason it gets pushed towards the Philippines. Africa
sometimes. But yeah, it's really weird and I can't explain it.
Maybe the type of music that I create is just better in the
Philippines. I really want to push my music towards America and
England too.
Your songs all have a very distinctive casual, stripped back
quality to them. Are there any other artists you feel have
inspired your sound?
Definitely. The way that I want to produce music is sort of
inspired by Joji and Djo. Maybe some Daniel Caesar, slightly
R&B, but not as complicated.The way FINNEAS produces is really
interesting. like the way he produces Billie Eilish's songs,
they're really fun. I've been trying to add some of those
aspects into my songs. They never work because they're so
complicated and I don't understand it, but I do get inspired a
lot by the way they make music.
Have you always wanted to be a musician? What got you into it?
I didn't really always want to be a musician. I always wanted to
be an actor when I was in high school, but that sort of faded
away after I started university. And I don't really know when I
started loving music. I would probably be around high school,
university, but I don't know exactly. I've been learning how to
play the piano since I was little. And it's strange because I
hated it, that's why I don't read sheet music, but that probably
had some sort of influence on me.
I think I started
writing music when I was in my first year of high school. I
tried to write a song for my mom on her birthday, and I think
that was the first song that I wrote. It was horrible. I can't
even remember it. I'm sure it was bad. Trust me, it was
horrible.
And what got me into wanting to be an
artist? The first time I actually felt something when writing
music was in my first year of university after watching a movie
called Sing Street. It's about teenagers making music. For some
reason it hit me on a different level of deepness., and after
the movie, I just sat down in front of the piano. I started just
touching the keyboard, you know, just making noises, sounds, and
it was the first time I actually connected with my emotions when
writing a song. And that was probably when I thought, "Oh, this
really means something to me." That song is actually still
probably one of my favorites. I haven't released it. I haven't
even finished it, but it has something really meaningful to
me.
After that, I just started to connect more to my
emotions and make them flow into music. And that's probably when
I started thinking I really want to do this seriously. It was
probably my second year of university or third when I was 20 or
21 that I said "Okay, I'm going to start producing music," and I
started learning how to use Logic Pro by myself.
You mentioned you were originally interested in acting, right?
Have you worked on any interesting projects in the past, and are
you pursuing any opportunities at the moment?
When I was in my first year, no, third year of high school in
Japan, I was offered a role for a short film for these people
who were making films as an assignment for university. And I
took the job. It was a two day shoot. I didn't really even have
that many lines and it was in Japanese. But it did feel really
really nice to see myself as this other character, as this other
person. I love the feeling of being captured in something and
then they polish it and make it look really nice. So that is one
thing that I love about film. As for my future acting career, if
there's anything that pops up, I would like to do it. I do not
feel as confident as I was in my early acting days about my
acting, but I would definitely love to do it.
Music videos are a unique way of bringing together acting and
music. What would your ideal music video be like?
It would be really fun to just dress up as like a Sith Lord and
do random stuff around. Probably really nostalgic with beautiful
Wes Anderson color grading or something really really weird like
what the Beatles used to do sometimes that just boggles your
head.I haven't really put thought into directing a music video
for myself. 3 minutes is actually long when you want to do a
music video because you have to take a lot of shots in different
places and a lot of scenes doing the same thing or sometimes
even exploding within yourself which takes a lot of stamina to
do.
So, what is next for you? Where do you see yourself in a year
from now, what do you hope to accomplish?
My very specific goal would be an album but before that I think
I'd like to release an EP. I don't know when that could be. It
will probably take me a year to finish. So hopefully I could
just find the time to produce these songs. And you know, it
would be great if I could find someone that just produces and if
they could come to my house and I could just tell them what to
do and they do it and I just record vocals and they can also mix
and master the vocals and the song. That'd be really smooth.
Then I could probably release a song each month even with my
job. But I can't find someone like that.
Thank you so much for your time. To end with, is there anything
else you would like to add, anything you want listeners or fans
to know?
To anyone who's listened to my music, I make everything with
pure emotion and it's just things that come out of my heart and
nothing else. I make it so that people can enjoy it. So, it
would be really nice to hear from these people, see what they
think. I haven't been able to post any sort of content for a
while so I just want to make sure that the people know I haven't
logged out or anything. I'm still in the game and I will
continue to be as long as I can, as long as I can make music,
and I would definitely love it forever. Hopefully I will have a
larger audience to tell this to in the future, but for now, I
think with the amount of things that I release and the amount of
time that I have, the audience that I have right now is really
adequate. But, well, you know, you just never know what comes in
the future. And I'm hoping for the best and I will do my best to
bring that outcome.