FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

The Creators Project NYC Recording Session: Final Day

As our music collaboration experiment comes to an end, we check in with our musicians one last time.

The word of the day was “bittersweet” during the final hours of our Creators Project recording session, a music collaboration experiment that assembled three musicians via the internet and flew them to NYC to write and record an EP together in just under a week. Over the course of their five days in the recording studio with producer Mike Beck, Aaron Horn (UK), Eugene Derek Hong (US), and Rossano Snel (Brazil) wrote and recorded four tracks in a burst of frenetic, creative energy that lingered to the very end of their grueling recording process.

Advertisement

“It’s been a long haul,” says Mike. “Lots of laughs and lots of work, but we survived.” Pausing a moment he adds, “No, we did more than survive. We kicked butt.”

From the beginning, the project seemed like an unlikely marriage—we brought together three artists from different parts of the world with nothing more in common than a shared affinity for electronic music and a burning passion to create. We decided to stir things up some more by pairing these laptop-toting music nerds with a producer who is best known for recording jazz, blues and rock, and subscribes to more traditional recording principles. Even to us, it seemed like a precarious combination that could either result in unequivocal ingenuity or a powder keg of disaster. (What can we say? We like to push the envelope.)

But when we met the guys last Monday, all our fears instantly melted away. Aaron, Eugene and Rossano converged on NYC practically brimming over with positive energy, high hopes, and enthusiasm. From their first hours together, they became “instant best friends” and assumed an integrative approach to their songwriting process that would make use of each person’s unique talents, strengths, and musical background to really make something new. Choosing to each take leadership over one track and equally collaborate on a fourth, the arrangement gave each person an opportunity to develop their unique creative vision while still working together as a unit. The results are as eclectic as the musicians themselves—ranging from dubstep to hard electro, from dreamy, ambient tunes to a dance-pop track with female vocals.

Advertisement

“It was almost easy to produce music with these guys,” says Rossano. “Each song represents our musical backgrounds, as well as our social backgrounds, the way we express ourselves and where we come from. You can really feel that in our music.”

The process turned out to be one symbiotic knowledge exchange exercise between all parties involved. Rossano, a classically trained pianist, brought a deeply rooted understanding of music theory and harmony to the equation, as well as a passion for Brazilian music. Eugene, the youngest of the group, turned out to be a self-taught electronic music prodigy—able to create virtually any synth, bass or drum sounds on his laptop. Aaron was a general Renaissance man and the true leader of the group, he helped keep the project on track and incorporate everyone’s voices in it. And producer Mike Beck helped guide the creative direction of the recording and imparted some of his old-school techniques onto the digitally-inclined musicians.

They, in turn, gave him an intense crash course in electronic music. “I’m not used to working with so many electronic musicians and have three guys make music on laptops,” says Mike. “They’re in here talking about dubstep, glitch, fidget… At first, it all seemed the same to me, but now I can see and hear the differences.”

The group enjoyed working together so much, they have plans to continue their collaborative relationship even after they return back home. The internet and its multitude of filesharing sites certainly makes that kind of remote collective songwriting process an easy one. In the end, they all felt like they grew as individual musicians from the experience, and that their music benefited from the interplay of styles and influences.

“The biggest success of this project for me was the guys and their personalities,” says Mike. “We all became really good friends and everyone was so smart and talented and passionate. I don’t know what other people will hear when they hear this music, but for me, I’ll always hear these three larger than life personalities,” says Mike.

Now, if they could only come up with a name for themselves…

Images courtesy of Christophe Wu