You went to Berklee College of Music, right?
Yeah, I was self-taught on guitar for about a year or two before I started taking lessons, sight reading, and stuff. Then I did drums. I was mostly self-taught as a kid. I started taking lessons as an adult here and there. I went to Berklee after that. I did a lot of lessons to get ready to audition to go there.
Did you graduate?
I did. I have a music business degree from Berklee, and guitar was the major. But because I was in the music business major program, I only had to get to level four out of eight. If you're in pro music, you have a lot more guitar classes you have to take. I realized, in my first couple days there, that I was not going to be a guitar player. The kids there are unbelievable, so I started hiding in my production.
Is that when you first got into production?
No, I started making beats when I was 14 years old. My dad got me a [Sony] PlayStation game called MTV Music Generator. It was basically an [Apple] GarageBand format, where there were a ton of loops and different genres all in the same key and tempo – you could mix drum loops, bass loops, and sax loops. That was the first time I sequenced stuff, which was different than me playing guitar or anything else I did up to that point. Then I got a demo version of [Image-Line] FruityLoops. I would use [Apple] Logic in the media center of my high school. Once I showed my parents that I was serious about it, I ended up getting a laptop and my own DAW. Then I got an [Akai] MPC as my first tool, and I learned how to use an MPC early on. I then went back to trying to learn FruityLoops and Logic. It was a weird zigzag.
At some point you moved over to Ableton Live?
Yeah. I've been in Ableton for the last decade, but I was in Logic for probably ten years before that. I thought I was going to be a Logic guy forever. When I started making dance music and more electronic music, all the automation and all the techie stuff that went along with those genres was much easier to do in Ableton.
But you're using [Avid] Pro Tools now?
Yeah, I use it with Ableton now. Ableton for MIDI. Ableton to warp. Ableton to get something out fast. But I'm pretty much full-time Pro Tools now.
How old were you when you graduated Berklee?
I was 21. By the time I graduated Berklee, I'd already produced for Kendrick Lamar, Mac Miller, ScHoolboy Q, and a few other signed artists. I wasn't making a ton of money, but I was starting to get my name on the blogs, on SoundCloud, and I was building up a small amount of followers. I was in an electronic duo with a friend, and we had started making stuff that was getting us shows before I graduated. I actually had an apartment in Los Angeles that I got six months before I graduated while I was on my “internship.” By then, I was already living in L.A., playing shows, selling beats online, and trying to get myself ready to get out of school before I was even graduating.
You're one of the people working in music who actually graduated from Berklee.
Yeah! They used to say that if you didn't drop out, you didn't make it! [laughter] I actually know a lot of people from USC, Clive Davis [Institute of Recorded Music] at NYU, or some of these other music programs who are killing it. I'm more peered up with people from these small programs that produced a lot of successful musicians, writers, and producers, whereas at Berklee there's a wide range of majors. I only have a couple of friends who went there at the time I did that are still in my orbit.
You've ended up doing a lot of education online via your YouTube channel and Splice. How did that come about?
