Part 2

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

The synthesizer is certainly the most important instrument and tool for me and my search for new sounds. It gives me infinite possibilities. It's like painting a picture and gives you different colors and that screen becomes infinite without pre-defined spaces. It is possible to start from a simple noise and unfold it into a complex sound-mass full of nuance and dynamics.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

My day starts around 6am. I prepare breakfast for my children and pack their lunch boxes for school. Around 7 am, I wake them up to change and eat something before heading to school. I return home and try to start my daily physical exercises, stretching, yoga, running or boxing....Then I start working on my projects. Normally the first activities related to my morning work are linked to the bar that I work and manage. After these commitments, I start working on my responsibilities linked to the label and producer Desmonta. This all doesn't have an exact time to end but I try to finish it at 6pm as much as possible... At this time I pick my children up from school and help them with their school lessons, I make dinner, I sit down to dinner with them, I watch some cartoons with them. I put them to bed, I try to rest for about 40 minutes next to them and then I return to what's left of work.... A couple of times a week I dedicate myself to practicing my songs, especially at night, after 10pm, which is when I become more productive.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

My creative process depends a lot on what I have at my disposal. I can't have the same set up for a long time. After a few days that sound becomes tiring and the process ends up not flowing. I like when I start to create I get results that I like but that still don't have a definitive face and give me an idea of where I can go....From there, I record everything on an 8-channel Tascam recorder.
I use each channel to record a different session, so I usually have multiple recordings of the same session. After that, I pass the best takes to an SP404 and from there I make some edits and add effects back for a new session in Tascam. After this step, I use Ableton Live to make some edits. With this foundation, I enter the studio to record more acoustic instruments like drums, percussion, strings, etc...

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

As an admirer and spectator, the two ways (both solitary and collective) have always worked very well for me, especially the collective listening and the experience it provides. As for the creative part, it also works perfectly in both ways but I need to separate these two things. The first stage is very lonely, it is very focused on my listening and on my constant exercise of concentration in finding places and rhythmic patterns that make me comfortable. Once I feel comfortable, I can imagine which people or instruments I can incorporate. This fusion works best at the studio.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

I think my daily routine exemplifies how my work relates to the world. Seeing my children in constant movement and showing me what youth pays attention to these days, they are impulses to continue creating. Music has always been part of my life, it continues to be my training and daily occupation in all instances. Music gives you the foundation we need to keep dreaming, to create images, stories, emotions and sensations that will be remembered forever. They are stored in a special and untouchable place forever. It is the rarest and most preserved jewel we carry.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

In all cultures, music is present in the most diverse rites and manifestations. It is the core of our being, it is with us in the first days of life outside the womb, it calms us and makes us present and protected, and at the end of life we are remembered and revered in verses or melodies. In music there are different colors, emotions and feelings capable of transporting us through never-before-seen terrains, it takes us to our ancestors and moves us when remembering our loved ones or lost love.

There seems to be increasing interest in a functional, “rational” and scientific approach to music. How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

The relationship between the two is notorious and goes back a long way. After these studies, it didn't take long for both fields to forge distant paths from each other. For a long time each of these fields had their significant advances. With the evolution of the two, even if the distance, the relationship between them is increasingly clear. Music can work in many fields that science still cannot reach through its traditional methods. It is an accelerated evolution when these two fields work together in harmony. The two tend to add and increase the interest and evolutionary capacity that music has on the field of science and vice versa.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I believe that other mundane tasks can take you to distant places like music does. I think that enthusiasm, concentration and study of music can be transferred to other activities. It may be that music has a "greater charm" for its lightness, for its instant involvement and sensory power. Through music I can create moments that reflect my state and bring these to people. They are vibrations, cycles and "colors" that in the end can sound like something alone or bring different fragmented sensations.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

The way I tend to create my music often has more to do with the texture and the way it reaches the ears. So my relationship with the relaxation or sensation that the sound brings me is in the foreground. In the background is a more linear concept and finally the question of structure as a whole, arrangements, bpm's, something more connected, the same production.