Half An Orange

Tell us about yourself.

We are a duo of two Ohio natives (Michael Maloof and Andrew Spellman). Our kind of weird name comes from a Portuguese expression that I (Michael) learned while living on a beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for a year. The expression, “metade da laranja” (translated to “half an orange”), means that everyone is half an orange looking for that one person, thing, or purpose that completes them (or the other half of their orange). If you’re still only half an orange then you’re still lonely and lost in the world. We liked the name because we always have felt a little lost or out of place in the world.

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Tell us about yourself as an artist.

We don’t really have the mind sight of finding a sound and sticking to it, though we are crazy jealous of artist who can do that. We just go out and experience life and let those stories, feelings, and people determine our music. When we’re sad, our sound is sad. When we’re happy, our sound is happy. When we’re lost, our music feels lost. Some of the more technical mixing and mastering techniques from our songs we will continue to use (since we do mix and master our own tracks), but the general moods, themes, and emotions in our track and sounds vary based on that point of time in our life.

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Tell us about the genre of your music.

We mix acoustic/indie music with electronic. We originally started as acoustic artists so all our songs are first developed on guitar before being produced in studio into electronic songs.
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Tell us about the story behind your song.

I (Michael) had just moved back to my parents in Ohio after a failed relationship and running out of money. I was super down on myself. I sat at my sister’s piano and wrote the song right as I started playing.
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Tell us about the problems you are facing as a musician.

We’re slowly starting to feel pressure to make more and more songs which is something we aren’t use to. Whenever we don’t release music we let down our team, our label, our managers, our fans, everyone. It’s hard to write music when you’re so worried about letting people down. We’ve had to mentally adjust and learn how to just make music for fun again.
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Tell us about the recording and production of the song.

We produced and recorded it in our own studio. The whole song took one studio session to produce (excluding the bridge). It took us weeks to develop a bridge we liked. It was the first time we had written a bridge we actually liked haha.
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List the names of blogs, radio or TV stations that have supported you so far.

Lowly Palace, Electro Pose, CloudKid, The Nations, Tech Me House, Get the Sound, Ear Milk, Purple Melon, iHeart Radio, and many more gracious and kind outlets.
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Tell us more about your music career, experience and future goals.

We’re working on an EP now where we travel the world and write a new song in each city. We usually travel when we’re lost in our lives. It helps develop ourselves and our sounds.

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Brief us what inspires you to write, compose and sing.

We usually write outside of the studio when we’re sad almost as a form of meditation. In studio, we’re all hanging out as friends having fun though. It’s a nice change of pace.

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Brief us the top-secret behind making a hit song.

Be yourself. If you sound like everyone else then no one will care.

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Tell the kind of advice you will give to an upcoming artist.

Learn how to finish songs. Most amateur artists make 70% of a song then quit because they get excited about a new song idea. It’s important to finish and work on one song at a time.
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Discuss at length your music careers, albums, songs, tours, recognition or awards you might have obtained.

My favorite “award” was a message a fan sent me. They’d been getting picked on at school and during “show and tell” they showed the class our music. The kids in the class liked our music so much they started asking our fan about us. It led to the fan making friends in the class and they stopped getting bullied. I cried reading the message.

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Tell us how you write your lyrics, compose, sing and record in the studio.

I (Michael) usually write our lyrics while I’m sad and playing acoustic guitar. I almost only write when I’m sad (which tends to happen a lot). If I write something I like I’ll record it in a voice memo and send it over to Andrew Spellman. Then we’ll both begin producing the song and I’ll come into the studio to record vocals. From there, he’ll produce the song off that original idea and vocals and then mix and master it. We’ve been making music together for almost 7 years so we’re a great team.
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Name the artists you are willing to collaborate with.

We have songs that we are working on right now with InukShuk, Blonde Maze, OTR, Bijou, LIHO, and we’re working on a remix for a huge electronic artist (though it is still secret.) 🙂

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State the links to your social networks and stores for purchase of your songs.

We post photos of all our travels, inspirations, and stories to Instagram. We respond to all messages we get on there too and are constantly giving out free “Half an Orange” merchandise

https://www.instagram.com/halfanorange/
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Tell us about your happiest day and saddest day.

My (Michael) saddest day was when I found out my dad had cancer. I was super shaken up by it and didn’t write any music nor touch an instrument for almost 4 months. My happiest day was probably when my sister got into medical school. Also our first song got 1000 views on YouTube and at the time I thought that was a lot and was the most excited I have ever been. Now we get millions of streams/views on our songs but the first 1000 were the ones I’ll remember the most.

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Tell us how you will spend a million dollars.

Bitcoins. HODL.
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Tell us about your song.
It uses very few words, which is rare for us. We felt the power and emotion of having a handful words was very impactful and that having more words would only weaken the song. When you’re sad or doubting yourself you usually don’t have a lot of words running through your brain. It’s usually a couple of strong words like “I suck”, “what am I doing”, “How did I become like this?” and then a bunch of silence.

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Tell us how you manage other activities with your music career.

We play a lot of original Playstaion. Andrew has beat Spyro 100 times. We have always wanted to write a song about video games but never could figure it out.
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Tell us five artists you can regard as legends.

Our five favorite legends are Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Tupac.

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Tell us your future plans pertaining music.

We have a new single coming out in February called “Given Up”. It’s a song I wrote in high school that we rewrote to release. We just filmed the music video for it in LA.
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Tell us what you think about creativity and originality in music.

Music is the best way to express yourself. Anyone can sing, anyone can hum, anyone can write words. It’s free to upload your songs and opinions. It’s this immediate, free, and easy way to communicate and share your thoughts with the world. It’s amazing.

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Tell us the major reason you are into music.

We write music to help us when we’re depressed. Without it we wouldn’t get through the hard times.
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Tell us your view on old school music and new school music in terms of preference.

There’s no school like the old school. 😉 Everyone is bias towards their own generation of music. When rock came up, people said playing electric guitar wasn’t real music. When electronic music came out, people said playing on pads wasn’t real music. They’re all real music and all amazing. No generation of music is better than the other. They all have a wonderful and unique sound that tells that time period’s story. That being said, I’d say this is probably the best time ever for musicians because technology has made making and releasing music so approachable that anyone can release something and get discovered. Plus it’s so easy to talk to your fans and other artists through the internet.
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Tell us your most memorable day as an artist.

We got to hang out with Petit Biscuit for his US tour. We were backstage and he played us songs off his new album (at the time it had not been released). It was surreal. 12 months prior I was sitting at my parents playing guitar in my bedroom alone.
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Tell us what you would do for the people if you found yourself in a position of power.

We’d force Marshmello to reveal his identity to the world. We spend half our time reading reddit posts theorizing who he is.

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State the official date of release.

“Far From Young” is out now. Please enjoy. 🙂