Share your life story with us.
I grew up being highly creative, with film as my main passion. When college came around I thought I needed to do something “practical” so I decided to study finance, and ended up working for a global bank on Wall Street. I excelled in the field but felt empty; it wasn’t until a trip to Miami in 2017 that shook things up again. I saw Oliver Heldens live – it was an outdoor set in the pouring rain. The music, the lights, the rain, and the crowd’s energy reminded me of a feeling that I hadn’t felt since I started doing banking. I felt alive again. Since then, I knew I wanted to produce music and recreate that feeling every time.
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List the names of those that have assisted you so far in your music career and use this opportunity to thank them. Definitely want to start out by thanking Jake and Tim for helping me majorly in getting the vocal part of this song done. Also my amazing friends Andisi, RK, and Patrick for helping me with taking photos, giving song feedback, and just overall creativity advice, Antonio and Azad for being early listeners of the song, and also Dielan, Carlos, Burak, Justin, and a bunch of other friends that I’ve met online that have been supporting a lot continously!
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Narrate your experience while recording in the studio or while touring.
Since I have a full time job, most of the work I put in for this song was done at odd hours at weird places. My friends have given me weird looks for being in a corner at the bar with my phone’s speaker to my ear because an idea came to me for the song, and I’m trying to think of how it would go with what I had made so far.
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Go into detail about your songwriting process.
Hooks and melodies often come to me randomly, sometimes with words already and sometimes without. As I tend to forget them very easily I always try to record them as a voice memo on my phone as soon as I can, and then build on them later if I still like them. When “Dark Side of the Moon” came to me it was just that specific line and melody that you hear in the final version “Welcome to the dark side, the side you never see.” I was in the office then and had to quickly run to an empty room for 10 seconds to record it before I could forget.
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Brief us on what you have on the way for your fans out there. As “Dark Side of the Moon” is my first song, I am still exploring different sounds and they can expect something different next time – I’m aiming for a more upbeat song. I am also working on my YouTube channel which will give a closer look into my music and my life in general. They can expect more music and more videos!
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Tell us what you are doing to increase your fan base. This is really interesting to me because even before I started doing music, social media marketing has always intrigued me. I study the science and psychology behind it as much as I can to help me increase my reach especially since I am currently my own team.
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Tell us that point in time that you just feel like giving up on your music career. Fortunately I haven’t reached that point yet.
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Go into detail on how you make your instrumentation or melody. It depends on whether or not I already have an existing melody or hook in mind, or if I am starting from scratch. For “Dark Side of the Moon” every instrument you hear was made virtually, but in the future I plan to start using sounds recorded externally. As for the melody, I look at what key I want the song to be in and see which notes I can work with. I hum most of it before playing on a keyboard or my laptop because they come more naturally to me that way.
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Tell us the best way to get in touch with you on social media. The best way would be through Instagram @SebastianHex as I am the most active there, although I also have a Twitter under the same handle. In a few days I will also start using my YouTube channel “SebastianHexMusic” to give others a closer look into my music and my life in general. If you’re more of a mailing list guy, then www.sebastianhex.com is the way to go!
Tell us your favourite genre of music. I honestly mean it when I say that it all depends on my mood. My Spotify playlist can go from Marty Robbins, to Duke Dumont, to Taylor Swift, then to The Exies in a span of 4 songs.
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Tell us the subject matter of most of your songs. Funny you ask that. Although I’ve only released “Dark Side of the Moon,” I noticed that a lot of the songs I write have lyrics that are a bit dark, so much so that I wrote a song about how I always write dark songs. I’m working on writing happier songs, though!
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Tell us all we need to know about this song. The inspiration for “Dark Side of the Moon” came when I was in the office, when a coworker got me quite upset about something. I walked away from the situation, but I thought about it and realized that they’ve never really seen me mad before because I almost always can keep my cool. So, me being upset is the side of me they never see – kind of like the “dark side” of the moon because we’re always facing one side of it.
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Tell us what you think about digital distribution and streaming. I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand it’s absolutely amazing because artists can distribute their music independently while consumers can access music more easily than ever, and don’t have to rely on piracy anymore. But at the same time everyone in the industry knows how laughable the payout is for streams, so while it has a lot of benefits there is still a lot of work to be done.
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Tell us various ways that artists can boost their revenue. Artists, especially independent ones, need to understand the value of building their brand and understanding how social media works. Although in some rare cases it can happen, making the best music possible and hoping for the best is no longer going to cut it if you want to become even remotely successful in today’s environment.
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Tell us your thought on self-training and going to educational institution to study music. I think every artist should take time to teach themselves whether or not they decide to supplement that with formal education. If you have the budget, there’s nothing wrong with going to school for it. I personally am self-taught.
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Go on at length on what it takes to write a hit song. I’ll let you know once I have a hit song!
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State the official date of release. “Dark Side of the Moon” was released on February 10, 2018.
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State your artist’s name and elaborate on it. Sebastian Hex is my artist name – I made a list of names but this one just stuck with me. I wish it had a deeper meaning… but it really doesn’t. I just like it.
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State the title of the song and the meaning. “Dark Side of the Moon” is about human complexities – more specifically the side of us that we don’t show other people. It’s like the “dark side” of the moon, or the side you never see.
