How can your high school music interests impact your future? Find out from an aspiring music producer!
Read songwriter/music producer, Benny Haploid’s journey through the music industry and learn how he found inspiration in Korean-Pop music!
Recently, the SWAYE Media team got in contact with Benny Haploid and conducted an interview with him about his experiences as a music producer.
Q: What form of art do you specialize in?
Haploid: I’m a songwriter/music producer. I mostly make electronic synth pop. I’ve developed my sound by taking elements of 80s synth pop and combining them with modern edm production.
Q: When did you start and why did you become interested in it?
Haploid: Looking back on it, it’s obvious how obsessed I was with music. If I found a video game I liked, the music was one of my favorite parts. If I liked a movie, the music was one of my favorite parts.
As a kid, I really wanted to write music for video games. While my priorities have shifted a bit since then, the music from my favorite games has definitely influenced me greatly.
I started playing the piano when I was around 11-12 years old. I later picked up guitar and bass. I really wanted to be in a band, but I didn’t really have many musician friends to practice with. I needed a way to make music on my own beyond just what I could do with my instruments. That’s when I started messing with Garageband on my phone. I just really had a lot of fun doing it and learning about it. I kept pushing myself to try new things and grow in my abilities. Now I’m going to school as an audio engineering major, which is just the next step in the growth process for me.
Q: What made you decide you wanted to pursue that style of art?
Haploid: Like I said, I wanted to join a band but I didn’t have anybody to be in a band with. Around that same time, I discovered K-Pop. I first started listening to groups like f(x) and Girl’s Generation back in 2015.
Once I started learning more about the industry and how all my favorite songs were made, I realized that making K-Pop songs could actually be a reality for me.
That set me on my current journey to become K-Pop songwriter/producer.
Q: What has your experience been like continuing your art while in school/work?
Haploid: Since I kind of study art it was easy for me to continue at first, especially during my first few semesters. I’m currently entering my junior year as an audio engineering major, so I’ve been able to learn more about the field I want to go into.
I go to a pretty music-oriented school as well, so there are lots of similarly-minded people for me to talk to and collaborate with. I’ve gotten to learn from some incredible teachers and I’ve had some pretty incredible experiences.
I genuinely feel like my experiences in school have helped me grow as a person. I look forward to learning even more in the future.
Q: What is one of your favorite and one least favorite things about your art form?
Haploid: When talking about realism, it’s a lot of work. A painting can take me months to finish depending on what it is. Being an artist basically means I’m self-employed.
That can lead to an amazing amount of freedom and fulfillment, but it can also be a struggle at times. I’m running an entire company with just one person. I’m the artist, the one that makes the music.
That’s how I see myself. But I also have to mix and master my own music, I have to advertise my music and network, I have to brand myself and create album art, and anything else that any other big music label does. And since I’m the boss, I’m the only one who can make sure that everything is getting done properly. When you look at all the jobs that need to be done besides music, it can be intimidating. With all the things I need to do, how will I fit in time to create more music? On top of that is school, and that’s just as difficult to manage if not more. That’s honestly my least favorite part. The artist in me just wants to make music and nothing else, but if I really want to make this my job, I have to treat it like one from the start.
On the other side of things, being able to do those things is really freeing. Being able to pursue this as a career at all makes everything feel worth it. I love being able to make the music I love and share it with the world as freely as I am able to.
Q: Do you have a story you want to share about your experiences in this field?
Haploid: I wouldn’t really call it a story, but yeah. Something I’ve always struggled with is being afraid of sharing myself or talking about the things I liked, especially K-Pop. In high school, I was always made fun of for it so I really just kept it to myself. During my very first year at college, I was still kind of afraid to mention that I liked K-Pop to anyone. However, I told one of my teachers about it and he told me that one of his former students had become a very successful K-Pop songwriter, and he would be happy to introduce me to him.
To me it’s just an example of how important it is to put yourself out there and let people know what you’re about. Sure it can be inappropriate at certain times, but don’t let the fear of people’s opinions discourage you from being yourself.
Some of the most important decisions I’ve ever made in my life so far have been deciding to take that chance and let myself be seen.
Q: What was a major setback in your artistic career and what did you learn from it?
Haploid: Perfectionism is my greatest enemy for sure. I want everything to be exactly right, I want my songs to be as perfect as they could possibly be. I let criticism really get to me sometimes, and I can spend hours trying to fix something that really doesn’t need it.
I’ve had to realize that perfection, especially in music, doesn’t exist. There are no perfect songs, but not because songs have “mistakes.” perfection just can’t be quantified in the realm of art.
Q: What advice would you give to young people pursuing art as a passion or career?
Xie: Creativity is not something that’s just given to you. You are not a creative person in that sense. That isn’t how being creative works.
Creativity is a constant cycle of input and output. The input is called inspiration. Then there’s the output, the things you create from your inspiration. The goal as a creative person is to have a healthy creative cycle.
Sometimes we struggle with getting a healthy amount of input regularly. We’re just creating so much so often that we just exhaust all our inspiration and burn out. Other times we have more inspiration than we know what to do with. We just let it sit there and overflow our brains, until we burst and burn out that way. If you feel creatively burnt out, I would suggest thinking about how you can achieve a more balanced creative cycle. It’s just as difficult as developing any other healthy habit, but it’s just as important in my opinion.
Q: What was your goal as a teenager and have you achieved that, or how does that goal look like now?
Haploid: My goal as a teenager was to be in a cool band, being successful early on and getting a record deal or something like that. None of those things have happened.
But really, I think my goals have changed so much that I’m not really disappointed about it. My current goal is to make music my job.
I haven’t done that yet either. But when I look at things in an even broader sense, I really just want to keep doing what I love. Whether or not it’s my career, I want to keep making music. That’s the goal I’ve had from the very beginning, and I can say with all certainty that I’m accomplishing that right now.
Q: Is there anyone or anything that inspires you?
Haploid: Well, something that really inspires me is just how much K-Pop has grown in the last few years. It’s so much easier to talk about and share with people now than it ever was. It gives me a lot of hope for my future and the direction I’m headed. The people that inspire me the most are my family and friends, who not only love me unconditionally but they also believe in me unconditionally. It’s such an encouragement to have people who can cheer you on the entire way, and it’s such a huge blessing that I’m forever grateful for.
A big thank you to Benny Haploid getting interviewed for our Professional Artists Corner. Check out his work below!
Benny’s work:
https://soundcloud.com/bennyhaploid
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4PDiOMYdbnt50MAiScUexS?si=mAZu_GpVSH-lPXOhzAmjTQ
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/benny-haploid/1521792368
Benny’s Socials:
Our Socials