Musical mixes have been allowing us to hear our favorite artists in one track for years, although such a collaboration would never officially happen. The best example are, for example, drill songs that combine extreme rappers with pop music artists. Sarnula told me about being a music producer, a sports hobby or just about mixing tracks. I invite you to read.
Turns out we have some connections. Less than a year ago, I interviewed Koro, with whom you worked quite a lot at the time.
Yes, Kornel and I did some music together. I practically did an entire EP with him as a music producer, but also an executive producer of the entire project. More and more often I happen to pilot such processes. I compose and record music, perform vocals, and supervise their production and premix. In Poland, I also have the impression that the concepts of a beatmaker are confused with a music producer. I have an influence on the issue from the beginning to the end in terms of art, but also in terms of design and deadline.
And it was similar with the Gonzo project?
Maybe a bit like that, because in this joint project with Dawid Borysiewicz we really manage everything ourselves. I think it’s one of the best projects I’ve done in my life. (laughs) The idea for it was born when we both lived in Krakow. There we also made the whole music and toplines for the song “What is techno for you”, then this material lay in a drawer for 2 years, until finally last year we managed to finish it. Gonzo is great, because on the one hand it is the absolute opposite to what Dawid does – this muse in its form and lyrics has a lot of satirical-beak elements, and on the other hand it is really qualitative in every respect. We are not ashamed of it, or we want to act in secret, but it was definitely planned to be a project that would fully defend itself with its music. So we adopted a tactic that was once used by, for example, the PRO8L3M, i.e. few faces and many secrets. We also have the second number ready, which is an even bigger firecracker. I’m sure there will be more, but we both have very little time right now to see to it. Everything here with Dawid and I do together, so we need a little more time for it. However, I would like this number to come out before the holidays. It seems quite real, because all we have to do is tighten the clip.
If it was to be such a good song as “What is techno for you”, then there is something to wait for. However, the big hits for me are also those mashups you put on your TikTok. How did it start?
I started making blends sometime in October of that year. At first, it didn’t go very well and I couldn’t break the barrier of a few thousand views that everyone starting some content on TikTok has. The fun began when my friend and I managed to figure out how to serve these TikToks to people. Now every time I raise one finger up, I have a grave face and I keep staring at the camera. This started to work in a couple of videos, and it worked best when I blended White Widow with the song “Black And Yellow” by Wiz Khalifa. A breakthrough moment was also the combination of Playboi Carti and Sandra S. Someone suggested this blend to me in the comment, and I immediately knew that it had potential, because it is such artists that resonate the most on TikTok. However, by doing these videos a bit, I have access to various statistics. However, there is no rule here whether something clicks or not. TikTok with Sandra S already has over 500,000 views, but I also managed to make a couple of 100-200,000 views. Another such important moment for my account was creating a blend using Fagata’s song. There were no mega-big views with it, but I remember that people started recording trends for it and there were almost 10,000 of them in the end. Even celebrities like Jessica Mercedes or even Fagata herself recorded them. This motivated me to upload the full version on YouTube, which now has over 350,000 views. It’s quite funny, because he’s been involved in music professionally for almost 10 years, of which 6 years produce numbers. However, if you asked a random person in Poland if they knew me, then if someone found one, they would almost 100% say that it was from TikTok. I’m doing my content fully consciously, but I think most of my audience doesn’t even know that I’m a music producer, who I worked with and what things I did. People also don’t know that I play a lot of parties as a DJ and I’m a guitarist, you can say “by profession” and I play a lot of concerts. All in all, with this content, it’s understandable. However, it doesn’t change the fact that it definitely helps to create content consciously, because you can do some stupid things and delete huge views, but then there is practically no conversion for anything. In my case, this applies to, for example, my YouTube channel, the number of parties I play as a DJ and the artists I collaborate with. That’s exactly what I’m aiming for, so it’s a perfect synergy.
Do you play blends from TikTok on these DJ sets?
Yes, and sometimes I’m even invited strictly to play my most popular blends there. I already have some full versions on YouTube, and I’m sure there will be more.
Has anyone recognized you by your TikToks?
It happened a couple of times. Recently, even when I played a concert as a guitarist, we only met the singer for the first time, and she told me that she associated me with TikTok. When we played with Mil in RapNews, the two boys who were there recognized me by the blends. It resonates somewhere on a micro scale, because it’s not like people, for example, recognize me on the street.
Do you play a lot of gigs like this as a guitarist?
Yes, I play a lot of them for sure in Warsaw and all over Poland. This is one of my livelihoods. I play events, company parties or acoustic duets. This is no reason for me to be ashamed, because for many years I have been earning and making a living from my passion. I use a looper live, doing pretty much the whole backing track myself live. This is exactly the same looping system that Ed Sheeran does at his concerts. great fun. I really recommend.
In a profession like yours, I think it’s common for people to do other things as well, which are an additional form of income for them. Many producers, for example, make music for commercials.
Yes, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s still a form of income and I’ve also done music for a commercial. It was specifically for the Kaufland chain of stores and can be found on YouTube. Making music for commercials is always cool, because the rates in this industry are really high and you can earn a lot of money. Of course, it also depends on the offer and your position, but in general it is quite a profitable thing. However, I also think that it is a very developing field and I would not consider it as the worst. If I ever have time in my life, which is probably never, I’ve always wanted to play with cutting music from commercials and making my own music for them. Knowing what advertising briefs look like, it would be a very practical learning and an interesting experience. Anyway, I often have a light with a producer alert on when I see some music content on the Internet. I imagine that I would do some things differently and then I take, for example, that given tiktok in which someone is singing and I make my own music for it, or I find mines of samples that I later use in my productions. I have a lot of such things on my disc and in the future I would like to publish them as my own – as Sarnula.
I also really like all these descriptions created by marketing people. There is always a lot of content that can be visualized.
This way of describing the numbers suits me to Adi Nowak. I really like working with him in this respect, because these briefs are always very original. It’s something like, “Imagine you’re sitting on a bench at 12:00 in New York, a black swallow flies by and 5 people pass by, each with a different job, make a trap.” There is a lot of abstraction in it, but in the end you have to imagine it and give it a musical answer
How did you and Adi meet anyway? You did a lot of numbers together.
We have done a lot, but we will probably still do a lot, because we already have a lot of cool things in progress. I met Adi when I wasn’t producing music. At that time, I was a guitarist at Te-Tris and we were playing a charity concert in Trzcianka near Poznań. It was a big event, because apart from us, Quebo and Adi Nowak played. The guys forgot to take their guitar stand from the stage, and since we played right after them, I just took it to their dressing room. The guys thanked me, and later we met at the club on a cigarette. The next day I played with Bonson in Poznań, and I only had the opportunity to get there with many transfers. The guys offered me a ride, because Adrian lived in Poznań at the time. That’s how I met Adi, and after a year we made a number together. Funnily enough, my first official production to go on streaming etc. was Adi’s Smoke Jar.
You started with a high C.
Well, actually yes, and I remember that when I started producing and sent my stuff to Te-Tris and Okson, the opinions were not very favorable. Both are very demanding in terms of foundations, so I had such a nice, though quite hard, beginning.
Were you nervous when your first official issue was about to come out?
I don’t think so. Now, of course, I am confident in my things, because I am also aware of my skills and possibilities. Previously, I didn’t know if someone would pick on me, etc. because when you start your career in this industry, you’re not used to online hate. I was more thinking the other way, that I thought it would be nice if this number made a few million. With subsequent productions, I have already cured myself of this and I no longer look at songs in this respect. It taught me humility, but you can’t be disappointed if you didn’t set yourself up for success. And let’s be honest, it just doesn’t happen much more often. I’ve also learned that my role as a music producer ends when I close the track. I have no influence on the promotion or general reception of the piece. I send the number to the mix and I don’t think about what to do to make the number fly more widely. I’m just focused on getting the best song out of the studio and that’s my main job, if not mission.
Do you mix your tracks sometimes?
For the most part, we give them to an external mixer, although I always make my own premix. Milo and I are doing a lot of material right now that we’ll be releasing in the near future. He works with him on the music, production and vocals so the sound we want is fully prepared before mixing. So it’s just a matter of dynamics, equalization, saturation or setting some individual levels. It often happens that the person from the mix already gets the vocals from me with the exact amount of AutoTune, adjusted all the modulation effects, adlibs or recommends the reverb that I use. I don’t leave things like that to the mix person so they don’t have to wonder what I meant. But there are songs that I mixed myself and that’s what happened recently when I had to mix/master a Kobe song. I’m really happy with the end result. At first, we were only supposed to record his vocals, but when it turned out later that the deadline was already approaching, I decided that I could also do the mixing. But I wouldn’t want to go that way, because I much prefer to create music than to play with technical details. Of course, these are very significant details for the whole, but it’s just not my thing. I enjoy coming up with choruses, melodies, leads, etc. more than I do levels in the mix.
So I conclude that you also work with rappers in the studio rather than sending them beats by e-mail?
Yes, I really like working with artists in the studio and I’m not the type who makes a bunch of dozens of beats a month and then sends them to hundreds of rappers in Poland. It naturally establishes a bond with the artists with whom I later work.
However, the method of sending bits is probably a bit faster and more can be done in less time.
Yes and no. The whole album with Mil, which we are working on now, was created strictly in the studio. Even at the beginning of our cooperation, I brought a ready idea for a loop to the studio, but later we gave up on it. We would just meet in the studio, drink coffee and talk for half an hour, and then start making music from scratch. This is how 80% of the stuff on the album was created.
You have a great desire to create all the time. Do you remember the moment when you started such a passion for pouring all these ideas into instruments?
For that matter, it’s just that when I was already a musician, I started having ideas for whole numbers. Even though I was a guitarist, I often had the feeling that I would do some things a little differently. I wanted to control them, so I went into production. I also had a musical background behind me. My guitars landed in numbers such as Bonson “You want to know me”, Solar “Dom”, or Te-Tris “Radyo”. I also played a lot of concerts, because for a few years I was a guitarist in the live band Te-Trisa, I played a tour with Bonson or a few festivals with Adi Nowak.
Were you familiar with any DAW before?
Just absolutely not. I had a hard time with them in the beginning and it took me quite a long time to dig through it all. Fortunately, I didn’t start producing music in 2004, but much later, so I had a lot of access to knowledge on the internet. I learned practically all technical things and DAW knowledge from the Internet. Of course, I had to click mine, but this process was less complicated anyway. I started with Logic, but after half a year I switched to Ableton, which I use to this day, both when it comes to music production and vocals. In the future, however, I would like to change the DAW in which I would work on vocals, because I think there are a few better ones in this respect. Ableton is great for making music and playing gigs.
As you mentioned earlier, however, the guitar was your first. Where did your passion for this instrument come from?
My story begins even before I started playing the physical guitar. I’ve been a huge fan of Guns N’ Roses since I was a kid, and they were the first rock band I listened to that much. I was most excited about their guitarist Slash, of course. I remember that I took some cardboard boxes from Tesco, and my mother at home helped me cut out the shape of Slash’s guitar – a Gibson Les Paul. Later, I colored it, and my mother helped me attach threads as strings. At that time, the all-time hits list, led by Marek Niedźwiecki, was always on MTV Classic on Fridays. You could hear songs by Queen, Metallica, Nirvana or just Gun N’ Roses. I have this image in my head of jumping in front of a mirror with a paper guitar and pretending to play with a band. In the 4th-5th grade of primary school, I still played a borrowed guitar, but later my parents bought me my first acoustic guitar, and in middle school I got my first electric guitar with an amplifier. Then I managed to form my first band, in which I even sang, but to put it mildly, we were not the best. In high school, however, I started a band with mostly the same friends as before, but then we were already playing repertoire like Korn or Limp Bizkit, because we were into a little bit heavier stuff. It sounded really good and we even managed to play some gigs in the brewery’s den. It was a great way to gain experience. Then, after I finished my studies, I immediately went to the Krakow School of Jazz and Popular Music to learn music theory. I spent 2 years there and really gained a lot from there, because before that I was a typical practitioner. I knew, however, that playing jazz was not my thing, so I left after 2 years. It was also a private school, which, like a music high school, later gives you the opportunity to apply to the academy. In general, I think that a lot of the greatest musicians and singers from our country should follow a similar path. Many of them quickly achieve great success in terms of views on the Internet, but they lack the time to acquire some stage background. I traveled half of Poland, playing from a small bar, where the floor is sticky from the brewery, to huge festival stages. Today, no concert situation is scary or strange for me and this is what many artists lack. Eyes are on you and people expect a certain level right away. All the gaffes people make on stage are just stress, not familiar with the stage, and the fact that you’re inexperienced.
So it’s nice that you have this experience, because thanks to this you can help such a rookie on the stage.
It’s true, and sometimes I even perform in such situations that I suggest the artists with whom I’m playing on stage at the moment, how they can arrange a show or improve certain things. The issue of experience is one thing, but it is also very important to prepare for such concerts. I remember when Te-Tris and I played the Rap Stage Tour in January, and even though Adam has a lot of concert experience, we were already preparing for the tour a month before. Since December, we’ve been meeting regularly for rehearsals and thanks to that we managed to produce the whole concert in terms of preparing it in the DAW. We also figured out cool connections or creative transitions from track to track to make as few artificial breaks as possible. It gave us a lot on tour, because people felt that there are dynamic transitions, numbers are blending and we operate at a high level of interest all the time. I believe that such preparation before concerts gives you a lot of slack later during the performance, because you can enjoy the event and not wonder what to do at the moment. This year we will also play at the Polish Hip Hop Festival in Płock as a Rap Stage Tour, in which I am the DJ of the entire project. I feel very good as a DJ. I mix my music, I make a selection of songs and I choose things that resonate with each other. I find it very easy due to my knowledge of music theory, understanding of harmony and a sense of dynamics. I won’t say, it makes the subject of DJing much easier for me.
Do you find an outlet for music in any other passions?
Yes, because breaks are simply necessary. No matter what you do in life, you can’t be 100% efficient by doing the same thing all the time. When making music, a change of environment certainly helps, because it is created differently in the studio, differently at a friend’s, and still differently at home in the room. It’s worth flipping this convention and changing scenes, because it’s good for creativity. Speaking of non-musical things, I really like playing football and on average once a week I am able to catch a random match on Orlik. In addition, I play in the amateur league of Orlikowe Sixes or ride a bike. In general, I like to do sports, because for me it is a kind of escape from music and doing something completely different.
Well, that’s the final question. What is your biggest dream right now?
I don’t know if the biggest but the most current one is being a very wealthy person. However, I am not talking about buying another car or expensive clothes, but about the lack of life pressure. Having a specific financial cushion provides you with security and peace of mind when planning your next moves. You can then perform your assumptions and goals according to your own rules and without unnecessary haste. Besides, I’ve been dreaming of a gold record since I was a child and I’m slowly laughing at myself that I’m Harry Kane of Polish music, because he’s a really good striker, and he hasn’t won any football trophy. Of course, it’s just statistics and I don’t make music for awards, but it’s such a small thing that would be the icing on the cake of my musical endeavors. Every day I work hard for success and I believe that one day it will come back to me.
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