[EDMTunes] [INTERVIEW] Night Breeze Talks Music Origins, Persistence, Career, And More

We sat down with a great musician recently.

The music industry is a very interesting place. You just don’t ever run out of good music, and it can come from virtually anywhere. That’s what happened to us when stumbling upon Night Breeze, a former Rock guitarist from Los Angeles, who’s turned to Dance music with swift success in just a handful of years.

A lover of the Melodic House style, since kicking off his alias in 2023 he’s released on labels such as Where The Heart Is, Krafted, and BeLove, among others. And he’s just released his latest, ‘Wanaka Springs’, which felt like a great time to have a bit of a checkpoint chat with him. Check it out below, as we sat down with Night Breeze for an interview.

Where did you grow up, and how did your environment shape your relationship with music?

I moved a couple times as a kid but mostly grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. My dad didn’t play an instrument, but he always had music playing in the background, be it classic rock, jazz, or Cuban music (the music of his homeland). So music was always part of my environment in that sense. Additionally, my mom forced me to learn piano when I was a kid. There were times when I really enjoyed it, but also times when I resented having to practice every day and just wanted to play video games. When I was 14, though, I convinced my mom to let me switch to guitar instead. This is what turned music from an activity I sometimes enjoyed into an obsession, as I could actually play the songs that I spent most of my free time listening to.

Once that switch was flipped, all I wanted to do was learn and play guitar, and that became the primary way I spent my free time in high school. Since my dad had a huge selection of classic rock CDs, and since classic rock is a natural place to turn when learning electric guitar, I went pretty deep down the classic rock and blues rabbit hole for a few years.

What’s the first memory you have of making music?

I remember writing a few songs on the piano when I was in 2nd grade. In high school I started forming bands with friends and writing a lot more songs. I also started playing around with GarageBand and made and recorded a few dozen songs probably, both solo stuff and songs with bands. (My friend and I did in fact record a few of them in an actual garage).

When I was in college, I formed a more serious band with a friend, and we played a lot of gigs around campus and town. We kind of straddled the line between classic, alternative, and indie rock. There was a recording studio on campus that was free to use and equipped with Pro Tools, so right before summer break one year we recorded a handful of songs. We attempted to hire someone to mix these recordings, but that person had no idea what they were doing, so my dad instead got me a cracked version of Pro Tools from a sketchy site on the internet so I could finish the songs myself. We moved the band to Orlando that summer and spent the summer jamming, playing around town, writing, and recording songs. I became the person in charge of recording, producing, and mixing the band, and that’s when my production journey really got going.

When you think back to your earliest projects, what’s something you would do differently now?

I should have used sample packs and preset packs more. I used to feel like I needed to create everything from scratch to be unique, and while it’s certainly valuable to learn sound design so you can edit sounds to your liking, I think I could have progressed faster by starting with better tools and simply focusing on finishing as many songs as possible. Related to that, my productivity increased dramatically when I dedicated a chunk of time to cultivating my sound palette and building out a template with a selection of favorite sounds ready to go. Aimlessly surfing presets is the fastest way for me to smother any creative spark I’ve got going.

Why do you think persistence is such an important part of making it in the music industry?

Well, for one, persistence is the only way to get better. Producing, much like playing an instrument, takes a long time to get good at – you can certainly practice ‘smarter’, but there’s still no substitute for simply putting in the time and effort over an extended period of time. Part of that is because producing requires you to learn and master so many different skills, from music theory to arrangement to drum programming to mixing to sound design. Not to mention that learning to use DAWs and plugins well also takes time and effort. It takes a long time before you can start to make music that actually sounds the way you envision it. I think that’s a point that ends up discouraging a lot of people – if you get into music production, that probably means you love and listen to a lot of music, so you’re probably painfully aware of how much your early tracks don’t quite stand up to the quality of your favorite artists. That’s completely normal, though, and ultimately, you just need to fall in love with the process of creating and not be too tied to the outcome. Related to persistence, I also think an essential skill in the music production journey is developing thick skin, as you’ll frequently deal with rejection and negative feedback along the way. But if you want to improve and get better, it’s essential to try and get honest feedback as much as possible, so you have to be open to receiving difficult feedback at times. And even after you start getting releases and building relationships with labels, they won’t necessarily want to sign every track you send them. And potential collab partners may not like every idea you send them. And released tracks may not resonate with listeners as much as you’d hoped. So there is going to be some amount of rejection every step of the way, so it helps to learn how to take that gracefully and not let it get you down. We naturally get very attached to the art we make, but music is a very personal, subjective thing, and how one reacts to it might be different from day to day or even morning to night, so you have to learn not to take anything too personally.

What’s the most unexpected lesson you’ve learned throughout your career?

It’s very hard to predict what people are going to like. Sometimes you make something that you’re certain is going to be a banger and no one really vibes with it. Yet other times, people latch onto what you thought was a throwaway track. At the end of the day, all we can do is keep creating and not get too attached to any one idea.

What’s a key piece of advice you would give to your younger self at the start of your journey?

Try to collaborate / make music with more people and try to find mentors. Music production can be such a solitary activity that you can easily get lost in your own little world for long stretches of time, but bringing other people into your world helps give you perspective and can keep things moving. You can also learn and grow from anyone – even if they’re theoretically earlier on their journey, we all have different methods and ways of working, and you can pick up little ideas, techniques, and inspiration from anywhere.

Final Words

Thank you so much to Justin for this one. You can listen to his brand-new ‘Wanaka Springs’, by hitting the ‘Play‘ button on the Spotify player below. Also, be sure to follow our page to stay up to date on the latest news and views regarding our beloved Dance music industry.

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