We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brendon Pearson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Brendon, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I learned by doing – I just jumped right in feet-first and followed a few tutorials, made a few terrible demos, then figured out what was wrong with them and tried new ideas that were slightly better. After I had a general idea of the workflow and timeline of creating a song from scratch, I started carefully (and then MUCH less carefully) investing in tools that helped me get closer to the sound I wanted. Right around that time, I started getting more involved with producer communities on Discord, Twitch, Instagram, and so on…that was a huuuuuuuuge step forward in my learning process. Having tons of people to work with, debate, bounce ideas off of…it’s a true game-changer.

If I could go back to 2021 and give myself some advice, it would probably be twofold – first, study music theory sooner rather than later. I have a decent ear for music, but there’s no substitute for learning the actual ins and outs of music theory if you want to up your game in a hurry, not to mention actually be able to describe what you’re doing and why. Secondly, I’d slap myself in the back of the head and force myself to go introduce myself to everyone I could in the scene – making friends in the community and developing creative relationships with tons of people over the past year has been incredibly fun, rewarding, and beneficial to my own growth as a producer.

Essential skills…I’d say learning how to actually mix a track was the biggest thing for me (though some might say I still have a long way to go there). It doesn’t matter how badass your sound selection and sound design abilities might be – if you can’t get everything to play nicely together as a cohesive whole, it’s just a big muddy mess (and that’s coming from someone who LIKES muddy walls of sound).

The biggest obstacles for me are the realities of 30-something life – there already aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything I HAVE to do finished, much less spend hours working in my DAW. Solution: I basically quit sleeping for like 2 years…My insomnia has somehow become a meme in the producer group chats (I’m working on it, peeps, I swear).

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

So I’m Brendon, but I go by Pashang爬上, and I’m a music producer, guitarist, and singer, but mostly a producer these days. I started dabbling with music production in early high school, I think? I bought a copy of Fruity Loops 3 on CD from Guitar Center and, since my family didn’t even own a computer, installed it at a friend’s house and went wild from there. We tried a little bit of everything, but I always came back to hip-hop and EDM as genres I wanted to mess with. I sold some beats here and there, went through phases, learned a few things, forgot them, re-learned them, but it was always just a sort of on-again/off-again thing (mostly off, if I’m honest) until COVID turned us all into introverts.

Like pretty much everyone else around 2021, I was spending a ton of time on YouTube, and I happened upon an album on a post-rock channel that absolutely blew my mind – Volkor X’s ‘This is Our Planet Now.’ It wasn’t post-rock; it wasn’t sci-fi music; it wasn’t EDM…what the hell WAS it?! One rabbit hole later, and I had discovered Synthwave, and a week after that, I re-purchased FL Studio and started learning the ropes, but this time with a determination to actually LEARN music production – no half measures and no laziness. Fast forward to today, and I’m really deep in the scene, still learning as much as I can and continuing to develop my own unique voice (or voices – I genre-hop a lot, honestly).

The main thing I felt really proud of last year was my ‘Summer of Shred’ project. I’m a pretty big metalhead, and I really enjoy darker and heavier music, even though I don’t always lean that way in my own work. I always loved the combination of synthwave-esque electronic vibes and guitar shreds, so in 2023, I got inspired (thanks, Mark!) and started working on an album in that vein, but with each track featuring a different guitarist from a different country. It was an absolute ton of fun, a crazy amount of work, and an incredible learning experience working with all the badass musicians that agreed to feature on the album. I worked with RAN from Chile, Dimi Kaye from Greece, Sub Neon from England, Typherion from Canada, and Russell Nash from Scotland, and the resulting album ‘RESISTANCE’ is definitely my favorite thing I did in 2023.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

For me, music production is three things: therapy, community, and creativity. I can’t overstate the positive impact that creating music and being an active participant in the producer community has had on my mental health. Being able to channel my depression, anxiety, anger – all the darker elements of my psyche, really – into music has been a very literal life-saver over the past few years. Moreso even than that, though, the friends I’ve made in this scene have grounded me in my worst moments, given me healthier perspectives on the things I struggle with daily, and given me a wealth of knowledge that has helped me up my game as a producer more than I thought I could in a relatively short time.

I’m not really in the game to make money or get noticed, chase clout…none of that (and if I was, producing in a fairly niche genre is probably not the way to go about it). I’m here to express myself as clearly as I can through the music I make, and if possible, maybe have that music reach a few ears that needed to hear it.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of producing music, for me, is the incredible, indescribable JOY of having an idea pop up in my mind, humming it in the shower, while I’m walking, getting it stuck in my head, and then, ever so slowly (or sometimes really, really quickly) getting that concept out of my head and into the world as a real, actual SONG. It’s a feeling like no other. Confession: I’m told all the time that listening to your own music once it’s released is lame, but I do it all the time – I genuinely like all the music I make, lame or not. I’m listening to an unreleased EP right now as I type this, in fact!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pashang_audio/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PashangAudio
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrqZonPcjkM4rIOEzq9xBJw
• Other: https://pashang.bandcamp.com/ linktr.ee/pashangaudio