Today we’d like to introduce you to Diego Hinojosa

Hi Diego, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?

I first fell in love with music by accident. I had just moved to a new city and to make friends I volunteered to be the bass player in a rock band, even though I had never played bass in my life. In fact, it was all very new to me because during my childhood I used to listen to what my parents loved. My dad is a melomaniac and his favourite thing in life is classical music, and my mom used to listen to her favourite latin pop albums, or local radio stations while we were in the car; so I had never really listened to rock music. I remember feeling very curious and excited about exploring these new sounds that arrived to my life. I have a very obsessive personality in general, so I just dove deep into the music of a few rock bands, and the rest is history as they say. I just kept stumbling upon new sounds that interested me: I found prog rock and metal, so I formed a metal band with friends; and then I found jazz, so I decided and had the huge privilege to study jazz abroad in university; and then I found latin american folk and classical music, so I decided to move to Mexico City and write and produce latin american pop, and so on. It has been a constant exploration of different sounds and in the end, whether I want it or not, they all get synthesized in my mind and they come out in how I play the guitar, how I write and produce music, and even in how I teach music. I think it will continue to be like that throughout my life, I don’t really have a plan in terms of how I want my creative output to be like, I just want to follow what interests me and have it run its natural course. I think that keeps me engaged, which is of utmost importance for me to keep doing what I love and keep constantly falling in love with music.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

To be honest I think it has been a pretty smooth road broadly speaking thankfully. I have had the privilege of always having the support of my family to study music with amazing teachers and to even go to university to further my studies, which I will always be very grateful for.
Having said that, I have had my struggles to be able to dedicate my life to music. In a few words, my struggle has always been one of loneliness in one way or another. My personality, combined with the path that I took in order to be a professional musician often resulted in spending long periods of time on my own, even when music is, or should be in my opinion, full of social interactions at it’s core. An example of this is how I decided to dedicate all of my free time in high school to practicing guitar. I’m aware this is a first world problem haha, but I was fixated in being accepted and getting a scholarship to study music at a great jazz program in the USA or Canada. So I had to maintain certain grades at school in high level classes, and I had to practice as much guitar as I could so that I could have the skill necessary to stand out amongst all the other applicants. This resulted in me not going to friend’s gatherings, parties, or pretty much any social event. And once studying at university it was a similar story. The music world can get very competitive if you let it, and I certainly did. The skill level of my class at university was extraordinary, so during those 4 years I was constantly pushing myself to keep up with my classmates. All I did was practice guitar and go to class, again having to maintain good grades to keep my scholarship. So there was no time for social events either.
I struggled with loneliness up until the pandemic came and I decided to re-evaluate some core-beliefs and priorities. Since then I have been prioritizing finding a balance in my life so that I can still be proud and happy with my music, and most importantly, enjoying my life as a whole with music being a big part of it, but not everything.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

I do multiple things inside the music industry. I am very involved in the independent music scene in Mexico City as a composer, producer, arranger, and session musician, and I love it. It is a vibrant scene full of people from all over the world, so there is a lot of talent, and very honest and interesting music is being created constantly. I have also found all of my close friends in the process and I collaborate with them, so it has been a special experience.

I also have an indie pop project with my brother called “Por Lo Menos Dos”, which has been one of my favourite things in life, and it is what I am most proud of. We are both extremely curious musicians so we enjoy tremendously learning new genres of music and incorporating elements we love about them in the music that we write. It has also brought me and my brother closer together. We write, produce, and manage the project while living in different continents. Don’t get me wrong, it is very hard, but we talk to each other constantly and share experiences and quality time while we do music, so it has been a true blessing.
I am also a music copist and transcriber, and I give music lessons about a range of subjects like guitar, theory, harmony, arranging, composing, producing, and recording.

Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?

To be honest nothing really comes to mind. I don’t hear too many podcasts or read blogs, but what I could say is that I love consuming art in all its forms and I think that has helped me a lot in creating that first “spark” of creativity. I love reading fiction novels and going to museums to look at art, and I am also very passionate about cinema. I couldn’t really say that I analyze much of the art that I consume, I just enjoy the experience of consuming it, both by myself and as a social activity. It might be that consuming art in this way results in my creative process being the “glue” that brings all of the art that I consume together in an almost unconscious way. I very rarely have a plan on how I want a certain idea to evolve as a whole, I work by just having multiple ideas all the time and little by little piecing them together until they quite mystically make sense as a whole. I have always loved this because it keeps my creative process feeling very spontaneous and exciting.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diegohjsa/
• Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/porlomenosdos/
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1UH44bhUyWMv5RIggLPJrf?si=q0GzOFiHQnS0HYyTiLIO1A

Image Credits

Feli Gutiérrez, NITI2 Casa Productora