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

Hi gen.wav, 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.

As an Artist,Producer and Software Engineer I learned all my skills throughout my life in different ways. I went to University for 5 years for Computer Science to learn Software Engineering but I still did a lot of self learning during and after my studies. As for music, I’m a life long musician, having gone to Magnet Schools throughout Grade School and then continuing my own studies in Music Production, learning new instruments, and continuing to develop my voice. YouTube University, as they say or just online resources have been instrumental in my learning process, in both music and tech. To be honest, looking back I might not have gone to school even for Computer Science as I’ve met many successful self taught developers and I don’t want to stick to the traditional route of working for someone else. The skills that are most essential in my ongoing learning process are patience, consistency, and keeping an open mind, always remember that you don’t know it all, and you never will. Obstacles that stood in the way of learning more were honestly always personal doubts, fears, or letting other things interfere because of those said doubts. If you prioritize what you want, you will never let anything else get in the way.

gen.wav, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m gen.wav, an Artist, Producer, Audio Engineer, and Software Engineer. I’m a lifelong musician, and early on, around middle school I started realizing I wanted to produce music and started doing so along with creating videos and studying photography. I’ve been making original music and working with other artists recording, producing, and mixing for over 10 years. All the tech involved in making music also steered me towards tech and I ended up studying Computer Science, and I have 4 years of professional experience. I am now building websites for artists and studios as well as offering all of my music production services, along with visual services like graphic design, photography, and videography. As an artist myself I have learned the craft and perfected my system for creating, distributing, and promoting music and offer the same to others. With my Software Engineering background we offer it all under my agency Enigma Labs.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think its an overall attitude, if more of our family and friends supported us you would see more artists breaking out organically. It seems like theres always some push or when an artist does blow up, everyone knows theres a reason for it. It’s like people really have the flock mentality sometimes when they only listen to huge artists, and I get it not everyone has time to go search for new music or to show up to every underground show. But going back to my original statement, we can do this for our close friends and family. Most of the time all artists do is work on their art, so showing up in any small way means a lot to us.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I built my audience by trying different things throughout the years and never stopping. I’ve been posting to YouTube since I was 14, covers, contests, originals, vlogs, anything I can think of. I started off with a cheap camera, and have upgraded a couple times, when possible. My advice is to try, look at what other people are posting, and create your own formula. I know it’s been said a million times, but there’s literally nothing else to it.. You can stay in your head about it and never do anything, or just try, and your work will speak for itself.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://genwav.xyz/OS
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/gen.wav
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/genesis-barrios
• Youtube: https://Youtube.com/@genwav
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/genwav

Image Credits

KHR!S João