Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mar Gimenez. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Mar, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I left my home in Spain to chase a dream. Music has been my guide and the driving force behind my struggle ever since. In 2020, I received the incredible news that I had been awarded a full scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music, one of the world’s premier music institutions. The disbelief actually helped me not to overthink things, so I packed up and, with barely any English, moved to Boston, USA. Now, as I’m on the verge of completing a double major in Music Production and Sound Engineering with a focus on Arranging, I’m tying up the final loose ends before making another radical turn in my life. I plan to move to Los Angeles, California, to carve out a name for myself in a music industry predominantly dominated by men. I’ve always been someone to just dive in – I believe it’s the only way to truly live life to the fullest.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I began composing songs at a very young age. Since then, this has been my way of making sense of the world and connecting with music. My desire to improve my songs has led me to develop other skills like playing the piano and producing music. The vast possibilities that the digital world offers today for creating music are incredibly promising. Turning on my computer and opening one of the DAWs I use (mainly Ableton and Pro Tools) makes me feel like my work is a video game. It’s strange, but for me, the different areas in which I work (as a composer, producer, and sound engineer) are just different sides of the same coin. Everything is intrinsically connected, all stemming from my ability to write songs. In this year, 2024, I’m launching a new project as an artist, composer, and producer under the name Virola, and I’m very excited about it. This project is particularly thrilling because I believe it will provide me with a showcase to display all the facets that form me as a musician at once.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One piece of advice I’ve often received throughout my musical career is to specialize in something. ‘If you’re the best at […], you’ll have guaranteed work.’ This hasn’t been true for me. I believe that the world, especially the creative industry, has changed a lot in recent years. Now, versatile profiles are needed, those who can fulfill various functions and have an ease for learning new things. This could have been frustrating for me since I’ve invested a lot of time in studying piano, for example, but it has turned out to be quite the opposite. Learning different things satisfies my curiosity, my constant thirst to discover and grow both personally and professionally. Also, we live in the best era for learning, as we have access to tools like artificial intelligence which, when used well, can become our best ally in enriching our knowledge.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

A funny little story is that before coming to the United States, I was studying Philosophy in Spain. Reading has always been an indispensable tool for me, as I feel it protects my creativity and gives me new words with which to perceive the world. My favorite recreational writer is Borges, as I feel I could never anticipate what kind of literary pirouette he is going to come up with. I also enjoy reading Ernst Jünger (On the Marble Cliffs) for the same reasons. I feel I use a lot of their writing when I am in the process of writing a song; I find them very inspiring. Reading essays helps me to strengthen my mind, and I feel that Spinoza’s Ethics has particularly radically changed the way I perceive the divine within the world. Another thing that I have been exploring more recently is audiobooks, and I use them for personal growth or to learn new skills. For example, learning sales strategies with books like “Never Split the Difference” or “Pitch Anything” is helping me to figure out how to make a business of what I do after I graduate from college.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conmdemar/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/margimenezmusica
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@conemedemar

Image Credits
Quini Palacios