We were lucky to catch up with Samuel Armando Gunawan recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Samuel Armando thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?

So, back when I was a teenager, I was blessed enough to have a really wonderful teacher, which often asked me for help to do some work like creating musical arrangement and performing. That’s how I basically started being able to “earn” as a musician. But for a more professional level, one of my song was licensed by a pretty reputable game company, PeroPero for their rhythm game. I got the chance since I joined their competition where they are looking for composers and producers who are trying to get into the rhythm game sphere. This opportunity basically gave me a pretty good boost on my presence as music producer, which helped to gain some reputation for upcoming gigs.

Samuel Armando, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hello, my name is Samuel and I also go by Ryuzen as my artist name. As a music artist, I mainly work with Japanese & Indonesian influenced genre, which brings the cuteness of Japanese culture and the traditional sounds of Indonesia. For my hired work as producer/composer, I mainly focus on rhythm game music, idols, and VTuber stuff which is pretty much within the electronic & Japanese influenced genre. On the side I also do gigs as performing keyboardist, arranger, audio mixer and recording engineer. Basically I try to cover as many things as I can related to audio and music.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Honestly for me, a simple positive message of appreciation really goes a long way. As someone who is basically still starting out and trying to navigate around the industry, hearing that someone actually likes what I create really help me grow my self-esteem, especially knowing that what I typically make is not something that is popular among the norm. So yeah, whenever someone shoot me a message saying that they like my stuff especially my personal artist project, it really gives me the drive to do more.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

For me, its as simple as being able to live comfortably with the art that I make, whether its through commission work or from my personal project. As of now, of course the main way for me to make a living is through accepting commissions, which is still a fun thing to do, but I hope that in the future my personal artist project under the name “Ryuzen” can actually start to work and slowly gaining some traction. I am also currently trying to push myself to at least release a new track every month in the hopes that my stuff can reach into a wider audience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ryuzenmusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryuzenmusic/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryuzenmusic/
• Twitter: https://x.com/RyuzenMusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RyuzenMusic
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/ryuzenmusic