Featured Artist | Fabien Aubry, Part 2

Written by | Articles, Featured Artist, Interviews

Read Part 1 of the interview here

MR: This is your second year teaching in Berklee Valencia. What do you teach?

FA: Berklee-Valencia is Berklee’s first international campus in Europe. It’s a great opportunity for Berklee-Boston students to come to study and discover Europe, but it offers also four Master programs accessible to other undergraduate musicians. I’ve couple of production classes on the leading DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) of the industry, like Pro Tools, Digital Performer, Logic Pro any many other musical software.

MR:How do you set out your lessons?

FA: We have class settings that allow us to spend time with each student and give them a personalized help on their compositions, technical skills on the sequencer and how to mix and produce professionally music. Students have access to four production suites, fully equipped with the latest software, lots of studio hardware and microphones, etc… But they also can record projects on the scoring stage, and learn from experienced and talented teachers and professional sound engineers. It’s a unique opportunity for them to learn.

For me it’s essential to give personalized teaching method, based on each personality and learning ability, as we are all different being. My job is to help them to discover where are their skills and how to use them, but also to help them to push their production level to a professional level. For me having a good sense of psychology and pedagogy is essential to allow students to develop their potential and to grow up with time. Seeing evolving students in their technical and creative skills is my reward. It’s a job where you receive more that you give.

MR: You were a Berklee student, now you are a teacher. How does it feel?

FA:It feels great to be able to give to others the same chance that I received. As I said, at Berklee I basically discovered myself as a musician and where were talents in music and how to use them. We are responsible to perpetuate and transmit the knowledge of music and all the history of music that happened at Berklee in Boston. So the next generation of musicians will be able to do the same at some point.

MR: You are really active in composing, especially for big band formations. Would be that you main goal, living from writing for big bands?

FA: I love writing for any kind of ensembles or style. Jazz or big band is one of them.

It’s hard to make a living base only on that. You need to divers your interest, skills and market if you want to have a chance to make a decent living only with music, at least at the beginning. Some artist’s path start great since their beginnings as they might have a huge talent or special connection or a “name” already.

For the others, it’s a long process and intense work of getting where you want to be. You need first to know who you are, where is your talent and your niche. Then vision your goal and never loose faith that it will append one day. If it’s not happening, it’s either because you are looking at the wrong direction based on who and what you are, or because you didn’t water the seed long enough to see the flower blossom.

MR:You won the composing competition of L’Hemisfèric in Valencia, and now your music is together with the stars. What does it mean for you that your music is showed in such an important place in the city?

FA: For me is an honor that my music will serve and relax the audience during the Planetarium shows at the Hemispheric. The goal of a composer is to see his music be useful for others, depending where it will be placed. Composing music that no one will hear is kind of sad for a musician.

For this project, my approach was more like a meditation music that helps you to relax and enjoy the trip in the universe. What sound would you hear if you where alone in the space, if you feel to be one with everything that is. For me music has a spiritual aspect that is important. It’s an expression of your higher self, and then emotions translated into sound are just the vehicle for that.

MR: You also have your own musical project and you have recently recorded an album.

FA:Yes, I had the chance to receive the faculty grant to record my jazz-fusion compositions here at the Berklee-Valencia Studio. We recorded 5 of my compositions. My influences in this music style are artist like, Allan Holdsworth, The Yellowjackets, Tribaltech, Wayne Shorter and many more. But I’m also very inspired by metal bands like Meshuggah and their unique approach of poly-rhythmical motifs displacement. I try to combine both non-functional jazz-fusion harmony concepts and those poly-rhythmical composition concepts.

The goal of this project was to be able to have human expressions on my music that can feel very technical in some way. And I had the chance to meet great students in my classes, that participated as performers in this project: Mikael Chauvet Joergensen on drums, Daniel Toledo on bass, Ricardo Curto on keyboard, Alexey Leon on soprano sax, Stephen McHale and Juancristobal Aliaga on guitars. Also I also met a great jazz-fusion guitar player, Alessandro Giglioli that has a unique sound and musical sensibility in this specific music style. He mastered the interpretation of the melodies and did some impressive improvisations on those pieces. I’m very thankful to those players that achieved to interpret this challenging music, with both precision and personal approach.

MR: You have started a new adventure as a producer with Psychosound Productions.

FA: Yes! Psychosound Productions is the independent music production company that I recently started. I write music for media, film, video games, songwriter’s compositions arrangements, hip-hop beats creation and more.

MR: How do you see your future?

FA: With a lot of music.

Read Part 1 of the interview here

Last modified: July 15, 2018