Whoisazar creates music that makes you Feel Like the main Character
Azar (whoisazar!) is a producer/musician/artist ,based out of the suburbs of New Jersey. He is a versatile beat maker, who’s made his way into the industry producing for a number of artists and rappers.
Azar has since began his journey creating his own music as an artist, combining his love for jazz/soul music and classic lofi beats. An avid instrumentalist, he began playing drums in middle school, and has taught himself the guitar as well as bass and keys. Taking inspiration from artists and beat makers like J Dilla, Azar’s sound fuses hip-hop drum grooves, with smooth and catchy melodies on top.
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I want people to see me as a regular human being
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I've kind of always wanted to do music. I've always enjoyed watching live performers play.
I always used to love watching people play the drums, maybe I'd say the first time was the Tarzan DVD when I was a kid. There were extras, like DVDs used to come with behind the scenes stuff. They showed Phil Collins producing and playing the drums for that soundtrack because I'm pretty sure he did the whole soundtrack for that movie. So maybe that was the first time I realized I wanted to do something like that because I saw him playing the drums and stuff, and I thought it was cool. But I got a jump at a really early age. So I think it was just kind of put in front of me.
When I first started I'd never really taken anything very seriously and I was mostly making my own stuff. I was just playing covers and I just have a really wide taste in music. I make a lot of different music and I like to listen to every single genre.
It's really what inspires my sound and what led to my sound is today. It would be just a mix of literally every genre and every band that I listened to all mixed into one sound, like all my favorite parts of emo music, but I might not like the lyrics that they use or I might not like the style of mixing or something like that. I'll take an element of that and then I mix it, so it's really just a big combination of everything that I listen to all the time. It's like, make what I would want the ideal like my favorite band to sound like.
My music inspiration the first one and like still one of my biggest would be J Dilla. He was like one of the first instrumental artists that I heard that people were worshiping and idolizing, just as a beat maker and just as an instrumental artist. So seeing people listen to just his beats and just his instrumentals without any vocals on it, and really like it, it did something to me. So I think he's just one of my biggest inspirations just because he made me realize that I can do something like that myself.
So my creative process is…it's either the way it usually goes or it's either I have a single idea, right? And I start to build up from it that way. Or my brother has a single idea that usually starts with just a small melody, or a chord progression or something like that. And then it evolves. As soon as we come up with that idea, we sit down. I have my drum set right here. He has his guitars. We just sit down and we just start playing and figuring it out. We don't really write anything down or anything like that. We kind of just memorize it, but me having a second person to help me do that is really helpful. Like my brother. He helps with basically everything these days
I think this just comes from. My hip hop background and producing for artists and seeing how singers and songwriters arrange their songs, helped me to be able to do it for myself. We're just kind of having fun playing around until it turns into one big thing.
My process of writing music used to be, like, making hip hop and rap and more poppy stuff. I was following a formula. I would grab a loop or like a sample from another producer friend. I would just grab a loop kind of loaded in and then I would add drums that would work for it or the bass, whatever. And then I would structure it basically the same every single time because, for that genre that's just kind of how it went. So I would just do an intro, a hook, a verse, or various substructures. Every beat the same and then just, call it that.
But now it's a bit different because I just have more freedom with this style of music, especially because it's instrumental. We kind of just do kind of whatever we're feeling at this point.
I think just with experience and with letting go of insecurities of wanting to fit in a box, I kind of just would do whatever I’m feeling now. So, our process is much, much different now. We'll come up with just one random idea and build off of that and it just feels more genuine. It feels like it's just more honest.
Now it's just a lot more free and just a lot more improvisational.
When I first started, it was a lot of trying to work with the artists that are bigger than me and trying to feed off of other people's successes. So I would say do your own thing. It sounds cliche, but everything started working for me, once we dropped everything and just literally started doing exactly what we wanted, and what was most honest to us. It's just really important to stay as genuine as you can to your art because people can tell right away if you're putting on a front. So literally make exactly what you know what, what's in your heart.
“The best piece of advice that I can give is to just make honest, genuine music and promote it like it’s literally your nine to five job. Promote it every single day. ”
I want people to see me as a regular human being.The same exact thing is that you know, the kids that might not have the most friends in high school, or they might not be the coolest or the most athletic or have the coolest clothes, or you know, stuff like that. I want them to realize I'm just like them. Like people thought I was weird.
I want people to see me as one of their friends. You know, like I don't want to be on a pedestal or the greatest artist ever or something like that. I just want people to see me as a good dude. Life is so short and we're here and then we're gone, and pretending to be higher up than somebody else, it's just so silly to me. Just want to be known as a guy who makes music and loves his fans.
We shot a music video for the “intro to a movie about a loser”. So that should be coming early 2023 also. We're going to have an album for sure. And we're going to do CDs for that. So that'll be cool. Like we'll have physical copies that people will be able to get. And we'll have singles monthly coming out.
