How does porter robinson make his music

Writing on a piano, he composed, recorded and sang every song himself, pitching up his vocals to often sound childlike and feminine — an effect he was relieved to find out can be recreated in real time when he sings during future live performances. I made everything into a more fun version of itself. I just felt pure unbridled joy and excitement. That was the goal: I was trying to get to this place where I could write music in a way where I could be vulnerable and just do this thing I love with the confidence I used to have.

That song is that materialized for me. A version of this story originally appeared in the April 24, issue of Billboard. Search term. Billboard Pro Subscribe Sign In. Top Artists. Top Charts. Facebook: facebook. Porter Robinson gave an interview on Virtual Self at the Grammy's red carpet event. Music Releases. Home NEWS. Recommended Articles. By EDM. So I increased my hours working and cut out all of the stuff that ultimately becomes fertilizer for creativity, like going out and falling in love, and watching new movies, and exploring, and trying an instrument that you haven't played before or trying a new technique.

It was like I was too scared, and I had this white knuckle grip on my own sense of myself that I couldn't try messing around with a musical idea that didn't seem like it would work, something truly creative and exploratory, because I needed results now. That was the biggest mistake. And it's certainly, I'm sure I'll learn new lessons in the future, but I feel like now that I'm looking towards the future of my music, my first thought is I need to go have some new experiences and have new things to write about and try things I've never tried before because otherwise I'm going to fall into the same patterns.

Do you have a list of those things? I definitely want to learn to dance, that's something that feels like it's on my list.

It's a new perspective on music and rhythm. I got my first little taste of what dance might feel like working with a choreographer a few weeks ago, trying to figure out a stage presence for the live version of this album.

And it's all really simple. And if you watch what I do, it literally just looks like I'm walking around the stage and stuff like that.

A lot of choreography is like, "Just make sure you have a microphone at this station when you get over here. But once I started tapping into the idea of choreography and movement, it became so clear to me that it's like you're on an airplane and all the windows are closed and everyone's sleeping.

But the airplane is actually above the clouds and it's daytime because you're changing time zones, and you open the airplane window just slightly and it blinds everybody. That's how big the world of movement feels to me right now where I'm like, "I feel like I just barely looked through the tiniest crack in the window and realized how expansive it is and how much growth is possible in that department.

So I'm just excited to find another thing to improve that and find another form of self-expression. Whereas I think a few years ago it would have been like, "Dude, dance? What the fuck you talking about? You have to make music. It's funny that you're saying that it's a relatively new revelation for you because these are the sorts of things that I gathered from Nurture , especially the song "Musician.

That is exactly it. That's how I've always felt. I've always been trying to be understood. I've always been trying to make people feel the same thing that I'm feeling. When I'm in awe of my favorite music or even when I'm in awe of those rare moments where I've made something that moves me, which is not that often surprisingly, I'm just like, "God, I have to share this with somebody.

It's like I need someone to understand what's going on in my head right now, because this is incredible. And I feel like everything I've ever done in music has basically been a love letter and a way of me trying to take some little thing that I've gotten obsessed with — whether it was electro house back in or J-pop and ambient music in the case of Nurture , those were some of the big driving inspirations also.

When I hear something and I just love it, I feel like I have to get closer to it. And the way for me to get closer to something I love is to try and embody it and live it for a fleeting second. And it's like, that's what takes me from place to place, I think, with creativity is just loving things so much and wanting to drink from the fountain of whatever that person who made it felt. And then I'm just imploring people: Don't you want part of this as well?

To me "Musician," it's funny. In one sense kind of falls outside of the record because the palette and the ethos feel very, very different, but then the lyrics are still so much about making music and about creativity and about passion. It's just the other side of all this angst that I think Nurture sets up, where Nurture has so many questions on its mind. There's almost no questions in the mind of a song like Musician. It's just pure blissing out. And then there's that little touch of self-awareness in the chorus where it's like, "Oh, whoa, slow down buddy.

So you definitely earn points by me by mentioning "Musician. I wanted to talk a little bit about how the pandemic influenced the album as well. The project was announced, I believe, in early It wasn't a definitive release date attached to it, but I think people assumed it was coming that year. Now, of course it's coming in April Did it change at all over the course of the pandemic or was it pretty much set in stone?

Nurture changed so much throughout , and strictly for the better. I added three extra songs and I got rid of some songs that I felt like weren't all the way there for me or stuff I had settled on. It was really hard though, because I think it was a Wednesday, the day that everyone realized that this was really serious. I think I had maybe only put it together the Monday before that like, "Oh, things are really going to change.

This was like two days, I think, after the second single "Something Comforting" had come out, and the six months leading up to that, I was living in this world of filming music videos and gearing up and working on the art direction together with SBJ [Samuel Burgess-Johnson] every day.

It was a fun, fun time. And then all of a sudden, I released the song and it's like the next week I'm getting these calls from my manager being like, "Streaming, not just your music, all music streaming has tanked.

People aren't I think it's because people aren't driving or people are just too anxious. Now is the worst possible time to be releasing music. And so there wasn't that much certainty about how this was all going to change. I probably would've shit myself if I knew that the album was going to get delayed by over a year. But in the end, it's funny how that kind of hardship and anxiety can sort of blossom into something that's an opportunity and something really beautiful, because I was able to take that time to write some new songs and get a bit of a new lease on and a new perspective on the album and resuscitate some songs that had fallen by the wayside.

And being able to write "Musician," that was written in ' "Trying to Feel Alive," the last song, was also written very, very, very late in the process. In my opinion, the album got 25 percent better during that time. And the way I described it to people was almost like you go to turn in your Master's thesis, and then the professor hands it back to you and says, "Yeah, you actually have another year to work on this.

And so ultimately I'm really, really glad. One big question I think I was left with, with all this extra time, was this whole album is trying to answer this question of whether or not all this stuff I'm doing is meaningful and whether it is helpful and whether I've truly improved and gotten better, and whether I've learned anything. And the biggest point of anxiety for me was the last song.

I had this other outro in the past that was called "Pass Your Light Along," it was this ballad. I remember feeling like it just felt a bit lecture-y, it was almost like a list of things I wish I had told myself and I just didn't buy it. I was just like, "Yeah, this is cool, but it's too concrete of an ending. It's like, I don't feel like I've actually transcended all these problems, and I know the answers now. This is coming. This is really difficult to you.