We caught up with former HND Sound Production student Joe Miller (Hydeaway & Ganunga) about debut albums, live shows and future plans – and of course, the Riverside Music College experience.
What have you been working on since you left Riverside?
Since leaving Riverside we have released our debut album ‘Chasing stars’, this was quite an exciting time for us as it reached number 16 in the iTunes charts on the first week of its release. We have also been working on a lot more projects in the background including 8 or 9 new songs that are nearly complete. In December, I also played my first live gig which was pretty daunting but I got it done and played the full gig without a hitch.
What skills/knowledge from the HND Sound Production course were most useful to you?
All of the skills that I learned on the HND sound production course came in extremely useful for me as each aspect of the course related to something I was working on with our own work. This spanned from the recording process, time domain effects, the correct microphones to use for the specific job in hand, the correct processes with EQ all the way through to the mixing and mastering of the final project. The areas that were the most beneficial to me in the course were the skills for business outcomes. These sections taught me things like copyright, contract laws, royalty collection societies, the Musicians Union and sample clearance – for when we use samples of other songs for a remix. If I hadn’t studied at Riverside I wouldn’t have known about a lot of different aspects, especially the legal side, of the music industry. The mixing and mastering sections helped me a lot when it came to releasing our album to industry standard.
How would you describe your music with Hydeaway & Ganunga?
I would describe our music as a chilled mix of pop and dance music. The music we release is perfectly suited for summer. You can just imagine chilling on a beach listening to the slower songs or dancing all night with your friends at a club into the small hours to the more energetic dance songs we have released.
What are your plans for the future?
Our main plan for the future is to keep releasing feel-good music that fans can enjoy whatever they are doing. At the moment we are starting to push towards the release of 2 more singles before we get things ready and some of the songs finished for our second album. I also intend to build and open a recording studio this year to expand on the production side of things in other genres, bringing bands and singers in to record in the studio environment.
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