It was another late afternoon and junior Ishir Ayyagari sat quietly in a dining hall at Stanford University. He was there for a workshop teaching music production with different apps
He stared intently at his phone, when a vocal chop suddenly popped into his head. As the day went on, Ayyagari stayed at the table, adding and removing beats on Ableton — a music tool software — trying to conjure up the perfect melody. This song, called “Lonesome,” ended up being the first song of his newest album, Realization, released Jan. 5.
Ayyagari’s music journey began at the age of 5, when he first picked up the guitar. A few years later, after his sister started playing the violin, he followed suit and joined his middle school orchestra. During an orchestra class project, Ayyagari was introduced to Soundtrap, a browser-based, cross-platform, digital audio workstation. He transformed several parts of his ensemble pieces into electronic sound as a way to start experimenting with sound. Although he took a break from producing music in eighth grade, by the time the summer before freshman year came along, Ayyagari was back at it.
Entering high school, he began to find musical inspiration from beyond his middle school and high school orchestras. He often looks to his favorite artist, Porter Robinson, for his ability to capture emotions within his songs. He also cites his younger sister’s love for Ariana Grande as encouraging his attempts at creating catchy and upbeat music.
Though he often gains inspiration from other artists, his songwriting process starts out completely differently — he typically begins with a small idea or concept and builds it into something more complex.
“The cool thing about it is, [my music will] kind of turn into something completely different,” Ayyagari said. “It’s just the starting tune that I’ll try and write down, and then, if I have any different ideas, I’ll try and add it… It might not sound as good, [so] then I’ll try something different.”
Ayyagari uploads his music to platforms such as SoundCloud, Apple Music and YouTube Music.
However, being a high school artist poses a number of challenges for him. For instance, Ayyagari faces creative blocks at times, where he struggles to create new beats or write music. To overcome these blocks, he watches tutorials on the characteristics of certain genres or scrolls through loops or splices, to see if anything inspires him. Additionally, because he is from a smaller community, there are discrepancies between actual audience numbers and the amount Ayyagarri wants. In hopes of attracting a larger audience in the future, Ayyagari is slowly looking to create more music that appeals to his audience throughout Los Gatos and Saratoga.
“I want to make music that appeals to people’s emotions rather than just house music, a cool tune that you’d play at a party or something,” Ayyagari said. “But, most of the time, I want to make stuff that feels beautiful.”
Beyond composing, he also hopes to expand into DJing and performing. While he’s only DJed once so far, he plans to reach out to local venues to secure more opportunities.
His advice to other aspiring local musicians is simple: “Keep trying to learn and don’t be discouraged if your first couple projects sound really bad… mine sounded awful, but keep building and trying to find new resources to learn, and it’ll start sounding better eventually.”
