A Short History of My Production Journey

Growing up as a kid in Puerto Rico, music wasn't something I really thought about… it was just there. Salsa, merengue, cumbia, latin jazz… I never thought of it in terms of genres or styles. It was just always in the background and that's all I knew music to be.

A lot of that music came from my mother and her side of the family. I was constantly hearing artists like Ismael Quintana, Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Héctor Lavoe, Rubén Blades, Willie Colón, El Gran Combo. Being exposed to that sound, the syncopated rhythms, the musicality… all of it was completely normal to me, and I didn't really question it or think beyond any of it until much later.

When I was six, my family and I moved to the mainland US and that's where my ideas about music started to evolve. I was raised by a single mom, so I spent a lot of time by myself at home. Because of this, the radio became something I relied on just to fill up the time. The radio wasn't so much about discovering music at first, however, it did expose me to all sorts of music I'd never heard before.

The first track I remember hearing on the radio which stuck out to me was Money's Too Tight To Mention by The Valentine Brothers. It completely caught me off guard because up until that point I didn't even know music could sound like that. There were so many other artists around that time that grabbed my attention as well… artists like George Benson, Bobby Caldwell, The Commodores, Kool and the Gang. And it wasn't just that everything sounded different, it was actually the first time I realized music could exist outside of what I had grown up with.

Because of that, I started paying more attention and eventually drifted into another side of music almost by accident. I used to have a clock radio I'd leave on at night to help me fall asleep, but more often than not I'd stay awake listening to late-night shows. That's where I first heard new wave, industrial, post-punk, alternative rock… music I'd never heard before but was immediately drawn to.

It's where I first heard bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Depeche Mode, New Order, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Cure. I remember going to school and asking friends about tracks like Dear Prudence, and getting blank stares. Nobody knew what the fuck I was talking about but it felt like I had found something special on my own.

By the late 80s and early 90s, that curiosity had deepened. I spent a lot of nights staying up watching 120 Minutes, getting into industrial bands like Skinny Puppy, Ministry, Sisters of Mercy, and at the same time becoming obsessed with The Smiths, Concrete Blonde, and the Pixies. I can't express just how vast the musical landscape felt like for me in those days. There was just so much I was trying to take in.

After high school, I started going to raves and clubs, mostly through older friends who were DJing and could get me in. That's where I first got properly exposed to dance music. House, techno, trance… but it was breakbeat and early jungle that really stuck with me. There was something about the rhythm and energy in it that felt different but also familiar to the music I grew up with. Hearing The Prodigy for the first time, especially Experience and Music for the Jilted Generation had a huge impact on me.

But the moment it all clicked was hearing Mixmag Live! Vol. 21 mixed by LTJ Bukem for the very first time. Listening to that mix felt like all of the music I'd been exposed to up until that point was suddenly living in the same space. It had a mixture of rhythms from my childhood, textures from alternative music, and the energy from rave culture… all merging together at once. That's when I stopped listening to music and started trying to understand what I was actually hearing.

A big part of that was also Good Looking Records. It's hard to overstate how much that label meant to me at the time. It wasn't just the music being released on the label, everything had this elevated sense to it. The visual design, the atmosphere, the presentation… the way everything felt so connected in a way that made me think for the first time, "I want to make this".

Around that same time, I had also randomly picked up a VHS tape from Tower Records called Talkin Headz: The Metalheadz Documentary. That was a big moment for me, because that fortunate coincidence was what pushed the idea of making this music even further. I've watched that documentary by now more times than I can count, almost to the point of reciting it from memory. There's one part in particular that always stuck with me where Gilles Peterson talks about drum and bass producers and how they listen to everything. How they're not locked into any one genre and they're open to all kinds of music for all kinds of reasons. That resonated with me because it described exactly how I experienced music, and this genre felt like a place where all of those influences could coexist.

What's funny is that looking back, before the idea of producing music even crossed my mind, I had already been interacting with music in a more hands-on way without realizing it. In 1988, my grandparents gave me a Casio MT-520 as a gift, and as a kid I spent hours upon hours on that thing trying to play songs from the radio by ear. There was no MIDI and no way to save anything permanently, but to me that didn't matter. I was just enjoying myself, figuring things out and that mindset stayed with me.

By the late 90s, I was fully immersed. I was living in Colorado, listening to shows like Groove Radio and constantly buying records. In 1998, I bought a pair of Technics 1210s and started DJing, which quickly turned into an obsession. I was buying records at a pace that I can only describe as unhealthy, even picking up a second job just to keep it going. My roommate at the time was also DJing, so we were always practicing and eventually started playing out at a few local bars and clubs. Those were some great days and I look back on them fondly… just being with close friends and playing records.

But eventually that started to change. With MP3s and Napster in the early 2000s, DJing didn't feel the same and I started thinking more about making music instead of just playing it. And that's when production became the focus.

My first real piece of gear was a Roland SP-808EX. After trying out the floor model at Guitar Center and haggling with the sales guy behind the counter, I took it home that same day and spent the next several years learning on it. Love-hate doesn't quite cover my relationship with it, but it's a big part of why I still love and produce on grooveboxes. From there, it turned into the usual cycle of buying and selling gear, picking up rack units and eventually my first "proper" synth, an Alesis QS6.

By 2001, my gear buying was in full swing, so I started an online record shop, foursquarerecords.com, to sell off what was left of my collection and continue to fund my gear habit. The site was short-lived but it gave me the chance to sell most of my records and put together a small home studio.

It's probably worth mentioning that I've never had any formal musical training. I've never taken lessons, I can barely play a few instruments, and everything I've learned has been self-taught. When I first started doing all of this, there weren't nearly as many resources for producers as there are now. Back then there were just a handful of magazines dedicated to music production and a few forums where people shared what they knew. Most of it came down to experimenting, fucking things up, figuring things out over time and keeping what worked. It took a long time to get anywhere close to making the music I was listening to, but that process has always been a part of it.

And that's how I carried on up until 2010, when I moved to Spain after meeting my wife. That move forced a reset. I sold all of my gear, lived off my savings and started again with nothing but a laptop. But it was a good thing, because it was the first time I had separated making music from having equipment, and with that clean slate I was able to focus and finish my first track, Letting Go in 2011. The track itself wasn't a big release but it mattered to me because I finally followed through and finished something.

Shortly thereafter, I stepped away from music for a while to continue focusing on building my career as a developer and getting settled in Spain. It wasn't a conscious decision to stop, it just happened over time as other priorities took over.

At the end of 2019, the pandemic had begun and with plenty of time on my hands, I started to consider taking production seriously again. By that point, I had lost a lot of the enthusiasm for working solely in the box, so I decided to pick up some used gear and build a small studio again. Between that and my friend Modal who was a constant source of inspiration and encouragement, I slowly started finding my way back into it and eventually began releasing music again over the next few years.

It's 2026 now, and by no means am I a prolific producer, but I've made peace with that. Finishing music is important, but so is what you're finishing and I'd rather release fewer tracks I stand behind than a lot of tracks I don't.

These days my production is less about chasing something and more about understanding my own process, what I'm drawn to, what feels right, and how all of those influences I've carried over the years show up in the music I make. It's also the one thing I feel that has helped carry it forward the most. Not momentum in the usual sense, but something built around attention, patience and what I feel actually holds up over time.

Looking back and reflecting on it all, my production journey isn't anything unique, but it is mine. We all come into this with our own influences and experiences, and what I've learned is there's value in not overlooking that… because a lot of it ends up shaping us and our music more than we realize. –

That history is what led to the process. Next up: The Missing Key to Finishing Tracks