SoundGym Hero: Kevin Krouglow

Composer and multi-instrumentalist with a focus on Film, TV, and Games. Currently from Toronto, Canada. Kevin Krouglow is this month's SoundGym Hero!

Who are you, and where are you from?

My name is Kevin Krouglow, I’m a Film, TV, and Games composer, recording artist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer.

I’ve been very lucky to have worked on feature films such as “Eat Wheaties!” starring Tony Hale, over 120 episodes of TV shows including Disney Channel’s “Backstage” and the international hit dance show “The Next Step”, the Nintendo Switch Video Game “Skies of Fury DX”, and numerous commercials for clients such as Adidas, Campbell’s, McDonald’s, Toyota, and many more.

I was born in Russia and my family moved to Montreal, Canada when I was 4. I’m currently based in Toronto, Ontario.

How did you get into music?

I’ve been making a living and working full-time in the music industry for 10 years now, but have been writing, performing, and playing music for 21 years, since I got my first guitar as a birthday gift at 13 years old.

I was self-taught and became obsessed, often practicing for 6 hours a day. In high school, a friend and I were jamming, writing songs together and decided to start a band. A lot of the students at our school became big fans, and I think that was the spark that really made me believe that a music career was a possibility for me.

I had also taught myself piano, and was writing instrumental themes using tablature software – PowerTabs and GuitarPro. I loved film and game music, being a big fan of Hans Zimmer, James Horner, and Nobuo Uematsu scores at the time, so when my older sister suggested film scoring as a potential career option, everything clicked and I was convinced that’s what my path in life was going to be.

I took lessons for a bit over a year to prepare myself for the grade 9 RCM level University auditions, learned Music Theory and Harmony basics from a book, and ended up studying at The University of Western Ontario as a Piano Bachelor of Music major in their Classical Program, having been playing piano for only 2 years at the time.

I was there for two years before I decided to leave and pursue opportunities to perform as a guitarist and bassist in several bands. I also started working as a private music teacher, first teaching Guitar, Bass and Piano, then adding Vocals and Drums to my lessons.

I wrote the score for my first short film, “Last Stage”, in my first year of University, for some students from a college that had a film program close to where I lived. That led to more connections and more opportunities to write on other student films, which allowed me to build my skills, reel, and resume.

I also reached out to various audio houses around the city, and ended up getting hired by Grayson Matthews (now Grayson Music) as a co-composer on the second season of the popular TV show “The Next Step”. I was then brought on as an in-house composer, working on many more TV shows, films, advertisements, some games and other projects. I was there for a little under 4 years, and have been freelancing since!

What do you like to do for fun outside of working on music?

Honestly, most of my time is spent on music, haha, because I also try to make a point to play for fun when I’m not doing it for work, in order to stay connected to the initial spark and keep it from becoming just a job. But when I’m not working on music, I absolutely love being in nature. I love bike rides, runs, walks, hikes. I’d love to try mountain climbing.

I love kayaking when the weather is right. I think I’d much rather live around nature but close to a city rather than in a city and close to nature. I’m a pretty big introvert. I enjoy reading, I absolutely love to meditate and do yoga – and if I’m in nature that’s even better! I want to travel more, that’s something I really enjoy but haven’t done enough of. I also love learning new things, especially scientific discoveries and theories, and then discussing them with good friends.

What's your most useless skill or talent?

Haha, that’s a hard one. I think I can find usefulness in many seemingly useless skills. But my girlfriend tells me that I’m really good at making monster and cartoon voices when I’m being silly. It would lend itself well to voice acting, but I’m not pursuing that, so it’s a pretty useless skill for me currently!

What inspires you to keep making music?

There are few things in my life that bring me as much consistent joy and peace and make me feel as much as music does. Honestly, I just start to get depressed when I stop making music.

Sometimes, after I haven’t played or created music for a stretch of time, I don’t know why I feel down, until I sit down to play and I create something again and it rejuvenates me and brings me back to life. I find it’s really easy to get caught up in the mental side of it – wondering if what you’re doing is original, if it’s interesting enough, if it has value, or if it’s the best thing you could be doing etc – but at the end of the day, I just know that regardless of all that, I feel better when I’m playing and creating music.

So it helps me to come back to that. No matter what else is happening, I can reconnect with that initial spark, which had nothing to do with success or originality or making a mark or anything like that.

It was just the experience of falling into the flow of music and engaging with it, being part of it as it unfolds – through playing, performing, creating – it’s hard to explain, it’s not cerebral, it’s a feeling, an experience, and that’s why I do it.

If you could sit down to a session with any artist, who would it be?

Oh boy! So many I’d love to work with, both composers and performing artists. Right now my gut instinct is to say the electronic duo ODESZA. I’m a huge fan. I love the stuff they come up with, and whenever I listen to something new they release, there’s always really cool new sounds and approaches they’re using.

I find myself being intrigued, surprised and inspired. It sounds like they love to explore and they’re very creative, and their genre and style meshes with mine quite a bit! I think it would be a lot of fun working with them.

Any habits you have before starting a session?

It really depends. If I’m in the mixing process, I’ll probably take some time to listen to a bunch of references for a bit to calibrate my ears. If I’m feeling a little unmotivated, I’ll probably take some time to listen to other tracks I’ve worked on – I find doing this helps get me into listening and feeling, and out of thinking. It also starts to inspire me and liven me up, and reminds me that I can do the work.

I suppose listening to something you’ve worked on and are proud of gives you a dopamine boost which then helps with motivation. Often when starting a writing session, I’ll start by improvising on an instrument and just recording everything. This allows me to be creative without any self-analysis or judgment, knowing I can always review whatever I’ve played later. And last but not least, since joining SoundGym, I do also love to start my day with a workout!

If you could pick one, what would be the theme song of your life?

That’s a tough question! Haha. One song to represent your whole life, ouff! Hmm, I think maybe I’d go with “Don’t Worry Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin. It’s not that this is one of my favourite songs, though I do enjoy it and it does make me happy haha.

I don’t think you need to be happy all the time, but I’m choosing this one because I like to make the most of life, despite all the challenges. I always try to find the good in people and situations, and like the song says, I try not to worry so much.

Ironically, though I don’t always show it, I do get anxious often, and have throughout my whole life, but I try to remind myself that at the end of the day it’ll be alright, and this song kinda represents that.

The only lyric I don’t fully vibe with is “cause when you worry your face will frown and that will bring everybody down” – I don’t think that we should put on a smile to hide our troubles – that doesn’t sound too healthy to me – but I do think that in the hustle and bustle of our modern life, we can sometimes lose perspective and get swept up in all the little worries and start catastrophizing.

What is your favorite piece of music gear you own?

My computer! I do most of my work there and it’s absolutely amazing what it can do! But, I think that answer is cheating a bit haha, so I’ll pick something else.

I got my first hardware analog synthesizer a couple years ago – an Arturia Minibrute 2. I don’t use it all the time, but it’s so much fun when I do use it.

Getting it made me realize why people love analog gear – it’s not just the sound quality, since digital is recreating analog pretty well these days – it’s the fact that you engage with it differently. It’s very hands-on.

You are more directly connected to the sounds you are generating – there are fewer degrees of separation so to speak – it’s a bit more intuitive and musical in that way. I find myself experimenting more and stumbling on cool new sounds and effects more often with the analog synth than with digital emulations.

Turning a knob with your hand to the music is very different than moving it with your mouse, or automating it. And though you could map a digital synthesizer’s knobs to a controller, I think it’s nice to have the same knob always do the same thing, and without having to route everything and endure the occasional hiccups that the digital world of automation brings.

What is your favorite SoundGym feature?

If you asked me this a few months ago, I’d probably say the EQ games, as the improvements I noticed in my ability to identify and detect frequencies have improved significantly because of them very quickly!

But now I’ve actually grown to really like the community aspect of SoundGym and the friendly competitions the most! Seeing the incredible scores other top players manage to get and wanting to improve and beat your own scores is hugely motivating! I think if SoundGym didn’t have this aspect, I probably wouldn’t push myself to keep improving past where I’ve already got to. And I think the best part is that everyone in the competitions is incredibly supportive and friendly – this makes it inviting to participate rather than intimidating when you’re starting out. It’s a very nice platform!

What does the future hold for Kevin Krouglow?

I’m actually just finishing up mixing and mastering an album that I’ve had in the works for some time.

It’s an electronic project with a mix of instrumentals and vocal songs. Nothing is live yet, but the first single will be coming out very soon! This is very exciting for me because I’ve been wanting to release this album for a long time and have been working on many of these songs on and off for the last 5 years.

I’ve just been too busy to put enough time into it until more recently. It’s a very personal project and I’m feeling pretty proud of it, so I can’t wait to share it with the world.

Asides from that, I’m always keeping busy, and am looking forward to the next Film/TV project now that I’ll have more time for that again!

You can follow Kevin on his Site, Soundcloud, Instagram, and IMDB