SoundGym Hero: Michał Wysocki

A bass player with a passion for RPG games, yoga, and military history, balances his love for music with his diverse interests, drawing inspiration from Maynard James Keenan and creating alongside his girlfriend in their project Juno Willo. Uzurpan is this month's SoundGym Hero!

How did you first find your way into making music?

When I was about 14, I had an older buddy who started playing electric guitar. He showed me some of the tunes he had learned and it made a huge impression on me. I immediately wanted to own and play an instrument like him, but I didn’t want to copy exactly what he did so I chose the bass guitar instead. The rest is history.

Aside from music, what hobbies or activities do you enjoy?

I love computer games especially RPG games where I can choose an easier path in life, such as a rogue. When it comes to physical activity, I am a deep lover of yoga which helps me stay healthy after long hours at work, making music or just sitting at my desk.

What’s something you're surprisingly good at that has nothing to do with music?

For most of high school and early adulthood, I was interested in history and the military, and even wanted to join the army. And because of this interest, I can recognize and talk about virtually any weapon, armor or simply military equipment from any period of history.

If you could play or create with any artist, who would it be and why?

Maynard James Keenan, his music was a lifesaver for me during a difficult time in my life and allowed my passion for music to survive. I love his philosophy of life and am impressed by his unusual division of attention between several bands, the vineyard and jujitsu training. I am convinced that a few hours of working together would have developed me incredibly as an artist and as a human being. He’s a huge inspiration for me.

What piece of music gear do you love the most, and what makes it irreplaceable in your creative process?

This will probably be the world's dullest answer. The most important/loved gear is my ADAM A8Hs studio monitors. Everything I record guitars, synths, drums or vocals goes through the speakers in the end anyway, and this is the equipment that allows me to judge the quality of the tracks produced.

After a bumpy road of trying many headphones, speakers and room settings for months, only recently I've become confident in what I'm hearing. I must emphasize that there is a huge contribution of soundgym exercises. And even though I'm a bass player at heart, I have to give the first place on the podium to, at this point my irreplaceable speakers.

This is also due to the fact that I am increasingly working on other people's material, and the bass guitar itself many times loses in the clash with the other bass sources during production. So definitely studio monitors come first and the rest are not even close to it.

What daily or weekly habits do you have in place to keep you creating?

Here I have two tactics. First, whether at home or in the studio, I have all my instruments out and ready to play. This makes me reach for them much more often in my free time and sometimes really interesting melodies or bass lines are born this way.

Secondly, I have had my daily exercise plan written out. And it includes both typical motor exercises on the string instruments and auditory exercises at the soundgym. Thanks to this, there is no day off without me visiting the studio to practice, or there is simply no day without a guitar in my hands.

What keeps you motivated to continue making music?

I will answer in one word, people. Thanks to music, I found a way to deal with difficult periods in my life, I found my girlfriend and I met many very interesting people. Because of these gifts, I make the decision every day to be faithful to music and give it most of my precious minutes of living here.

What song would you choose as the soundtrack of your life?

“Momma Sed” is a song I have come back to many times and I still come back to it. At different times in my life I found different meanings in it. This song was able to calm me down in moments of anger and comfort me in moments of melancholy. I am even more happy that Puscifer decided to refresh it with a new line-up and a new arrangement. Now the song is even better and closer to be perfect.

What's your favorite feature on SoundGym, and how has it helped you in your musical journey?

It's hard to name just one, and I must admit that after using the site for over a year, I still haven't tried everything.

At the beginning of my journey, I became very interested in buying virtual instruments for a virtual studio. I also loved breaking my scoring records. It got me hooked because I treated it more as fun activity or a game. But after a short time I started to notice that I could hear more and more accurately and that it wasn't just pleasant games.

Today, I rather do daily exercises, I also take part in "Olympics" to have some reference point for my skills compared to the best ones on the website. I would also like to highlight initiatives in private rooms here, such as the "Mixdown Training Room" where every week a mix is selected, which we mix during the week and at the end we evaluate each other in an atmosphere of mutual understanding and respect.

What’s something exciting you're working on or looking forward to?

My girlfriend and I are creating a project called Juno Willo. She is in as a producer, singer and songwriter, and I as a mixing engineer, bass player occasionally.

Motivated by our first successes on Spotify, we are eager to do more as a duo. We even managed to create our little hit, which exceeded 100,000 listens, which we are extremely proud of. We will soon have our first concert together and are currently preparing for it. It's quite a challenge because we haven't performed on stage since high school, but we can do it!

Of course, after the concert we go back to producing, releasing music and trying to conquer Spotify playlists and the local music market.

You can follow Uzurpan on his Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify, and even his studio's Instagram.

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