Check Out Connor Irias’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Connor Irias.

Hi Connor, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always been fascinated by music and sound since the very beginning. I honestly can’t imagine what my life would be like without it.

My Pop still has an old VHS tape of me as a toddler, sitting on the kitchen floor & playing a little Casio keyboard with a huge grin on my face. I don’t remember that specific moment, but I do remember the joy I felt making silly sounds come out of that machine. Eventually, my parents signed me up for piano lessons. I’ll always be grateful to them for recognizing my sonic curiosity early on and pushing me to develop my talents.

Of course, I didn’t like being told what to play—much of the music in those children’s piano books was so boring! So I definitely didn’t practice often enough, much to the chagrin of my strict instructor Vera, who would curse at me in Russian whenever I would show up to a lesson unprepared. One day when she was particularly irritated with me, she said, “You only have to learn notes ‘A, B, C, D, E, F, G.’ So easy! In Russia, pianos also have the note ‘H’!” Eventually, I realized that was her idea of a joke.

Anyway, my mom forced me to stick with piano lessons for three years. That was our deal. But when 4th grade rolled around—I was about ten years old—I had the chance to join my school’s concert band, which meant I would get to learn a new instrument. I almost chose saxophone, but something about drums & percussion just spoke to me… Of course, nobody told me that playing percussion in a concert band involves a LOT of sitting & waiting around to actually *play* something. But I loved all those percussion instruments—snare drum, bass drum, crash cymbals, even triangle—and also learned to appreciate the moments of rest when I got to just sit back and listen to the band.

There were some fairly regrettable musical side-quests during this time as well, of course. I truly hope my family never leaks the video of me rapping along to “Aaron’s Party” at the 5th-grade talent show. What the hell was I thinking? I probably shouldn’t have even mentioned that…

My relationship with music got pretty serious when I discovered jazz & funk music. It was at our end-of-year school district concert; I heard the high school jazz orchestra play “Chameleon” by Herbie Hancock. Their performance blew my mind. The groove was absolutely infectious, so much so that everybody in the auditorium stood up and started dancing and clapping to the beat. I’d never seen anything like it. The energy was incredible, and I knew I wanted more. So I told my mom I HAD to learn how to play drum set. Being the sweet & supportive mother that she is, she found a dusty-yet-decent old kit at a yard sale and let me set it up in the garage. I spent countless hours alone in there, figuring out how to compose and play complex grooves with all four limbs at once. It was a noisy time, during which I’m sure my family briefly regretted allowing me to go down this path.

But they found a drum teacher for me: Gerry, a patient & kind man who helped me correct some of my poorly self-taught techniques and gave me a proper introduction to the wide world of jazz, Latin & rock drumming. Gerry was always giving me burned CDs of music he thought I might enjoy, along with handwritten sheet music to help me learn how to play along with the songs. After a year under his guidance, I successfully auditioned for the middle school jazz band.

Playing the drums became an obsession. Serving as the heartbeat of the band while still having the freedom to jam and improvise within certain boundaries was such a thrill. Of course, I would always push those boundaries; my immature ego and lack of experience often led me to bust out hip-hop beats (and/or full-on drum solos) at totally inappropriate times. Our jazz band director was a good man, but I pushed his patience to the limit. One day he chucked a whiteboard marker straight at my face because I kept overplaying so much. And I don’t blame him at all for that; I totally deserved it! Another morning, I arrived to find that he had removed the kick drum and toms from the kit— leaving me with nothing but a ride cymbal, snare drum and hihats. “Learn to play tastefully with this setup and then you can have your kick drum back,” he said to me in front of the whole band. That was a real wax-on, wax-off moment for me. I was so embarrassed then, but looking back on it now… I’m grateful for the much-needed reality check. Eventually, I learned to control my rebellious tendencies and dedicated myself to studying proper jazz technique & form.

By the time I started high school, I was quite certain that playing music was my life’s purpose, my raison d’être. I couldn’t get enough. It consumed the majority of my day. (It’s a wonder that I managed to maintain good grades in my other classes!) Jazz drumming was #1, but I also learned to love classical music—marimba, vibraphone and timpani were my favorite instruments. Somehow I also ended up directing our school’s pep band—I wrote custom arrangements of songs like “Love Rollercoaster” by the Ohio Players and “When The S___ Goes Down” by Cypress Hill and conducted the band at our football games while wearing a ridiculous pirate costume for no good reason at all. I would also bring pie to share with the band at half-time, because who doesn’t love pie???

My mom continued to be my number one advocate when it came to my creative endeavors. She worked in an office with the father of another musician my age, Jeremy Lyon—who currently leads an indie rock band called “King Dream;” you should go check them out, they’re really sick! At the time, Jeremy played guitar with a local band called “The Audiophiles” alongside his classmates Greg Fleischut and Zak Mandel-Romann. They had just lost their drummer and needed a replacement ASAP, so I auditioned… and we immediately began playing at bars & clubs all over the San Francisco Bay Area. That was my first experience playing rock shows, doing professional gigs with no adult guidance or supervision. We were a little rough around the edges but we played some truly epic shows, and listening to those old live recordings still puts a smile on my face.

During those years, I also started listening to other genres like electronic ambient/psytrance and began to compose and record some of my own songs at home—sequencing basic beats and recording guitar & vocals using Cakewalk Music Creator on an old PC my Pop lent to me. I was pretty shy about singing at the time (still am, honestly), but by the end of senior year, I had started a band of my own; we played a short set of cover songs at our graduation ceremony, closing out with “In My Life” by the Beatles. My voice cracked, but the crowd still went wild.

My high school band director, Norm Dea, a passionate man who always pushed his students to do their best, had encouraged me to continue my music studies in Los Angeles. So I auditioned at a few universities with reputable music programs and got accepted into the USC Thornton School of Music—with a half-tuition scholarship—as a Classical Percussion major. (I briefly considered Northwestern too, but Chicago was just too damn cold for me).

It seemed like my future as a professional drummer/percussionist was guaranteed at this point, but evidently the universe had other plans.

On a hot July day, less than two months before I was to begin my Classical Percussion studies at USC, I was driving home from my summer job (at a powder-coating and sandblasting factory, of all places) when a careless motorist ran a red light and T-boned my minivan. I remember it all so vividly—as soon as I saw his car speeding into the intersection ahead of me, everything went into slow motion. I turned the steering wheel to try and avoid the crash, but I knew what was coming. Upon impact, I saw a flash of white light and everything went quiet. I’m not sure how long I was out for… but when I woke up, I was still in the driver’s seat, smelling that burning-airbag aroma that still haunts me to this day. The door wouldn’t open by hand, so I kicked it open, stumbled out of the van and sat down on the curb. Witnesses were frantically asking me, “Are you okay?!” and I said, truthfully, “I feel fine.”

Then I looked down at my left arm. It was completely purple, one giant bruise spanning from my elbow to my wrist. “Hmm, that’s new,” I thought to myself. I was taken to the hospital and they said nothing was broken, so I convinced myself everything was okay. But as days passed after the accident, I couldn’t ignore the heavy aching feeling. I realized how bad it was when I was playing my drums in the garage one day and my elbow suddenly locked up—I couldn’t rotate it at all. My wrist felt pretty weak, too. Something was definitely wrong.

In August 2009, I left my hometown for Los Angeles with the hope that my injuries would heal soon and I could proceed with my percussion career as planned. But the pain and lack of mobility in my arm only seemed to get worse over time. I was barely able to carry my own groceries, let alone practice/perform for 8+ hours a day. I remember crying in the practice room once because all I wanted to do was rehearse a marimba part, but my body just wouldn’t cooperate. I did my best to stay positive, but I was thoroughly depressed at the thought of fighting what seemed to be a hopeless battle.

Luckily, my new friends helped me get through it. One of my dorm mates, Alex Fink, lent me his old drum machine, which provided me with endless hours of groovy inspiration. And in October, another friend Brandon Phipps (who had previously introduced me to dubstep via the Jakwob Remix of Ellie Goulding’s “Starry Eyed”), invited me to attend a rave—HARD Haunted Mansion. I had something akin to a spiritual experience there, dancing to sets by Boys Noize, Major Lazer, The Bloody Beetroots, Justice and deadmau5, among others… and I realized, “Hey, this music is awesome—I could do THAT!” Shortly afterward, I met with the school counselor and dropped my Percussion major in favor of a Psychology major and Music Recording minor—because I couldn’t afford to stay for the extra semester required to get the credits for a new Music major. By December, I had purchased a copy of Ableton Live along with an APC40 [MIDI controller], fully determined to become a DJ & producer.

I soon realized that DJing is pretty easy, but my first attempts at making my own beats were nothing short of terrible. It’s a good thing I switched my major when I did. I needed all the help I could get at first, particularly when it came to the finer points of audio engineering and sampling/synthesis. I didn’t share many of my original tracks in these early years… but thanks to my tireless enthusiasm and obnoxious self-promotion, I quickly became a household name as a DJ in the local college party scene, playing weird mashups of Top40 that people wanted to hear (combined with the hard tech-house and dubstep my ears were craving at the time).

Meanwhile, I coasted through my Psychology and General Ed coursework, basically living life as if I were still a music major. I soaked up all the information and experience I could about recording, mixing and mastering while also developing my singing voice as a means of expressing myself—I took a voice class, joined the Men’s Choir, and spent a couple of years beatboxing & singing bass/baritone for one of the on-campus A Cappella groups (The “Troy Tones”).

My interest in singing ultimately provided a gateway into what I consider my primary “career” these days—live sound reinforcement. We had a bi-annual a cappella outdoor concert series, and at the first one, I immediately noticed how unbalanced the sound was with no amplification. I couldn’t hear the bass or beatboxer at all. So I offered to bring my DJ PA system and small analog mixer for future events (with recording included) and became the go-to sound guy for a cappella concert on campus.

I still love to sing, but I think most people who know me nowadays would agree that I’m much better at audio engineering & production. After college, I reconnected with an old childhood friend, Edan Freiberger, who had also moved to LA and was starting an electronic pop/funk project called “B00TY.” He sent me some demos, we started working on them together, and I became their co-producer. Edan and his friend Adam Epelbaum wrote most of the material, and I made the tracks sparkle—and helped translate said tracks into live shows by designing the Ableton playback set, playing synthesizer parts, and creating drum sounds for the drummer to play on his pads.

It was after a B00TY show at El Cid where I met Jason, the venue’s sound engineer, who offered me my first paid gig in live sound. I shadowed with him for a month (compensation consisted of free drinks and charcuterie plates) before he handed me the reins and left me to mix the weekly open mic shows & occasional flamenco guitar nights on my own. From there I continued to get more live sound jobs via word-of-mouth; this soon blossomed into a full-time freelance audio career which has paid most of my bills over the past decade or so.

Live sound really turned out to be the ideal career path for me. Not only does the job itself provide a satisfying challenge for the logical/practical side of my brain, it keeps me inspired & in touch with the local music scene (I get paid to attend concerts!) and gives me ample opportunity to meet and connect with fellow artists. In fact, I have met most of my musical collaborators at shows where I was the sound engineer—when I meet an artist whose sound & vibe I dig, all I have to do is invite them over to my home studio for a recording/writing session—or a remote collaboration, as the case may be. I have built so many wonderful relationships with friends and collaborators through this work, and I wouldn’t change my story for the world.

Heck, come to think of it, I even met my girlfriend when I was on a live sound gig several years ago!!! She was working at the bar, I asked her for a free beer, and the rest is history…

As you might imagine, I have a busy schedule these days—but not so busy that I can’t make time for my own projects. Throughout the years, I have never stopped producing/writing and pushing my own creative boundaries… And my arm has finally recovered—so I’m drumming again more and more all the time!

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
When I’m not doing live sound & events, I am constantly refining my craft as a music producer / sound designer / composer / audio tech guru / etc.

The majority of my creative projects nowadays happen in my home studio here in Highland Park.

Such projects include recording/writing/producing with singers, rappers and bands (I am especially proud of my vocal engineering work—tuning and processing to help artists sound their best without creating an artificial “Autotuned” sound), composing music and creating sound effects for films, and helping musicians with their technical issues to help them deliver a solid live performance while still experiencing that essential element of joyful in-the-moment expression.

I’d like to think that after spending so many years on both sides of the stage, I have a unique perspective when it comes to balancing the needs of artists’ creative intentions versus the modern quality standards that audiences have come to expect.

These days I release my own productions under the name Auralponic, and I am always open to new artistic endeavors.

Here are some highlights I’m especially proud of:
– 2016: Released my self-produced/mixed/mastered debut album “Auxins” which features a bunch of favorite musical friends including B00TY, Nina Herzog, TeaMarrr, tribes (Veronica Ramirez) and Jen Rose
– 2017: Produced a remix for ZEDS DEAD—“Too Young” (collab with Rivers Cuomo and Pusha T)
– 2017: Played djembe onstage with Random Rab at Oregon Eclipse Gathering
– 2018: Composed original score & handled the majority of audio post-production for Zavafilms’ feature film “I Wrote This For You”
– 2019: Produced a remix for Solar Theory [Divasonic + Torkom Ji]—“Submerge”
– 2020: Started releasing collaborations/remixes with my wacky festival friend Cello Joe
– 2021: Recorded and mixed Duckwrth in my home studio for his feature on TeaMarrr’s single “Specific”
– 2021: Won several remix contests hosted by Disclosure via their Twitch/Discord and recruited 50+ of the all-stars in that online community to contribute vocals/production/video to an original song I co-created called “I Got Friends (All Over The Globe)”
– 2022: Played SCHOOL NIGHT at Bardot with powerhouse singer Tito Rey (who will be featured on many of my forthcoming releases)
– 2022: Released my concept art piece called “Pinecrest,” a song/video comprised entirely of field recordings and footage I captured while backpacking in the forest
– 2023: Released a self-produced music video cover of King Harvest’s “Dancing In The Moonlight”

We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
I’ll never forget when I saw Don Was (producer of the Rolling Stones) speak for a panel at USC back in 2009.

He told us that when he’d won a Grammy and stepped out onto the red carpet, he suddenly felt sad, realizing that even though he had looked forward to that milestone so much… he remembered feeling so much more happiness in those moments of creation in the studio when he was actually *creating* the art that earned him those huge accolades.

I think that just about sums it up.

Success is not about the end goal.

Success is about doing what you love with people you love, doing what brings you joy as often as possible—and remembering to savor the journey at every step along the way.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/auralponic
• Facebook: facebook.com/auralponic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@auralponic3360
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/auralponic
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1c1hWS9bv16AlxgpPkBsFD

Image Credits
@gigi.takes.photos @tnestaphotography_