Today we’d like to introduce you to Josef Nygaard.
Josef, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I started making beats in freshmen year of high school and pretty much obsessed over them from the start. After high school, I went to Columbia College Chicago, a rather large art school located in downtown Chicago. I studied audio engineering and production, learning how to run studio sessions and mix and master songs as well as much more about the craft. While I was there, I continued to make beats and music as much as I could, trying to focus in on a sound for myself. I created the alias Joe Nora in Chicago and after school, I moved back to San Francisco where I was born and raised and then made my way down to LA after a summer of working and saving money. I worked two jobs, a day job at a bike shop, and what started as an unpaid internship at a studio called Blackwood Studios. Songs that I had made over the summer before moving to LA got put on a Spotify Editorial Playlist and I started to see more success as things started to pick up. I started doing paid sessions at the studio but started to feel like Engineering sessions was not what I wanted to be doing.
My own music that I was constantly putting out was getting more and more support and that was what I wanted to be doing with my time. I left the studio after learning a lot and getting a lot of crucial experience and started to work at what would eventually become my only source of income. I met the Fairrose Crew in LA who began to put me on their monthly Not Evil DIY concerts and they quickly became some of my best friends. My music under my Joe Nora alias is something I have been working towards for years and years and I am very humbled by how far it has come. I have played shows in Chicago (including a Sofar set), Kalamazoo, San Francisco, LA, and Austin for SXSW and have put out albums on cassette tape with Inner Ocean Records, and on Vinyl with Effortless Audio.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Maybe my biggest struggle over the years was finding a sound that felt like myself and not a replica of someone else’s that I admire. I started with pretty classic hip hop beats at the very start and then took a wild detour into dubstep and glitchy electronic music which I was interested in throughout high school and then started to make my way back towards the hip hop realm with a hint of the more wild electronic stuff I had been doing previously. I think it helps to experiment like that so that you can get the techniques and comfortability making other styles but then coming back and stripping it down to the most real and unique part of you that you can find. When I was in college after a couple of years of living like a normal college kid, I decided to stop going out on the weekends and instead devote that time to making music and that was where it really started to turn around for me. It doesn’t happen overnight and for me, it took at least six years of putting out music before I created Joe Nora and the sound I have today.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I am Joe Nora, but Joe Nora is also my brand. While my primary product would be the music I make, I am also a film photographer. I dabbled with trying to become a part-time photographer in college, shooting only film photography which fascinated me. After realizing I didn’t really want to be a full-scale photographer, I decided to work it into my brand as the visual side to my music. When I started as Joe Nora, I began to use ONLY my photography for the album art to my music. I wanted something that would be uniform and cohesive with my music and would be easy enough for me to create on my own without having to rely on graphic designers to create my art for me.
I think this photo side of my work has helped me a lot and has been something that people can really recognize as a Joe Nora song or album. However, I think what people have been drawn to the most is my emphasis on an aquatic, liquid or watery aspect to my music. I have always been very fond of swimming, something that I got from my mother who is an avid swimmer. I found as I was trying to find my sound that this part of me was something I could use to create a sound that was unique to me. I’m not saying I am the only one who makes music that has elements of water and aquatic life but it was a guiding style that people started to comment on more and more and identify as my sound: a very textured and wet style of drums, melodies and grooves.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I think I am very very lucky in life and it has definitely played a roll in my business. The first thing that comes to mind would be my studio job and internship in LA. When I got to LA, I decided to first get a day job to pay the bills and then try to find a job in my industry. I was told in school that when looking for industry jobs, LinkedIn could be a big help. I had been assigned in a business class in college to get my LinkedIn profile as professional looking as possible and when I was at my day job in LA, I tried looking at any graduates from my college who were working in recording studios. I reached out to a couple but one guy in particular looked promising. He was relatively young and had achieved quick success after leaving Chicago. I sent him a message over LinkedIn, thinking he would probably never see it. But to my surprise, he responded with the email for the studio he worked at saying that I should send my resume over. I went on to get the internship and work my way up to a junior engineering position there.
Later on, in my time at the studio I was talking to the co-owner and alumni of my school who I had reached out to and he told me that he never goes on LinkedIn and had just happened to open it up that time and saw my message. We were both so shocked that it had worked out that way and I believe it was really a combination of a large amount of luck and a small amount of networking skills that got me the job. Although I only stayed at the studio for a year and a half, I learned an immense amount of knowledge and skills there that have been helping me ever since. I was also able to meet the people who are now my best friends in LA at the studio. So it was a win-win.
Pricing:
- 150$ mix and master or just 100$ for to mix your song
- 200$ for production additions (ie. adding elements to your songs)
- 40$ for cover art photo or 40$ an hour for photoshoot
Contact Info:
- Website: joenora.shop
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: instagram.com/joenoraa
- Facebook: facebook.com/joenoraa
- Twitter: twitter.com/joenoraa
Image Credit:
Black and white sxsw performance photo by Levi Chappell
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