1. What is your name? Anthony Kasirivu
2. Where were you born and raised? I was born in Saulspoort and raised in Mafikeng both of which are in the North-West province.
3. How long have you been composing music? I’ve been composing music seriously since 2010.
4. What is your creative process? How do you start creating a composition? / How do you start writing lyrics? It all starts with the feeling mainly. That feeling then develops into a certain drum progression or melody and builds from there. Once the feeling is captured, as long as you stay true to that feeling the rest of the song will grow organically from composition to lyrics.
5. What influenced you choose a career in this field? Well I’ve always been fascinated with the way music is able to move people in celebration, motivate people to keep going in times of depression, comfort people in times of grief and even paint a picture visually in the minds of people. If I can use my music to touch others in a positive way I’m happy.
6. Did you do any courses for your career field? Like many other producers I’m self-taught. I took a lot of time researching the musical scale, what the feeling of each musical note is attached to as well as what constitutes keeping music in key and how to build harmonies. From there moved onto the technical aspects of production such as compression, to application of reverb and other mixing and mastering aspects. Once I felt comfortable with the theory I started to put them to use in Reason (a digital audio workstation for creating and editing music and audio developed). The great thing with Reason is that it’s more the sound design tool at its core so it has allowed me to build a lot of custom production tweaks.
7. Which songwriters have you worked with and how was the experience? I’ve worked with a couple of local and international songwriters, but the one that stands out for me is Sio (singer-songwriter). Her ability to take a composition and bring it to life is honestly amazing. She has totally changed the way I approach my creative process from producing something that is generally accepted or trending to focusing on a feeling to drive the composition at its heart.
8. What has been the highlight of your career? I can safely say the highlight of my musical journey is knowing I’m able to wake up every day and what I love. Regardless of the ups and downs.
9. What advice can you give to aspiring music composers? My advice to aspiring music composers would be to research musical rights extensively. The music industry as a whole is a tricky terrain to navigate so the more you know the better decisions you can make.