Formula Indie Sessions _ Interview with talha

What is your earliest memory connected to music?

I had a small Iphone when I was little, and I started playing around in GarageBand. It really fascinated me because it felt like a sandbox with endless posibilities and I ended up spending a lot of time on it. I remember making an awful cover of a song I loved at the time and sending it to my friends. It was the first time I did that. I think I was around 10 years old.

How did your passion for creating music begin?

Whenever I had listened to songs I like, there has been a small part of me that couldn’t resonate fully with the track. So what I love to do is take a song I like, strip the instrumental and recreate it from scratch. This way, I still listen to the same song, the same vocals, but with a flavor of my own. It’s how I got into making music, and eventually my own stuff.

What’s the story behind your current music project?

My upcoming album I have been working on for the past few months “You Don’t Even Remember Me” tells a story about remembering someone from your past, whose memories you have buried a long time ago but resurface from time to time like a cycle. The album could be looked as another “episode”, remembering all the stuff again and then burying them deep in your mind again for the time being.

How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?

I really don’t have words I could put my sound in. Sometimes I do dreamy stuff with lots of reverb, sometimes it has an acoustic vibe. There are times I like to play around with huge synths and pads, and sometimes I just like a good old guitar strum with tight drums. But if I had to put my sounds in one common catalogue, I’d say it’s almost always melancholic. I don’t know why but I can’t bring myself to make something else not matter what I try.

What is one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?

I always thought that in order to make music, I had to make everything from scratch. But as I mentioned, I love recreating instrumentals and when I’m reverse engineering those songs, I noticed so many things about the producer’s thought process and state of mind or method of finding that one melody or chord. I’d be able to take those methods and implement them on my own, creating something entirely new. This has taught me to be able to get inspiration from other songs and professional songwriters. In the end, music is all about inspiration and nothing really can be realistically considered %100 original. I guess it’s just the way music works.

What tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?

My process is fairly minimalist. At the heart there is FL Studio I find the step sequencer essential for my workflow, especially when I’m writing drum patterns and need to visualize the groove quickly, but I also try to keep things from sound too “digital”. I regularly use Spitfire LABS. They have an amazing free high quality sound library consisting of both digital and acoustic sounds. I literally always use the LuxeVerb on FL Studio. It’s an amazing reverb plugin and the best part is that it gives me a lot of room to work with because there are a lot of different parameters to tweak to my liking, and I haven’t really found another reverb plugin to match LuxeVerb.

Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?

I’ve been listening to Meltt for quite some time and I love their sound. I discovered them from their song “Only in Your Eyes”. They have a consistent dreamy sound and crisp drums which really click with me for some reason.

How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?

I have grown to write from both personal and fictonal situations. I like to blend both because it feels too personal when I completely write it from experience. Blending fiction also gives me more freedom to shape the sound and progression of a song.

What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?

I hope listeners take a sense of honest reflection. My goal isn’t necessarily make people happy or sad, but to create a space for me and them to sit with their own thoughts. I love the idea of someone listening to a song of mine and thinking about their own memories or something important to them. Even though I do this as an emotional outlet, I also love the idea of being able to make an impact in someone in any way.

 What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?

Nothing is as simple as it looks from outside. The days I do reverse engineer a song, I always discover something small in the background which isn’t audible for the casual listener. A small arp, a simple quiet guitar melody in the background etc. A casual listener wouldn’t hear or distinguish it but when you take only one of them out of the instrumental, most of the time it takes the life out of the beat.

What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?

I’ve never imagined myself performing at a specific venue. Sometimes I imagine a small intimate place where you can actually feel the quietness of the audience, other times I think of a big stage with a huge audience. My dream is just to find a space to share my music to other people how have come around and appreciate my work.

If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?

I really like Charlie Puth’s work. The way he blends his vocals and harmonies resonates with me on another level, and it’s the type of mixing I try to achieve. I also love the way he’s interested in the theory and science behind the music. It’d be a really interesting and fulfilling experience to have a collaborate with him.

Where can our listeners follow and support your music? (Website,Spotify, IG, links)

I have social media accounts on Instagram, TikTok and an artist page on YouTube:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nottalha4/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nottalha4 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nottalha433

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0lT8YELPZz9GPYW6lUejfi?si=7ySu1-ElSiC7vmy2qxQWeg 

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/tr/artist/talha/1807719062 

I haven’t been that active recently but I plan on returning with my upcoming album.

Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?

I’d love to have a small but steady audience that I could interact and share my stuff with. I’m not talking millions for now. A few hundred or a thousand would mean the world to me.

What do you hope listeners will discover about you along the way?

I hope listeners discover that there is a lot of intentionality behind my music. Being an engineering student, I’m getting used to looking at, understanding, and adapting the way things are built and I bring the same focus to my music. Every layer and every effect is there to serve the mood. Beyond that, I hope my listeners see that I’m not just one thing. People expect engineers to be purely logical but I’d like to show them the more reflective, human side of me through these songs. I’m just a guy trying to make sense of the same old memories and “what ifs” that most people if not everyone have, and I hope people can find a piece of their own stories in my songs.