To some students, music is the foundation of their lives. Being able to record and produce their own music is what inspires them.

Senior Kai McGarry, who has recently come out with an album on Spotify, explains his relationship with music.

“I’ve always just had a natural love of music, it’s just everything to me,” McGarry said. “I’m dedicated. On a weekend, I wake up at 8am to record. That’s all I do. Everything in my life revolves around music.”

Junior Max Fierro, who sings and plays guitar, gets his motivation to play music from something else.

“My whole family is really into music, and I’m around it all the time, so that’s what inspired me [to start making music],” Fierro said.

Junior Lukas Isenberg, who produces beats, gives insight on how long it could take to become good at creating beats.

“Those first few months of learning it, I was on [the site I use to create beats] for six hours a day just trying my best to make beats sound right,” Isenberg said. “Now I could probably make a good beat in an hour. It used to take me eight hours to make a super good one.”

McGarry’s process of practicing instruments takes a similar amount of effort before he’s ready to come out with a song.

“You have to practice so much that you don’t want to do it anymore,” McGarry said. “Even when you don’t want to [practice] you have to motivate yourself to do it, that is the only way it’s going to work out. I mean I practice for like six hours a day probably. I go home and record until like 9 or 10 pm. That’s all I do.”

Junior Sienna Suderman, who plays many instruments along with singing, explains how it feels when her songs are finished.

“It’s just fun to see everything get put together and listen to it at the end,” Suderman said. “It’s satisfying to see it all come together.”

But there’s more that interests students than just playing instruments or singing. Isenberg explains one perk of being a producer.

“Being able to have something that other people want but they can’t have [is cool],” Isenberg said. “I can just gatekeep [the songs] and think to myself, ‘Nobody else has this song except for me.’”

All of these musicians draw inspiration from many different sources, for some it could be bands they really enjoy or their specific genre. According to Isenberg, his greatest source of inspiration is his favorite music genre: opium rap.

“The style of music that I produce is kind of blowing up right now,” Isenberg said. “That whole subgenre of rap is going pretty viral.”

Isenberg details the effort that is needed to create beats.

“You have to be willing to put in the time for [making music],” Isenberg said. “There’s a lot of time that goes into producing.”