Shawn Wasabi has taken creativity to the next level. Using his custom-made Midi Fighter 64, Wasabi shows that music is all around us. Today, Wasabi drops his highly anticipated debut album MANGOTALE which timely releases during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Wasabi has produced nearly the entire project on his laptop showcasing his musical range from sound design protégé to pop producer. Each track on the album has a correlated cartoon character from Mango Island whom create Wasabi’s personal utopia. We had a special opportunity to speak with the incredibly talented producer.
Pass The Crown: How did the record “The Snack That Smiles Back” come about? (Does it have any underlying correlation to the Goldfish commercial “The Snack That Smiles Back”?) Also, how did you create the sound in the bridge?
We started and finished the whole song while playing Fortnite. It’s a “mouth trumpet”! I took a voice memo of my friend Brandon Colbein who co-wrote the song with us. He was singing that melody with his impersonation of a trumpet and I just recorded on my phone and threw it in the Ableton Live project!
Is there a particular lyric you are most proud of within the album? What is it?
I’m proud of so many of the lyrics in the songs. Snack and Halo Halo are the two songs I really dug into the most in the writing process. I’m proud of just how much we were able to fit into Snack from start to finish. “I’m gonna be the snack that smiles back” is the most fun way of saying “I’m going to overcome my social anxiety and shyness and unapologetically reciprocate the feelings you’ve been showing me.” And the whole song is about that. Big love to my friends Hollis, Raychel, and Brandon Colbein who co-wrote that song with me. We didn’t waste any lines or melodies.
The production is inspired by the Motown records I loved as a kid. It was the fun stuff in my mother’s CD collection.
Which song took the longest to produce? What was that process like?
“tokyo tea” and “HALO HALO” both started in 2016! I was going through files on an old computer and stumbled upon the demo gemel and I made shortly around the time of Burnt Rice. “HALO HALO” was started around the time of otter pop.
What was the most creative/unusual instrument or sound you used within the album?
“tokyo tea” was heavily produced using the Elektron Monomachine! I bought one in 2015 because I was a huge fan of SOPHIE who uses the synthesizer heavily in her work.
I have an hour long recording of me twisting knobs and pressing buttons on this “sound generator” thing, and that recording is what I chopped up and started “tokyo tea” with.
Gemel recorded her vocal on the phone outside walking around with cars passing by. Honestly so much of the process for making that song was vocal production surgery and audio manipulation! I’m glad it sounds GREAT though.
From an emotional standpoint, how do you hope your listeners feel after listening to MANGOTALE?
everyone who listened to the album has told me they’ve replayed it a bunch of times. There’s so many things and steps to what I want listeners to get out of the project, but the most important out of all that is - is it good? do you like it? does it slap?
The other stuff for MANGOTALE I have planned is a secret! But I’ll get to the rest of it soon enough.
The Midi Fighter 64 is a piece of equipment you use. Can you share the story of how it was created?
Shawn Wasabi: Yeah, I was nineteen at the time and I had a friend in San Francisco who had a 3D printer. 3D printing was popping off then and he’s a super smart engineer. I wrote down what I wanted him to build and over the course of about a year, he put it together. Using the 3D printer and a bunch of his electrical engineering and coding skills we made the prototype for the Midi Fighter 64. It’s pretty much my bread and butter nowadays. I make music on that. I perform on it and I’ve always had it with me since then.
I’ve heard you’ve sold them before.
Yeah, we did a production run of about a thousand.
On a fundamental level, how does the Midi Fighter 64 work?
It is basically a controller. I have my music production software on my computer. There’s no music on the Midi-Fighter itself, it's just a controller with buttons. It sends messages to your computer and triggers specific sounds.
So, each button has a correlated sound?
Yeah, you program it yourself. When I do mine, I map out a sound for each button individually and I map out a correlated light pattern. You can choose what sound you want on a particular cell. You can even use it to play video games or use it to play visuals. I use it for making music.
That is so unique. It reminds me of a video gaming system.
It’s based off of the Street Fighter controller from back in the day. People would have these big controllers with arcade buttons and a joystick. We basically made it a musical instrument.
And you remember each button’s correlated sound?
It’s like typing on a keyboard, when you do it for a while you don’t have to look at the keyboard to know what you’re typing.
Right, it’s just intuitive.
Yeah, like second nature. I know it like the back of my hand.
Do you have a favorite sample?
I have so many. I always switch out samples every now and then. At least now I’ve been sampling my Nintendo Switch. There’s this cardboard piano you can build using the Nintendo Switch called the Nintendo Labo™ and it has a really cool assortment of sounds inside the game. So I’ve been playing with the cardboard piano and making little tunes on it.
“Lemons” has a great array of sounds within it. I love it. How did the track come to fruition?
Thank you. I’m glad you love that song. My songwriting mentor, Justin Tranter, opened up a studio in West Hollywood and “Lemons” was the first song we made there with Kennedi. I was hearing this music in my head that was really catchy. It felt like a 90’s sitcom or a game show type beat. Kennedi got to the session and she really wanted to write a song about this person she had a crush on. We sat down and talked it over, you know how do you get your feelings out in such a way that feels expressive and feels artful? We started getting ideas down and Kennedi wrote this chorus that goes “I think she’s kinda ugly.” She didn’t mean to say that, but it just happened to be the perfect amount of syllables and it rolls off the tongue so well, so we went with it.
When I was producing the track, I was just playing around on the keyboard and putting in really cool sounds that I was hearing in my head that day. It’s a really fun song. It’s super upbeat and very happy. From the start, it probably took less than an hour to put together.
The whole bridge of that song is just Kennedi ranting while I left the mic on. I don’t remember what she said but it’s literally in the song, that whole part after the second chorus. It was so raw and real. It was an actual moment.
I love that approach. It comes across as very authentic.
Yeah, thank you. We didn’t think much of it. I remember we were listening to it probably a month later and we were like, “This song is so good. We should put this out.”
You’re signed to the publishing half of Justin Tranter’s Facet Records. How did that happen and what’s it like being mentored by a successful songwriter like himself.
Justin is the best songwriter in the world to me. He discovered me on Facebook. He was scrolling on Facebook one day and he saw one of my videos pop-up on his timeline. He then sent me a private message saying, “Hey, I’m the songwriter for Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” and Selena Gomez “Good For You.” Which are two songs I love and Justin said, “I’d love to work with you in the studio and make a song with you.” So, this is back in March of 2017. I worked with Justin for the first time and right off the bat Justin and I made this really cool song. It was the most fun I’d ever had making a song at that time in my life. Justin would put me into a room with people I would be super intimidated to work with, like people way above my caliber. But I would figure things out on the spot and I’d learn things really quickly watching Justin write and interact with pop artists. I’ve picked up a lot from Justin. I learned that pop songwriting is just having fun and not necessarily trying too hard to make music.
I feel like that’s the best way to learn.
Yeah, there’s no secret techniques or anything. It’s super simple and it’s so much more of a confidence thing. You realize that songwriting is not super overly complicated, it’s just having conversations and figuring out what words would fit into a song. You learn that from seeing one of the best songwriters in the world.
What do you think differentiates Justin Tranter from others? How is he able to capture moments so perfectly?
It’s knowing how to be a therapist to pop stars. Once you talk to someone and pick specific things from the conversation that would sound good in the song—that’s pretty much it. Also, when you’re working with a great person, it helps the collaborative process so much. You feel cared for and appreciated. You can talk freely without being judged. Feeling like you’re in a safe space to say what’s on your mind really helps the songwriting process.
What’s next for you?
When lock down first happened I would stay in bed all day and then there was a point where I was like I want to work on music again. I just grinded really hard on this project and I’m super proud of it. I love all the music on it. It’s called Mangotale. There’s a bunch of stuff on there that’s really cool and I can’t wait for people to hear it.
Listen to Mangotale on all streaming platforms!
Watch the visualizer to “MEDICINE” (feat. Tia Scola) below.