Penny Fusion band members Jonas Maya and Sebastian White describe how they met, how their band started and what type of music they produce.
Maya and White talk about their first album they released titled "These Days," and how the album came to be. White delves into how it felt to release their first album and reflects upon it. They share what ASU facilities they use to produce their songs and how they use their dorm as a studio.
They also discuss the difficulties of preforming live and the advantages of recording in studio, then shares his hopes for the future of the band.
Jonas Maya: [00:00:04] Bash and I met in middle school. We've had a band since late 2014 under about five different names. I think one was like a third wheel...but Penny Fusion wasn't a thing until 2017. And we didn't make an album or any songs until the next year. So, Penny Fusion has been around for like a year and a half now.
Sebastian White: [00:00:26] The kind of music we make is alternative rock/indie music. We're now leaning more towards indie, and we're getting a little bit softer with the tone especially with my vocals. The music is a lot more slow. We do have some fast paced tempo songs out there because we don't have a full on band yet. We have vocals and guitar, and every other instrument that's in our songs is put in through the software, especially our drums which come from keyboard. It all goes into the mixing software, Logic Pro X and that's what we use.
Sebastian White: [00:01:04] Our first album that we made here at ASU was actually our album "These Days." It was our first album we really felt comfortable with.
Jonas Maya: [00:01:12] "These Days" was actually made pretty quickly, just a few months. Before we made the album we the band had been lying dormant for a year or so. During the semester of spring 2018, we were thinking "Let's make some more music." So real quick we got on a few singles, I think it took us two or three weeks to write each song. We wanted to get something out like as soon as possible. The entire thing took few months at the most. It's kind of rushed but I think it turned out pretty well.
Sebastian White: [00:01:47] When we first released these days, it was amazing. I was very proud of what our band produced. I look back at it now, I know there's mistakes within the album. And I know it's not perfect. But, when I look back at it I'm still proud of what we've made.
Jonas Maya: [00:02:13] We extensively used the ASU best hall piano rooms. I find that fake pianos on software sounds really pretty bad in the context of our songs. Other than that we used one of their concert halls at the School of Music.
Sebastian White: [00:02:34] We actually used my dorm as a studio. We are loud but we try to keep it down during the day and night.
Jonas Maya: [00:02:41] The thing about playing through this music is that, a lot of it is hard to recreate in the real life setting because there's so many different effects and layers in it. It's hard because we get as many takes as we want to on our songs because we're in the studio. We can do the same guitar part 20 times so we get it perfect, and that's why the songs sound the way they do. So if we're doing it live we only get one. So we have to rehearse a whole lot. Me personally, I want to see Penny Fusion become a live performance band. Right now we're just in the studio but we haven't played any live shows yet. I would like to see us go on tour and play a few shows. Be on the lookout because I think that's going to become a thing really soon.
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