This week on Local Music Monday WUKY's Debraun Thomas profiles Electronica Artist, Jon Dose.
Jon Dose is a native of Lexington who got his start playing music in high school. His grandparents encouraged him to take music seriously and sent him to the Lexington School for Recording Arts located at Long Island Recording Studios. Dose says he was able to take advantage of the opportunity by putting in extra work and asking lots of questions.
“But if you just go in and you just do the test and you just, you know, do the basic thing and you get through it, you get a little bit, but if you actually sit down with the engineer and watch him work and ask why that frequency was cut, I would even have him do things like write me a diagram about like every instrument, I’d be like ‘so what frequencies are you usually boosting and cutting in like a kick drum, to a snare, to a hi hat to everything’ and he would just write me out charts and that’s how I like memorized all that I guess.”
His knowledge of sound engineering has paid off. Dose has been in several bands over the years, but more recently he’s been performing his own electronic music. As an artist, Dose doesn’t like to plan very much out and would rather things happen organically. He says this comes out most when he’s in the studio writing songs.
“I really don’t ever go into the studio being like ‘hey, I’m going to make a banger’ like, I don’t really do that, I just sit down and make whatever comes out, sometimes it comes out at a higher tempo, sometimes it comes out as a banger, sometimes it comes out as some super lowdown like, smooth R&B stuff, like I never force myself to ever make a genre, I just sit down and just make whatever comes out because that’s what I feel is most natural and most easy in the moment, that’s what’s supposed to be being made, you know.”
In 2013, Dose teamed up with local electronica artist Chuck Moreland to create the band Adaboi. Dose originally played keyboards in the group, but more recently has switched to drums. Having a band like Adaboi is something Dose says is another artistic outlet he doesn’t get when he’s doing his solo material.
“It’s a completely different thing, when I make a track and produce it, I’m proud of it when I go play it, you know, cause I made that and spent so much time on it, but when you can write a song and then go step on stage with three people and reproduce that perfectly, that’s a whole new feeling, it just brings more energy to the stage and that’s really what I like, I like to play live music, I like to watch the crowd react more, you get the reaction between musicians and like you get to jam a little bit, you end up in places you didn’t know you’d be, that’s the fun of it to me.
Jon Dose performs solo and with the band Adaboi. Dose will be performing with Adaboi on March 5th at Cosmic Charlies. More information about Dose can be found here.
