DARK TR0JAN

Artist Bio

Hi, I'm Ethan (aka DARK TR0JAN). I'm a pianist, composer and music producer from Manchester in the UK. I play entirely by ear and have never learned to read music.

I started out by playing video game OSTs from games that inspired me, such as Octopath Traveler and Zelda Ocarina of Time. I've always been drawn to the catchy melodies and beautiful instrumentation in those soundtracks and love trying to recreate the full orchestral productions on a single piano.

My journey into looping started when I found a video of Frank Tedesco on YouTube where he was playing piano on Omegle taking requests. After watching him take a few piano pieces I saw him switch it up and build a full track in front of my eyes in a matter of seconds and then brought in a synth lead on a Roland Fantom and Korg Kronos. As soon as he started ripping through fast improvisation licks, I got the chills and couldn't stop rewatching it with my mind blown. I immediately opened up Cubase - which didn't have great looping tools - and, with great difficulty, tried to recreate what I'd just seen. After some digging, I found that Frank used an RC-505 looper and discovered a whole community of loopers and beatboxers who were using it to build full tracks live. I picked one up not long after, and that was the start of my looping journey.

These days, the MPC Key 61 is the brain of my setup, looping and sequencing both MIDI and audio and integrating all of my gear while I build tracks from scratch.