Jae Yoon, aka Visionaire, is an up and coming artist from New York City who is known to deliver some hard hitting progressive house and big room tracks. His rise through to notoriety was greatly aided by the fact that Visionaire gave all of his tracks away for free on Soundcloud - which has gained him a loyal following as he uploads new tracks every month. He has garnered recognition from some of the top DJs in the game including Hardwell, W&W, Chuckie, and more. EDM Canada had managed to talk Jae about how he got started, what influenced him, the current state of the big room sound, and much more. Read on and enjoy:
Give us a bit of history of Visionaire.
Visionaire: Me being Asian I had Asian parents obviously and they made me (thankfully) take piano lessons. I hated it at the time, I never felt the music, I never knew why I was doing it, but they made me do it and it was probably one of the best things that has happened in my life (laugh). They also made me take violin lessons and I played trumpet from elementary to high school. I also taught myself guitar and drums. The thing is that I was never actually good at any of these instruments but then being familiar with all sorts of instruments, especially the drums, piano, and violin, producing just came along with it. It was a way for me to put all of my experiences together. When I was 15-16 years old I had gotten my first Macbook and I started fooling around with Garageband. At the time I was really into hip hop so I was producing hip hop for 3-4 years. From Garageband I moved onto Logic, then Reason, then FL Studio, and now I'm at Ableton. 2 years ago I fell in love with house music and from there I completely abandoned hip hop and started making house music only. It was a good thing that I did that because it was then I was just starting to get a fan base. I still remember when I had 67 likes on Facebook, 40 followers on Soundcloud, and asked myself whether it was all a waste of time, but it slowly grew to where it is today. I still have a long way to go but it's a humbling experience to see where I was 2 years ago to where I am today.
You mentioned that you had no real love for music when you were younger - when did you start developing that spark for music in general?
Visionaire: I first fell in love with hip-hop because of the beats, especially the drums. So I taught myself drums and then I started to get into rock n' roll so I taught myself guitar. I was still a huge beat guy, a percussion guy, but it was 2 years ago when I started feeling the melodies like I have never have before. From there I started listening to more melodic songs, even RnB, slow ballads, even classical music. From there I was able to piece it all together.
What was the first track that made you love electronic dance music?
Visionaire: The first house track that I fell in love with was Sydney Samson's “Riverside”, and from there I just started feeling the 4x4 house beat. I then went onto Youtube to find more Dutch house and I found Laidback Luke, Swedish House Mafia, etc. From there I was just listening to more Youtube videos and mixes, I also met DJ Bl3nd, and then I really got into it.
Describe the Visionaire style.
Visionaire: I love melodies and I love beats – so I would say that I love putting orchestral sounds into my tracks. I'd say that it's very big room-electro-house with a drop, and for the breakdowns I'd say that it's very melodic and beautiful I guess. (laughs)
You have an insane Soundcloud page with every track added as a free download, how important is it for your music to reach your fans?
Visionaire: It's everything because it's free downloads that pretty much got me to where I am today. All I care about is that fans have my music, and if they have it, then that's all that really matters. By doing that fans appreciate it and they supported me a lot by sharing my music to others – so it's a win-win situation. So just like that I've kept on building my fan base.
