The world of music production has opened senior Julian Mendez up to a unique outlet of self-expression, and has also given him an abundance of opportunities and connections.

Mendez shares his music on a variety of platforms including Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music. On Spotify, he has gained approximately 45,911 monthly listeners and 666,100 streams over the past year.

The music that Mendez creates falls under genres ranging from hip-hop to pop, and he finds inspiration from all sorts of music.

“I listen to a lot of different types of music, like way different than what I usually make,” Mendez said. “I’ll listen to anything from Taylor Swift to Lil Uzi. Listening to lots of genres kind of lets you take a bit from each genre and make it your own.”

Although it wasn’t originally his intention to start producing music, that quickly changed once his curiosity was piqued.

“I bought the software and everything, and I just kind of started from there,” he said.

The software that Mendez uses to make his music has been an important factor in the development of his skills.

“It’s called a Digital Audio Workstation, and it’s kind of like my main setup,” he said. “I use FL Studio, which a lot of people think you can only use as a beginner, but I stuck with it, and it’s been pretty well consistently. As I got bigger, I added more plug-ins that you can buy and it was good to be able to add on to what I already had.”

After his song, “7 Weeks & 3 Days Remix” blew up on TikTok, Mendez had his first taste of success and is continuing to work on more releases that will expand his discography.

“I’m currently working on a few new tracks that will be released in the next month or two,” he said. “It’s all finished, but it takes a while to put something out because you have to schedule it and things like that for promotions and all that.”

Mendez has gradually gained a large audience for his music, and has received lots of support and motivation from his listeners.

“I hate to say that numbers motivate me, but when I see that people enjoy it, and when I get messages from fans or supporters if you will, it just motivates me to make more,” he said.

The accumulation of so many listeners has been an intriguing experience for Mendez.

“It’s cool, I like to see how when I open up a graph, I can see how many listeners I have each day or how many streams,” he said. “It’s kind of weird because I never visualize the people, I kind of just see a number. It would be interesting to see the amount of people as a whole.”

Mendez’s skills as a music producer have also been applied to school, as music teacher Mr. Steve Fischer has seen his interest grow through music software class.

“As he became more successful and more people began to appreciate his music online, it helped him grow even in the class,” Fischer said. “He seemed to really focused more on producing the music and really try to be more meticulous with what he wanted to have happen in the music.”

In the future, Mendez hopes to improve his skills and expand his knowledge regarding the world of music production through college.

“I like to tell people that music is half the music you put in and half the marketing and business tactics that you use, so a lot of it can apply to any type of business or marketing program, like advertising specifically,” he said. “So, I was thinking of possibly going into something like that.”

The music that Mendez creates has touched many people, notably his closest friends. Senior Elias Vite has been with Mendez from the beginning of his journey as a music producer, and has seen his passion firsthand.

Vite was not aware that Mendez was producing music at first, until one day when his friend showed him that one of his first songs hit 10,000 streams.

“Ever since then, I could tell that it’s been a large part of his life,” Vite said. “Anyone around him sees his passion for it growing each day, especially as he succeeds even more. He’s reached a point that a lot of people dream of, and I’m excited to see him succeed even more.”