Sophomore produces trance, electronic as 'Atlas'

By Joanne Santomauro

Sophomore Raymond Jacob, also known as Atlas, is fresh on the Santa Clara music scene as one of the campus' hottest local producers.

Jacob composes original dubstep/electronic/trance tracks and performs at various parties and other Santa Clara events, like LoveJones.

Hailing from San Antonio, Texas, Jacob took both drum lessons and piano lessons when he was in elementary school.

However, by middle school he had quit the school band and stopped pursuing music. He didn't develop a real interest in creating music until sophomore year of high school.

"By this time, I hadn't been playing drums because I quit band in middle school, and I had quit piano in elementary school, so basically, I had been starting from scratch," said Jacob.

"I sat at the piano and was like, ‘I really like this instrument'… I started playing and thought, ‘Hey, I could be good at this.'"

By senior year, Jacob began writing songs on his computer.

"Looking back now, what I was doing then was so rudimentary, but it was the rawest form of music you could make," he said. "Recording yourself, over and over, layering sounds, just trying to make a song."

When he arrived at Santa Clara, Jacob knew he wanted to be a music minor and a business major, with the realized hope of becoming a music producer.

"I try to feel out whatever music I'm digging at the time and recreate it as my own style," said Jacob.

Other than his lessons in elementary school, Jacob hadn't received any formal music instruction until his freshman year at Santa Clara.

"I've just had a year of formal music schooling, but the ear's always been there," said Jacobs "You give me a guitar, I mean I can't really play guitar – but I can play that guitar, I can figure it out pretty easily."

In fact, Jacob produces most of his music by ear.

"After having the knowledge of music theory, circle of fifths, all that, I [can] play jazz, some contemporary stuff, but it's still all off the dome – I can't sight read, I need to learn a piece of music to play it, it's all by ear," Jacob said. "That's just one outlet. My true outlet is performing live electronic stuff, so that's when producing comes in. I've spent the last year and a half learning producing techniques. I had to learn, from scratch, how to make dubstep, how to make the wobble noise."

That's right — producer, not DJ. Jacob chortled.

"People refer to me as a DJ; I haven't spun a [single] record in my life," he said. "I don't even know how. People are like, ‘Yo, you wanna come spin at this party?' And I say, ‘I mean, sure…I'll play.' The equipment I use doesn't even allow me to play other people's music. If you hear a bass drum, that's because I put it in there. All the samples are controlled by hand."

Jacob's inspirations include Derek Vincent Smith, the electronic music artist also known as "Pretty Lights." Smith inspired Jacob to expand his music through using the monome, an electronic instrument that uses a lit grid to visually represent different sounds, allowing artists to gain fuller control of their samples. Interesting enough, there are only 2,500 monomes in the world — Jacob won a monome through an e-mail offer, in which the manufacturers released 50 limited edition monomes. Jacob was fortunate enough to score one of the rare instruments; they were sold out in an hour.

Additionally, Jacob finds inspiration from Dr. Dre, hip-hop and rap. His brother attended Santa Clara while he was in high school, and served as Jacob's link to the world of electronic music.

"Where I'm from, everyone's into Texas rap," he said. "I was the guy in high school that listened to crazy, different music… back then [electronic music] was so new.

Jacob is also using his music to reach people.

In Texas, Jacob played a song at the Promise Ball, an event designed to raise money for juvenile diabetes research.

As a Type 1 diabetic himself, Jacob wrote a song, and performed it alongside a children's choir.

"My music's not sad music, you know. I want to instill good feelings," said Jacob. "I'm only about good energy."

Along with the occasional party gig, Atlas will be performing at various local venues. On Tuesday, Jacob played live on the KSCU radio station.

When asked to describe his favorite dubstep sound, Jacob responded, "That really grimy, bassy, slap-you-in-the-face-with-it ‘womp, womp, womp.'

"If I could describe my music [in a few words] it'd be ambient, trance, with a lot of wobble… it's raw."

Contact Joanne at jsantomauro@scu.edu or at (408) 551-1918.