Exposed Vocals Interviews Solanis

Solanis was created by Diogo Gama, a composer born and raised in Portugal. He first studied guitar for 2 years, but a few years later he decided to start playing piano. Without any formation, Diogo started creating his own music.
He started to think about the project around July of 2015, but the first song was only released on November of the same year. The project was inspired by is favourite artists Thomas Bergersen and Tuomas Holopainen.
The name Solanis derivates from the word sun, and comes from personal tastes like gods, mythology, space and the sea.
Diogo studied sound, and had even created two soundtracks during that time, creating the whole music and all the sounds present on it.
Since then, he still creates music and sees no end to it.

 

Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?

I was born in Viseu, Portugal, and lived at least half of my life in Mangualde, a little city in Portugal. I studied guitar for almost 2 years, and some time later, I moved to Lisbon. There I decided to create the project Solanis. I became an artist and have created this project, because above all things, I love to compose. I discovered that when I made all the songs and sounds for an audiobook. Since that day, I’ve started to think about Solanis, and step by step, with a lot of time, I started to publish my work on the internet.

Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?

The name Solanis is based on most of my personal tastes, for mythology, space, the sea, fantasy and all around that kind of subjects. The name was raised first inspired by the sun, because of my passion for the space, after thinking a little and talking about that with my girlfriend, thinking of character names that we have created on video games, it turned to be Solanis.

Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?

I think that sharing music online is very important for the artist, to get people watching their work, to keep that fans, because today everything works around the internet, then it ends to be the best “space” for sharing work. If I give my music for free? It’s relative. Every artist wants to sell his work, it’s true we’re making something we like but we need money to keep that hobby. In that case, it’s normal we want to earn some money with the music, it’s our job, but sometimes it’s also important that maybe we need to lose money, to get in the world of music, such as, if someone use one of my musics on YouTube, I don’t mind they use it, I just want them to leave the description with all the information about my work. That’s what I ask.

Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?

I’m still at the beginning of the project, anyhow I had other projects in the past. The first tip is to never, but never give up, the begging of this business it’s always terrible. This kind of things take time. The second advice it’s to always publish what you can, and ask your friends to publish your things creating a chain of people, getting the word all around, I think that’s the best.

Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?

I’m used to get inspiration from a second to another. It’s not that there is anything in special that inspires me. Sometimes I’m just doing something random, and I get some ideas, I try to remember them, so later I can try to record it.

Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?

Yes, I do have a website, wich you can visit on this link:
And also have Twitter and Facebook, where you can follow me either.

Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?

I would use the money to travel, that’s for sure! Visit some countries, having time to see the most I can, basically it would be that. I don’t have great plans to use my money besides the music.

Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?

Social networks. I try to share the best I can my work on Twitter and Facebook, hoping to get something in return.

Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?

At the moment, I don’t have any ideas or intentions for a new project, pretending to keep Solanis, always sharing musics on the YouTube, but who knows if tomorrow I wouldn’t have a new idea or maybe even an album, but that would be probably only for 2017 or 2018. It’s still something that I have to think about.

Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?

If I wasn’t creating music, I would be probably studying Sound Design to get to work on the making of sounds for cinema or video games. For me, I’m fine with the music business.

Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?

I try to define timetables for everything, trying to separate working time with music working time. Things are going right until now, and I still have some free time to rest and think about bigger projects, maybe one day an album.

Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in 2016?

For 2016 you may expect more work from me on my YouTube, and maybe something more. Who knows what I have to show?