Exposed Vocals just sat down with Windsor/Detroit music producer ‘Tesko’

Nikola (aka Tesko) is a music producer from the Windsor/Detroit area. His music has seen support from veteran ill.Gates as well as some of the biggest EDM blogs (Dancing Astronaut, Most Addictive Music). His sound is the result of Progressive Metal influences merging with Electronic Dance music to bring a heavy and melodic vibe. 

Tesko’s remix of ill.Gates & Stephan Jacob’s track “Flying (ft. Jackie Rain)” got live support from ill.Gates and was released through MUTI Music on the official Flying Remixes Album. Additionally, his remix (co-prod. with friends from ALIVE imprint) for “Choppa” by Hi I’m Ghost (Never Say Die, Firepower) won first place through the official remix contest. His newest EP titled “Something Wrong” charted first on the Beatport Dubstep Releases chart and is a collection of his heaviest and most unique songs to date. It is out now on ill. Gates’ label Producer Dojo.

Tesko’s Team is ALIVE imprint, a collective/community focused around good music and an overall strive for greatness. The aim of the imprint is to spread gratefulness and appreciation for life as well as foster a like-minded community. You can join the community on Discord here: bit.ly/aliveimprint

Exclusive Interview with Tesko

Exposed Vocals: What drew you to the music industry?

Tesko: I feel like it was less about the industry than it was just the love I had for playing and creating music. The industry always seemed like something that was necessary to participate in to one day make my passion a career! I guess maybe when I was younger I liked the whole idea of being a Rockstar but it really was always about the creation aspect.

Exposed Vocals: Who are you inspired by?

Tesko: So many people! Everyone at ProducerDojo inspires me like crazy and of course ill.Gates. I got to shout out my friends Squashed Out and Lurking Shadows, they’re killing it right now and they’ve been a big source of inspiration for me. I’m also loving what artists like Ramzoid, Aries, Moonboy, Virtual Riot, Panda Eyes doing. I like YouTube. It’s a good platform for letting your personality shine through and there are so many cool things I wanna do in life in addition to music that I want to include the fans on. Definitely something I’m trying to do more of!

Exposed Vocals: Please explain your creative process

Tesko: It really depends on the song to be honest. It’s pretty different each time and depends a lot on what genre I’m trying to produce. If it’s something more sound design oriented like most electronic music I’ll usually lay down some drums and background FX and then try to come up with some cool sounds to groove on top. I spend a LOT of time on flow. The same way rappers have flow in the way they rap their lyrics, there are different flows in which you can arrange your basses. It’s the right approach to sound design, swing, arrangement, weird sound fx tradeoffs, layering, and so many other aspects. Soltan is a perfect example. Lately I’ve been focused on trying to articulate this idea better and experiment with more unique flows.

90% of the time I start with the Drop/Hook/Chorus/whatever and work my way backwards to the intro or build and then forwards from the first drop. I might stray from that occasionally but that’s my go to.

Exposed Vocals: What’s an average day like for you?

Tesko: It changes all the time over the course of months. Generally I wake up around 10, brush my teeth, shower, cuddle my dogs real quick cause they’re always excited, make breakfast and get coffee. Once I’m home I’ll sit down by my whiteboard and plan out what needs to be done for the day. I’m useless without organization in my life so deciding what I’m going to do for the day is CRUCIAL for me. Some days are more music oriented while others I spend the majority of my day programming. I’m in my last semester of uni for Computer Science so I get school work once in a while and also been experimenting with making software for music/marketing related tasks.

I can have a short attention span sometimes and I’m never short of ideas so generally I’ll hone in on 1-3 things on my to-do list and try to grind those out as quick as I can/for as long as I can. Getting into that flow state is really important and can sometimes take hours so once I get in the groove of things I don’t like to leave. At some point in the day I’ll generally go to the gym for 30-90 mins so I feel like less of a cave-dweller and once I’m back I’ll generally spend the rest of the day/night finishing the rest of my to do list.

Between all that I try to spend time with friends and family when I can. 

I’ll go to bed around 12-2ish and then it’s rinse and repeat the next day. I try to wind down with a book or something before bed just to get my eyes off a computer screen for a while but still keep learning. I read lots of non-fiction primarily self-development, business, marketing, psychology, finances, anything cool

Of course it varies, that’s an ideal day.

Exposed Vocals: Is there a hidden meaning in any of your music?

Tesko: With each song I generally have some sort of concept or story that I’ll base the song off of. Sometimes it’s not as explicit and no one would know without me telling them what I was thinking during the process but coming up with a little story before hand can really help keep the process moving along especially in later stages of the process. For example, “Imminent Doom” was named after I came up with the intro and part of the drop. The orchestral drums gave me a sense of urgency like something crazy was about to go down. The flutes reminded me of the Maya/Aztec tribes’ death whistles and that made me think of the Maya calendar and how the world was supposed to end in 2012. After that the name just kind of came to me and I based the rest of the song off this concept. 

Exposed Vocals: Do you collaborate with others? What is that process?

Tesko: All the time! I’m lucky enough to have an awesome community of friends and we get on Zoom all the time to video call and share/work on music together. I’m probably sitting on like 10 collaborations currently, maybe more. There’s lots with Squashed Out and Lurking Shadows. Got a really cool one coming with Sinnergy.

Zoom makes it super easy to work on music together since you can share screen and direct computer audio so generally I’ll be working on a tune with friends or I’ll sit in on their session and if a cool idea forms someone will be like “dude send that over I’d love to hop on” and generally we’re open about sharing projects with each other. The odd time there’s a track I have a strong idea for and want to finish myself (or likewise for my friends) but usually we’re pretty open to sharing anything with each other since the writing chemistry is so good.

Exposed Vocals: Please discuss how you interact with and respond to fans

Tesko: I try to get back to anyone that reaches out. Especially anyone that I can tell is trying to make a genuine connection. I’ll always reply to insta DM’s. I’ve been trying to find time to create more YouTube videos as well. It’s important to get more of a face-to-face kind of intimacy with fans. We live in such an amazing time where we can do that so might as well take advantage of that.

Exposed Vocals: What is your favorite part about this line of work? Your least favorite? Why?

Tesko: My favorite part about all this is creating something from nothing. I think that’s why I ended up liking software programming so much too. We have one most important finite resource, time, and it feels very satisfying to have something tangible to show it afterwards.

My least favorite part is coming across people who are so obviously only in it for themselves. 

Exposed Vocals: Have you ever dealt with performance anxiety?

Tesko: Of course, I think everyone has. You just got to do it though ya know?

Exposed Vocals: Tell me about your favorite performance venues

Tesko: Probably the time I played a house party show with my old band. Just everything about that night was awesome, I’d definitely love to do more house shows. Any smaller size clubs I love too. I love the intimacy of smaller venues both as a performer and audience member.

Exposed Vocals: What advice would you have for someone wanting to follow in your footsteps?

Tesko: For anything you’re trying to do in life, find a mentor. Someone who is 10x ahead of you in your journey. Find a way to build a genuine relationship with them and help them out. I’d bet any successful person you can think of has had at least one mentor over the course of their life. It’s absolutely crucial and since I’ve started seeking out mentors I’ve become a much more competent music producer and programmer. There are semi big name artists out there who will show you how they produce music and if you’re serious about your craft, saving up $50-100 to spend an hour with them is a no-brainer because it could save you 20 hours of bashing your head off a wall. Money is finite, time is not. People get nervous about the tangible upfront cost only because they aren’t even aware of how much they are shortening their learning curve. You could spend like $400 a month and get 1-2 lessons a WEEK with actual artists who killing it in the music scene right now and it’d still be cheaper than tuition at some music school.

Fan link: https://fanlink.to/TESKO
Social links: https://www.instagram.com/iamtesko

https://www.youtube.com/c/teskomusic

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4ss7lRCRlwjpQ3iIJIATdx
https://soundcloud.com/iamtesko

https://www.facebook.com/iamtesko