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Who is Madison Park? “Hindsight” on the Seoul based DJ making waves for Women in South Korea

May 18, 2019

In Seoul, one could easily say that the industry for DJ’s is predominantly male. Because of this, many female artists aspiring to produce, write, or DJ are easily discouraged into pursuing this career path for themselves, mainly because they can’t envision themselves in that role. Producer and DJ, Madison Park had music ingrained in her since she was a child, and now she’s making the most of that earned talent and paving paths for young women everywhere that want to pursue the same dream.

We asked how she defined herself and her music, “20-year-old music producer, pianist and a DJ based in Seoul, South Korea. My music doesn’t necessarily fit into the typical “EDM DJ” music since I love incorporating lots of different elements from different genres” she goes on to discuss her latest single, ‘better w/o you’, “ has an RnB and Pop influenced vocal, with a future bass drop, and a heavy melodic bass. Also, every time I start a new idea, I circle back to Piano first instead of jumping right into the production, thanks to my long history of classical piano training background.”

Park practically grew up with sheet music, so it only makes sense that it’s how she begins her musical process. From the age of 4 years old, Park had been trained in the art of classical music and taking vocal lessons, specializing in Piano. Being so young and with not too many avenues to pursue, we wanted to know if that was a path she thought she always wanted, or if she had other ideas in mind. “Classical music and film scores were the only types of music I would listen to until I was about 12 years old. It wasn’t as if I never liked other genres, but I just never really had a chance to be exposed to different music styles” she continues on to say,

“It may sound like a stupid excuse, but we didn’t have big music streaming platforms in Korea back then, and I was in fact still computer illiterate haha. But after I heard my first EDM song (Zedd – Clarity) in my Tae-kwon-do gym, that completely changed the type of music I wanted to learn more about and pursue. That moment led me to the world of Youtube, where I was able to learn pretty much anything I ever wanted to listen, watch and learn.” Park goes on to credit her growth in music style to the abundance of viewing opportunities that the platform Youtube was able to bring her. She also credits joining American based app and platform Spotify, which currently is not in service in South Korea, with helping her grow the past 3 years.

We wanted to get to know a little more about Park and her goals for the career she’s cultivated. She started with an eager goal to branch the fan bases in both Asia and America, she plans to regularly update and push out great music. She’s also actively seeking to build the right management team as her foundation for growth and support, something that is especially important for a budding Producer.

Park also says her long term goals consist of “playing at big dance music festivals, going on a world tour and collaborating with big artists that I always looked up to while constantly putting out dope musical and visual content“

Sometimes it takes more than talent, Artists and Producers can rely on trends to keep them moving forward or help them go viral. It can be difficult to avoid being swept up in the trends, especially when there are so many producers trying to rise above the hype and struggle to keep up. We asked Madison how she felt about keeping to her original sound even when it may be easier to go another route. “I just make things that sound good to my ears, and that’s the only checklist that I care about. I think anybody’s artistic work become less and less original once they compromise their own standards. It doesn’t mean you have to completely not care or intentionally go around it, but constantly asking yourself ‘what can I do to make myself more happy with my work’ is more of a guaranteed way to stay original and stick to your true self.”

We got to know a bit more about what inspires her, and what proves to be the most challenging part of her process.

“I get inspired by a lot of things but film scores and boy choir music inspire me a lot these days.” She continues to reiterate the importance of starting at her roots, with her piano or keyboard, when brainstorming. “I believe making great melodies and chord progressions is the most important step of the process. If the melodies are not good, the track will never sound good no matter what kind of production magic you do to it. The next important, but also the most challenging step, is finding the right vocalist for the track. I think this is especially harder for artists like me who are not yet signed to a major management agency that would normally help their artists link up with different connections to complete their projects. But, I also got very lucky with my personal friends and business connections that I made through social media and by living in L.A. for a while, so I currently get a lot of help finding different singers to feature on my tracks from them.”

Park collaborated most recently with vocal artist Who is Fiction for her track “Hindsight“, Fiction was the co-writer for K-Pop artist Tiffany Young’s charting single “Born Again“. Park has also partnered up again with the artist for her newest single “better w/o you” which will have its music video drop this upcoming Friday, May 24th.

We received an early look at the music video debuting next Friday with Park and Fiction, and personally, I was rather engulfed into the track.

Taking a more nostalgic route than prior track “Hindsight,” the song invokes a kind of scene within you, you can genuinely feel the lyrics and the movement of the song takes you somewhere distant. Listening to “better w/o you” makes you have to relate, the climaxes are the fights and the melody invokes that feeling of dismissing feelings you pushed aside up to that point. The end of the song hits you hard with realizations and if you didn’t feel it with the audio you definitely get the picture with the visuals. This song took me back to a plethora of scenarios, and to feel and visualize things from simple audio, prior to even seeing the music video, just stands to prove that Madison Park has big things coming, this is only the start.

Follow Madison Park on her Social Media channels for first looks at her music

SoundCloud | Instagram | Youtube | Spotify

Interview by: Allie Norado