What started as a spark of curiosity has grown into an eight-year music journey for ASU music artist AJ Schinco, who is preparing to release his second album this December. From a young age, Schinco was thrown into music lessons and learned how to play the piano, guitar, flute and clarinet.
“I ended up teaching myself how to play songs by ear, and after that it snowballed,” Schinco said.
One day, he recalls opening his mom’s computer to use GarageBand, wondering what it was like to create his own music. Schinco said he started messing around with the app's different beats and controls to test out various sounds and compilations.
“Before I knew it, I was 15, 16, making actual songs, writing, singing them, producing them, recording them all in my bedroom,” Schinco said.
By 17, Schinco had released his debut album “Venice” in October 2023 with tracks all created by himself. It has 14 songs, spanning a total of 54 minutes.
Schinco is a sophomore at ASU’s Popular Music Program on the downtown Phoenix campus. He already knew how to produce and make music, but could never figure out how to mix and master, so he said attending school was the perfect opportunity to learn while also getting the college experience.
“Progression-wise, I haven’t progressed that far, but I am a lot farther than I was before college,” Schinco said.
According to Schinco, his first album served as an introduction to his artistic foundations, with meaningful songs he created at a young age. He likes to refer to the album as homemade.
“It’s a very juvenile record,” Schinco said. “It’s a compilation of music that I made starting when I was 14, and the last one I made, I was freshly 17.”
Now, he wants to play with genres and do everything to design a variety of different beats and music.
“I get bored just sitting in one genre. I have to keep it fresh, keep it exciting, and challenge myself,”
Schinco said.
The first thing Schinco does when he starts to make something new is figure out the instrumentals and produce the backtrack of the song. He then toplines, which involves writing lyrics over the instrumentals and deciding what sounds good and what does not.
“It’s a lot, but I like doing it,” Schinco said.
Schinco is very particular about what a song sounds like, which he says can make it difficult and frustrating at times to finalize tracks and keep on time with projected release dates. However, creating songs from scratch takes a lot of work and commitment, which Schinco says not many people are able and willing to do on their own.
“I see myself being my own recording, producing artist with a fan base, but also helping other artists with their work,” Schinco said.
The end goal for Schinco involves touring across the country, continuing to create music on his own but with a bigger team with his same visions.
Coming from a small town in Omaha, Nebraska, Schinco said he performs at small venues and events to promote his music but also to simply enjoy doing what he loves most.
Ideally, Schinco said he wants to expand the industry so that small artists like him are able to be successful in their hometowns rather than having to uproot their lives and move to big cities like Los Angeles and New York.
For now, Schinco continues to attend classes at ASU and work on his next album, “2005,” which is set to be released this December. Schinco said this album is 80s synth-pop-inspired, all created by himself, with a more evolved and grown version of his previous music.
Schinco’s music can be found on Instagram, Apple Music and Spotify.