“It’s kinda crazy, right?” asks Nicolas Hicks, 20, who is better known as a music producer, Illusion X. “Everybody is doing it, young and old. Back in the day, the youngest person you might find, was like 15 year olds but now it’s kinda getting crazy, seeing 13 year olds getting into it,” he adds.
It’s a strange outlook when one considers the fact that Hicks himself was only 12 when he began producing beats.
As he was about to embark on his high school journey, the music production enthusiast found his joy in creating melodies that would soon become a favourite for some across the world and more specifically in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and, of course, his home country, Guyana.
“It started in 2012,” Hicks told Stabroek Weekend at his home, where he has a mini-studio set up for his production and uploading to his YouTube channel, where he has over 44,000 subscribers.
Recounting his journey as Illusion X, he said that as a child he was always interested in music and he did not let his lack of knowledge deter him from exploring the world of beat producing. He explained that he ended up teaching himself how to do it. “It was a self-taught process. I would just sit down and make the beats for fun and I would send them to my cousins for their input,” he said.
His skills soon developed and were not a secret for long after he started creating beats. Full of curiosity about beat producing and wanting to share his love with the world, he said he got the idea to create a YouTube channel. “I would talk to my friends and persons I would send my music to [just to listen]… they kinda like pushed that idea and I was like, okay, I could try it,” he explained.
And so just three years after he started the process of learning to make beats, he created a YouTube channel, where he uploads his work. In 2014, when the channel started, he would make his beats then one of his cousins would make templates for the track which he would then upload. He added that he would make his own art sometimes too because he enjoyed doing it. As he paused from speaking, he proceeded to show this reporter his current YouTube banner and profile picture, which he said were created by one of his friends. On the banner, his trademark “ILX” can be seen above art work which, he says is usually similar to each other.
On November 23, 2015, Illusion X uploaded a video on to his YouTube channel. At the time, he thought nothing of this video and only found it to be funny but, in time, it became his most viewed video on the channel. The “Best Day Ever remix” video, is a composition of Illusion X’s beats, which he specifically created for the song, which is featured in the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon.
While sitting at his home studio, he shared his thoughts about the video and even about the making of it. It had its genesis in a Vine video based on the SpongeBob song for which he made the instrumentals. “I was with my cousins when I heard it and I turned to them and said, “I should probably remix this, this would sound funny.” At the time, he explained that his cousin was the editor behind many of his videos. “I did the song, then I sent it to my editor (at the time) and he uploaded the video onto my Soundcloud. My cousin then edited it (made it a video) and I uploaded it to my channel,” Hicks recalled.
He then explained that at the time his YouTube channel was not as popular as it is now as he would only get a minimal amount of views although that never bothered him because he thought of the channel as just ‘fun.’ However, that YouTube video changed everything. “…I uploaded the video on YouTube and that stuff just snap,” he said, snapping his fingers as emphasised the astounding results of the YouTube video. “On the first week 10,000 views, I was like ‘What is happening?!’” he said, with an elated expression took over his face as he reminisced on his excitement about his burgeoning YouTube career.
The Best Day Ever video has gained over 7 million views on YouTube and keeps gaining more views every day.
Working with his mood
Hicks noted that with the YouTube channel it is easier for people to reach out to him because he sees comments every day and even receives emails and fan stories. “One of the comments on my Best Day Ever upload…a teacher actually commented and she said that they actually use the song to play for the children… like during recess, they play the song for the children,” he said.
Producing, Hicks pointed out, has always been a “low-key” endeavour as those who make the beats are often overlooked. “When you hear a song, right, you don’t think about the producer who made the beat, you just think about the artist. So back in the day I would just go deeper into it. Like I would ask who made this beat,” he said.
Giving insight into his process for creating beats, Hicks said he starts with the melody over drums. “I know what I want to do first. Sometimes I vibe with the drums first too…it’s all about how I’m feeling. I work with my mood,” he said. “If I’m feeling a certain way, I’ll make a beat to go with that mood. It’s like an artist, how the person feels that will set their mood for what they will draw.”
He also said that the process is very time consuming. “Music is like an everyday thing. If I work on a song now, I might not finish it today because another idea might come up but I always return and finish it,” he said as he mentioned that because of the long process and many distractions, he often finishes projects in two weeks and other times, two months.
Finally, the YouTuber said that when he started producing, his family thought it was just a hobby. “My mother… she thought it was more of a hobby ’til it got serious. My family is of an older tradition. If it’s not paying off they don’t respect it. But now they respect it because it pays off,” he noted.
He is more proud rather than happy because he did not plan to make music for anything other than for recreational reasons but now his music is recognised by people from across the globe.
After pointing out that a lot of younger children are trying to compile their own beats, he said that when persons reach out to him to do collaborations, it stuns him after hearing some of their ages. “It amazes me, it’s a mixed age group, sometimes they are young, like my age and other times they are even older than me and they’re just reaching out… just trying to support,” he said.
Hicks also mentioned that he would like to do music composition for films or video games someday and has a surprise that he would like to keep under wraps for his fans.
As for advice, Hicks said that persons who want to try beat producing should go for it. “It’s a game of chance. Just go for it. It was not always big. There was a time when people didn’t know about what I was doing and I didn’t think the music was going to make it big. But if you want it, you got to know it’s going to be time consuming but if you want it enough, you got to be consistent,” he said.
