New Artist Melaku!

My name is Melaku Assegued, and I am an artist, in the non-traditional sense. I am a musician, an actor, and a student, studying for my BA at Columbia University. I am a friendly, fun, and motivated guy. So feel free to get in touch to talk about my work, services, employment, or anything else. I look forward to hearing from you! I can outline my stages in life by listening to my recordings, because every song I wrote and went into my studio to record was better than the last. As I matured, my music followed suit. I taught myself microphone placement, digital effects, automation, panning, compression, layering, and audio sampling. Each recording trick and piece of equipment I learned to use made my songs sound crisper, cleaner, and more professional. My growth into my current state of musicianship reflects my attitude towards everything I set my mind to in life. I will spend as long as it takes to research, perfect and reach my goals, whether they are school-related, social, or artistic. My passion for music is a driving force behind my motivation for success. .My hope is that the music that I create will be expanded to a larger audience, so I can expose the world to my performance and songwriting abilities. I see myself as a solo artist and songwriter specializing in the R&B, Soul, and Pop genres, but the road to my current self began from day one. I set my mind on music at age 4, holding an acoustic guitar and singing about chickens. I began studying guitar at age 6, and I built a drum set out of pots and pans at age 9 (which were returned to the kitchen cabinets for a real drum set a year later). My guitar teachers have included Mike Millwood, Bob Burnett, Bill Walker, and blues master Robert Lowery. I studied drums with Neil Bettencourt for a year and am otherwise self-taught. I have sung with two choirs, sung as the lead singer in two bands, sung the lead roles in seven musicals, and frequently performed at open mic nights and talent showcases at school and in New York. When I got to college, I auditioned for acapella groups and was selected as one of three out of the about 120 students who auditioned for Columbia University’s oldest acapella group, Notes and Keys. Today, I am the Assistant Musical Director and the CD Manager of the group. My first recording studio in middle school consisted of a RadioShack cassette recorder placed underneath the clothesline in my basement. I desperately wanted to record songs that sounded professional, like the songs on my CD’s, and so began the five-year construction of my real home recording studio. I spent entire summers working to pay for microphones, hardware interfaces, headphones, recording software, and studio monitors. I taught myself how to use my equipment through extensive research, and I subsequently became enthralled with songwriting, composing, computer music, and audio engineering. My recording process is unique, because I do everything myself. Using multi-track computer recording software like Cubase and Protools, I record myself singing over my own instrumentation (both live and electronic), and then I mix and master the tracks and arrange them together to create a complete song. Two of my original songs have received Notable Mentions in the songwriting contest “Song of the Year."

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