The Echio Quiz with Doctor Jeep

How did you learn music and did you have any mentors?

I started making music around 13 or 14. I had already been playing guitar for a few years and discovered this program called TabIt, which let you create guitar tabs and play them back in MIDI — drums, bass, everything. There was a whole forum of people sharing songs, giving feedback, and helping each other improve. I didn’t really have a mentor growing up, but that community acted like a group mentorship, where we all learned together and pushed each other to make better music.

Tell us about a key piece of feedback you received during your career and from whom.

This one’s recent. I was booked to play a festival full of forward-thinking, heady, psychedelic music. My DJ sets tend to be a bit more fun and goofy, so I was feeling out of place and had prepared a very serious set. On the way there, my friend livwutang told me to throw away the plan and just be myself — that the festival booked me for who I am. That advice hit hard. I played a silly, playful set and people loved it. It reminded me that being authentic always connects more than trying to fit in with a trend or a scene.

What feedback would you give to your first release?

My first release as Doctor Jeep was an EP called Your Mind — just a bunch of long, psychedelic tracks my friends and I put on SoundCloud. They were busy, the intros and outros dragged, and they weren’t DJ-friendly at all. If I could go back, I’d tell myself to strip things down in the second half of the track, leave space for DJs to blend in new elements, and not fill every moment with sound. Learning to be more minimal took years, but it made my music way more playable.

If you could spend a day in the studio with one of your heroes, who would it be?

Objekt. His tracks are engaging from start to finish, always filling the space perfectly without feeling overcrowded. His sound design is incredible. When we’ve met in person, we’ve nerded out over the same technical details, so spending a full day in the studio together would be amazing.

What’s the object in your studio (musical or not) you can’t live without?

These beat-up headphones. They’re old, the leather’s coming off, they’re not even great technically, but I know exactly how my music should sound on them. My studio speakers can’t handle bass well, and new headphones never feel quite right, so I keep coming back to these. I also make music on the go a lot, and they’ve become part of my process.

If you were not making music, what would you do?

I actually already do something else alongside music. I’m a post-doc research assistant at NYU’s ITP program, where I design interactive installations and abstract musical instruments. I love creating systems that let people — even complete beginners — make melodies and rhythms just by moving their bodies. It’s one of my greatest passions, and even if I stopped making music tomorrow, I’d still find joy in that work.