Meet Tsuyoshi Wu | Multimedia Support Consultant & Music Producer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tsuyoshi Wu and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tsuyoshi, do you have some perspective or insight you can share with us on the question of when someone should give up versus when they should keep going?
Being a complete optimist, I define the term “giving up” as “putting an indefinite pause on achieving goals and dreams”.

I’ve started taking piano lessons when I was ten in 2008, and I’ve continued semi-religiously practicing until I got accepted to Berklee College of Music in 2017. Moments such as my solo pianist performance at pianist made me proud at times, but trying to prove myself to others as a competent pianist didn’t make me emotionally satisfied. The more I practiced to brag how decent I was to others made me frustrated on where my progress was. That being said, I never hated playing piano, but I disliked my motivation that forced myself to practice. I also was too scared to throw the towel into piano, because there was something I was clinging onto, and I knew I was going to lose everything if I quit music. I didn’t discover my purpose in music until my second year of college.

Throughout my first two years at college, I slowly eased myself into the rabbit hole of music production, and my parents gifted me Ableton Live 10 for my 20th birthday in 2018. I started to take more college courses regarding electronic music composition and production. As I became more experienced, a small population of people have shown interest and enjoyment towards my tracks. I realized that my favorite part of being a musician was seeing my audience feel a kind of emotion while listening to my music. Producing music made me feel more alive than playing piano for “flex”, and I decided that my dream was to make living off of producing music and making people happy. In 2020, I’ve released a lo-fi hip-hop EP, “Colors of LA”, and I’ve released a fast paced.

However, love for a dream can ignite frustration. I’ve produced so many bad, unpublishable tracks that is sitting somewhere in my hard drive. I’ve taken many hiatuses to just focus on life outside of music. I’ve spent most of summer of 2021 on my on-campus job at the Classroom Technology department. After not producing for several weeks, I came up with “Sugar High” towards the end of August, which was not released until January 2022. Summer flew by quickly, and my final academic year at college was about to begin. But in order to finish my degree, I had one last piano private lesson course that I had to attend and complete.

Surprisingly, getting back into practicing piano was rather refreshing. For the first time in 13 years of playing piano on and off, it did not feel like a chore. My only purpose as a pianist was to complete the graduation requirement, and to feel relaxed while caressing the ivories. I enjoyed playing different combinations and chords while practicing my final exam material. I’ve finally made peace with my pianist self, and I’ve forgave myself for having a twisted attitude towards learning music in the past.

In May 2022, I’ve successfully graduated from Berklee, and my on-campus job became my full-time job. However, my dream of making income from music is still alive, and even if I have to take breaks every now and then, I have no intentions in quitting music at this moment. Even if I have to adjust my priorities and drift apart from music, I know I will always have love towards music, and my past efforts will never be a waste. I am an IT technician and customer service agent in the day, and a music producer at night.

At the end of the day, there’s no shame for one to “give up” after putting in dedication into something they love. But they will always have an option to continue to do something they once loved doing again in the future.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
As a musician, I’ve started playing piano at the age of 10, and picked up a trombone when I turned 12 during middle school. I performed at Carnegie Hall as a solo pianist when I was 15, and I got accepted to Berklee College of Music in 2017. I started to focus on learning how to produce electronic music, and I eventually started to release tracks to streaming services in 2020. I eventually earned my bachelor’s degree in 2022, and I still produce music and play trombone for bands to this day. In addition to my passion, my hobby is to collect headphones.

I’ve also built my career in customer service and polished my abilities outside of music. I started learning how to use a computer at age 4 on top of my father’s lap, and I spent a lot of time on the computer every day. Throughout summer of 2020, I worked at a school supply shop to gain experience, and worked two different work study jobs at Berklee: Japanese Language Tutor and Classroom Technology Support assistant. I eventually focused on the latter position, and I became a student supervisor in the beginning of my fifth and final year at college. After graduation, I was blessed to receive an opportunity to work at Berklee as a full-time staff as a Multimedia Support Consultant.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If a friend visits Boston, I’d give them a food tour depending on what they want to eat. If they’re into seafood, we would rent a car and drive up north to New Hampshire or Maine and have lobster rolls. There’s also a really nice Mexican restaurant named Taqueria Jalisco near the Logan International Airport subway station. But if I look hard enough, there might be a better taco stand in my hometown in Southern California. If my friend and I were to visit where I grew up in, we would try different foods such as In-N-Out, while visiting the Del Amo Mall Shopping Center, Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood, and Six Flags Magic Mountain. My main takeaway is that both Southern California and New England are relatively culturally diverse, and they can find all kinds of food and fun if money isn’t an issue.

However, if my friends want to visit my parents in Japan with me (they are moving sometime in 2023), I have no idea where to start. I know for a fact that they will have a time of their lives though.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would like to dedicate this article to my parents and my friends from high school for all the unconditional support throughout my childhood and beyond. My education at Berklee has helped me become a musician that I enjoy being today. I also would like to give a shoutout to my workplace at the Classroom Technology Support division at Berklee to help me push myself to build my career.

Website: tsuyoshiwu.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsuyoshi-wu-2598aa150/

Image Credits
Colors of LA album cover: @paugalk on Instagram End of the Tunnel and Sugar High album cover: @ico_sphere on Instagram