Boston, Massachusetts, May 2, 2023 — During the pandemic lockdown Boston-based Israeli producer, composer and guitarist Shwesmo stayed busy posting short, odd-meter groove explorations to social media. Inspired, he began to build those ideas into longer compositions, combining metal, fusion and Middle Eastern influences layered with sound design and processed through Polyverse plug-ins such as Supermodal and Manipulator to produce a string of new electronic music releases.
“A lot of my latest album features grooves that I just came up with,” Shwesmo says. “That was my workflow for the past few years. I would have an idea, something cool that I hadn’t heard before, like a nice groove in 11/8 that sounds kind of funky. Then I would try to find some melodic elements,” he says, using instruments, MIDI and various software tools.
On many of his compositions, Shwesmo continues, he works on a parallel workflow to create sound design elements that he can integrate into his compositions. “It’s very valuable to have sound design sessions separate from your composition sessions. I can make some wild sounds — let’s put a hundred compressors on this and see what happens! That’s where the Polyverse plug-ins come in very handy. I’ve been using Manipulator forever because it’s so cool. You throw any sound into that and it just creates something completely different. Then I can chop it up and put it into my music later.”
Polyverse’s plug-ins have been especially inspirational in his sound design, he says. “I felt like I was in a rut in terms of sound design, doing the same things and trying to get different results. I was looking for something that would boost my creativity and that’s exactly what happened with Supermodal. I wasn’t even sure what it was meant to be. Is it a filter? Is it a resonator? But it’s everything! And it’s super cool.”
As flexible as Polyverse’s plug-ins are — Supermodal, as an example, offers almost limitless possibilities through the combination of its filters, resonance and modulation modes — Shwesmo still likes to push things further. “I try to use things the wrong way, just play around with it and see what comes out. I love that I can throw different things in it, like a drum groove or a vocal shout, and get totally cool results. I like that it acts as a resonator if you want, I really like that I can play some notes and it will give those notes to that drum groove. It’s awesome because that gives me the inspiration to try some weird things. And you have all these options but it’s very intuitive.”
Shwesmo has always been musically inquisitive, he reports. “I find myself being curious about new things all the time. My mom sent me to piano lessons when I was six, but I already felt like more of a composer and would make up funny songs. I found the guitar when I was around 12 and that got me into rock bands such as Guns N’ Roses, Metallica and Iron Maiden. I had a teenage rock band in Israel and slowly developed into heavier music,” he says, listening to System of a Down, Dream Theater and Pain of Salvation. “The more prog-metal side of things really attracted me and naturally I started to write that same way too. My compositions went further down that road — odd times signatures, heavy guitar riffs and all that fun stuff.”
At that point, he says, “I decided that I didn’t have a choice but to make music a career. I was really taking it seriously, playing for hours and writing music.” Through a scholarship he attended Berklee College of Music, for two years, which allowed him to do the next two years at Berklee in Boston, adding jazz and orchestration to his skillset along the way.
Shwesmo first heard of Polyverse through Israeli electronic music duo Infected Mushroom, which in turn led him to the company’s CEO, Assaf Dar, who was formerly the head of the Electronic Music Dept. at Rimon in Israel. “A friend introduced me to I Wish,” says Shwesmo, an early pitch freeze plug-in that is also included Polyverse’s Infected Mushroom signature bundle. “I used it on guitar riffs that I wanted to freeze in time in order to get some unique sounds out of them. Then I saw these other plug-ins come out. Manipulator was the big one where I thought, ‘This is awesome.’ Ever since, I’ve tried to keep up. Gatekeeper is cool and of course, Supermodal is insane.”
After Berklee, he says, “I really got into electronic music. Everything I learned in electronic music was probably on YouTube from tutorials” by producers such as Au5. “You pay so a lot for Berklee and it’s worth it, but then you can also learn something for free on YouTube! It took me three or four years to produce something that was up to what I saw as my standard. And that’s when Shwesmo was born, with a vision of doing this by myself.” That said, he is now working with a drummer from one of his previous bands, and often brings in guest musicians, vocalists and rappers on his compositions.
“You could say my mission as Shwesmo is to take things like odd time signatures and make them danceable, make them fun and something that you can actually groove to.” he says.
For more information about Shwesmo and to listen to Trail To Now, please visit: https://beacons.ai/shwesmo
For more information about Polyverse, please visit https://polyversemusic.com
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