You’re in a foreign place—Amsterdam to be exact—playing your music for thousands of people. Your just about to start; you get that last set of butterflies in your stomach, the last big nervous breath, the last quick look across the crowd, and then you start. You blow them away.
With his days on the school jazz band behind him, alum Tim Nelson ‘06 is now making music for a new audience.
“My real introduction to music was the Laguna Jazz Band in fifth grade when I started playing trumpet.”
Although well known for its academics, Laguna has a growing reputation for launching musicians.
“We all had to pick an instrument and since everyone else took the drums and the other piano players were much better at readying music than I was, trumpet seemed like a good second option. I played trumpet pretty seriously all through high school.”
Nelson, under the stage-name BetatraXx, is a classical/ electronic music DJ.
This kind of music usually involves “big drums, distorted synthesizers, and orchestral instruments (which are also very often distorted).”
He has a growing fan base in California of mostly 17-25 year olds.
“The sound I’m creating is a very new sound to most people, but it is also very much a sound that is developing out of Los Angeles and is expanding very quickly into Europe and the rest of the world.”
Tim is helping change how music sounds and has joined in making electronic music one of the more popular genres of this generation.
From his own experiences, Tim gave advice to aspiring musicians, “I think as long as you’re realistic with yourself there is nothing wrong with trying it… Then being able to take criticism is equally important. When someone tells you they don’t like something it is important to ask why and improve upon what you do. Of course you don’t have to act on every suggestion or criticism (sorry Mom and Dad).”
A milestone that Tim considers very significant was the show he played at South By Southwest in Texas “because that was where my manager and everyone I work with now found me.”
“I just recorded a track with Foster The People that will come out as well as some other really big songs.”
Nelson thinks “these releases are really what’s going to blow up my career and they’re just about to happen… So close!”
