Hanze JIN

Music

Illustrated collage: a bedroom studio with a keyboard, monitors and drums; a young musician singing at a microphone and playing a red bass; around them, torn-paper scenes of a mountain path, an anatomical heart among bubbles, a marble statue and a teddy bear.
AI-generated illustration.

Original songs across post-rock, R&B, neo-soul, film-score ambient and electronic rock, and an arrangement of a classic song.

Selected tracks

  1. Rome

    · Post-rock / Jazz elements

    Listen forBrass over a math rock acoustic guitar, carrying a solemn, epic melody.

    I wanted a modern style to carry the weight of history that the word ‘Rome’ suggests.

    Excerpt –
    Full track ·

    Written, arranged, performed, produced, mixed and mastered by me in Logic Pro.

  2. Before sunrise

    · R&B / Pop / Acoustic guitar

    Listen forLight R&B over a spare acoustic guitar arrangement, with a melody written to be easy to sing along to.

    A love song for my girlfriend, written for our hundred-day anniversary.

    Excerpt –
    Full track ·

    Written, arranged, performed, produced, mixed and mastered by me in Logic Pro.

  3. way back

    · Electronic rock / Experimental rock

    Listen forFiltered, fuzz electric guitar, overdriven chopped drums and Autotuned rap, inside a shoegaze wall of sound.

    I wanted the electronic edge and the force of distortion, with the shoegaze wall adding a hazy, weightless atmosphere.

    Excerpt –
    Full track ·

    Written, arranged, performed, produced, mixed and mastered by me in Logic Pro.

  4. You Belong to Me (arrangement)

    · Classic-song arrangement

    Listen forA bright electric guitar in place of acoustic, with a picked guitar loop in tribute to The Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’.

    I first knew the song through Bob Dylan’s country cover and loved its picture of love heading far away. I deconstructed the original lyrics to express the journey of crossing oceans for love.

    Excerpt –
    Full track ·

    Arranged and mixed by me in Logic Pro. Song by Pee Wee King, Redd Stewart and Chilton Price. Other contributors are not listed.

  5. When Thinking of You

    · Post-rock / Instrumental rock

    Listen forA heartbeat motif, hard-hitting drums and clean electric Fender guitar tone.

    A tribute to toe, a Japanese math rock and post rock band I love; I wanted to recreate the feeling of love at first sight.

    Excerpt –
    Full track ·

    Written, arranged, performed, produced, mixed and mastered by me in Logic Pro.

  6. Melatonin

    · R&B / Pop

    Listen forA clean Fender guitar tone, simple drums and touches of electric piano.

    Life’s worries are the insomnia and melatonin is the cure: an upbeat way of saying that life is simpler than it seems.

    Excerpt –
    Full track ·

    Written, arranged, performed, produced, mixed and mastered by me in Logic Pro.

  7. Sweet Life

    · Neo-soul

    Listen forA minimal synth motif over layback drums.

    A neo-soul piece in tribute to D’Angelo, a soul artist I admire.

    Excerpt –
    Full track ·

    Written, arranged, performed, produced, mixed and mastered by me in Logic Pro.

  8. Autumn

    · Ambient / Score

    Listen forAcoustic guitar, brass and bass in a movie style melody and arrangement.

    I wanted to describe the calm and quiet happiness of autumn, and to put the listener inside the scene.

    Excerpt –
    Full track ·

    Written, arranged, performed, produced, mixed and mastered by me in Logic Pro.

Archive

By year, newest first. Every track here plays in full.

Style

Notes on process

When a motif stalls

Sometimes I write a motif and then cannot develop it into a full piece with my own character. I usually turn to sound design or to sampling. Filtering, EQ and modulation give an instrument a wider range of timbres, and new timbres spark ideas.

For way back I wanted rock’s passion and electronic music’s cold edge, so I sliced a rock drum kit, downsampled it and added overdrive. Reverb and fuzz pedals in series then built the shoegaze wall of sound that keeps the song going.

I like sampling sounds from everyday life: they make music feel familiar and strange at once. In When Thinking of You, I sampled a heartbeat as the kick drum of the intro, for the rush of falling for someone. I also sampled café chatter and distorted it, so the room’s noise blurs away, as it does when you meet someone and fall for them.

Listenway back · When Thinking of You

When the arrangement gets crowded

I find it hard to keep an arrangement simple: without noticing, I keep adding new instruments and melodies. But a complex arrangement is not the same as a pleasing one.

So I study how introspective modern artists such as Frank Ocean arrange, and how a jazz trio makes a small line-up expressive. Then I take instruments away and dig deeper into what the melody can express.

Rome uses only brass, acoustic guitar, synthesizer and drums. The intro leaves deliberate space, so the drums hit harder when they enter. The brass melody steers the tension and direction of the whole song.

A simpler arrangement puts less strain on the listener and makes their attention easier to guide.

ListenRome — the intro, in the full track

Elsewhere