Archive
All projects.
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Video
02 leavesGallery
01 leafProject / Audio
Fourth Ground
Description
This was the final project we made for MAT 111MC, which for me was a deep, dark production. All the sounds come from Ryan's sound library (klotho) that he made. Then, using Google Colab, we used those sounds and coded arrangements of those sounds, and did some mixing in the Colab Notebook itself. I used a synth that Ryan provided outside of the sound library, and with that, created the dark, low, spacey drone. Then I grabbed the sounds that I arranged in the Colab Notebook as samples, and then made the full piece in FL Studio. It is fully produced, engineered, mixed, and mastered by me. I took inspiration from other producers like Popilization, ssongbirdssing, orchead420, and it's a style of production I have never explored before, which is why I wanted to make it.
Process / Below the Surface
The Making
Project / Audio
I'll Call On Your Name
Description
This track is a purely instrumental track that I made in FL Studio, arranged, engineered, mixed, and mastered by me. The main melody is an instrumental guitar from the song "and the rest..." by yoshi douglas, where it is reversed and processed with different filters, which makes the original sample unrecognizable. This is my first fully produced song with a sampled element that persists through the song, and where I sample other movie vocals. The old TV sound effects that are scattered throughout give this beat a blippy, retro atmosphere.
Process / Below the Surface
The Making
Project / Video
Coward Music Video
Description
"Coward" is a song that I wrote the lyrics to, performed, mixed, and mastered by me in FL Studio. The guitar instrumental was made by a different producer. The song was made in a darker place for me, and the aesthetic I built for this is a representation of that. The music video consists of clips I took around the Isla Vista area because of how foggy the coast can get. I edited the video in CapCut. I made this solely for me; it means a lot to me and was very representative of my mental health and where I was in life. This song's alternate title was "Diary Entry Number 3" to illustrate the personal nature of this song.
Process / Below the Surface
The Making
Project / Audio
Collaborative Works
01 / 03
KICK!! (w/ bbyazul)
Description
This is a beat I made with bbyazul, where he made the melody and I did all the percussion and sound effects, and I also mixed the final version of this song. I wanted to go for a different-sounding trap beat and when I came across bbyazul's melody, it was the perfect groove for this. @bbyazul4k on Instagram and SoundCloud.
02 / 03
Lab (w/ kwuzi)
Description
This beat was made with my friend Kwuzi. He made the melody sounds from scratch, and I edited/mixed them, arranged them, and added bass/percussion. It is very dark and electronic, with heavy saturation in parts, which adds to the atmosphere. @juskwuzi on Instagram and @kwuzi on SoundCloud.
03 / 03
Droplet (w/ fubar & tgwog)
Description
This beat was a collaboration with fubar and tgwog, where they did the melody and I did all the percussion. In the original melody, it was very glassy and open sounding, with lots of reverb and space being used in the melody. It gave a really ambient feel, so with the percussion, I wanted to keep that feeling with wet reverb, delay, and heavy sine wave bass with fast attack. Overall it gives a very ambient and wet sound to this beat that I really like. @fubar.cfg on Instagram and @fubarcfg on SoundCloud. @realtgwog on Instagram and @tgwog on SoundCloud.
Project / Audio
i lost my mind trying to figure out yours
Description
This is a beat that I made solo in June 2026. I used a melody I had, and mixed it and flipped it to give the really ambient melody in this final beat, and it gave a really cool rhythmic sound that I used as the benchmark for the rest of the percussion. I sampled clips from YouTube as it is a very distinct thing I do in most of my production, and it gives rise to the title of this beat. I was really inspired by ambient beats I heard recently through producers like chinapoet and tgwog, who do really similar and cool things in their music.
Project / Audio
MVP
Description
This is one of my projects that I made in my MAT 111AU class at UCSB during the summer while completing my Media Arts & Design minor. I produced everything here in Ableton, which was my first time ever creating a full song using Ableton, and I really like how this turned out. The synths at the start were inspired by ice levels in different Super Mario games, most notably in Super Mario Galaxy for being soft, but with structure and with higher-pitched notes. Then I wanted to make the main section extremely cinematic, with strings as many Nintendo compositions are, but also I was inspired by producers online to use live strings in my music, so I used Spitfire Audio's BBC Orchestra Library. It gives the piece a really emotional and cinematic element that persists throughout the song. I add horns and cymbals at certain parts to emphasize areas of the song, and then it all stops and softens up before returning to the original synth. I felt as if this was one of my favorite instrumentals I've made to date. It was such a different experience and workflow and extremely different from my normal production that uses a lot of samples.
Process / Below the Surface
The Making
Project / Video
diaryentrynumber1 Music Video
Description
This is a music video that I made for my song, diaryentrynumber1. The song and video were both posted in October of 2023, and it served as a journal entry for initially leaving home and moving to college, which was a hard time for me when I first moved. My friends back home are some of the most important things in my life, and I wanted this to be for them. I recorded, wrote, mixed, and mastered the song. I recorded and edited the video, and all the footage is in Isla Vista, California.
Process / Below the Surface
The Making
Project / Gallery
Northbound
A place, in sound
About Northbound
Northbound is a gallery of photos from my time in Lund, Sweden from August to December of 2025. The audio provided is something I solo produced myself, and it really represents the feeling and my time in Sweden. It was very somber and soft, with a lot of ambience. There is a static TV sound to represent something familiar, but unrecognizable to everyone, which is what Sweden felt like to me. The photo gallery below is a complete representation of my time in Sweden, where it was a mix of scenic, liminal, and atmospheric in a way you can only appreciate and understand when you are there. It defined a lot about me and changed my mindset towards school and life in 2026.
PProcess Pictures
Lund, Sweden
About
Nicholas Taylor
The layer beneath the surface
My name is Nicholas Taylor and I am a producer and a visual artist from Torrance, California. I have been involved with playing music since middle school, but never really fell in love with music until I got to college. I go by "foreground" on most if not all of my musical work.
I am currently an Applied Mathematics student at University of California, Santa Barbara, and I am minoring in Media Arts & Design. Math was something that really called to me, and in a way it allowed me to be creative and challenge my mind working in such an abstract space. I credit math for a lot of my musical progression and it is one of the most important aspects in my life.
Math, music, and nature all influence me so much. Going to Sweden for a semester in fall 2025 really highlighted how important nature was to me in my creative process. I think without that experience, not only would I understand how important nature is to me, but the other two wouldn't have developed nearly as much.