Ever since Ninajirachi landed the cover of MusicTech, the Australian-born DJ and producer has been on a whirlwind run. She recently completed her debut tours of the UK and Europe, she closed out the intimate Sonora stage at Coachella 2026, and her debut album, I Love My Computer (2025), has earned millions of streams.

And yet, despite this rapid, vigorous ascension, the title of her album is quite literal when it comes to her production. To clarify, the artist, real name is Nina Wilson, still only uses her computer to produce.

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“All of my muscle memory is here now with the trackpad,” she tells Mixmag in a recent interview. “I’ve never learned to use gear like synthesisers or MIDI machines, it was just always laptop music.” She goes on to refer to in-the-box production as her “first language”, and that so far it hasn’t been necessary for her to expand beyond it.

Her current DAW is Ableton Live, and before that, it was FL Studio, but she got her start on the entry-level laptop-friendly DAW: GarageBand.

On her episode of MusicTech’s My Forever Studio podcast, she went into detail on how she fumbled through those early days to her immense success:

“I would just loop the stock loops and record over the top through the MacBook microphone. A lot of the first recordings, I didn’t know how to turn the metronome off, so it would be just completely out of time with everything I was recording over the top. I still have a bunch of those old recordings.

“I eventually started using different software when I got into electronic music when I was in early high school, like maybe about 12 years old. And I realised I kind of needed something more powerful if I wanted to make sounds like the ones I was hearing in my favourite songs.”

While she continues to use software to make those sounds, she is also expanding her musical toolkit. Namely, she has started doing a lot of singing on her tracks.

“I can now use my voice like an instrument for songwriting and not feel embarrassed about it,” Wilson says. “I remember when I first started collaborating with people, I wouldn’t sing even if I had the ideas because I figured that I just couldn’t sing. But I manipulate my voice so much because of that insecurity – it’s something I want to get past.”

Wilson has confirmed she is working on new music, including a song with her hero, Porter Robinson. Those songs may not feature any fancy outboard gear, but they will represent her persisting growth as an artist.

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