Karina Magallon goes with the flow: “If you get too rigid, you forget what you’re creating”Ad feature with BandLab Opportunities. [Editor’s Note: MusicTech and BandLab are both part of Caldecott Music Group.]
“Sometimes, things don’t feel real… But then, I’m on a call with you right now, so it is.”
That’s one of the first sentences Karina Magallon says in our interview. She’s fully dressed up, prepared to take the stage when she shows up for our video call. Even her purple eyeshadow, signifying the colour palette of her upcoming album, Island Night pt.2, due late this summer, carries thought and intention. When she steps into her own universe, woven with Latin R&B songs sung in Spanish and English, she embraces her artist persona inside and out.
Stacking vocals in her home studio and sprinkling whistle notes on top, Karina takes a wholesome approach with her musical creations: “It’s kind of like you’re a scientist sometimes, trying different things. And other times, it’s something beyond you, and it’s just your job to translate that into art.”
A natural songwriter, she’s always finding her way to captivating melodies and lyrics, even when she’s asleep. “Sometimes, songs come in a dream,” she says, “It’s special when harmonies, melodies, and lyrics all arrive at the same time.” Not a surprising statement coming from someone who, while still “figuring things out”, is also living her dream.
Image: Press
But Karina wasn’t always this sure of herself and where she’s headed. Although music was always in her life, her upbringing in Houston, Texas, could have easily led to an ordinary career path. “I see myself doing a lot of things on film and television, not just as a songwriter, but also as an actress. I love all things performing, dancing, and singing…When I was younger, I was too afraid to say these things out loud.”
Fortunately, she has a powerful voice with a stunning range to sing about those things now.
As is the case for many singer-songwriters, vocal production is a sacred part of Karina’s creative process. Now living in Los Angeles, she still records most of her vocals in a makeshift vocal booth with a Scarlett Solo audio interface, a Shure SM7B microphone, and a Cloudlifter preamp. When she takes breaks from recording and editing vocals, she turns to her electric piano, guitar, or ukulele to produce the instrumentals for her demos.
Although this paints a picture of a bedroom producer who prefers to make music alone, she thrives on collaboration.
“When the pandemic started, everyone in the world was on the internet. Every networking event was on the internet. So I just started meeting people online,” says Karina, who was completing her music studies at Belmont University in Nashville at the time. “One of my professors was trying to teach us a bit about different areas of audio engineering, but we hadn’t figured out how to connect Zoom to Logic Pro and other DAWs yet. So, he showed us through BandLab.”
Image: Press
That was her first introduction to the platform where she would eventually establish her strongest following. Through those years when all musicians were cooped up at home, Karina spent her time on co-writing sessions over Zoom as well as plotting her career as a songwriting artist.
“A few years later, I started posting on BandLab. I posted my demos and videos just to try it out. I was posting everywhere, but people there resonated with my stuff a lot more than other platforms,” she explains. Since the community on BandLab is made up of people who love creating music, there was immediate interest in Karina’s artistry. Cutting through the noise on each social media platform is an ongoing challenge, but she’s grateful for the exposure she’s gained through BandLab, where music is the ultimate, non-negotiable conversation-starter.
Today, she continues to actively post on the platform to her 31,000 followers, especially now that she’s in the middle of a release cycle with two album singles already out. She also keeps an eye on the Opportunities tab, which she deems one of the most valuable features on BandLab.
“I don’t know all the things about how to promote a song, but I keep trying, and I learn different things. I feel like nobody quite knows either — it keeps changing,” she admits.
Being an independent artist comes with budget concerns, organizational challenges — and juggling it all comes at a cost: “I’m so used to writing music every day that sometimes it’s a little bit painful not to have enough time for it. It comes in waves, the things that I need to focus on creatively, and I think what I’m doing right now is what’s going to allow me to write more.”
Image: Press
When asked about the production process behind her upcoming album, she lights up. Karina is no stranger to writing for sync placements within a limited period of time. In fact, recently, she completed a 10-song custom project for the ESPN Network within a month. But with her album, she took her time, working with her co-producers, Mateo Barragan and 4NALOG, in-person and remotely over a long period of time.
Starting each session with a blank slate, they created one song after the other, blending, in Karina’s own words, “Latin R&B, some bolero vibes, and girly pop.” After a series of upbeat tracks, Karina found herself sitting in front of her piano one day, struggling to finish a gut-wrenching ballad. She had to be patient to get over her tears and see it through: “Not all songs have to be happy, you know?”
First came the chords. Then, she began to imagine various sounds she wanted to add to it. Sometimes she’d experiment with samples: EQ them, pitch them up or down, and add some flanger or phaser effects. Other times, she’d use her voice to produce cinematic textures. “I just go with the flow. If you get too rigid, you forget what you’re creating.”
She points to her single, Divina, which is a stirring track that ends with a wall of sound filled with her vocals, as the perfect example. “I wanted the last chorus to feel grand. When you’re in a choir, not everyone sings the same way. Some people have more straight tones. Some people have brighter voices. So, I tried to add several characters there to really make it feel like a choir, even though it’s just my voice.”
Image: Press
It sounds easy, but Karina is aware of the misconception: “This is one of those careers that you really have to put a lot of effort into for it to be long-term.” That’s why she perceives each step she takes as another forward motion. When she first moved to LA, she had a bunch of day jobs, which she eventually phased out for creative gigs. Now that she’s over the hump, she keeps an open mind about opportunities that come her way, whether it’s an audition to book a new role or a music project for another artist.
“I like to be challenged. Any time I’m creating, I’m happy. I’ve written songs for a long time. I read poetry, songwriting books, and collaborated with many people… Even if a song didn’t go anywhere, I was still getting better every time.”
Finding joy in the process is important, but it’s her ultimate goal that truly motivates Karina: “To be the biggest artist and actress in the world, creating number 1 hits that bring light into people’s lives. That is my calling.”
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