Joe Koda is a senior majoring in music technology here at Rowan University. Koda graduated from Paramus High School in Bergen County back in 2020. He began tinkering with creating his music after being inspired by the beats of Marshmello and Martin Garrix a few years prior. 

“Around six years ago, I was discovering myself in music like I was listening to Rap because that was what everyone was listening to, and then I discovered Marshmello and Martin Garrix when they were starting to blow up and I enjoyed that type of music and I was like, “what if I started doing it?” and after hearing Martin Garrix’s ‘Animal,’ I was like, ‘I can do that easy-peasy.’” 

His senior year at Paramus was when he started trying to create music seriously after doing a little bit of experimentation prior and seeing the improvements he was making was something that he enjoyed so he kept pursuing it. In 2019 he released his first single “Falling Down.”

“I did a couple of releases after my first song but I took the whole year off in 2023 just to focus on myself, grow, and get better and the first month of 2024 was when I released my first songs coming back,”.

Koda took a lot of inspiration from Electronic artists like Marshmello and Martin Garrix early on but recently began looking into other artists to help find his style. 

“I took inspiration from them at the beginning (Marshmello and Martin Garrix) but recently I’ve been taking a more emotional touch to my music and I’ve been looking up to Last Heroes because they’re very emotional and acoustic.”

“I wanted to try to do music in my style, I like making pretty catchy melodies with huge drops that are emotional and I like to write about my feelings and perspectives of other things that have happened in my life”.

Joe’s end goals go hand in hand with his future occupation and his career as an artist. He wants to own a music studio one day, but as an artist, his dream is to live off making music.

“It’s nice to do that because I can see a lot of people relate to that stuff and it’s nice when people say that they like my music.”

Joe Koda goes by his name on all platforms (Instagram, Spotify) and he recently released a single two weeks ago, “Unreal.”

“I got a lot of great feedback on that one because that’s the first song I’ve ever sung on that I released myself and did another release in January. I have an EP coming out in April so I decided to do a single for each month leading up to it, the March release drops March 22, and 2 weeks after my EP will release,”.

Koda is also doing a release party the night the EP drops, April 5 at Landmark.

“It’s nice to do that because I can see a lot of people relate to that stuff and it’s nice when people say that they like my music.”

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