LP Giobbi had to “unlearn” what she’d studied in music at school to make her own music
Tucker Halpern of Sofi Tukker was on hand for advice for her first tracks.
LP Giobbi. Image: Ismael Quintanilla
LP Giobbi had said she had to “unlearn” what she had been taught in music at school when making her own music so that she could truly “feel” the music rather than “intellectualising”.
The DJ, producer, pianist, and leader of FEMME HOUSE had her first official performance at Coachella earlier this year, and her debut album Light Places landed back in May. But the climb to her current success involved a complete switch in mindset when creating original material.
Speaking to MusicTech for a cover interview, Giobbi reflected on how she felt her first ever DJ set opening for Sofi Tukker was “horrible” and “the worst set ever”. But despite her inner critic, the duo loved her energy, and invited her out on tour with them.
Eventually, they guided her into becoming a full-fledged artist, supporting her as she began releasing her first official tracks. Given her background in classical and jazz, this process was not always straightforward.
“Tucker kept telling me there was too much here. ‘Take out a lot of shit’,” Giobbi tells us. “When I first started making dance music I had to unlearn everything. Studying [music] in school, I had to theorise everything.
“I started intellectualising it instead of feeling it. When I trusted myself to feel it with my body, then I can start intentionally incorporating ninth chords and diminished chords, finding the right moments to build tension and resolve with jazz theory. It took me a few years to get there.”
This support from Sofi Tukker ultimately led to Giobbi launching FEMME HOUSE, a non-profit organisation which she co-owns dedicated to creating opportunities for women, gender-expansive, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ creatives in technical areas of music: “People have come in and shaped my life in a massively wild, beautiful way and [that’s] the reason I wanted to start FEMME HOUSE. To pay that forward,” Giobbi says.
Find out more about FEMME HOUSE here.
