I was born in Ghana, and raised in Portland, Oregon in a family of engineers and musicians. We played live music at family gatherings (my grandma and I on trumpets and my mom on french horn) and competed at homebrew math games.
I discovered hip-hop at 10 and won a turntable breakdancing, starting a lifelong adventure of music creation. As my high school’s valedictorian, I received a scholarship to the University of Southern California where I earned my degree in Mechanical Engineering (cum laude) and simultaneously launched my music career by producing the theme song for the hit TV series “In Living Color”. Despite my musical success (multiple Grammy nominations), my grandma never stopped asking when I was getting a “real job”. As much as my family loved music, it wasn’t seen as a secure career.

I fell in love, had a son, and my wife and I moved to Oakland to be close to her family. My grandma had just passed and the music business seemed to be passing too with record labels closing and CD sales tanking, but in Oakland I discovered a new home. Optimism, progressiveness, and futurism buoyed by the success of tech created an environment where my love of science could blend with my musical talents and allow me to reinvent myself. My business was accepted to a non-profit music accelerator called Zoo Labs that is committed to helping artists build sustainable careers. At Zoo we left behind forever the failing old music business model. Two years later we’ve transformed into a music tech hardware company. I’m excited about the future of music creation on wearable devices and mobile phones, and I believe that by developing music tech we can enable people to be more creative in all aspects of their lives.

I’ve written and produced music with computers since age 11 and my wife and I have worked together making music for 10 years. However, with a young son to support and music sales rapidly declining, we knew we needed to reinvent ourselves.

With the help of a non-profit music accelerator called Zoo Labs, we identified our strengths and discovered a way to combine our love of science, belief in human creativity, and love of music. We transformed into ElectroSpit: a music hardware tech company and a music group all in one.

ElectroSpit’s vision is to simplify the creation of music, helping to build a world where we’re able to create pro recording studio quality music in minutes on our phones and wearables! Creativity in the hands of all!

ElectroSpit’s products are made for those who want to make their own music, but haven’t had access. We want to give everyone the experience that artists and musicians have had. The experience of play and experimentation leading to masterpieces and innovation that spill over into other areas of their lives. Creativity is like a muscle waiting to be trained and not the privilege of a “talented few”.

Our first product is the ElectroSpit wearable device and App. It’s voice replacement technology turns anyone’s body into an instrument. You place the ElectroSpit around your neck and launch the ElectroSpit app. Next you chose a song, press play, the background music starts playing out of the ElectroSpit speaker, and the melody vibrates through your neck and out of your mouth. You form the words with your lips and then bamm…you’re singing in perfect pitch. You can customize the sound and share on social media.

We are proud to be a living example that the feeling empowerment through musical creativity can lead to innovation.

We’ve created a new kind of wearable music device and it’s time to share it with the world. Launching hardware is…hard, but with help from the music tech lovers out there we can do it!

We need this loan to help us make an awesome crowdfunding campaign (Indiegogo/Kickstarter/etc)! Thus far, we’ve been making ElectroSpits by hand, but crowdfunding will allow us to pay the large manufacturing setup and cover engineering costs. Ultimately we want to deliver thousands of ElectroSpits to music lovers around the world.

In addition to giving this project our all, we’ll use this loan to pay for professional help such as:
$3000 Video Production (filming, editing, graphics, & sound)
$3000 Music & tech PR (4 months)
$2000 Social media outreach and promotion (4 months)
$1000 Campaign manager (4 months – part-time)
$1000 Customer support manager (2 months – part-time)

This loan and this crowdfunding campaign will complete our transformation from old school “check to check” musicians to futuristic music tech entrepreneurs with a sustainable business. The late nights, travel, and instability that are part of the life of a performing musician, have been hard on our young family, but we’re creating an alternative. ElectroSpit allows us to continue to share our art while supporting our family. All the while we’re working to inspire creativity and enable a new generation of music lovers to actively participate in music creation!