His love for music started when he was introduced by a childhood friend to a song from an American rock musical film. Bedazzled by the song, Beelzeboss, by Tenacious D, Glen Wong picked up his father’s guitar to learn a few chords. He gave up as it proved difficult.
A year-and-a-half later, Glen found himself picking up the guitar again. This time, he was serious about learning simple chords.
Another area Glen worked on was his vocals. “Vocals was the one that took me a long time to even get to a standard of not having your ears bleed when you hear me sing,” said the 20-year-old.
After years of hard work, Glen is beginning to make his mark on the music scene. In 2015, he released a self-composed song Your Story and Mine on SoundCloud – a global online audio distribution platform. Glen, who goes by the artist name ‘Glen Ashburn’, has now four songs that are available on both Spotify and SoundCloud.
“I have always been a fan of writing my own compositions and singing them as the songs I have written so far is always about someone or something in relation to my own life,” said the 20-year-old Mass Communication student in Republic Polytechnic. “I feel that every song is precious to me as it reflects who I am and only I know the true message behind that song.”
While SoundCloud allows users to freely share their music to the world, Spotify—a digital music streaming service that gives you access to millions of songs from artists all over the world – is delivered by labels and distributors and cannot be directly uploaded by a user.
Glen enlisted the help of Jerry Galeries, an Integrated Events Management student in Republic Polytechnic, as his producer.
“When Glen finally announced that he would like to work on his own writes seriously, I gladly volunteered there and then to put together a production dedicated to his debut EP,” said Jerry, who has also released multiple songs on both Spotify and iTunes.
The pair hit it off after they worked on a music video in 2014 which was showcased during the Polytechnic Foundation Programme Graduation ceremony. Since then, they began working on new songs in Jerry’s home studio, even if this means a two-hour commute for Glen.
Glen list several influences along his musical journey, especially Paul Gilbert, the guitarist of Mr. Big. When asked about his advice to aspiring musicians, Glen said: “Practice makes somewhat perfect, but you don’t really need perfect. You need your own style and that is important. Also, to have the tenacity to want to pursue more and grow as a musician or anything you want to become in life.”
