Homegrown in Ditmas Park: Love Science Music Productions

Homegrown in Ditmas Park: Love Science Music Productions
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Josh Giunta (Photo: Sofia Nunez-Morales)

Tall and wiry, with soft green eyes and a wry smile, Josh Giunta sits poised over compressors, microphones, and synthesizers. In his home office, he exudes confidence countered by a calm focus. Perhaps the calm is leftover from his morning routine. “I love to wake up to make breakfast, meditate, read, then get to work without commuting,” he says.

Or maybe Josh’s calm comes from living in a neighborhood that truly feels like a home, “I love Ditmas. I love Mimi’s and Tibet Cafe. I’m a regular at Asya.”

Or maybe it’s because, after 10 years of hustling as a Brooklyn-based freelance drummer and engineer, he’s finally working on a passion project that ties music and community together. In 2014, Josh moved into one-bedroom apartment on Rugby Road and transformed it into his ultimate writing, recording, and mixing studio for his homegrown music production company, Love Science Music.

Josh began Love Science Music as a production company and band rolled into one unit. But the band element felt limiting. “All the time I was spending preparing the arrangements and rehearsing, booking and promoting gigs, I felt that the time I spent on production was more true to my art,” he explains. Plus all the touring left him little time to spend at home creating music.

So he pared down his focus to production, recording, and social media promotion. “For me, it’s been a gradual process of zooming in on what I feel is my truest voice as an artist and musician, and therefore focusing on writing and releasing music,” he says.

Josh’s Ditmas Park apartment is immediately inviting; painted in primary, bright hues that bounce rhythmically from room to room. The living room couches and chairs orbit a record player. On one wall, overstuffed bookshelves lean with titles ranging from science to philosophy, and music business to jazz biographies.

Opposite that, the four walls of his home recording studio look like a self-contained floating square with an adjacent closet-turned-vocal-booth. “I mix and write everything for Love Science Music here, as well as collaborate with vocalists,” he notes.

Art is a physical presence in Josh’s studio. Alongside the customary sound panels to absorb bass frequencies and echo, a vibrant quilt sewn by his mother hangs behind his monitor, adding a thread of family history. “I have numerous pieces of art in my apartment by both of my parents and my great uncle,” he says. “I love the works themselves, but they also make me feel that the artistic process goes deeper than just me, it pushes me to keep running with the baton.”

While Josh is also head engineer at Sweet Sounds Studio in Manhattan, he still finds time to focus on his business. Last year, Love Science Music released one original song per month with various collaborators and guests.

Now, Josh’s goal is bigger: Create a brand that produces multidisciplinary art — using social media to build influence and connect with peers that share his desire to learn and grow as an artist.

“The goal [of Love Science Music]  is to fuse intuition with analysis,” Josh writes in his blog, “bind the spiritual with the tangible, and build bridges between peoples who are disconnected, by incorporating ideas from various mediums and disciplines.”

There’s a strong community aspect to Josh’s work, “I’ve been planning a collaboration event between musicians and dancers. I’m looking to partner with local dancers who have access to their own community to merge the two disciplines, and a local loft space for performances,” he says.

Josh still loves to play music, but wants to play on his own terms, and find a way for that music to enrich his community rather than always playing on the road.

His advice for musicians is that being proactive is the only way to get discovered. “You have to be in charge of your own content, and you have to have a vision for your project. But you also have to play offense: make goals for your project and figure out how to make it happen,” he advises.

How to find Josh:
Love Science Music
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