Get to know Brown Jewel
Curiosity is one of the keys of creativity. And when speaking with Brooklyn-based producer Brown Jewel, it’s clear she has it in spades. Her curiosity led her to start producing 20 years ago. Her older cousin showed her some beats he had been working on and she became fascinated with the process.
Since then, she has gone from making beats in her apartment to competing in beat battles with some of the greats. She even has been traveling to the other side of the world to teach music production. Brown Jewel will be our Serato’s Kitchen resident for March, where she’ll be sharing her wealth of knowledge on what she says will be a “fun journey” on our Twitch channel each week.
Growing up in Wisconsin, Jewel was surrounded by music and fell in love with it from an early age. She was always surrounded by music at home thanks to her parents’ playing music. George Clinton and Teddy Pendegrass for dad, and gospel for mom as well as her brothers who played instruments. Jewel also played clarinet and alto sax up until high school. At the same time, she had a brief stint as a recording engineer. This was before she realized that she was more drawn to making her own music versus facilitating recording for others.
“I just loved music, and I wanted to create it.”
Once she got her Korg Triton classic, Jewel was off to the races! She draws on her innate curiosity to figure out how to construct her own beats from scratch, programming drums and instrumentation without sampling at first. Over the years, she started incorporating various DAWs, sampling, and other hardware into her workflow.
Jewel’s rise hasn’t been without barriers. She recalled on a recent episode of Sound Collective’s Culture Cut TV about times that she would show up to open mics and they wouldn’t play her beats because of doubt that she really created them. She credits support from the DJ and producer community, and in particular DJ Special Dark in Minnesota, with helping her get her name out.
After relocating to New York, she got connected with The Creator’s Suite, an alliance of women producers, DJs, and audio engineers founded by Abhita Austin. Through Austin she participated in a virtual beat cypher that exposed her to a new community of producers. Jewel was active in numerous virtual beat events and cyphers over the pandemic. This includes Slop FunkDust’s The Session-In and Today’s Future Sound. Her beats are showcasted alongside many heavy-hitters, more than proving she deserves a spot amongst the greats.
“Serato Studio gets me to create differently. It takes my brain to a different place.”
Jewel has been using Serato Studio for a few years now. She has been enjoying a refreshing workflow and the quick creation speed, especially with the sampling capabilities. She keeps her hardware fairly minimal these days, incorporating an Akai MPK Mini and an Alesis midi keyboard, as well as a SP-404 MKII for performances.
During her Serato’s Kitchen residency, Jewel will be bringing the audience along through her typical workflows, which include a lot of on-the-spot creating and wherever her curiosity leads her that day.
Brown Jewel’s Serato’s Kitchen dates
Episode one: March 9th 5pm ET / 2pm PT / 10pm UK
Episode two: March 16th 5pm ET / 2pm PT / 10pm UK
Episode three: March 23rd 5pm ET / 2pm PT / 10pm UK
Episode four: March 30th 5pm ET / 2pm PT / 10pm UK
Watch Brown Jewel’s Serato’s Kitchen episodes live on the Serato Twitch channel and download the samples from the Serato Discord.