About
Justin Bianco was born in 1983 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and he and his family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was three. When he was tall enough to reach the keys of the keyboard, he began his musical career with an odd mess of tunes.
Some two decades later, he still plays the piano, amongst many other things. Although he has spent time in Iowa, California, and even Costa Rica, he currently finds his home in Portland, Oregon, where he records his latest compositions.
While Justin’s first album was professionally recorded and mastered, every album since has been entirely home-grown, with Justin being responsible for all of the recording, producing, mixing, designing, advertising, and more. He also licenses his music for commercial and non-commercial uses; find out more here.
Music
Justin began making sounds before he could speak, listening to each one individually and exploring his auditory senses. Before he was even tall enough to see the keys on the piano, he was reaching up and playing them- not as your usual toddler would- by playing one at a time and letting it continue until it faded away entirely before pressing another. Eventually, and with lessons, Justin learned simultaneously how to play the violin and the piano, eventually focusing solely on the piano. Although led by the Suzuki method which utilizes written and recorded notes to teach, Justin clearly favored playing by ear, skipping the written music altogether. To this day, he can barely pick out written notes.
When he was ten, Justin composed his first piece, entitled Dragonfly In Amber, which later appeared on his debut album by the same name. It was professionally mastered and recorded (although is notably the only album of his to make that claim) on his family’s land in the wooded mountains of southern Oregon.
Even when he made his way across the country, to a small, remote boarding school in Iowa, a piano was never far away. Justin continued composing, and also began to explore electronic music. Later, at Lewis & Clark college, he continued on in both respects, and two this day releases albums either focusing on electronic sounds and vocals, or entirely on solo piano. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon, and has learned how to play the flute, cello, electric and acoustic guitar, bass guitar, mandolin, and more.
Licensing
Licensing royalty-free, non-exclusive music directly from a musician is an extremely attractive idea for advertisers, filmmakers, game developers, and even wedding planners. It keeps prices down, and gives their work an added freshness that using more mainstream sources wouldn’t provide. Music licensing is available for either commercial or non-profit use, and all of Justin Bianco’s music is available for licensing- currently through two means:
- Magnatune.com: Magnatune offers an industry-beating array of statistics and the process couldn’t be simpler. Just navigate to the album of the song you’re interested in and click the “License” button. With prices 30% lower than the rest of the industry, and over 3000 licenses in five years, they’ve staked the claim as the best place to get song licensing online.
- Direct: Of course, if you’d like to deal directly with Justin, you can drop him a line and he’ll seriously consider all offers. With a considerable amount of time spent creating contracts and dealing with licensing and creative works across multiple industries, he’ll give your request the time it deserves and find a way to make it work if he at all can.
Design
Justin firmly believes that every bit of an album should describe what the music itself is intended to convey. To this end, Justin has designed every album layout since he began recording in 2001, and believes that, short of technical and economic limitations, the minutiae are as important as the overall end result.
He has designed many of this site’s incarnations; some from scratch, but all in some way have been molded to fit the mood of their content at the time. He has also worked extensively in HTML, CSS, PHP, and graphically (screen and print) and has designed many systems from the ground up to meet a certain aesthetic and functionality in a professional environment. He has designed logos (for example this site), icons, and has spent time working in application development and interface design.
Production
Justin has long been interested in the engine of business, from concept to marketing. Since his second album, he has written, recorded, arranged, mastered, marketed, designed, and produced every release. While studying film in San Francisco, he learned about business models in that industry, and applied many of the ideas to music. Later, during an internship for the non-profit organization Justice Now, where he served as sound designer, he learned how to produce audio on a larger scale, with higher stakes. He is particularly keen at drawing up contracts, and loves the intricacies of running his own one-man business.
Photography
Since teaching himself photography in high school in a leaky darkroom of an old science building in Iowa, Justin has studied and practiced photography of many different media types, and you can see samples in the gallery.
