In 2020, Weird Genius’ “Lathi” became one of those rare songs that seemed to travel everywhere at once.

The track, featuring Sara Fajira, fused thunderous electronic production with Javanese–inspired elements and a haunting vocal performance. It dominated Indonesian streaming charts, sparked a global TikTok challenge and carried a distinctly local sound far beyond its home market.

For many listeners, it was their introduction to Weird Genius, the Indonesian electronic music group founded by Reza Oktovian, Eka Gustiwana and Roy Leonard Soewarno. For Gustiwana, it was also a milestone in a much longer dream: to be known not only as a performer, but also as the producer shaping what people hear.

Today, Gustiwana is one of Indonesia’s most recognisable producers, composers and music-tech creators. As part of Weird Genius, he helped bring Indonesian electronic music into regional and international conversations. On his own, he has built a career across production, songwriting, viral internet formats and creator education.

But long before the charts, the awards and the millions of listeners, his dream began at home, watching melodies take shape inside music production software.

Gustiwana was around 11 when his father introduced him to musical instruments and digital audio workstations. His first software was Cakewalk, a production tool from an earlier era of computer music. Back then, learning music production was not as simple as opening a video tutorial or asking an AI assistant to explain a concept step by step.

To find information, Gustiwana went to internet cafes and searched on his own.

“I was amazed,” he says, “that I could make music by putting in a melody and seeing the melody recorded on the screen.”

That sense of possibility stayed with him. While others around him learned more traditional instruments, Gustiwana became fascinated with production itself: arranging sounds, recording melodies, building songs from behind the desk.

His first real industry breakthrough came when one of his songs, “Kutetap Menanti,” was used by Indonesian actor and singer Nikita Willy in a sinetron.

“That was my first song that broke through in the industry,” he says. “I’m really proud of it because it’s really hard to find a way to promote your song and have it used by a big artist.”

To keep the momentum going, Gustiwana turned to the internet. He uploaded music to SoundCloud, posted on social media and built a YouTube channel. One format in particular caught on: speech composing, where he transformed spoken words into music by editing syllables, pitch and rhythm into songs.

Today, when AI tools can manipulate audio in seconds, the idea may sound familiar. At the time, Gustiwana was doing it manually.

The videos made him famous online. But they also created a personal tension. People began to know him as a content creator, when what he wanted most was to be recognised as a musician and producer.

So he turned the attention back to music. On YouTube, Gustiwana’s channel became a place for production experiments, music edits and conversations with local artists and musicians about how songs are built.

Then came Weird Genius, where Gustiwana found an even larger canvas for the work he had always wanted to be known for. With “Lathi,” the group showed how Indonesian electronic music could travel globally while still carrying a distinctly local identity.

Gustiwana has lived through waves of music technology. “I’ve been through several industry evolutions,” he says. “AI is going to be one of them.”

The industry’s discourse around AI in music creation has been fraught for good reason. Artists, labels and critics have raised questions about control and consent: how creative work is used to train models, and whether an artist’s voice or likeness can be replicated without permission. At the same time, a growing wave of low-effort synthetic content has made some creators worry about human artists being crowded out.

But Gustiwana’s point of view is clear: AI should support the artist, as opposed to replacing them.

Gustiwana notes that the core and creative part of production should stay sacred and AI-free, a boundary that greatly matters to him. “The most important part that needs to be done by humans is writing music and writing lyrics,” he says. “But if you use AI to write your song, produce it and make your music, then you’re not a musician – you’re just a prompter.”

More conventional apps such as Logic Pro remain the core of Gustiwana’s music production process, but he also uses AI assistants like Google Gemini and Claude to explore themes and search for references during pre-production, as well as ideate and refine promotional ideas after the song is made.

If he had to sum up how to stay in the game, Gustiwana would use one word: adapt. “The creative industry is always changing, and innovation is how we keep moving forward.”

Want to make music, promote a release or shape a creative project of your own? Start with Gustiwana’s practical approach: use apps to move faster, but keep your own taste in charge.

Share your process. Try posting small pieces of your own process: a melody idea, a before-and-after edit, a production breakdown or a lesson you learned while making something. You don’t need to wait until a project is perfect to let people in.

Use AI assistants for pre-production research. Start with the song’s world: theme, mood, genre and audience. Try: “I’m making a song with an ’80s Japanese city pop feel. Can you suggest underrated songs from that era and explain what I can learn from them?”

Consult AI assistants for ideas on marketing strategies. Once the song is ready, ask for help promoting it. Try: “I have a new release coming up on 15 July. The song is about someone who’s delusional in their relationship. Please create a marketing plan that relates to Gen Z audiences.” You can also ask for short-form video ideas, captions, release-week timelines or ways to explain the song’s story.

Use Logic Pro to take apart sounds and rebuild them. Gustiwana uses the AI-powered Stem Splitter for his own edits and Weird Genius edits, separating mixed audio into parts he can study, remix or prepare for new versions. Try using it to understand how a reference track is built, isolate a vocal idea or create a new arrangement from existing material.

Keep the human decision-maker. Gustiwana’s rule is simple: the artist decides what the song is trying to say.