Hannah Roberts - aka HANAH - has been on the road for her first UK tour, celebrating a track that’s hit over one million streams and working on new music. We caught up with her to discuss all of this and how dBs Institute has helped get her there.
At dBs Institute, we help our students develop their natural gifts, take their skills to the next level and build creative careers. Following that template, Hannah Roberts, aka HANAH, a recent BA (Hons) Music Production & Sound Engineering graduate, has been making music since she was just 13, has always been immersed in every part of the creative process and was releasing music before she started studying with us.
However, since finishing her degree at dBs Institute, all of her creative endeavours have come to a head and she’s now thoroughly enjoying the fruits of her labour. In her graduation year, she embarked on a UK-wide tour, celebrated the one-millionth stream of her track ‘Solo’ with a Live Session performance at our Bristol campus and started work on her next project.
We caught up with her to find out about her art, the excitement of new music yet to be written and how studying at dBs Institute helped clarify her processes and bring everything she needed to do into a much clearer focus. Find out what Hannah had to say here!
Hi, I'm Hannah. I am a producer and a songwriter, and I'm a student at dBs.
I like creating everything myself, I love having my own print on everything. I've created all of my own merch with my brother and my music videos with my friends. I’m very DIY as an artist, I'd say. I taught myself production and I've crafted my style from that. I'm very aural with how I make my music. I'm not by the book. I'm not very theoretical. What sounds good, is what I do. I’d probably describe my music as electronic. It draws from jazz, ambient, folk, and has been described as ‘folktronica’. It's left-of-centre music.
So I started making music, producing and recording when I was about 13 or 14. I did music GCSE and I always sang in choirs and I was doing theatre as well. I'm from an acting background; doing musicals and having singing lessons. I've sung my whole life. All of those formative years led up to when I started recording and when I came to dBs at the age of about 19. Before I came to dBs, I didn't realise that I had been producing that whole time, which was kind of mad. All of the terminology came to me when I came to uni which gave me a bit of imposter syndrome but also clarity. I was like, “Oh, I've actually been doing that for ages and that's the word for that. I'm a producer.”
One thing that was life-changing for me was getting on the Saffron Records development scheme. That was around four or five years ago now. That was massive for me because I got to release an EP, it was the first time working with a label and it's a team who are so supportive of whoever you are and whoever you want to be. Your vision is their priority. They just have such good intentions. I love Saffron. They need to be talked about and they need to be given their flowers. They do so much for people.
I’m also going on tour in a week, which is kind of hard to think about. That's something that I feel really proud of. I’m feeling really scared, but I’m doing it and putting my all into it. I'm forcing myself to play guitar on tour, which I'm kind of scared of. Singing and playing is hard. It's really hard, but I can only get better by doing it. I'd also say that just generally releasing music is a massive success story in itself. If you can put out a piece of music, that's so vulnerable and hard to do. That's something that I'm proud of.
The second anniversary of my EP Colours of Now & Then was in October and ‘Solo’ was a single from it that has done well. It got a million plays, and although I'm not really all about numbers, it’s nice that it's resonated with people. I wanted to give back to people who have played it and have streamed Solo, so I said to Saffron, “Should we do a celebration ‘Live Lounge’?" I thought, “Where can I do this,” and thought of dBs! They were so supportive. The process was basically gathering the community around me, reaching out, pulling favours and people coming together. It all came together with a lot of love and intention and it's turned out really great.
We're hoping to get a headline show booked in London and Bristol. I want to curate a show with people who I love and whose voices I think should amplified and who deserve to be heard. The new music excites me too and just, in general, what excites me is the prospect that there's more unwritten music. What is that going to sound like and where is that gonna take me?
I feel so happy when I'm creating music and then I got into dBs and from then, something clicked and I've never looked back. The best decision I've ever made was to come here and change my career path in that way. Something clicked. I can't explain what but there was definitely a moment where things started coming back to me; positive things and more opportunities. That was when I was like, “Okay, I’m tapping into something here.”
We help countless students like Hannah kickstart their careers in the music industry. Want to join them? Check out our unique music production courses at dBs Institute today!