Making music is typically thought to involve some sort of instrument or vocal use, but in the EDM group Trip 40, made up of 10th grader Ian Toomey and 8th grader Justin Viel, all the music created is done using electronics.

“[Our music is] under the main genre of EDM, Electronic Dance Music,” Toomey said. “But we specialize in trap music and progressive house, both also under the EDM spectrum.”

Unlike most music, EDM is made exclusively using technology.

“Basically, me and Ian use the computer,” Viel said. “We just open up this software, and we compose sounds in these different plug-ins, so like sound creators, and we’ll use real audio sometimes. I’ve got a drum kit we’ll sample.”

There are special programs the group uses to make their music.

“We have a software called Fruity Loops, FL Studio for short,” Toomey said. “It’s not cute, it’s manly. When we originally started making music, we started with Mixpad and Garage Band and worked up to machine software and now we’re on Fruity Loops.”

Trip 40 was not started in a normal way, however; the band came to be through a disagreement.

“We started to make [EDM] because at first I wanted to prove how easy it was to Ian to make [EDM],” Viel said. “I play guitar and we were in a band and I was like ‘dubstep is trash’ and we got in a fight. So, I got out my laptop and I tried to make something and it was really bad but I was like ‘this is kind of fun’ and I started listening to [EDM] and ended up making it.”

Despite the many remixes out there, Trip 40 tries to keep things different.

“We try to make our own [EDM], we usually just keep parts of the song that people know,” Toomey said. “Definite parts of the song so that people can recognize what song it is, but we try and make it as original as possible. [EDM] was just music that we enjoyed, and we thought that we could make [a song] better, and we made it better, and now we’re doing it [as a band].”

Trip 40 has a Soundcloud and Twitter, and have slowly been gaining followers on both.

“We just hit 400 [followers] on Soundcloud,” Viel said. “We have almost 11,000 plays on an original called Party Animals. We have another one called Drop Machine that got like 8,000. We actually have a pretty good following, because we’ve only been in Trip 40 for six months.”

The boys have plans in the future of their group.

“This summer we’re gonna start releasing a lot more stuff cause we’ll have more time,” Viel said. “And we might release an album I guess, but we have some plans for the summer.”

Many of the boys’ friends have supported their band by listening to and appreciating their music.

“[Trip 40 is] original and there’s a lot of variety in their music,” sophomore Kendall Taylor said. “I like [all types of the EDM], it just depends on my mood.”

Trip 40 hopes to keep improving on its music.

“We’ve definitely gotten a lot better, we’ve changed,” Viel said. “We used to make a ton of big room and dubstep, but we’ve started to make trap and progressive house, we do a lot of house. It’s definitely changed and gotten better over the last six months for sure.”