Today we’d like to introduce you to Rick Wade.
Hi Rick, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My story started in Michigan. I grew up in Buchanan, went to the University of Michigan, and eventually found my way into Detroit radio, DJ culture and music production. By the late 1980s and early ’90s, I was deeply immersed in the underground music scene, learning production, developing my own sound and eventually becoming part of what was happening around Detroit electronic music at the time.
I was always drawn to the deeper, more soulful side of music; cinematic library stuff, jazz, strings, Rhodes, melancholy, atmosphere and emotion rather than simply following trends or making tracks for the dance floor. Over time that became the sound people associated with me. I founded Harmonie Park Records and began releasing my own music as well as building a catalog that allowed me to reach listeners far outside Detroit.
What started locally eventually became an international career and I’ve been fortunate enough to DJ and perform throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and other parts of the world, and one of the things I’m most grateful for is that the music has continued to find new generations of listeners. I never really approached it as chasing trends. I made the music I wanted to hear, and somehow that has given it a much longer life than I could have predicted when I started.
At the same time, my career has never been limited to music. I also work professionally in instructional design and media development, creating training and learning experiences for organizations in aerospace, automotive and other industries. That side of my life pushed me deeper into technology, visual communication, animation and software development.
Today those worlds are starting to come together. In addition to continuing to DJ, produce and run Harmonie Park, I’ve begun developing my own creative tools for music, visual storytelling and independent production.
So in a strange way, I feel like I’m still doing what I was doing when I started: experimenting, learning new tools and trying to turn ideas in my head into something other people can experience. The technology has changed tremendously, but that part really hasn’t.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Smooth road? If there was one, apparently I missed the exit, LOL!
But seriously, like most cats in the creative arena, my path has been (and is) a mixture of great opportunities, bad timing, closed doors, unexpected detours and a lot of figuring things out as I went along.
One of the strange things about my career is that I never really thought about longevity. I wasn’t trying to build a forty-year career or stay relevant. I just kept making music I liked. I’ve never been especially interested in chasing whatever sound happened to be popular at the moment, and I’ve never been very good at worrying about whether everybody else approved of what I was doing.
Of course I like making money (I’m not allergic to it, LOL!) but money has never been one of my main motivations for making music. Now, my corporate work is different. That relationship is very simple: I provide a professional service and they provide money. Everybody understands the arrangement. Music has never worked that way for me. I started off making music for me, and would be making music whether anybody was paying attention or not.
Being independent has brought its own challenges. You become the artist, producer, label, promoter, archivist, accountant, problem solver and occasionally your own IT department. There have been periods when I was balancing music with the full-time career and family responsibilities while still touring, releasing records and keeping Harmonie Park moving.
There have also been plenty of situations where opportunities didn’t materialize, recognition came late, or the business side of music didn’t necessarily reward the people doing the most interesting work. Early on, I probably assumed that if you made good music and worked hard, everything else would eventually sort itself out. I learned fairly quickly that the universe had not actually signed that agreement.
But those experiences made me very self-sufficient. I learned not to wait for permission, not to depend too heavily on any one scene, platform or gatekeeper, and to keep developing new skills and interests.
Ironically, I think that may also be part of why the music lasted. I wasn’t designing it around a trend with an expiration date. I was simply making what sounded right to me.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m probably best known as a Detroit house producer, DJ and the founder of Harmonie Park Records. My music tends to live on the deeper, more soulful and atmospheric side of house — a lot of jazz influence, Rhodes, strings, melancholy, warmth and space. I’ve always been more interested in creating a feeling than simply making something functional for a dance floor.
Over the years, that sound has taken me around the world as both a producer and DJ, and one of the things I’m most proud of is that the music has continued to connect with people across generations. Some listeners discovering my records today weren’t even born when they were originally made. That is still a little surreal to me.
I think what sets me apart is that I’ve never really approached music from the standpoint of trying to fit into a market. I make what I like. Sometimes that lines up with what is popular and sometimes it absolutely does not. I’ve never had much interest in changing direction because somebody decided a certain sound was going to be fashionable for the next eighteen months.
I’m also naturally curious, so my creative work has expanded well beyond music. Professionally, I work in instructional design and media development, which has exposed me to animation, visual storytelling, interactive media and emerging technology. More recently, I’ve begun developing my own creative tools, including Harmonie Keys, a browser-based composition tool built around the kinds of chords and musical textures I naturally gravitate toward. I’ve also become increasingly interested in visual storytelling, animation and the new creative possibilities emerging around generative technology.
I think that curiosity, along with a fairly stubborn creative independence, is probably the common thread through everything I do.
What are your plans for the future?
I don’t think I’m planning one dramatic reinvention as much as I’m allowing several parts of my life to finally start connecting. Music is still central. I plan to keep producing, releasing records, DJing internationally and continuing to develop Harmonie Park. I’ve been doing this long enough to know better than to announce that I’m entering my “final form”, something new always shows up and ruins the plan, LOL!
What I’m especially excited about now is building tools and creative systems around the way I actually work. Harmonie Keys grew out of my own approach to chords, harmony and atmosphere, and I want to continue developing that into something genuinely useful for other musicians rather than simply another piece of music software.
I’m also developing SignalFrame, which brings together character design, story development, storyboarding and AI-assisted filmmaking. Visual storytelling has become a much bigger part of my creative life, and I’m interested in what happens when independent artists have access to production capabilities that, until very recently, would have required a studio, a large team and a substantial budget.
More broadly, I want to spend more of my time on work that I actually own, my music, my label, my software, my ideas and my intellectual property. I’ve spent many years using my skills to build things for other organizations, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m increasingly interested in putting more of that energy into building my own.
I’m also looking forward to experimenting more across formats, music, animation, film, interactive media and whatever comes next. I don’t really see those as separate disciplines anymore. To me, they’re all just different ways of creating an atmosphere, telling a story or making somebody feel something.
At this point in my life, that freedom is probably what I’m most interested in: having the tools, experience and independence to follow an idea wherever it leads.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rickwade1986/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rickwade2/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-wade-a134715
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/rick-wade
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1HaiySQ7RMsuvfCEVML84p?si=c3dfQzLCRheJc8Lic-nlrg
