"It's kind of like an itch. It's something that is there and you don't know exactly what it is, but I was conscious about this itch. When you get into something like that, you get in your own world and you begin to find your sound."

Darko Saric has had “the music in him” since he was a child, already frustrated that his hands were too small to play the guitar. After coming to this country barely a decade ago, he proceeded to make life happen by combining a pioneering, entrepreneurial spirit with his creative passion for music, and he is one of those elite few who do what they love for a living. “Whatever makes sound, I will use it. I began playing flute at age 4 or 5, and I hated it because it was so limited. I wanted to play the guitar, but my hands were too little. When I got older I was able to play the guitar, and that’s when the real fun began.

When I was a kid everything was new, and as a teenager I think I was a little obsessed at that time. When I got to the point where I knew I wasn’t going to get better and I was getting bored, I just started to create stuff.

I was signed to Sony with my band Indigo and those were the rock star years of my life in 1998-2004. I came from Peru in 2005, and got hired here to work in a studio in New Jersey. In the beginning I thought my path was being a music producer. I liked to work with artists and explore different types of music, but the people that I met most of the time didn’t have the same amount of passion to do stuff and to make things happen. I realized I needed to work by myself, and that’s how I began to make music for TV. One day you can be doing music that is super fun and comic, and the next day you are making music that is suspenseful and scary. For me that’s super fun because I don’t like to be in one place all the time musically. I’m a working class composer, so if you’re watching shows on ABC like 20/20 or Good Morning America, you are hearing my music. I thought when I was in my 20s that the only way to make a living is being famous, and that’s not the way I am. I prefer to be a little more honest. For work, I do music, and if you like it, you use it and you pay me. I work with a laptop as a recorder, and I like to use outboard gear a lot. I have my personal projects; Malka, Dayan and DRKO, and with my band Indigo, we are getting back again for a mini tour in Peru, Mexico and the United States. When I do MY music, I close the computer, and when it is down, that’s just me for myself. I do my music and grab my iPod or iPhone to record what I’m doing at the moment. It’s like opening a door to a room that is all dark; you begin to light up candles and see what is there.

When you do music for TV, there’s a place you have to go that is very exact and structured. If I had to work at something that was not my passion, first I don’t think I would be that good, but if I have to, there’s always a half hour in the day when you come back and you just grab the guitar and play something, right? Sometimes I feel like I have a free ticket here. I don’t know when this train is going to stop. Somebody is going to come and say the show is off and now you have to go back to your real life.”