Engineering the future of independent sound through code: MDM alumnus brings technical precision to new single "Let the Paint Dry"
When Aidan Wolfson exports the final digital master tracks of his upcoming album this summer, he will be sharing more than just music.
He’ll share the heavy emotional weight of a major life chapter left behind in Calgary. He’ll share the sharp technical logic of his computer engineering background. And he’ll share the evolution of an artist who finally learned how to embrace the art of continuous change.
For Wolfson, a cohort 15 graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Master of Digital Media (MDM) program, his upcoming solo album, The Butterfly, to be released under his electronic artist moniker Far Aside, is a deeply personal milestone.
“There is no one metamorphosis point,” Wolfson explains. “You never all of a sudden get it and understand. The butterfly symbolizes a fleeting thing passing you by. It’s about coming to terms with continuous change - romantically, growth-wise, and within yourself.”
A programmer with a musical soul
Growing up in Calgary, Wolfson found himself managing a striking dual identity early on. He began producing electronic music in middle school around the age of 12 or 13, experimenting under early pseudonyms before adopting the electronic persona "Nexero" around 2015. By early high school, when he began tracking and engineering his own vocals, he rebranded to Far Aside, a title born from feeling a bit off to the side, safely tucked away in a creative world of his own design.
Alongside his musical evolution, Wolfson was also pursuing a highly rigorous degree in computer engineering. Throughout his undergraduate engineering studies, music served as a crucial outlet to satisfy his creative needs.
Rather than keeping these two worlds segregated, he found a profound technical intersection between them. He realized that modern independent sound relies heavily on data-driven audio optimization. Leaning into the nitty-gritty digital complexities of sound production, Wolfson utilizes his engineering acumen to bring technical precision to his mixing and mastering process. He meticulously calculates how audio is encoded for streaming platforms, navigating file size formats, balancing integrated loudness specifications, and analyzing how data compression algorithms alter sound waves across services like Spotify.
The day everything changed
In mid-2024, Wolfson's personal and academic trajectory took a sudden, massive turn. Just two months before he was set to relocate to Ontario to begin his master's degree at TMU, he went through a major, painful romantic breakup.
Suddenly, he was dealing with intense emotional upheaval while simultaneously moving away from his lifelong home in Alberta to adjust to an entirely new province and academic lifestyle completely on his own.
To process the immense friction of this transition, Wolfson poured himself entirely into his music. He wrote a complete album reflecting his sorrow and the dramatic disruption of his circumstances, titled Closing Doors.
Scrapping an album to start anew
For a while, Wolfson believed Closing Doors would be his next major release. However, as he progressed through the winter months of the MDM program in early 2025, his perspective began to shift.
“I hit a point during MDM, kind of in January or February of 2025, where I was listening to it and I was like, 'This is sad,'” Wolfson recalls. “This is just a sad album. I don't even enjoy listening to it at this point.”
In a bold creative move, he chose to cut the entire project and start completely over from scratch.
This artistic clearing of the slate paved the way for what would become The Butterfly. Operating as a complete solo act, Wolfson chose to write, perform, produce, mix, and master every single track entirely by himself to achieve the exact technical precision he envisioned. The resulting record transformed from a static lament about a breakup into an optimized, self-produced celebration of navigating life's continuous, fleeting evolutions.
Finding community at TMU
While navigating these personal transitions, Wolfson discovered a powerful sense of validation within TMU's Master of Digital Media program. Coming from a strict undergrad background where multidisciplinary pathways were rarely encouraged, the MDM program stood out to him because it actively welcomed students with unconventional, mixed identities.
"It honestly was the multidisciplinary nature of the program that drew me in," Wolfson says, explaining how it contrasted with standard rigid career tracks. "A lot of common career paths nowadays don't encourage having a broad range of skills. They want you to specialize down into one specific lane. MDM encourages people to explore and grow diverse skillsets."
The true core of his experience, however, came down to the community. He quickly developed a tight-knit creative connection with fellow student Hannah Nicoletta. "Hannah and I really pushed each other to chase our ideas and understand what we were doing more," Wolfson recalls, noting that they shared a remarkably similar dual DNA of music and computer science. Together, they successfully co-developed the game jam project Snowmageddon.
He also found an invaluable mentor in his thesis supervisor, Max Lander. Lander championed his fluid, cross-industry approach, providing him with a welcoming environment to safely ground his varied creative interests. "It was amazing to be surrounded by people who shared the same excitement for creative products," Wolfson notes, reflecting on how the community helped reaffirm his direction.
Building spaces for shared narratives
This synthesis of technical mastery, interactive media, and sonic design reached its peak in Wolfson's Major Research Project (MRP): Goblin Talk. A multiplayer narrative game framework that grants four players equal agency over a digital story simultaneously, Goblin Talk was a concept Wolfson had been wanting to explore long before grad school.
"That system was an idea I had for a long time," Wolfson explains. "And I'm very grateful for MDM because that was the culminating thing the program gave me: the time and a supportive space to explore it."
The project was heavily inspired by Wolfson’s deep love for tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, which he credits as the vital anchor that kept his high school friend group tightly bonded online throughout their undergraduate years and the isolation of COVID-19.
“The exciting thing about D&D is that you're sharing a narrative with your friends,” says Wolfson, who naturally self-composed and produced the full musical score for the game prototype. “I don't think that experience of focusing the gameplay on making a story together is out there enough.”
Looking ahead, Wolfson aims to establish his own independent, full-service indie game studio that fully loops video game development and original music production together under one creative roof. He admits that stepping out into the professional landscape as a junior multidisciplinary creator is an uphill battle. "The games industry is so hard right now, and finding junior work is nigh impossible," he candidly observes. Yet, it's that very challenge that makes his artistic endeavors, and his ultimate goal of building a collaborative space with people who inspire him, feel entirely necessary.
For now, the upcoming release of The Butterfly, with its lead single "Let the Paint Dry" already demonstrating his technical precision, marks a moment to honor how far he has traveled. From Calgary to Toronto, from a painful ending to a fresh musical beginning, and from a rigid algorithmic landscape to an open digital ecosystem driven by story and connection.
When asked what piece of advice he would offer to current or future MDM students navigating their own complex, multi-hyphenate artistic identities in a world trying to force them to specialize, Wolfson focuses heavily on self-investigation:
“Find what makes you excited, and then find out why,” Wolfson advises. “Investigate what makes you tick as a person and why you care so much about what you do. What else is the point of life if not to do that, and to share it with people along the way?”
When asked to sum up his MDM graduate school experience, Wolfson points to three definitive words: "Supportive. Creative. Inspiring."
Connect with Aidan: LinkedIn (external link) | Instagram (external link) | Portfolio (external link)
Connect with Far Aside: Instagram (external link)
Listen to “Let the Paint Dry”: Spotify (external link) | Apple Music (external link) | YouTube (external link)