Discover Me UK: The blind keyboard king who is pioneering studio technology and giving new acts a chance
Jason Dasent has been in love with music since he was nine years old growing up in Trinidad.
“A friend had a little toy keyboard at school and I picked it up and realised I had a bit of a knack for it,” he says, as we sit in his home studio in Sheffield surrounded by stacks of keyboards and synthesisers.
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Hide Ad“One thing led to the other and I got my own keyboard and started playing around and just became more and more interested.”


Dasent quickly found that he was not only immersing himself in his new hobby but he had a natural aptitude for it too.
“My brother Dean got me into synthesisers as well,” he recalls. “He wasn't particularly musical but being the big brother, he saw this interest in me and so I started looking at how music technology works too. He challenged me in this direction.”
By the age that most people have only just wrapped up doing a paper round, Dasent had a job working in the music industry at just 15.
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Hide Ad“I was working in recording studios producing artists, programming music, doing commercial jingles and stuff like that for advertising,” he says.


“It was a job I held when I was still in school. I would go straight from school to a recording session, go home, get very little sleep, go back to school the next day and then repeat the same thing. And then by 17 or 18 I had started performing in live bands as a keyboard player and programmer.”
Such was Dasent’s proficiency that he soon found he was running his own operation.
“I had my own recording studio,” he says. “I had worked in most of the recording studios in Trinidad as a producer and then I was fortunate enough to open my own place with the assistance of my mum.
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Hide Ad"And then, unfortunately, she passed away. But a few years later my wife Sarah came on board and joined me and together we ran a pretty successful commercial studio in Trinidad.”
However, one hurdle that Dasent came up against is that not all of the technology he was using was accessible to him as a blind person.
“We bought one machine thinking it was accessible but when it came to Trinidad it turned out to not be,” he says. “So I couldn't use it. But Sarah and I are a little tech savvy, so we decided to make our own interface to make it accessible.
"We used a platform called keyboard maestro and we started building some macros and stuff to make it talk in order to allow me to use the software.”
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Hide AdThe company that made the instrument, Native Instruments, got wind of what he was doing and was keen to learn from him.
“They invited us to the office in London and they subsequently hired me to work with them,” says Dasent.
“The aim was for them to make it accessible from their end. And then word started spreading about this and then other companies started calling.”
Dasent is surrounded by his own work in the studio. One slick looking new synthesiser had arrived just the day before and he shows me its functions with a voice reading out every option available on the machine.
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Hide Ad"Everything in this room talks,” he says. “I work with the different music manufacturers to make that happen – to integrate accessibility into the hardware and software.”
As a result of his work, there’s been some major changes in the way companies build such equipment now.
“A lot of companies now rather than retrofit their hardware and software with accessibility, they're thinking of doing it from the ground up, so that when it is released it is accessible,” he says.
Dasent’s knowledge and ability in this field is so great that he’s working with companies all over the world such as Focus, New Gen Audio, Solid State Logic, Ableton, Softube, Arturia, Audio Modelling and Native Instruments.
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Hide Ad“These companies are really making strides and really making accessibility a priority,” he says.
On top of all of this, Dasent also launched an artist discovery platform in Trinidad called Discover Me, which he has now brought to Sheffield.
“It was an initiative we started in order to highlight emerging talent,” he explains. “We found that in running the studio there was a lot of young talent who we felt were market ready but there might be a financial problem for them in being able to afford to take things to the next level.”
So Dasent and his wife, Sarah Joseph-Dasent – who is also a fine artist – set something up that people could access for free.
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Hide Ad“So we started this project called the Discover Me artist of the month,” he says.
“The aim was to give one artist enough tools and material for them to go and push their own music independently as we were seeing a lot of artists struggling to make headway getting their music played on the radio and such things.”
So, Dasent opened up his studio and equipment for these artists.
“We would take an artist and bring them into the studio and we would professionally record, mix and master a song,” he says.”
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Hide AdThey would then work with a video production company to make a one minute trailer for the artists which was shown in cinemas before films ran.
They partnered with a radio station to get them heavy airplay and they also sorted them out with a press pack, media training and various other bits of advice and mentoring. And then finally, they gave them the opportunity to play live with a professional backing band.
Some of their artists went on to be nominated for big awards or land jobs working in TV and radio. And so since 2023 Dasent has launched Discover Me in Sheffield, which is a similar initiative for local musicians.
He had originally moved to London in 2019 to study a Masters Degree before moving to Sheffield in 2021 and is currently undertaking a PhD at Kingston University.
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Hide AdOnce settled in South Yorkshire he began the project which, four times a year, will provide an aspiring artist with the same recording opportunity and mentorship, which will then culminate in a live show with a full band.
In order to find a consistent home for these performances, Dasent teamed up with Alder bar in Kelham Island (which won the Best Bar award at 2024 Exposed Magazine awards) to provide a space for these artists to play.
“We just aim to give them a whole holistic approach and a jumpstart into the industry,” he says.
However, it would appear Sheffield is just the next step in a plan that is intended to become very large indeed.
“My aim is to take it national and then international,” he says.
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