Tag: hip hop

My Musical Goals: 2021

I’m sitting in a room at my parents’ house right now, and I just finished a beat. I’m moving out soon and much of my stuff is packed. I’m listening to Tycho on headphones (Epoch). He’s been my go-to writing music ever since I started this blog in 2018. Since then, I’ve learned so much, and there’s a lot I want to accomplish. Here are my musical goals for 2021.

1) Be a singer-songwriter again. I started performing as a singer-songwriter in 2013, and because of the pandemic, I barely played in 2020. I found myself writing less for my singer-songwriter name and focusing more on beats and electronic music. I love writing electronically, but I want to come back to guitar and voice, too. There’s something personal and uniquely expressive about playing guitar and singing. In general, I want to sing more.

2) Collaborate with other artists. Working with people on Songs From Home was a really cool experience. I loved hearing my instrumentals come to life and the surprising directions they went. I haven’t worked with a rapper since 2014, and I really want to change that. I’ve been stockpiling rap beats and in February I’m going to start reaching out. I’m not trying to sell anything at first; I’ll be DMing talented locals with free beats and see if there’s any interest. In the future, I’d love to work with all kinds of singers and musicians.

3) Create consistent content. Every teacher, vlogger, YouTuber, and Gary V will tell you about the importance of content creation. I’ve done the random Instagram post, blog, or video, but it hasn’t been consistent in awhile. In 2018 I released a video and blog post every week for months and that was awesome; I want to return to that level of output. My goal now is to make a weekly YouTube video and take clips of it for microcontent on Instagram. I’m hoping to slowly build a following and get better at consistent creation.

4) Get an internship / volunteer. I graduated with my Bachelor’s of Science in Music Industry, and now I’m ready to be rich! And by rich I mean gainfully employed (but first, an internship). In my projects class I focused on the licensing side of music, but recently I’ve been interested in non-profits like Musicians on Call and the Harmony Project. I’m also excited for volunteer opportunities like working at Big Turn Music Festival. There’s a lot of people that need help and endless ways to get involved.

Whichever way I go, I’m excited to learn more about these fields and be part of a world I love. Thanks for following my journey!

Making a Lofi EP

This December I graduated college and I celebrated by releasing a lofi EP. I wanted something commemorative of the college experience, and what better way than by making chill beats to study / relax to? Not to mention, I love lofi. I dropped it during finals week in the hopes of attracting more student listeners.

I started the writing process in June. I know firsthand the annoyance of putting together an EP and not liking all of the songs. I usually handle this by releasing fewer songs or by writing more, but this time I tackled the problem upfront. I committed to writing 20 songs and only releasing the best. This helped me relax while writing since each song carried less weight. I wasn’t too hard about whether or not I liked what I had; my goal was to finish two demos a week, good or bad. This gave me more freedom to experiment.

After I had my 20 demos, I found several that I could eliminate instantly. They were good songs that didn’t fit the lofi aesthetic for varying reasons: too exciting, too high energy, too much dynamic range, and a few that I just wanted to develop into hip hop beats. Writing a lot of tracks made it easy to finish these ideas as they came along rather than scrapping them on the spot. Especially after I had a handful I liked, it was nice to write without any sense of needing it to be good or having it fit in a particular way.

I eliminated seven songs for genre reasons and one because it was a remix (Misty by Ella Fitzgerald). I wanted to have five to eight songs. There were some I planned to include from the start (Morning Dew, Breakfast Brew, Halloween Chillin), and for the others I relied on Instagram polls. I had eight songs selected, but as the deadline got closer I narrowed it down to five. I was on the fence about a couple and opted for quality over quantity. The project is only 9 minutes long, but I think I made the right choice.

I’m happy with the outcome and I hope you can enjoy these songs while studying, relaxing, drinking coffee, or watching the snow fall.

Finals Week Available Everywhere.