Just For Fun: Creating Tunes

Q: Tell us about the music you’ve been producing.

A: I’ve been working on pop music, and usually, my friend Casey sings my songs and I do the production, most of the writing -the lyrics, the melodies. We’ve actually written music together before, she’s got a great voice, it’s very versatile. It’s just very fun working with her [...] I genuinely think that pop music is the best genre of music because of how incredibly catchy it is, how it can get stuck in people’s heads. A lot of times people say doing the simplest thing is the hardest thing.

Q: What is your creative process like?

A: I worked with this guy called Roth-Newell at the Riekes Center. He’s helped me learn a lot and tweaks my projects[...] It usually starts with an instrumental, if I find a synthesizer, I mix them together and make it into a melody I like. The hardest part for me is what lyrics to put in, so the lyrics often come months later. [...] With Isak, it was interesting for the last song we worked on. We kind of argued about some stuff when we were working on it but in the end, it made things better, we had two different perspectives and worked things out. The last song I released was in early April, but we pretty much finished that song by early March before shelter in place. Isak started mixing it, and I went to his house twice to work on it with him. But when COVID started, it proved to be a whole new problem even with Casey, because usually, we would record the vocals together, whether it’s at a studio or at her house. This time we recorded remotely. We were face timing, she has her own mic and would basically do all the vocal tracks. After that, she would upload those files and I would import them into my computer. For Isak to do the mixing, I’m going to have to export every track as a wav. file so he can do the mixing.

Q: Do you think you’ll turn this into a career?

A: I don’t think I’m going into songwriting or making music as a career, but I hope to work in the music industry more on the business side. It’s just really fun making music and it’s kinda interrelated with what I hope to do in the future, so I think it’s a good hobby to have.