Interview by Dlisah Lapidus
When did you start working on music production?
I’m a drummer, and I’ve been getting really into music production the past couple of years, and that’s what I’m going to school for. During quarantine, I was really bored, and I just made like, a shit ton of music. I kind of tried to make a song every day or something. And I started posting stuff on SoundCloud, at the beginning of quarantine, little projects, kind of like this one.
Why did you decide to put together “Aah Sealife?”
It's kind of a funny story. I ran out of free upload space on my SoundCloud, so I had to pay for a paid version of SoundCloud. And the paid version of SoundCloud also helps you get your music on Spotify and Apple Music. So I was like, Oh, shit, okay, well, I'm already paying for this thing so that I can post more on SoundCloud, I might as well just get myself on Apple Music and Spotify.So, I had these four songs that I was kind of sitting on because I'm planning on releasing an album with vocals, featuring others, but I was just like, I kind of need to get something on Spotify, and now seems like a good time.
How has time impacted your creative process?
Life is like the idea of distorted time. That really resonated with me, particularly quarantine wise. The first couple months when you really weren't seeing people, it just felt so weird. It felt like every day was an eternity. So, that was really disappointing at first, but then I tried to turn it into something more productive. And it turned out that day that feels like a year can be really useful if you are making music all day.
What has the impact of the Coronavirus been on your process?
Obviously COVID and quarantine is terrible. But I do think that having a lot of time just to yourself, in your ro
om, at least for me, has gotten me to do a lot of things that I've been meaning to do. Not just personal organization wise, but also music and art like, I had all these like pants that I bought that didn’t fit. So I have been customizing those and doing shit like that. I don’t know, I just feel like giving yourself that kind of time to work solo can be really helpful to so many people. I feel like when we get out of quarantine, everyone's gonna be like, hella creative.
How did you put together this album?
I used the most very basic shit that you can get. Like I use Logic Pro as my software, which is literally just like the upgraded version of GarageBand, which is just on my computer. I like that everything is online. For my album, like, all the samples and everything, those are completely free, you could probably go on like freesamples.net and find something I used. I like the idea of having accessible music in that way. I really did not spend a dime on this project. I used the shitty microphone that I've had forever to record my drums and everything. So, along those lines, like that's something a little interesting. Like, it really was a very cheap thing to put together and anyone really interested should do that, there's so much free stuff on the internet.
Did you face any challenges in your production of this album?
I got discouraged a ton, trying to make music and then having days or weeks where I didn't like anything. You just really have to keep working with it. Even if you don't like it, if it's really ugly or whatever. Like, you just got to like really trudge through it and like not give up on something halfway through. Because I feel like, whenever I did that I got really great results, just like working through everything I tried and trying new weird things that I wouldn't really normally.