06.20.22
How did you get into songwriting?

I've just always grown up loving music, as cliche as that sounds to say. That has to do a lot with my parents. My dad was always always playing classic rock, so I'm a big fan of all that from him, like the Beatles are my favorite band. And my mom was always singing around the house. Even my grandpa on my mom’s side, who was born in Ireland, was always singing songs and playing the tin whistle or the accordion. My dad's mom played the piano. I don't know how I could not have been musical if that makes sense. Getting into songwriting…I don't know I just loved listening to music and singing along to it. I definitely started trying to write songs when I was little, probably 8 or something. Of course, they're all very bad. With my friends in school I'd be like ‘let's be in a band!’ We'd write lyrics, but never actually do anything. I think middle school is when I actually started songwriting. I got GarageBand on my iPhone, so I could record my voice and do it. High school, I just kept going, and then within the last year or 2 I'm finally like, ‘These are kind of good’

When you typically go to write a song now, what does that look like?

I still don't really have a streamlined process. I normally need to already have an idea to be able to sit down and write. It is fun to sit down and and see what you can come up with on the spot, but most of the time I'll just get an idea for a line or like a melody, and then sit down and record it. A lot of times it's just into voice memos, because my ideas will be like in the shower or in the car, where I can't really sit down with the piano. The ones I like enough I'll sit down with the piano.

When the ideas come to me it's lyrics and melody at the same time. I've heard a lot of people say they write the lyrics first, and then set it to music or do music and then write lyrics to it. Mine just happen at the same time and then normally I'll be like ‘Oh, what chords would go well under this.’ I'll bring it into like logic on my laptop, and that's where I can really get into arranging all the different parts and stuff.

Has it always been like that?

I think that's how I come up with the best stuff, because I still struggle if somebody gives me just a track to write lyrics over. I took a songwriting class, and that was one of the assignments. My professor had all these like backing tracks, and was like ‘write lyrics over it.’ Or he gave us the text, and you had to make a melody. Maybe I should try doing that more often. With my band Fools Caravan, one of our songs I did the music, and then our other member Ronak made the lyrics over it.

So you write songs by yourself, and you also write them in a band. Is that a different process for you? Do you come in with something, or do you riff off of what they bring you to?

Most of the band's stuff is Ronak's ideas. Sometimes they're fully formed with lyrics and melody already, and he just comes to us and is like, ‘Okay, come up with instrument parts for it.’ But sometimes the whole group writes them together, throwing out lines and stuff. I brought one idea that was already a melody and some lyrics. Sometimes the rest of the band chimes in if you need help filling in a line. My brother, Mark, will write the guitar part or at least the lead guitar part, if the chords are already written. Sometimes Mark will bring a guitar part by itself, and then we're like ‘Oh, like let's make lyrics and melody around it.’ Alfred, will come in with a bassline. One song he had a mandolin, which was really cool. A good way to put it is a bunch of seeds of songs, which could be just a line or a melody or a guitar like riff. Sometimes it is tough with 4 different minds trying to throw things out because you could say, ‘Oh, how about this?’ And everyone else is like ‘no that's bad’.

Would you say that's more of a challenge than writing by yourself? Or do you enjoy working with others more?

There’s different challenges. I've written by myself the most and that's my favorite, because you have complete control over everything, whereas writing with a group or even just writing with one other person, you might have to compromise. I've done that a few times, too. I think maybe I prefer writing by myself the most, or with one other songwriter, because that can be pretty cool. But I mean the band comes up with fun stuff, because you have more minds on it. So I guess it's all different challenges and different benefits to each type of songwriting.

Are you studying music in school?

I’m a music industry major at Drexel and it's different from a music program. It's not just for musicians or artists. There's people who want to be managers, or run a label or people who want to work with booking and venues. There are a lot of artists, though, because there's the business side and the production side. I'm on the production side, but everybody still has to take the general business production classes and we all graduate with a minor in business administration which is pretty cool. I’m more interested in the creative/technical side, so I didn't really enjoy those classes, but I still got the minor!

So tell me a little bit about production. Have you ever been just a producer? How's that different from being a songwriter or an artist?

I haven't been a producer for others as much as for my own stuff.There's been a few times when I've gone into the studio with a friend who needed to record vocals. I acted as the engineer/producer for that session. I've taken a few studio classes where we learn how to set everything up, and I've also taken a mixing class – that's once everything's recorded, doing the levels of volume and EQ and compression to polish the song.

It definitely is different, especially if you're the producer, just for someone else. You're kind of under their control. Especially if you're doing vocals with a vocalist, you can direct them a bit, but most of the time the vocalists will tell you what they want. It's called punching them in. They'll record the whole song and if they may be messed up they'll be like ‘punch me in at verse two’, and then you have to like set it to start recording there. You're more working for someone else's creative vision. But it's cool because then you're like ‘hey? I'm a vehicle for creativity’. I'm still less confident in that myself, because with the pandemic I didn't get a lot of studio time. I've gone into the studio with more experienced friends and even they will struggle sometimes for 20-30 min, because you could do everything right, but there's one little thing you're missing or one little setting that somebody else left on and it doesn’t work. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out what's wrong. So that's the annoying part about studio time.

Studio time, which is also the tentative name for this newsletter, so I'm glad you've been saying it! Do you see yourself going that direction as a producer with your career?

Initially going to school I wanted to be a producer specifically, so that's still what I want to do. Being surrounded by so many other students and producers, sometimes I feel like am I actually technically good enough? But I'm here to learn so that's like I shouldn't really compare myself if I'm still learning. Do you know Jack Antonoff? He's a producer who works with Taylor Swift and Lorde, but he also does his own music. That's kind of the dream. I'd love to be able to do my own and also work with other artists. But I also am really just into film scoring.

Tell me about film scoring. What got you into that? How do you approach scoring a film?

I've always loved film scores. Growing up I loved the Harry Potter score because that's like John Williams, and he's like the god of film scoring. He's Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Star Wars. You can't even name them all. When I had my first keyboard when I was younger, when I first started writing, it was just instrumental stuff. I thought -– instrumental stuff, it sounds like it would be like the film score to a movie or a TV show. I gravitate towards instrumental stuff a lot. So that's how I got interested in that. For the first time last year, I did a two minute score for my friend's short film. In Logic, you can import a video so as you're working within the digital audio workstation, you see the video and you can just play the piano along to it . That's how a lot of film scores are made because you want it to sync up exactly with what's happening on screen.

I also did an original song for a film this year with melody and lyrics. This kid in the film major had heard about me through friends and reached out to me and was like, ‘oh, i'm making this short film. It's kind of like eighties themed. Do you want to write an original song for it?’ So I did that. I'm slowly getting credits under my belt.

What I usually ask everybody at the end is what is one piece of advice that you have for me as a total beginner to writing music?

There's a tip that I heard at tiktok, so I'm stealing it. It was from a Berklee music professor. She said, as an example for a prompt, think about a relationship in your life write down all your thoughts about it. Then she said to go back and star the lines that you wrote down that you're like ‘Oh, I would never say that, that's too deep or too personal.’ That's what you need to be writing about. I personally think the best lyrics I've come up with have been like “these are my thoughts on this relationship or this scenario”