I've always written pop songs. I tend to take inspiration from more experimental genres, like ambient music, but at the root of the song, it's verse-chorus-verse.
Maybe in the future, you'll be able to understand what I'm saying. I'm going more for an atmospheric vibe in my songs. And I really don't want to ruin the illusions people may create for themselves.
The one sound I think of when I think about dreaming is the harp glissando, which is this really atmospheric run up and down the scale that's really dreamy.
The types of melodies I tend to write kind of have this bittersweet quality; they're meant to be uplifting but kind of have this melancholy vibe to it.
For me personally, I'm always writing from what's happening in my emotional life. Even without thinking about it a lot of the time, it comes out in the songs that I'm writing.
I try to be as optimistic as I can. I feel like that's the beautiful thing about art and music. It can take you places, and they can be a positive influence. A very soothing influence. Honestly, I feel like there's enough pain and terrible things that happen in life. That's beautiful thing in art, you can really idealize things.
I felt like I was building this world brick by brick with each layer of instrumentation I was doing. I could see it growing in some ways. I feel like most writers feel the same way. You're almost living inside of this magic world that you're building.
I try to stay on a pretty normal schedule of nine-to-five.
My parents live out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of this peach orchard. It's actually Peach County, one of the largest peach-growing counties in Georgia. It's very rural, and there is nothing much going on, so I guess that's had a big influence on everything as far as just not having much to do.
If a band or artist isn't tweeting or writing posts on Facebook every day, there can be this kind of mystique built about them, and I find myself retreating from the spotlight more and more.
You hear ten seconds of a song, and you know it's OutKast. There's a strangeness about it because it's catchy, but it's not just pop for the sake of pop. They're pushing the envelope.
The thing that's good about music-making software like the DAW-kinda systems is that they're all generally the same; the kind of interface is normally laid out in a similar way. Depending on the program, the sounds might be quite different, but they tend to all have a drum machine or synthesizer or a sampler.
There are certain sounds that have a loaded past. Like the sound of a harp, if you go back to old movies, represents a dream sequence; it transports you there.
I have a little basement studio set up here at my house, and I do probably 80 percent of the recording here on my own. With multi-tracking technology, I can play various parts on top of one another.
