Music

Isaac Gonzalez

Mr. Lewenstein

ENGL 008

19 September 2017

Music

Have you ever been in a bad mood, turned on some bangin tunes, and feel your problems melt? Music has always been something special to me; it’s helped me through many hard times especially this summer. I felt overwhelmed by the challenges to come and felt alone in the process. I’ve seen people make instrumentals, and it seemed interesting, so I gave it a try. After I graduated from Calipatria High, I picked up a producing software and got to work. Experimenting with the software day and night and studying its ins and outs took my mind off to a better place. After a couple of weeks of just making beats, I started to write the words that were floating around in my head.  I never thought that I would become a rapper or producer, but creating my own sound drowned out my constant sadness.

After I graduated high school, I wasn’t prepared for any of the obstacles I was about to face. These feelings were eating me up inside, making me stay up late in the night just laying there thinking. To helped me sleep I put on a slow rap playlist that helps take my mind off of the current situations. I can listen to any genre except country and mariachi; Blake Shelton's the only exception. Keeping up and listening to modern rap is how I spend a lot of my time, and I thought it would be cool to work with some beats. Researching more into the modern rap scene, I’ve noticed that producers really do a lot of the work creating and altering sound. My friends, that I talk to online almost everyday, told me about a program that many producers use to create those catchy, flowy, and vibey sounds. I bought the program and began to create beats, mostly starting off with little tunes I had in my head. At first, the program was really confusing, but after finding a chain of hour long youtube videos from many different channels, I started to understand the thousands of scattered plug ins. Digging further into the program improved my sound, and they also didn’t sound as techno. I created instrumentals everyday to sharpen my skills.

After few weeks passed of just creating instrumentals I started to write down some lyrics for the fun of it. Which led to me then giving myself a goal to write a verse every morning to sharpen this skill and help get my mind up and running. This also kept my mind busy after a while, I started to piece them together and create songs. Creating these songs helped me deal with that feeling of loneliness, and it felt like I was being heard.By Stirring up all these feelings, I cooked up  a song called “Low on Life,” which lifted a giant weight off my shoulders. I was trying to go for a mix between three of my top favorite rappers Yung Gravy, Wintertime, and Ski Mask The Slump God. I wanted a smooth flow like Gravy, more bass in my voice like Winter, and those catchy lines that make you take a second look like Ski Mask. These three artists inspired me big time. I can recite at least three songs from each of them. Other artists that influence me are Lil Yachty, XXXTenacion, and Kevin Gates. The flow started to come to me; I created some videos that I posted on my twitter. As a result, I got some positive feedback. This led me to buying a small keyboard and microphone to improve on my instrumentals and become an actual producer. I had to watch even more of those handy Youtube channels because I knew working on the compressing and voice editing for the song was gonna take some time.When my microphone came in, I worked for a week straight and created six songs.

These songs became my first extended playlist (EP), called “Lonely Thoughts.” The inspiration for the title came to be because I was alone most of my summer, and everything I created was from my  head. After the release, I created a new goal for myself  to drop a song every week. In addition, I'm working on a new EP going to drop soon. This new hobby really helped me get through this summer and taught me a lesson in the process. No matter what’s going on in your life, always look up and never stay stagnant. Always improve and try something new because a busy mind is a healthy mind.