Ask Me Anything!

An insight into my songwriting, the Kickstarter, and my opinions on Bigfoot.

🍒 Hello friend!

As you will most likely be aware, the Kickstarter for my debut album finished yesterday and I can now finally stop bugging you via email. We did so well: we raised £1000 extra! This is incredibly invaluable money and I can’t wait to show you what I’m going to do with it.

As a thank-you I wanted to open up the floor to those of you who are curious about myself and the project. I asked you for some questions and you guys delivered! Thanks to

Niko Batallones

,

Max Murphy

,

Scoot

, James and veritanuda for these.

So here is an Ask Me Anything. Feel free to ask more questions in the comments!

Here’s what I get into in this email: what the album was originally going to be about before I discovered geology; my songwriting process; the pros and cons of being a self-taught musician; why I used Kickstarter; my opinions about record deals and more. Including Big Foot, ‘cause one of you asked a question about that and I must uphold my part of the bargain where I answer anything you ask me.

So let’s go!

If it wasn’t rocks, what would the album be about?

I really like this question, because at the very beginning of this project, it wasn’t about rocks at all.

For about two years, the folder on my desktop where I kept everything to do with this project was called ‘WASTED TIME.’

In 2021, when I began working on this, I was interviewing friends and family about times in their life where they felt things were moving too slowly. Illnesses (both mental and physical), moments of indecision, motherhood… there was a broad range.

I was also reading Timothy Morton’s ‘Dark Ecology’ at this point and REALLY wanted to write a songs about all of the ideas he worked through in that text. Agriculture, the anthropocene, ecology, object-oriented-ontology, sparkling darks and playfulness. Not that I had an entirely full grasp of what the book was about. It was brilliant but Jesus, if I could explain any of the concepts within it…. (reader, I cannot).

Looking back at my notes from this time, here’s what I was thinking about:

Time, stillness, black holes, ducks, mountains, loss, loops, lakes, forests, geology, diaries, layers, portals, volcanoes, reservoirs, ancient underwater mountain ranges, ecology, being a person, spirals, myths, and the hero’s journey.

The phrase “personal mythologies” kept coming up, and also I wrote down the phrase “songwriting as personal mythology,” which I still love now.

It’s funny because I think some of the things that I didn’t end up exploring in this album I am now considering in my next project. Mostly the personal mythology and hero’s journey stuff.

Would you use Kickstarter again, and was it worth it?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: It’s pretty hard to get substantial funding as an emerging artist, even in the UK where we have grants and opportunities from organisations such as PRS and Help Musicians. These places want to see serious proof that you’re already operating on some sort of semi-professional level and have released music before. This means the artists which are able to break through and get funding are those who can afford to release music on their own dime and dedicate real time to it. Or people who just jumped right in and never dabbled with another profession or career.

Before the pandemic I released my EP mostly out of my own pocket. It took a lot of resources: time as well as money (I had one day a week off between music and my day job, and that was mostly for laundry/cleaning/life admin), and by the time I’d done the record, the music video, and the launch gig, I didn’t have any money left to invest into the next project. In fact, I probably hadn’t even made back the money that I’d sunk in to that EP.

This time round, for my LP, I decided it would be different. I managed to gain funding, not from an organisation that supports musicians, but an organisation that supports people who want to increase public awareness of geology: the Geologists’ Association. This allowed me to get into the studio with musicians and record. After that, it was my own money which got the project mixed and mastered.

At this point I was still unsure about whether or not to crowdfund to complete the project, but after about 3 unsuccessful grant applications, I knew that there was no other way, unless I wanted to:

A) take a really, really long time to save up in order to release this album

B) release the album in the most minimal, least impactful way, aka just post it on Spotify and do my own plugging on social media

The kickstarter allowed me to cover the costs of this release AND ensures that a group of people are hyped up about this album and will listen to it on release day. The money raised has been amazing but the awareness raised over the course of the campaign has also been invaluable. You get to yap about your project for 30 days straight! Free marketing!!

Kickstarter itself is a great way to go — I truly believe that the ‘all or nothing’ approach works best (how are you going to fulfil rewards if you can’t afford to make them?), and the other sites which enable people to crowdfund seem more geared towards charity fundraisers and tech products.

Are you a self-taught musician?

Yes and no!

I grew up in a school which was heavily music-focussed. So I learned to read music from an early age, and we had weekly choir and orchestra meetings. I took lessons for singing (albeit classical singing) in my last few years of school and also played the French Horn for about 7 years.

When it came to guitar and songwriting, I taught myself for the first several years, starting when I was about fifteen. I did a songwriting course when I moved to London and have also participated in shorter courses. I haven’t had a guitar lesson ever and to be honest I would really like to have some!

What are your opinions on self-teaching music?

Pros: You will be spurred on by an intrinsic motivation, rather than a dusty old man standing over you. You get to learn what YOU want to learn, and play the songs YOU want to play. When you’re self-taught, you can create the curriculum. Do covers of songs you love and watch interviews of artists you admire. As I learned to write songs, I listened to a lot of Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello. The Elvis Costello was not so great for my voice when I started out, because I sounded like a friend-zoned weasel, but he’s a great lyricist and melody-writer.

Cons: You will most likely develop some ‘bad habits’ but as long as you’re not heading for carpal tunnel or vocal injury, this is fine. You will most likely develop some sort of weirdness which may become part of your personal style as a musician but could also just be super off-putting for others (see: weasel voice). That’s where it’s good to have a bit of course-correction and input. Finally I’d say the worst thing about self-teaching is that you WILL plateau and it is so hard to get out of those plateau moments. I have like one growth spurt in my guitar playing every 3 years and I really want to change that.

I would say teach yourself what you are driven to learn, and then take advantage of courses and teachers when you are drawn to them.

What does your song-creation process look like from start to finish?

• have an idea for a song, or a desire to write a song

• grab instrument and start noodling with chord progressions

• sing nonsense words and nonsense phrases over the top until a nice phrase or melody emerges

• repeat this process until something more concrete emerges, this either reveals itself to be a verse, a chorus or a pre-chorus

• then take it back (or forward) and try to write a more parts of the song starting from the piece you just wrote

• get stuck

• go wash the dishes or take a shower or just record a voice note and let it sit for a minute

• try to write again — this is where I usually just free-write for a page, just about the things I want the song to be about

• usually after this another phrase/thing/idea emerges and I latch on to that, continue writing the song

• sometimes it’s done at this point! other times I have to walk away and then come back to finish it

• sometimes it’s evil and I have to come back to it days/weeks/months later

• ta-da! when it’s done, I record a demo of me singing it on my phone and then let it sit and chill out

• play the song at a gig if I really like it and see how it sits on the audience

• repeat

What are your thoughts about being independent vs signing a record deal?

I think at this point it’s hard to see the benefit of being signed to a label, beyond the clout of being signed to one. Large labels often give artists an advance, and quite often this leaves the artist with a significant amount of debt. Their music has to pay back both the advance and the costs of producing the album, and at the moment music ain’t making a lot of money. So artists have to tour. But touring is expensive (and even worse because of Brexit etc and venues closing and general terribleness). Yadda yadda.

Larger labels have more creative control over an artist, so indie labels appeal more to smaller artists. However many smaller indie labels don’t even have the money to cover recording costs, so they just cover marketing and press. Which ain’t much use if you can’t make a decent album.

Going completely independent is hard because it means you have to be smart with your money and pretty damn organised, there are many down sides mostly from a finance, infrastructure and support side of things. But at the same point it means you can dictate what your career does, what kind of artist you are, and the kind of music you make. You don’t have to be boxed in. As an indie, you own your masters, you own your relationship to your fans, you own your social media and you own 100% of your royalties, and that’s pretty good in my books.

Would you change anything about your life if you learned that Big Foot was real?

Thank you for this insightful question.

Probably not. Like, I’m not gonna get on an airplane and fly to wherever Big Foot lives to interview him for my newsletter.

But if Big Foot exists would it mean that other cryptids were also real? Would there be an increase of visitors to Loch Ness to see if the monster is truly there? And if it did exist, how would I, a Scottish person, live with that knowledge?

Scotland would probably do a good job in terms of protecting the Loch Ness monster and conserving it, but you know how we humans are. If Big Foot was real which then meant that the Loch Ness monster was real I would probably travel back to Loch Ness to see the monster for myself and 100% would write a song about them. Then I would sell the song to raise money for the Loch Ness Monster Conservation Fund. And then when the Loch Ness Monster inevitably dies or gets harpooned by the English (THE ENGLISH!!! [shakes fist]) I will be very sad and most likely cry and also write a song about that.

Do you like Regina's version of ‘Après Moi’ or Peter Gabriel's version more?

My favourite artist covering my favourite artist! I love Regina’s playful performance, her vocal gut-punches and falsetto soars. It ebbs and flows in a way that goes from understated to thrilling in seconds and then back again. That skeletal, danse-macabre xylophone!

Peter Gabriel’s arrangement is cinematic but for me his vocal performance doesn’t contain that same amount of visceral energy as Regina’s, or at least not until he gets to the primal wails in that middle section. To be honest the best stuff on that album in my opinion is his ‘Book of Love’ cover and his take on David Bowie’s ‘Heroes.’

🪄 Got More Questions? Ask ‘Em!

Leave a comment and ask another question, if you’re feeling curious!

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🎙 Upcoming Gigs

London! I’m playing soon, and it’s free:

• London, 23rd May: Bright Nights @ The Foundry Space, Walthamstow | FREE ENTRY

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Til next time! Be good,

Olivia 🌈✨🏔🎶