This was a question I was asked multiple times, and I figure what better way to introduce my blog with sharing a bit about myself as an artist?
When talking about where my interest in music starts, it can depend. I've always had an interest in music. I've enjoyed singing for as long as I can remember, I've taken piano lessons when I was 6, and when I was 13, I got my first microphone. So really, take your pick. I assume this question regards when I decided to be a content creator, so I'll start there.
During my tween years, I took an interest in watching YouTubers doing Let's-Plays of a lot of indie video games. At the time, the only music I was really familiar with was whatever mainstream pop artists would come up on the radio. I didn't think there was more to music than that. But with a plethora of videos at my fingertips, I couldn't help but feel curious about just how much content I could find. One day, I made a revolutionary discovery. People actually made songs about these games I enjoyed watching people play! I found dozens of YouTubers whose content was solely based on creating fanmade content based on popular video games. I found songs, musicals, short films, animations, fanfics, comic dubs, you name it. I ate it all up. But especially the music. I was obsessed with nerdcore.
Seeing all these artists making fully written and produced songs paired with videos all on their own was very inspiring for me. There was so much I wanted to learn to do, and so many songs I wanted to cover. It was at this point where one day I pitched to my mom, "I want a microphone." I didn't think she'd take that request seriously, but lo and behold, my final Christmas present was a PreSonus M7 microphone paired with a PreSonus AudioBox interface. I was beyond thrilled!
I knew nothing about how to use a microphone or how to record songs, so in my very early stages of learning to be an artist, the only thing I could figure out was how to record sounds into my microphone. I didn't know how to import songs, so I would play a song's instrumental out of my phone speaker as I held it right up against the microphone. Then I would record my singing over that. As the young obsessive little fangirl I was, I started a YouTube channel of my own that I titled "That One Fangirl." I would make videos entirely on my phone paired with my awkward weak singing over the poorly recorded instrumental I'd sing over and called that poor excuse of content a cover. No one really discovered my content on YouTube who I didn't already know from my small friend group I made on Instagram (Shoutout to the homies who remember me before I was Liv & Learn.) My videos were cheesy and the audio quality was poor, but something about them still seemed to stick out to people. They loved my voice.
I let that one redeeming trait motivate me to continue creating. I started to more thoroughly learn the DAW I had: Studio One 3. I figured out how to properly import instrumentals. I learned how to add effects to my vocals. I learned that I can adjust the volume of an entire channel instead of individual audio clips. I was learning.
My time as That One Fangirl is something I don't remember too well now, but I do remember when I changed my name. At the time I was in high school, in a not-so-great environment of not-so-great girls who didn't really care for me. I thought if I acted like them and did things they would, they would appreciate me more. I'm sure we all remember our awkward grade school/high school phases like that. That was mine. As part of trying to fit in, I made a separate Instagram account where I would solely try to post things my classmates would. I noticed a lot of them used catchy phrases as part of their usernames, so I followed their example. Thus began the birth of Liv and Die. I got hardly any followers or engagement on my posts, which was one of the many first-world problems I let bother me during that part of my life. I was convinced no one cared about me, save for the two or three classmates who cared enough to consider me a friend or acquaintance.
Since school failed to provide me with real friends, I continued letting my friendships primarily start from online. That also meant friends of their friends would hear of me and for some reason, not all of them liked me. At one point, I dealt with cyberbullying, some of these people using the username I had as leverage against me. I was sick of the harassment, so I decided to start anew. I let Liv and Die die, pun intended. I replaced it with Liv and Learn. I only intended for it to just be a social media username at first. But over time, it was starting to grow on me. I gave it some thought, and decided to scrap That One Fangirl and replace my YouTube channel with Liv & Learn.
My YouTube channel still didn't see much traction right away, but when I changed my name, I was almost fully moved from Studio One to FL Studio Mobile. I was making music entirely on my phone. At this point, my favorite artist was Aviators. My earliest videos on my new YouTube channel were Aviators covers. I later discovered Aviators did Twitch streams twice a week, so I decided to start watching his streams. I was pretty new to Twitch and didn't know much about it, so I gradually learned how I can engage with a streamer. Shortly after discovering Twitch, I discovered Discord from finding out Aviators had a Discord server. I started getting to know some of the other viewers I met from his stream and was starting to get comfortable in that community.
One evening while I was watching another Aviators livestream, I wanted to see if I could request a song since he took requests from viewers for background music. My request just so happened to be one of my covers. To my surprise, he was more than willing, and even played the full video onscreen for everyone to see (and at least a few dozen people got to see a really cringy picture of me. I so badly want to burn that memory out of my head). Of course, I was fangirling hard. People seemed to like the cover. Aviators liked the cover. I was really excited. People started subscribing to my YouTube channel after seeing I was making Aviators covers. I was starting to build an audience.
To my further excitement, he reached out to me on Discord later to ask if I was interested in singing on his Last Christmas cover he was working on. While I feel I could have contained my excitement to him much more professionally than I did, I accepted. I didn't know how to collaborate with people online, given this was my first time, but what I did know is it would be better if I use an actual microphone over my phone microphone. Moving back to Studio One at least one more time, I imported the stems I was sent and recorded my singing for Last Christmas a few days later.
I had to be walked through the process of how to properly export my vocals by Aviators himself, as I at first exported my vocals still on top of the instrumental, and thought to export just the vocals as a backup. Fortunately he was very patient with me. He was pretty satisfied with the results, and through my cheesy fangirling I thanked him for the opportunity. He mixed and tuned my vocals into the song and shared a small render with me, which I treasured for a while.
When the song was ready to share to his Twitch stream, he "surprised" everyone with sharing the new guest vocalist on his cover. I was very flattered by all the comments he made about my recording, and was beyond stoked to see everyone's reaction. Once the video and song released, many of the people from his streams were excited for me. Some of his community saw me as some sort of celebrity on the Discord server. A couple people who approached me in my Discord dms admitted they were a little intimidated to talk to me because I seemed so "high and mighty from getting to work with the great Aviators".
I began to foster relationships with the people who reached out to me, once they felt more comfortable knowing I was just some random (at the time) teenage loser on the internet, like anyone else. These people on the internet all had a shared interest in Aviators, his music, or making their own music, usually at least two of the three if not all. I met some newly-emerging artists, all who shared a passion for creating their own music. They had their own YouTube channels, their own genre of music, and their own style of songwriting. From engaging with that one community alone, I met and worked with dozens of these newly emerging artists, and we helped build each other up. One artist reached out to me and we started a duo band that later became Supernova Revival. Another artist reached out to me and I joined a worldbuilding team of artists, which became ValeStorm Studios. We worked together, and I helped to bring several albums to life by their side.
From here, the rest is history! I'm very grateful for each artist I've met and worked with online, whether or not I'm still in touch with them. I've learned a lot from each person I've worked with, and my experiences have led me to more incredible opportunities.
I understand my story probably sounds like I got lucky from the start, but the last thing I'd want to call it is luck. I look back at my beginnings and consider it all a learning process, mainly in understanding my strengths and weaknesses as an artist and learning professionalism. I'm grateful for the talents I have, but looking back, I feel I could do so much better now if I were given a second chance to start over. Basically, maybe things did seem to line up in my favor, but I don't want that same goal to sound completely unattainable to anyone I share it with. Many people in the "industry" say that the way they got to where they were was convenient timing and luck, but I believe it also comes down to learning and preparing for how you can accomplish your goals. On that note, I'll end this post with a few things I've learned in my experience:
Don't be afraid to put yourself out there, but understand where your strengths and weaknesses are. There is so much you can learn from working with other content creators. Never stop learning.
Comentarios