Final Reflections

As I reflect back on the past semester’s blog posts it seems to me to be almost like a catalog of my inspirations. From J Dilla and Pink Floyd to the Beach Boys and Kanye West, this semester has allowed to me to take a final look back on these inspirations of mine and see how exactly I’m inspired by them. Even though there’s no way I could’ve spoken about every musical inspiration of mine, I feel like we are all more or less a product of our influences, and I’m glad I can look back and see the ones that were important enough to me to mention. It gives me a bit of a perspective on what the musical side of me is comprised of.

Although I make mostly hip-hop music, it would be disingenuous of me to only mention my hip-hop influences. I’m glad that I now have taste in genres outside of that and could break down and articulate why exactly it is I like them. You may not fully understand something unless you have the words for it. So it’s for that reason I took on the challenge to try and talk about all of the different music I enjoy. Because now, I may be that much quicker at pulling from those influences (unconsciously, that is) while creating my art.

Although all of my inspirations are pretty dissimilar, there is a silver lining that connects them: I think its the authenticity of all of them. The fact that when they made those projects and there was a lasting effect on not only me but for generations of music listeners. I’ve always tried to adopt the philosophy that people respond best to someone who is genuine in what they do. They don’t sell out, they don’t cater to anybody, but they, in fact, do what they do for the sake of doing it, not even for themselves, but just for the creative process itself. I’ve been listening to more music than ever the past few months, mostly on the classic rock side.

I have also been playing with a live band this semester, playing bass amongst three other of my friends. It’s allowed me to learn how to play the songs that I enjoy and it teaches me a lot about the different chord changes and different styles of music of the course of different decades. As crazy as the different albums were in my blogs is how different the songs are when we play live (with the exception fo any hip-hop music). We have only played two shows so far but we’ve had a lot of fun with both of them.

Over the course of this year, outside of my studies, I have been playing, writing and recording music for myself, trying to carve out my own identity as an artist outside of my live music playing. Its been a crazy semester, a grind in every sense of the word. But it hasn’t been for nothing, I have tried to develop something to show for it.  I thought it would be appropriate to leave a link to my SoundCloud below so you guys could get an idea of what I do.

Thanks for staying with me this whole time. I appreciate every person who read and commented!

Take care, everybody!