Hey I'm Laurel, I'm a musician and producer
and I've just released my first album
[Music]
So I wrote this album over a few years and I wrote, produced, and mixed it all myself.
When I've written a song, I start building the track around it
usually I write it on the guitar, like an acoustic guitar mainly.
I lay it out I get a guide vocal down, and I set the tempos and stuff
and then you just have to play around you just have to go for it, I just play the guitar over it
whatever, I feel like there's no formula to be honest.
You have a feeling, oh I need to put that here and you just do it
there's other songs where that really doesn't happen
and you're kind of waiting for those magical moments where you know what to do.
With songs I always know when they're not finished
I'm very quick to write songs, I don't go over things a million times
I think that you either get it instantly or it's not meant to be
that's how I feel
and with production, it just sounds right, that's literally it I think for me
and sometimes a song will never sound right and maybe it will never be finished
and one day you listen to a song that you wrote three years ago
and suddenly you crack it.
I'm more of a creator than a technical person
it just so happens that I've done all this technical stuff because
I'm so specific about what I want it to be like right, because I've created it
But yeah, no I don't know anything about what you're meant to make it sound like I just think
you know on this limiter, some people might look at this and be like
"what the hell is she done", like I pulled the limiter right down to the bottom and
it's just practically got bouncing up I'm pretty sure no one does that but I
think it sounds amazing so I'm gonna do it!
To get in a creative space I think I just have to be in a creative space
like this, in my house is perfect it's really chilled
there's no time constraint that's also a
reason I don't really like working in big studios because I feel like
the time pressures and the money pressures to get something done
sometimes make something a bit in-genuine for me
sometimes your head's just not there, there's nothing about the exterior it's all just about you.
You know, I was trying to mix this album for like five months
because I was in and out of the country my head was
just all over the place I just wasn't in the space to do it
and then I went on tour for a month and I didn't have a chance to work on music
and I came back cos I've had a bit of space I guess
and I finished mixing the album in a week.
It's annoying but you can't really decide sometimes what happens.
I think with self producing the main obstacle and
what makes it hard is focussing
so I think sometimes if there's somebody else in the room, it's very good
to like vibe off each other and get energy off each other and really keep going.
When I do stuff with other people, we work long way longer hours
than I do when I'm on my own
When I'm on my own it's more just like a few hours at a time
I might get distracted by something, I might want a coffee, you know it's just
I like working like that, it's like the freedom of being on your own which is great
however you have to have a real sure focus and a determination to get
something done and to really have that work ethic and sometimes you wake up and
you have it and sometimes you don't and it just means that sometimes things
take a lot longer to get done I think.
I've got a million guitars they're all packed away
actually at the moment I just been touring with them
I've just got a MIDI keyboard
in fact it's super broke because I've dropped it so many times
and just modulates things randomly so that's fun
I have this microphone that I've been using because my other microphone
broken because that's also been dropped.
Classic!
I think it's an AKG C214
I have some Yamaha speakers and obviously the lovely Audient soundcard
and I've just got my laptop and that's really it
I sometimes, this is my amp that I play with live
I sometimes record through the amp because it's a valve amp, it's really really nice
however recently I've got a new guitar, I got a Fender and I've never had a
Fender before and I've just been DI-ing it through the computer to be honest
just putting loads of effects on because I'm lazy
I've got a very lazy setup it's not very technical but
I really think sometimes you can get stuck in all of the
the technical side and you don't make anything
sometimes you get so stuck in
what a sound sounds like compared to actually making whole vision of a song
and then before you know it you've spent a whole day on this one tiny thing
With me if I hear the same thing over and over and over
I don't get any new ideas I have to get all the ideas down and then make it
sound good because otherwise you just, the freshness of it is gone.
When the album went out I expected to feel this huge like "wow this is awesome"
but it's just out
the album just comes out you're so involved in everything that
you don't even think about it, it's just normal, it's done now I'm already thinking
well what's my next album gonna be, I have to get writing it
I can't believe I haven't already finished my next album
but to get it back and to know that you created everything on there
and it's exactly the vision that you wanted
is probably one of the most rewarding things ever
and you know I'm looking maybe to not do that on the next album
but I do kind of wonder how I'm going to feel about the album if it isn't
if it isn't all made by you because it's your creation
that's what I think is so exciting about it.