This time I aimed my blurry ques­tions at Hayden Arp, a 17-year-old singer-songwriter from Alexandria, VA. Should some­one think he’s too young to be taken seri­ously, just remem­ber that Kate Bush started writ­ing songs for her debut album at the age 13. Taking that fact into con­sid­er­a­tion, Hayden might be a bit over­age already…

When did you start writ­ing songs? What inspired you?

I started writ­ing music when I was 12, though I only started writ­ing lyrics at the age of 14. At the begin­ning, I wasn’t really inspired, more curi­ous. I had a com­puter with GarageBand on it, and I really liked loop­ing and lay­er­ing dif­fer­ent sounds. It was only later when I started dat­ing a beau­ti­ful woman (of course), that I began to get really inspired, which is why I started writ­ing lyrics.

As for my cur­rent inspi­ra­tion, it’s really a range of many dif­fer­ent things. Any promi­nent emo­tion will gen­er­ally trig­ger music, whether it be anger (The Darker Pages), hap­pi­ness (Don’t Let Go), sad­ness (Quicksand), or some­thing else. Other times i’ll just make music for it’s own sake, and the music will inspire an emo­tion or story. For exam­ple, “Waking Up” started as a bla­tant attempt to copy James Blake, and it only lat­ter evolved into the creepy story that it is. I also am very inspired by tea, thun­der­storms, and other musicians.

What instru­ments do you play?

I play gui­tar, piano, upright bass, ukulele, drums, and I pre­tend I can sing.

Can you tell me some more about how you pro­duce your music?

I record, write, and pro­duce my music on my own, and because of this I’m not really held down to any sched­ules or proper order of record­ing. As I don’t have to do one thing before another, I often do them at the same time. The writ­ing and pro­duc­tion become inter­twined in a very dynamic way, often build­ing on each other dur­ing the song’s record­ing. For exam­ple, I may make the chords of a song I’m writ­ing jazz­ier because I find a very smooth key­board while record­ing, or will write in an extra melody when I find a synth I want to slip in. In this way I think the pro­duc­tion flows along very nat­u­rally, and ends up mak­ing a lot of sense for the song; it has a snow­ball effect that i’m very drawn to.

In your lat­est blog post you write about “tiny down­load cards” that you left at pub­lic places in France to pro­mote your music. How did this lit­tle guer­rilla mar­ket­ing project work out for you?

Ha. Well That didn’t go well per se, but that could be pretty eas­ily attrib­uted to the fact that the coun­try was France and the cards were in English, but I’ve seen sim­i­lar results on the big pic­ture as well. People want a rea­son to lis­ten to some­thing, and my record doesn’t have that yet. It’s a lit­tle too short, has a cou­ple tech­ni­cal issues, and while I really do think it’s good music, it’s not the most radio-friendly. It’s nichy stuff, and being a one-man mar­ket­ing squad makes it hard to find that niche.

To be hon­est, I’d much rather be work­ing on mak­ing more, and bet­ter music than spend­ing all this time email­ing blogs that don’t seem to want to respond. I think the issue is sim­ply that I have a tiny stu­dio in my bed­room with one mic and one pre­amp, and I’m try­ing to make music that requires high sound-quality. I have taught myself all that I know, so get­ting things to sound pro­fes­sional is still a pretty hefty chal­lenge. I have had a cou­ple peo­ple buy the record, and they gave me some pretty good feed­back, which I always appre­ci­ate. I try to make sure every­one who hears it has my email (haydenarpmusic@gmail.com) as out­side opin­ions really help, as well as fas­ci­nate me.

What kind of music would you do if you had the money to hire the best engi­neer and rent/buy the best equipment?

One thing I’ve wanted to do for a while is record a full string orches­tra, and write some instru­men­tal orches­tral pieces. I’m actu­ally try­ing to get into col­lege for com­po­si­tion. But going past that, my dreams really focus more on the loca­tion of the record­ing. Atmosphere in music really fas­ci­nates me, and I’d like to take my hand at record­ing music in some harder record­ing environments.

For exam­ple there are a num­ber of churches and park­ing garages I’ve found that have ridicu­lously cool rever­ber­a­tions, and I’d love to head over there with say, a gui­tar, a cello, and some intro­spec­tive lyrics and see what kind of sounds I could make. Maybe even head out­side some­where and try to cap­ture that feel­ing with­out hav­ing wind be too much of a problem.

Other than that though, I still would want to make the same things I try to do now; I just think I might suc­ceed a lit­tle more. So I’d still make another “The Darker Pages,” but the vocals wouldn’t be so obvi­ously recorded in a bed­room. I’d make another “Willow” but the atmos­pheres would be much more pre­cise and the build up would be a lot more mind-blowing. Also, drums. I can’t record real drums with my cur­rent set-up, so that’d be pretty cool.

Can you imag­ine your­self doing any­thing other than writ­ing and per­form­ing music?

To be hon­est I can’t really. I can totally imag­ine doing other things, just not as a full-on pro­fes­sion; that’s music. When I was in about 8th grade I decided to stop say­ing to myself “wouldn’t it be cool if I became a musi­cian” and started say­ing “I’m going to be a musi­cian” as I didn’t think the peo­ple who made it had many hes­i­ta­tions. I’ve still got quite a way to go, but it’s what I’ve cho­sen to do, and I’m not going to stop any time soon. I’m still going to col­lege. I’m not drop­ping out or any­thing, but that’s more because I still love learn­ing other things and think they all relate. Studying eng­lish can lead to bet­ter lyrics, and study­ing physics can lead to bet­ter recordings.

I also think in the inter­net age, the music play­ing field has been lev­eled. It’s not about being lucky enough to get a record deal any­more. You can be a 17-year old mak­ing music out of your bed­room and still get it on the same mar­ket­place with the same price as Justin Bieber; thus the entire ques­tion of “who’s going to make it” is boiled down to “who makes the best music” and “who can mar­ket them­selves most effec­tively.” With that in mind I do think I can do it, and that’s the plan. Get bet­ter at writ­ing music, get bet­ter at record­ing and mix­ing it, and get bet­ter at mar­ket­ing it. We’ll see if it works, but I love music more than any­thing, and I can’t imag­ine doing any­thing else.