A Chat with dWyn (10.05.2021)
Everyone goes through formative years whether in life or their art. This is something that has been captured by dWyn in his album Young Signal, which is a collection of songs written and recorded over his formative musical years. Reflecting the challenges he faced, the charm of his music and the beauty of making music, the album is a journey through an ad-hoc process that many listeners have never had to face before. We sat down with dWyn to talk about the album, career paths, evolving sounds and much more!
OSR: You started teaching yourself to play the guitar at age 17, but did you have any musical ambitions before this?
dWyn: I had been interested in music from a young age, I remember dancing in the living room with my parents to Tina Turner, Roy Orbison and Showaddywaddy, as embarrassing as that may be! I also remember my grandmother had a little electric piano at her house and I would entertain myself by making up songs on it or figuring out songs I knew. I once figured out the Welsh national anthem by ear, which seemed to impress my grandmother! But, to be honest, it had never crossed my mind that I would be any good at creating music or playing instruments myself. We weren’t a particularly musical family, so I’m not entirely certain where the desire to make music came from.
OSR: At what point did you decide that you wanted to make your own music?
dWyn: After playing the guitar for a year or so, as most people do, I suppose, you start gaining a bit of confidence and improvising and making your own stuff up, rather than just learning other people’s songs. I had a few friends who were in bands, which looked like a lot of fun, but I never had the confidence or self-belief that I would be good enough to join, so I would just make up my own songs and keep them to myself. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t even call them songs, they would just be a collection of guitar riffs and little chord progressions that I found catchy.
About three years after starting on guitar, when I was in university, I used part of my student loan to buy a cheap bass guitar. Probably not the wisest use of the student loan, but a couple of friends and I started getting together to jam and it was great. The feeling when you’re all playing different parts of a whole song and it comes together. It was the first time I had experienced that. There’s very little I’ve experienced in life that beats the rush that I get from that. A bit ironic I suppose that I ended up being a solo musician!
OSR: Your debut album Young Signal is a collection of exciting yet random songs you have created over the years. Why choose to do this and not a more conceptual album?
dWyn: I suppose the album wasn’t a conscious choice, it came together when I realised I had enough songs. They’re a collection of songs that I came up with as I was learning a lot of instruments, drums in particular, as well as how to record music. They were written and recorded over the space of a couple of years. At no point did I think that I was actively creating an album. More a situation where I would be listening to a particular artist one week and practising one instrument, or that I may have bought a new synth and that would be the spark that led to another song. Or even that I would have discovered a cool new recording technique or trick, I would be trying to perfect that and all of a sudden I would have the makings of a song. By the time I knew it, I had a collection of 15-20 songs, so I picked a few that seemed to fit together.
OSR: Over the course of the album, you can hear an evolution within your music. Do you feel you have found the sound you want or is it still evolving?
dWyn: I would like to think that my music would always evolve. I hate the idea of stagnating and staying in one place, creating the same type of music over and over. There are so many instruments and types of music out there to discover. These songs in particular were created a while ago and I’ve kept on learning the instruments as well as added a few more. Notably, I’ve been teaching myself piano and violin. The piano was always something on which I could manage very basic chords, but I would never feel like I could legitimately say that I could ‘play the piano’. So about two years ago I made it a bit of a mission to get to a point where I could say with confidence that I can play the piano, however ‘amateurish’ my level!
The violin was a bit of a random Christmas gift from my mother. I genuinely had no idea. It turned out she felt bad after I told her I had wanted violin lessons when I was small but never did. Then at age 33 or 34, she buys me a beginner’s violin for Christmas! I had no idea where to start, but I randomly found out that a close friend could play the violin. So he agreed to teach me some of the basics. Every Tuesday evening I would head over to his house with a bottle or two of red wine and learn some Irish folk songs on the violin and get drunk! So, to answer your questions, I hope my music will always be in a state of evolving, regardless of how happy I am with what I create.
OSR: What was the biggest challenge you faced when creating the album?
dWyn: I think that when you’re not an established musician, who has the time, space and money to channel your energy into creating music at all times, they are literally the problems you face; time, space and money. Working a full-time job means you’re often too tired or too busy to dedicate the time to not only create but to practice what you do as well. But if you enjoy something enough, you’ll make the time for it.
Trying to create a suitable physical space in which to be able to record something that’s in any way ‘listenable’ can be difficult as well, especially if you don’t have the time or money for a professional studio. Luckily, at the time, the person I was living with was very understanding and relaxed about me having the space to set up my equipment. Which, in a flat in London, isn’t entirely easy.
Finally, money; to be fair, technology, music software, in particular, has come a long way over the last 10-20 years and if you have some understanding of what you’re using, it actually doesn’t cost a crazy amount to be able to get something out there that at least gives people a good idea of what you’re about musically. There are loads of great artists around who have been able to create incredible work from their set up at home; Bon Iver’s ‘For Emma’, James Blake’s first album and Boy Azooga’s ‘1, 2 Kung Fu’ are all amazing albums that, as far as I’m aware, were created in pretty budget setups, at home.
OSR: While all the tracks represent a different moment of your musical journey, is there one that stands out for you?
dWyn: ‘Northern Lights’ probably stands out more than any of the others as it was the first song that seemed to get some positive attention. People seemed to like it, which came as a surprise. Without wanting to sound too pessimistic, I hadn’t expected anyone to enjoy something that I had created before that. I know it sounds a bit silly, but it’s true. Up until that point, it was all a bit of a casual hobby and uploading songs online was sort of an experiment to see what sort of feedback I would get. A music blog in South America took a liking to it and reviewed it and off the back of that, it got a fair amount of attention. I suppose it caught me a little off guard, but it was the first time I realised that there was a potential for me to make something that people would enjoy.
OSR: What is the one thing you would like people to understand about you from your music and how do you feel this comes across in the album?
dWyn: That’s a difficult one. Music can be a very personal and different experience for each person, whatever they listen to. What one person takes away from a piece of music compared to another, can be very different. Ultimately, I’ve always found music to be somewhat of an escape, a way to take your mind off things and relax. Some people meditate, some people do yoga, I play around with a load of instruments and make music. Beyond that, these songs have all been done by myself, even down to the learning of the instruments and the artwork and videos that go with some of the songs. While it may not be groundbreaking work, it at least shows that it is possible to do this stuff on your own. Depending on what your targets are, you don’t necessarily need a record contract and a load of people working for you any more. You just need to enjoy the process. Once you discover something you enjoy, finding the time and energy to put into it becomes less of a problem.
OSR: What is your creative process for individual songs? Do you start with a melody, concept or the lyrics?
dWyn: It probably differs with each song. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes it comes from an instrument that I may have been learning or some new effect I’ve discovered by combining different pedals. Other times it may have been some guitar riff or drum fill from a song that I’ve been trying to learn and would play around with it until I find something I like and then it goes from there. Since starting to learn guitar I have pretty much always had one within reach when I’m at home. If I’m alone, watching television I’ll always be playing around with a guitar. I’ve come up with countless riffs and chord progressions in that way. When smartphones became a thing, with the voice memo recording apps, I’ll record anything I come up with that sounds good to me. The majority of them will likely never get used, but other times they lead to songs.
OSR: You did everything for the album yourself from writing the music to creating the artwork and videos. What sort of learning curve did this entail?
dWyn: It varied, depending on the task at hand. Guitar, being the first instrument I picked up, took a bit of time and persistence, however, you can always find very simple songs and riffs that you enjoy and which you can learn. For me, finding those songs and being able to play along with them was incredibly enjoyable and rewarding. Once I discovered that feeling, I could apply it to all instruments. I still do it now, from time to time. If I feel like I’m in a bit of a creative funk, so to speak, I’ll just stop trying to create. I’ll just think of a song I enjoy and try to learn it. Eventually, without thinking you’ll find yourself with a new idea off the back of learning to play the song.
Some instruments would obviously be easier than others; bass, for instance, you can get the basics pretty quickly, once you can play the guitar. I also found that the more instruments you learn the more your subconscious understanding of music as a whole improves and the quicker you may pick up a new instrument. Learning piano properly has been very rewarding and something I wish I had done years ago. I find it very easy to come up with new song ideas with it. I’m still not particularly good at it, but my approach to learning instruments has never been “I want to be a virtuoso on this one instrument”. My goal has been to learn a lot of each instrument to a standard where I can put them all together to make songs I enjoy.
The video and artwork aspect has been a completely different kettle of fish and one I sort of fell into by accident. I would just use different apps to edit photos on my phone and eventually realised some of the photos could be used as song or album artwork. I have a friend who is a video editor in Cardiff and he gave me a few tips from that point of view, but beyond that, it was a case of just trying things out. In my experience, it’s usually a matter of just giving it a go. Usually, if you stick with it, you’ll end up with some interesting and fun results.
OSR: What else can we expect from you in the next year?
dWyn: Now that I’ve bitten the bullet and put this first collection of songs out there and the response has been decent, people have been nice about them, I guess my goal is to keep going with it, get a bit of momentum going. I’ve been trying to decide whether I should hold off until I have another album’s worth of songs ready or whether I should just release them, one by one, as they come. When I was growing up, I would love buying albums but since streaming has taken over and the physical copy of a CD or vinyl became less of a thing, the idea of an album as its own work of art seems to have become less important. Which is a shame, in a way. You can get a small part of a story from a song, but the whole album will tell you so much more about what the band or musician went through at that time of their life. I imagine I’ll release the odd song as they come, in order to keep people engaged, then hopefully, once I get to a point where I’m happy with what I have, bring them all together, with some other songs and release an album later on down the line. I just hope I can get my arse in gear and not let it take as long as this last one did!!
Thanks to dWyn for chatting with us! You can find more about him on his Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Spotify.
