Ryan Smart Interview
Q: A couple of songs on Take A Chance reminded me of late ’90’s R&B. Can you talk about some of your influences on this album?
A: It's crazy how long this album took from start to finish, because the things I was listening to in the fall of 2014 when I was tracking vocals are different than what's on my rotation right now, but thinking back it was 12 Play by R. Kelly, Music Of My Mind by Stevie Wonder, X by Chris Brown, and really John Mayer is responsible for me taking guitar seriously. There are direct vocal references in a sort of homage to the artists that mean something to me on this tape. I've heard that there's this idea that nothing created is new; it all comes from somewhere and I can agree with some of that.
A lot of this album comes from the music I grew up on, wherever my sensibilities came from. My dad in the car as a kid playing anything from Sugar Pie Honey Bunch, to “Crazy” by Seal and “Watching the Detectives” by Elvis Costello. Somewhere along the way I knew what I liked and this album is my literal first step into trying to do what these heroes were doing through my speakers for all these years.
Q: Take a Chance has impressive production of a DIY effort. Can you talk about this process and some of the tools you used?
A: First of all, thank you! I'd love to talk about the production side of things because when I came to deciding to do this it was much larger than just okay it's time to make my record. I met this guy named Dylan Cortez in a poetry class at KU and after our creative final we both found mutual respect for each other (I played a song, he rapped one). Long story short the universe sort of put us together along with his current music partner Taran Bowman, and I felt that finding these people was the reason I went to college.
The breaking point from my old life to my new one came after my senior year, I needed 30 hours to graduate, impossible for one semester, my Grandfather wasn't doing well, and my Mom decided that she was going to move out to Nevada where he lived, change jobs and be with him. This was all a long time coming and I could see it from about a year prior to everything happening, but basically it was a sort of combination of everything in my life that grabbed me by the collar and said “now's the time.” So I talked to my Mom and dropped out. I came to her with my situation of not possibly being able to graduate next year; “I'm an English Creative Writing Major, I'm not going to get a job with this degree, I found these people that know how to produce music that sounds good enough, I can learn how to do this,' and somehow with her infinite wisdom she got on board.
So now I'm out of school and finally free to do what I've been dreaming of doing for the past six years. I think my skill set is finally somewhere I can put on record and be proud of. My Mom invested in the equipment I needed to produce this stuff, and I have a blank canvas in front of me--At this point I'd been playing live for a couple years on a weekly basis, recorded an hour or so of the songs I was playing at this guy’s home studio based on the recommendation of the sound engineer where I was playing open mics at. I thought that was the path; someone swoops in and helps you make your record, but I always had this nagging thought in the back of my mind that I would have to do this myself and I was scared to.
I went into this project with essentially two hours on a studio microphone, no knowledge whatsoever of what a DAW was or how it works. I was learning how to plug microphones in and get waveforms to come up on my screen. My friends who I moved in with were doing their own things, but showed me how to connect everything and get it so I could record onto my computer and I just did what came naturally. It was great because we were all learning together from basically square one. Their knowledge turned out to be limited, having only tracked vocals over beats they found online, basic mixing and mastering of those elements.
We used Logic Pro for this. I had an Akai Max 49 cherry red keyboard, Audio Technica headphones, and two guitars. I started writing the songs in June '14, finished the instrumentals and lyrics by Octoberish,and finished tracking vocals the first week in January '15. My escape from college was short lived, and my Mom came to me this time, encouraging me to go back. She hit me with the facts. I wasn't going to be self- sufficient right now based on this album and my budding music career. “Finish your degree so if you need to get a job you can check the box that says ‘college degree' instead of 'some college.' I begrudgingly agreed and my music side drastically slowed down. I spent all of ’15 learning how to mix and master from YouTube; thesame way I learned guitar, same way I improved my voice. Slowly but surely, the final version of Take A Chance was done by August of '16. I got cover art commissioned from 99designs.com and put my songs out for the world.
Q: Was there any collaboration at all on this record? Do you plan on using a producer at some point or do you want to keep it DIY?
A: It depends on how you define collaboration. Yes there was tons of collaboration, because where I wrote this record where my best friend is seven feet away - we share a wall, and my other best friend is 15 feet away. We live on the same floor of this rickety college house in the center of party nation at KU with three other guys, literally 50 feet from Bullwinkles Bar. We're walking to class, we're talking shop, we stroll into each other's bedroom studios every hour to see what's going on and share what we are learning. Someone learned how to use a sends and bus? Now all three of us know. Are we partying tonight? Cool we're walking to the spot. That's sort of where the line in No More Bets comes from, 'The only place I drive is the gym, Man I can walk to the club' in Lawrence, KS where KU is at, you can walk anywhere.
When you talk about producer collaboration stuff, no, at no point did someone else come in and play notes on an instrument and record them into my computer. I think the most that happened was the mixing of “Sail Out.” Taran and I spent three nights together in his studio trying to figure out how to mix my vocals; he Melodyne stacked some background for the chorus, and Dylan thought adding a chorus plugin to the acoustic guitars would sound good, I can't remember if I kept it or not. As time went on Dylan got much better at producing however, and did help me EQ a few elements on “Over & Over” and “America.”
In regards to whether I want to keep it DIY or bring in some help, Man let me tell you, I was just trying to keep my head above water for a minute there with managing a website, marketing this album, shooting video clips, editing everything.
My dream world has people that run my online stuff for me, that take pictures for me, that video for me, but as of right now, I'm holding the camera, I'm changing my DNS settings to get an email list that works. I'm editing the videos and coming up with concepts. I lost the music production side of my life for awhile there, but it's about balance. At the end of the day I love singing and playing guitar and writing things that I never imagined could exist. As long as I can do that, I'll take the other parts of life and business along with it.
But on a serious note, In that time it took to learn how to mix and master the balance of life still exists, I wrote two other albums in that time and I'm tracking vocals next week for them. Very different projects than Take A Chance, one is a House EP, and another is a guitar opus similar to a John Mayer album, but my style is much more Ryan Smart now. My long term vision at this moment has me putting out these next two tapes for free, House EP won't be on iTunes, just my Bandcamp. The third project is called Our Stars and it will be on iTunes and everywhere else.
In this game you have to plan ahead or you won't make it. Movie stars plan ahead,; every successful person is working on things years away from when they come out, and so am I, so my fourth album has four songs made for it already, and I'll be bringing in outside producers for that. I have plans to get some beats from Dylan, who has made serious strides in his own craft as he's given up rapping to be a full time producer, and our fourth album is going to be a much broader scope pop album, danceable and accessible for the masses.
Q: Do you have any favorite songs off the album now that’s it released? Any suggestions for songs that you want people to hear first?
A: Oh man favorite songs? That's like picking kids haha. Listen I love “All That Your Love Means To Me.” That's a fantastic song for me on so many levels because I can play it live with just a keyboard. I think I hit a stride on that one, and I love where it takes you to on the album from maybe being in your head a little more, deeper concepts at the beginning, to being more in your body by the time “Over & Over” ends. It's a bridge and a keystone, but every song makes the record. Take A Chance doesn't work if you remove any of these tracks.
Honestly if you check this tape out, clear your mind and play it from start to finish. It's short, 35 minutes, sounds better in the car at night. Strap in for the ride and you won't be disappointed! The first 15 minutes might jar you, but by the time “No More Bets” hits, you'll be in the flow, and when “Over & Over” is over, haha, you'll be turned.
Q: Any plans to take this music on the road? What does a live show look like?
A: As far as playing this album live, I have no plans to tour this record. I have a catalog right now full of music itching to be recorded that I think more people can get into than this project. My dream for this record is that people find it ten years from now tracing my career back to its origins and they see that Take A Chance was my first step. Recorded in the living room of a duplex and my dilapidated college house with the brashness of believing I can compete with these juggernauts of the industry straight from the jump. I can't wait to floor people with the solo acoustic version of “More Sure,” and the solo keyboard of “All That Your Love Means To Me” and “Looking 4 Love,” but the only way you'll hear them is when I get them recorded to YouTube from an open mic or busking somewhere, or when I tour for Our Stars because I do plan on getting some shows under my belt for that record.
Q: What are your plans for 2017?
A: 2017 is going to be the biggest year of my life. The amount of knowledge I've gained from making and releasing Take A Chance has changed everything. I upgraded everything and wrote absolute classics, and some perfect songs. I'm in an acoustically treated home studio as I write this, with $7000 of upgraded equipment, mics, amps and guitars. My voice has undergone two years of two hours a day of serious work and devoted practice on my weak areas and expanding my strong suits, and I'm completely mentally ready to take what's mine and give people the best of me. Make no mistake - I believe that I have the potential to be one of the greatest artists and performers of all time, what I see in my head gives me chills just thinking about it, and it's a razor sharp focus that keeps me grounded in this moment to get better every single day, and make these dreams a reality.
Q: A couple of songs on Take A Chance reminded me of late ’90’s R&B. Can you talk about some of your influences on this album?
A: It's crazy how long this album took from start to finish, because the things I was listening to in the fall of 2014 when I was tracking vocals are different than what's on my rotation right now, but thinking back it was 12 Play by R. Kelly, Music Of My Mind by Stevie Wonder, X by Chris Brown, and really John Mayer is responsible for me taking guitar seriously. There are direct vocal references in a sort of homage to the artists that mean something to me on this tape. I've heard that there's this idea that nothing created is new; it all comes from somewhere and I can agree with some of that.
A lot of this album comes from the music I grew up on, wherever my sensibilities came from. My dad in the car as a kid playing anything from Sugar Pie Honey Bunch, to “Crazy” by Seal and “Watching the Detectives” by Elvis Costello. Somewhere along the way I knew what I liked and this album is my literal first step into trying to do what these heroes were doing through my speakers for all these years.
Q: Take a Chance has impressive production of a DIY effort. Can you talk about this process and some of the tools you used?
A: First of all, thank you! I'd love to talk about the production side of things because when I came to deciding to do this it was much larger than just okay it's time to make my record. I met this guy named Dylan Cortez in a poetry class at KU and after our creative final we both found mutual respect for each other (I played a song, he rapped one). Long story short the universe sort of put us together along with his current music partner Taran Bowman, and I felt that finding these people was the reason I went to college.
The breaking point from my old life to my new one came after my senior year, I needed 30 hours to graduate, impossible for one semester, my Grandfather wasn't doing well, and my Mom decided that she was going to move out to Nevada where he lived, change jobs and be with him. This was all a long time coming and I could see it from about a year prior to everything happening, but basically it was a sort of combination of everything in my life that grabbed me by the collar and said “now's the time.” So I talked to my Mom and dropped out. I came to her with my situation of not possibly being able to graduate next year; “I'm an English Creative Writing Major, I'm not going to get a job with this degree, I found these people that know how to produce music that sounds good enough, I can learn how to do this,' and somehow with her infinite wisdom she got on board.
So now I'm out of school and finally free to do what I've been dreaming of doing for the past six years. I think my skill set is finally somewhere I can put on record and be proud of. My Mom invested in the equipment I needed to produce this stuff, and I have a blank canvas in front of me--At this point I'd been playing live for a couple years on a weekly basis, recorded an hour or so of the songs I was playing at this guy’s home studio based on the recommendation of the sound engineer where I was playing open mics at. I thought that was the path; someone swoops in and helps you make your record, but I always had this nagging thought in the back of my mind that I would have to do this myself and I was scared to.
I went into this project with essentially two hours on a studio microphone, no knowledge whatsoever of what a DAW was or how it works. I was learning how to plug microphones in and get waveforms to come up on my screen. My friends who I moved in with were doing their own things, but showed me how to connect everything and get it so I could record onto my computer and I just did what came naturally. It was great because we were all learning together from basically square one. Their knowledge turned out to be limited, having only tracked vocals over beats they found online, basic mixing and mastering of those elements.
We used Logic Pro for this. I had an Akai Max 49 cherry red keyboard, Audio Technica headphones, and two guitars. I started writing the songs in June '14, finished the instrumentals and lyrics by Octoberish,and finished tracking vocals the first week in January '15. My escape from college was short lived, and my Mom came to me this time, encouraging me to go back. She hit me with the facts. I wasn't going to be self- sufficient right now based on this album and my budding music career. “Finish your degree so if you need to get a job you can check the box that says ‘college degree' instead of 'some college.' I begrudgingly agreed and my music side drastically slowed down. I spent all of ’15 learning how to mix and master from YouTube; thesame way I learned guitar, same way I improved my voice. Slowly but surely, the final version of Take A Chance was done by August of '16. I got cover art commissioned from 99designs.com and put my songs out for the world.
Q: Was there any collaboration at all on this record? Do you plan on using a producer at some point or do you want to keep it DIY?
A: It depends on how you define collaboration. Yes there was tons of collaboration, because where I wrote this record where my best friend is seven feet away - we share a wall, and my other best friend is 15 feet away. We live on the same floor of this rickety college house in the center of party nation at KU with three other guys, literally 50 feet from Bullwinkles Bar. We're walking to class, we're talking shop, we stroll into each other's bedroom studios every hour to see what's going on and share what we are learning. Someone learned how to use a sends and bus? Now all three of us know. Are we partying tonight? Cool we're walking to the spot. That's sort of where the line in No More Bets comes from, 'The only place I drive is the gym, Man I can walk to the club' in Lawrence, KS where KU is at, you can walk anywhere.
When you talk about producer collaboration stuff, no, at no point did someone else come in and play notes on an instrument and record them into my computer. I think the most that happened was the mixing of “Sail Out.” Taran and I spent three nights together in his studio trying to figure out how to mix my vocals; he Melodyne stacked some background for the chorus, and Dylan thought adding a chorus plugin to the acoustic guitars would sound good, I can't remember if I kept it or not. As time went on Dylan got much better at producing however, and did help me EQ a few elements on “Over & Over” and “America.”
In regards to whether I want to keep it DIY or bring in some help, Man let me tell you, I was just trying to keep my head above water for a minute there with managing a website, marketing this album, shooting video clips, editing everything.
My dream world has people that run my online stuff for me, that take pictures for me, that video for me, but as of right now, I'm holding the camera, I'm changing my DNS settings to get an email list that works. I'm editing the videos and coming up with concepts. I lost the music production side of my life for awhile there, but it's about balance. At the end of the day I love singing and playing guitar and writing things that I never imagined could exist. As long as I can do that, I'll take the other parts of life and business along with it.
But on a serious note, In that time it took to learn how to mix and master the balance of life still exists, I wrote two other albums in that time and I'm tracking vocals next week for them. Very different projects than Take A Chance, one is a House EP, and another is a guitar opus similar to a John Mayer album, but my style is much more Ryan Smart now. My long term vision at this moment has me putting out these next two tapes for free, House EP won't be on iTunes, just my Bandcamp. The third project is called Our Stars and it will be on iTunes and everywhere else.
In this game you have to plan ahead or you won't make it. Movie stars plan ahead,; every successful person is working on things years away from when they come out, and so am I, so my fourth album has four songs made for it already, and I'll be bringing in outside producers for that. I have plans to get some beats from Dylan, who has made serious strides in his own craft as he's given up rapping to be a full time producer, and our fourth album is going to be a much broader scope pop album, danceable and accessible for the masses.
Q: Do you have any favorite songs off the album now that’s it released? Any suggestions for songs that you want people to hear first?
A: Oh man favorite songs? That's like picking kids haha. Listen I love “All That Your Love Means To Me.” That's a fantastic song for me on so many levels because I can play it live with just a keyboard. I think I hit a stride on that one, and I love where it takes you to on the album from maybe being in your head a little more, deeper concepts at the beginning, to being more in your body by the time “Over & Over” ends. It's a bridge and a keystone, but every song makes the record. Take A Chance doesn't work if you remove any of these tracks.
Honestly if you check this tape out, clear your mind and play it from start to finish. It's short, 35 minutes, sounds better in the car at night. Strap in for the ride and you won't be disappointed! The first 15 minutes might jar you, but by the time “No More Bets” hits, you'll be in the flow, and when “Over & Over” is over, haha, you'll be turned.
Q: Any plans to take this music on the road? What does a live show look like?
A: As far as playing this album live, I have no plans to tour this record. I have a catalog right now full of music itching to be recorded that I think more people can get into than this project. My dream for this record is that people find it ten years from now tracing my career back to its origins and they see that Take A Chance was my first step. Recorded in the living room of a duplex and my dilapidated college house with the brashness of believing I can compete with these juggernauts of the industry straight from the jump. I can't wait to floor people with the solo acoustic version of “More Sure,” and the solo keyboard of “All That Your Love Means To Me” and “Looking 4 Love,” but the only way you'll hear them is when I get them recorded to YouTube from an open mic or busking somewhere, or when I tour for Our Stars because I do plan on getting some shows under my belt for that record.
Q: What are your plans for 2017?
A: 2017 is going to be the biggest year of my life. The amount of knowledge I've gained from making and releasing Take A Chance has changed everything. I upgraded everything and wrote absolute classics, and some perfect songs. I'm in an acoustically treated home studio as I write this, with $7000 of upgraded equipment, mics, amps and guitars. My voice has undergone two years of two hours a day of serious work and devoted practice on my weak areas and expanding my strong suits, and I'm completely mentally ready to take what's mine and give people the best of me. Make no mistake - I believe that I have the potential to be one of the greatest artists and performers of all time, what I see in my head gives me chills just thinking about it, and it's a razor sharp focus that keeps me grounded in this moment to get better every single day, and make these dreams a reality.