“Play Loud”
It doesn’t matter how bad you think you may sound. Even if what you’re playing is so completely wrong, you better make yourself heard.
“Play loud.” No matter what you’re playing, no matter how bad you may sound — it doesn’t even matter if you know how to play your instrument. You could blast a B flat for the whole show, and your job would have been completed.
These were the words I once heard so often from my close friend and mentor from my first year of high school marching band. Play loud. It doesn’t matter how bad you think you may sound. Even if what you’re playing is so completely wrong compared to what notes are written down on the page, you better make sure you make yourself heard.
To any classical musician, that may sound like one of the worst bits of advice you can possibly give to someone. But for me, a timid player who had long since given up on becoming a decent musician, that was exactly what I needed to hear. With that goal in mind, I was able to persevere through my squeaks and missed pitches and play my heart out, ultimately teaching me the trombone faster than I ever would have learned if I had been given the time to ease into it.
As a music fan, I find my favorite genre to be indie — specifically, indie rock. The way the music sounds is not only fresh, but DIY, in a sense. It has a different vibe than music that is more well-known does. As a critic, I like to think of myself as an adviser, just like my former mentor on the trombone.
With any album, artist, band, or individual song, there is always something good and something bad about the music. Songwriting — like any other medium of art — is a work in progress. You can always go back, add, delete, or alter a piece to make it better. But there are multiple ways to look at how good a piece can be. And that is what I aim to point out in my writing.
That is how this publication started out, really. I became absolutely obsessed with indie music and would spend countless hours analyzing lyrics and researching everything I could about them. It wasn’t until I was talking to my close friend about Velvet Starling’s “Sold Down the River” that the suggestion for a music journalist career came up. With any song I listen to, specifically those made by smaller artists, there are so many details beneath the surface that make the sound special that I want to share with the world.
So I set out to start a blog. Generations of Youth, I called it, after a lyric from a song I thought was appropriate. I never liked the name, and I didn’t touch the blog for a long time. And then the words of my old friend came back to me. Play loud.
It doesn’t matter if you’re not the greatest singer in the world. It doesn’t matter if all you’re playing is power chords for a full two minutes. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how many people you have to back you up. If you don’t play loud enough, no one will hear you. Playing louder exudes confidence. It fixes most tonal issues in wind instruments, believe it or not.
It is the last thing you want to do when you feel like you are the worst player ever, but having the mentality that you need to hide when you make a mistake is like calling your latest album the worst project ever in the middle of an interview during your promotional tour. Jack White is arguably the greatest guitarist in history, and when he makes a mistake, he makes it loud and proud. That is the beauty of rock music: it is never perfect. It is raw, sometimes ugly, but also from the soul.
I want to talk about those smaller bands. I want to be able to give someone a chance, not just the musicians that are trying to grow an audience, but also those potential fans looking for their next favorite band. I want to learn more about the industry and how it works so I can be more informed. But most of all, both outside of and through my work in Play it Loud, I hope I am able to give just one budding musician the confidence to be heard.
