5 Q&A With Roel
What is the creative process like?
For me, the creative process most often starts pretty subconsciously with a melody or lyric popping into my head as I'm doing something completely unrelated (like showering), and gradually becomes a lot more delicate as I dive into the deeper writing, production and mixing stages.
Against better judgment, I oftentimes end up working on every stage of the songwriting and production processes simultaneously and therefore always have a half-finished song, which is ironically exactly what this song is about — never finishing anything.
Was there any challenge that you encountered while making the track?
Yes, too many. This song took me 3 years to finish and all throughout those years I genuinely thought I'd have had it finished in a couple of weeks. The song has gone through like 20 completely different sounding versions because none of them ever felt right, but I loved the melody and idea behind the track too much to not keep trying.
Writing the melody and lyrics were the only things that happened really easily, those maybe took me a night or two. I'm very grateful for all the struggles the track has given me, though, because I learned so much from this one song and I'm taking that with me into my new projects.
How does "the grind" fit into your overall artistic vision and what can listeners expect from you in the future?
Sound-wise, it's honestly just a teaser of what I do and it'll probably forever be "that" song with the theme song sound. My other music isn't necessarily as typical 2000s sounding, but the theme song aesthetic felt right as a first release to start the show (pun intended).
As for lyrics & songwriting, I'd say it's very me and I catch myself writing about similar stuff a lot because it just comes so naturally. Writing for me is very therapeutic because I can just put my whole brain into a piece of text.
The chiptune elements, electric guitars and all-over high-energy are what I love and pour into all my music, so definitely expect more of that.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got started in music?
For sure. If we're talking started-started, I went to music theory school when I was about 7 years old and took a few years of piano lessons afterwards from when I was 9.
I discovered FL Studio, my DAW, in 2013 when I saw a Future Music video of Avicii making Dancing In My Head. It took me a little while to learn the program, but 11 years later I'm still using it and it's become my best friend.
I’m 24 years old, live in the Netherlands and I do all songwriting/vocals/production/mixing by myself. Theo Artz (guitarist) has helped me with guitars on this track and it was mastered by Idania Valencia!
Where do you find inspiration for your songs or musical ideas?
Everywhere, really! My favorite music comes from the soundtracks of video games like Pokémon and The Legend of Zelda which I grew up on, many composed by Junichi Masuda, Koji Kondo and Gō Ichinose.
But I also get inspired by a bunch of old and new pop/rock/punk/electronic music! Some of my favorite artists right now are underscores, renforshort and Mura Masa.