Quarantine gave many people a time to do things they never thought they would do: write a book, paint a mural, start a youtube channel, etc. For the first three months of quarantine, I didn’t do anything new or remarkable. Two days before leaving for school, I rashly decided to do something extremely out of my comfort zone. I decided to publish a song on Spotify.
I’ve been writing songs since I was a little girl and really enjoyed it, but I never felt very comfortable sharing them. They were like my diary. Though I was proud of how they sounded, they were personal. However, after listening to countless artists over quarantine and becoming inspired by influencers, I realized that many of my songs had universal messages that many could relate to, and I could inspire others the same way others inspired me.
Being an amateur artist and a broke college student, I didn’t have all of the tools or professional equipment to create a song, so I simply used what I had. There were five things I used: my iPhone, the free app, Garage Band, a microphone I had from participating in virtual classes, a chord to connect my iPhone to the microphone, and headphones.
Professional singers usually had a nice recording studio, but I didn’t have that. The first draft of my song sounded atrocious. A test I used to make sure it sounded alright was to play it in my car and compare its clarity to other songs on the radio. There was a weird feedback and echo sound, so I nearly gave up.
I realized the problem was that I had recorded in my basement, which did not have good acoustics and had a lot of background noise. I decided to record in my sunroom when I had the house all to myself. My sunroom was where my family kept plants to get sunlight and it had very good acoustics. I closed all of the doors and filmed while squatting down next to my microphone. After lots of trial and error, I added background singing, more instruments, and cool effects.
I then published my song through DistroKid. It was super easy and allowed me to release my song on more platforms besides Spotify such as Apple Music and TikTok. The company emailed me with updates as soon as possible, so there was never any doubt on what was happening.
Overall, this was a great experience that taught me patience and gave me fulfilment. My friends and family were extremely supportive and have encouraged me to publish more. Once I have some more time, I hope to get better equipment and put together a whole EP. Feel free to check out “Words” by Kaitlin Jacobson! Now you know the backstory of how I created it.