INTERVIEW: BRADEN ROSS (12/8/23) -
We were honored to get the chance to speak to Braden Ross, who just released his project 'digilogue' !! As of publication of this interview, the EP is out now everywhere, including a CD and Vinyl copy run through us! Thank you again to Braden for taking the time to chat about his new project plus a variety of other interesting topics, we're excited to present you this interview and urge you to check out the EP once you're done reading!
What makes music special to you? Do you find more joy in listening to music or creating it?
I think music is just something special to me in an unexplainable psychological way. Like for as long as I can remember, there have been moments in my life where I hear a song and I have a genuine physical reaction to it. The hair on my arms stands on ends, and I feel chills throughout my body. It’s not something that I can control, and it’s one of the most incredible, unparalleled sensations I’ve ever felt before. I more often feel that when listening to music rather than when creating it, so I try to make it my goal as a musician to give others that same feeling when listening to something that I have made.
Did you have a plan in life before making and releasing music?
Nothing ever super concrete; I had a few ideas of what I would potentially want to do for a living as a kid, but none that I actually would have liked to do now as an adult. Around middle school is when I made the conscious decision in my head that I wanted to pursue music professionally, but for the longest time I didn’t really know how to go about doing it. It wasn’t even until after highschool that I started releasing music, and then it all started to make a little more sense. Although if I ever were to stop making music, I think I would want to go into environmental science.
Do you have any secret hobbies or interests that most people don't know about?
I had a few growing up that I don’t typically share. I did Taekwondo for 13 years, and I used to play tennis in highschool. I haven’t really participated in either of those activities since I started taking music more seriously, but they’re definitely things that I would like to pick back up in the near future. As for secret interests, I’m really into coffee right now. I have been scouring goodwill for espresso makers and am currently hyperfixating on making the best coffee I possibly can.
How do you deal with insecurities in creating music and life in general? do you have any advice for someone dealing with insecurities of their own?
Honestly I’m naturally a very insecure person. I struggled and continue to struggle with body dysmorphia/body image issues. I grew up as a relatively chubby kid, and I have never really been able to escape the feelings associated with that. As for musical insecurity, that’s definitely been a running issue with me as well.
I often find that I compare myself to others very heavily, and I spend a lot of mental energy on stressing about numbers/what people are saying about me. And I think it’s because I have so much love for music, and I want this to work so bad, that it drives me crazy sometimes.
My best advice would be to take some deep breaths, confide in someone your close to (or get therapy), and do all that you can to acknowledge your current achievements. We all have to start somewhere, and no matter what anyone says, life isn’t a race. If you’re doing your best, try not to be too hard on yourself if things aren’t moving in the way you thought they would
As an artist, is there ever a struggle to balance personal relationships and creating music? if so, how do you overcome that?
Yeah totally. For the longest time (upwards of 3 years) as I was getting my career off the ground, I pretty much destroyed my social life. I locked myself away, stopped replying reliably to my friends, never agreed to plans, all because I was incredibly stressed about keeping up momentum. And to an extent, it worked out. But that’s not something that I would really encourage.
I think time away from music, and time spent with friends that care about you, is a really important piece of artistry that is often overlooked (at least by me haha). It’s very easy to put yourself in a bubble of imposter syndrome and insecurity if you cut yourself off from the people who care about you. And although spending less time on what you want to do for a living might sound counterintuitive, it is essential for your sanity and for protection against burnout. Over the last couple months I have been making a lot more of an effort to spend time with people that I care about, and although it is a bit stressful for me to not be working so hard, it has made me more fulfilled than I have been in a long time.
Recently, you said that your upcoming ep was about the effects of social media and fame on your mental health. Do you mind expanding further on that?
Of course. Prior to my discovery of utilizing TikTok as an artist, I was very content with my musicianship. Things were going well, and every time I put out a song, I felt genuine happiness and excitement. Then I started using and growing on TikTok, and my feelings definitely warped overtime. I began to focus a lot more on the promotion of my art, rather than the creation of it. And a lot of my promotional tactics came across as very disingenuous and cringy (which I totally agree with).
At the time it was hard for me to accept this fact, because my numbers were going up so I felt like that justified my behavior. It took a lot of self reflection, and a lot of help from my friend Aria (leastfavorite! on every platform check her out fr) to realize that my current approach to music was flawed. I had let social media and the instant gratification of seeing a number get bigger take over my life. So I wrote an EP about it. And don’t get me wrong, social media is a necessary evil when it comes to being a musician in today’s world. But the way I was using it turned me into something I hated, and that wasn’t ever going to be sustainable
"For the longest time as I was getting my career off the ground, i pretty much destroyed my social life."
How has tiktok impacted your music that you market? Do you make changes to your music based off of what you think will get more traction, rather than what you want to release?
I wouldn’t say that TikTok has ever influenced me into actually changing a song sonically. But I would say that I often find myself trying to find the most TikTok-worthy snippet of the songs I’ve written to showcase. But if that snippet doesn’t do well, I never go back and change the song. In those instances, I would just try out another snippet and see how that performs, until I find something that clicks with my audience.
To expand more on that, do you think social media and tiktok helps or hinders creativity? How come?
I think if used correctly, social media is a great tool for musicians. But I think it is very possible for it to destroy the creativity of an artist, and I feel as though I’ve experienced that firsthand. There was a time not too long ago where I would post a TikTok (sometimes even two) every single day. A fully produced, filmed, edited video every single day.
That occupied a good portion of my time. And although my numbers were technically going up, it wasn’t for the reasons you should want them to be. And by the time the day was over, I hadn’t done anything legitimately productive in terms of creation of music. I would say I was putting 75% of my total effort into social media promotion, and 25% of my effort into the actual creation of music. And with a ratio so skewed, I think it negatively impacted my music.
There are songs where I feel I could have done something much better with them if I had just spent more time on it. But I was so focused on finishing something so I could promote it, that I would often run with ideas that I wasn’t 100% happy with. This whole EP is the antithesis of this mindset. Every single song on here was endlessly tweaked and edited until I could no longer make it any better with the skill-set that I currently possess.
How would you describe your evolution as an artist and as a person since your musical debut?
I would say artistically I have greatly improved. I think “digilogue” is by far, the best music I have ever made. And I think that’s because I had to fight my own instincts a lot during the production of it. I had to rewire my brain to make it possible. Instead of rushing myself, instead of spewing out as much music as possible to be able to immediately promote and gain numbers for, I forced myself to take my time, and create every single song to the best of my ability without cutting any corners. And I came out of it on the other side as a much better producer, lyricist, and artist as a whole.
As for my growth as a person, I think this career path has honestly been pretty rough on my mental state, just because I’m 22 now, all of my highschool friends are finished with college and moving on to work “real adult” jobs, and I feel very much behind. I’m sure most of it is me being really hard on myself, and I am very grateful for the amount of people that resonate with what I’m doing, but it’s hard not to feel like it’s hopeless at times. Especially when you do this by yourself and lock yourself away most days of the week in a tiny room. But that all goes back to my sentiment of spending time away with people who you care about. That part is integral for my growth as a human being.
How long does it take for you to work on a song before it gets released?
For the longest time, I tried to write one song a month, and I don’t think that’s an unachievable goal. But with all the promo I was doing, and the amount of time that took up, there wasn’t really a lot of time during that process where I was actually working on the song itself. Nowadays, I don’t really give myself deadlines. I’m pretty sure “unalive” took me like 4-5 months to 100% complete. And don’t get me wrong, there’s songs off the EP that took significantly less time to make (I think the final song off the record only took me a few weeks). But I just find it more beneficial creatively to let whatever happens happen in terms of how long it takes to finish something
Was it hard or easy to pick the songs for your ep? Do you have any songs you wanted on the ep, but just didn't make the cut?
I wouldn’t say it was hard, because the only songs I ended up actually finishing are the ones that ended up on the EP haha. There were only two REALLY SMALL ideas that I had tried to flesh out that didn’t end up making it past the writing/proof of concept stage, but everything else that I’ve worked on over the past 11ish months got finished and got put on the project.
Your song with jay kim, "break!" came out as a single recently, after first teasing it in your discord way back in april. was this song always meant to have a feature? Did you reach out to jay first, or did jay reach out to you?
I wanted to do a couple features on this EP actually, mainly because I thought it’d be fun to work with people within the scene. I don’t often do features, so I thought it would be cool to get some for a project of this scale. I had initially reached out to/secured a feature for “break!” from someone else, but they ended up backing out unfortunately. I still hope to work with that artist in the future, but they dropped out relatively late into the development of the EP so it was a bit stressful for me haha. That’s when I sent Jay a rather frantic voice message asking if he wanted to hop on, and he sent back his (totally sick and dope) verse like, the next day. He’s such a cool guy and it was a pleasure working with him.
"I think digilogue is by far the best music I have ever made ... I had to rewire my brain to make it possible."
Do you have any other artists in mind for potential collabs? If so, do you mind telling us who?
I was gonna try and get 4cf and Ryan Hall on the EP, but schedules just didn’t line up unfortunately :/ There’s tons of artists that I would love to work with though! I feel as though I’m a bit isolated in this scene, most likely because of my past promotional tactics and TikTok persona, but perhaps this release will open up some more doors for me.
Is there anything in the works after the ep that we should be on the lookout for?
I want to do a show in Seattle soon! Being completely independent makes it kinda hard for me to plan this stuff because I’m quite busy and also the idea of it TOTALLY stresses me out, but I am totally gonna do it and people should be on the lookout for that. I’ve got some cool merch dropping as well (my first ever merch too!) that I’m quite excited about. As for actual music, I don’t have anything planned post-EP, but I’m sure I’ll get something in the works relatively soon after the release so people should totally keep their eyes peeled.
Do you have anyone or anything to shout out before we go?
In no particular order, my girlfriend, my brother, my family, and my awesome friends for constantly filling my head and ears with nice words and encouragement. My online homies for supporting everything I do. The entirety of the young sheldon fan theories groupchat that I’m in for letting me spam demos. And every single person who has ever reached out, commented something nice, or listened to any of my music. Thank you all so much.
Big thank you to Braden for joining us in this interview today!
We're excited to also bring you Braden's new project on CD and Vinyl today as well!
You can pick up a copy of digilogue on CD + Vinyl here:
https://propyl.store/b/bradenross
Thank you once again to Braden Ross!
This interview was written by cober with editing by the Propyl Team.
Please contact us @ propylrecords@gmail.com for any questions or inquiries.
