A Conversation with Will Tulip
Will Tulp, who performs under the name Will Tulip is a musician who lives between two places, Kansas, and California. Out of the four singles he has released on streaming, all four have found major success. Will says that his supportive group of friends, his confidence in his music and his willingness to release has fostered his growth as an artist. Nestled in an apartment complex themed to a Japanese tea garden was Will’s home complete with a home studio. His setup consisted of two studio monitors, a laptop, his treasured synthesizer, and a turquoise Fender Telecaster he said was his dream guitar. Will’s studio was the epitome of bedroom pop, giving him the necessary tools to manifest his dreamy collection of available singles, and from what I understand, hundreds of unpublished and unfinished pieces he had made.
Will was soft spoken and humble, going deep into his love of his craft and delving into the chronology of his musical history. Over the three hours I spent with Will, very little of it was actually spent recording an interview. We traded psychedelic rock bands and became entranced in Stevie Wonder’s vocoder cover of “Close to You.” He played for me a multitude of unreleased tracks, that to me, felt ready for an audience, but to Will, needed just a bit more polish. His love of musical collaboration was put on display as he frequently would point out parts of each song that were contributed by guitarist acquaintances and drummer friends. He genuinely loves to support his fellow artists and as I left his abode, he gave me a laundry list of musicians he was friendly with to check out.
Will gave me clarity on what it means to start small at something and work your way into putting your work in front of a larger, more mainstream audience. Will urged musicians, to “release your goddamn music”. I took this as a sign that people should just put themselves out there and refrain from hiding behind self-doubt and fear of judgment when releasing public works. Will admitted that he had gone through a plethora of Soundcloud accounts, uploading music under aliases and it wasn’t until “Ooh Yeah,” that he felt he was ready to use his real name. He seemed ready to release more, and although he loves his prior releases, he felt he has more to say and share more with the world.
Please enjoy my interview with Will Tulip.
Nik: I think song construction is something I’m really interested in hearing about first. Songs have so many moving parts that to come together to form this beautiful concoction of sounds, I’m always fascinated about what comes first. Where would you say you usually start with track?
Will: Funny thing, one of the ones I'm releasing started with a sample. It was started with one of those beats made for Miles that I just showed you. It was just one of those times when he didn't like it that much, so I kept it.
(Will references making beats for his roommate Miles, something he showed me pre-recording)
I'll usually have an idea if I'm playing on the guitar or playing on the piano. Maybe an idea was sparked there, maybe I'll be working with a sample and I’ll like the drums. I’ll start with the sample and then I'll play some random keys to figure something out. Other times I will have a melody in my head and try to match chords. Typical things like that, but it's always so random and sporadic. I have all these random chord progressions or lyrics that I've written but haven't used. And at any point I might be looking back at one of those and become inspired to use it to lead into in a track.
N: Could you talk to me about your 2020 quarantine experience? Were you working consistently or was it random?
W: Quarantine was a crazy time for everybody, it was kind of tough to stay inspired.
You’d think being inside for a long time would give you a lot of time to focus on music. But you know, I was juggling school and juggling work and trying to figure those things out. I was kind of having a hard time with it all. I just wasn't inspired. Then I came out here (to Orange county) and I couch surfed for a while. I had a lot of fun wild experiences and bought a new guitar. All of a sudden, I had a lot of stories to tell. I had more to make songs out of.
N: Most of your songs are about relationships or break-ups, is it more personal experiences you are drawing from or are you putting yourself in someone else’s shoes?
W: I think in anyone's writing their life and their experiences are always represented. Subconsciously, those experiences shape how you tell your story. A lot of times when I write songs, it comes from a single phrase, single idea or a single line that I improvise when I'm playing. If I'm writing a melody, I'll say random words and sometimes come up with a line, and for a while, that was how I was doing it. For my past songs I was trying to write fun songs and trying to tell fun stories with them. I think the music that I'm working on now and the songs that I am ready to release are coming from a different place than all the things I did before. A place of more inspiration, new experiences, more practice, more ideas, more scratched ideas and more revisions. I feel like what I'm working on now I'm like a lot prouder of and a lot more tied to. Honestly, I feel like I'm just telling better stories and deeper stories. And that's all that I try to focus on with my songs, along with catchiness and chords.
N: For the new music you are working on, are you making new things in one sitting or are you looking back at old files and reworking and repurposing them?
W: It depends honestly. I've circled back to things and worked on them more, or had an idea sparked from something that I had before. But as far as the songs that I released already go, they all came together simultaneously. It was kind of one inspiration from start to finish. Whereas with these new songs, they all similarly were created spontaneously and then they sat for a while. And I guess I've been marinating on them more and working on them together back and forth, which is something I wasn't doing previously. It was like an idea, scratch it another idea, scratch it, a new idea, then take it and run with it for a long time.
N: I really like how you are still in a way finding your sound and giving yourself room to grow. Do you find when you are working on your newer songs that you are trying to fit in the mold of what has worked for you with the four singles you released?
W: I think bedroom pop for me is the genre that all my music fits into. For me that works because I can still play with a variety of other genres and tastes. I don't think my sound is like sourced in any one place. I don't search for it anywhere. I don't try to match it anywhere. But just because of how I mix and make the music and how I setup and use my drums, it all fits together to make that sound. The stuff I'm working on right now is inspired by some of my favorite folk music. I've been listening to a lot of Fruit Bats and I've always been listening to the Avett Brothers. That kind of fingerpicking I love, and I don't have an acoustic guitar, but I've been incorporating that into some of my songs a little more. Of course, I listen to all my favorite bedroom artists, but I’m also trying to incorporate sampling a little more and get more into funk.
Will and I paused our conversation to listen to a few new pieces he was working on as well as share a variety of bands and music related videos we found interesting. After listening to Silk Sonic’s new single “Leave the Door Open” we entered a discussion regarding musical terminology, specifically the concept of warmth. I felt his analogy was concise, capturing the subjective beauty of music and the mutual appreciation that all listeners and musicians share.
W: I mean every word in music is subjective, but like there's kind of a collective understanding. Like if you go into a guitar shop and you're asked for like a guitar with warm tones, they're going to get you a guitar with warm tones, and you're both going to agree that it sounds warm. But you're not really going to know like, why. I could, I could play you a cold and warm thing and you’d notice it's very it's very hard to describe.
N: I’m interested to hear more about your beginnings as a musician and the first few songs you released publicly. Could you delve into that a bit?
W: I've been releasing songs since I started learning FL studio with only the demo version and only knowing how to play the ukulele that I bought after my first concert. I know so many talented musicians who just don't release their music. Who am I to talk? You know, I'm sitting on so much stuff that I'm working on. But I've always been releasing and originally, I was doing it under aliases for a while. I went by another name for my SoundCloud account. I would really songs under that name for a while, and then when I would go, “Huh, these songs are kind of trash.” Once every year, I would make a new SoundCloud account, I'd make a new name, and I'd released some new songs on that. Every once in a while, one would get like some nice success, and then I'd follow that for a little bit. But then I'd grow out of that account and move on. I was always releasing music. But I feel like that first song is the hardest to release. My advice is if you haven't released a song yet, just release whatever you're working on now. Honestly, you’ve got to start somewhere. In 2019, I decided that my music is good enough and I’d been working on my vocals, so I figured I'd try singing on a track. I decided to not hide myself behind a SoundCloud account and put it on Spotify. I basically put my own name on it. It was just another one of those jumps. But this one worked out really well for me. You’ve always got to be releasing as you're making.
N: Your first song on Spotify was “Ooh Yeah,” so I’m curious, did that start as a Soundcloud single and then it made the jump to Spotify? Or when you made it did you decided it was the right time to put it on Spotify first?
W: December of 2018 into January of 2019 was when that happened. And at that time, it was just another song that I was working on but, I fell in love with it instantly. I wrote the lyrics for it naturally as I was playing the song out loud. It was the first song that I had produced of mine that had vocals and everything, and I really liked it. I was just uniquely proud of it compared to other things I was working on, which is how for a long time my singles would go. It was just like, “Oh, this one's stand out let's follow this.” And this was just another one of those moments. The song was tied to me by having my voice, and I just decided might as well not hide myself and put it out there and really promote it, because the nature of being under an alias is you don't promote your music to your close friends. But, because I was so proud enough of it, I decided I'd release it on Spotify, SoundCloud and everything so that all my friends could listen to it. Even though anyone can release on Spotify, it just feels a little more official, like when you get an artist page and everything, it's fun. But it took me like six years of making music and releasing things on Soundcloud before I did that.
N: I feel like it’s hard for a lot of people to put their voice on a song for the first time. What was it like for you, finding your voice and putting it on a track?
W: I think this is probably the case for everyone that writes and sings their music, but I started singing out of necessity. The whole time that I was releasing stuff on SoundCloud, I was working on other music where I was writing lyrics, but it felt like too personal for me to sing on it. But it got to a point where I liked what I had written. My two kind of separate processes, this world of songwriting and this world of making beats started to fuse together a little more. It was something that was kind of anxiety inducing at first. But when you're in the studio, you get plenty of time to tune your vocals and do many takes. And I find that your voice when you hear it is not that bad, even though everyone naturally hates their own voice because their external and internal voices are different. It's funny, because I'm not anxious about singing at all now, but I was for so long. And it's hard for me to even say why because I've always been singing, I just wasn't doing it in front of people. But whenever I release a song, I get to put auto tune on it, I get to do different vocal layers in release a product that I'm proud of. I care a lot about my sound almost too much, and it almost holds me back and holds back releases and I need to try and let that go more. Part of letting that go was in taking steps to invest more in my sound. Instead of like spending a lot on equipment, or doing subpar vocals, I'll just make the investment to go record some dope vocals with dope equipment and a dope studio.
Like all interviews I do, I asked Will for a piece of advice that he’d like to share. I told him it could be anything he wanted.
“Release your goddamn music, if you haven’t released a song, do it now because it’ll only get better and better.”
He also gave a piece of general advice that everyone should follow.
“Take care of yourself and others.”