A Conversation with Ysa
From living in a beachside Florida town, to playing her first Nashville show virtual reality bar, Ysa is brimming with stories about her musical experiences. Ysa’s music is a smooth, jazzy blend of r&b and contemporary pop. Standout tracks include her latest release “Everything is Fine” that she says is heavily inspired by the aches of quarantine and isolation. We delve deep into the production elements behind the track during our conversation as well as break down the lyrical composure. Ysa was talkative about her love of Nashville and the incredibly creative nature of the city, as it is a haven for musicians. Nashville is a collaborative environment, but as Ysa says, it can be easy to become caught up in the definition of success. A very interesting piece of our conversation was the dissection of TikTok’s influence on her music as well as the culture of sharing music. She explains that on TikTok that you can interact with people, “you would never, ever have the chance to get your music in front of.” This notion of interacting with new people has showed that her music has real power, because on TikTok everyone is a stranger, no one is liking simply because they are a friend.
We also both admitted that we would sacrifice multiple limbs in order to be back at a full-scale concert, specifically in the moshpit, thrashing with our fellow music lovers. Thankfully, Ysa has returned to the stage on Nashville, playing gigs around the city, so she may be able to return to the pit in the next few months as venues begin to re-open. She is returning to the stage with multiple new production skills in her repertoire after diving deep into new ways of making music while in quarantine. I am very excited to hear what Ysa has next, especially her new single “Phase for You” which releases on April 30th.
Please enjoy my conversation with Ysa.
Nik: What kind of music was being played in your home when you were a kid?
Ysa: My mom had this Barbie boombox that she would play CDs from while she did chores. She always had the best of each decade CDs such as best of the 60s, 70s and 80s. She loved disco hits, so I listened to a lot of disco. My dad was a classic rock dad, like Creedence Clearwater Revival and Muddy Waters, the blues types. Between those two it was a lot of jazz, blues, and rock.
N: Would you say that became the foundation for your current musical taste or did you diverge from that you get older?
Y: I have two older brothers too and they were really into hip-hop artists like Biggie, Eazy-E and that classic 90s and 2000s style music. So, I think when I was maybe 13-14, that's when my taste really developed and changed. They showed me hip-hop, and I was like, “these are all the jazzy things that I love in music but harder.”
N: Was there a particular moment in your life where you fell in love with music and the idea of pursuing it in the future?
Y: Yeah, I think that I was always a weirdo, so I knew I wanted to do something creative. I did a lot of theater in high school; I was a total theater kid. I auditioned to go to school for theater and didn't get in anywhere, so I realized that it was not my lane. But I liked musicaltheater a lot, and my family listened to a lot of music so I was like, “well maybe I could do this for a living” and my parents were like “yeah okay go ahead, try.” They're supportive and everything but, my college decision was really important because in high school I was like “theater is the move, I want to be on Broadway,” that sort of thing. And then after not getting into any of the schools I wanted to, I was like “alright, I'll just do Community College and figure it out.” Then at this little school in Daytona, I walked into one of the media rooms and there was a recording studio. It had all the vibe-y lights, the speakers, and the whole console with all the knobs and lights on it. I was like “this is fucking cool, I want to know how to do this stuff,” and that's kind of how it happened.
N: Where do you where do you traditionally start when you are making a song? Is there a melody stuck in your head? Is it instrumentation? Lyrics?
Y: I'm constantly listening to people's conversations. I'm not really a melody person first but I'm always on the Notes app in my phone. If people are talking and then they say a phrase and I'm like, “God, that's such a cool phrase” or I’m sitting down, drinking coffee or whatever and I hear someone two apartments over yelling at somebody else. I like listening to people talk because they say the most interesting things. I’ll take those phrases and keep them in my phone. And then usually I'm in a room with another artist or writer for a session, or maybe I'm just making a beat, then I usually open up that Notes app on my phone and find a core phrase that fits the song.
N: One song that I really want to point out and dive into because it is extremely topical is “Everything is Fine.” You are contemplating time on that song and I really enjoy the line “but what's familiar?” because nothing really feels familiar today with the crazy circumstances, we are all under. Is that song inspired by the quarantine blues?
Y: I was in my last semester of Belmont and I hadn't written a song in probably three months. Quarantine was really hard. Everybody had to be by themselves for a really long time and I'm a really extroverted person that was really tough. The hook “everything is fine” came at the very last moment. I wrote the song in the perspective of wishing somebody was telling me those things. It started with the line “I've been good I've been killer.” It’s just kind of putting on that face for people when you go out and then not actually being okay on the inside and not really liking yourself and having to be with yourself all the time because you're in a pandemic and you can't be around people. Especially in the second verse how it says, “wish I could see it clearer, dip my hands in the hallway mirror.” It's literally just looking at yourself and not really liking what you see, but having to be with that person every day. I mean it's kind of heavy. I guess the whole song is just what I wish somebody was telling me to make me feel better. I had this whole alternate version of the song where the chorus was big and more atmospheric. Then I thought, wait, It shouldn't be that. When that when I say, “everything is fine,” it should just literally be bare, drum and bass. I feel it's a little more haunting that way and that was a really important production element. I wasn't creative for like three months and then I wrote that song in one night.
N: That's a beautiful explanation, I was pulling themes of isolation and uncertainty. We don't really know what's coming next and nothing is really familiar anymore. How would you say 2020 and the pandemic affected your music overall?
Y: In general, it was really hard, but it was also so good for me because I'm a really type-A personality, so I want to be working all the time. In the beginning of it I just wanted to get out and make a bunch of music. I had all these rights booked two months out and sessions with people I had to cancel. So, instead of doing those sessions, I just started making a beat a day. With lyrics, I just had such a writer's block, especially the first three or four months of quarantine. I was just making beats and making tracks, and it really upped my production game. I was watching all these other producers and just really getting better at that and doing that every day has made me such a stronger producer. That would have never happened if I just had all those rights with people. I'm really grateful about that and I feel I got to sit with my computer a lot, so I became really techy. One computer died so I'd buy a new one and buy parts for it, so it really upped my tech game and my producer game. I’d say that it was really good in the long run.
N: Yeah, it's a whole new skill for your tool belt. When you're in the room with an engineer you can talk the talk, walk the walk because you've had no other opportunity but to do it all yourself.
Going off that we kind of talked about the home studio and the trend of people investing in home studios. What's your relationship with the professional big board studio versus your personal studio?
Y: I worked for a year at Curb studios, and they did a lot of commercial country music. And I was mainly the techie person there, so I was soldering cables in the back and fixing gear, and it wasn't really creative at all, but I learned a lot. I'm a fan for just a small producer setup, literally what I have in my room works best for me when it comes to creativity. It doesn't matter how big the space is. I just want the instruments and a laptop as close to my fingers as possible. When I have the musical idea I just want to reach for the guitar and have it be right there and it already be plugged in. Sometimes it can be messier in home studios, but I think overall the music that I've made in my little setup with other people has been better than a professional setup.
N: How would you say that that plot the right the meteoric rise of TikTok as a platform has influenced you and your music?
Y: It's cool because it's strangers who like your stuff. The thing with Instagram is that it's usually friends of friends who are following you. Whereas it feels wild because one of the first videos I posted on TikTok got 150,000 views. It’s so it feels crazy because it's not anyone you know and they still like your music. The cool thing about that was that was one of the first videos I posted on TikTok was a video of me literally recording vocals and people liked it. They were strangers to me, so I knew that they weren't just liking it just because they were friends. They literally were strangers and the lyrics resonated with them, and that was cool. The crazy thing about TikTok is that the algorithm shows you so many new people that you would never, ever have the chance to get your music in front of normally.
N: Live performances are such an integral part of music. Could you tell me about performing in the past pre-COVID versus now, a year later, coming back to performing?
Y: Yeah, it was crazy, me and my band had not performed for literally a year. March of 2020 is when I started really getting into more sampling and building tracks. So, once the year mark hit and we could finally play this show, we were reworked the entire set because I have a sampler I use now. So, It was really cool to be able to play this show and see the growth in myself because I didn't even realize it. I missed performing so much, it was all pent up. I needed to entertain, it was just such a good moment. The show turned out great, it was at this place called Live Oak in Nashville and their capacity was running at 50% or something and everybody seated with a mask on, but it was just good to play in front of real people.
N: What it was like making that transition from Florida to the incredibly musical city of Nashville?
Y: It was crazy because there's no real music scene in my hometown. It's a little surf town and Nashville is huge, it's the city. There's just so many people and there's so many musicians. When I moved here, I thought I was a pretty good musician but the dude probably playing on the corner for a sandwich at the end of the night is going to be 99% better than most of the people in this small town I grew up in. The musicians are top tier and everybody's really good. I thought I was good with musicianship and music theory but I was like, “oh, I there's so much I don't know.”
N: That's the beauty of a city, you're kind of the big fish in the small pond, but then you go to this huge pond of musicians. Could you tell me about your first live performance when you arrived in Nashville?
Y: My first show was a couple months into going to Belmont. Somebody slid into my DMs about needing an opener for this set. First of all, the venue was a virtual reality cafe, it's no longer a standing establishment, it's out of business. It was a bar/coffee shop with these virtual reality bays. Then there was a stage, but people are in these cubicles with these virtual reality headsets, and there were screens projected so people could watch you play. The person I opened for was this chick named Adara and she was big in EDM, and I don't know why she hit me up because at the time I was making indie rock and r&b. It was an insane night, and she had a lot of people come out. I think I had 1000 followers at the time she probably had 7 or 8000 followers. I was like, “girl, I don't know how you found me, but I’ll open for you anytime.” In fact, the next day I went in to grab a guitar stand I forgot and the guy working there was like, ”Yeah, unfortunately you guys were the last show, we're closing down.” Honestly, I thought that place was the future.
N: You’ve been teasing quite a lot on social media about your new single dropping at the end of this month, “Phase for You.” Is there any information you could share about that new single?
Y: What I'll say is that I wrote it with my friend John, and he uses Ableton. We started it on his on his rig so that was pretty fun. We wrote it with his two roommates too so there's four writers on it. I usually write produce by myself but on this there were more writers, and he did most of the production on it and then we kind of finished it together. So, a lot more collaboration on this song. I'm really excited about it.
I asked Ysa if she could give a piece of advice, and such as every interview, I told her it could be anything she’d like.
Ysa: I'll share one that my mom always tells me. She's always telling me every time I talk to her about what I'm doing, especially in Nashville. You're surrounded by a lot of artists, friends, and people trying to make a living doing this. You can get caught up in the idea of what's successful and what's not successful. It’s something along the lines of:
“you're not going to enjoy the view on the top of the mountain, if you don't enjoy climbing it every day.”