Nelson finds passion in creating his own sound

March 31, 2017

Blaring music in your car, dancing frantically at a party, singing along with the lyrics. We all enjoy listening to music, but Luke Nelson, a junior at Manhattan High, works on creating the music we all love right at home. Nelson decided three years ago that he was going to dabble in the production of music, working at home to create the energetic beats we all hear behind our favorite rap songs.

“I’ve always listened to rap music, and just music in general,” Nelson said. “Then I started watching Youtube videos on like what goes on to make a song and I found beat machines and stuff. I just watched people like do this thing called finger drumming, which is where you take a drum machine and you program it to make any noise and I thought it was amazing so I just bought the cheapest beat machine I could find and started from there.”

There are many different items that make up a normal studio. Nelson has had to make some adjustments to make it fit his budget and his bedroom.

“You have to have a computer and some kind of studio software,” Nelson said. “This is called a midi and this is what you can program, you can use a keyboard if you want, as long as you can hook it up to the computer. And then your software is called a DAW, Digital Audio Workstation, so once you have the software you have virtual instruments already with the software. So these are things that just came with it, noises you can use and you program.You assign those noises to a keyboard and then you just hit record and you can play using that instrument. That is pretty much the base concept of it.”

The equipment comes at a high cost and takes a long time to get. Nelson would always wait until birthdays and Christmas to get new upgrades because he didn’t have a job at that time. As a love for creating his own music grew, his time in the studio also grew and he now can spend hours in it if he feels he is onto a good beat.

“Whenever I do have time and I’m in the mood I could probably go for an hour everyday of a week,” Nelson said. “Just messing with it trying to tune stuff up. If I have some inspiration I’ll come and open a new beat or a new file and I’ll just play out the idea so I have it for later when I have a lot of time to work on it.”

In a world where so much is going on it is not hard to find inspiration but it is difficult to make that inspiration into a workable idea and craft that into music.

“I try to incorporate regular sound effects, not like a musical sound effect,” Nelson said. “You know a lot of rappers now a days will use gunshots or something, of course that’s not a musical noise but it adds to the effect of it.”

Adding these everyday noises intensifies the full effect of the song. On Nelson’s song “Bankroll” he incorporates the sound of money being dispensed by an ATM to add a great sound effect to the musical tones put into it.

At first Nelson just enjoyed the process of creating his own beats and trying to copy other beats he heard on the radio.

“At first I never recorded stuff,”  Nelson said. “I would just play and just [play] the drumming and do it to just have fun and just to play live. Once I actually had the pressure of posting something I always hesitated because I couldn’t think. I couldn’t figure out if this is what people would want to hear cause I never really had my own sound.”

Nelson was still searching for his own sound, his signature, when after more time in his studio he was able finally able to find it.

“I started figuring out different noises that I could use that are kind of like my signature noises,” Nelson said.

There is a lot that goes into creating the beats behind the music we all love, countless times Nelson has to cut and replace different sounds and tinker with all the noises to make them sound perfect.

“Whenever I’m working on a beat it is on repeat for the whole time, like I just click play and I just keep adding to it and taking from it but it is always repeating on a loop,” Nelson said. “If I can listen to it continuously and not get so annoyed by it, because I mean of course if you hear one song on repeat it’s going to get old. But if I can hear a beat and I get excited about it everytime it starts over then I think it’s going to be pretty good.”

Even though Nelson has a talent for creating music, he will look to pursue a different path while keeping it on the side as an option if it were to take off.

“I’m definitely going to keep posting and trying to get my name out there,” Nelson said. “All you need is one song, one hit song and you will make millions and people will know your name.”

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