Happy October!
It's Spooky Season! 👻 As a songwriter I talk a lot about the importance of songwriting but I've never actually done a video where I share some of my own personal favorite music quotes. Lyrics are an important part of making music because they can help us process so many feelings. So if you need a little inspiration, I hope these will help you out! Enjoy! xo, JONATHAN MILLER📕
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Growing your fanbase after 11 years of trying is a peculiar experience.
Many artists in this situation seize the opportunity to erase all of their experiences, start over, and become someone new. It feels like a brand new story begins and any song they've released no longer matters. This often happens with major label artists, which is why we call their first major-label release as the artist's "debut" album regardless of whether or not said artist has done anything prior to getting signed. It's a time to start over. I don't really understand this. To me, it feels like you cancel out a major part of your existence. I recognize that some people want it that way, but for me it's different. I would rather bring my new fans up to speed, so no one feels excluded. I've been working as a musician professionally since I was 15 years old, why would I remove that part of me from my history? It made me who I am today, after all. For example, 11 years ago I was working on my first full-length DIY music video for a song called "If You're on the Same Level." I was invited by a company (whom later turned out to be a scam) to go down to Los Angeles and write with other professional songwriters and grow as an artist. It was a whirlwind of events that led to an entire decade of tornados and small moments of peace. While I most certainly am not that 19-year old boy, he still exists in all of those words, lyrics, videos, and recordings. Do I agree with every choice I made over the last 11 years? No, but those mistakes and lessons shaped my worldview into what it is now. That 19 year old boy worked his ass off trying to make a career with no map, no connections, and no idea what he was doing. I'm proud of the old me. A lot of my life is shaped around the music I released at the time. I may not be a major label artist but I certainly have my own "eras" as an artist and human being. Eleven years ago was The EP Trilogy era followed by The Space Between era and so on. 19 year old Jon-Jon wrote his ass off and did everything he could to run with the wolves to prove he could compete and belonged. So why would I diminish that by pretending it didn't happen? Why would I erase my own history? Just because someone started reading on Chapter 11 doesn't mean Chapters 1-10 don't exist. It IS my job, however to bring people up to speed so that we can write the next part of this tale together. So I guess the story goes on... xo, JONATHAN MILLER📗 Hey There!
This week we're talking about the importance of marketing in music and why you need it! A good marketing strategy can be the difference between money for your second album or no money for your second album! Enjoy! xo, JONATHAN MILLER📕 Happy Wednesday!
This week I'm talking about branding strategies in music that actually work! There's a lot of strategies out there that people share that work on paper but don't actually yield results. So today I'm sharing 3 that will help artists build their brands and stand out! Enjoy! xo, JONATHAN MILLER📕 Hey!
This week I'm sharing many different ways you can earn money in the music industry! Not everyone wants to be an artist or producer but there are still many jobs in this industry for you that will help out people a ton! So take a look and enjoy! xo, JONATHAN MILLER📕 Hey There!
Whoever said being a musician was easy LIED. This job is very hard, especially just starting out. There's so much you have to remember and sometimes you get so used to doing things a certain way you don't even realize your brain and body needs a break. So here's a video on burnout as a creator and what you can do to keep your health prioritized! xo, JONATHAN MILLER📕 Hey There!
I can't believe it's already September! 😱 It's actually my 30th birthday on Monday and so today I decided to share 30 lessons and things that I've learned so far in my music career as an Independent artist. Some of these things are funny, some of them are more serious but either way I hope they'll help you navigate a career in this industry! Enjoy! xo, JONATHAN MILLER📕 Writing music gradually went from writing lyrics and melodies to making instrumentals on my laptop as I continued on. One day my mom, my brother, and I were shopping at Target and out of the corner of my eye under the electronics section I saw a computer program called “American Idol Jam Trax.” I was 15 years old and had very little understanding of music production but I knew what American Idol was so I was interested. I convinced my mom to buy it for me (“Is this something you think will help you get better?” -every investment needed a purpose) and with her support I went straight to work that night.
This “digital audio workstation” was relatively uncomplicated for a freshman in high school. I learned how music loops were pre-recorded little sound bytes you could repeat over and over to create bars of music. By this time my familiarity with song structures was well-seasoned from writing hundreds of lyrics and melodies so I clicked on the first synthesizer loop I found and my jaw proceeded to drop. The first sound I found was nearly the exact synth line I had made up in my head from a song I’d written a month prior! I was flabbergasted and excited. Taking it as a sign I was on the right path, I began creating songs by grouping these loops together based purely on what felt right to my ears. No musical training, just going off of intuition. Soon enough, one song became two then 30, and so on. Of course I wrote lyrics to nearly every instrumental I made, but there was still one problem. How do I get my vocals on these songs? I had very little concept of how recording worked, let alone the mechanisms to make it function on a laptop, but surely if I could do that, I could finally create an entire full-length album, right? I saved up any money I could find, did some odd jobs for people, and again with my mother’s support, I acquired some additional cheap, beta equipment to help me put it all together. My mother hadn’t really even heard me sing at that point but she recognized a drive within me and gave me space and support from afar to figure it out. Something that would eventually come to save me one day not too far in the future. I practically had zero concept of what I was doing. People would talk to me about musical instruments and chord progressions and I didn’t understand a single word they’d say. YouTube was in its infancy and tutorials for recording were extremely hard to understand unless you were a trained producer and musician, both of which I was not. I skated by in choir by mimicking my designated parts from those seated near me rather than reading sheet music (a language I still barely understand although eventually gained some elementary knowledge on the subject after high school.) I had all this musical desire and inspiration that I kept largely to myself as a shy kid. Nevertheless though by the end of of freshman year, I managed to scrape together my first studio album, “Intertwined.” The album is ROUGH. In hindsight, I’m not sure real melodies actually exist on it and my vocals can’t really be considered as such but I’m proud of it regardless. It’s a little time capsule of a teenager not knowing what the hell he was doing. My childhood artist friend gifted me with an album cover for fun which I of course, used. Again, I had no clue about how to do music promotion especially because performing live wasn’t much of an option. I lived in a city built for alt-rock music, I was too young to perform in clubs and no one in my circle understood what a backing track was. I was also very shy. Still determined to try though, I burned every CD and cut out every single album booklet myself. Eventually I created my second studio album, “Convulsion Heart,” another time capsule of teenage angst. I was a sophomore and junior during this time and even though it’s still very rough around the edges, unbalanced, and off-tune in parts, it’s still the product of someone who put their mind to it and created music. I found an online music distributor which got my songs up on iTunes for more sale which was very exciting! However, people kept calling it “techno music” which at the time felt like some kind of derogatory slur, until I realized many years later that it wasn’t one. It absolutely was techno music but I always did my best to put my pop star dreams in to it. Neither of my albums went anywhere or got any radio play but I did manage to put together a music video (again by myself in private) for “Convulsion Heart” using the photo booth app on my Apple laptop. 2009 was a long year. It was long because of coming out as gay and my not-so-secret-secret relationship. I really wanted love like every teenager does but something was off from the beginning. I found myself lying to those around me more often, making excuses for bad behavior, and hiding even more. My sophomore album felt darker because it really was a dark time for me, as cliche as that is for every pop artist to say. Psychological and emotional abuse seeps its poison into every aspect of your life without you knowing and my songwriting always seemed to know things before I did. I was just a kid. All of my friends got to be in relationships, why was mine destroying everything that I knew? Was it “the gay thing” that made me feel like the family shame or was it something more? Was it both? I was so confused and conflicted. The biggest eye opener was when my boyfriend tried to run me over with a car as he completely ignored my pleas to stop. Luckily, I had the sense about me that day to jump out of the way. That is not normal. Eventually, after numerous other events including cheating on me with the guy down the street from me and telling me I deserved it, I broke up with him and chose myself over what I believed at the time was love. During this time, I wrote another album called “This Summer Air” (a lighter-toned body of work) my senior year in more of a pop-rock style after a song I’d made called “Somebody” strangely seemed to make people pay attention to what I was singing about. The album chronicles my realization of realizing that even though sometimes things can feel really good being young and in love, abuse is abuse. One song in particular, “Revolution (Part 2)” represents the moment after I realized internally there was no going back. I’d written it 8 months before I finished the album and it was originally going to be the last song on the album. My songwriting oftentimes feels like little messages to myself from my subconscious. Something I know deep inside but might not be ready to learn. However, I didn’t want to end this “lighter” album on a dark note, so at the last minute, I wrote a song called “Celebration” because it captured the heart of what I imagined love COULD be. The album was much more accessible to different age groups I was finding and I had slightly more of an idea of what I was doing so it became my best-seller at the time. However, after it was out, it immediately didn’t feel 100% right to me sonically. It felt like I was covering something, a habit that most abuse victims know all too well. It felt like I was telling the story I thought people wanted to hear. I love “This Summer Air” and still treasure those songs deeply but at 18 years old, I was done not doing things for myself. I began to take back control of my life as the end of my high school career approached. I was lighter in apparent stress to those around me but fury waged a terrifying war inside me. A war I would go on to fight for an additional ten years in silence. I was heartbroken. I was betrayed. Manipulated, bullied, afraid, silenced, confused, and embarrassed. It felt like I came crashing out of a cocoon into another world. Who was I? Everyone was telling me I needed to be this, that, or the other thing. I needed to go to this college, and “live the life we didn’t.” They got so busy telling me what I needed to be, no one stopped to ask what I wanted. I had just escaped this traumatizing relationship and I felt I couldn’t say anything simply because my being gay was a taboo subject. Truthfully, I just didn’t know how to communicate what I felt either. I once again was silenced in my own emotions; trapped within my own body. All I wanted was to be heard. Eventually that fury turned into strength when I realized that the past could stay right where it was because the only thing that began to matter to me was my future. I dove immediately back into my electronic sounds and writing. Soon enough the lyric “I am a machine but not a robot for your operation” came to my head and I began writing a song called “Graduation” (literally the week of of my high school graduation, fittingly.) I showed the instrumental to my brother one afternoon and he immediately asked, “Wait… Do you have lyrics for this? That’s really good.” I knew it was good. I felt it in my bones. After recording it, I then showed it to my sister who proceeded to tell me it was the “best song I’d ever written.” My siblings were hard to win over sometimes and to have their support in this way meant a lot but this song spoke to me in ways that even still to this day I continue to discover. I poured every ounce of my desire to be heard and passion for freedom into every moment, lyric, melody, and sonic in that song and just let loose. For the first time, I did not care about anyone’s feelings but my own and my art was beginning to reflect that. My siblings’ support was just a small cherry on top. I still felt like a prisoner to my abuser though. I wanted freedom and my music was going to take me there. Three months after “This Summer Air,” I dropped an EP called “Rising Eon” that still remains as one of my favorite bodies of work that I’ve done because it’s nothing but emotion. I learned how to update my own songs, re-record things and modernize them. It’s growth on high octane and after showing a specific song on the EP called “If You’re on the Same Level” to my mom, she eagerly told me it was time to do a full-length music video and show the world my music. The goalpost for an artist is never a far-off place in the future of financial security, fame and fortune. Those things come with time through work and a little bit of luck. Instead, the goalpost of the artist is to never give up on the dream that inspired you to take a leap of faith in the first place. Life tests you incessantly to see if you’ll give up on yourself, but you mustn’t give in. Never stop chasing your dreams but never forget what led you to chase them in the first place. “Take a leap of faith and hope you fly.” A phrase that echoed in my mind when my phone rang one September afternoon with the voice of a businessman saying they’d like me to come down to Los Angeles and write music soon. To be continued… #BookTwo Hey There!
Summer 2021 has been quite a wild ride! A lot of great music was released this summer (myself included 😉) and so today I wanna share some of my favorites! This video only features my top 10 but make sure you check out the full Spotify playlist below! Don't forget to follow me too! [ Click Here for the Full Summer Playlist! ] xo, JONATHAN MILLER📕 One of the hardest things to do in this world is to tell the truth. When you grow up feeling alienated from those around you, it can feel like what you have to say doesn’t matter. In actuality, to many of those people, it doesn’t. They don’t care about you, your feelings, or your opinions -but it’s not always out of spite. Humans have a way of getting wrapped up in their own story in a way that doesn’t often leave room for yours. The problem is, you’re left alone in your head knowing that what you have to say needs to be said even though it might upset some, it might even hurt them. So for many years you remain silent. However, your experiences are your truth. Chances are if you’ve been led to think that no one will believe you if you tell your story, it’s a story worth telling.
This is mine. I have always known I was gay. I grew up with a lesbian aunt and an uncle who was gay too. However, I was 3 years old when my uncle died at the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1994 and I didn’t see my aunt very much either. It never occurred to me, though, that anything was different about them. No one said anything to lead me to believe anything otherwise and my mom, whom took care of my uncle while he passed away, never shied away from the word “gay.” The problem was I didn’t understand the context of what the word meant. It wasn’t until I was home alone sick though (many years later) when I heard a news anchor on TV refer to two men as “gay” that my 4th grade brain finally put two-and-two together. I laid on my bed and thought “Oh… that’s me. That word describes what I feel. Ok.” That was it. Unfortunately, I learned soon after that there were negative connotations to this word. My friends were bullying me for the sound of my voice. Kids of all ages bullied me because most of the friends I believed I had back then were girls. Around the age of my little self-realization, the word “gay” became an insult. Something you hurled at someone you wanted to inflict pain on. This “gay” thing made you weird, strange and different. People were also getting hurt if you were suspected of being it. It was confusing because some people seemed very accepting of gay people and others vehemently hated them. Was being gay bad or good? I never received a clear answer. I just knew I needed to make sure no one found out their insults and bullying tactics were correct when it came to me. If I came out then certainly, my entire world would be destroyed. As I grew up in the subsequent years following 9/11, I realized how polarized my family was in their beliefs. Half of them conservative, Proud-to-Be-American types who loved hunting, fishing, and guns. The other half of my family was liberal, embracing of changing times whilst being critical of guns, the government, and favored something called “domestic partnerships.” My father belonged to the conservative side and my mother was a free-spirited liberal (or “hated all politics” as was common to say back then.) Throughout middle school and the beginning of high school I realized everyone had a point of view! I remember my mother crying in the hallway after George W. Bush was re-elected fearing that my aunt could never get married. My dad constantly asked if I was interested in religion and learning more about God. My friends began to firmly plant their feet down on certain political topics I didn’t understand. My siblings, all older than me, fell on both sides of the aisle too and frequently assumed I believed what they believed. Everyone told me how they felt about everything. The only person’s opinion I never heard was my own. Freshman year in 2006, I finally got the opportunity to visit my friends in Japan with my mom. A place I had only dreamed of going, I felt right at home the moment we got off the plane. My friend and his family became my host family, flipping the script on what I knew always being the host family back in the USA. We visited places like the shopping district in Harajuku and Asakusa with the big Red Lantern leading to an ancient temple. I participated at another friend from the International Program’s school festival led by all of the student clubs. I walked the streets of Saitama, Akihabara the Electric City, and even Tokyo Disneysea for its 5th anniversary! I specifically remember going to the Edo-Tokyo Museum too, learning more about the history of how Japan’s capitol city came to be -this time by experiencing it first hand. My host father told me to pay close attention because there would be a quiz afterward (a promise he promptly fulfilled that night before I went to bed.) The trip culminated in an International Program reunion featuring students from almost all of the previous 20 years. I was in my favorite city with the people who felt like family to me. I wrote songs with my host brother and visited the Pokemon Center in Japan (buying the new games several months before they’d arrive on US shores) feeling cautious but magical. I felt like I had space to hear my own thoughts. Maybe it was the 5.0 earthquake that shook the home I was staying in or maybe an earthquake occurred within me, but either way for the first time I had a strong opinion of my own about my life. It took over a year later but I began coming out. It was sophomore year, beginning with my best friend at the time and then my mother (both of which had long assumed being gay was my truth.) It was terrifying and liberating. My mom cried because it brought back all her fears from losing her brother, but she was supportive. My best friend got very serious when I told them and they swore not to breathe a word to anyone, (a promise they kept even after the world found out.) Eventually the word got around without me saying anything! To this day, I have only ever come out, myself, three times because most people just assumed I was or didn’t care either way. Public opinion was also changing. Lady Gaga ruled the airwaves and gay marriage was slowly being legalized state-by-state. I remember in Government class we did a mock legislative meeting where each student had to present a bill that would be voted on by the class. Of course, I chose gay marriage and aside from two people due to religious reasons, my “bill” passed by landslide. Other kids were out at this time in school too. Most of the student population actually favored gay rights and would have participated more in my school’s day of silence if the Gay-Straight Alliance club president had done a better job telling people what day it actually was. My high school wasn’t perfect and coming of age in that environment was definitely a privilege, but things were changing, which I appreciated. I, myself was changing. The only person who didn’t know how to deal with that was my Dad. I did not come out to my father by choice. My dad was accepting of gay people, but having a gay son was much more of a complicated issue internally for him. After finding a picture of me and another boy I may or may not have been secretly seeing at the time, he cried very hard like a river becoming a flood, then an ocean. We sat there in the living room in silence as he fought back tears. I felt like I had committed the worst crime a person could commit. He tried comforting me in the best way he could, but I knew he was wrestling against his beliefs and his reality behind the emerald eyes I also inherited. Even though we lived in the same house, after that day, my dad receded into his work and barely spoke to me again for three years. There were many other factors to this as I would learn later (the recession hit our family hard and we nearly lost everything at one point, never fully recovering) but the guilt stuck with me. However, it wasn’t the only guilt I was harboring. Something was eating me from the inside. Something was wrong and something was worse. The boy I was seeing disguised himself as kind and beautiful like a perfectly wrapped Christmas present… but this was a manipulation. “He didn’t mean to,” I’d tell myself, “it was just one time.” It wasn’t. It was never just one time. He wanted me to keep quiet and because I was seeing my truth destroy the world that I knew, I followed suit willingly. I wanted love like any teenager does, but this wasn’t love. This was different and I knew it. Somewhere deep down inside, I understood what was happening to me in secret wasn’t normal but I pretended I was ok because simply being gay and in a relationship was collapsing everything. The songs I wrote took on stronger emotions about freedom and anger. I didn’t consciously understand why though. It was May of 2010. I was 18 and a word kept cropping up in my mind over and over again. Little did I know how many personal meanings this word would go on to have for me as I began to open my eyes to the ways I was being treated by people. It was time to rewrite history. It was time for moving on. It was time for Graduation. |
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