I've always been into the confessional kind of songwriting. I used to play drums in church and toured with indie-rock and country bands, but I decided I wanted to step away and make my own music. Around the same time, I got into experimental, avant-garde sound art. 

I was trying to figure out a way to do diaristic music that didn’t depend on traditional songwriting. Field recordings felt like the best way to get something similar across. First, I was just using the voice memos on my iPhone, but the fidelity was not great and it was only recording in mono. So around four years ago I got a Zoom H5 audio recorder—an older, secondhand model. It’s nothing fancy or expensive, and it’s small enough that I can carry it with me most of the time. 

Today I have thousands of hours of recordings on my computer. I’ll usually start with a recording and then add more traditional harmonies and melodies on top, or I’ll build a basic structure using the recording. The initial inspiration often comes from the recording, or the general feeling I had when I made it. It could literally just be the sound of the air conditioner, but I’ll remember what I was thinking about and going through and what that day was like. Somebody else listening to it without any context probably won’t get that, but it will hold so much for me. Then I will start adding things musically that better evoke the feelings or emotions that I’m trying to convey or investigate. 

My Zoom H5 is so fucked now: It has dents in it and you have to hold the SD card in. If I move at all while I’m holding it, what’s meant to be minimizing the noise of you handling it now creates this sticky sound. It’s been through so much, but even though it’s completely busted I like the portability, and I don’t have enough money to buy another one right now. I don’t tend to use super expensive or complicated tech; it’s important to me that it’s accessible. It shows that anybody can make music.