As a passionate young keyboard player and singer, Oliver Young’s life is intertwined with music. Young is a senior at Shorewood, and is a member of a band outside of school. He enjoys the creativity and collaboration that being in a band provides.
Young believes that it is important to act as someone who lets others have a voice in a band. “When collaborating with other people in a creative world, you need to be very careful to not block out other peoples’ ideas when you have a strong vision,” Young said, “So [you have to] just really listen to other people too, and decide what works best.” For Young, this kind of collaboration is one of the most crucial parts of making music with others.
Within his band, besides singing, Young experiments with instrumentals.
The synthesizer and keyboard instruments have always been something that Young has found interesting. “The synthesizer always appealed to me because of the creativity you can use with its sounds. I wanted to have a more creative approach than just the typical piano,” he said.
He got his original inspiration for playing the keyboard from a couple of bands he listened to that motivated him to start playing music.
Feeling comfortable around your fellow band members can be extremely important so you feel like you can use every aspect of your creativity. Young emphasized how close the band members have gotten, and how it’s been beneficial for them. “Now that we are all close friends and hang out outside of band practice, it creates a better stage performance because we all feel like a team rather than individual players,” he said.
Young has always been interested in music so it makes sense that he would want to keep building on his already strong foundation. Looking to his future, he said, “I would still like to create and perform music. I’d like to continue to play keyboard and continue to take vocal lessons to improve my vocals.” At the end of the day, Young has always been ambitious with music and enjoys performing alongside his bandmates.
For many artists, songwriting starts with inspiration from another musician or a passion they’ve had since childhood.
But for senior Charlie McFarlane, it was way more unexpected, as he recounted the moment as just “dumb luck.” This opportunity came from his church, where he got the chance to help write song lyrics. From that point on, he’s continued following his passion. For the past two years, he has gotten big into songwriting as one of his special hobbies. He is currently in the church’s band and writes for himself alongside the band as well.
When it comes to genres, one of his favorites is folk music. “…[it was] because the words used are so powerful,” McFarlane said. He appreciates the storytelling elements of the genre, finding it more meaningful to him. Folk music has very authentic storytelling, a usually nostalgic feel, and is comforting. But if it’s live music, McFarlane said he prefers rock because “…it’s more about the performance and the music rather than the writing.”
McFarlane’s writing process changes based on his mindset and mood he’s in, so there’s no perfect way to start a song.
Most of the time, though, he sits down with an instrument, typically with the piano or guitar. He finds a melody, usually something more upbeat, then layers in lyrics.
Before the opportunity from the church, McFarlane played guitar. “I found that I just loved sitting down and playing around,” McFarlane said. This led him to other instruments like piano. Now he plays a variety of string and key instruments as well as drums on the side. In the future, he’d like to get better at the key instruments, specifically the synth.
For Charlie, music is all creativity-based and going with the flow.
He never intends to create a full song in the beginning. The reason Charlie creates is for that feeling of well-being, not a final product. This mindset allows him to experiment freely without pressure.
Charlie uses music as a way to process thoughts and emotions as they come. McFarlane said, “Everybody has things they work through, so I think the music kind of shows that.” Songwriting becomes less about the outcome and more about understanding himself and his thoughts in the moment.
Music has also opened him up to other avenues, like within the surfing community. McFarlane says, “A really cool music scene stems from surfing.”
But for McFarlane, one of the best parts of making music is the sense of connection you get from others. “A bunch of people, even if you’ve never played with them, you have this connection through music,” McFarlane said.
Overall, songwriting isn’t really about making something perfect. It’s more about going with the flow and seeing where it takes you.
