Formula Indie Sessions _ Interview with Isaac Wright

What is your earliest memory connected to music?

My memory is unfortunately pretty bad so earliest is tricky, but definitely my strongest early memory is when I first decided I wanted to start learning guitar and taking vocal lessons

I was 16 and thought it might be a bit late because most of the people you see that end up pursuing music seriously have been getting lessons since they were 5 or something, but I knew I wanted to give it a real go and had to start somewhere at some time

How did your passion for creating music begin?

Nothing groundbreaking with this one, I just always loved music and was always fairly engaged with it emotionally and lyrically especially, so eventually I wanted to do it myself and connect with other people through my own works instead of just listening

What’s the story behind your current music project?

Most of my more recent tracks have been about feeling invisible, alone and unheard, feeling like you have so much to offer, but it’s like you’re just screaming into the void and no one cares
Unfortunately that’s just all personal experience at the moment, I’ve been doing this for over 10 years and when people listen, 9 times out of 10 they say they really enjoy what they heard, but almost no one ever takes the chance to listen to begin with

How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?

It’s like a slap right to the emotions with a sound similar to someone like Lewis Capaldi or early Ed Sheeran

What is one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?

Start simple, work out from there and sometimes, even just keep it simple
You can easily get really caught up with adding the “most” of everything and making the song the “most” but a lot of the time you just need to get something down, keep it simple and then slowly add layers and tweak things from there, start first, perfect it later

What tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?

For me I use a combination of a bunch of different things depending on what I’m trying to make, but generally I’ll use FL Studio as my DAW with a couple of plugins for piano, strings and sometimes brass instruments, (sometimes I’ll use my actual piano, depending on exactly what kind of vibe I’m going, sometimes I’ll use my guitar) I use Audacity for recording the audio and then Ozone 8 for mastering the tracks

Technically I think FL Studio can do all of those tasks on it’s own, but for some reason for me, creation those separation points helps me work through it part by part, which just makes my flow work way better and allows me to reset my brain for each new part so that I don’t get stuck anywhere along the way – you’d be surprised how many times you can end up working on 15 seconds of a track for hours, then you come back and just go “what was I doing?” the separation points really help me with that

Other than that it’s just sitting down at the computer or piano, creating a melody/chord structure that I like and singing to it until something sticks

Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?

I always have a little trouble defining the differences in genres between things like Folk, Indie and Folk Rock, but my biggest influence now (and has been for a while) is a band called “Vocal Few” who make really thoughtful songs that I connect with.
Iit’s a husband and wife duo and the husband also is the lead singer for one of my other favourite bands “The Classic Crime” who are technically classed as Christian Rock I think, but I’ve loved their work since the 2000s as well

How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?

Lyric wise, 90% of what I write is directly from personal experience, thoughts, feelings, emotions, maybe exaggerated a bit to accentuate things for the song, but always raw and real

Vision wise I guess different experiences have changed what my original vision looks like now compared to when I was 19 and ready to take on the world
Almost 10 years of the world kicking my ass (and now having a family) has made me have to sideline live gigs that I used to do and focus on just putting out music I’m happy with

On the positive side though, I’ve grown a lot on the sound engineering side of thing due to not being able to afford someone else doing it and my overall sound has definitely improved

What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?

Life kicks your ass, regularly, constantly, your vision changes, but your passion doesn’t have to
For some people it’s that, but on a simpler level, sometimes it’s just nice to feel like someone else has been through the same sort of stuff you’re going through, maybe there’s not a happy ending yet, but maybe you’re just not at the end yet

What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?

Patience
It might not be the kind of answer you were looking for, but I stuff up verses and choruses so often when recording, that I have to re-record them dozens of times just to have 3-4 usable takes and if I wasn’t a bit more patient and forgiving, I think I would have given up music entirely

What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?

At this stage, just anything where I knew there were more than a dozen people there to listen to my music, not just that they happened to be there
It could be some quaint pub with 40-50 people or a stadium, I just want people to want to be there and enjoy what I have to offer, because I know there’s plenty of people who would get a lot out of it and I know what I have to offer is worth the time

If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?

Probably either Matt McDonald (lead singer of the bands I mentioned earlier) or Lewis Capaldi for a more contemporary pick
Their music is so raw and real and it’s exactly the sort of thing I aspire to make myself, so I think working on something together would be a dream come true

Where can our listeners follow and support your music? (Website,Spotify, IG, links)

The best place is probably Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5ngygfRLlrWQq4MgzIdgqB?si=RGqLrVL2T6GeV7_2eOySVg

But I’m also on YouTube where I post lyric videos of current releases, also rarely if I get a chance to do a cover that isn’t an official release
https://www.youtube.com/@IsaacWrightMusic

I’m also on Instagram, but I don’t very often get much chance or reason to use it

Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?

I’d just love to get a larger audience and find some time to work on and release some more music that I’m proud of
I’d love to dream bigger and I’d be open to bigger opportunities, but especially with a small, young family, I have to keep my expectations managed

What do you hope listeners will discover about you along the way?

My favourite thing that someone ever said about me as a musician and singer/songwriter

A lot of musicians start their journey really really young and they live and breathe music all the way through, they become extremely proficient at making music and create incredible songs, but they were musicians before they were people and it shows

I’m always looking to improve myself and make better music, but that raw and real approach to everything is something I’ll always prioritise over the technically best product
I’m a person, a dad and a 19 year old that never got the chance to suceed, but at 33 now, still not giving up, just doing my best to get by