The internet and advances in recording technology have made the music business more accessible than ever before. All you need is a microphone (even your smartphone’s will suffice) and the right software to record music and distribute it online. One artist who is finding success in this brave new age is singer-songwriter Racella, who called in to DT Daily to talk about recording music in 2018 and her new album, Waves.
Although she is front and center on Waves, Racella worked her way up through the business as a writer.
“I actually started as a songwriter,” she explained. “So I was just randomly searching for people online to work with … I always was an artist myself, but I wanted to get into that field because I loved to songwrite.”
Even when writing songs for other artists, however, Racella doesn’t change her creative process.
“Honestly, I just try not to think, and I try to just feel,” she said. “I have to feel what’s in my gut, and whatever comes out of my gut, I just sing it. I record it. And that’s why it’s so important when people say ‘Oh, I’m inspired to do something! I have to get my phone out, and I need to record it,’ it’s real … if you don’t put it out there, it’s not going to come back to you.”
Racella doesn’t just limit herself to writing and performing; she also records her own albums. As she explains: “Somebody told me that Pro-Tools was the industry program to use for music, so I said, ‘OK, I’ll try to learn it.’ Thank God I learned it, because now I know how to engineer my own music and edit it, and do all the things that I want to do with it, with my voice.”
Racella’s emotive songwriting is especially apparent on the new album, for which she drew on family trauma.
“I was inspired by my husband. Three years ago he got into a terrible car accident, and we had just gotten married a month before he got into this accident. So it was my highest of highs to my lowest of lows. It was like a wave, so that’s why I named the EP Waves.
“It was such a miraculous thing to witness,” she said, “for my husband to just survive that type of accident. He had heart surgery, and he also had spine surgery, and nobody knew if he was going to make it. But I just stayed with him … It still boggles my mind how I got through that.”
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