We recently connected with AJ Rosales and have shared our conversation below.
AJ, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
Being fruitfully creative can actually take discipline. Normally I enjoy the creative process, but sometimes you have to focus for long periods of time to achieve a goal. That’s where the discipline comes in. As a result, I try to be creative as much as possible at various times of the day. If I’m taking public transportation in the morning or evening I’ll try to write some lyrics along the journey instead of wasting time on the internet. I also have a habit of video recording snippets of ideas for music. Before I start rehearsing, during my warm-up I will noodle around on the guitar to try to see what ideas can be coaxed out. I have a large library of various ideas that I have recorded. When I’m writing a song I’ll take a video of a theme on a device to listen to so that I can think about how to add lyrics to it when I’m on a daily walk. I like to use every available minute I can to speed along the process of writing a song, and it’s something that I almost never stop doing for more than a day.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
My approach towards what I do musically can probably be considered a little idioysncratic. And on purpose! I guess I’ve never really been interested in being piegonholed as an artist. I had some fairly firm roots in Classical music when I was younger – I think that ended up training my ear to enjoy certain types of melodic and dissonant phrasings, so I’m not usually satisfied with the obvious approach. Another part of my “sound” is the tuning I play in – the majority of my music is actually in DADGAD tuning – an English fingerstyle tuning popularized by Jimmy page in the 70’s. But – I’ve been playing in it for so long that it’s sort of become my own signature at this point. by no means would I attempt to compare myself to Jimmy Page though. The tuning allows me to create certain phrasings and progressions that aren’t so easily achievable in a standard tuned instrument. At the moment, I’m very focused on songwriting, and trying to get a bunch of tunes completed to begin my next recording. I’ve actually already composed an entire album’s worth of material but decided to keep going on and write enough material for two albums – then maybe release them both back to back! I’m about half way through the second one and hope to be done by next year sometime with about 24 tunes. I’ve released some of this newer material on my YouTube channel, as an audience teaser.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Tenacity, Focus, and Resilience would probably be the three words I’d use. Tenacity because you have to be able to withstand a lot of rejection in the music industry. At this point I really play music because I enjoy it though – I don’t necessarily place a lot of pressure on myself to create the next “hit” for an audience. I think that’s an artificial way to go about creating art. To me, music is a very personal sort of art form and I think there’s something about being genuine in some way that is a key to impressing people on stage. Focus because it takes a lot of discipline to keep going (and especially to continually find inspiration through songwriting…) Long, hard hours of work eventually pay off, but you have to persevere sometimes. I’ve never been stuck in a “writer’s block” situation (knock on wood) and I think that’s because I don’t really ever stop writing or performing. I’m always thinking about music whenever I can. Resilience because I’d like to think that there’s a certain amount of flexibility involved in this line of work. I guess I mean that word in the sense of “elastic”. That could mean being open to new experiences, or being willing to take chances when you need to, or to play in an environment that you weren’t expecting to!
Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
I mentioned Resilience earlier as a positive trait – this question plays into that a bit. Self assessment can be a sometimes unpleasant experience. No one really enjoys scrutinizing themselves too heavily, but sometimes that’s a necessary thing. I think most people realize their faults and strengths – but many choose to ignore the weaknesses. But let’s face it – some of the people who engender a certain kind of admiration are the ones who have figured out ways to assess and improve themselves in some way. So, I think being willing to fail once in a while to come to a realization about what is and isn’t working is an important thing. One example I’ll mention here is that I feel like I’ve only recently come to a truly comfortable place with my vocal range. A few years ago I wanted to try to improve that, and I spent many many months singing other people’s songs trying to learn how to stretch my ability. It was definitely a slow burn but now after a couple of years I’m sounding better than ever!
Contact Info:
- Website: ajrox.net
- Instagram: ajrosalesmusic
- Facebook: ajrosalesmusic
- Youtube: ajrosales
Image Credits
Emily Davis, PeteWolf Winninger, Nacho Bru, AJ Rosales
