How I Started Making A Cappella Music

You might be a bit surprised to hear this, but I never used to sing on my own music. Most of my experience in music production has been in instrumental and electronic composition. In fact, I often felt like singing on my songs would somehow take away from them, as though it wouldn’t sound ‘professional’ enough. Funny how things turned out.

Throughout the first decade or so of my journey in electronic music production, I’d developed a pretty promising artistic process. I was learning, clarifying my creative voice, making valuable connections, and feeling overall optimistic. But then in 2016, all of that came to an abrupt halt when I began suffering from a chronic condition in my hands that made it near impossible to do much of anything with them.

I tried everything I could think of to fix them—from seeing multiple doctors, to blood and neurological testing, to anti-inflammatory medication, to sports injury recovery specialists, to chiropractors, to Ayurveda, to juice fasts, ice baths, and even esoteric practices. No one had a lasting clue as to what was wrong with me. And so after a depressing 4 months of productive paralysis, I started to consider alternative ways to drive forward in spite of my condition.

The first thing I tried was to build a contraption to control my computer using my feet and chin (see picture above), and believe it or not, it kind of worked. It was slow, it was arduous, but I was producing music again, and that was worth all the strain and awkwardness. Being reliant on such an approach though, as you can imagine, was still extremely limiting. And so I continued reflecting on other ways forward.

Up until then, the way I’d grown accustomed to getting my musical ideas out of my head was to sing them into a voice recorder, then I’d use my production skills to bring them to life using virtual instruments. But then I wondered, what would happen if I simply skipped that last step? What if I just went straight from voice to computer?

And so I gave it a shot, and within a short period of time—using my voice as the instrument and my foot-chin contraption as the controller—I’d made a jam that flowed out of me seemingly effortlessly. And I actually liked it! The relief I felt knowing I could actually do something reasonably productive and enjoyable in my current state was blissful. I’d made my first a cappella piece.

It was short (about 42 seconds long), and odd (11/4 time strangely enough), but it was filled with joy and I still love it to this day. If you want to give it a listen, I’ve offered it as a thank you to anyone supporting me on Patreon at the ‘Friendly Supporter’ tier or higher. You can also preview it there for free, along with a large collection of other unreleased songs.

Around that same time, I recorded a vocal idea simply titled “Chin” in my voice notes, which was named in the spirit of my mechanical attempts to overcome the impasse I’d found myself at. A couple years later, I decided to properly record and produce it, and only recently finally polished and put a bow on it, calling it “Impasse”.

I think an important lesson we might be able to extract from what happened to me is that we can’t possibly be clear on what our challenges truly mean for us, and that leaning into them holds potential to reveal something beyond what we may have initially imagined.

Wishing all of you strength and courage in the challenges you face, and in your willingness to embrace them.

Much love my friends 🙏💙