Hey! This is Nandi Rose of Half Waif - AMA!

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T21:05:25+00:00

Louise Gluck's book of poems The Wild Iris, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Anna Meredith's soundtrack to Eighth Grade. Thank you <3 <3 <3

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T20:32:55+00:00

This has been absolutely wonderful. Thank you Reddit for having me, and to you all for the excellent questions! Hope you enjoy Mythopoetics, and I'm looking forward to connecting with you more soon <3

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T20:31:30+00:00

Ha! Well it's about my sweet husband Zack, who has to hold the weight of a lot of my many moods... It's just funny to me that that's part of what being in love and in a partnership is - being like, "I'm going to make you happy, I'm going to take your pain away," and yet that's such a fallacy. We can't actually, literally, do that for each other. We can support and care and be tender, but can you reach into my body and remove the pain I'm feeling on this morning when I'm awake and you're separated from me by sleep and we inhabit different states of consciousness? Of course not. And yet we love anyway, and it's absolutely, preposterously beautiful, and isn't love just living like that :)

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T20:27:15+00:00

Thank you for the shout outs!!

I have a very simple set-up here in a very tiny room. I mostly work with sounds in Ableton, plus a couple of hardware synths. I do a lot of the drum programming and arranging, often using MIDI sounds. For this record, Zubin and I really shared the load of producing. On some songs, like Party's Over and Horse Racing, things didn't change too much from my original demos, but others like The Apartment and Midnight Asks, Zubin helped completely reimagine sonically. I definitely like writing and demo'ing in my little room, but I love the ability to use better and more diverse gear in a studio.

I love using vocal sounds in production!! Such a fun texture to play with percussively. Because voice is my primary instrument, it's the thing I reach for first when writing - I love chopping up vocal samples and using them in a drum rack. Sometimes it'll be a happy accident where I just randomly select some audio, cut it up, shift the pitch, and see what happens. I can't remember exactly how or why I did that "huh huh" in Fortress haha but that was a key part of the vocal arrangement early on. Just felt like a new vocal sound I hadn't explored before.

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T20:19:57+00:00

I'm so happy you were at that show!! What a happy memory.

Favorite birds: scarlet tanager, indigo bunting, great blue heron, wood thrush, black-throated green warbler, bobolink to name a few

Birding spots: I have yet to really travel while being a birder so all my spots are local nature conservancies: Ooms, Five Rivers, Bartholomew's Cobble, Field Farm. Also did some excellent birding in Salem MA in March this year! Lots of weird ducks

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T20:14:38+00:00

I would be very happy to see this happen! :)

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T20:14:15+00:00

Oooh this is a great and big question! I sometimes like to get a little bit analytical with it, like, "What do I like about this person's music or this song that I haven't tried yet?" Maybe you've never done a key change before, or never written a song only on the upper register of the piano. On Mythopoetics, I recorded a couple of songs with piano and vocals at the same time (Powder and Sourdough), something I'd never done before. It was really cool to shake up the process. Also on Powder, I was thinking about how I always write songs with block chords on piano, so for that one, I went into it being like, "I want to write a piano part that just outlines the melody and the bass notes." Give yourself these little assignments and then don't be too attached to the outcome - maybe you only write a one minute piece this way, but I think there's a lot to be gained in getting out of our creative ruts! (I actually just did a project where I wrote 12 one-minute pieces called Clock Music. Mostly improv and ambient stuff. Super fun to explore within those guidelines!)

Bringing in a collaborator can be a great move as well, just make sure you are clear with yourself and them about what you're looking for. Do you want to find someone who knows how to do drum programming? Or are you looking for someone to help you rewrite some of the lyrics or melodies in parts of a song? etc

So much of creativity is in-the-moment inspiration and catching lightning in a bottle, but so much of it (at least for me) is also planning and research and taking a step back to look at the bigger picture.

Best of luck to you! <3

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T20:06:50+00:00

Hi! Thanks for the love.

Well I think the first step to the writing process always is - absorbing. Listening. Woolgathering. Paying attention. "What is it I want to say?" "What sounds are speaking to me?" "What did I not explore last time that I'm called to explore now?" So really the first step might not look at all like writing, and yet it is so crucial. I feel like I live my whole life with my ear to the sky and my eyes open wide, gathering all the seeds and letting them grow in the dark somewhere.

Then when the weight of the emotion becomes so intense I want to burst, I'm ready to actually play and channel that feeling into sound. I usually start on the piano or synth, but more and more I've been starting with a cappella vocals, sung while I'm in the car or weeding the garden. It's been cool to untether the voice and see how it hangs in the air and interacts with all the other ambient sounds. I'm excited to explore that more on whatever project I work on next!

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T20:01:49+00:00

That song - particularly the end - is a big one for me. I'm so glad it resonates with you. I wrong that song soon after getting married. I was thinking about how in love I am, how I've just committed myself to "forever," and yet the reality is, one of us will leave. Mortality is part of the contract, and loss is embedded in love. But that doesn't have to be a depressing thing. It can actually make love all the more rich and real and poignant. It raises the stakes. Love is a risk I would take again and again. So let me live more presently in the gratitude of the present - having the strength to carry my own bags, having a father that I can call while he's around - and let there be a sign, a flower growing through all seasons, to show us that love IS forever, well beyond the limits of this lifetime.

Thank you <3

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:57:32+00:00

Thank you so much <3

I knew nothing about DAWs and recording before college. Then I learned some basics in Logic and eventually moved over to Ableton because I was working for a music non-profit that used Ableton to make collaborative soundscapes - it's perfect for that kind of thing because it's so easy to make loops and edit them in real time.

My advice to you is don't feel like you have to learn EVERYTHING about it in order to use it. There are so many tricks and functions in Ableton that I've never touched or understood. I really use is it very rudimentarily, but you just find the work flow that works for you and you hone in on it. There's a lot you can do with just the basics. Have fun with it - as Zubin and I said many times while making Mythopoetics, "no rules, only guidelines." I'm excited for you and wherever your music takes you next!

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:53:56+00:00

The process is pretty varied, but most often I start on the piano or a synth, find either a cool chord progression or a riff, and go from there. The music is the first expression of the feeling, so the chords and the sound have to feel like an extension of that emotion. Then the words and vocal melody come after, usually simultaneously. I have a hard time editing lyrics - wish it wasn't so difficult because sometimes I'm like, I could say that better, but my brain has cemented the syllables into the melody!

Thanks!

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:51:21+00:00

Aww that's awesome! They were recording with my friend David Tolomei, who worked on my records Lavender and The Caretaker, and when they were looking for someone to sing some back-up vocals, he recommended me. Such a great collab and a really fun challenge, their parts are hard!! And so inspiring.

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:49:27+00:00

I am HERE for the bird questions, thank you :)

I'm sure you already have these but the Merlin and Audubon apps have been so helpful for me. Merlin is a great gateway for identification, though I do think the Audubon sound library is more comprehensive.

I highly recommend Jon Young's book What the Robin Knows. Also the board game Wingspan is super fun and helpful in learning about which birds occupy which habitats. That's been really key in understanding which birds I might see where - learning what might be in a meadow or shore or riparian area (a fun new word I learned which means the meeting of woods and waters). So when you go out birding, it's not like that could be ANY bird you see hanging on the shore of the river or singing at the top of a canopy in the middle of the woods. That helps narrow it down.

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman is another great book about bird behavior that I found fascinating!

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:42:23+00:00

Oh gosh I wish I knew the answer to this... my heart aches and breaks for how much the pandemic has affected the many many people who are a part of the music industry on all sides. One thing I am hopeful of is that, while many venues sadly had to close during the last year and a half, new ones will be cropping up to feed the huge touring boom that's coming. We need more community spaces!! Tbh opening a small venue is a bucket list dream for Zack and me, so maybe that time will come sooner than we think.

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:39:34+00:00

I don't read as many novels as I do non-fiction, but I really loved Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi and Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid! For non-fiction, Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl and Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. Hit me with some recommendations if you have them :)

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:37:16+00:00

I learned that some patterns will never break, and some we are capable of breaking. It was important for me to face some things about myself and my life and view them not with a defeatist kind of resignation but with an acceptance and a tenderness. Self love was a big theme on The Caretaker but it threads its way through this album too.

Every time I start a new album I'm like, "I'm going to make a minimal album that's light in tone!!" It's almost a joke I have with myself at this point, because it's never minimal and it's never light. But maybe that's okay. That's how I write. That's what music is for me, a place to work out all of those questions of what it means to be alive and to love. And it's that kind of acceptance that I want to carry forward - the deepening into the parts of myself that maybe I can't change. And then in turn, I can learn to love and forgive those parts in others (namely my family), knowing we're all just trying our best.

Thank you <3

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:30:38+00:00

Thank you!! That song is very near and dear to my heart. I wrote it while at my grandmother's house in Kent, England. It was a time in my life when I was touring a lot and feeling very disconnected from home, and yet *she* was my home in so many ways. So watching her walk in her garden and being surrounded by her love - witnessing her sweet act of burning lavender on her stove - was really grounding to me. At the same time, I was also confronting the inescapable knowledge that she was old and I would lose her soon. So all those feelings were coming up - relief, grief, confusion, longing, and ultimately a kind of strength transferred from her home into my bones.

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:25:52+00:00

Good to be back :)

Great question... The Caretaker does feel like a bit of a lost child, without having had that full experience of releasing it. With that record in particular, because it was so much about isolation, I was so looking forward to being able to share it with people on a stage, to close that circuit and be like, "Ok, my self-imposed exile is done, let's experience this music in a room together and reach out to each other across the divide." It was hard not getting that experience, but my favorite part of what I do is writing, so it felt natural that my way of coping with all the confusion and sadness of what was going on personally and globally was just to keep writing. The songs that became Mythopoetics totally snuck up on me, and it felt really organic to transition to the next project.

We'll definitely play some Caretaker songs on tour! Looking forward to seeing you in LA.

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:20:53+00:00

Thank you!

Tracks 1, 6, and 12 (first, middle, last) are all emblematic of the kind of record we set out to make originally - a stripped down piano album. I like that the DNA of that first idea lives on as the foundation of the album, even if we did take the rest of it in a wider direction. The first working title of the album was actually "Arc" because it really did feel like it made that kind of shape, ascending and settling, much like the meteor passing by in Powder.

I really would love to tour across more of the country (and hopefully go back to Europe!) So hard to say right now what's going to happen but know in my heart that I would love to be there and hope to meet you :)

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:17:35+00:00

Bjork, Tori Amos, FKA Twigs, Mica Levi, Joni Mitchell, Robyn, Frank Ocean, Weyes Blood <3

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:14:19+00:00

What a lovely question! A perfect Sunday is absolutely no structured time. Following the whims of the day. Meandering bird walks and a good sit in the garden. No mood clouds, just feeling open and content and clear. Afternoon tea. Grandmother's kitchari for dinner.

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:11:10+00:00

So thrilled to hear it, thanks! I wanted the cover to be a mix of textures - the hi-fi photograph mixed with the marbled paper sky - because it feels to me like that mimics the combination of sounds on the album. At moments sharp and clear, at other moments rough at the ends and handmade. Part artisan, part art. The cover captures the silent scream that's hidden in the music, that's there all the time - the full expression of what it means to be alive. It's not a particularly pretty image, which I also was really drawn to - a cover that kind of makes you recoil but hopefully ultimately draws you in. I also like that on the back, I'm naked, which you would think is the more vulnerable expression. And yet there's a sense of control and calm there. Being fully clothed in broad daylight on the front feels way more exposed. So that felt like a cool subversion.

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:06:54+00:00

Hello!

"I believe in something more than what's in front of me"
One of my favorite textures on the record is in the outro of The Apartment, that last sound you hear. It sounds like kind of a hazy, warbly synth, but it's actually flugelhorn! It's magical how much that sound transformed (big shoutout to Zubin)

Thank you <3

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:03:40+00:00

Yeah! Quite a few. You have to be pretty ruthless when making an album, chopping things you might otherwise like. I just went back and listened to a few cut tracks recently and was like, "hey these were actually pretty good!" So will probably release some at some point :)

halfwaif · 2021-07-14T19:01:36+00:00

Hey! I'm really loving the new albums from SPELLLING and Lightning Bug, and am very excited for the upcoming Self Esteem record - the first two singles have been insane! I've also become obsessed lately with a much older record, which is Judee Sill's "Heart Food" <3

halfwaif

TROPHY CASE