Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Randy Chiurazzi. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Randy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
I started practicing guitar at age 13. From then it’s been a continuous series of practice sessions mixed with a great teacher along the way. My learning has been enhanced by noticing how music and language acquisition are very similar. The exercises I design and use to improve are more effective when I design them with language acquisition in mind. The most essential skills are effective practice and persistence.
Randy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
John Sherman and Randy Chiurazzi of San Diego, California formed The Social Orphans with the vision of writing, recording and performing songs using the advanced production tools now available to everyone. Drawing influence from the rigid art funk of the Talking Heads, the technical precision of Rush, the slick pop rock of Rick Ocasek’s The Cars and the sarcastic rock of The B-52’s, The Social Orphans comment on the world we’re living with surreal, weird, dramatic, romantic lyrics over a cosmopolitan mixture of violin, keyboards and clean ringing New Wave guitars.
Classically trained from youth, their burning desire to make music reignited in early 2001 with nightly jam sessions in the San Diego neighborhood of Point Loma. Efforts stepped-up in earnest in the fall of 2014 with the creation of Black Cat Music Studios. The studio provided a sanctuary inspiring the creativity, musical exploration and personal expression necessary to develop a truly unique style and sound that is fresh and exciting to the ear.
The songs and videos on our web site, thesocialorphans.com show what we have been able to do with vision and the persistence to bring it to life. For listeners who like this kind of music we provide professionally produced tracks and videos .
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
The recurring story for anyone who wants to make something to a high degree of quality is the story of persistence in small moments in the creative process. Following an idea from conception to a full blown song is a great example. A recent song started with a riff that the band came up with together. To begin developing the riff into a song I write down a concept for the song subject on a song development template I have developed. In a recent writing session, that concept statement started out as usual: a series of sentences describing an idea. But then i noticed a few words in one of the sentences and begin to notice that if I thought of them in isolation, they formed a rhyme scheme. In the next line of the concept statement, I combined the words in the order I visualized a moment earlier. From there I was able to repeat the process. So the form of the concept statement evolved from sentences into song-like stanzas. The concept kickstarted the song formation process.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
The best thing that could happen for musicians who want to sell their creative work is that systems continue to evolve that facilitate artist-to-fan interactions that result in a high percentage of the profit going to the musicians. A promising model using blockchain technology is The Open Music Initiative spearheaded by Panos Panay at the Berklee College of music:https://open-music.org. Panos Panay provides a clear vision for why and how blockchain technology can be used to solve issues with the current creative product supply chain:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzWWpzPVy0w.
Contact Info:
- Website: thesocialorphans.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesocialorphans/
- Facebook: facebook.com/thesocialorphans
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/socialorphans
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx5tEXtGy7_ek_dkY8oDEHg
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