Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Timmy Milner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Timmy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

Making the intentional change from playing guitar for yourself or attending casual jam sessions or even writing some songs to deciding to make a record is a big change, full of risk. You’re risking a lot of money when you become a recording artist, between instruments, recording gear, loads of time, studio time, mixing/mastering, and distribution. And then you quickly learn that many musicians rarely make any money, and then even fewer make enough to pay themselves back for expenses. I suppose it’s unique from purely business ventures because creating music has its own rewards that have nothing to do with money, but this can be a comfort as well as a burden or even a curse.

With a normal business, you have a great idea, get funding, give it a few years, and if you’re not making money you might just close and move on. But giving up on your business as a musician feels a lot like giving up on yourself. Then you have that shoulder devil telling you not to make it all about money, suffer for your art like an impressionist painter or an 1980’s punk. But part of my dream of being a musician was to make a living doing it. This cyclical conflict is one every professional wrestles with.

So I’ve taken the risk of becoming a singer-songwriter, especially the risk of producing and recording my own records, and it’s a new risk every day-to believe in yourself.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

In 2016, I began producing my own records as a singer-songwriter. I had been studying music since I was 9 and attended Chapman University as a composition major in their conservatory that was geared towards 20th century classical harmony and contemporary classical composition. I had chosen to study in a classical program to learn everything I would ever need in order to compose for orchestral music. My dream has always had two sides, to be a recording singer-songwriter of alternative rock/folk music and to score for Hollywood movies as a film composer. So in my studies, I wanted to learn how to write sheet music, all about orchestration and classical harmony, and to improve my song writing and pop music arranging.

After falling in love and getting married, in 2016, I felt ready to put years of songs together in an album, which would be my first record called Fall Risk, released in 2018. From there, I’ve been writing more and more, finding ways to improve my sound, and in the process, I’ve become a proficient sound engineer, with a big value for analog gear and sound, I put out two albums this year, Winning Time in June and Double Time in October. I still have another full record releasing in November called Prayer Journal, a collection of original religious songs.

All the while recording my albums, I’ve also further pursued my career as a film composer. I’ve scored a feature film as well as a number of short films over the last couple years. I think my rich education as well as my deep dive into the alternative scene and the recording techniques I’ve learned along the way makes for a very unique style/voice in film music. I love the way I get to enhance stories by telling a new part of it that can completely change a movie. I also love how film making is a focused single effort of multiple artists coming together, using each of their specialties to tell one unified story-it’s really exciting when it comes together like magic.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The pandemic coincided with my idea to record a number of religious songs, songs I wrote to God. Coming from a Christian tradition, I learned how to play guitar learning what we call worship songs, Nirvana, and classic rock. Since I was a kid, I’ve had an obsession with music from the 60’s and 70’s music, 90’s grunge, and indie rock and alternative music from the 2000’s. Christian music recordings never connected with me, but the experience of worship music in person had. My idea was to take these songs that I’d written in vulnerable places, about very true beliefs I have as well visceral spiritual experiences I’ve had, and record and arrange them in ways that I would enjoy listening to, with the hope that listeners wouldn’t have that feeling of “Christian music just started playing”, but instead be able to just listen, and hopefully experience something greater than me. There are good Christian music recordings out there, but I think much of it speaks to an audience that isn’t necessarily mine. I also want Prayer Journal to be an open and safe invitation to religious discovery that is free of the judgement that is unfortunately associated with Western Christianity.

Well all that was supposed to be completed in 2020. Because of the pandemic, I had to get very creative, my normal process of recording wouldn’t work. I recorded with my friend and co-producer at the time, Sam Winsor. We were recording in his house with his tape machine, and some gear we raised funds for. The fundraising campaign wasn’t successful, we raised less than 10 percent of what we needed, We decided to press on and find the cheapest gear that would give a great sound, we got very creative. The drums were performed and recorded in Sweden by my good friend, Ludwig Näsvall. There was a lot of zoom calls, back and forth with directing his drum parts to these crude demos, and then we recorded everything agin to his drumming recordings, which he sent through the ol’ world wide web.

Recording took longer than expected, we had a lot of gear trouble that pushed things even further, and for a number of other reasons I didn’t have the files to mix the project until 2023. As I mentioned before, I’d been busy recording other projects by the time I had the files, and I also lacked some music equipment for the job. Now, in 2024, I’ve been able to get everything in order and the project is finally mixed and mastered, which I learned to do myself for this project (as well as for Double Time).

Prayer Journal releases this November 15 to most streaming platforms.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Growing up I had a lot of well intentioned mentors stress the importance of protecting your intellectual property. While this is a lesson many people haven’t learned yet and really should, it created a fear in me that said, you shouldn’t show people what you’re working on because they will want to steal it. It played a big part of me not recording my music for a long time and it also kept me from collaborating when I was younger. I had to unlearn this in order to start working with people, playing in bands, writing songs with people, and playing live shows.

It is good to copyright material, create agreements, and all of that, but in my case it held me back for a while. I actually think I realized that most people believe that they have the best ideas, and aren’t usually out to steal yours, and if they did, their version would likely be so different from yours it wouldn’t really matter. Again, still protect your work, but be open to collaborate.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://timmymilner.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timmymilner/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timmy-milner-ab6283103/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC26pEe-_zQuCtMiIbcQolRQ
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3eDssRah1oB3lJK3UyPG5b?si=bVIcCp09RAGu9StUxmUWsQ

Image Credits

All Images shot by Chris Ram