We were lucky to catch up with Joshua Seay recently and have shared our conversation below.

Joshua, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

So when I first started making music a lot of what I learned was based on what just felt right. I didn’t necessarily have the knowledge of how to write an actual song it was more of just finding beats online and expressing my thoughts over them. It wasn’t until I went to college that I learned the actual concepts of a song and the different intricate parts that go into them and the technical side of making a record sound good. I also learned a lot from watching videos online and just teaching myself, especially on the technical side of things. If there was one thing I would’ve done to speed up the process knowing what I know now it would be to really take the time to learn how to mix and design music and just train my ear for that. I think learning how to listen to all the small details in a song is what makes or breaks the song so I think that is the most essential part of creating music. I think the biggest obstacle in the way of learning more would be just starting from scratch by yourself without anyone around that actually knows what they’re doing. That hands-on knowledge that you get from experience would’ve been extremely helpful especially when I first started out and I think would’ve prevented some of the mistakes I made early on.

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?

My name is Joshua Seay, known professionally as SOUTHSIDE VIZZY. I am a recording artist, songwriter, and producer from Nashville, TN. I started writing songs when I was 13 as a way of expression during a time when I really felt alone and felt like I had nobody to talk to so I just started to write it out. When I turned 15 I found some extremely cheap equipment and started recording the songs I had written and from there I just completely fell in love with making music and it has been that way ever since. I feel like over time what sets me apart from others is just staying true to who I am and not conforming to a trend or a popular sound. I make sure whatever I put into my music is based off a real-life experience or feeling that I have or sharing a story from an outside perspective. I really feel like in music, especially hip-hop there’s a stigma that you have to present yourself and be a certain way to be successful at it. I don’t agree with that at all and we’ve seen through other successful artists that there is another way so I just feel like when I’m creating music I’m speaking for and to those people that might not feel seen or heard. When it comes to the business side of music I have had to learn a lot of skills to be successful as an artist from songwriting. recording, mixing, and mastering on the music side to photography and videography on the visual and presentation side. These are the services I provide to other artists as well because I just want us all to be able to grow and show off our art. The thing I’m most proud of is having ownership of my name and brand and being able to present myself how I want to with complete control.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being creative is being able to take a feeling that I might not even know how to openly express in a normal conversation and put it into a song and then being able to share that song with an audience, especially when I’m performing and just seeing how people react to it.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think one thing that is hard to understand for people who aren’t necessarily artists or musicians is that learning and creating take a lot of time especially when you have to live your actual life as well. A lot of times it gets hard to balance everything because sometimes I just wanna lock myself in the studio and just work on music all day but I might have to go to work or go do something for somebody and I just feel like it’s taking away from the time I could be creating and growing myself and my business but I think those breaks and time away help with the process and give me more to talk about when I do start creating again.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fanlink.to/southsidevizzy
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SOUTHSIDEVIZZY/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/southsidevizzy
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1zcA0-IoNdglPL7LeJN_ww
• Other: https://soundcloud.com/southsidevizzy https://music.apple.com/us/artist/southside-vizzy/1463174592 https://open.spotify.com/artist/1cO4N0DMe1MLqLdzDhaqQS

Image Credits
Xavier Cunningham Joshua Seay