We were lucky to catch up with Asa Bell recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Asa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

Now that I have been at it for a while, I definitely wish I had known that this is a path I would want to take much earlier in my life. It’s almost the question of “If you could start over with everything you know now, would you?” to which the answer would always be a resounding yes. That said, that doesn’t mean I feel like everything I’m doing now is happening too late or not as quickly as I’d like. Everything takes time, especially the things that reap greater overall rewards, and starting earlier doesn’t really change that. What it does change, however, is how good I would be in this moment had I spent an extra two/three/four years practicing prior to the beginning of my career. I have a constant desire to just be better at whatever it is I set out to do, and in this context, it refers to my craft and how badly I just want to make great music. So overall, I would have loved to start my career sooner.

Asa, 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?

My name is Asa Bell, and I’m a producer and engineer from Philadelphia, PA. I come from a family of musicians, and I have been a musician all my life, starting with drums in fourth grade. Because of this, I have been surrounded by music and all things adjacent to it and discovered the world of production through my friend Luke Volkert who gave a presentation to a music class I was in. I have my undergrad degree from Guilford College in Music with a focus in Recording, a major I both helped create and was one of the first students to graduate from at Guilford College. Since then, I have gone on to produce a wide variety of music including full-length albums, and produce and engineer individual tracks for artists I have worked with which I hope to release in the near future. I believe one of the things that sets me apart from a lot of other producers is my dedication to getting a finished product, and not necessarily how it happens. In a lot of musical spaces where everyone is trying their hardest to succeed, it can feel like there are only people who want to work with each other to make it. In reality, not only is the success of people at your level good for you as well, a lot of the time generosity and being a good person can help you and the other person in the long run and in such an individual-focused career like music that can be forgotten. That line of thinking is something I am most proud of and pushes me to help anyone I work with get the best out of themselves even if I never get any recognition for it. There are certianly times where that is more appropriate than others, but at the end of the day my main focus is making the best song possible, getting the best recording possible, or engineering as well as I can to ensure that we make something that gets the absolute most out of the both of us in the end.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I think something that a lot of people think about getting what you want is that it needs to be earned through hardship or sacrifice. In a lot of cases, this is true. But when it comes to music, it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way. There are so many tools available to creatives today that can make music composition really easy, and a lot of those are frowned upon by people who have had to go through more to succeed. The battle between these two groups has always confused me because making music isn’t meant to be an extremely difficult or exclusive task, anyone with the means to create should have access to it. And in a lot of the cases where an individual had to endure hardship to succeed, they were extended an opportunity that allowed them the same access young artists and producers are getting now. All of this can be compounded upon the fact that difficult to make does not always mean good, and some of the most successful and popular songs today took a good idea and drums to become everyone’s favorite. All in all, making music is about having a good time, and the way each of us chooses to do that is different.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think something that people find hard to understand about creatives is how critical of ourselves we can be. Deep down we all know that beating ourselves up for not having amazing ideas all of the time does nothing for us, but it can be incredibly frustrating and sometimes you don’t know what else to do. I have always been a person that only accepted the absolute best from myself at all times, and truthfully how I have responded to that in the past hasn’t been the most beneficial for me. It became harder to be at my best for any extended period of time to the point where there was so little left I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to make music anymore. All of these feelings didn’t come from a place of anger, just a desire to be better and constantly feeling like I wasn’t doing enough. The concern that I started too late, that I don’t practice enough, that I’m simply getting outworked, is something that all creators who want success feel, and being congratulated for doing work you feel wasn’t up to your standards is a confusing feeling. I doubt that people of other professions were meant to experience or understand it, and it can be hard to explain to people close to you why it’s not a switch you can turn on or off. Something that helped me with this is an interview with Miles Davis I saw a while ago where a child played a piece of his and asked how it sounded. Miles responded with “You know how it sounded, you need more practice.” This of course is incredibly harsh to say to a child, but ultimately something that they both knew to be true at the time, and something that I believe spoke more directly to me in the moment. At the end of the day, I am the only one that knows how hard I am working, and if that is not enough there is always room for me to meet my own standard. If I choose not to do that, that is my decision, but I need to rely on the fact that I know what I can do, and I am the only thing that is stopping me from doing it. Being frustrated with myself and draining myself won’t fix that, working to improve in the best and healthiest way possible will.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kwasikwabenayawo/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asabell/

Image Credits
Chris Johnson, Alex Johnson