Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ben Elder. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Ben thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
Music was the first thing I attached onto when I was younger. I was blessed to be born with a really great ear for music. I don’t necessarily come from a musical background – but my Dad played a bit of guitar, and we always had a piano around. I remember spending hours with these instruments figuring out how to play songs I liked by ear.
By seven I had committed a whole catalogue of classic rock, blues, and pop music to memory. I became kind of like a party trick in my family and with my friends, they would call me “the human jukebox”. I began writing songs and learning how to record them, before I really understood how to go about doing that correctly. This was still early Internet era, and I didn’t have access to a lot of tools beyond some acoustic instruments, and a USB mic from Rock Band.
Growing up in the south, it was a culture centered around sports. So from a young age, I had played baseball, basketball, football… I was never really all that into any of them then, but that was just the culture. When I was nine, I acquired a pretty serious concussion playing football, and the doctors told my Mom that I couldn’t continue playing contact sports. This was bittersweet news to me, because I felt like being involved in sports was the only thing that made me valuable to the people around me, but I knew deep down it wasn’t where my passion was. I still feel like this was an indicator from the universe, because from that moment forward, I fully invested myself in my craft.
Soon after that, the Internet started to become a hub for independent artistry. We had artists making full albums with zero budget from their houses, posting about it online, and performing on TV within a month. This was really groundbreaking for me at the time because I had always thought I would need to be “discovered” at some bar or on a street corner, just me and my guitar. But here we had people with no studio equipment making entire records from their laptops, that sounded just as good if not better than a lot of commercial albums at the time. I think that was when I really started to see a path to doing this at a professional level.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Ben Elder AKA “Snacktime!”. I have music under both names, but it all falls under the umbrella of the “Snacktime!” sound: one filled with child-like wonder, fascination, confidence, and playfulness. I describe myself as an artist because I don’t just specialize in music – I see my brand as a multimedia experience, including visual works, film, and live events.
A good portion of my music is sample-based, and it exists on a spectrum of multiple genres – mainly dance, funk, jazz, and rap. I love how intentional the artform of crate-digging requires me to be. It doesn’t matter what type of music I sample if it has soul in it. I spend hours upon hours at record stores searching for new sounds, taking them home, and combining them into something completely new. I still make music from scratch, but it doesn’t really challenge me in the same ways. And there’s something to be said about, for example, making three songs from completely separate eras fit in a new context, chopping them up, layering, reversing… there’s a lot of creativity involved in sampling that I think is really misunderstood.
I’ve dabbled in songwriting with my solo artist project and had some good success with it, but over the years I’ve become less interested in recording my own vocals. I like making the samples talk for me. Sometimes I make the instruments talk for me. And I feel like the Snacktime! project really allows me to explore beyond the capabilities of my songwriting and vocal ability. It’s more like getting to share my taste with people in a way that fits the modern era. I think that’s why I’ve landed more on DJing, too, because it’s such a great way to expose an audience to something they may never stumble upon themselves. And being so inspired by musical ideologies and techniques from the 90s and 00s, it really makes sense with the music I love making.
I just released my first full-length record, “Chex Mix!”, this past month. I spent a really long time developing a new sound for Snacktime!, collecting bits and pieces of things I found great, and just learning how to hold back less. The project is essentially a lofi house record, but has aspects of all of the stuff I love to listen to. I’m super proud of the way it turned out, the response has been super positive and inspiring. And I love that every single person I talk to has a different favorite song, which shows me there’s something for everybody there. That’s kind of the mission with Snacktime! – music with soul that anyone with a soul can snack on ;)
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
I think that true creatives have a certain level of “passionate blindness”, meaning that they don’t make art to satisfy anyone, or to gain anything. They have a gnawing feeling inside themselves to create, and if that’s not satisfied, they won’t be. They prioritize it out of love, even when all odds are against them, or it doesn’t make sense to those around them.
Artists work just as hard, if not harder than most in a non-creative position, and a lot of their hard work is never seen by anyone. Most of my creative friends, myself included, work a day job to support themselves. There’s no shame in that. Really, that means we clock out of one job just to clock into the next one. And the reality is – it’s draining, frustrating, and lonely, but we do it because we have to. And the next level of that from a creative mindset is to lose that need for external validation, because at the end of the day, only a lucky few artists get the opportunity to broadcast their art to a larger platform. And even then, a lot of their art is only consumed at a surface level anyway.
It’s hard to blame an audience who doesn’t understand the intricacies of doing creative work, who are on the receiving end of a complex algorithm… but as a consequence, the day-to-day of an artist is so misunderstood and glorified now. The new age of technology is a double-edged sword, because while it can totally help propel you to the next level, the way it forces us to consume content is not conducive to the creative mindset. There is a lot of inner work involved in creating honest art. Art cannot be manufactured. So this pressure to spend more time creating content than music is completely counterintuitive to me. And as the music industry becomes more and more saturated, my hope is that people look beyond the numbers and can appreciate anybody that pursues a creative endeavor. I hope that we continue to spotlight independent artists, because they’re making just as much quality art as the art that gets a larger platform.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The creating process will always be the most rewarding aspect of being an artist for me. To translate a particular feeling into an idea, and to turn that into something tangible is an unmatched feeling. Of course, eventually being able to share my creations with the world is part of the reward too. But if I were able to spend all my time with my records making music, I would do so in a heartbeat. I can’t go a single day without making something. I think in an ideal society, I would just want to make a bunch of music and visuals to put on display whenever I saw fit, like an art show or gallery.
When it does come down to putting out music, I’m a very project-minded individual, and I really try my best to deliver quality over quantity. I don’t necessarily set out to make it happen – I get to a moment where I have a ton of tracks that just work together, and I whittle it down into something that makes sense. And I find that process of packaging it up into a record incredibly fulfilling. I see albums like time-capsules or journal entries – a statement from an artist in their particular headspace given the environment around them, whatever that may be.
I used to be a lot more critical of myself and gatekeep a lot of my best ideas, but it’s really benefitted me to detach myself from my art. Creative ideas are floating all around us waiting to be claimed – it’s better to just execute and see what happens than to wait around to be “inspired”. So it’s rewarding to create because you enter a flow-state with the purest version of yourself. And despite the outcome, the journey you took has equipped you with more tools for your next project.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://benelder.life/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ben.elder/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nonstopsnacks
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nonstopsnacks?lang=en
Image Credits
Ben Elder & Emily Hall