We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gfire Mayo. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gfire below.
Gfire, 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 singing at age 3. I continued in choir starting at age 10 through college. I started taking opera voice lessons at age 14. By age 15 I was singing in a band. At college I actually started making money singing in a wedding band. After college, I toured around with some cover bands before landing in Austin and getting serious about being a singer/songwriter.
I studied the Science of Singing starting at age 22 and I finally got my certification (in England) in June 2007. I also studied Speech Level Singing with Seth Riggs in California.
With songwriting, I wrote my first song at age 11. I am not the most prolific writer but I tend to keep working with a song over a period of time until I get the results that I want. I studied songwriting with a professor at Berklee College and started making recordings on a 4-track recorder early in my career. Later I switched to using Pro Tools and Reason, which I still use today.
Looking back, I wish I had gotten serious about songwriting a little earlier in my career, but I am making up for it now!
Gfire, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I was born and raised in Maryland and came to Austin, Texas in the mid-1990’s. I have sung my entire life and began songwriting at an early age. That’s all I really ever wanted to, so I steeped myself in learning about singing, songwriting, piano, and folk guitar. Later on I became a rave DJ, so then I began incorporating electronic beats and synthesizers into my songwriting process.
I also started teaching singing, songwriting, piano, and folk guitar after getting to Austin and realizing the money I was making as a singer/songwriter would not support me. I have now been teaching music for over 26 years to students ages 3 to 90 at all different levels of skill.
Teaching music is a lot different from playing music. I have developed my own singing technique called “Yoga for the Voice,” which incorporates yoga breathing, Italian singing exercises to develop “bel canto” (beautiful voice), and working on every single note to be sung in a piece, for complete mastery.
With piano and folk guitar, I am able to break songs down into bite-sized nuggets, so I teach my students to learn mastery from the beginning levels.
With my actual singer/songwriting, I have performed everywhere from Texas to California to Cannes, France. I have also been featured on the NPR show “UnderCurrents” with my song “less is more (rm 61 mix).” I am currently working on my second EP of all original songs, tentatively titled “choosing my own colours” volume one.
Please check out my website: https://gfiremusic.com/
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
I think it is important that society learns to pay its musicians fairly – and that, although music can be streamed for free, it costs money to produce. I am personally developing a page on Patreon, on which fans can select how much they want to pay per month to support me in making my new EP. In exchange, I will develop exclusive content that is only available for my Patreons. This will include acoustic versions of my original songs, cover songs I am working on to develop musically, and behind the scenes videos as to how I am writing, recording, producing, and promoting my new EP.
Have you ever had to pivot?
COVID 19 affected my business profusely. When it first hit, I had to cancel my SXSW show and I lost a whole bunch of my music teaching clients who were either coming to my home studio or I was going to teach in their homes.
I had been using FaceTime and SKYPE for some of my out of town students, but at the beginning of the pandemic, that was a small portion of my business. Since then, I have also learned how to use Zoom and I purchased a stand for my iPhone so that I can show students my hand positions for piano and guitar. Fortunately, I ended up getting a lot more online students.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://gfiremusic.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gfiremusic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gfiremusic
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/gfire
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/gfiremusic
Image Credits
N/A – these images belong to me.