We recently connected with Gretchen Lohse And Thomas Hughes and have shared our conversation below.

Gretchen Lohse and, appreciate you joining us today. 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.

We’ve been making things since we were kids – whether they be drawings, plays, films, albums, videos, sculptures. I think the best way of learning these skills is to just do them. Experiment, play, and collaborate with like-minded folks. I don’t think there’s really a way to optimize that. I think the only obstacle is the occasional voice in your head that tells you these pursuits are not valuable or worth your time and you just have to ignore that.

Gretchen Lohse and, 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?

We create compelling short-form videos for a variety of clients. Our work plays off of our backgrounds as composers and are often musical / rhythmic in their editing. Our signature style is usually a single melodic line / narrative fragmented across different timbres / scenes. There’s actually a German term called Klangfarbenmelodie which translates to “sound-color melody” which we feel aptly describes our work. In addition to making videos we also perform as a music group and compose for film and television. One of our proudest moments in 2024 was recreating the theme from “Bluey” on toy instruments.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

The COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 stands out in particular. While most of the world was shut down, we felt incredibly lucky to have a creative outlet by being able to work out of our home-studio. Focusing on making music and videos helped distract us from the world. We ended up having an incredibly interesting and productive year – we learned how to adapt quickly, find opportunity in constraints, and experiment with new platforms.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson we had to unlearn of was the idea of needing everything to be perfect before releasing it into the world. You can spend days or even weeks on something and build unrealistic expectations about how it will perform – simply because of the work you put into it. But, as we’ve learned, you can also quickly create something engaging, fun, and even messy and people may love it even more. Just put it into the world and see what happens. Who cares. It’s the internet.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lavendercatcreative.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolclevelandsings/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarolClevelandSings/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/CarolClevelandSings
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@carolclevelandsings

Image Credits

Carol Cleveland Sings