We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jaylen Ward. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jaylen below.

Jaylen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

One of the first instruments that I fell in love with was the drums. My family has been a huge inspiration for me and has inspired me to pick up music. I first started playing drums when I was 2 years old, and I first started playing professionally when I was 4 years old at church. This really challenged me to the edge of my ability. When I was about 7 years old, I ended up playing for the mass choir for multiple international gospel artists. Ever since then, I have always been in situations that challenge my resources and skills. During the pandemic, I discovered that I had to create my own opportunities to push myself. That is when I started to pick up other instruments and music production. Being in nerve-wracking situations all the time has caused me to struggle with imposter syndrome over the years, but now that I understand that taking risks is my career, I never really struggled with my position in life. Over the past 2 years of college, I have played or produced 15 records.

Jaylen, 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 Jaylen Ward. I am born and raised in Kansas City Missouri. I am a professional drummer, musician, and music producer. I picked up music at the age of 2 years old. My family is a musical family. Throughout my childhood, I played in church with them. As I grew up, I started playing in my parents’ jazz fusion band the JWB. My uncle was the first drummer of their band. After he retired I started playing in the band. In Kansas City, there is a huge jazz culture here. Jazz giants like Charlie Parker, Pat Methane, Bobby Watson, and many more came from here. The jazz community has been very welcoming to me at a very young age. I started playing professionally at the age of 9. I started composing music in middle school inside the computer. Over the years of working in the computer, I picked up audio engineering and music production. One of the first projects that I produced was my own record

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

For a long time, I made a conscious decision and effort to be around people that would like-minded you had the same craft as me. I have a lot of friends that are musicians freelance musicians to be specific. I learned a lot of skills outside of music in 2020 that weren’t really common skills for musicians to learn; Audio engineering, videography, mixing mastering, and marketing. It became exhausting being responsible for every step of the production. I started to find it easier to be around people of other crafts and trades. When the world started opening up, I found out that a lot of other musicians also are videographers and audio engineers. I started working with other people to create Bigger Productions and offload some of the work to each other. This also raised the quality of every production for everyone.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

And not entirely sure how NFTs work, but I do understand the intention of why they were created. You seem to be a novelty medium to display and own art. When streaming first came out, it was a novelty to have access to every record in existence on one device. When iPods came out, there was still a simple Commerce process of buying music and owning it rather than paying a flat fee to have access to endless music. With the new technology emerging, there is also a consideration for who owns and uses the technology. One of the first instances of an NFT being bought was beneficial to the artist, but as soon as the system started to be abused, it became a bigger problem than just the artist owning their art. It became a digital stock market puzzle. This same issue seems to reoccur in the streaming Platforms in terms of Revenue distribution. Nfts was a blown-up version of a pre-existing problem with artists owning their intellectual property.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jay_ward_music/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jaylen.ward.146
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaylen-ward-753a56182/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jayward0/likes
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM2F_FCXuEUe5MmJGx3yg8Q

Image Credits
James Ward