We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nicholas Goncalves. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nicholas below.
Nicholas, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
Deciding to become a music producer happened for me at quite a young age. Around 14 or 15 years old. I had gone from programming hacking software all summer long to wondering how I could add “a song no one else has” to the software. Just for the bragging rights. Without getting in to the lore of the AOL underground scene, the more unique your software was, the more internet cred you would receive. Long story short, the path of trying to find a way to creating my own song led me down a rabbit hole via hotbot.com (before google was around or popular). Found a demo version of FruityLoops 1.7 (I think) (it is now called FL Studio) and just spent a lot of time trying to figure the thing out. What notes sound rad together? How long should a song be? Why is my song so boring compared to legit ones? After about a year I had completely dropped programming and spent all my time making techno and trance songs. This was around 1999/2000.
I guess what I am trying to say is that, in order to learn, you have to want to learn it. It is a murky road filled with misinformation, opinions, and vague answers like “just use your ears”. Everyone has an ear. We perceive sound as music and organize music in a way according to the way that our own brains work. This is dependent upon our experiences, and for me it was filled with techno, video game music, and epic movie scores. These are the soundscapes that moved me and motivated me to define my own style in that space. Can you be in an emo band and add these elements to the mix? I had definitely tried that once upon a time and continue to ask myself similar questions to this day.
Emulation is the cornerstone to most blossoming artists. It is a process of creative reverse engineering whereas the artist can try to imagine the genesis of a song and see in realtime why a song works. However, we must move away from emulation and instead retain the tools of what we’ve learned during the process. You cannot create art using someone else’s approach. You will find yourself having nothing in your own well of creativity having to pull from songs that already exist. Whether the audiences of the world know it or not, they want you and your sound. Whether or not that audience is massive or just a few people does not matter.
I do consider myself lucky to be around serious musicians for most of my life. Having dedication to the craft and all of the f*cked up things that go along with the industry is paramount. These people can push you and encourage you along the way while trying to reach for the impossible. Because it is a crazy idea that anything an artist does will become a success. For me, and my level of success with 8 Graves (which is subjective by the way) it became stagnant. I felt like I stopped asking myself the same thought provoking questions that fueled me at a young age. When something works, you fear staying away from it in any regard. Pressure to repeat that success overwhelms you to the point where you would rather feed the beast you’ve created at your own expense. So at some point I reached out and knew we needed help. Dwight Baker worked with us on several records from 2021-2023 which gave way to many eye opening moments to the process of making effective songs. I had to change my process and look at it from the ground up. This new approach led to new types of songs, lyrics and textures. He taught me a valuable trait to have in this industry. Pass it down and pay it forward. With all of his success he never safeguarded a single plugin preset or song writing method. In fact he empowered us to take the wheel on many occasions which pushed us to new heights. Forever grateful for him.
In the end, you never learn the craft. It is a fluid evolving space with changes to music, tastes, and approaches. Having an open and curious mind will let you stay a part of the magic.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am Nicholas Antonio Goncalves who is 1 half of 8 Graves. 8 Graves is a decade long project where we as a duo express ourselves through the music and art that we write. However, we learned early on that our special space we carved out has allowed a positive fan base to foster. To be honest, the fan base we have is one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed. Music is such a subjective art form in which folks define their personalities not only with the music they love but also the music they love to hate. Criticism is no stranger when it comes to art and the toxicity along with it. So when I say we have a 99.999% positivity rate on all of our socials, it is nothing short of miraculous. Not sure what we did to deserve the fans who have found us, but we cannot be more thankful for them. In our discord server we have seen people grow and mature with the help of their online friends. Visual artists using our music to inspire their art, and fellow fans deciding to be musicians or form bands of their own by bonding over the music we have released to the world. Typing this now is making me take a moment to reflect and I have to say, I am in awe. 8 Graves could end today and I would have ZERO regrets. However that will not be the case because we are sitting on another full length record as this interview takes place.
8 Graves has a logo that was based off of the original design we commissioned. It was a graffiti style approach and the designer added an embellishment off to the side that was a gravestone and a holy cross on it. To stay away from religious imagery we said try something else instead. He came up with the 5-lines face and it has been our mascot ever since. “Nine”, as in the 9th grave, as a cat has 9 lives and this was supposed to be our last attempt at creating a music project after 12 years of trial and error at the time, has grown to be an identifiable creature. He has been used on pins, hats, shirts, hoodies, masks, music videos, album art. You name it. The design is so simple it is as if it has always existed. For the most part, Brent Carpentier (other half and singer for 8 Graves) does not really enjoy being in front of a camera or posing for photos. I might like it a litttttlllllle bit more than he does, but the logo has allowed us to have a face for the project online. The fan base has speculated on lore for the mascot and deepens the relationship with us and them. Our latest music video for “Ghost” features him and a whole cast of similar characters each with their own name. Playing off of numerology mostly.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
As far as resilience goes, I am a definite risk taker. From a young age I was looking in directions less traveled. This may have started out as a way to avoid unpleasant exposure to the general population. When you have no guidance for a certain life path you get a lot of criticism and discontent. I would create techno music on my computer at the age of maybe 15 and show it to family members. Looking for validation and approval was met with confusion and condescension, even just general disinterest. It would get me down for a little bit, considering this was before the dawn of social media so my only audience was whoever I had access to and the ears attached to them. So I took a music course. Introduction to Traditional Western Harmony, or some bullshit. The jaded music teacher with an attitude was so unapproachable. I had a little CD-R (we used to burn music to a cd, for all you young kids) that had about 50 song demos on it. Handed it to him looking for some feedback or direction as to where I could take my music career. Mind you I was like a sophomore in high school, just about, and all he said after a couple weeks was something along the lines of, “I guess it’s good. I would have no idea though.” Cool. Thanks music teacher guy. Appreciate that. So as time went on, I kept trying to get my music to the ears that mattered. Having that patience and determination allowed me to see that external validation is useless. You need to have it within and to believe in yourself. I’ve always been told that I’ve done things the wrong way. If you do something unconventional long enough, you find yourself crafting your own sound that more or less, can not be replicated.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
Do. Not. Stop. If creating art was easy, everyone would do it. Well, I argue everyone CAN do it, but seldom do people want to do what it takes to master it and be successful. Something I find myself telling young artists is that you must first define what success looks like to you. Plenty of financially successful artists that feel lonely at the top or have had their lives destroyed by fame. Not to mention the ones that fake it on social media portraying a perfect life. What is success to you? Whatever it is, be honest and obtain it. A healthy example would be to just enjoy the process at your own pace. Strive to challenge yourself and be as true to self as possible. When you set goals like I want to sell a million records in my first year you set yourself up for potential failure. While you very well may get lucky and do that, it should be a bonus rather than a stipulation of success.
Also, you have to do a lot of things in this industry. An accomplished colleague in the music industry attributes their longevity to doing it all. Touring drummer, song writer, producer, mixer and artist. That stuck with me. Also humans are complex creatures and can be good at many things even outside of music. For me, I have been working as a part of a film crew as a budding camera operator doing cool shit for a true crime show. This fills my well of creativity because I have inspiring and challenging inputs. Go out and experience life, come back and organize it for all of in your art so we can be inspired by you. This is the art-life cycle.
Contact Info:
- Website: 8graves.com
- Instagram: @8graves
- Facebook: @8graves
- Twitter: @8graves_
- Youtube: @8graves
Image Credits
Photos: David A. Patiño Album artwork (Hello Jupiter): Alec Hank