We recently connected with Rosie Cerquone and have shared our conversation below.
Rosie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
The most meaningful project I’ve worked on to date is my debut album called “the how & the why.” It’s a collection of songs I wrote from the time I was in high school through out my entire time in college.
I made this album happen because I knew I wanted to be known as a songwriter and share my music in a more impactful way than random snippets on Instagram and YouTube. My senior year of college, I started telling everyone that I was going to be releasing an album in 2020, even though I had no idea how to even really make an album. I new how to record, but besides that I had minimal knowledge of mixing, no idea how to master an album, and zero clue on how to distribute it.
But, through an IMMENSE amount of trial and error, I did it. I made an entire 11 song album. I tracked every instrument and vocal on it besides the drums. I recorded vibraphone in an empty apartment for two 13 hour days by myself, and the vocals I recorded in my “music room” at the house I was renting with my boyfriend that was located by a fire department, so I’d have to scrap recordings whenever they got a call. I mixed it entirely myself, doing the best I could, Googling what I didn’t know, and making up what I couldn’t figure out. I found someone to master it for me, and then distributed it on CDbaby. I designed the album art all by myself on Photoshop, and my best friend helped me set up the image I wanted in my timing living room, with fabric and props I bought from Joann’s with coupons.
This album is not perfect. I listen to it now and I hear all the flaws, but I love it so much. An album is like an diary of where you were in your musical journey and life, and I am so grateful I have the moment packaged in a sonic format. I made an album before I was “ready” to make an album, and I’m so glad I did. I have found making art before I knew how to make it has only opened doors for me. If it’s closed any, I don’t know about them. But I probably wouldn’t have wanted those opportunities anyway.
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?
My name is Rosie Cerquone, and I am a percussionist, singer, songwriter, teacher, and sonic content creator. A long title, but they are all really important aspects of the career I have built and continue to build.
I have been a singer as a hobbyist for my whole life, and I started playing percussion in my 5th grade band class. Long story short on my early years, I loved music and band, did as much as I could related to it, and ended up majoring in Percussion Performance in college. I also minored in media arts, where I furthered other passions I had such as graphic design, video editing, audio editing, and sonic art. So I don’t really have a crazy story about how I got into my field – I was one of those weird kids that actually knew what they wanted to do at 18 years old and is still doing it. But what I will say, is even though I knew I wanted to be a musician, I was never really sure what that was going to mean. Did I want to play in an orchestra? Definitely not full time. Did I want to tour full time? Sounds cool, but not forever, I’m kind of a homebody. Did I want to be a film composer? Sounds interesting, but I would be sad never getting to perform.
I would say I still don’t know what I really want to do, or who I really want to be within my career. But I have found a few different areas that really bring me joy, and instead of honing in on one and choosing, I’m slowly learning how to meld them into my own unique career path.
The most unique element of what I do is the type of music I write. I create a style of music I like to title “pop percussion.” I am a singer-songwriter, but I don’t play guitar or piano – I play the vibraphone. I wear a head set mic and I play with four mallets to get all the harmonic content I desire. I have a backing band with a drummer and a bass player, and I am also starting to incorporate live looping and electronics. There are other people doing similar things to what I’m doing, but there aren’t many of us. I would also say that I am one of the people more actively bringing mallet percussion centered music out of the concert hall and into bars, local stages, and music festivals.
I’m really proud of creating a style of music that melds my strengths into a format that is really inviting to listen to. Classical percussion literature is really fun to play, but often rather off-putting to the listener. The music I make is a bridge between mallet percussion and the average music listener.
I am also proud of the fact that when people see what I do, I know it opens people’s minds to creative possibilities in their own world. Most people would not think to start learning the vibraphone as a way into songwriting and learning cover songs, it’s not a super clear pathway. But all the people that make the coolest art, projects, businesses, have the wackiest paths. And I would love to be a small signal to someone to take a chance or their own weird path.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding part of being a creative as my full time living is having my time be mine. Of course the trade off with that is having to be really great at managing your own. I am quite young, so I would say my time management skills are still very much in the works. But I would take the struggle of learning how to balance my time any day over being told how I need to spend my time. Every day, I have to wake up and ask myself “what really matters to me today?” and then I get to go make that happen.
I don’t have an autopilot function in my life like I did when I was in school or had a part time job, and to me the stress of always planning for myself is worth it. To me, being a creative not only means I get to create art – I get to create my life.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
The last major pivot in my life is when I decided to start teaching music lessons. In the year and a half leading up to my pivot, I had been working a part-time “day job” and trying to create music in my off hours. Because all of my job experience had mostly been performing or music related fields, I actually had a really hard time getting a job at a coffee shop or something with a good atmosphere. So I was working these terrible jobs, and I was absolutely miserable.
I had never wanted to teach music, I had always thought I just wanted to be a performer and composer. I didn’t want to teach for several reasons:
1. I thought I would mess up the students more than help them.
2. I had heard the saying “Those who can’t do, teach,” a few too many times. I unfortunately thought that was true about myself, even though I thought the world of my past teachers and knew they were great performers, too.
3. I thought I wasn’t good with kids.
But, I saw an opening at a lesson studio for a drum teacher and I figured literally any job related to music was better than what I was currently doing. So I quit my job and started teaching lessons. And I found out I was wrong about every single fear I had.
I was actually great with kids, and I also started teaching adults, too. The challenges are different with different age groups, but I learn so much from each of them. Instead of fearing of messing students up, I had a huge learning experiencing learning to just be honest with students when I got something wrong, and realized that I’ve been playing for 14 years and they’ve only been playing for the past 15 minutes. Anything I say will help in some way. And most importantly, I realized that the saying should “those who CAN do… and are also patient, kind, and excited about helping others… teach.”
Teaching has only strengthened my creative life. I learn more from my combination of teaching and creating art than I ever would from just working on my creative projects 24/7.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rosiecerquone.com
- Instagram: @rosie.cq
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosie.cq
- Linkedin: Rosie Cerquone
- Youtube: Rosie Cerquone – https://www.youtube.com/c/RosieCQ
- Other: Email: [email protected] Spotify: Rosie Cerquone – https://open.spotify.com/artist/1cmkEuTzTx52t235qX35Zc?si=vi4HfeO8QwaS2aKeEs-JSA
Image Credits
Clarin J Photography Sara Diggins Photography