We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ryan Yingst. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ryan below.
Hi Ryan, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
I started out playing the violin when I was really young. I’m not sure exactly the age but I must have been 4 or 5. I played a lot while I was a kid, and was a part of a bunch of state and county based orchestras, but it never really struck me as something I wanted to pursue. Actually, I was a terrible student with it. I never practiced as often as I should have, but something changed when I got into high school. I picked up guitar because all the music that really spoke to me seemed to have been made on guitar. That was when I really started looking at music differently and started recognizing the way it could change what I felt. I’ve had issues with depression from the time I was young and always had a difficult time coping with that, but in my early teens I started recognizing the dramatic impact music had on my mental state and my ability to process emotions. At this point the concept of harmony and structuring chords became fascinating to me and I dove into every music lesson my high school would offer. I picked up lessons from the head of guitar at Lebanon Valley College, Joe Mixon, and he helped me discover a love of improvisational playing. This was the exact opposite of how it felt to learn the violin as a kid. I couldn’t put the guitar down and in a couple years I had picked up enough to get me a scholarship to Duquesne University where I continued picking up everything I could. In my late teens I picked up engineering and producing as well as signing and songwriting, but it took me until years after college to consider taking that route seriously.
I probably could have sped up this process knowing what I do now, but the process made me feel rounded. I feel as comfortable in the recording studio behind the console as I do leading a band on stage. Thats not to say that my learning in any of these areas is finished. I don’t think songwriters and performers ever have the luxury of being ‘finished’ learning our craft.
The most essential skills I have learned all have to do with ‘how’ to study and not really ‘what’. These days every individual piece of knowledge a teacher can give you has been compiled by someone, somewhere online. But you’ll never grow if you don’t know how to put those pieces together. Learning to listen critically, recognize your own short-comings and develop solid habits are all best done under the supervision of someone with time in the industry.
With this being said, I do have a favorite piece of advice, and this comes from the late Chick Corea and his 16 rules for playing music in a group. The top two are (in my mind) the most important things to keep in mind to keep your music hip: 1. If you hear something, play something. 2. If you DON’T hear something DON’T play anything.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
The most important thing I can say about my music and performances is that I want to create space for authenticity. I keep open sections and improvisation active in a lot of my compositions because I want you to feel what I am feeling in that moment. My lyrics and writing always start from a place of personal connection and experience. That’s not to say that I don’t include things I haven’t personally done, my songs are not always a biography, but the challenges in them, or the basis of the song has always come from personal fears, triumph, aspirations or failures.
Because of this personal connection to my writing, my style changes frequently. I listen to a lot of different sources so my inspiration changes from day to day. Lately my style has been cycling between 90’s rock, soul and folk music and for now, thats where I plan to stay, but I really try to let the song influence the style. I don’t usually look at the genre of a track until it’s time to release.
Releasing music began as a byproduct of my involvement in music. I’ve been writing since high school, but it wasn’t until a few years in the industry playing as a sideman for other acts and working as a recording engineer that I decided to take my own music seriously. I’ve always struggled with imposter syndrome and it was a big mental hurdle for me to finally decide this element of myself was worth sharing. I have since seen my music matter to people in a way I never would have expected, and I hope that as I continue to grow in my songwriting, I can help other people overcome similar hurdles and find comfort and healing with their own issues through music.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Well I wouldn’t necessarily call this a lesson, but I have had a reimagining in how I like to record my music. I use to believe that everything in a recording session should be ‘perfect’, and I had aa couple recent sessions that taught me just how wrong that was. ‘Perfect’ meaning no bleed from microphones, everyone isolated in separate rooms and total control over all the elements after the initial recording. I still believe this style of recording can make some great tracks, but lately I’ve become much more interested in making my recordings ‘messy’ or, I guess a better way of saying is ‘real’.
I have a new song coming out on May 30th titled ‘Please Don’t Burn The Sage’. This song explores death my taking the viewpoint of one who is recently deceased, but has someone alive that can’t let them go. This was an incredibly emotional song to write and my recording process with my coproducer Shane Weisman really reflected that. Even with us working remote from separate studios for part of the tracking, he really helped me capture the feeling I wanted and made the recording feel as honest as the writing. However, before I made the smart choice to bring Shane on as a producer, I recorded the track at a larger studio here in Nashville (but I’ll leave them unnamed). They reached out to me about tracking a song, they had Grammys on their belt and a list of seriously killer country session players. Only one issue, I told them before we started that I did not want this song turning country. I showed up to the session and between the basic tracking and the overdub session for vocals, I must have been in the room for only about 1-2 hours. This is a VERY short time to track a song. I didn’t know if things were moving in the right direction, but I trusted the seniority of the room and figured their experience would carry the track. When I got it back from mastering (first time hearing it all together) I realized this was not my song. It had been turned into a straight up country pop tune that was so far out of line with the original vision and demo. I felt pretty defeated in that moment, but it also motivated me to get together with Shane, who has an epic ear for folk music, and give it another shot. This time around we made decisions together and built the song around the guitar and vocal line. Shane then laid down the other instruments, i mixed the tracks in conjunction with him, and it turned out so much more real. I wouldn’t trade wha we made for any other recording process, because it was exactly what this song needed.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being a creative is when I get to see something take shape that didn’t have it. Often times when I’m writing a song I don’t even fully know what its about. It’s so rare that I start writing by saying “this song will be about X”. So it’s rewarding in the same way that some therapy sessions can be. I will find out that I had some issue lying right under the surface and it took that song for me to get it out. When I wrote my song “Boxcar” it really started as a story about someone I didn’t relate to, but almost immediately I started implanting my own fears for the future and imposture syndrome into the character until it was basically an unleashing of my uncertainties.
I feel the same way with recording or even just making beats and electronic compositions. What I set out to create is so rarely what ends up as the final product. I love that. That to me, feels like pure creativity, when even you have no idea what direction you’re going, but you just know you can’t stop pushing forward. I consider some of my most interesting creations to have been made in this way.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ryanyingst.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_yingst/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ryanyingstmusic/
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@ryanyingstmusic
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2fcotWEGbj3K0I3LW6QP7Z?si=vgPZN53jReKQZC26zPtb_A
Image Credits
Madison Adair