We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Scott Grady a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Scott, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

When I think about the process of creating music and learning the craft, I am struck most by the synthesis of contrasting elements: magic and science, emotion and intellect, freedom and discipline. In the beginning of my musical journey, I was mostly self-taught. I learned to play guitar by ear as a kid and tried to channel aspects of the music that I loved into my own playing. Since at first, I was playing by myself, I’d create melodies, chord progressions, and patterns without much thought of building these fragments into anything more than what they were. Continuing this process indefinitely without growth would probably have started to feel empty and pointless. But, at the time, it was pure and beautiful. I was just playing with sound the way kids might play with clay or sand or sticks in the woods. It was all freedom, feeling, and magic.

Without any real formal training, I picked up some new skills and knowledge here and there from friends who played music and some random music-related books I came across : a few scales, some chord shapes, a little bit of music theory. When first discovering the “math” in music, I remember feeling resistance to it. I was existing in a musical fantasy world and the perspective of breaking music down into numerical terms felt cold and lifeless.

Despite my initial feelings, it turned out there was no denying that using some of my new-found tools was really opening up some useful creative possibilities. As I gained more knowledge about music, I came to love the very different aspects that became part of my creative process and development as an artist. There is a side to my artistic life that is very analytical. Some of my time might be spent working out intricate counterpoint and polyrhythms, re-harmonizing melodies, or sculpting a vocal line meticulously until it feels just right. Yet, I’ve never abandoned the idea of making space for the magic to happen unhindered by thought. Almost every time I work on a piece of music, I spend a lot of time just improvising with the material. Most of the time, for me, this happens on the guitar. But, it’s great to mix it up and improvise on a piano, with my voice, or any other random instrument that happens to be in the room. It’s a similar process for creating song lyrics. Most often, musical ideas come before lyrics for me. Once I have a rough melody in mind, I’ll spend time singing through the music and just letting words emerge in a stream-of-consciousness manner. Eventually, lyrical ideas make their way onto the page where they may go through a critical process of revision. But, the improvisatory activity is usually the first step. There are always great moments from time to time when ideas just seem to emerge spontaneously without any conscious effort or plan. But, in my experience, creating is much more about the consistency of daily work and dedication to the process. On one hand, there is the never-ending path of developing the technical skill of songwriting/composition. Simultaneously, there is the more nebulous task of nurturing an openness to the intangible magic that can be channeled without conscious thought.

Another aspect of creating music that has been absolutely essential is cultivating the ability to deal with failure. As a person who is so profoundly moved by music, it was incredibly challenging in the beginning to deal with the emotions that went along with creating so much music that fell short of my hopes and expectations. I remember a friend sharing with me the sentiment that the difference between a good artist and a mediocre artist is being willing to throw away the “junk”…along with the understanding that most of your work will be junk. Of course, ‘throwing out’ might just mean revising and ‘junk” may just be material that isn’t best serving the artistic vision. But the basic idea is one that I think could serve a lot of people well to understand. With practice, I imagine most songwriters find that they can easily and quickly compose songs that work perfectly well musically and lyrically. But, if your goal is to make music that deeply moves people, it might be good to develop a habit of not settling for making music that just “works well” and to consistently stay true to the deeper musical impulses which may require us to keep searching and reaching when we could simply finish something and move on. And then, of course, there is the opposite skill of knowing when to stop working on something and just let it be finished. These are such simple principles but, in practice, can be very important challenges to consider as we develop our process of creation.

Scott, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I founded The Mercy Stone because I had no choice. Creating music has evolved into an involuntary behavior similar to breathing. If I stopped trying to create music, my mind and body would still create music without my consent. While music can serve a variety of functions, I’m interested in creating music that inspires us to be fully present in the miracle of existence. My goal is to create songs with depth and intensity that engage the sublime parts of our conscious experience. Some of our songs may sound introspective. Others are more aggressive and upbeat or may explore some unusual soundscapes. But, at its core, all of our music comes from the same artistic impulse to prime the mind and feed the soul. Music has the power to make us move physically, bring us to tears, energize social and political revolutions as well as to stir revolutions of the mind. This is the space I aspire to in my work.

As a genre-bending project, The Mercy Stone is committed to continually trying to surprise our audience. As an emerging project, this presents some innate challenges since our music does not consistently fit into any particular musical category. I think that our fanbase is made up of open-minded music lovers that are searching for something outside the norms of typical musical genres. It’s my hope that our music fits into the soundtrack of our fans’ lives and is something that they can come back to over the long term as a source of inspiration.

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

One lesson that has had to be learned through experience is how to navigate input from others as it relates to creating music and running the practical side of building a project. If you are a creative person, it can be incredibly valuable to get consistent feedback about your work. Whether you are at the beginning stages of learning the craft or a seasoned and successful songwriter/composer, having people that you trust to give honest and informed perspectives can be a very helpful tool. At the same time, ultimately, artists need to be able to accept and reject advice on a case by case basis. Certain technical aspects can be addressed very objectively when it comes to composition or mixing/mastering of a recording. But so much of the experience of music is personal and subjective. There have been times when I’ve received feedback from people whose opinions I greatly respect, but had to reject it in the end. I’ve had to reject gushing praise as well as harsh criticism. Looking back at these instances, I think now that there are a few times when I should have accepted the opinions that I rejected. But, in the vast majority of cases, I’m extremely glad that I was not swayed. So, on the creative front, the short story is that there is no getting around the fact that we can benefit greatly from outside input but also need to develop deep trust in our own ears.

On the practical side of building a music project, it is crucial to understand that there will never be a shortage of people who will confidently tell you that they know exactly what you need to be successful. Some are well-meaning friends, family, and colleagues. Others are in the business of selling services to help artists grow their career. In these circumstances, we face the same challenges as receiving creative advice. If you are closed off to outside input, valuable opportunities may be missed. If you are not careful enough, you may end up spending thousands of dollars with little or nothing to show for it. While there are not any concrete rules that I can relate, I would just suggest that artists always do adequate research and to beware of anything that sounds too good to be true. Getting an offer to sign with a record-label is likely to feel very exciting. But, even offers that appear legit on the surface can be detrimental to an artist and even predatory.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In one of the previous questions, I mentioned the amount of failure on the creative side that is common with aspiring music artists. In addition to creative struggles, there can be other types of disappointments for emerging artists as they build their project/career. I’ll give an example of this in the area of releasing music(online). A very common release strategy these days is to drop one song at a time. Even if all the songs are eventually included on a single album, they can be released separately(every 4-8 weeks commonly) and then finally released together on a single album. The first time one of our songs was very successful, it was exciting. In a short period of time, we gained thousands of new fans on Spotify, YouTube, and social media. From a numbers perspective, it seemed like this release firmly set us on the path to the type of success that emerging artists hope for. We had much more music to release that we felt really good about, and I felt that some of the upcoming songs were even stronger than the one that had been so successful. However, while the next few releases did fairly well, they did not come close to matching the success of our small “hit.” Not only can we, as artists, not always accurately predict how music is going to hit, but there is also no certainty of how the algorithms are going to treat our music. So, while having a single song go viral can be a game changer, consistently pushing forward and gaining fans one person at a time is definitely a mindset that seems valuable.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.themercystonemusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themercystone/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMercyStone
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@themercystone5894
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0tGb9I9vsWGTw3PSphK5Si?si=cAdMAq-JRweDG10J7okRLA