We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tyler Gagnon a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Tyler, thanks for joining 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.
I’ve taken risks my entire life, it’s sort of become my M.O. as i’ve grown older and I think it’s safe to say that almost every decision/event thats gotten me to where I’m at right now started from taking a risk. One story that I think relates the most is how I got my first multi-million streamed song. Now, this is after my break with Lil Skies as an engineer so this was a big deal.
I used to take trips out to California often, strictly for music and very seldom for relaxing. I would maximize my two weeks here as much as I could, and Ironically, through all of my endless hours of work this event took place at 10pm in a drive through at Chik-fil-a. I was sitting there with my friends raving about the power of Tik-Tok and what potential it has for artists, when this beat up honda overhears me in the drive-thru line. So me being me, I walked over and introduced my self. I unknowingly met two people that I’d end up forming an incredible musical relationship with for a long time. Their names were Baby Jake and Sham. Me and Baby Jake hit it off immediately with packs of beats being sent that very next morning. He would reach out through out the rest of the year asking for music until one evening he asked if I’d like to work with his Sham (who I only spoke to briefly) now mind you, Jake thought I lived in California this entire time, but… I in fact did not. I was on the opposite side of the country. We set up a time, a date, and a studio and we’re just about to lock everything in until I felt like I needed to clarify I was definitely on living on the east coast.
Me bringing this up almost halted tho whole plan but I was DETERMINED to make session happen. He insisted that we cancel and that I don’t need to worry we’ll do something another time, but at this point I’ve been in the business long enough to know “another time” may never happen; I insisted back saying that it’s too late and that my flight was already booked – my now booked flight being in 8 hours.
all in all, I took a risk, I spent an exorbitant amount of money on flights and it was worth every penny. Our song came out a year later and has seen incredible success.
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 Tyler and I’m 26. I grew up in a military family – which means I never actually stayed in one place for more than 4 years. It’s been a blessing and a curse but it makes for interesting stories which I cherish. I got into music more or less as a necessity for me and my friends. We started a band (what group of guys doesn’t at one point or another) and didn’t have grown up money to get it professionally mixed and mastered, so semi-jokingly I started learning, and I was God awful. Now as someone with ADHD I know I do a-lot of dumb things, but one of the top 3 dumbest things was me deciding to start a full blown studio to mix OTHER peoples music, which don’t forget – I’m still awful at this point, but of course after some time, it became the thing that catapulted me into a full-time career as an Audio Engineer and Music Producer. There’s two things I’m most proud of one being that vast network of friends and colleagues I’ve met throughout the years and secondly that by 2nd quarter next year, I will have reached 1 Billion streams in my career total. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that but here we are.
to wrap up, I love what I do. I love what I’ve learned along the way, and I love that I get to create music with people. I just curate peoples desires and wants; help write peoples diaries with them. It’s pretty incredible.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Mutuals. Mutuals. Mutuals. I don’t think people who are newly getting into this truly understand the power that mutuals have on social media. I can say confidently that at one point or another, while you’ve been exchanging socials, one of you brought up who you both follow so many of the same people. It’s the most human aspect of social media. I like to think of them as currency, or tokens if you will. It’s like when you’re at an arcade and you’re hustling to get as many tickets as possible to get that ONE prize. Except the tickets are your mutuals and the prize is the person you’re trying to connect with. You cash them in and get your prize. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this and within an hour of cashing in my mutuals I get a message from the person I wanted to connect with talking about how we have so many mutuals. I think I’ve said that word at least a hundred times already but you get the idea. I am a firm believer in growing your network horizontally not vertically, and you can expedite that by finding value in mutuals.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
In the wise words of Rick Ruben, “I think goals can create limitations”. When it comes to music, I believe having a specified goal is a hinderance, because music is SO broad and covers so much, so why make a goal so specific that you box yourself in? Find the people you wanna work with, find the sounds that resonate with you the most, (physically and spiritually) and run in that direction. Another really cool thing Rick said was something along the lines of – when you’re starting a project don’t start with a goal in mind, just start finger painting and see what comes out of it. It’s like sculpting clay except you don’t what your making until your a quarter of the way in. Let the music be the goal, follow behind it.
Contact Info:
- Website: tylergenius.com
- Instagram: itstylergenius
- Twitter: tylergenius
- Youtube: Tyler Genius
- Other: MusoAI: https://credits.muso.ai/profile/f0f9dcd9-f414-4c0c-8e86-e70a77a85644