I moved to Los Angeles from Little Rock, AR the summer of 2017 to pursue a career in music, and quickly found out that I could not afford producers and major label resources to make music. However, I come from a tech background and studied accounting in college, and I have always been somewhat resourceful and willing to learn. I taught myself how to code websites and apps while I was in college, but music has always been my first love. I remember spending my first paycheck as a sophomore on a Yamaha YPG 235 piano and it set me on a music path that has led me to this place. I taught myself how to play mostly with Youtube tutorials and my natural ear for music, producing music professionally was far from something I imagined. I've had the privilege of performing locally going to open mics almost everyday in LA and meeting musicians and creatives from across the board. I finally made the leap and started producing and writing my own music delving deeper into sound engineering in the process, and while it hasn't been all sails, the skills I acquired in the process have been invaluable. In the true spirit of Silicon Valley, I believe in taking a minimalist approach to anything and like Elon Musk love breaking things to their core fundamentals. I started doing this with music and quickly learned that making music isn't about sitting in expensive studios or what the industry at large would have us believe. It's really about 7 elements and how they fit well together. The new found Mr. Musk in me iterated that music was just 7 elements really (Timbre, Pitch, Harmony, Melody, Texture, Dynamics and Tempo) as I struggled to break through creative block and the proverbial sound barrier. In a bid to prove this, "Show Me Love" was mostly produced on my phone using the Reason Compact app, I exported it to my computer and worked some engineering magic and show me love was born. The single celebrates the cultural shifts and strides propelled by technology in the past decade from Instagram, Memes, Tik Tok, Giphy, and so much more that our brothers and sisters around the world have created. This to me is how we move society forward. Without technological innovations of the past decade it would be unfathomable that anyone with a dream and a phone can create music and release it to the world. Furthermore, the tech economy has opened a new opportunity for creatives such as myself to earn income in a flexible way (I mostly drove Uber Eats for the past year so I could focus more on learning the most I could in music production.) Again, the new gig economy powered by technology made this possible. 2020 will see a further explosion in creativity from all corners of the world and am proud to take part in an initiative called Pieces of Sound to help creatives such as myself who may not have access to major label resources to create commercially viable musical work from wherever they are, with whatever they have, for gone are the days of expensive gatekeepers and barriers to freely expressing ourselves, technology has made this possible in the past decade. The 2010s helped shape the notion of self and being comfortable with sharing our most intimate moments with the world with a simple touch, swipe or click. The compilation video for Show Me Love celebrates those who dared to use technology to elevate themselves and the idea that being different is more than ok. I would like to thank everyone who made our online lives that much better as we close the decade, whether through a line of code, a meme, a video, a photo and so much more because it is because of daring endeavours such as those we've seen in the past decade that move humanity forward. And to those who continue to make products that serve people around the world and feel a burning desire to do something for the whole, keep at it for without you the world would be a boring place.

SHOW ME LOVE

Here's to the decade that gave us the selfie, emoji and meme

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