Episode #7 Holly Pyle: Singer, Composer, Looping Goddess
Welcome to Living A Vocal Life: A Podcast For Singers!
Welcome to the Living A Vocal Life Podcast, where I interview singers who have succeeded in creating a life in music. You’ll hear from vocalists of all genres, in different stages of their careers, including singers who’ve been on the Billboard charts and those who are teaching the next generation. What do they have in common? They're all performers with amazing stories to tell and experiences to share.
In our conversations, you’ll learn what inspired them to become a singer, the kinds of challenges they’ve encountered, and how they've overcome them. I'll also share what I've learned on my own journey as a singer and educator — practical tools and insights that will help you to live your best, most authentic vocal life.
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January’s guest on the podcast is Holly Pyle, a singer who uses different musical styles and technology to create her own unique vocal sound and compositions. Holly was an opera major at Northern Arizona University when she stumbled upon a jazz choir audition. She fell in love with the genre, eventually completing her studies in jazz and psychology.
Since diving into a music career in 2014, she has released two albums and given over 900 performances in a diverse mix of genres — from hip hop to country to jazz. Holly frequently performs as a solo acapella act, using electronic looping to sample and recombine her voice into an ever-changing choir of Hollys.
I met Holly when she was visiting Portland to give a concert and music workshop with my friend, pianist Darrell Grant. Their conversation about collaboration, improvisation, and the creative process had me wishing I had a way to take notes. I loved how she talked about her inner life and her relationship to creativity and knew she would be a wonderful guest on the podcast.
“Art is a way to connect, whether you’re connecting with the art itself, or the art helps you connect with other people.”
Links:
You can find Holly on: Facebook or Instagram.
The songs from today’s episode are called: Veil, Zoloft, Human Together, and Outside of You. (All tracks used with permission.) To listen or download, go HERE.
Theme music for the Podcast was composed by John Smith. He edits all the podcast episodes too. (Thanks honey!)
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Valerie Hello, and welcome to another episode of Living a Vocal Life. Today's guest is Holly Pyle, a singer who uses different musical styles and technology to create her own unique vocal sound and compositions. Holly was an opera major at Northern Arizona University when she stumbled upon a jazz choir audition. She fell in love with the genre, eventually completing her studies in jazz and psychology since diving into a music career in 2014. She has cultivated her own progressive sound, releasing two albums and giving over 900 performances in addition to moonlighting with several acts from hip hop to country to jazz.
Holly frequently performs as a solo acapella act, using electronic looping to sample and recombine her voice into an ever-changing choir of Hollys. I met Holly when she was visiting Portland to give a concert and music workshop with my friend, pianist Darrell Grant. Their conversation about collaboration, improvisation, and the creative process had me wishing I had a way to take notes. I loved how she talked about her inner life and her relationship to creativity and knew she would be a wonderful guest here on the podcast. So thank you, Holly, for joining me today.
Holly My pleasure.
Valerie So what's your first memory of singing?
Holly When I was four, and I just made up words, and they usually sounded like country songs. And I just remember my brother overhearing me making up these nonsensical songs and making fun of me for them.
Valerie A typical brother move, right?
Holly Typical move. Yeah, because I think I started talking around somewhere between 3 and 4, and so it was pretty soon after talking with singing. And yes, that's my, that's my first memory singing.
Valerie When did you know you wanted to become a singer?
Holly I remember thinking about it when I was eight or just envisioning wanting to be on a stage with a microphone. And I started choir soon after that. But. I don't know just the idea of singing for some reason. It has always appealed since an early age, even if I wasn't really singing very often. At that point.
Valerie Do you remember what it was that really drew you in and made you so attracted to it?
Holly I used to go to church every Sunday, and they had a church choir, and there was a singer named Roxy who always had solos, and I was just blown away by her singing. That idea... And plus, I also had a neighbor at a younger age who had a little recording studio, and they let me come over and just make up some songs and sing into it. And I was just hooked from that point.
Valerie That's fun. That's actually kind of a precursor to a lot of the things that you do now with the recordings that you make.
Holly Yeah. Who knew? It's crazy.
Valerie Right? What was your family supportive, or were there other musicians in your family?
Holly No other music at all. And my mom has always been really supportive. My dad, I think, came around about a year and a half ago. He's kind of a late bloomer.
Valerie It's hard. I think for parents sometimes because they're like, oh, how are they going to make a living? And, you know, this is a hard life. And all those kinds of things. So I'm glad he's come around.
Holly Yeah. Or they'll have preferences with the genre where they're like, Why are you doing opera or why are you doing jazz? And if they don't really like it, they understand why you like it. And so eventually you just have to do your own thing long enough where they understand that you really have to do your thing for that reason.
Valerie And be your own person eventually.
Holly Yeah, right.
Valerie So speaking of opera, you made a huge leap from classical singing to jazz. And I'm really curious what that looked like in terms of technique. I mean, did you struggle at all with how to navigate those different sounds?
Holly Absolutely. I wish I had known about jazz sooner. I think the first time I ever really heard much of it was around 17 on the radio, but I didn't realize that you really could study jazz in an educational context. I really thought that going to college for music was just studying opera technique. Because a teacher I had in high school advised I get voice lessons and that teacher taught operatic, classical training. So I was trying to study opera just for the sake of going to school for music. So once I got to college up there, they had a jazz choir, and I was intrigued by it and fell in love with it. But at first, I was terrible at it. But, once six months broke, I found some way to interact with it, where it felt like I had a niche. So some of the differences between opera and jazz is, you know, opera is a very different sort of vibrancy, a different kind of projection. And I always had a hard time with it because I'm kind of a control freak with pitch.
And I always want to have this kind of straight tone and just have the pitch right centered all the time. And opera requires a little bit more variance in pitch for the vibrancy. So at my opera teacher, who is just more of like a Wagnerian, Puccini kind of singer, got a little bit frustrated with my resistance for it and was even harder when I got into jazz.
So she basically told me that I needed to choose between jazz or opera, that I couldn't pursue both because they were kind of canceling each other out with my own personal challenges. And so I had to choose jazz, and I had to quit the opera program and change the major and everything else and haven't really gone back since.
Valerie What a sad thing that you didn't have a teacher that could help you navigate those different sounds and those different kinds of vibratos and all of the stuff. Because the voice is just an instrument. And if you can hear the sound in your head, in your mind, and then just practice making those sounds; eventually, you can get it. Opera definitely takes more intensity and, and more strength, and all kinds of things. It's like the heavy weight lifting of singing. Yes, but I just feel like you can sing all styles.
Holly And I agree that to this day, maybe I just wasn't able to really handle that integration at that age. I'm not really sure, but I did find a coach more recently that specializes in both. So it's been really helpful to basically have to retrain and start over.
Valerie Wow. That's always a hard thing to do.
Holly Yeah, very humbling and frustrating.
Valerie You also studied psychology in college. Yes. And that's intriguing to me because I've always really been interested in the human mind and what makes us who we are. And so I'm wondering what attracted you to that, and how it informs the music you make now?
Holly Oh, that's a great question. Well, initially, I chose psychology because once I changed my degree from performance to general music, I had to find some sort of arbitrary minor to study. And psychology was appealing just as a general topic. So then I found out that the minor and the major are like five classes different. So then it just made sense to get another degree just out of convenience.
But yeah, I just I've always found the mind really fascinating and wanted to dig more into it. And also, I've had a history of a lot of anxiety. And so it just felt like if I learned more about the mind, it would give me more control of my life and my, my sensations.
So yeah, with songwriting, there's... This is an interesting story with psychology. But I once saw this holistic dentist, which is really random. And when I went there, she said, well, you're really disconnected, and you need to find a way to reconnect. And she advised that I do a meditation retreat, which at the time, I did not have the right to diet to be eligible for the meditation retreat. So I was like, how do I connect with myself without doing this retreat that this person told me to go do? And so songwriting was this way of trying to connect with myself and trying to connect with my sensations.
There's this ongoing reality that I am very disconnected with my experience in real-time. And songwriting is my own therapy to try and get my body to interact with experiences that I've had and understand things better and be more connected. So it's a very psychological process.
Valerie Psychological mixed with the somatic kind of?
Holly Yeah. Yeah.
Valerie Wow. That's a really wonderful way to reconnect with your body through music. I know a lot of people do that through different kinds of art. Drawing, and, I mean just it brings you back into the present moment in a way that a lot of things don't.
You also wrote an interesting song about some medication that you were on.
Holly Oh, yeah.
Valerie It's a really great tune. I really love it. Yeah.
Holly Thank you. There's definitely...
Valerie So tell us the name of the tune and how it came about.
Holly Okay. I will tell you about it. So, yeah. The song is called Zoloft. And so after I graduated college for music, I was petrified of doing music. And I just wanted to quit and avoid the whole thing. I just didn't really think I had the personality for it. And so I wanted to just find something grown up to do and found a disability claims job where my job is basically to find people who are qualified to be out of work.
I'm really type A and perfectionistic with work. And so I quickly hated my job because it was so demanding that I could never actually feel like I was accomplishing anything. So I just felt like a failure every day. And it was unbearable. And I became super depressed. And I just reached a breaking point where I just I started getting panic attacks. I didn't want to like, I would be crying while I'm driving to this job. So I had to take out my own disability claim for stress. And I knew exactly how to get the claim approved. So I just went through the motions of getting the diagnosis and a prescription.
And once I got the prescription, I just felt like I was like a puddle of nothing for a month. And I just laid on a couch. And despite how miserable I felt with the job and how much stress it was and how much I hated things, the puddle on the couch feeling was even worse. So I just kind of quit the job and the meds and started working at a coffee shop and felt way better.
Valerie And where did the song come from?
Holly So yeah, the hook of the song is basically saying, I want to feel again. And it's just saying that this sort of lifeless cloud feeling that I felt on the prescription felt worse than all of the suffering that I'd felt from my body, trying to tell me that I'm not fit for a job like this. Anytime my body gets too disconnected, there seems to be this breaking point where it has to turn, and suddenly it's like I'm becoming reborn and really connected with my experience. But I have to kind of keep killing myself to get there.
Valerie Oh, that sounds hard. Yeah, but at the same time, better than being completely blank.
Holly Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Valerie Well, one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on the podcast. Because your conversation about collaboration, improvisation, and the creative process with Darrell was so incredibly interesting and I really did wish that I'd had a big notepad there and could have just been scribbling notes the whole time. I'm wondering if you could share some of the things you talked about with our listeners.
Holly Absolutely. I find my own brain operates in a very scatterbrained way. I don't know if it's an A.D.D. thing, but I just feel like I'm juggling a lot of ideas, and it feels very disorganized. And the two of us were talking about Evernote. So I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's the coolest app. And so I have sort of a system to store these sort of confetti of ideas.
One of the pillars is sounds. And so whether I'm with a band and we're improvising, I record everything. And so I, I will listen back to everything we've recorded and kind of see if I resonate with it after the fact. And then if I do, then I can store it here and have a label for it and take notes on that label. If something comes up emotionally, maybe or some sort of visual or something to reference.
And then another pillar would be just information, especially if I have some kind of writer's block or some kind of emotional block. Research of random things helps a ton. If I just find a book that's kind of interesting. If I research... I had a phase where it's really into bees and did a bunch of research on bees, and it had this surprising amount of information about the emotional experience I was going through. So then I'll just kind of create different files under just categories of research that I found interesting. And sometimes they never take, and sometimes they do.
And then the final one is feelings. And so I'll keep an online journal that I take any kind of feeling inventory of. And then I'll sometimes we'll look through the journals and say, well, that particular feeling, I'd like to explore that more, or I feel like I need to dissect it further or that seems somewhat more universal, that it's worth sharing. And then I can kind of add it to the system.
And so then I have these sort of databanks that kind of are just waiting. And it almost feels like it's this giant dating app or something. And they all kind of float around and then someday they like all meet, and then all three pillars converge together. And I can like build a house out of it.
Valerie I love it.
Holly [00:15:06] So it's really frustrating because it's not a very prolific method. You know, I have friends that will write a song a week, and it's mind-blowing. And I'm just, how can you come up with the content? How do you know what to say? Just that, to have a clarity of thought to execute something blows my mind.
Valerie Yeah, I would be in that camp with you where I'd be going. There's so many facets to this. And I need to do more research. And I'm going to. Yeah, but you're composting a lot. I mean, it sounds like you're gathering all these elements and they're like... Well, my husband, John, is a really prolific songwriter, but he has this thing he calls the bone pile where if he gets a fragment of an idea, he'll write it down in a, in a little notebook. And then when he's writing songs, and he's looking for a hook or, you know, a drumbeat or whatever, he goes to the bone pile and excavates. And then...
Holly Oh, that's fantastic.
Valerie I know. And I think sometimes songs have they have their own life. And some songs come easy, and some songs take a lot of fallow time in the ground, so to speak, in order to sort of grow into what they're supposed to be. But I love your process. I think that's an awesome way to use Evernote.
Holly Evernote.
Valerie I know! Three pillars: sound, information, and feelings. I love that.
Holly Thank you. I mean, I also love the metaphor that your husband brings up that the idea of... It's like very anthropological that there's just life buried somewhere that you unearth and then you bring out. That has such a lovely correlation of meaning by describing it. Yeah. It's wonderful.
Valerie I'd just love to hear you talk about your relationship to improvisation.
Holly I have a band in Phoenix called House of Stairs, and most of our process with creating as a group is based on improvisation and having a practice of it where we'll have these monthly performances where each of these sort of special featured monthly things. We start by improvising, and it just kind of keeps the juices out. And especially if I think in songwriting there can be this tendency towards perfectionism and where there's this block because there's just too much sculpting happening during the clay process. And so just by having a practice of improvisation, it kind of helps balance that tendency because you have no choice. You're in the moment. You can't strengthen that muscle of being overly controlling. You just have to let the moment be exactly what it is.
Valerie And create that flexibility in the muscle. Yes, muscles that are too tight can't move. But muscles that are too flexible can't hold things either.
Holly Very well said.
Valerie I'm a little like you. I want to control. And so I just really admire that you keep putting yourself in situations in your life where you have to be flexible, and you have to just throw down.
Holly Absolutely. Especially because ego is very present in something like this because you're constantly exposed. You're constantly in some sort of light where people can judge you, where then you judge yourself. And it's really hard to bring that essence into improvisation because you just don't have room for it. I really, really appreciate sort of the therapy behind improvisation as part of the entire process just to manage a couple of those other competing energies. And also just it creates a lot of listening demand because when you're in sort of a collaborative improvisation setting, you also don't have time to be a perfectionist in your head. You really have to constantly be having this live dialog with the people around you and figuring out how to come up with things in real-time without the pressure that you have to have a good idea. So there's like a patience also that has to be attended to really make it musical or meaningful.
So, yeah, I mean, the so the band. We do a lot of improvisation. I also will sometimes do it by myself with a looping station, and then I'll record that. And that can be like a foundation for an idea. But it just seems to be easier if I just kind of have that practice for the founding blocks for a composition instead of trying to create very specific words that are too structured and finding ways to merge other things on top of it.
Valerie Wow, what a great practice. What a great thing to do with a group of people. So you just mentioned you're looping station, so let's cut to that because I think it's an amazing thing that you do with this machine. I have so many questions about how you use it. How do you create what did? Do you record your ideas as you work on them? It sounds like you probably do. But once you have a composition fairly nailed down, do you practice the moves you're making? So when you're doing it live, you're able to switch from your technology brain to your singing brain more easily? How does that whole thing work?
Holly Wonderful questions. So I'll kind of go a little chronological with looping.
There are a couple amazing looping artists that are already in rotation. Surila May is one of them. Tune Yards is another. This one girl, Teresa Anderson, not very well known, but they were a couple of looping female pioneers that cemented purchasing a looping station in the first place. And there are many different looping models. Some of them are more simple than others. So initially, I had one that had two channels or two banks that you can store loop information and then soon upgraded to the one that I have now, which has five different banks that you can store infinite information in. And so it's sort of a... It's kind of a two-way thing where, on the one hand, the technology can really inspire process because inside of this box, you do have certain limitations, but you also have certain permissions that you can get from it. Where you can, you can make the voice way lower. You can reverse things. You, you can make some loops longer than others, or you can try to apply different percussive ideas for how to fill in the spaces in a certain crafty, sneaky way. And on the other end, sometimes within this improvisation practice that we do, I have the loop station handy, and I'll try to just make up the loops on the fly and have it recorded and look back and be like, I really like that.
How can I make it a little bit more intricate or make it where I can repeat that basically just transcribe whatever it was that happened in that moment. And so certain really intricate songs came out of trying to improvise something and being surprised by something turning out a certain way. So it's just been a really helpful relationship to have with a piece of technology that's surprisingly organic.
Valerie There's parameters, and there's limitations, but you can go in there and play with what's in the sandbox and then record what you've improvised, either with the people that you're playing with or when you're just working by yourself? And then you have like the bones will say of a song or a piece of music that you then start to sculpt?
Holly Yeah. So basically the end result either is in the band context, it usually provides some sort of introduction, interlude, added texture, just because there's already members playing that are covering...
Valerie I love how you use it with the band. It's such a cool way to do intros and outros and add sections. It's cool.
Holly It's also really gratifying just being a huge choir geek and being able to maintain that sort of choir geekery today without having backup singers per se. So that's really exciting. On the other end, if I'm in my solo project where I don't have percussion, and I don't have a synth or keys or anything, I have to have a different relationship with the whole song to be more accountable to what it is the chords actually are doing, how to make a bass line, how to do the beatboxing in such a way... So, I have to have a more visceral interaction with the entire song to create every piece of it, but then also have to make it engaging. Because that's like priority number one inside of solo arranging is don't waste any time because...
Valerie You have to get there. Well, watching you online do this is amazing to me because when you have to jump right into the next part when you are doing these loops. There's no like, kind of figuring out what you're going to do next. Do you practice that part of it? I mean so that you can just do it seamlessly? Because I know you have to hear it kind of in your head right before you sing it.
Holly So it's just a giant horizontal performance. So it's like all of the notes kind of are creating this giant necklace. But then you just have to know how to stack the beads.
So those are the two parts of remembering. If I'm doing a song that's new, what I'll do is I write down the voice leading. So I write down, okay, this first line has these three notes. That third note is going to go onto this next layer, and it's going to lead to this set of notes instead of being able to just play the chord with the three notes. It's just really taking account of how they interact with each other as sort of creating like a line that can stand next to each other and then stack later.
Valerie That's a cool way to do that. Do you actually have like sheets of the stuff drawn out?
Holly Yes. So I keep like an iPad where a lot of the tunes that I haven't memorized, I can look over and see, OK, I have these four chords, and it's most effective to sing through them if I start with this note and then it can help me go to these notes. And then there are some that I've done enough times where I just remember the whole necklace, and it's just in my head that way.
There's a couple of them where I never actually took the time to figure out what the chords were. I just was like on the spot, and I was like, I think I remember how it sounds. I'm just going to try to harmonize, and voice lead this in real-time. And then it actually worked. So every once in a while, I can actually do that without having to arrange it beforehand. But usually, I still have some learning to do before I can do it that quickly all the time.
Valerie What are your practice sessions look like with the looping station when you're preparing for a performance?
Holly So when I first was starting looping in like the first six months, I probably practiced like two hours a day. The only times I really practice these days is when I have like a church gig, and I have to make a looping arrangement the night before, and then I'm going to perform it the next day and I have like a piece of paper to remember what the notes are cuz I barely know how the song goes. And so it becomes almost like a sight-reading exercise where then I have to be convincing on top of it.
Valerie Aha. Right. You have to actually perform the piece, not just do the technical part. Yeah.
Holly Yeah. So that's just a nice little extra added stress. But, so yeah, initially, the practice regimen was having a metronome and just pressing the downbeat of the loop in the metronome and then kind of waiting for a bar and then pressing it again and just to reinforce the exact feeling of a really accurate loop.
And so just because you'd find like the button would be pressed is a little late, and you could hardly hear the metronome go. And so you wanted to really hone in on the physical act of pressing the button as accurately as possible. In a live context, you know, since you're inside of an organic experience, we don't do any clicks. There's no headphone of a BPM to maintain. And so the method to be able to do looping inside of an organic band is to always be able to reinforce pressing the downbeat again. So I'll often stop the loop right before the end of the phrase and then restart it so that no matter what, it still feels accurate with the band. And the band doesn't have to worry about the downbeat kind of floating away.
Valerie Right. It has a nice feel, though. When I've watched some of the videos of you working with the band, it really feels organic in this way that I wouldn't expect. It's lovely. Yeah.
Holly A lot of touring acts use tracks, so they have some extra prerecorded elements, and we're trying to avoid that component at all costs. So we'd rather really sit down with the musicianship that's necessary to put these things in a live context.
Valerie Yes, I do know that one because we have a nine-piece band, but we really need 13 or 14 people to do the music right. So we play to, you know, even with nine people, we play to track. And it locks you in a certain kind of way that doesn't feel very musical. So I can relate to wanting to have that more organic feel. And I think it's really cool the way you've figured out how to do it.
In 2014, you took the leap into becoming a full-time artist. And I imagine that many singers listening to this podcast would love to know how you did that. When did you know it was time? How did you make the leap?
Holly It's actually one of my favorite stories.
So I took on the coffee shop thing. Did the standard Guitar Center thing. You know, it's kind of like the Community College for musicians is to work at Guitar Center — kind of kidding.
So I eventually found this really interesting job from a friend, and it was sort of a rehab center for juvie kids. And these were very particular juvenile delinquents where they had some, some extra behavioral challenges and where they really had some other life struggles that contributed to the crimes they committed. Where just serving time as a punishment really would not help integrate them. And so this was a really amazing program to help develop citizenship in kids that have really not been given the resources. And the curriculum for this program I think every person should take it. It was really life-changing. And so inside of being trained to help these kids figure out how to see themselves as a different person than they are... Because you know, what will happen, they'll commit these crimes, and then they identify with the behaviors that they've committed. And that does not help integrate someone into society whatsoever. It just sustains different abusive behaviors. And so, you know, this curriculum is really honing on how to be like a functional human being, how to really replenish your relationship to yourself. And then you have to find ways to teach children how to do that. But you have to also step into that.
Valerie Now, weren't you taking a break during this time period? From music?
Holly Yes. I was just I was hiding from music, and I wasn't really doing anything. So I was just doing this job. And every once in awhile, I went to an open mike or like a jam jazz session here and there, but nothing serious because that would be too vulnerable.
So I get there with the kids, and I have to figure out how to be a role model of someone that visualizes and goes for their dreams. And I felt like a giant hypocrite because I was hiding from what I actually wanted. And quickly, the kids found out that I sang. And so every day at work, it was a really good diversion tactic to sing for the kids because, you know, they get bored and boredom causes bad behavior. So if I sometimes might sing for them they would, it would kind of distract them for a bit. They were all super encouraging. And were just like, what are you doing here? You know, you should try out for The Voice, which actually I went and did that just because the kids told me to. Not that I got in. Not a big deal, but...
Valerie But it got you out and doing it. What a wonderful thing. Absolutely.
Holly So they were so encouraging, and it just gave me such confidence. And so then I just started really leaning into it more. And I started going to open mikes obsessively and jam sessions all the time. And I just got really hungry for it. And so I'm, I'm on this work mission. And, you know, it develops a network. Once you're just doing it all the time, you start to meet more musicians in town and you start to get more involved with the scene and really getting a sense of how it works, how people get paid, what they get paid, how they fetch those gigs, what they have to create in their repertoire and their media packaging to sell themselves as a viable artist. And so from starting that job until a little over a year later, I got enough networking to find a band that I wanted to collaborate with and figure out how to do the packaging in such a way that we could get gigs and get busier.
And so there was one angle where I wanted to be a jazz singer, but people really struggle with that genre title. And there's some sort of blacklisting with that where restaurants... I don't if it's just Phoenix, but some of them are like, well, it's my relationship with jazz is, it's this really smooth dated thing, and we want to be fresh. So, they, they want, you know, a very popular door opener is saying, well, we do a lot of pop covers. And then in order to digest that, I was saying, well, we do very eclectic versions of pop covers. And I found a group that was down to sort of develop that kind of packaging. And suddenly, one restaurant opportunity turned into a ton of different gigs. And I got busy enough doing that that I no longer had time to work part-time with this rehab clinic.
Yeah. So I was working overnight there for like a year. And then finally there was one day where the end of my overnight shift I was doing like some special on, like one of those morning news networks. Like a half an hour after my shift. And it was like, oh, my God, I'm so stressed. I can't do this anymore. So that was, that was where I finally quit that job. And yeah, it's been full-time music since that point.
Valerie Ever since. Wow. For the last four years.
Holly Yeah.
Valerie So, you took a break. You got this job with these juvenile delinquents. They turned your life around, basically. And you started doing the thing that you really love. What happened after school that made you want to take that three-year break?
Holly I felt really frustrated with school in general. I'm just in the sense that there's so many things they teach you that are very useful with music, especially you know, theory, diction. There's performance opportunities. But there was a huge void as far as the career side of it. As far as what kind of repertoire is actually relevant to learn. The marketing skillsets? The business side of things. I still feel behind on a lot of it. And also just, just the fact that this industry is a sales job. And there's a psychological skill set to develop in learning sales. And if you don't know when you're getting into that, and you just think, OK, all I want to do is make music and write music. I didn't sign up for this other side, where I'm having to convince people into investing in my product. And there's this weird psych thing where you don't want to have a product to sell. And it just created a lot of dissonance. And I just decided that I wasn't cut out for a sales job. It just made me shy away from leaning into the entire set of attributes that would be necessary to really do this kind of career.
So it felt like a breakup like you have this boyfriend you love 'em. You can't, you just... There's just too much politics. And everyone's got their opinions, and you just got to break it off. And you still long for them to miss them, but you're like, but I know better. And until it comes to a breaking point where you get back together. And that's really how this whole thing fell.
Valerie Yes, you get into it because you love music, and you love to sing. And then all of a sudden it's about the business. My journey is very different than yours. But I did come to a point where I was like, Wow, I need to break up, too. I'm not having fun anymore. I'm not loving this the way I once did. And I don't really like sales either. I'm not, you know, a marketing pro. I just want to feel the way I do when I'm making the music. And it's taken me a long time to figure out how to infuse the business parts of the music with the same kind of creativity that I am using in the actual music creativity piece. How has it changed for you since you first broke up and then got back together?
Holly Fair. Fair. I guess it's really honoring what the qualities of music are that really brought you there in the first place. And I guess realizing that those qualities can empower anybody in their own relationship with what they're doing.
I just had a fear that marketing meant that I'm just flaunting the feathers of my own ego and that it's this showcase of, Look how great I am and... And really, marketing is not trying to do that. And it's just an easy stereotype to think about from a distance. Especially just because there's a vulnerability inside of marketing. There's a lot of room for rejection in marketing. And that same sort of fear of rejection can happen when you're on a solo gig, and nobody claps for you at all. And you have to figure out how to sit with that sensation of your relationship with rejection. And instead of focusing on that and letting that be what de-motivates you, really thinking about the quality of what this music does for you personally and letting that be what, what you show people. Especially, it's just that, you know, art is a way to connect, whether it's you're connecting with the art itself or the art helps you connect with other people.
So, you know, trying to find what your actual purposes and then let your work support your purpose. So my purpose is wanting to be a connector. And so whatever insecurities I have with marketing can't get in the way of that. And so it's kind of asking that question like if I have this anxiety and this resistance to this very necessary part of this career, is that resistance going to help serve me or is it working against my purpose. Kind of bringing it to that kind of vantage point is a good motivator just, just to not get so negative. So then you just get to market your humanity instead of this sort of like ego presentation, that is fragile and insecure.
Valerie Right. People don't like to be marketed to. No, actually, they really they really don't. And when they can sniff that out pretty quickly, you know? So it sounds like you've learned a lot since taking that leap. If you could go back in time and have a conversation with the person you were then, what would you say to her?
Holly Great question. Trust the process. Because I think when you're first starting out, there's this kind of weird time-warp because you observe your potentiality, and you observe, sort of where you feel like you want to walk or where you're gonna head, but no one else sees what you see.
And you always want to... I don't know for me, I always have this problem where I believe other people more than myself. And so if there's this sort of very small-voiced intuition that says, I'm capable of this, this thing that's bigger than myself. And no one around you believes you or really has any evidence. They just kind of treat you like you're not this potentiality, it can create a lot of dissonance and a lot of self-doubt. I wanted this external validation for what I felt was that I was capable of or what I was starting. Yeah, I just wish I had more patience with that when I started out because it just felt so invisible for such a long time.
There's no rush. The point is not this trophy thing. That, people, think there's such a gratification behind achievement, but it's actually such a short-lived experience because it's really just a really quick stepping stone to the next feeling of distance from the next trophy. It's just getting used to that feeling is so much more empowering than this attachment to having to have this trophy to feel validated.
Valerie Right. Because then you're not really staying connected. You're staying connected to the result. You're not staying connected to why you're doing it in the first place. Which is the thing that has the real juice. The real energy. Yeah, I know that feeling of reaching for the gold ring, you know, like, Oh, I missed it this time. I'm just reaching, reaching, reaching. And it never feels good. It really doesn't.
But reaching for new things inside of your creative life is different. You know, when you hear something, and you're not quite able to do it yet, that's a different kind of reach that I think is, is a lot healthier. So I just have a couple more questions for you. That was wonderful, by the way. I think it's a really important thing for singers to hear because there's a lot of comparison that goes on and comparison really kills creativity, you know.
So, what are the pros and cons of being a singer today versus being a singer in prior eras?
Holly I do like that there's more room for sort of a uniqueness in genre. And from what I understand about the comparison between then and now is, then more heavily relied on having a label to really create anything or to have any sort of reach. And today has, has way more opportunity for anyone to really express themselves in a very unique way. Though, the other side of that is that there's so much out there now that it actually is really hard to get exposure. And there's still sort of a ceiling inside of, there are still gatekeepers inside of certain parts of like the streaming industry that it's really hard to break through without having some sort of PR, or a publisher, or agent. So there's just certain frustrations there. And then certain cons, too, is there's that frustration with having to run the business independently. You have to reach a certain point before you can actually start hiring people to do a lot of the busywork. And personally, I have a hard time being able to juggle the busy work alongside the creative process.
Valerie It's really hard. It is really hard. It's a, you're your own business, and you have to create the product, which is the music. And that takes a lot of time. And then you have to do all this, all this other stuff. But the good thing about having to do that is that you learn hopefully how to do those things so that when you do hire somebody to do it, you know if they're doing a good job or not, you know? So speaking of time, what's next for you?
I do want to try to start recording another album with House of Stairs, hopefully by June. So I have to write four songs in the next three months to try and do that, which usually songs take me two months to write. So we'll, we'll see. Maybe I have a feeling... I'm really optimistic about this year. It's just been a really beautiful clearing of space and thought in the past couple months. So I am confident maybe that this is an achievable goal. And that... I have this sort of secret hope that someday I'll have the gumption to maybe do a solo release. And I'm still kind of debating whether that's going to be more on the jazz side of things to do a series of jazz arrangements that are just in my name or even to traverse into more of the looping style and kind of push that forward a little bit more and... Because there's just a vulnerability inside of completely creating a composition alone, just because there's a lot of, you know, there's there's vulnerabilities and so much of the orchestration. You know, I'm not a drummer, I'm not a guitar player. I'm not a bass player. So there's the attempt to try and manage any of that. It's very exposed. But deep down, I really, really want to strengthen my ability to record myself and to have more interaction with the composition process from the foundation of it, more than just sort of the sprinklings of it.
Valerie Well, I have a feeling that we are going to hear a lot more from you in the years to come, and I hope that you share whatever it is that you're creating with me so that I can share it with others, because I, I really love your work. And I think there's just so much that I see you doing in the future.
Holly That means a lot to hear from you. Thank you.
Valerie Where can people find you online?
Holly House of Stairs has a website: HouseOfStairsMusic.com. I also have a personal website at HollyPyle.com, which is PYLE. There's a lot of stuff on YouTube. There's Instagram, Facebook, kind of the socials are available as well. Spotify, iTunes.
Valerie It's so great to have you on the show. Thank you again for being here.
Holly So honored. Thank you so much.
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