Musician soothes the soul
Ryan Adriaens, whose stage name is Ryann, performs. Photos submitted
By Tom Victoria
Ryan Adriaens uses music to soothe the soul through storytelling.
The Netherlands musician, whose moniker is Ryann, explained why this is the best way to express himself.
“I've always made music because it was a way at first to put my creativity in something,” he said. “I really wanted to tell stories, but I can't draw. I can't really film something. I tried a lot of things but nothing worked. Music was something that worked for me to express my creativity.”
Ryann, 21, said music not only is a way to help others deal with their emotions, but his as well.
“It really helps to cope with some kinds of experiences,” he said. “If I experience something bad or something I have to get out of my head, I write a song about it and it makes me feel so much better. That's the main reason why I make music.”
Ryann described his style.
“Of course, pop music,” he said. “But I also really like experimental music. When I make a song, it's not like anything I've made before or anything I'm going to make in the future. Every song needs to be something on its own and something I've never made before. That's really important to me, that it's all different and experimental and try to make something new that you haven't heard before.”
Ryann’s current release is Housewife, a song about feeling love for the first time.
“I want to create a world in which everyone has the freedom to be themselves,” he said about the sentiment behind the song.
Ryann’s prior release was I regret breaking up with you on November 15.
“That really came two weeks after I broke up,” he said. “I was like, did I make the right choice? Why did I leave him? It was great, right? You forget the reasons why you broke up. You just want to get back to that safe connection and that love with him. Now, I realize that I've made the right decision. But that song really captures that moment of the doubt of did I make the right choice to break up with him even though I knew that I wasn't in love and that it was the right decision to make.”
Ryann’s previous release was Gay Struggles.
“Gay Struggles, I wrote about things that I experienced in my life like being gay in this time in this place,” he said. “I'm so incredibly lucky to live here and in this time that is actually now more accepted than it used to be. But there are still things that I'm also afraid of and that I think aren't good. It makes you feel scared. And that was just in my head. I wrote it really fast, like half an hour. Everything just came out and I was just like, yes, this is exactly what I want to say.”
Ryann recalled the experiences the song evoked.
“I was afraid to hold my boyfriend's hand when I was walking on the street or to kiss him in a public space just because I'm afraid that people might say something,” he said. “That's really what that song is about.”
Ryann draws inspiration from his own life to make music.
“I've discovered that I actually only like my own songs when I write them completely to the truth and exactly how I've experienced something,” he said. “For school, we have to write sometimes in someone else's perspective or something that happens in the world. And that's fun to do. But the songs that I really, really love are the songs that are exactly the truth. That every lyric in it is exactly how I felt about something instead of something I've made up or is more like a fantasy.”
Ryann explained his creative process.
“I think of lyrics first,” he said. “What happens is that I have a topic in mind that I'm thinking about a lot. And then I just sit behind the piano. The first line most of the time just comes out and then after that, when it's really an important thing to me and the topic, then usually the song pours out really quickly. Usually, it's first lyrics and then immediately the melody after that.”
Ryann said it’s easier for him to write melancholy tunes.
“I found that it's easier for me to write a little bit sad songs,” he said. “But I'm actually an outgoing person. I really like to go to the club and dance all night to uptempo songs. I've tried now for so many times for so long, but I just can't write a happy uptempo song. I'm now asking other people like co-writers, hey, I really want to make an uptempo song. Help me because the only songs I write are melancholy songs.”
Ryann is ready to perform in front of live audiences again.
“A few years ago, I did it more,” he said. “I was asking venues here in the neighborhood: can I maybe perform? I let that a little bit go because I was really insecure about my singing and my performance and my songs. I had not a lot of confidence. But lately, I'm really confident about the songs that I write and put out and about my voice. I'm actually thinking a lot about performing them live again because I'm proud of it and I'm confident about it and I think it may help people or may help them out. But I also really like performing. Actually, I miss it a lot.”
Ryann enjoys both parts of music: producing the music and performing it in front of an audience.
“At the moment, more of the production and sitting behind my computer and working on the song,” he said. “I also really miss performing live and I really want to grow and get better at live performing because it's so much fun to be with people and sing for them and connect with them.”
Ryann recalled the first musician he heard as a kid.
“The first thing that comes to my mind is a CD that my mother always played from Adele,” he said. “I didn't even really get the song or really think about it but that's for me I think the first thing that I really encountered with songs.”
Ryann was a teen before he started singing, but much younger when picking up his first instrument.
“I think 15 or something,” he said about singing. “I first started playing the trumpets, I think I was a 6-year-old or 7. And then the production and songwriting and singing really just came around 14 or 15.”
Although Ryann no longer plays the trumpet, he does play the piano.
“That’s something I played immediately when I started a little bit of songwriting,” he said. “My dad used to be a musician, so he had this keyboard and then I started playing it.”
Playing the keys led Ryann to start writing his own music.
“I do remember the first thing that I did was just play notes on piano,” he said. “When I had something that I thought this is beautiful, I recorded with my camera on my phone. I had hundreds of little recordings, just three or four notes playing. I started to learn that you could write songs. I started with playing a chord or something. But the first songs that I wrote were all instrumental. It was just a piano, no melody, no lyrics. It was all instrumental. The real songwriting as in lyrics, a melody, that came way later actually.”
Ryann recalled the moment of realization that he could make music.
“I do remember that one day I made something like an instrumental and I started to put that in a program way to make lead sheet music,” he said. “I put all in the notes and everything and I printed that out. I looked at it and I was like, damn, I made this piece of music. This is so cool.”
Ryann would like to incorporate horns into his music someday.
“I've never worked with a horn player in real life but I always think it adds so much to a sound,” he said. “Maybe one day, a song with just vocals and a horn would be cool.”
Ryann, who also is a film composer, cited his musical inspirations.
“I'm really inspired by film music, like Ludwig Goransson or Michael Giacchino, all the big film composers,” he said. “That is a huge inspiration because in film music, they use chords and everything that you don't hear in pop music. Pop music is sometimes really basic chords, while the film music is really experimental and chords that people think that never fits in a pop song. And that's really cool to try and use those chords in a pop song.”
Ryann wants to make good music not based solely on commercial value.
“I discovered when your focus is on becoming famous or a success, then the songs that I write really suck,” he said. “I'm only thinking about what the people are going to like, and I really hate it. My goal is not to have success or become famous, but by doing what I love. And when it comes, that's fine. It's okay. But it's not my main goal to be I'm going to become a celebrity. I just want to do what I want to do. And when fame is connected on that, that's fine. That's really cool.”
Ryann has a broad audience.
“When I look at statistics, it's a really big range from people who are 16 and people who are 60,” he said. “I think that's really cool. But when I go perform live, I really want to target an audience who just want to be themselves and are happy, maybe my age and just want to have a good time. That would be amazing if those people could come to my concert one day.”
Ryann said the public image of being a musician is the same as the person.
“What I post is exactly who I want to be in real life,” he said. “I tried for a while becoming a person that everybody likes and that is cool. But that's for me, it's really exhausting to post something that is actually not me. It's so much easier to post things that are really me. That's also when I like it the most and have the most fun. There's a person that is on those posts and is on Instagram that's exactly who I am in real life.”
Lucas said it’s vital people accept others’ differences.
“I do think that we can be much more open-minded and more acceptive of if you're weird or different,” he said. “That's cool. That should be normal.”
Ryann doesn’t have to struggle to stay motivated.
“I stay motivated because I do things because I really like to do them,” he said. “I really love to do them. I don't do them for other people or because other people expect it from me. I just do it because I love to do it. And that's also something that keeps me going. I love to do it just for myself. It's my satisfaction.”
Ryann dispensed advice to aspiring musicians.
“Two things,” he said. “Tell yourself every day that you are a musician. Eventually, you'll believe it that you're a musician. By doing that, you're going to look at the world as if you are a musician. So you're going to listen to music a little bit different or look at images a little bit different. Just tell yourself you're a musician and go look at the world like you are a musician.”
Ryann added musicians or anyone else should create work that they want to do.
“Never do something or create something with the goal or the aim for people to like it,” he said. “Just really make everything in order for yourself to like it and make what you have in your head instead of thinking about what is going to give me new followers or what are people going to love. Be really honest with yourself and make what you want to make.”
Ryann’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryannsounds/
Ryann’s music: li.sten.to/iregretbreakingupwithyou