Singer connects to music

Isaac Roughton plays a tune. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Isaac Roughton views music as an everlasting connection. The singer and songwriter makes that happen with his voice and instruments.

The musician explained the association people have with song.

“It's just something that connects in an easy way,” he said. “I feel like it's always there. Music is not something that stops when I turn off the radio. It's always in my mind or I'm thinking about it or I'm listening to it. I don't know if there's a time in my day when I'm not imagining some kind of song.”

Isaac, 18, of Michigan explained his musical style.

“I am a contemporary musician who tries to do it all,” he said. “I really am someone who experiments with everything. I grew up in school being trained classically. Over Covid, I had so much time. I spent that time picking up stuff like guitar, ukulele, production and composition. I'm someone who's discovering it through my own lens. Most of the stuff that I'm going to school for, I've actually never had formal training for. Obviously, voice I've trained a lot for. I'm studying voice in school, but I'm someone who's exploring as themselves in a forest, trying to make things out.”

Isaac enjoys singing to an audience.

“I've got a lot of local stuff coming up,” he said. “I perform with a band and I perform on my own. I do both of those things on the same day at a local event. It's the Ann Arbor Art Fair. I've played at farmers’ markets. It's a lot of street corner setups, basically on a sidewalk where some restaurant will have me in for outdoor seating or whatnot.”

Isaac favors some of his work over others.

“My favorite that I have done is an album called Equanimity,” he said. “It's very short for an album, should even be called an EP, but it is long enough to be an album technically. I put this out when I was learning how to do things on my computer. I just went up into my DAW (digital audio workstation) and it literally started with this random MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) pack. It's a preset chord progression that you can load in automatically without having to do anything.”

Isaac then fiddled with the piece.

“I put that into my computer, and I was really just playing around with it,” he said. “After a couple hours, I knew I had this track that I liked. And so I started with this, and I made seven more like it. I'd never done anything like that before. It's an instrumental album because that's what my roots were. I was barely even singing at the time that I made that. I put this together and I was like, you know what? Let's just put it on Spotify. I did, and that was a lot of fun. That was a huge learning thing for me.”

Isaac recalled the album’s inspiration.

“Equanimity was an experiment,” he said. “It began during COVID, when my family stayed at a private house for a little while when school was just Zoom meetings. Essentially, I played around in FL Studio because I was super bored, and came up with a few simple piano parts. After we got back, I had an itch to try to make something out of them, and I began to create some full tracks that I could share. After I ended up with enough random ideas, I tweaked everything a bit so that it felt similar. What began as sporadic thoughts at a table in some beach house molded into an album that I called Equanimity.”

Isaac explained the album title.

“I chose this because it is defined as mental calmness, composure and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation,” he said. “This perfectly portrays the state of mind I was in at the beach house during Covid, and I felt it was a beautiful word in itself, so why not name it my album. Each track feels like an adventure that I couldn't be having. While it is instrumental, each track is a memory or daydream of something I cannot be doing because I am stuck inside.”

Isaac hopes his listeners get at least one message from his music.

“I really try to live by this belief of doing things that are meaningful,” he said. “There's always those moments in life that you're questioning.”

Isaac compared the idea to the decision whether to hold a door for someone.

“You have to decide if you're gonna wait 10 seconds and hold it or just let it go,” he said. “I'm trying to start living my life every single time, always waiting the 10 seconds, holding the door. That's my whole thing. I try to convey that to people.”

Isaac draws upon real life for inspiration, but with a creative take on it.

“I really like to use metaphors and try to make what could be a very imaginative story,” he said.

Isaac tries to not overcomplicate the songwriting process.

“If it's flowing, I let it flow and I leave it there,” he said. “I have literally 50 Google Docs of songs that I've written and done nothing with. What I found is that if I have an idea and it's working, I will just let it be, and I will almost let that moment be. There's something I used to really stress about. I need to review, review, make these lyrics perfect, which I think you could do. And I do that sometimes. Sometimes, I'm reading through and I’m like, oh, it'd be cooler if I did this instead of this phrase or something like that.”

Isaac cited a famous tune that was written quickly.

“I was watching an interview with Billie Eilish and FINNEAS, who wrote the song What Was I Made For? from the Barbie soundtrack,” he said. “That entire song was written in 30 minutes. A lot of people really like the lyrics. I like the lyrics. I think it's great. So that helped me. It doesn't have to be reviewed so much that it's perfect. It just has to capture a moment effectively.”

Isaac is relocating from Ann Arbor to attend college at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

“I'm studying voice,” he said. “I'm gonna major in composition production.”

Isaac wants music to be his future.

“Overall, the long-term goal is to be able to be a full-time musician, which is very broad, very niche,” he said. “I'm going to Berklee because I feel like it will give me the best chance at getting into the industry in the best way that I can. I have no industry connection already existing. My family's not musical at all. I felt like Berklee was the best step in the right direction to getting into the industry.”

Isaac has mixed feelings about the prospect of becoming famous.

“I don't fully know what it would be like,” he said.

Isaac said his initial inclination would be not wanting to be restricted from leaving his house to avoid being mobbed.

“But on the other hand, it sticks with my narrative story of getting my message to as many people as possible,” he said. “At some point, if I've reached a level of success where everyone would notice me everywhere, then I must be proud of what I've accomplished at that point.”

Isaac named the first musician to impact him.

“The biggest influence at the earliest time that I can think of right now is Alan Walker,” he said. “It must have been fifth or sixth grade when I was starting on the violin for the first time just through school orchestra that I started to hear him. I realized I had this random DAW on my phone that I had that I could make little musical ideas with. I learned about electronic music production like Alan Walker does. I started to do that. That was probably the biggest and earliest inspiration that I can think of because I heard it. That was the first time I think I ever thought that I wanted to try to do that from somebody.”

Isaac has been around music since he was a tyke.

“I did toddler music classes,” he said. “I don't even know where it was. Through my preschool maybe. My parents would take me. I don't remember any of this. This is what I've heard. I was 2 or 3 years old, and they'd have random percussion instruments or we would clap along to a beat or something. That's the earliest music I've had.”

Isaac began focusing on vocalizing a few years ago.

“I've been singing for almost three years,” he said. “I always liked singing. It wasn't the first time I'd ever sang. Three years ago, this is when I started to do lessons. I'd never been in choir before. I'd always been in orchestra, an instrumentalist. I found myself singing a lot, randomly, and I didn't really think anything of it. I didn't even think I was gonna go into music at this point. I was like, well, I like it a lot and I'd rather not suck at it. Started on a whim. I wasn't even in choir at this point, but I had taken a music theory class with the person who is the choir teacher. I emailed her asking for recommendations. I literally clicked the first link that she sent me, signed up for a lesson, and I've been doing it ever since.”

Isaac’s early YouTube days led to a moment of realization that he was going to become a musician.

“I always knew I wanted to do it just because I like it so much, whether I keep a piano or a guitar in my house and do it for fun,” he said. “But I can give you a moment. I started originally doing YouTube videos and livestreaming video games. It was doing pretty well. I had a couple videos that actually went big and got a lot of views, which is really cool. I was doing that for a long time, maybe two or three years. I was pretty consistent with it, and it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot of stuff. Don't regret it at all. But one day, maybe over the course of a week, I'd been playing with music. I had software on my computer and I was playing with it.”

Then, Isaac had an epiphany.

“Maybe the summer going into my 10th grade year of high school or maybe even 11th grade, it just hit me that I don't want to do this,” he said. “I want to do music instead. That day, I made a video saying I'm done. I'm going to go to music. Stay subscribed. You'll see more of what I'm doing if you want. I uninstalled the streaming software. I uninstalled every single video game that I had.”

Isaac wasn’t always comfortable performing in front of a crowd.

“But it always felt like something I wanted to do,” he said. “The first time I ever sang in front of someone was eighth grade. I don't know why I ever did this because I was never a person in theater, but the first production I ever did was (You’re a Good Man) Charlie Brown, the musical. I walked in and did the audition, and I got Charlie Brown. That was the first time I'd ever sang. I remember being incredibly nervous to sing in front of people. I was untrained. I was probably not sounding that great. My voice would crack all the time. It was too high for me to even be singing in the first place. Since then, it's gotten a lot easier.”

But Isaac’s butterflies aren’t totally gone.

“It is still a little nerve-wracking when I'm walking into my Berklee audition for example,” he said. “When the stakes are higher, there's more nerves.”

Isaac can play various instruments.

“I can get my way around pretty well with guitar, piano, mandolin, ukulele, bass guitar and a drum kit,” he said. “I know how to make sound out of a couple others, but those are really what I would consider my main instruments.”

Isaac would like to incorporate one instrument more into his music at some point.

“The instrument that I'm best at out of what I've named is my mandolin,” he said. “The reason I ever learned it is for a band that I'm in that is bluegrass. It's called the Saline Fiddlers Philharmonic. I play mandolin for that, and that has a very interesting sound. It is just so unique. It's very carefully used in pop. If I didn't play it, I wouldn't even hear it most of the time. But people like Noah Kahan use it all the time. I noticed Taylor Swift, of all people, has a lot of mandolin in a couple of her albums.”

Isaac also wants to do more with the traditional friend of the singer/songwriter.

“My secondary answer would actually be guitar, because I'm just starting to kind of get over a new curve with it where I'm learning how to do unique things,” he said. “When I'm gigging on a street corner, I'm honestly not doing anything more than cowboy chords, just strumming. But I'm beginning to learn new things that I'm experimenting with.”

Isaac said people don’t have to fret about becoming the topic of a song if they’ve dated him.

“Not personally, but I will say there's a lot of lyric inspiration that can come from relationships,” he said. “That's in every emotion possible.”

Isaac cited a British musician among his current musical inspirations.

“Without a doubt, Jacob Collier,” he said. “From a music theory writing perspective, I would say Jacob Collier. Another person who is hugely inspirational to me is Jack Antonoff, who is producer for everybody it seems like. And Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote music for The Greatest Showman, Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land. Pretty impressive list of things that they've done. Those are my three main inspirations.”

Isaac is following suit.

“I'm actually taking a backseat on the whole artistry thing,” he said. “I'm trying to write a musical. See how it goes.”

Isaac said it can benefit a musician to be able to play works from earlier periods, including classical.

“I feel like it can be helpful to learn from,” he said. “Maybe my answer would change for this in 10 or 20 years. I've been pretty confident that I wanted to do contemporary music for a while. I was actually planning on doing classical voice in college and being in an opera company and singing opera. That's great. But I spent a week at an opera camp. It took me three days of being there to realize that I didn't want to do that anymore and I wanted to pursue contemporary music.”

Isaac explained having that knowledge and ability isn’t necessary, though.

“I can apply a lot of classical music knowledge to contemporary music because at the end of the day, harmony is harmony,” he said. “It's gonna be very similar. Honestly, though, I don't think it's necessary, that it's that vital.”

Isaac doesn’t take precautionary steps to protect his voice unless he’ll be taxing it more than usual.

“The whole philosophy behind singing is to sing in a very healthy way,” he said. “You actually sound the best if you're completely relaxed and you're not feeling any pain whatsoever. That's the goal. If you're singing healthily, you should be fine. I know how to sing healthily and I know what I'm doing, so I'm in a good spot. When I go to Berklee, I'm sure that it will be intense because I'm not a professional singer. I still have some tension that could harm me. Some things that I do, humidifier is huge, especially in the winter. I'm definitely gonna have a humidifier in my room going all the time in my dorm room just to be safe there.”

Isaac’s mood impacts his songwriting.

“It fully depends on why I'm writing the song and what it's about and what I'm feeling in the moment,” he said. That's just how it is for me. If I've had a terrible day and I have to go write a happy song, it's gonna be bad.”

Isaac finds lyrics a freer way to express himself.

“I like the freedom that lyrics give to express however I want to,” he said. “Because if I'm talking to someone and they don't understand, then I have to say it in a way that I didn't say the first time. But with lyrics, I can say it how I want to the first time. And it doesn't matter if no one understands, because I understand.”

Isaac isn’t perturbed if someone interprets his lyrics differently than he intended.

“That's an incredible thing about art is that it can be interpreted, especially instrumental music,” he said. “That's something that's interesting about instrumental music. Lyrics convey meaning and everything else conveys feeling. And the feeling can be interpreted in a way that lyrics cannot necessarily be.”

Isaac stays motivated to write music by not waiting for inspiration to hit and not being discouraged when it doesn’t jibe.

“I can sit down and make myself write as opposed to: oh well, I'm not inspired,” he said. “Doesn't matter. Make yourself do something. Sometimes, it doesn't work, and I find that okay. Sometimes, I sit down and it's just not happening. I tried. I get up and forget about it for the time being.”

Isaac dispensed advice to aspiring musicians.

“Just do stuff that you like and create stuff that you like,” he said. “If someone's trying to busk (perform in public for tips) on a street corner and they hear that there's a bunch of crowd favorites, but they hate the crowd favorites, don't play them. I hear this all the time, people telling me you should play this song. I'm sure it's a great song. I'd never heard of it, and I don't like the song. Even if it would be a crowd-pleaser, even if a thousand people would come running over and give me $100 bills, it's not sustainable for me to do something that I don't like. That's my biggest advice is do things that you like now.”

Isaac’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isaac.roughton/

Isaac’s website: https://sites.google.com/view/isaacroughton/home