Chris Stanley Interview

What inspired you to start creating music and how long have you been creating music for?

I've been around my family who are professional musicians in various areas. Going back generations, I have a great aunt who played percussion for the Chicago Symphony, and another who sang in the choir. Vinyl records were always playing in the house, and when I had my own little boombox, I played around with the eq and listened to radio stations. I got into music programs at school and started playing trumpet when I was 11 or 12. I never put it down and through that, I learned to read music and understand music theory. When I started transcribing music, I began to understand musical devices and started to find my own voice. I'm still learning, and I've been playing the trumpet for about 20 years. I've been creating music in my own way ever since, little by little as I got more into tech and understood audio engineering more.

Do you have any placements? If you have had any placements, who have you had them with?

I haven't had any major label placements, but I collaborated with a singer named Grace Blackford and Isaiah Campbell Pyro on Grace's project. Campbell Pyro reached out to me.

What kind of samples do you normally like to use when creating your own beats?

I use a mix of things. I got into sampling by listening to records on the radio and buying CDs with my allowance. Nowadays, I create a lot of my own samples because I'll wake up with an idea and write it down. I love many different genres of music.

What vibe were you trying to achieve with this sound pack?

The sound pack feels stylistically fluid at times, with mixes of hip-hop, jazz, classical, cinematic, and experimental sounds. It's about exploration and freedom, with many genres mixing together in the pack.

What vibe were you trying to achieve with this sound pack?

It felt stylistically fluid at times, especially when I created stuff and was able to sit on it for a little bit. Then, I listened back to it, refreshed my ears. So, there are mixes of hip-hop, jazz, classical, almost cinematic feeling material, as well as completely experimental sounds. Some sound I created with non-percussive instruments, like a Harmon trumpet mute and a quarter-inch connector, and just banged them together to see what would happen. Overall, the vibe would be exploration and freedom, if that was a thing. But it's so many genres mixing into one that just becomes so fluid. Even inside the sample, you start to hear different things.

How do you see other creators using this pack?

Stretching your ears, being okay with stepping outside of your comfort zone. I created these samples as a means to stretch myself because creating this project overall was a significant challenge of my own, creating samples is one thing, but creating a sample pack is a whole different beast. It's stretching what you may feel to be your musical taste or your musical palette and just really needs to get out there just to see what happens. It's a start, really focusing on what may be your process rather than what the result will be. We get so focused on the process that great stuff happens anyways, it's just a matter of time.

What tips do you have for creators using the pack?

When I initially designed these samples, they came off as a little bit warm sonically. But that doesn't mean the frequencies aren't there that you may not hear. So, when you're EQing, you can go to extreme measures with the EQ, which will completely change the sonic palette of the sound because if those frequencies weren't cut out, they were just masked at some point. A lot of the harmonic samples were created as a means to be melodically and harmonically strong so that they could function with or without percussion, solely by themselves. And even through that, I created them with the intent to have them stretched tempo-wise. Be it shrunken or stretched apart to create entirely new ideas. This means they're intended to be mutated.

What advice would you have for upcoming creators?

Speaking from a trumpet perspective, since I've been doing that on a professional level for the longest time, audio engineering and sampling come in second place. I spent a lot of time worrying about what might happen or what if this doesn't work out, or scenarios where you feel like or you're afraid something's not going to work out or you might fail, I guess would be the best word. Don't worry about that stuff. So many of these outcomes that we sometimes get blessed to be a part of are sometimes out of our control. It depends on a huge set of factors that we don't control. But, the work that we put in is definitely in our control. So, find and search for the processes that light that fire within you. If something leaves you excited and energized, no matter how challenging the work is, that's what you should be doing because nothing's gonna stop you from doing that. No setback or what may be viewed as a setback should make you think about quitting, even though there's a lot of uncertainty, doubt, and frustration, especially when it comes to pursuing your art or your craft from a technical perspective like audio engineering or just music in general, being purely a musician, a singer, an instrumentalist, all that stuff. It comes with uncertainty and doubt right from the get-go because it's really up to you to do the work, and with the knowledge that the results are gonna happen, it's just a matter of time. But you're setting yourself up for success when you do the work to the best of your ability. Not saying you need to feel ready, but when you do the work, you're preparing yourself more each day. And it's just finding that space where you just feel like you're playing, whether you're working dials or when you're working, be it.

What are the top three producers of all time?

Jay Dilla, Maup, and Lil' Kim.

What is your favorite studio snack?

I love tea. Yeah. But through that stuff like gummy bears and chips. Those are probably my favorite go-to things. I do drink coffee, but I don't like drinking it a lot. So whenever I feel like I need something other than water, I go for tea. I love different types of teas, and then, yeah, gummy bears, chips, snack stuff like that.

What's your dream collaboration?

My major inspiration of all time is Tyler. I love him so much so it would be a dream to do anything with him.