Exposed Vocals Interviews The Oceania Tenor

Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?

The Oceania Tenor: We’ve all spent most of our lives in Calgary, Alberta.  The three of us have been playing music in some form for a long while, and we were all looking to start a new musical project, so it seemed natural to have a couple of jams with each other.  Something clicked and here we are a couple of years later still making music together.

Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?

The Oceania Tenor: Nathan – The name comes from a lyric on Iron Seas. “A tenor in spirit, in a dead current,” is the direct quote, which is a kind of apology to a close friend of mine that passed away several years ago, for not speaking or seeing each other in the days before his death. It was about his continued drug use and instead of confronting it I kind of distanced myself from it. Thus I think it’s important that we don’t shy away from speaking up, when it comes to something that can be that destructive.

Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?

The Oceania Tenor:  Online music sharing has given artists such as ourselves an amazing platform to share our music with the listening community, and as listeners we love how easy it is to find and support new artists.  Currently we do not have any music available for free, but doing so can be a great way for bands to market themselves by making it as easy as possible to access their music.  Our second EP which we plan to start recording soon will be released for free on Bandcamp.

Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?

The Oceania Tenor: We ourselves have quite a small following as of yet, but we have a few tips for starting out as a small band. Networking via online platforms or word of mouth with other bands/artists can help you gauge what opportunities are locally available, such as live venues looking to book, or other gigs wherein an empty slot needs to be filled.  When you release music, make sure you give CDs to university and college radio stations too, as they are supportive of the local music scene and will quite likely play one of your songs.

Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?

The Oceania Tenor: All three of us are always sharing new music with each other to find inspiration, and we also find ourselves inspired by experimenting with new playing styles and techniques on our instruments.  When we write music, either Nathan or Riley usually start a Guitar Pro file with some riffs and ideas and send it to everyone else.  Then we collectively build upon and restructure these ideas while we write our own parts, and when we are finished writing a song we already have a demo of programmed instruments.  In addition to allowing songwriting to be more collaborative, using Guitar Pro allows us to have a very useful practicing tool as well as a tempo track to use for our recording sessions when a song is done.

Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?

The Oceania Tenor:  We use Bandcamp (https://theoceaniatenor.bandcamp.com), Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/theoceaniatenor), and Twitter (https://twitter.com/TheOceaniaTenor) to communicate with our followers and share our music.

Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?

The Oceania Tenor: We would probably dedicate plenty of resources to producing and releasing new music, and probably set up some kind of tour. Studio work and touring is quite expensive and as with most music projects, they all have some kind of initial investment. That kind of money would certainly relieve some of the restrictions that exist currently.

Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?

The Oceania Tenor: Our main channels of promotion right now are playing live shows, and sharing our progress through our Facebook page.  We have some amazing supporters that help us out by sharing our music via online platforms as well.

Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?

The Oceania Tenor: Our debut EP is almost complete, and we are very excited to be releasing it soon.  We are currently organizing a release show for it as well, with some other artists that we are fans of.  In addition to that, we have been working hard writing new music and hope to start tracking for our next release within the next month.

Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?

The Oceania Tenor: Making music is such an integral part of our lives, it’s hard to imagine what we would all be doing if we weren’t making music.  We would likely spend all that time listening to even more music than we do now, get to listening to those albums that passed under the radar.

Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?

The Oceania Tenor:  With all three of us being university students and having jobs in addition to playing music, it certainly can be difficult to stay ahead in our musical life.  Our approach has been to always be working on something, even if it is at a slow pace.  That way we can always retain our motivation and excitement about creating music, even during busy times when it is difficult to juggle all of our responsibilities.

Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in 2016?

The Oceania Tenor:  This year, our followers can look forward to new releases of music that we have been working on for a long time.  We will also be playing live as often as we can while we continue to write and record new material.  Fans can also expect some live and studio playthrough videos of our material fairly soon.