There’s more to metal! An interview with Kylee Brielle

Kylee Brielle is a multi-talented musician who offers her skills on freelancer platforms. I became aware of Kylee when Nekonomicon (Interview with Nekonomicon) was randomly played to me on a streaming platform. Kylee highlights the songs with a mix of growling and clear vocals that reveal her great talent.

Hey Kylee. Thank you for doing this interview with me. How are you doing, how is it going right now and what do you do when you don’t get any orders from musicians? 

Things are going pretty great, thanks for asking, and thanks for this interview! When not working on orders from other musicians, I try to make time to work on my own music projects. I’m currently working on a new album that will hopefully be ready for release later this year. I’m also a guitar teacher, mostly for kids, which is incredibly rewarding.

When people search for you on streaming platforms, you’re mostly represented on tracks that can be classified in the metal genre. Is that your choice, is that your favorite genre?

Favorites are always a difficult thing for me. I appreciate music in any form and find inspiration from so many genres. Metal is definitely a big one for me, though, and has been a big part of my own musical experiences for most of my life. I think that’s because of how much variety you can find within the numerous subgenres. They can be so completely different from each other. Metal is just a really expressive category, and that makes for a great outlet for someone who wants to explore that kind of diversity. And I think my familiarity and comfort with metal makes it easier for me to fit into other musicians’ metal centric projects. For my own music, I don’t limit myself to a single genre, so it goes all over the place, but I always love working on metal projects for other artists because I think they’re better at composing that kind of music than I am.

Your voice is, in my opinion, really impressive and fits super into the metal genre. Have you ever sung in a band or is that something you would like to do?

Thank you! That’s kind of you to say and encouraging to hear. I’ve been in a few bands, yeah. The most formative for me was a local band, Begging Victoria, when I was in my late teens/early twenties. I sang lead and played bass. We had this weird combination of pop punk and prog rock that was fun to play with, and occasionally heavier influences snuck in. Unfortunately I had to quit due to health issues, which led me to doing session vocal work. I missed that kind of collaboration. Now I get to work on a lot of projects and styles I wouldn’t have sought out otherwise, and that’s been great for me. I love those opportunities because they push me to try something I’m less familiar with. I’ve grown so much.

My old bandmates and I talk a lot about getting something new going, and that might still happen, just without the exhaustion of playing gigs every week.

 

On your Fiverr profile you offer lead vocals, scream vocals, drum recordings and, which I found relatively funny, explicitly the composition of a bard song for DND. That’s a broad spectrum. How long did it take you to acquire that?

I have a musical form of synesthesia and I grew up in a family that loved music. That got me interested in instruments really young. I’m pretty sure I’ve been singing since I discovered I could make noise. My elementary school teachers would send notes home to my parents for my disruptive humming in class. I desperately wanted to make music in any possible way I could and played anything I could get my hands on. One of my friends took operatic singing lessons and would share exercises with me, my older brother taught me how to play bass guitar, my parents sent me to guitar lessons with my dad’s beat up old Yamaha, and my first girlfriend was a drummer. I just picked up what I could along the way. 

As for the DnD songs: Well, I’m a big nerd. My love of tabletop and Ren Faires got me interested in doing stuff like that. That’s a pretty new offering from me now, I’ve only been doing it officially for about 6 months I think. I had a client message me about a “strange request” a while back, and he wanted an original song to commemorate a character that died in their campaign. I had so much fun on that project and realized how much I wanted to keep doing that, so I made it one of my Fiverr gigs. I immediately started getting orders, the demand was there, and it’s a special experience to get to step into someone else’s creative world and add a piece to the lore.

What was the funniest or weirdest assignment you ever did for another artist?

One of my earlier orders for scream vocals, I had one client who liked my scream vocal sound and, in his own words, “REALLY WANTED” me on a track. So he repurposed an old song of his and rewrote the lyrics to be about nothing over this sort of underground thrash punk instrumental. He thought it would be funny for me to be screaming about the most mundane things. Memorable lines such as “I have a sandwich, it’s a really good sandwich” and “Where is my coffee?”. It was absolutely hilarious. According to him, this version was 50 times better than the original. I had a blast.

Have you also had bad experiences with making your arts available to everyone?

Of course. I mean, anytime you work with human beings, you’re inevitably going to run into some less-than-ideal interactions. But I’ve been lucky in that the overwhelming majority of my clientele are very respectful people and good collaborators. Those make up for the bad ones pretty quickly. I had to learn through experience how to navigate some situations where the buyer didn’t understand boundaries, or the legal ins and outs of hiring freelancers, and figure out what signs to look out for to aid in my decisions to work with certain individuals or not.

If you want to tell us – what do you earn as a musical freelancer, how tough is the market and how did you manage to get noticed?

I can only speak for myself here. Personally, I use my freelance work as a way to earn a little extra income through something I love. It’s enough to keep it going and invest in, plus a little extra for savings or whatnot. I try to strike a balance between meeting my buyers’ budgets and a fair price for the work. When I first started, it was more important to me to make a name for myself that people could reliably trust in and build a portfolio, so in the beginning I offered vocals for next to nothing. It was more a trade of favors at that point. I’d do the work in exchange for a fair review, the files and credits to add to my portfolio, etc. I probably did that longer than I should have because I tend to low ball myself. Slowly I got to the point where I could let my experience and skill speak for itself and now I’m making an amount that I’m comfortable with for the work I put into each project.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who is Kylee? What do you do in your free time and what fascinates you?

I obsessively have to be doing something creative. I mean, I love playing video games, watching shows, or reading books, but I don’t feel like I’ve made good use of my day if I haven’t created something or worked on learning a new skill. I’m currently trying to learn Norwegian (Bokmål), and I spend a lot of time writing stories. I’ve also really gotten into building and modding guitars when I need to focus my mind on something else. Like I said, I’m a big nerd, so I love giving my instruments a nerdy flair. I’m currently building a Commander Shepard themed Telecaster and an Avatar Kyoshi 5 string bass.

You are welcome to advertise yourself here as well. Just write what comes to your mind.

Thanks so much for this interview, it’s really been great! 

I’m pretty terrible at actually maintaining an online presence, but any announcements I have I make through my Facebook page. This includes my personal music as well as client work! 

If you’re interested in listening to music written and released by me, you can stream my EP on Spotify and Soundcloud, and my album through those and most other streaming platforms. If you’d like to support me more directly, I have them both available to purchase on my Bandcamp, where I primarily update new media first.

Anyone interested in my services can find me on Fiverr!

Bandcamp 

Facebook 

Soundcloud 

Fiverr 

Spotify 

 

Thank you so much for your time Kylee. I hope to hear your great voice on more “harder” music projects. All the best!

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