Ari Hest: Recording Inspiration

Prolific singer songwriter Ari Hest knows something about productive creativity.  Shortly before his latest full-length album through Columbia Records, "The Break-In," Hest produced, recorded, and mixed "The Green Room Sessions," a five-song EP, also released by Columbia Records, in his Brooklyn, New York apartment…all on his own using Apple’s GarageBand. While "The Break-In" was a product of collaboration with producer Mitchell Froom (Crowded House, Elvis Costello, and Soul Coughing) and other well known musicians, "The Green Room Sessions" was a solo, multi-tasking extravaganza. While on tour throughout the United States and Canada, Hest took time to share some of the secrets to his creative achievements with Behance.
 
Hest seizes and records inspiration immediately, before ideas slip away. Wherever he may be, Hest uses any technology available to him to capture ideas for new songs to ensure that they are not lost. "Jack Black once said to Kyle Gross, his bandmate in Tenacious D, 'Always record!,'" said Hest. "When I’m home and get an idea, immediately I’ll sing it into GarageBand on my Mac. If I’m out, I’ll sing the idea into my cell phone and come back to it later.  Before I owned a computer this was a problem.  Nobody wants to carry a tape recorder around with them all day.  I lost a lot of ideas that could’ve been something because my memory wasn’t good enough. Thank goodness for technology."
 
Hest looks to other artists for inspiration and new challenges. Like most creative professionals, Hest, at times, faces creative frustration. When this happens, he said, "I seek out people and information that is in some way thought-provoking. The worst thing you can do is sit at home frustrated and bored. Sometimes going to someone else’s show will put me in the mood to write again."
 
For Hest, however, other talent can serve as a mountain as well as a muse.  "Collaboration forces me to work in a new way," said Hest, "especially when I write songs with someone else that they, not I, will wind up singing.  You have to consider their strengths and weaknesses and let go of your conventional methods of writing a melody. I sing a certain way, a different way than whoever my counterpart is, so there’s a new approach I have to take."
 
But thinking different is not always easy. "You also need to be willing to compromise a bit, which can get a bit messy if you’re not careful. I just want to make sure at the end of the day that what was created sounds like something that I would create."
 
Hest refuses to settle for incomplete ideas.  According to Hest, some writers release the first iteration of songs to the public.  Hest, however, redoes a lot of what he creates. "The first thing out of my head generally is lacking in definition or purpose," he said. "I used to settle for writing songs that when I look back on them, aren’t really complete ideas.  Most of what I’ve written the past few years has been tweaked a number of times. I wanted to make sure I was creating something that really captured an idea and not just a portion." His advice: "You’re gonna be happier if you at least read over what you wrote before it is released to the public."
 
Regardless of his successes, Hest strives for continued improvement. "I got into playing music because of my love for it and nothing else.  The only mission I have is to get better at it, write better songs, perform them better, etc. I’m motivated by the music I hear and love." His inspiration? "Bands like the Beatles and the Beach Boys started me out, made me excited to write my own material… I’ve learned a lot about songwriting from studying them."

About the Author

Contributing Writer Sara R. Katz is funny and smart. She wrote this.