Photo by Holly Turner.
Ascribe’s Abacus is a journal of entries written by different artists. From studio diaries and guest blogs to opinion pieces and lists, each entry to the Abacus is unique.
For the first entry into Ascribe’s abacus, we are joined by Michael and Ajay of the NY-based alternative rock band QU!ET, where they discuss their journeys as artists, what success means to them, and their advice for upcoming musicians.
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MICHAEL:
One of my favorite singers once wrote a song about defining what success means to herself, and in the chorus she wrote “we are all just passing through it, hoping for someone to notice how we do it.” This song is called “How We Do It” by Lights, and it’s one of those songs that can be very thought provoking when you delve into the meaning of the lyrics. Anyone can have their own interpretation to a song, and everytime I hear that chorus, I think of the millions of musicians on Earth who work so hard to be noticed, and I’m one of them. However, so many people have different purposes and goals when it comes to being a musician. In my experience these last 3 years in QU!ET, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that defining personal success is very critical, and if you pursue that path you must stick with it, even when failure is at risk.
My advice to anyone entering the music industry is to define what success means to you, and most importantly, to stay focused on it during your pursuit. At least once a year, AJay, Juliana, and myself have a sit down for at least an hour or two, and we discuss how our year has been going. There’s always ups and downs, and we often make changes based on our experiences. One of my favorite memories was the very first time we did an annual meeting in May 2017. I made the three of us go around the room, and list a few reasons why we like being in this band, and our intentions. After each of us took our turns, we agreed that we all love making music together, and that we want to continue showing our art to as many people as we can. That became our purpose as a unit, working together for the love of making music, and pushing ourselves to be heard.
If there’s one word I can’t stress enough from the first sentence in the previous paragraph, that would be, focus. You must not only focus on your goals, but you can’t forget about yourself personally. It’s easy to get lost in the thrill of building a fan base, seeing crowds get bigger at your shows, generating engagements on your social media, but one day these things may stall! And this is exactly what happened to us. I got so caught up in everything I’d just mentioned, and I had to stop and take a good long look at who I was, and what I was not. I’ve always had serious aspirations as an artist, big dreams like being signed to a major label, touring around the world, selling out arenas like the bands we all love. The bottom line is that I was stressing over the business side of music more, as opposed to recognizing the problems standing right in front of me, in plain sight. The production in our music was not the greatest, our vocals needed work, and we were not writing enough music. We realized that these were the reasons why our progress stalled, many became uninterested in us and it was a rude awakening. It was time to stop and understand that you can’t make powermoves in this industry without a strong foundation.
This all happened during the summer of 2018, AJay called the next annual meeting and brought up his feelings on some of the issues we were dealing with. We all shared our problems, and as the conversation progressed, we knew that big changes were coming. This marked the end of Scarabino, and the birth of QU!ET. Part of making the journey to success is re-evaluation, and that is exactly what we did. The three of us buckled down and began taking vocal lessons, stopped playing shows to write more music, and rebranded the band. It became about doing what good musicians do, practicing and growing. We decided to start from scratch by changing the name of the band, abandoning our influences by making the music that truly expresses ourselves, and most of our problems dissolved.
At this point I’ve identified what success means to me, and it’s a common feeling between my bandmates. We’re still in this band for the same reasons we set out for. But this time we realized that we have what makes each other happy. We’re making music together, and having fun being the best that we can be. We are rounding 4 years as a band now, and I have never had more fun being a part of this unit before. I now focus on the things that matter, my skills as an instrumentalist, a vocalist, and as a songwriter. We still give the business side of the band great attention, but it’s better balanced now. Our band came back strong in 2019. According to our fans/followers, we shocked the Long Island music scene with our new music, and everything has been rolling on a good path upward. Referring back to Lights, this is how we do it in our band. Success to me is having the privilege of making music with my friends, and writing our best work to anyone who listens to us.
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AJAY:
I haven’t always been into music. After growing up with it practically woven into me, there was a point in my life where I was about to throw it all away for what I guess you can call a new start, a chance to grow and to experience the world, but it all just ended up collapsing in on me. I was far away from home, around people I didn’t know. I had cut ties with all of my old friends so I had no one to reach out to, and I was too prideful to ask for help from family. This wasn’t a super sad or tragic event by any means, I was a dumb kid that was just lost and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But I soon started descending down a spiral staircase of partying, drugs, insanity, and self-loathing. I lost my sense of self and everything that I knew about me just disappeared into a haze of paranoia and escapism as I dug myself deeper and deeper, but the only thing that had really survived was my interest in music. Once I realized that it was still there, it was the one thing that was able to ground me through the self destructive storm that I was putting myself through. After some time, I was able to focus more and more on the music, and slowly rebuild myself.
When I joined up with Mike in 2015 I wasn’t honestly expecting much to come out of it. I’ve been in so many bands with a bunch of people while growing up, where we’d write some songs, spend a few days practicing them, probably play an open mic or two and then call it quits after two or three months. And that’s what happened with us, and then I left for that new start. Once I was able to come back home, we met up and we got some drinks. I thought he’d want nothing to do with me after pretty much disappearing, but he welcomed me back with open arms and we picked up where we left off.
It’s kinda funny to think that this band was almost not a thing because of a dumb descision I made in the beginning. I also find it funny to think that I thought I could give up music after living with it all of my life. It is something that once you breathe it in, it stays with you. It becomes you. I make music because I am music. No matter what you do in the course of your life it will always be there, even when everything else falls apart.
Listen to QU!ET on Spotify here:
You can follow QU!ET on Instagram here.
You can follow QU!ET on Twitter here.
You can follow QU!ET on Facebook here.
