David White is a full-time swim coach with a passion for music. He has been playing piano and singing since before he was five, and as a middle schooler, toured the world with The American Boychoir, even singing with Beyonce. He went to school for music and learned how to produce his own music from his apartment. All of his music is written, played, recorded, mixed, and mastered by him. He is looking to continue to improve his abilities as a musician and producer while also sharing his music with a wider audience.
By Kamil Bobin
Discovered via Musosoup
Kamil) Hey David White, super nice to have the chance to chat with you. What first got you into music?
Thanks for having me! I've been a musician as long as I can remember. I learned how to play songs on the piano watching Barney as a 3-year old and started singing in my church's children's choir not long after. As a middle schooler I sang and toured with The American Boychoir, and then went to college and grad school for Music and Music Technology, respectively. Music has always been a part of my life, I don't think I could ever turn that part of my brain off.
How do you balance your time in the studio with other commitments such as a part-time job, family, admin?
So I'm the head coach for a swim team, the JCC Bridgewater Tide. It's a full time job and I work afternoons, nights, and at least one weekend a month. My wife is a teacher, so we only get to see each other a few hours a day, and we spend as much time together on weekends. So the only time I get to write and record is weekday mornings or times when I have the apartment to myself. Fortunately I do everything at home by myself, so I don't have to spend any time commuting or waiting for others to do work.
Your latest release is 'Pioneer'. Can you tell us more about the making of it and if there were any unusual things happening during the process?
All the music on the album was written over the last two years, except for General, whose bass line I'd been playing around with since about 2016. All of the instruments and vocals are done by me with the help of some MIDI drums (if only I had room in my apartment for a drum set). I also record, mix, and master everything on my own.
Where did you get the inspiration for this album?
A lot of the inspiration behind the songs is about travel and the places I've travelled these past few years - Washington, Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh, Ireland. I'm a big fan of landscape paintings and find scenery to be easier to write about. Beyond that, there are songs about love, anxiety, boredom. The song Backwards Town was actually inspired by people complaining on the Facebook page for my hometown!
How long did you work on the 'Pioneer'? Was it an easy process for you?
I started working on the songs for the album about six months after finishing the music for my last album, Saturn Return. Letters from Nowhere was the first song I wrote in the winter of 2020. In terms of ease, things started off really slow and between Letters and the next few songs was about eight months. Then in the winter of 2021-2022 I was writing about a song a week, and wrapped it all up by this past spring.
Is there a hidden meaning in any of your music?
I feel like all my songs are pretty straightforward, with most of them being about very concrete things (i.e. Rainier is about me visiting Mount Rainier). Y is probably the one song that's most up to interpretation, but it's about meeting someone only once and never seeing them again, which I is universal.
What interests or hobbies do you have outside of music?
Swimming is definitely my other big interest. As I mentioned before, I'm a full time head coach and run a team of 150+ swimmers 5-18. It's really another creative outlet as I have to spend most of my team writing workouts, planning for the season, finding ways to get better at my work and making the kids better. Much like songwriting and trying to really hammer out a transition between sections or finishing lyrics, it's puzzle-solving, and I love it.
How do you find yourself in the music business? When you started out in music, did you know it would be like this?
I'm not really sure I'm in the music business besides making a few cents from streaming! I think that's one benefit to keeping music as strictly a passion instead of my job/primary income is that I have a lot more control over the creation of my music and there are no deadlines or huge pressure to promote. Frankly, I never thought it would be so easy to just do everything from home and still be able to share my passion with a wider audience beyond friends and family.
How do you nurture your own creativity?
The #1 thing is continuing to listen to music and continue to practice playing and singing. Except for the piano I really only know how to play my music or just improv on the guitar, so that constant "I don't know what I'm doing I'm just going to create something new" certainly helps. And being a swim coach and having a wife who loves to travel are great for my sourcing of inspiration for the lyrics, which I find a lot harder than writing the music itself.
What are your plans for the future?
I have written some new music already, with one song completely done, and a few others recorded/semi-recorded but not mixed yet. That music is a bit darker than the last album, and so all of it is currently being written under the working album title "Gray". On top of that, I have a lot of piano sonatas that I've written and I want to finish a book of 24, similar to Chopin's preludes. I told myself I wanted them done by the time I turn 30, but that ship sailed haha.