Interview with Sara Anjum :: Creative Friday
Spotlighting creativity in music production and song cover creation
Welcome to Creative Fridays, a feature of On Humanity to engage and inspire readers to create new things and share your own creative journeys. The following was one of several email interviews conducted by me in early 2021 and originally published in the HiH magazine. It is republished here with permission from HiH. Some content may be out of date; the aim is to share these creatives’ pathfinding and thought processes. If you would like to be interviewed on anything you do for inspiration — or know someone who might — please reach out!
“I am a full-time Materials Science PhD student working on using miniscule wires for energy sustainability applications such as generating solar power in space and converting sunlight into liquid fuels. I have played the piano and violin since elementary school, and performed in various orchestras and choirs throughout the years. I have performed internationally in South Africa and Spain with my undergraduate choir, and am currently in my university’s orchestra and chamber ensemble. Since the pandemic, I have started a YouTube channel where I cover pop songs, singing along to piano and string instrumentation.”
Can you tell us a bit about your music making pursuits?
I’ve always loved music, and have been in various choirs and orchestras over the years performing both classical and contemporary repertoire. The pandemic spurred me (and gave me time) to pursue music on a solo level by giving me the time and extra motivation I needed to start a YouTube channel and learn basic music production skills so that I could post polished audio that was at least somewhat comparable with other YouTubers’ professional-sounding audio.
What inspired you to record covers in the first place?
I love singing, but I haven’t written my own songs (yet), so covers were a natural choice for me. In light of that, I definitely do not see covers as “selling out”, namely because I do not yet have my own music and I do like a lot of “older” pop (at least a few years old). I do, however, enjoy singing and listening to emotional vocals, and I think stripped down instrumentation / production (especially piano and orchestral strings) can really enhance emotional vocals, so I also felt I could add something somewhat different to the cover space, especially since a lot of “stripped down” covers focused on acoustic guitar instrumentation.
Sam Tsui is my biggest inspiration among cover artists — his and Christina Grimmie’s cover of “Just a Dream” by Nelly, still one of their more popular covers, was to me more emotional and true to the sentiment of the song than the original, and that has stuck with me all these years with regards to the magic of covers. Currently, Cinematic Pop, a group that was on America’s Got Talent, inspires the sort of pop cover arrangements I would like to work up to eventually (although I’ll have a lot to learn about orchestration and arrangement along the way!).
What does your planning process look like, whether in terms of song creation, delivery, or recording?
It depends on the goal of the cover. I have realized, by talking to professional musicians, that to build a following one of the most important things is to post regularly on social media, but due to time constraints and current skill level in production, I cannot record and mix covers with a one-week turnaround time, so for my weekly uploads I simply choose a song I like which has a nice piano karaoke track and sing to it. Depending on the time of year, I might choose a song to reflect it (eg. “Last Christmas” for Christmas, or “Flashlight” to bring in the new year by thanking those who got us through 2020), but the main consideration is whether I like it.
For covers which I record with a proper microphone and actually mix and record video separately, I now also consider the popularity of the song + the competition. VidIQ has a helpful extension that gives a score based on a balance between the two. A popular search term with many associated videos will get a low score, but something that is reasonably popular but has much less competition will get a higher score. This helps me seize songs on which I will likely stand out more, especially given the level of effort that will go into them.
I currently do not really plan my recording or mixing, but that’s something around which I aim to build more structure in the future.
Do you employ feedback of any kind in your work? What considerations do you use to determine that a cover of yours is complete and ready to be uploaded?
It had been hard to find people who could give me feedback I trusted but also be kind / encouraging about it and speak to my level. There are some nice producers out there, but also some snobby ones, and a lot of online communities are filled with rather professional producers so it can be awkward or uncomfortable to ask for feedback at my beginner level. However, through an online music production course I bought, I won two listening sessions, and got feedback on a past cover as well as a cover in progress, so I have some more direction. I also know I can turn to that community comfortably for initial feedback, and feel a bit more confident about my skills, enough so to ask producers in other communities for feedback.
Up until now, my main considerations for when I decide a cover is “complete” is mainly whether it sounds good enough to me and whether I feel I have reached a point where I am tired of my current project and can’t get more yield out of further effort. However, now that I have a bit more practice and more time in the evenings and on the weekends due to being done with classes, I aim to record more projects at once and cycle through them so I can avoid the fatigue of overworking on one individual project and have higher standards for quality.
How do you usually go about publicizing your creations? Is there a routine you default to or an avenue you have yet to explore?
Currently, I am taking the advice of many musicians who guide indie artists and attempt to be active on social media and either cultivate a “culture” around my music or just post content vaguely related to my music journey (such as the music I am working on or the music-related things, such as songwriting or music production, that I am trying to learn). Then, when I do share my music, such as the weekly live covers I record on my phone, it feels less intrusive and less like constant self-promotion, but I do post those on all of my social media as well, with links to my YouTube channel for the full covers. I have also reached out to the pianist who covers the Bollywood piano tracks I use for my Hindi covers and asked him to create a playlist of people’s covers who use his tracks, since he has a solid following of 25k+ subscribers. He graciously agreed.
So far, Instagram has undoubtedly worked the best with regards to social media engagement in general, and by extension in getting strangers to follow my musician account. There also seems to be a correlation between my more frequent Instagram posting and the uptick in my subscriber count. I am trying to explore Tik Tok because of how popular and successful it is amongst various musicians, but I will admit I do not feel quite as natural on that platform. I’m hoping to experiment some more with different ideas to make the most of it and my Facebook page, which also has not had much traction, but I am definitely looking for advice!
Has the pandemic affected your creative work and/or output in any way? If so, how?
The pandemic is what kickstarted all of this, honestly! Before this, I didn’t have the time to learn music production or video color grading, and would not have felt comfortable posting anything on a YouTube channel given the proliferation of professional-sounding covers and the seemingly-crowded marketplace. I’ll admit I probably also felt (and still do, to some extent) pressure to pursue music through campus community groups like choirs and orchestras because of the guaranteed performance opportunities / audience, even though I never got a chance to really shine. By shutting all that down, the pandemic left YouTube as the undoubtedly best platform to have an audience to perform for, and also gave me the time to learn basic music production so that I could feel good about the content I put out.
Looking into that also led to Facebook showing me a lot of ads for music marketing, which not only inspired me to want to create my own music someday by showing me I COULD find an audience for my work and COULD even find superfans for good-quality original work that I may create someday, and it also introduced me to the world of online music marketing, which showed me a vast world of possibilities even as a part-time musician, full-time scientist. It inspired me to use social media and channel my natural extroversion into connecting and engaging with people who enjoyed my music and my related social media posts and encouraged me to post regular content even if it WASN’T perfectly produced and polished or edited.
The pandemic has certainly been devastating for so many, but in my case I can honestly say it’s the reason why I’m doing any of this in this way.
Are you currently working on any particularly exciting project(s)?
Yes! I’m in the process of mixing an a cappella cover of a Taylor Swift song off of her album “folklore”. Once I get all of the new equipment I need, I also look forward to recording a few more covers for which I have some basic arrangements going, and maybe even filling out the arrangements I currently have.
How can readers of this Issue help your work(s) reach a larger audience?
Just follow me on all of my social media (you can find me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tik Tok at @sarascovers17), subscribe to my YouTube channel and please like + comment if interested, and share my posts with those who you think might enjoy my covers! If you would also like to support me financially and receive exclusive benefits, including early releases of my videos, social media shoutouts, and more, then consider becoming a patron on my Patreon page.
If you would like your work or thought process to be featured in this publication in a future Creative Friday post, please leave a comment or contact me. If you’d rather not receive these twice-a-month Creative Friday emails, but wish to remain subscribed to the main section of On Humanity, you may adjust your email settings here. Please consider inviting your friends or collaborators to this publication, the abundance.dev community, or the anyhumans podcast.