Michael Walker: If you’re listening to this then you likely already know that being an independent musician can be a lonely road. And maybe your friends and your family don’t fully understand why you do what you do, or why you invest so much time, energy, and money achieving your music goals. And especially early on, it can be hard to find people who really understand what you’re trying to accomplish and how to make it happen. So, that’s where Modern Musician comes in!

My name’s Michael Walker and I can understand and relate to that feeling. I’ve been there myself, and so has our team of independent artists. The truth is that basically everything good in my life has been a result of music. It’s the reason I met my wife, my 3 kids, it’s how I met my best friends. And now with Modern Musician, we have seen so many talented artists who started out with a dream, with a passion, without really a fanbase or a business. And you’ll take that and turn it into a sustainable full-time career and be able to impact hundreds, maybe even thousands or millions of fans with your music. We’ve had thousands of messages from artists who told us we’ve helped change their lives forever. It just gets even more exciting and fulfilling when you’re surrounded by a community of other people who get it, and who have shared their knowledge and success with each other openly. So, if you are feeling called into making your music a full-time career and to be able to reach more people with your music, then I want to invite you to join our community so that we can help support your growth and we can help lift you up as you pursue your musical dreams. You’ll be able to interact in a community with other high-level artists, coaches, and industry professionals, as well as be able to participate in our daily live podcast, meet these amazing guests, and get access to completely free training. If you’d like to join our family of artists who truly care about your success, then click on the link in the show notes and sign-up now.

Wendy Parr: Know who you are at a deep level. Archetypes, childhood heroes. What am I really about? What did I forget about in my teens? Or what did I put aside when people told me it wasn't cool? Or it wasn't in my genre? And so by remembering ourselves, we actually find the secret sauce that makes your music special, your sound special, your look special. That authenticity you talked about. The audience resonates with your truth. And if you don't feel your truth down there, you're not going to like your own career, and the audience for sure isn't buying it. But when you're like: I stand behind this; I feel good about this; I feel good about that; I feel good about that. The audience resonates. 

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high-quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker. Yeeeaaaaah.

All right. Excited to be here today with the one and only Wendy Parr. She's coming back on the podcast. She’s one of my favorite human beings. She's a holistic artist, coach, artist, educator, and networking musician/magician who spends more than 20 years in the entertainment industry. She's worked with artists like Sara Bareilles, Regina Spektor, multiple Grammy winning compositions and she has a course called “The Parr Method” where she basically helps artists to discover their unique voice and their branding. Especially in today's day and age, it seems like authenticity is both rare in a lot of ways and more important than ever. And you can sense it when it's there. And hugely appreciate the work that you're doing, Wendy. And thanks for coming on the podcast today.

Wendy Parr: I'm so happy to talk to you. And it was a very kind intro. Thank-you.

Michael Walker: Absolutely. Yeah. Speaking the truth. Wendy, maybe just really quick... I know you've been on the podcast before, but for anyone who, maybe this is the first time hearing from you or connecting with you, could you share a brief introduction to you and your story and how you were able to connect with artists like Sara Bareilles?

Wendy Parr: Sure. So I came up as an artist. I started working when I was eight years old as a voiceover performer or singer, and I was developing myself as a recording artist, up until my twenties, what have you, and I went through all the things that artists go through: having a label saying we don't know what to do with a 15 year old who sings R&B, then another label telling me you should be more like Alanis Morissette… just really being misguided in many ways, and as well as just coming up in life, being told, don't be like, don't be you. Don't do you, Wendy. It took me a long time to actually be me. I grew up being told “you're the good girl. You're supposed to be the good girl”. So it just was a lot of unraveling for me to find my authentic self. And even in my training! My training was technically amazing, but it really focused on being technically right. And so my voice got better and better, but my heart and soul was like back here and locked up. Where technique served me and getting more skills, it was a detriment to my heart and artistry. And then I had to unravel all that and find my way back to just being me. And like, how do I show up being me? Cause I can't live any other way. Like I can't live not just doing me. And then as a coach, and I started coaching when I was about 20, that was the process for me of: how can I support artists and being true to themselves and finding their own sound, their own voice and throwing away the, “there's a one way to sing” or a “right” way to sing, but technique's really there to serve you. If you watch a wild basketball player, a great basketball player, I should say, they might be really out of range for that layup, but they get the ball in and you're like, “Whoa, how did they do that?” That's what great skills are for: It's so that when you're in the game, you can roll with the punches. You can still win when your shots cold. Oh, I go to defense. I go to other things. I assist. So it's not about “Oh yeah, I'm perfectly aligned every time”, because that's not going to happen in the real world. So skills should serve you to express yourself. And that just kept developing for me just as a coach and just as a person, I'm just very interested in life. And what am I about? And what are humans about? What matters to us? And how can we curate a life that feels good? So helping artists do that with just across the board, there are very few artists who know their whole aesthetic; Know: this is what I want in my music video and this is an expression of me. Most of the time you'll make a music video or you choose a single and before that video comes out, the artist will say: no, I'm not feeling it, I don't want to put it out. Oh, you just spent money on it, time. It's part of a campaign schedule. How did we go from there's an idea for a music video. “Cool. Let's do it! To shooting it with all these choices and actions to by the end going, no. So that means the artist isn't clear about who they are, how they want to express, or they don't know how to communicate it with the team. So that's led me to create my 6 month artist development program, really helping artists be able to know who you are at a deep level. Archetypes, childhood heroes. What am I really about? What did I forget about in my teens? Or what did I put aside when people told me it wasn't cool? Or it wasn't in my genre? And so by remembering ourselves, we actually find the secret sauce that makes your music special; your sound special; your look special. That authenticity you talked about. The audience resonates with your truth. And if you don't feel your truth down there, you're not going to like your own career, and the audience for sure isn't buying it. But when you're like: I stand behind this; I feel good about this; I feel good about that; I feel good about that… The audience resonates. And now that's going to be greater success and a career you really like. I'm wearing my hat today because 1, I'm a hat person, but 2, I'm in between like where I was with the buds cut and where I'm going, which is, I don't know yet. So I can't show up like this because this isn't me. I'm like: no, this isn't my vibe. So we're going to be in hats for a couple months until I get where I want to go or I buzz it off again. And then I go, yeah, that's me. I can show up like this. I feel good. I can't show up with that “in-between hair”. It's so basic.

Michael Walker: Spoken like a true branding coach.

Wendy Parr: But it's so basic. We all know what it feels like to have a bad haircut. And you're like, no, this isn't me. Don't look at me. No, it's not. This isn't what I feel like. Times that by a million with your sound and your look and your visuals and your social media content. That's all way more important, but it's actually the same thing: I don't feel like I'm being seen for who I am or how I want to be perceived or how I want to share myself. So the clearer we get about that and we can nail it and then communicate it. Now we're talking.

Michael Walker: Love it.

Wendy Parr: That was my short answer apparently.

Michael Walker: It's perfect. It's super interesting, just identity in general. Identity just shapes so much of how we show up and how I behave and the relationship between our identity and our ideal identity. And you mentioned how we want to be perceived. I'd be interested in hearing you discuss more about that idea in particular, like how much of our identity from your perspective can be decided or chosen? Let's say that I don't feel like I am a, hypothetically, I don't feel like I'm XYZ artist, but I would love for people to perceive me like that. Do you think that's something that people can intentionally decide: this is who I want to be. This is my intentional identity and then show up and then, and then do that. Or do you think that it's more important that rather than trying to intentionally come up with that, that they let go more than anything and uncover their identity that's already there? Awesome. So I'd be curious to hearing your perspective on how people get to the root of that, and how does someone become aware of what their actual identity is as opposed to what they think it should be or other people have told them it should be?

Wendy Parr: Yeah. I think that there's a term called perceived value and we all know it. Your Instagram is full of it or people who rent a car on the weekend to pose, that's all perceived value. I'm not going to lie. Some of that's important in the world we live in, unfortunately.

Michael Walker: Yeah. Because there's like that social proof element.

Wendy Parr: Yeah. It's like: Oh, if I can make people think it's valuable, it becomes valuable as opposed to no, it's valuable where people know it inherently because they resonate with it. They see it. They get it. So that's a thing, perceived value. Again, I think though if you're living on: I'm going to show up being who I want to be. Now, I think everything I say, you gotta take with a grain of salt. Let's say you want to be a person with more integrity. You want to be a person… the want to is actually your ideal self. Then strive for it. Absolutely. I'm striving to step into that more and more, right? I want to be more confident to talk to people. Strive for that. But if you're like, I want to be like 5’ tall, bad ass, but I don't have the stardust of a model. If my Instagram is full of me posing like a model, like I want to be a model. You're like: what are you doing? It's literally not your stardust. It's not who you are. My Instagram, for example: there's a lot I like about it. It's very organic. It's very raw. I'd like it to even be better with the branding. I'd like to have a better production value; more polish. And we'll get there. But like right now it's me and my small team and when I can hire out and have it more dedicated than it will. I've asked people like. Actually, someone commented to me recently: I love your Instagram. I was like: Oh, thank you, that means a lot to me. The fact that I'm sharing that it has value to you is the most important thing about my Instagram to me, not the polish. The polish can come. And you see that happen with artists. When you get more success, you have a stronger team and you have more money. They're like: Oh, I have time to go to the gym. I have time to do this. I have someone handling that now. Like that all happens. And he's yeah, it's just very organic. And I'm like, you know what, to me, that's the more important thing than the polish, especially when I'm like: what am I talking about with people and being authentic and real? So I'm like: Oh, that's the biggest thing that people are getting from it. That matters more. I can look at pages I really like and go: I really like the way this is. It looks great, but it doesn't have actual authenticity. It's just pure marketing choices. That is worse than not interesting to me. It's negative. It's detrimental. So I think it's most important to be true to: who am I actually including like the shitty stuff? Like, where can I improve on those things? These are my character defects. Okay. Can I accept them and can I improve upon them? But most importantly is like, who are you? One of my favorite questions to ask is: Think of your three childhood heroes. Who are your childhood heroes? Who did you love as a kid? Fictional or non-fictional and look at those characters. What do I love about them? What were the qualities I loved about them? Because that's you. You were admiring and connecting to parts of you that you love. Lean into them, bring them out. Where are you not being those things? So looking at childhood heroes and what adjectives would you use to describe them and then go deeper, go look at the visuals, go look at all the things that made you like them because you're going to see things you forgot about. And my childhood heroes, they all fly. Peter Pan, Superman, Greece, even the musical Greece, they end up taking off in the end. They fly. There's a sense of moral justice, helping the world be a better place. There's magic in that Peter Pan, magic, enchanted child. That's one of my archetypes. So I look at my heroes and yeah, there is a sense of empowering others and lifting people up and flying and freedom. And so if I go deeply into all of them and then, I basically have had Danny Zuko, Superman, Peter Pan haircut my whole life, and I actually went from the pixie Peter Pan to the more GQ buzz-style haircut later, and when I got the haircut finally, I was like: I've wanted this haircut my whole life. And when I look at the pictures of my heroes, it's actually that haircut. But I wasn't thinking: Oh, give me a Superman haircut. I was thinking: I want that 1930s GQ men's cut that I've always loved. I've never gotten: [whispers] and that’s the haircut the have! When it's humid, I actually get like that elephant trunk, it's called. It happens very naturally. So I think that we need to look at who we were when we came into this world, who we were before the world dumped a lot of stuff on us. Who were we before teenage middle school told us: Those qualities aren't cool. You need to be something else. And bring out all the wonderful weird layers of yourself and learning how to use the different layers. Like: how do I let this aspect of me and this aspect of me and this one all coexist in my work and in my art? That's what we want. We want your voice. We want your weirdness. Everybody's weird. And we'll resonate with parts of you and your audience will resonate with that truth of you.

Michael Walker: So good.

Wendy Parr: Yeah. And you just get to show up being you, which is just so much more relaxing. “Oh, I don't have to try to be cool. I don't have to try to be... Oh, I just get to be me.” That's easier to do.

Michael Walker: Yeah, that's a great point. It's a lot easier to just show up and be yourself than actually having to put on your front and doing something different. One quote that comes to mind is, I think it's Dr. Seuss: Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. And it seems like that's a great lesson too, is that, yeah, even if you do happen to be successful being someone else that's not true to you, and you build an audience around it, now you have to show up and be someone that you're not.

Wendy Parr: You're actually going to suffer for that. The minute you're trying to fit in, you are not being yourself. So better to be yourself and build a whole world and community that comes into your world, that's like: we dig who you are. Amazing I just get to be me, talk about the things I care about, give the message I care about, the way I love to do it. Historic artists and right now artists that are, I'm going to put in quotes, “successful”. What does that mean? Financially successful, but who don't like the music they're making, which means they don't like their day-to-day life. That's… no!

Michael Walker: Yeah, that definitely feels like one of the death exercise of imagining you're on your deathbed about to say goodbye to everything. If we’re lucky enough to die a natural death, we're all going to have that experience. But really getting in tune with that and imagining looking back makes it really clear. You can have a die before you die kind of moment. I know for a lot of people, they've said when they had a near death experience it woke them up to what's really important and what's not. And definitely, it seems like being someone that you're not is almost always something that we regret later. We're like: I should've just gone for it. I should've went for what I really wanted.

Wendy Parr: Yeah, and with being a parent and that, that does it too. When my wife was pregnant, having kids, like just a whole bunch of stuff was not important. This stuff matters more. And like the motivation and priority for things change. Just think: even in my day-to-day, when I get upset about something, in those moments I remind myself: is this really worth being upset about? Like in the scheme of life, and we make drama for ourselves. My two-year-old makes drama. It's part of survival, apparently. Actually, when things feel really good, your biological body's: Uh oh we're in trouble with, we create problems so that we look for danger so that we're more on alert. But like those little things, I just… [sighs].  I have knee jerk reactions: Oh my God, the sky is falling. I'm like, really can we not? Cause I got a day to live here. Do I want to spend it in that energy? Another tool that I find really helpful is: go to your baby pictures, particularly age 8 and earlier, again, before the world got on you. Oh, I won't be able to find mine cause all my years of photo organization got wiped out. So all my albums are gone.

Michael Walker: Oh no!

Wendy Parr: Yes, it's pretty sad. But basically, go to your photo albums, find a picture or 3 of yourself, and have one on your screensaver, and have one on your side of your bed, and have one framed of yourself. See yourself as a baby, as a young kid and connect because that is you. That's you before the world said: no, be something else or no, whatever. And by connecting to that energy… I don't even want to tell you what happens. I want you to DM me and say: Oh my gosh, this is what I'm experiencing. So look at yourself and see yourself and then show little you the world you live in now and the friends you have now and the life you have now. They will be very excited. Like what? We're doing what? We get to do this? That's a really good way to connect to yourself as well. But I think that the Childhood Heroes is one. My mini course “Navigator” is a taste of “Compass” and it starts giving you those questions to ask yourself. Like: oh, let me explore this explore that. And then “Compass”, which actually we have our next cycle in 1 month so applications are open right now. And we have early bird until I think Wednesday this week, we're in the early bird registration and we've got some amazing artists coming into it. And I would say, if you think: Oh, I'm probably not good enough for it. Everybody thinks that: apply. If you're not ready for it, we'll direct you to the other courses we have but a lot of people think that even when they're very successful. They're like: Oh, no, I'm not good enough. It's just a human fallacy and it's definitely a creative's belief. But “Navigator” starts with these questions. And I think that, like I said, the childhood hero questions, a great place to start.

I also think just looking at patterns in your life. Just go open your closet. How would you describe the clothes in your closet? What colors do you see repeating in your closet? One artist I work with, whenever I see them dressed, I'm like, you're cozy. You're just like, so about comfort. I see a music video of you in the clouds. It should feel like I just want to wrap myself up in there. And she said, that's so funny. I was thinking about a music video with clouds. I'm like, yeah, your clothes just, it's always cozy-cozy. Not casual, just cozy. And it was like seeing that it's like: Oh yeah, that says a lot about who I am or what I want my music to feel like or what I might want a music video to feel. So look at your world. I'm gonna turn my camera around for you. This is my studio. That's where everybody gets to chill, including me. So this is an antique Indian daybed from the 1860s, with a bunch of French fabric. I designed all of that. I picked every fabric and the main mattress, if you flip it over, it has that blue and white fabric. So it's got like a summer version and a fall/winter version. If you see these colors and you see the Moroccan stuff and the Turkish stuff here, you go: Oh, that's Wendy's vibe. That's my thing right there. I love patterns and when I literally show that to my graphic designer and my logo maker, you're like: Ooh, you like warm colors. That tells them right there, warm colors. That particular red and that particular blue. Those are colors I see in my world a lot, in my clothes, this. It's very rich, deep red. Today is a black and white day. It's actually a green day. New pants.

Michael Walker: [singing] Don't wanna be an American idiot.

Wendy Parr: Green, this is my green day, mixed with gray, and black. And this is how I dress. I pick a color, it's my theme, and then I'll mix patterns. So I've got black and white, gray and black, and this gray and black and this black. And so that's how I recognize myself. I'm like: Oh, I like monochromatic, but I like patterns and textures. So that shows up in my clothes. That shows up in my website. That shows up in my logo: patterns, textures, warm colors, and when you know these things about yourself it doesn't get boring. This isn't boring. I'm not always in the same color, but there is a formula or…. that's not the word I'm looking for. There's a pattern to my style, right? So when you know that, with my graphic designer, same as he was doing my website and I was showing him graphic designs I love, but I also just showed him things about myself, right? I had learned this word previously: texture. You like texture and patterns. Okay. So my website does not have a flat background, there's a lot of textures and patterns, and then that translates into my deck and my workbooks. That's a really important language that I learned was texture and patterns. It's funny cause my hairdresser Betty the Barber, I love her, we're talking about can I want to go somewhere with my hair? And she's trimming my hair and she's like: Oh yeah I've looked at your Instagram. Because I was saying, I like texture. She's yeah, and you like flow. You need movement and flow. And I'm like: This woman is good at her job. She sees me as a whole and then goes: Oh yeah, that's part of her hair. She needs movement and flow. And she's right. And again, knowing that means: Oh, don't cut my hair too short or I lose all the waves, which is the movement and the flow. So if it's too short, I lose a thing I love. And so isn't that funny? You figure these things out as you go. You're just asking yourself all the time: Ooh, what makes me feel good? What do I like about this? And then what are the qualities? Maybe I need to ask the person I'm working with: how do I describe this? And then you start learning. I know that you're always going to see me with tea.

Michael Walker: What kind of tea are you drinking?

Wendy Parr: This morning it is High Garden, my favorite tea shop actually, period. High Garden tea, it's called “All Better Little One”. It's so my kids can drink it too, but it's like an immune booster. So I got this one. It's really beautiful flavor and some really good honey from France.

I remember when I was a teenager, I was working with a guitar player and he was playing something and I'm like, what is that? How would I describe that to you if I wanted you to play like that again? And he said: Oh, these are arpeggios. I was like, okay, I love those. Okay. Now noted when I work with a guitar player, I now know I love arpeggios. He played something else. I'm like, what would you call those? Those are power chords. I'm like, okay, I hate those. Don't play those. [both chuckling] But I didn't know the language. And so I'm asking:: how would I describe this to you to tell you: what is the language you need? So learning the things that you love and then the language to communicate them is the key for working with people. And again, just knowing yourself. What do I need? I like my tea. It's never like a singular flavor. It's 5. Cause I like texture. I like depth. So it makes sense.

Michael Walker: Totally makes sense. Yeah. This is super interesting. Part of where my mind goes as well as you're describing how to communicate the style, and put it into words. I can see that being extremely important in general, right? It's really what you do is like you help people communicate who they are and their style in words. Where my mind goes to as well as thinking about the current state of AI technology and the prompt engineering and knowing how to communicate. And that's, I think in a similar way, it's about figuring out how to use the words that communicate the style that you're going for. And so I can totally see the work that we're focused on right now, the work that you do being extremely valuable for defining your style, both to anyone that you're collaborating with to create artwork.

Wendy Parr: Yeah. From what I understand, and I know you're way more into the knowledge of AI than I am. But from what I can see and understand is that the prompting is essential. It's going to send you off track or closer to where you want to be, and then you've got to learn how to, so the prompting is essential. And yeah, that's the ability to describe adjectives. I described “Compass” as helping the artists have the ability to point everyone to the dartboard of me. This is the dartboard that is me. This is where we're aiming for. There's the bullseye. So once everyone can see it, now aiming all in the right direction, like fine tuning it and we just get better and better at hitting the bullseye and then it doesn't stop. You go inside of it and you go deeper and then you got influenced by something else and now, Oh wait, I want to add this into this dartboard, but you're never going to go: That's the dartboard. That is me. And then the next album; Now we're over here. No, this is the dartboard. And then we add layers and we had layers or we go: Oh, I want this layer to come up more now. That archetype was more on the side. Now I want that to take the front.

Michael Walker: Super interesting. Yeah. The other thing I really appreciate about what you brought up with the exercise around looking at your childhood heroes and finding: What did you appreciate about them? What did you admire about them? And using that as a way to reflect on: this actually says something about you and what you resonate with and your brand. Our last podcast was with ill factor, who was talking about music production and about his recommendation around finding references and using those references and doing it in an intentional way that isn't about copying somebody else, but it's more about figuring out what do you resonate with? And there's a reason that you resonate with certain aspects of the things that you appreciate and really honing in on that. I love that strategy.

Wendy Parr: Speaking of that, I have a course and it's part of “Compass”, but I have its own course called “Sound Chart” and it is a 3-step process to look at: this is the music I love and then start to distill the actual elements of what is it I love about this music? So one artist I'm developing, we discovered that the bass that she likes is very Skrillex. That's not the genre she's in at all, but the bass is from that sound. So it's oh, okay. So now, that's your bass sound. Whereas, you're not going to go through packets of packets of bass and be like, Oh, is it that? No, not, Oh no. That's consistently the kind of bass sound you like. And then we can keep looking at the ingredients of those things. And then the third step is it actually distills into a recipe of: these are all the ingredients I love and want in my music. Now you're not copying anybody, you're just recognizing: Oh, this actual instrument or this actual tone or this actual message. One artist discovered that their love songs all had a certain type of point of view. They weren't pining love songs. They weren't yearning. They were like over here. I'm not going to say it cause it's their work. But, oh, it all had this kind of tone. They were like, that makes so much sense. So now they make sure that when they're writing songs and all the messages is: this is the type of love song I like. That clarity just gets so basic. Don't give me a flowery tea. I don't like flower. I like roots and bark-based and tree-base; earthier. You're like: now my selection is like honing in. So we have to keep honing in. “Sound Chart” doesn't give you: Oh, I have a whole library of musical references now. but if you're working with someone, they're not going to listen to your whole library. Give them the samples, right? Like here's samples and then I can even hone it down. These are three references for this song, but if you have a recipe on paper and you go: these are the ingredients, Now let's have fun exploring how we bring them to life. Is in in the dark and edgy? Is it in the vocal? Is it in the lyric? Is it in the synth? Is the feminine, playful, girly in the lyric or in the harmonics or in an instrument? It's on paper, but now you've got to bring it to life. And that's where you get to play. And is this ingredient everywhere in all the songs? Or is this just: Oh, this is just in three songs. This is everywhere. Cause that'll change the tone. Even right down to BPMs. Artists will find, Oh yeah, my songs are generally upbeat, generally ballads or: Oh, I'm in the middle all the time, and then I have a couple songs over there. You see it in artists, Justin Timberlake has little to no super slow, vulnerable songs. like there's one in the set and he's a showman. It's up here. It's fun. And then John Moreland has one song that's like: this is my upbeat song. It's like a little more upbeat than his very sad; very make you cry; very we're all outsiders; feeling like outsiders together. And that's because that's their character.

Michael Walker: Super interesting. Wendy, we do have a live audience that's here right now, and I would love to open the floor to anyone who's here that has a specific question that they'd like to ask Wendy related to their artist's identity, their artist branding.

Wendy Parr: Love that. Yes please!

Michael Walker: All right. I see Jess asked a question here. He said: it's great advice. Wendy do you have any other tips for artists who are struggling to find their own style and they have very broad tastes and enjoy almost everything in life? I'm talking about myself, of course. Yeah, I think that's probably a pretty common one. It's ah, I love everything. Same thing with music fans: What do you like listening to? Everything. That's always what people say.

Wendy Parr: I think, if you think about: okay, I'm going to go on tour and I'm going to play these same songs for the next three years. And if I'm really fortunate and I have a hit, I'm going to be singing it forever. So what do you want that music to sound like? And that can evolve obviously from record to record, but at the core, I was like, what do I want the band to be? Like, what do I want the sounds to be like behind me? What do I want to be singing to? So I definitely recommend “Sound Chart” because it's going to help you really distill: it's not just that I like rock or I like whatever it's like, Oh, these are the actual elements that I like. So now I can bring that into my sound and I'm not doing a rock sound per se, but I have this guitar, I have this element or have this drum sound. When I did my first “Sound Chart”, I was shocked that I had no hip hop because hip hop was like the core of everything. I listened to Latin music for two years. Nothing but Latin music. And then when I was done, hip hop was back on. I’m always listening. I love hip hop. But my playlist only had two hip hop songs and they were both Tupac and they both were samples. One was like a Bruce Hornsby sampled piano-based song. And I was like: I can't believe there's no hip hop, but what there was gospel. I'm like, ah, the root of what I love is the gospel and the gospel music being uplifting. The gospel music having a divine and important or like uplifting message. The call and response. That is everything I do has call and response, whether it's vocal to guitar answering or in one album, a sitar answering or actual vocals. I love call and response. So I was like: Oh, the root of my hip hop is actually rooted in gospel. And then rooted in the gospel, these are the actual ingredients I love. So you can really have some fun discoveries from that. Cause again, in “Sound Chart”, I actually take Sylvina Moreno, she's making her fifth record when she took “Compass”. So she wanted new motivation and inspiration and you watch me take her through the process. And in it, she discovers there were two songs. There was a Pink Floyd song, super respectable, and there was a Backstreet Boys. And she's like, Oh, I'm embarrassed. I like this song. They were big for a reason. But when we looked at them, I saw common qualities in both of those songs. I went, wait a minute, these two songs, this is something that is in both of them. And then I also see this in a couple of your other songs. So perhaps that's the thing that you're actually like loving about this song. And so now it's not oh, that song's embarrassing. It's oh, actually I love it because of XYZ. Now I know XYZ needs to be in my music.

Michael Walker: Very cool. Yeah. Awesome. Well Wendy, it's always a pleasure to talk to you and bring you on the podcast and for anyone that's here right now who's interested in learning more… What I love about what you offer is that there's a few different entry points where people can connect deeper. So what's the best place for people to go to connect deeper if they're interested in exploring?

Wendy Parr: Definitely. Wendyparr.com. Everything's there. I definitely recommend joining the mailing list. We send out blogs and creative tips and my Instagram. Everything's in my website. The pathway of all the courses are there. They're written in order. There's a mini course, it's a taste of compass and then it's written in the order. I would do “Blueprint” first, but “Sound Chart” or “Voice Maps” could just be: Oh, I need this now. I want to dive into the sound or: Oh, I want more vocal variety and style in my voice and how I write. You can actually take those in either order and it’s just really according to your need and everything there is everything I've been teaching for going on 30 years. Like one on one I was like: okay what do I do with artists? How can I make a program that really offers this to more people?

Michael Walker: That's super valuable. All right. Let's go ahead and let's wrap up the podcast for today. Do it good old fashioned. Yeaaeah.

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