Some of my readers may be questioning my choice in featured musicians today, due to the fact that this young man does not even play trumpet. He is a composer, singer, song writer as well as a great person. Oh…..did I mention he plays guitar?
Put your hands together for an astonishing young musician who will succeed in his chosen field as an accomplished musician.
Let me introduce you to my new friend, Daniel Hardin…
Here are a few questions I sent him to more fully understand his tallents and drive.
• How did you get started in music?/When did you start playing the guitar?
I began playing acoustic guitar when I was eight years old under a bluegrass teacher, who showed me the basics and gave me a good starting point in music theory and proper technique. When I was 12 or 13 however, I began to listen to artists like Led Zeppelin and Joe Bonamassa, and I started to love all things blues and rock. I started playing electric guitar and practicing improvising and playing the blues for 6-8 hours a day. As I entered high school, I loved all things music and started to sing, mix ,write my own songs, and play them live, and I haven’t stopped since.
• Who do you listen to?
I love and am inspired by a very wide spectrum of artists such as John Mayer, Joe Bonamassa, The Black Keys, Vulfpeck, The Punch Brothers, Ben Folds, Collective Soul, Dave Brubeck, Gary Clark Jr., B.B. King and Jason Isbell.
• What do you hope to accomplish with your music?
I want to inspire people, and to reach a large audience and capture them with good songs. That might seem like an oversimplified answer, but a lot of music that I hear seems to be trying to show off in one aspect or another, whether it be with technical proficiency or musical complexity or whatever. I certainly used to do that, and used to deem it necessary to play a million notes per solo, per song, but I am moving away from that, and I simply want to write exceptionally good songs that stand out on their own. Everything else is just to serve that purpose, and I hope that with that being my focus, I will be able to reach a larger audience that just wants a good song.
• Where do your ideas for your songs come from?
From life experiences or things that I ponder on a day-to-day basis. For example, I wrote the song “Wishing” when I was moving away from my hometown, away from my parents. It made me think a lot about my conflicting desires, where one part of me really wanted to move on, go to college, and begin to gain independence for my own life, while another part of me didn’t want to take the last few months of home-life for granted, because I was ending a stage of my life that I would not see again. I wanted to appreciate the present moment more than I was able to.
Moments and ideas like that run through my head somewhat often, and they eventually come out in a song. I either sit down with a guitar or in front of my DAW and play around with progressions, rhythms or melodies that I have in my head until I flesh them out musically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4ubu0MsrcM
• How long does it take from conception to final song product?
Generally the writing process gets done in a day or two. Either one long writing session, or two shorter ones if I get burnt out. The recording process usually only takes a day, depending on what I’m doing. The part that takes the longest is the final 10% with mixing and tweaking everything to get it perfect. I like to make a rough mix, then come back to it a week later or so and listen to it with fresh ears to make further changes. It’s easy to get lost in the perfecting process, so I also try and involve at least one more person to get an outside perspective.
• What programs do you use to record your songs?
I use Ableton Live 9. Some of my earlier drum tracks came from Toontrack’s Superior Drummer, though I now record with a live drummer. I generally stick with stock plugins to mix because I find they do the job well enough.
• What mike setup do you use?
My vocals are through a AKG P220 Condenser and a ART Pro MPA II preamp that I replaced the tubes in for some nicer Tung-Sol 12AX7’s. My electric uses just an SM57 on a combo, though I have used the direct signal through Native Instrument’s GuitarRig before and the results aren’t terribly different. My acoustic is just a small diaphragm condenser at the heel and the AKG P220 near the bridge.
• List your guitar equipment that you use.
I have built my own guitars since high school in my dad’s wood shop. I have a custom cocobolo dreadnought acoustic that I built that I use almost exclusively for acoustic work, and I have a 4-string bass that is on every track I have currently released. I have a custom electric that I built that is based off a Gibson Les Paul, however it is a bolt-on with a Fender Stratocaster scale length (25.5 in). That is currently my main guitar, but I do commonly use an Epiphone ES-330, a 2006 Gibson Les Paul Standard and a 1996 Ash American Standard Stratocaster.
My amp is a Fender Bassbreaker combo. It’s perfect for me and it has every tone I have ever needed. I pretty much plug straight into it except for a tuner and a Wah pedal. I use my controls on my guitar to control my gain and tone and the rest is in the fingers.
• What are you going to do after you graduate from college?
I plan to continue writing, recording, and playing shows. I am currently working on a second album that will come out roughly around the time I will graduate from UGA, so with the release of that, I will have new material to promote as soon as I am out of college.
“You might mention that if they’d like to keep up with me they can like Facebook page or follow me on Instagram at @DanielHardinmusic and my music is available on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, and all other digital music platforms”!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPXAUXQBXu8
With this said, be sure to check out this tallented musician from time to time for I predict that he will be hitting the headlines soon and you can say that you heard him first on a TRUMPET BLOG !
