Music Producer

From an instrumental side of things, when you’re making beats, what’s the recipe? What’s really makes it stand out?

I’m not sure! To be real, even the terrible beats I made when I started producing (which I look back on now and think ‘Wow they were so bad’ (haha). Even though at the time I was like, ‘Yeah these are pretty good! I’m onto something here (haha)!’). I don’t know: I think when you make something yourself, you have a bit of a personal bias. It’s hard to really pinpoint exactly where I noticed that I was onto something.

Let’s talk about your recent project with Dunn D. Can you tell us a bit about that journey and who Dunn D is?

Dunn D is a local hip hop artist. He’s been a rapper for a number of years now. He’s a battle rapper and he’s had a lot of success in the battle rap scene. He’s toured all around the world and built a name for himself doing a really great job. I met him through Promise. Promise brought him around to work on some tunes and he kind of liked what was going on. He and I started working on some tunes together, then I ended up producing his album really recently. That was an amazing opportunity! He’s such a talented dude; it was so easy working with him and bouncing ideas off him. Every beat just came together so quick and every song came together so easily. It was a great opportunity to be able to work with him.

How have things changed for you during the COVID situation? You mentioned that you work from home, but do you still feel on track doing your own thing?

I’ve been really lucky to not have been too negatively affected by COVID. I know some people are really going through it at the moment. Their businesses are kind of put on pause right now for an unknown amount of time, which is really unfortunate. I’ve been really lucky to have a completely digital service. So I’m not too negatively impacted. I’ve had to postpone recording and those sorts of jobs, but mixing, mastering and beats – I love doing all of those things and I can still do all of them which I’m really grateful for.

What advice would you give to anyone else in the creative arena thinking about chasing similar goals?

From my experience, it’s entirely possible to do. You just need to pursue it. I think it’s entirely worth it! I’ve seen all these cliché self-help quotes and stuff like that: the ones that are like, ‘You know you can fail at what you hate doing, so you might as well do what you love’, but it’s actually so true. I think you should definitely try to pursue what you love. I know not everyone can, and I guess of course there’s ‘luck factors’, but the more you do it, the more likely you will be to succeed at it!

For more info about Callum Ball and his music, be sure to look him up on Facebook, or Instagram, or listen his work on Triple J Unearthed: www.triplejunearthed. com/artist/callum-ball.