Introducing Avi.

Avi is a New York based solo pop artist, producer, mixing/mastering engineer, multi-instrumentalist and former lead-singer for the pop-punk band, Sad Heroes. As frontman of the band, Avi focused primarily on pop-punk style vocals, production and instrumentation but has since moved much more into the pop scene. In 2022 alone, Avi has released five singles in his own solo project and many others as a producer, songwriter and audio engineer. Avi sat down in a live-form in-person interview to discuss his music, process, marketing strategies, being in a band, and the future of the music industry!

Q: Thanks for joining us! Tell the audience a little about yourself

Sure! So my name is Avi Turner. I'm a record producer from New York. I mix, master and produce and write records with artists from all over the world. I was in a band called Sad Heroes. We did pretty, pretty well back in our day. I, I'd say, and now I'm a solo artist and I just put out my own indie pop music whenever I feel like it and it's a good time.

Q: You make everything from rock to pop to country. How did you go about finding your own sound and your own preference within all of that? And how do you recommend an artist find their sound? 

Well, the thing is, I feel like because I started music at such a young age, my sound has, or I guess my preferences kind of evolved.

So when I was a teenager, I really liked metal. Punk rock. And then as I got older, I started liking more pop rock. And then as I got older, I started liking indie pop. And then I started, I went through a country phase and then I think that I took elements from all of those genres and was basically like, this is what I actually enjoy playing.

So more of like that indie pop style, kind of like just a-- a tamed version of whatever is going on on the radio in the rock side, and the pop side. And then I was like, I really love the way that these rock artists are writing their choruses, and I love their lyrics, but I wanna take that and put that into a pop song because I think that would translate really well.

And like country artists are so good at harmonies and I love harmonies. So I would take that aspect from country music and be like, I love big harmonies in songs. So like, why don't I take that and put that in an indie pop song? You know what I mean? So then all of that stuff just becomes one big, like you take little things from everywhere and put it into one thing and it just kind of becomes your own sound.

You know? Like even metal, they have like these like really cool base drop effects and these impacts that I'm like, shit. Like that would sound so cool in a pop song like this impact when a chorus hits. Like a lot of pop songs don't really do that sometimes, you know? So to take that in, like an indie pop Lauv vibe and like put that in there, it's like, oh shit.

Like I did not expect that. You know? 

Q: Your Sad Heroes and solo pop project require very different singing tones. How did you learn to sing in multiple different ways?

So what I did was I. I started doing these really heavy vocals really incorrectly in my band, to the point where recording sessions had to get cut short because I would hit a note and then I'd lose my voice for two days. So a band made of mine suggested that I buy this DVD by this woman named Melissa Cross, and what she is is an opera trained singer who helps metal singers scream without blowing their voice out using opera techniques. So I went and bought her DVD and I watched it, and I basically took a month to train my voice to get aggressive without it coming from my throat. So I'm able to basically sing as aggressively as I want without it coming from my throat. And that way it preserves my voice and, and it actually helps because when I need to scream at people, it doesn't hurt.

But I think my natural way of singing is very throaty, which is what, where that raspy tone comes from. So it was just really cool to be able to get that raspy tone, even in pop stuff without feeling like I have to like push my throat. And it comes more from my diaphragm and more from my chest. And like, I guess kind of like contorting your throat in a different way so that it, it comes out correctly and like the throat just kind of acts more as a passage way rather than the source.

Q: What is the difference in songwriting and production structure between Sad Heroes and your solo project? When you were working in the context of a band project, a group thing, and now you're doing your own thing. One in terms of style and then in terms of logistics how did the music creation process work in the band and how does it work now for you? 

So when you're in a band, I think that ideally people want to think that it's a complete democracy, and it's like, what do you wanna play here?

And hey buddy, what do you wanna play here? And what do you wanna sing here? But the reality of being in a band is that it has to be a dictatorship in a way because nobody is going to be happy Compromis. On what they want. Like if I want something a little more poppy and somebody else wants something a little heavier and we compromise, it's just gonna sound like a product that neither of us like.

So the reality is somebody has to take the leadership seat and call the shots, and then everybody else kind of just has to fit around that so that your sound is solidified. And that is why a lot of bands get into fights and why a lot of bands don't work. It's because a lot of people have conflicting ideas and they don't really wanna serve the song.

They kind of want to just have it all of their ways, and then they end up compromising and then they find this, they end up with this product that just isn't good. With my solo stuff, I work with one or two songwriters based in Nashville. Shoutout Keana. And so what I will do is I will completely finish an instrumental, completely done.

I will send it to her and if she likes it, she will send me voice notes of ideas that she has, and then we will build off of that and then basically have the lyrics written that way. Because I think she's a really great lyric writer. Like one of the best, honestly, best pop song writers. So in that sense, I like it better because it's less moving parts. I get to kind of just make my creative choices in the music, and then we get to just collaborate on lyrics and nobody's really like, it's, it's my song in the end of the day. So I don't think that anyone else has like that authority to just tell me that I have to do something. If, if she brings something to me and I say, I don't like it, we don't use it. Whereas if we're in a band and I say, I don't like an idea that two people like, it's me against those two people, and then it's a battle of persuading people to be on your side, so it definitely gets a little complicated.

Q: Let’s talk a little bit about the story of your band. Sad Heroes still does have a relatively big following. I think I saw over 30,000 monthly listeners even now in 2022. Which is amazing for the band that you were. But people might not even know that the band has since broken up. Could you talk a little bit about the formation of the band?

So the band started as a, I was a really big fan of Panic! At The Disco and I thought it was really cool how Brendan Yuri was Panic! At The Disco.

So I. I'll just be Sad Heroes. That is, I'm gonna take on this identity as Sad Heroes. And the original idea for this band was that I wouldn't talk or show my face and it would just be this music that would just come out and people would be like, who is this? And then I realized that I loved attention, and then I couldn't do that.

But so it started off as a one man project. So the first EP that I did, songs like Ghost of You, Dark Matter, the Parade, all that stuff. I just recorded everything myself. So I did all the guitars, drums, piano, bass.This was back in 2016. Wow. And then I basically sat on this EP for almost a year, and then I released it towards the end of 2017. And, so many people were telling me to not put it out cuz they thought it sounded outdated because it's just like this pop-punk thing. And little do they know, it came back and now it's taking over the world.

But back then, in 2017 it was not cool. So people would tell me to people would be like, you should not release this. You should rewrite these songs and make them sound more like this dark pop thing. And I was like, no, you gotta trust me. I gotta do this. I put it out, nobody liked it. And what happened was I realized, I was like, so none of my friends, none of my immediate friends like this, so why don't I reach out to fans of other bands who do sound like this and gain my own fans who aren't my friends?

And so I did. I literally started reaching out through the DM’s to people, Hey, saw you're a fan of Fallout Boy, you should check out. My band and we got big enough to where I needed to start filming music videos. So I started bringing on members, my brother being one of them. And then they were just originally supposed to be live members.

And then I kind of just brought them on as official members cuz I just thought it would be easier. And also the cost of having. Pay for music videos and photoshoots get split into three, which is great cuz you know, I don't want to have to spend definitely an incentive. Yeah. But it started, I think a lot of people started relating to those lyrics because I wrote them in like the darkest period of my life.

So people hear those lyrics and emo fans from across the world who are fans of like My Chemical Romance and bands like that who are like, oh shit, Like this is like, this is good stuff. Like I, I need this. And that's why people started, like they would show their friends and then like I'd get DMs every day, like, oh, my friend just showed me your band. You guys are so cool. And then I was like, maybe I should release sweatshirts because maybe these kids will buy sweatshirts. And then they did. And I was like, wait, so people actually believe in this? Like, this is crazy. This isn't just like me in my bedroom anymore with these grandiose ideas, it's people buying things from me.

And so I guess that's kind of how it started. And I was like, I, I feel like I could, I have a really good shot with this. I gotta keep going. And I, and I did for a time.

Q: You’ve told me you gained a lot of fans simply by reaching out directly through social media direct messages? How was this strategy successful for you?

When our numbers were growing, a lot of other local bands would come up to me and be like, how did you get that? How are you doing this? And I would tell them the method, and then it would just be a pride thing.

Like, they're like, yeah, but like, I'm an artist. I'm in this band. Like they should be coming to me. And it's like, it becomes this pride thing where it's like, I don't want to have to like reach out to people. I don't wanna look desperate. And I'm like, okay, but then you're just not gonna-- these people are people who have like stuck with us and would've never found out about us had I not just sent a single, a simple DM to them.

You know, people used to get mad at us on Twitter about that too, cuz we would reach out and we would reach out and they'd, people would like screenshot our dms to make fun of us and be like, oh my God, this bands like the second time they've reached out to me.

And it's just like, okay, very funny. But what they don't realize is that them posting that made other people check us out cuz they saw that and they were like "who are these weirdos? Let me check it out." And then we would gain a fan because like somebody would check it out. 

It's just like you just kind of had to swallow your pride and people would, when I would message people, sometimes they would be like, you know what's so funny that like eight years ago I got a message on MySpace from Panic at the disco to check them out, 

So it's like people, bands have been doing this for a really long time and the ones that aren't willing to put in that work are the ones that are not reaping those benefits and they're paying for these like scam playlists where they bump your numbers for a month and then they go right down.

I think a lot of people get discouraged if the people that are immediately around them aren't all in on what they're doing, but I think it's just an important reminder that your fans are out there and you just need to find them

Right? And I mean, think about the worst song you've ever heard. Chances are with the fact that there are like, what's six, 7 billion people in the world? Like even if 1% of the of the people in the world like the worst song you've ever heard, that's still millions of people you know? So your odds. Your odds are like, pretty good for people liking and, and reaching out to bands in that same genre.

So Fallout Boy and Panic at the Disco were big ones. And the band the Maine, I don't know if you've ever heard them, but they're really good. So like we would reach out to their fans and they'd be like, holy shit, I've been looking for a band just like this and everybody. A lot of people love supporting a new band.

Like they're like, I just found this really cool new band that has less than a thousand followers. Like they're mine. Like they hold them close to their heart cuz they're like, I discovered this band. And then we would get dms like, like I remember when you guys had like 400 listeners and I felt so special and like, now you guys are growing.

And I'm like, I'm sad. You guys are my babies. And it's just, it's cool to have that fan like that, that growth with your fans and a lot of people. Discovered us in, you know, 2017 by 2019 forgot about us. And by 2019 we had a whole new set of fans. And it's like they, cuz people's music taste evolves. You know, you don't like pop punk for.

Forever. I guess so. Shit, you know, it evolves.

Q: Busker is all about finding emerging talent. Has there been a band or an artist that you have listened to that maybe was slightly smaller and that you feel like, that you felt that sense of pride with? 

Billie Eilish was an up and coming artist, and me and my friend Liba discovered her. When she was playing at Pianos, which is a small bar in the city. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. No. She was playing pianos and Liba was like, do you wanna come see this girl Billie Eilish with me? Like, she's so cool. And I was like, whatever. She's like this new artist that's not, it's 

It's like, and, and it's like Billy I And then another one in high school, my friend Aaron was like, You should come see this new artist, Lorde with me. And I was like I'll pass. But that's fine. I mean like whoever, whoever it is, I'm sure she's great.

He was like seeing her at some little dive bar in the city and then she became this huge thing. So it's not, I don't think I held those artists near and dear to my heart. But I do think that it was cool to see that you know. They, they had, they had exceeded my expectations.

Q: Sad Heroes and Avi Turner. Have you always been independent? Did you ever look into working with any labels?

We have had several labels reach out to us. We rejected all of them because we basically discussed in our band meetings that having leverage in this game is really important. And when you're a band with 2000 followers on Instagram and a couple like 30,000 followers on Spotify, the label has all the leverage.

So if they give you a really shitty deal, you can't. You don't have leverage. If I was Ariana Grande and a label was like, we want 90% of your next release, Ariana Grande has the leverage to be like, no, because I have millions of fans, and if that's not the deal that I want, you're going to, you're going to appease me or else no deal.

We don't have that option. Cuz if a label says we want an 80 20 split, who is sad heroes with 2000 followers to say, no, we don't want. 50- 50 or nothing, cuz they'll be like, get the hell outta here. Yeah. So I think it's really important that you should you sign to a label when you actually have some form of leverage, which is why a lot of TikTok artists and stuff are being signed to labels right now, and they're getting these crazy good deals.

It's because they have this giant following now. So if a label is giving them a shit deal, they can just say, well no, I don't want that. I want this instead , but we didn't have that, so we had to reject all of them. A lot of our friends got heavily fucked over by labels. I have friends right now that still owe money to labels cuz a label will give them a $60,000 loan to go record a record that didn't sell well and now they have to pay outta their own pockets.

The idea was like, why don't we just keep releasing our music and make, and keep all the money and split it rather than like, we could, we could have gotten a $60,000 loan or a $40,000 loan to make a record, but then what some, some of our songs didn't make $40,000 and we would've been fucked.

Yeah. So. Like, maybe like we were in like the single digit thousands for, for song sales. Most of our money came from merch and a lot of iTunes purchases. Cuz you keep a lot of the money from iTunes. Yeah. You don't keep really anything from Spotify. They take, like, you, you keep like 0.80 cents from every stream.

So like 12 streams will make you one cent. Which is nuts. . 

An artist like Taylor Swift makes like 42 million a month. I think somebody calculated it with like 80 million monthly listeners every month, or 82 million monthly listeners, You are, you're gonna make like, and with merch sales and purchases and CD sales, like that's like, that's like several million a month. But for an artist like me, if you have 30,000 monthly listeners, you're making like a few hundred dollars a month. You know? 

I think that the biggest thing a label does for an artist is get them on good tours with other artists.

But you can do that through good management too. 

That's true. So yeah, that's A lot of people did the management thing as well, which worked out for them. We kind of were our own managers. So we didn't have to pay anyone to do that stuff, which is great. We just basically, I think that a big thing that a lot of people do is they cut co-- which we did. We cut a lot of costs because we were able to do a lot of things that normally would have to be outsourced, like mixing, mastering, management, all that stuff.

I think a lot of, all the other young artists who don't have those skills will end up cutting costs by doing those things and then things will end up not sound like, for example, a music video, right? A music video doesn't make an artist any money. Yeah. By just being a music video. A music video makes an artist money because when you put that out and it, and you run an ad on it, or it shows up on somebody's homepage, that view becomes, oh, this song is sick.

Let me check that out because I've ha that's happened to me with tons of songs and that's happened to fans. For us. But like the only reason we felt comfortable two years into being a band with shelling out $2,000 or $3,000 to make a music video is because we knew that within two months we were going to make that money back.

But before then, it didn't make financial sense to do that. Yeah. You know, That's why band meetings are important and why management is important because if it was up to me, I'd be like, music videos, photo shoots, and like I would wanna do all these big things because I wanted to look like I was really official.

But there's, there's really a time and place for that kind of stuff.

Q: Is it better to build an audience from the top down or the ground up?

The thing is people look at [sliding into DMs] as a sleazy thing, but what they don't realize is that the beauty of it is that fans are grateful that they're like, put it this way. If I was a kid and somebody DM me, Hey, I saw you were a fan of Breaking Benjamin, listen to my band. Cuz you might like our band if you like that.

I would've. New music being handed to me on a silver platter. Hell yeah. I'll take it. And if it's bad, I just tell them it's bad. And some people told us it was bad and it's, you know, who cares? But the thing is, like some people look at it as a sleazy marketing tactic, but in reality it creates such a community.

We had so many fan group chats. We had a street team, we had a listening party team. So whenever Sad Heroes would drop a song, there were a group of like 20 to 30 fans on Twitter who would be like, okay, Sad Heroes song drops at midnight. Set your Spotify to repeat the song all night while you sleep. Leave the-- but and leave the volume on one because Spotify doesn't count it as a stream if you mute it.

So it's leave your phone in another room, leave the volume on like one bump. And just let it stream all night. And those streams would not only amass us more streams and make us look good, but they would trigger the Spotify algorithm to say, this song is important. Let's show more people. Yeah. So doing all of that, like sleazy stuff, as some people would say is super helpful because it's like a trickle effect.

It's not just people who are random listeners. You're getting people who are like, oh my God, this band reached out to you too. That's how they found me. And we would tweet things like, Hey we want to get to know you guys. Where are you from and how did you discover us? And then some people would be like, oh, you came up on my Spotify.

And some people would be like, you DMed me like two years ago and I discovered you. And then somebody will reply to that comment and be like, oh, no way, they discovered, that's how I discovered them too. And then those fans would become friends and it built a community. So I think there's definitely, it's definitely the, like a very underrated way to go about it that a lot of people on surface level will just look at it and be like, that's so skeezy. Why would you do that?

A lot of artists may think they’re too good to be DMing strangers

And it's also like, what does that mean? I'm too good for this. It's like, who are you? You're not, you're not anybody right now. You're not too good for this. You will be too good for this once you hit your goal, but you're, and yeah, it's, it's just, it's an ego thing.

It comes down to an ego thing. And then some people will be like, I want, it's like I'm all about the art. Like this is an art. Like I don't wanna do this. And it's like nobody's stopping you from being all about the art. Like go be about the art and don't promo it and just make songs for yourself, like that's okay too.

Yeah, but you're trying to do this as a career, you gotta do it.

Q: You've released like five singles this year alone as Avi Turner? What’s next?

My music releasing is so random because it, depending on how busy I am client wise I'll basically just have to gauge how much time I have to actually write and release a. My goal was one song a month, and I was doing that until April, and then I got a little too busy, so I had to stop.

But it's, it's very, it's, it's a very random process. I, my goal is to, before 2023, to have like two songs out, two new songs. So that would be sick. That is the goal. 

Q: What do you offer to people as a producer?

As a producer I really enjoy listening to people's stories. And listening to people's ideas and then making them larger than life.

It makes me feel really good, and it's something I've always liked to do. So when an artist comes to me, I offer to help them write, I do pre-production, I produce, I mix it, and I master it. And I, I really love every bit of the process. And I think that it's almost, as a producer, you're, you're, you're acting almost.

You're acting, you have different roles. You're not just a guy sitting in a chair trying to execute a sound. You're acting as a therapist. You're acting like a, sometimes as a parent, when you got a band here and there's tension in a band, like you kind of have to act as like the, the diffuser and the, the mediator.

So there's a lot that comes with it, and it's, it, it can be emotionally taxing at times, but I think that the projects that have come out the best were the ones that were the most emotionally taxing because it gets captured in the room. Like you can hear when somebody just had a really shitty experience and sang about it.

You know? So those are the things that that really like make me enjoy what I do. If I had somebody coming in here and was just like, here's this song. Make it sound sick, it's fun. The process is always fun, but it doesn't mean as much as when an artist will come in and actually basically come here with their heart cut, wide open.

Just, this is what I need to say. Help me say it. You know? So I enjoy every bit of it.