A Week In The Life of Chelsea Warner
Sydney alt-pop artist, Chelsea Warner recently returned with a wonderful new single, Drama. This new one is Chelsea’s first release of 2021 and has set the tone for what the rest of the year will be for this talented young artist.
Drama is written from the perspective of a young person going through the formative years of life. It’s quite the tune, with it’s dynamic production and clever vocal delivery. We were lucky to have Chelsea share a diary entry with us of a week in her life. It’s an interesting insight into this talented girls life.
My life is never the same week to week as a songwriter/producer/musician, so what follows is kind of organised chaos.
My weeks usually start with recovering from the weekend. There’s usually at least one gig, and since I’m studying, I tend to link up with people and write on the weekends. Monday mornings I try to make about whatever I need. I can fit in some of the good habits I tried to build up during Covid, like yoga, cooking, reading and going for a walk, and I feel so on top of the world if I start my week with some of these. Right now I’m reading The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara and I might sit on my new Facebook marketplace grey velvet desk chair and flick through some pages. Since I keep it a pretty free morning, I’ll normally have some loose ends to tie up for the projects I’m working on. This week I finished an interlude for my University project (a concept EP), and did some work on an EP I’m doing additional production for!
On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I do Uni and work on my music. Right now I’m also working on my own project, getting my first body of work together, so a lot of my time is spent scrutinising mixes, EQing snares, making pinterest boards and tracking 1001 extra harmony layers. I love putting the finishing touches on songs so this is kind of my favourite part. I also tend to write a lot at night time, so I’ll often be locked in my home studio, sitting on the floor with a guitar or toplining to a beat I made the day before. My Tuesday classes at uni have been about popular Musicology, so I’ve been dissecting pop songs, and on Wednesday I study Jazz Arranging – writing/arranging music for jazz bands which is not easy for me, but I love it. I spend a good amount of time on the train from the Hills to Sydney, daydreaming or writing lyrics on my phone. I come up with a lot of ideas that way so I often am trying to be lowkey while voice memo-ing on the bus. In the evenings I might write out some harmonies for a horn section for homework, and then make a beat for fun.
On Mondays & Thursdays I work as a mentor and teach songwriting/production, and on Fridays I practice jazz piano and ear training for Uni. Thursday and Friday nights are often gig nights, whether with my band or with the solo live-looped one woman set-up I’ve been doing a lot lately. I also sometimes will go to a place like the Rocks with friends, or walk around the botanical gardens in Sydney.
On the weekend I’m normally pretty pooped from the week so I will make a concerted effort to get some sun and do some of that aforementioned Covid-spawned exercise. I’ve also been playing wii again (?) lately so might do that on a Saturday night if there’s nothing on. Lately I have been known to do nerdy blind book swaps and to cook various time consuming meals with friends. Weekends are also for writing sessions with anyone who, like me, doesn’t have a real job (<3) and therefore doesn’t really understand weekends. Last week I spent Sunday in the studio writing/producing and Saturday shooting a video. I had approximately 0% of my yoga & soy latte induced energy left in the tank so then, the beginning of the next week was back to square one. And repeat!
