From the KSPS PBS studios, its Inland Sessions.

Drummer Jay Orth brings his lo-fi, hip hop beats to the Inland Sessions stage with his project August to August.

Right now on Inland Sessions.

[Floating by Jay Orth] Yeah.

I got into music, uh, it was the seventh grade when I first started playing any sort of music, uh, and it was the drums.

Uh, I have an older brother and he played guitar and he formed a band with his friends.

So my group of friends saw how cool that was, and we formed a band called Boat Race Weekend, and we were able to do a lot of cool things in that band.

Um, and then, you know, you just get older and and life happens and um, I was kind of ready to take a break from music.

Um, so I started a project to help me fall back in love with music.

And so I kind of started trying to figure out how to learn piano.

And so my motivator was I want to write a simple piano song every month for a year.

And I started in August, hence the name August to August.

It was supposed to be just a simple thing that was not complex.

And then it's become the most complex thing I've ever done.

So there you go.

[Laughs] [Sunset Hill by Jay Orth] [Late Nights by Jay Orth] Um, so I kind of do it all on my computer.

And that takes however long it takes to come up with the piano, the basses, the synths, the guitars, add the drums, and then once it's written from there, I have to figure out how to play it.

And so I figure out what order I can do things in, and that helps with my song structure.

Um, so a lot of it's about the performance where in other projects the song structure is fully about making the song sound good and having a structure that makes sense.

And for this I have to kind of put myself in a box and be like, Well, I have to make it realistic.

What can I actually play?

So in my set, you could probably notice some songs I was doing a lot more than other songs.

Um, those would be the newer ones, and the older ones were more simple.

So I've kind of learned, you know, from there.

More complex as I go, because I can do more things now.

[As It Should Be by Jay Orth] [Grocery Store Sushi by Jay Orth] I just, I absolutely love live music um and I truly fell in love with it when I was in the other bands.

And just the culture of touring bands and the culture of just making a good show and raw emotion and um, imperfections are part of that.

You know, snapping things to a grid, when you're programing, it's so easy to be perfect.

Um, but that's not really, to me, that's not what it's about.

Um, that's why I wanted to - find a way to perform this so much is because you see the human aspect of it.

You see improv, you see, you know, sounds that weren't supposed to be there.

But that's, that's the beautiful part of it for me.

And that really comes back to like rock and roll and punk and things like that.

Um, so I don't know if it translates well to this, but I still hold on to that because I love that part of live rock and roll music.

[Always by Jay Orth] Hear more from the artists on this program on the Inland Sessions podcast, available now at ksps.org/podcasts