- [Film Crew Member] Like I said, the white balance, there's something was a set different, like it was really yellow.

(mellow guitar playing) (film crew faintly speaking) - Okay.

Whenever, I'm good.

- [Film Crew Member] Cool.

- My name is Hayden Pedigo, and this is Sound On Tap.

(lighthearted guitar music starts) (guitar playing stops) Everything that I do, be it the music or the absurd, weird stuff I put online, I think they're both trying to fulfill different things 'cause with the music, it's kind of easier for me to separate myself from it.

You can just listen to it, never see me and get something from it, and it's a way I can kind of create without stress 'cause no one really has to see me and I make it in private, where when I do the weird photos or the city council run, those were very public with me, my face.

And it's not so much who I am as a person.

If you meet me in real life, I'm not really out there, super weird, but it's kind of a way to express my really crazy, more comical side of things that doesn't exist in my music.

And I like to keep them kinda separate just because they're two different things that, when that one's not doing something for me, I switch to that one, and it always is kind of this back and forth, which I think they're very connected to each other in a sense, but they never, I never let them touch at the same time.

They're just two totally different worlds.

I've always gotten a kick out of people that know me for different reasons where it's like I can have someone come up to me and know me for my music or they can come up and know me for city council or a dumb picture I put up on Reddit or something, and I'm interested in all forms of the ways people know what I do.

I think it's cool when somebody knows me without knowing I make music at all.

That's kind of cool because it's like I have this whole other world people don't know about or vice versa, and it's especially cool when you have somebody that knows that whole story where they're like, I like that, but I also like music.

But I've had people a lot come up and know me for city council and things like that that have never heard any of my music, which I'm completely cool with that.

I think that's kind of, it's kind of neat to have different characters people know because a lot of that stuff is in a way kind of playing a character.

Again, if people meet me, it's not really gonna match up with the weirdness that I put online.

And I think the music probably matches how I am as a person more than the images I might put up online.

(lighthearted guitar music starts) (guitar playing stops) I would 1000% have an interest in scoring films or documentary type things.

I think the tricky thing right now for me is probably not having the fancy equipment I would probably need to do it.

And also, I don't know if I have the connections to make that happen in terms of knowing the people that would want my music.

And I've seen it done before, I've known people that have done it and it's kind of a slow, gradual process, and sometimes you walk out 'cause there's a well-known director that happens to like your music and will reach out.

If I'm ever offered that, that would be great, and I definitely think my music has that soundtrack quality to it because whenever you don't have lyrics in your music, automatically, people use it to soundtrack their own life because it's not, if you hear somebody singing a song about themselves, of course you can put yourself into it, but it doesn't always apply to you, where instrumental music always applies to everyone.

You can listen to an instrumental track and find yourself in it no matter what kind of instrumental it is.

And that's what I like with mine is, it's a film score for everyone's life.

Everyone's life is the film, the music becomes the score.

So I'm film scoring on a small scale for non-existent films, that is people's lives.

(whimsical guitar music starts) (guitar playing stops) The thing that's kinda weird for me is, musically, I doubt I'll ever be successful at it in terms of I'm probably never gonna make money from it.

When you're making solo guitar music, you're dealing in, like, a success in that realm is, oh, I sold 2,000 copies.

That's success in what I do, but in terms of grand scheme of things, it's not really success that you could live off of.

I definitely, I've been happy with the attention it's gotten media-wise when people write about the record or talk about it, and that's, sometimes that feels like enough for me just 'cause it feels like it validates me when someone is like this is good.

It makes you feel good, like, okay, someone else thinks it's good, and that's enough for me to kind of keep doing it even though I don't really make money off of it, and that's part of the reason that it's never been my career and I've never tried to is that I kinda rope it in on how far it could actually go in terms of living off of it.

I probably couldn't, but I think it also has kept my music pretty honest because I've never made music with stress of paying bills or things like that.

It's been more an escape for me.

So I think when people hear the music, they pick up on the escape feeling.

It feels cut off from stresses and worries and it's good music to zone out to.

I know a lot of people want music to make people connect, and in a way, my thing is I want people to disconnect when they hear my music.

And disconnect in the sense of the stresses and worries and help other people hone in on their thoughts 'cause my music is me honing in on my thoughts.

If you listen to it, I hope it helps other people hone in on what they wanna create and do.

So that's, I think, the grand purpose of where my music sits at.

(guitar harmonics play) (playful guitar music starts) (music ends) For me, writing's kind of weird because I don't have any musical training.

I can't read music, anything like that, so it's really just, I'll sit down with a guitar, start tweaking with the tuning and if I like the sound of that tuning, I'll start playing some notes and forming it together over time like blocks, just sticking them together.

And that's kind of how I write my own music, where in the past, when I've played in bands, it's been more, in some ways, it's been a bit more freeing playing in bands because there's really less stress 'cause if the singer has a song they've written out, I have the framework to go, okay, this is what I'm gonna put on top of it.

And that's really fun for me because I genuinely, I don't hate writing songs, but I'm not a fan of it, even my own music, 'cause it's hard, it's kind of difficult and it takes a long time for me to do, whereas I'm playing lead guitar over someone else's music, the song's already written.

I can just go and write my part and go crazy.

It's like the framework's there, it's like the house is already built, I just get it going and decorate.

As opposed, like, I don't have to do the grunt work of putting in the plumbing and all of this stuff that is like when I'm writing my own stuff.

So that's kind of the difference in how I write versus when I'm writing playing with a band or something else.

Hopefully in 2021, hopefully COVID will ligthen up, and that will help a lot of people, not only myself, who play music be able to play live again, do things like that 'cause I think we all miss playing shows and doing that.

I hopefully will have this new album out in 2021, and then there's a documentary on my city council campaign that's coming out in 2021 premiering at South by Southwest.

So those are kinda the big things I'm excited about for next year.

But 2020 was more of just a year to write and create, and hopefully next year is when a lot of this will come out and people can hear it and see it.

'Cause I was scheduled to play at South by of last year, or this year, 2020, and it got canceled because of COVID, and in a way, it kind of worked out because I didn't have a new album written yet, and because of COVID, it gave me a lot of time to write new stuff and make a new album.

But obviously, didn't get to play shows, didn't get to really be in the scene of other musicians 'cause that helps inspire when you're around other people.

So felt completely cut off, but this year is my year where I just felt more patient, where it's, like, just work on stuff, make it perfect and then next year put it out.

I didn't really wanna release anything this year, and this was kinda my year to lay low and just make stuff on my own.

(soft guitar music starts) (music ends) (playful guitar music starts)