Scott Turek, local musician and band member of Bazooka Zoo, started playing music at a young age. Over the past three years, he has become more serious with making music and is now focusing on building a career.
What kind of music do you make?
Myself, personally, I’ve been diving into a lot of synthesized electronic soul music, kind of along the veins of James Blake meets Radiohead. I just really like the intense core structure of the music behind some vocal and lyrically driven music. I appreciate that a lot more—the heavy stuff. That’s my favorite to make on my own, definitely. With the group I love working a lot with providing sonic layers into funk stuff. Yea, funk, electronic, rock, everything like that.
What is your favorite instrument to play?
To play it’s definitely the synth. I kind of started playing keyboards and synths about three years ago, and I’ve just been in love with it ever since. Being able to manipulate the sounds so much, you never really know what you’re going to get.
What is your process when making music?
As far as the synthesizer stuff, I normally just come up with a melody line or a bass line with the keys itself, and then I just start singing stuff over the top of it and see what sounds good. A lot of times, I just sing a bunch of nonsense that has syllables but no words, just so I can start tying together words that have the same kind of syllables and write a story around that.
Did you grow up with a music background?
Yes and no. I mean I grew up with a piano in the house and stuff like that, but I didn’t really pick up music until later on. I didn’t pick up a guitar until I was 16. I didn’t really get into the piano or anything again until I was asked to join this band … three years ago.
How long have you been playing music?
That where it gets kinda tricky. The first song I ever played was like Top Gun theme music on the piano because it was sitting right there, but I also played violin in middle school. So I’d say just for continuity sake, since I was 10 years old.
When did you start doing shows and making a career out of music?
I’ve been playing shows since high school, since I picked up the guitar. But I only got really serious about it when I got back from Los Angeles, so about six years ago.
What is the best part about making music?
Giving a message. I like relating to people, and I think that is one of the most important aspects of music. Having the aesthetic of relating with other human beings even though they could live completely across the world. You’re giving them some sort of message to which they can relate. It helps people. I like helping people.
What are your hopes for the future with making music?
To make a career and be able to travel around. This last year has been a really big eye opener in being proactive and making it a thing. I’m really excited about what this year has to offer. We’ve done shows in Vegas, the Bay Area and Los Angeles. We also have a tour coming up in March that is going to take us from Arizona all the way up to Washington, which is the next big step. I mean for being only a 2-and-a-half-year-old band, that’s pretty good.