An Interview With Cody Fry

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I had the privilege of talking with the brilliant musician Cody Fry for a school project, and got to pick his brain on many things that I had been quite curious about for some time. As a music composition major myself, there has been no one musical artist that I have learned more from during my time in school! Cody is a singer-songwriter artist, as well as doing extensive work for other musicians (including playing in Ben Rector's band for several years). He is an arranger, orchestrator, composer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and all-around versatile musician. I corresponded with him over email and he was generous enough to send a voice memo with his responses, which are transcribed below.

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Hi, Shane, this is Cody Fry!

Could you briefly tell the story of music from your childhood— from as early as you can remember— and what it was like to grow up in a musical family with a prolific composer for a father? When did you realize that you wanted to pursue music as a career?

Well, you nailed it when you said that I grew up in a musical family with prolific composer for a father— I am aware of how lucky and amazing that is. You know, it's like winning the lottery as a kid who ends up being in music. I used to sing on TV commercials because my dad at the time was a jingle writer for like McDonald's and other companies of that nature. And so me and my three sisters, we used to sing on TV commercials for McDonald's Happy Meals and stuff like that— from when I was very young, like five or six years old all the way till I was 11 or 12. So I've kind of always been doing music, and my dad had a studio in the house, back in the day when that wasn't very common. Now everybody's got a studio in the house, but this was, you know, when I was a kid in the nineties, I could go in and make my own little songs using his studio equipment and learned how to do MIDI programming from a young age. And yeah, I had a very, very special upbringing musically and seeing my dad as a working musician. There was never a doubt in my mind that this was a viable career, which I think some people probably don't have an example of that.

So I felt very lucky to have an example of someone who was doing this successfully. My father wasn't like a household name or super famous or anything, but he was just a working class musician and making a living and supporting his family. That was just really cool to grow up with. And I realized I wanted to pursue music as a career. I don't know, I kind of went through some phases of like, “Maybe I want to do film stuff” or whatever, but really, there's there's only one thing I've ever been any good at— and it's music. So I kind of just always knew this is where I was going to be. I love it so much and I'm just terrible at other things. So, music.

I would imagine that as a result of such strong childhood influences (i.e. having a home recording studio, etc.) you had a significant education even before going to Belmont. What was your perspective after high school in pursuing higher education and a career? How essential was college for you and would you recommend it for everyone?

I love this question. So, I actually wasn't going to go to college after high school. I knew I wanted to do music and I just thought, you know, “I could do that” and I knew how to produce. I kind of had the general skills I needed to kind of make a go of it. So I thought it was just gonna be an expensive way to hang out for four years by going to college. No one really cares about a music degree. I did get full rides to Berkley in Boston, and USC in LA, and the New School in New York. But I really found their environments back in the day to be very jazz focused— and I love jazz! But I really wanted to go to a place that had outlets in other areas of music as well because I wasn't focused in jazz. My friend who was a year above me, his name's Nico [Xidas], he was like, “You should really come check out this place called Belmont.” And so I made it to Belmont, and I'm so glad that I went.

My spiel on college is that a music degree is basically worthless. Everything about music you can learn on YouTube. Sometimes even better than your teachers can teach it because, you know, you're watching a YouTube video that is well produced and showing you exactly what to do the whole time. So I learned a lot in college, but really the reason you go is because the people you meet in college become the community that provides you with the basis for your work moving forward out of college. Especially right when I was out of college, every job I've ever had could be traced back to someone that I knew at Belmont. In that sense, the money that I spent on college— which I had a partial scholarship at Belmont— was so worth it because it provided me with this network.

How would you describe your work ethic?

I would say, you know, obviously during COVID, everything kind of shut down. But I think prior to that I am an extremely hard worker. I work very long hours. I stay up very late into the evening— 2:00 AM— working on music. I've sort of stopped doing that in the last couple of years. When you're just out of college and you're young, that's the time when you should be putting in all the work you can and then let that work pay dividends as you go forward. So I've tried to have a more normal schedule. But I've always been very task driven and I think that's really important, especially when you're working by yourself. No one's there to tell you you have a deadline. So all the deadlines for my albums are just made up! So you have to be a self driven person to be able to get things done and have a good work ethic.

What was the transition like for you turning music into a full-time paying job— and how did you first get connected with playing for Ben Rector?

Well, like I mentioned earlier, getting involved with Ben was a connection I had at Belmont. Basically what happened was, Ben needed a guy that played keyboard and guitar. Ben's drummer at the time was this guy named Jake Goss, who was a year ahead of me at Belmont and was already graduated. And Ben was like, “Hey, do you know anybody that could do this?” And Jake recommended me. So I met Ben— and we hit it off! He's been one of my close friends for over 10 years now. So, I think basically I started working in music while I was still in college. I had a job at a huge church and then was also doing TV and scoring work. And by the time I was a junior or senior, I was already kind of a working musician per se. I just don't think there's any reason to wait until you're out of college to try to get jobs.

You’ve reached great success not only as an artist but as a freelance musician— from arranging to producing to songwriting. I don’t see many people who achieve full time artistry who maintain being active in freelance projects as well. What interests you as a musician to work on so many different formats and genres of projects?

Well, thank you. I think great success is in the eye of the beholder, but I appreciate you saying that. I think the the truth of the matter for me is that I just get bored really easily. And I think if you told me, “Hey, you gotta do the same thing and just like, keep cranking this out day after day” I would just be so bored and that is just not a fulfilling life worth living for me. And so, yeah, I think I look at other artists and I see them do a 10-song album and all the songs sound so cohesive and kind of similar, cut from the same cloth. And I'm just like, “I respect that and I think that's amazing” but I just like, I cannot... I just get bored really easily. So, the truth is there's just so much good music out there. I would never want to limit myself to just one genre because music is just so much fun and the more genres that I like participate in, the more I learn about them and have respect for them. It’s just— I get bored easily.

Could you talk a little about singing and learning to sing? From studying voice as an undergrad, to the brief American Idol fame, to recording your own albums— your voice has been a highlight of your career. Any advice?

I don't really know. I think singing is like a really personal thing for everyone. It's connected to your body. I will say that like having a good voice doesn't matter. I think you can point to a million artists who have not great voice voices or what I would call, not traditionally great voices, not voices that you would learn technique in college for. But you look at a guy like Justin Vernon from Bon Iver who, you know, he is not singing properly. His pitch is awful but it's so cool. So I think really singing as an artist is more about finding your voice rather than, learning or using your voice. You want to find your unique voice that sounds like you and sounds unique rather than trying to sing like someone else. And I think that is a more difficult task than you might think. But that's what I would focus on for anyone learning to sing. Don't focus on sounding good, focus on sounding like yourself.

What’s your holistic perspective on producing? The production and programming throughout your music is bursting with imagination, and I’m always finding something new the deeper that I listen.

These questions are so thoughtful and wonderful, thanks! Um, I don't really know. I think a lot of times I've used my own music as sort of like the, the experimentation ground for other things that I've been producing or whatever. So I just like use my own artistry to kind of like learn a new sample pack or try out a new microphone so that when I'm producing other people, I have little presets that I can go to. In general, I try to be pretty selective about the people I produce. A lot of artists can be a bit of a headcase— myself included! So I like to work with people who know what they're looking for. That way, I can just aim at the target and deliver for them in general.

I do single day production sessions. So when the artist comes in, in the morning, they sing a scratch vocal. I do scratch piano. We produce the song in the afternoon, we record the vocals and then when they leave at 5:00 or 6:00 PM; they have a finished, fully produced master. And that's generally how I work. I like to work very, very fast.

Best piece of advice in general?

Oh man, I would say this is sort of just… Well, I'll just say it. No one is coming to help you. Stop waiting for someone to give you permission to do the thing that you're already allowed to do. I wasted a ton of time in my career waiting for someone to validate me and say, “Yeah this is good, come join our company” or, “Yeah, you're doing a great job; I guess here's $1 million” Like number one— that's never gonna happen. And number two, you don't need them! All the tools are so democratized now. Anyone can make music, put it out, anyone can set up a website for $20 a month on Squarespace and promote their production work, set up a reel on SoundCloud— all the tools are there. It's just a matter of developing your talents to the professional level and then marketing yourself using the tools that are available so cheaply to everyone. And so I think there's really never been a better time to be in the music industry because there are no gatekeepers, you can just do it, you don't need permission. So stop waiting and just do it!

The mixing and mastering on your albums sound second to none. (esp. Pictures of Mountains!) How do you get such vibrant mixes and what part do you play in the post production process?

This is more like a little bit of industry insider stuff, but generally, I've found a mixing and mastering to both not be as much of an art form anymore. I think most of the time I see producers basically mix the entire track and then they bring in a mixing engineer to sort of finish it. This is not the case for every project, for example, doing a jazz record, or if you have a record that's like my records which are pretty orchestral— and I don't know how to mix an orchestra. So a mixing engineer does a great job with that. But a lot of times, basically when I send my stuff to get mixed, I have it mixed and I'm just asking for the mixing engineer to just make it sound a little bit better. With that said, I've worked with incredibly talented folks like Jared Fox and Sean Moffitt and Chad Copeland and amazing mixing engineers who know how to take what you have and just make it sound better. And I do love the idea of having another set of ears on a project towards the end to just say, "Hey, this is kind of like gotten lost since you've been working on this for so long. Let me help you kind of hone it in on what is actually important to focus on.” So it's helpful to have someone like that toward the end.

Uh, mastering. I don't even… I don't know, it's just like black magic. I don't really understand mastering. I don't know if it's worth it or not. To be honest, I think it's just something people do. And sometimes it's amazing, and sometimes I'm just like "this sounds the same as it did before!” but you never really know until you try it. Uh yeah, sorry. I hope that's an okay answer!

While this is certainly better suited for a much more in depth conversation, I’d be a fool to not ask you about your process for both arranging and orchestrating. Your orchestral chops have really set you apart from the pack with the success of songs like Photograph and I Hear a Symphony. How do you go about arranging/orchestrating?

Thank you, this is a lovely question. How do you go about arranging and orchestrating? I do it in different ways. Sometimes I arrange straight into Finale for a song like I Hear a Symphony or Photograph for some of the stuff on my new record. Other times, I'm in Logic and I'm programming using orchestral samples. A lot of times when I'm doing more pop-ish songs, I'm programming in Logic because I like to feel how that's going to come across with the other synthetic elements that I'm using drums, etcetera. I am sort of trained as an orchestrator. I took orchestration classes, but I would not necessarily call me the most knowledgeable orchestrator. I think what I do is when I'm listening to a song, I'm not trying to orchestrate the song. I'm just asking the song, “What do you want?” And so I'm not thinking like, “Oh, I wanna write a cool four-part French horn thing here.” I'm just thinking, “What is going to make the emotion of this moment come across properly?” and then whatever technique that requires, I figure it out. And I think also when you're arranging for orchestra, you just have to internalize the sounds of everything and the sounds of couplings of instruments as well and just different textures. You have to understand that writing a C major chord for a string section versus a string quartet is even if it's the same notes is going to have such a different feeling. And understanding the differences in timbre even within sections, and just the general, how does the bassoon sound different from a contrabassoon, and internalizing that? So that when in your head you're hearing, “I want this” then you immediately know that thing is an English horn and it's in this register and I'm going to pair it with whatever. So, just listening a ton and being able to sort of internalize the different sounds that the orchestra makes, being able to command them whenever you need them. I think that’s the most valuable skill you can have, because the technique will come— because you can learn that. But it's the listening and the instincts, that’s what you need to develop. Jeez, man, you really ask some questions here!

How did you learn how to write songs? Amidst the ornamentation of the production process, melodic songwriting seems to be the heartbeat of your music.

I don't know, man, I just started writing songs in high school. I would not say I'm the best songwriter. I would say I'm a pretty good songwriter and sometimes I can come up with kind of like cheeky, unique concepts like Underground or I Hear a Symphony. I live in Nashville where there's just a million songwriters who are amazing, and so sometimes I feel a bit like, “Oh man, I'm just an okay songwriter.” But I don't know, I think songwriting is one of those things that you just have to do it a lot to get better, the more you write and the more you analyze your songs, successes and failures, the better you'll get at it. I just look back on songs that I wrote in high school, and even early college and I'm just like, “Oh, yeah, those were like the songs of someone who was just starting out.” It's like I'd like never written a love song before. So everything felt new to me, which is really cool. But you also kind of have to get through some of that to find the unique nuggets that sort of stick out and are unique to you as a writer rather than just the lowest hanging fruit, if that makes sense.

Something I’m particularly thankful for are your scores. I had quite mediocre notating skills until I studied your detailed charts and learned how sheet music itself can be beautifully notated— now I transcribe and engrave professionally. Could you speak a little about the importance of writing good notation?

I'm sure you didn’t— I'm sure you're great at notation! So, from a very young age when I started notation, this is something that came from my father: he said you never put a dirty piece of music in front of a player because the second you put a piece of music from in front of a player that looks like you didn't think about them. They're not going to think about you, and you want them to look at this piece of music and go “Oh, this is someone who thought about what they were putting on the page for me.” It's clean. There's no collisions. The notes are properly written. The bars are numbered, there's no extra rests. There aren’t mis-notated rests where, you’d have two eighth notes instead of a quarter rest. You went through, you made it look right, you thought about the player and that way they're going to give you their best performance because when they think that you didn't think about them, they're just going to kind of check out. And so always, ever since I've notated, it's been a huge priority of mine to make sure that everything that I put in front of a player looks immaculate, because I want them to know that I care about them. And I think that that is what produces better music.

Nowadays, I am pretty busy and so I can’t notate my own stuff. So generally I put the notes into my scores, I'll do the orchestration and then I send it off to a wonderful guy named Stephen Lamb who is an amazing copyist. And he basically extracts the parts and cleans up the scores for me. He's really, really good at it better than I am, so I'm happy to hand it off to him. But this is a great question because it's important to make sure that your notation looks great.

What role does Christianity play in your music? In life?

I don't know. This is kind of a private question, so I'm not going to get super into it. Um, I think I will say that like over the past 10 years (I'm in my thirties now) I think that when I was in college and just out of college, I was very interested in answers. And now I'm just much more interested in questions if that makes sense. I think that's where all of like the fun is at as a creative person, that's what I like: write songs about the questions.

Ultimately, I have been so encouraged by your music and seeing you reach great success as an independent, trailblazing musician and artist. You’ve created a substantial market and fanbase; your music has had great prominence on streaming platforms; you’ve well-nigh invented the genre of “symphonic pop”. What has been your mission statement that has guided your career as you’ve gone about marketing yourself, from humble beginnings to the present day and beyond? What does the future look like for you?

Oh, you’re so nice man! Thank you. You are so kind. I think generally my thought process is that I've got this one life to live and so it's too short to do something that isn't fun. And I think that sort of became my motto, which is just “If it sounds fun, do it.” I realized this right before I recorded my album Flying where I was kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do next artistically. And I just thought, "You know, what sounds fun is to just put an orchestra on every song." And that's what started it. And since then I've just always tried to make fun my compass, because I think as a creative person, when you're having fun and you're sort of losing track of time in your work and you're just doing something that you enjoy, I think people hear that. It also helps to sort of quiet the voices of doubt when, instead of making something for fans, you're just making something for yourself. And I think fun is the best way to short circuit that; it's like a shortcut of life! It kind of gets you out of your own head to— I don't know, just do whatever sounds fun musically. And that's kind of been my guiding principle when I'm making music.

In terms of marketing myself, honestly, I don't know if I'm the best at it. It's hard, I think, to talk about yourself. And it's kind of a strange world we live in these days, obviously; I got very, lucky on TikTok with the explosion of I Hear a Symphony and I wasn't even on the platform. So that's just basically just like getting struck by lightning. I was ready to take advantage of it and worked really hard to make sure that the what happened with I Hear a Symphony wouldn't be wasted. But at the same time, you can't discount the role that luck plays in your life. Like, you always gotta work hard. That's a given. But at the end of the day, you gotta be lucky too. I feel like I've worked hard and been lucky. And so I just feel very, very, “hashtag blessed”! I genuinely do feel very blessed and I'm excited about the future. I think it's so cool that there are people who are into orchestra music and symphonic pop. I thought that I was the only one for forever who did, and turns out there's kind of a lot of people maybe who do.

So, I'm excited to keep making music and I really appreciate your questions, Shane. Genuinely, genuinely. These are very thoughtful questions and I hope that I didn't ramble too much in my answers. Good luck with your project and have a great day! ~