Chapter 20
TWENTY
Ty
? Ocean Eyes – Billie Eilish ?
Even though I’ve read the same page six times in the last ten minutes, I couldn’t tell you a single word on it. I should probably just start this entire book over, because according to the bottom corner of my screen, I’m ten percent in and I don’t have any idea what’s going on.
I’m distracted.
Again.
It’s another chill night on the RV as we travel between cities.
I’m reclined in one of the chairs in the living room, Kindle in hand, and Eric is sitting at the table in the kitchen in front of his laptop wearing a pair of gray sweats (lord help me) and a black t-shirt, headphones on, working on bringing new music to life.
It's the third time he’s done this—had rhythms in his head that he needed to get out—and I am completely captivated watching him work.
The way his brow furrows as he plugs away.
The way his eyes close and he bobs his head to whatever beat he’s laying down.
The way his body moves when he’s tapping out patterns every so often on either his legs or the table itself.
The way the laptop screen illuminates his face, making the lines of his jaw seem sharper than they are.
I’m mesmerized as he leans back and stretches his toned arms above his head, leaning his upper body from one side to the other and rotating his neck, stretching out the kinks that come from leaning over a laptop for hours on end.
His eyes meet mine and I curse myself for not being quick enough to look away before he can catch me staring at him. He slides his headphones off his ears, resting them around his neck.
“Sorry, did you need something?”
“No,” I say, looking back at my Kindle.
“Were you staring at me, Sunshine?” I can hear the teasing tone in his voice, and I fight a smile as I keep my eyes glued to my book. A few minutes pass, but I can feel his eyes on me the entire time.
“Now who’s staring at who?” I say, not looking up from my screen.
“Oh, I will never apologize for staring at you,” he says, and my eyes snap up to his. He’s sitting in the booth, elbow on the table and his chin resting on his hand. I fail to hide my smile this time, and he grins wide, putting his dimples on full display. “What’s your book about?”
I groan, setting it into my lap.
“I don’t know,” I say, scrubbing my hands down my face. “I can’t concentrate.” I look back over at him and sigh. “I’m nosy. I want to know what you’re doing.”
“Well then get over here,” he says, sliding over on the bench seat and motioning for me to come sit beside him. I practically leap out of the chair before I cross the RV to him, excited that I’m about to get a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to write music by one of the best to ever do it.
“Okay,” I say, letting out a breath. “What am I looking at?” I glance at the screen—a mess of jagged lines and dots and other details that, even though I’d played drums for ten years, looks like something I wouldn’t even begin to understand. “It looks…complicated.”
Eric grins before informing me of everything I’m looking at on his screen and explaining his entire process—from setting the tempo, to choosing the right kit (each pre-loaded kit has a different sound), to using the small piano keyboard in the bottom corner of the screen to play the different patterns and show how they’re mapped to each key, to adding a sound, and adjusting the velocity (how hard or soft a note is played).
“Once I have everything set the way I need it,” he explains, “I can create loops and add tracks to layer everything together.” He points to the different sections of dots and lines stacked on top of each other, and I can’t stop myself from moving my attention back to his lips while speaks, distracted by the way they curl at the corner ever so slightly, like he has a secret tucked in there waiting to get out.
“Is this just a placeholder for when you record in a studio?” I ask.
“No. Drums are the only thing not recorded live anymore.”
“So, you don’t even go into a studio?”
“I do. I guess, technically, I don’t have to.
The rest of them could go in and track everything and send it to me after to program the drums, but I like being there.
As you’ve seen tonight by staring at me,” I roll my eyes, and he laughs.
“It does take a lot longer to do things this way, and since you pay per hour to be in a studio, it’s usually not ideal to start from scratch.
Technology sucks sometimes, and it sure has a way of making a guy feel obsolete, but I am glad to have this option when I need to get all these grooves out of my head.
I can send it out to the guys ahead of time and then make changes before we go record. ”
His voice is rich with a tone of confidence that I’m starting to recognize.
I’m still learning him—still piecing together the parts of him that don’t always come out in the bright lights of his on-stage persona.
I’ve spent enough time with him now to see the vulnerability that lurks behind his confident smile, the weight of years spent as a musician, always pushing and perfecting.
But this—watching him bring something to life from his head into a digital space—it’s almost like seeing him in his purest form.
“The rest of the guys have the same app on their laptops, so we do this a lot—track the stuff we have in our heads and send it back and forth. We could build an entire song via email, which is where we would save on studio time. They’ll all know what they’re going to play live, and my track will already be complete before we head in.
I may need to tweak something here or there if in the moment they decide to make a change to something, but for the most part, we go in with everything mapped out and ready to go. ”
Learning about the process of making music in a digital world is eye-opening.
I always assumed that every song was made by playing live in a studio, instruments in hand, capturing that raw energy and emotion in real-time, but I’m quickly realizing how much of the magic happens behind the scenes.
The freedom to manipulate sounds in ways I never imagined—stretching, distorting, layering, and even crafting entire tracks seemingly out of thin air.
It’s fascinating and has shifted my understanding of music creation from a purely organic process to a fluid, boundless art form where the possibilities are endless.
“Can I hear it?” I ask.
Eric glances back at the laptop, then to me, and I know he’s deciding something. It feels like he’s measuring me, wondering if he can pull me in even further. It feels personal now. Like it’s become more than just showing me his process. He’s showing me a piece of his soul.
He finally nods and pulls the laptop toward him.
“Alright.” His voice softens, almost as if he’s excited about letting me in on the secret he’s hiding.
He slides his headphones from his neck and over my ears before clicking something on the screen, and suddenly, the quiet hum of the RV is pierced by a low, rumbling beat.
It’s chaotic at first, syncopated and loose, before it settles into a steady beat.
I lean forward, my heart beating in time in my chest as the patterns fill the space between us.
“With this one, I had this feeling,” Eric explains as I close my eyes, letting the sound wash over me. “It’s not fast, not slow, just…that perfect in-between space.”
I hear it. That space he’s talking about. A beat that isn’t demanding, but still pulls you in. It reminds me of the way you feel when you’re in a moment with someone, where nothing needs to be said, and everything just falls into place.
“I hear it,” I whisper, surprised at how much it’s affecting me. “It’s almost like…a heartbeat.”
“Exactly,” he says, his voice low and deep. “A heartbeat. Something steady, something that drives you without you even realizing it.”
I open my eyes and look at him, my breath catching when I find him watching me—really watching me.
His sapphire eyes pull me into their depths, and I’m completely at his mercy.
Falling as hard and as fast as I did the night we met.
The Eric in front of me now isn’t Velvet Shadows Eric, the one who’s larger than life and untouchable.
The King.
Right now, he’s just Eric. The man I met in New York. The one who made me feel.
“Do you have anything else I’m allowed to hear?” I ask, desperate to stay in this moment, but needing to pull the focus back to the music.
“Sure,” he says, clicking around on the screen. “I have all the demos from the last five albums. Do you want to hear something from Suspicions? I can show you how they started versus what ended up on the album.”
“Absolutely,” I say, a smile growing wide across my lips.
I spend the rest of the evening listening to the original drum grooves from their latest album.
Some of them are exactly as they are on the tracks, and others are very different.
I ask question after question after question—desperate to know how and why things changed from what he had in his head to what was tracked for the album.
If he’s annoyed with my incessant question asking, he doesn’t show it. He answers every question I have in greater detail than I expect him to and can’t help but feel warmth spreading through my chest knowing he respects and trusts me enough to reveal all of his secrets.