This past week, I sat down with Ben Trainor, sophomore computer science major and creator of the one-man-band Paper Watch. We talked about his music and his latest EP, entitled “Without a Map,” which he composed and produced himself.
Trainor took guitar lessons fairly consistently from third grade to eighth grade, but after that, he mainly taught himself, pursuing music on his own and figuring things out through base knowledge and muscle memory. In 2017, he started composing and producing his own music.
“I just discovered sounds on the instrument and was like, ‘I want to record this,’” said Trainor.
Trainor describes his music style as an orchestral/post rock/math rock hybrid genre. Almost all the music he listens to has influenced him in some way. These genres range from glitch music (which is sample based if, like me, you’ve never heard of it), Japanese Math Rock (no, this isn’t made-up), Math Metal, Progressive Metal, and Pop Punk (which Trainor laughingly describes as “life sucks, but it’s okay” kind of music).
Trainor hopes to combine his major and music minor in the future, using his computer science knowledge to help with video editing and film analysis and using the music minor for composition and production. He is currently apprenticing as an audio technician for Barefoots concerts and hopes to get better at live mixing as opposed to the mixing he does with speakers in his room. For now, he’d be happy to make a collaborative album written and produced by him and performed by all of his musically talented friends.
If you’ve listened to any of Trainor’s music or gone to any open mics at which he’s performed, you’ve probably recognized some metal elements mixed with orchestral elements that work together to create a unique sound. Trainor enjoys pushing the limits of music and crossing boundaries of conventional and easy-on-the-ears music, even when it comes to worship music.
“I try to add orchestral elements alongside my distorted guitar,” said Trainor. “Metal-influenced music isn’t the most palatable, but I’m trying to kind of make a gateway to that kind of music because lots of people don’t appreciate it.”
Trainor currently plays the electric guitar on Wednesday nights for Sojourn, Englewood Baptist Church’s college ministry, and through this experience, he’s realized that he isn’t entirely satisfied with modern worship music.
“One of my gripes with worship music is that there isn’t anything dissonant; there isn’t anything actually sad and unresolved,” Trainor said. “People feel that, and it’s kind of disingenuous to people whose lives suck.”
Trainor admitted that it would be hard to introduce some of the dissonant sounds from the metal genre into worship music because people are used to resolving songs on a G chord, making everything happy. But it’s still something he thinks about and tries to introduce into his own music.
“[Metal] is music too, and it’s dirt, and it’s got a purpose,” he told me.
Like everyone, Trainor has gone through some dirt in his own life. Though he bases some of his music purely off sounds, he has written quite a few pieces that tell a story from his own life. In one of his earlier EPs, there are several pieces he has a hard time going back and listening to.
“I need to not listen to [the music],” Trainor said. “Sometimes it really gets me because I know what I meant when I was writing it.”
Though his music can be intensely personal to him, Trainor doesn’t hesitate to release it to the billions of people who have access to the internet. He’s proud of the music he creates, and he wants to show people something that he’s proud of. He doesn’t necessarily feel like he’s baring his soul to the world, either.
“I can be more cryptic about it,” he said. “It can mean something to me and then mean something different to somebody else.”
For Trainor, music is a way to process, work through thoughts and even heal. Maybe through listening to his music, other people can do the same.
To listen to Ben Trainor’s music, go to: https://open.spotify.com/album/2fKxG7ca7TOrIL1DsjUKHC?si=F0evXoeTS3qcBme9BK_tsw.