Sitting in class, with his infamous cat sweatshirt on, Kole Butler has more on his mind than tangents and cotangents. In fact, trigonometry isn’t on Butler’s mind at all. The teacher rambles on, but Butler has toned it out, taking in only the sounds that may be just annoying to his classmates: the tick of the clock, the buzz of a cell phone. Behind his mane of blond hair, Butler’s mind forms these sounds into something of a melody, possibly to be used for his next beat. When Butler gets home and is reunited with his laptop, these sounds around him will be transformed into art.

Butler, known as Schier Beats, is a senior in high school – as well as a self-taught producer who shares his music over the internet.

With an uncle known as DJ Earworm in the industry, Butler took an interest in beat making during his sophomore year. He downloaded a demo version of Ableton, a music production software program. Butler’s interest quickly became a hobby when he received a single present for his sixteenth birthday; the full version of the software. A year later, he began to share his beats on YouTube.

“I guess I just wanted to try something new. I downloaded the software and tried it out,” Butler said. “I was really bad at first, but I liked doing it, so I decided to stick with it.”

He now works on producing music almost every day, using his laptop equipped with Ableton. He also has external speakers and a keyboard. Although Butler has a MIDI keyboard – an electric piano that can communicate with the software on his computer – he struggles to put it to good use.

“I have a keyboard, but I don’t know anything about music,” Butler admits. “I won’t know what key I’m in or what chords I’m using, but I can hear if it sounds good. I can hear where I want it [the melody] to go next, so I’ll just mess around with the notes. I don’t use the keyboard because I can click notes on the screen. I don’t know the reason they go there, I just know that it’s going to sound good or it’s going to sound bad.”

Creating a beat can be a lengthy and time-consuming process. Butler works on producing just about every day for up to hours at a time. For Butler, inspiration for a beat can come from anywhere.

“Most of my songs I make at night,” Butler explained. “It’s just something about that, that makes it better.”

Completing the beat usually takes two to three days. And even then it may not be completely to Butler’s liking. About one out of five beats that Butler creates becomes a final product. Many beats will be abandoned or deleted.

Once a single beat is finished, if it meets his own standards, Butler will share the completed work along with his email on his personal YouTube channel. He then receives emails from subscribers asking for a download link. Most likely, these people are planning to add vocals and create a full song.

“A lot of people email me from around the country, usually they’re not very good,” Butler admitted. “Hopefully someone will come along.”

Butler has already collaborated with a few Little Hawks, including former students Cinque Smith and Jared Kuddes, both of whom rap.

Gaining recognition and admiration for his beats was a challenge for Butler, but one that he has achieved and is still advancing. Butler recently reached 1,000 subscribers on YouTube and one of his videos has accumulated over 20,000 views. Interest in his beats began to pick up when Butler began creating his own album artwork for his YouTube Videos.

“When I first started I was just putting pictures of rappers up as the video. But then I started making my own artwork and putting the name of the song on it,” he explained.
Butler says that is when the volume of emails coming in really increased.

“At that point I was like ‘Wow, maybe people actually like it’,” Butler said.

Butler is the nephew of California-based mashup artist DJ Earworm. Earworm is known for his annual mashups in which he ‘mashes up’ 25 of the year’s top pop hits into one song.

“We do totally different things,” Butler said. “He has helped me out and given me a few tools like his old laptop. He’s given me a lot of stuff to use, so I didn’t have to buy stuff myself.”

While producing and selling beats can be used to make money, Butler has chosen not to approach it in this way.

“I thought about it,” Butler said, “but then I look at other peoples’ beats and they’re no better than mine, and they’re charging twenty dollars per beat. Most of the people who look on YouTube for beats aren’t the people who are going to want to pay or have enough money to pay. So, I decided just to make them for free.”

Butler sees producing in his future regardless of whether it will make him money.

“I’ll still continue to do it, and if I can make money off of it that would be really sweet,” Butler said. “It would be nice to work with someone who really knows what they’re doing and who really knows a lot about music. In college maybe it will be good to meet more people and kind of team up. Either way, I’m still going to do it as a hobby.”

**This is a link to Kole’s Uncle’s Website: http://djearworm.com/

**This is a link to Kole’s Youtube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/KBeatz3