Left to right: Schizmatics members Owen Gerth, Gavin Listro, and Matt Byrne record at Burt House.

Courtesy | Jack Cote

 

Two student bands dove into the world of releasing music over winter break with their first, original songs.

Mix22 released its song, “Heartbeats,” Dec. 27 and the Schizmatics will release its first of four songs on Jan. 17. Both songs will be available to stream on all platforms.

Mix22, is made up of senior Luca Vitale, Michael Thelen ‘22, and juniors Erik Teder and John Frenz. Vitale and Thelen started the band after their performance at Centralhallapalooza two years ago with the band James Bullet and the Dirty Blondes.

Vitale said producing its alternative rock song “Heartbeats” was an incredible experience, especially when the band sent their recording to the U.K. to be mastered.

“My favorite part was probably when we got the master track back because it already sounded really good,” Vitale said. “We mixed it ourselves. We didn’t realize how far the ceiling could go above what we could do ourselves. I remember getting it back and listening to it and being like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is so epic.’”

Senior Gavin Listro, Schizmatics’ lead singer and guitarist, said releasing their first song, “Strangers in Seattle,” was the natural next step for the band which has been together since their freshman year.

“It took a long time, though,” Listro said. “These songs that we’re putting out were written almost a year ago at this point, and it’s just been a really long process.”

Senior and Schizmatics saxophonist Owen Gerth said the band had always hoped to create and release music but never thought it would actually happen.

“It’s a surreal feeling,” Gerth said. “This is one of those bucket-list things that me and Gavin have been talking about ever since our freshman year. It feels very rewarding to actually have followed through on something that always kind of seemed like a pipe dream.”

The Schizmatics’ song became more than a “pipe dream” when Listro and senior Isaac Green began writing the lyrics for their indie pop song, “Strangers in Seattle.”

“I came up with a guitar riff on the acoustic guitar that I would just play around the house,” Listro said. “I would just play that all the time and said we needed to write something to this — almost to the point of it becoming a joke — but it was I think fall break last year, Isaac and I were just sitting there when we said, ‘We’re gonna write this song’ and then Isaac helped me get through some of the words.”

While both bands love creating music, they acknowledged the challenges that come along with getting a song ready for the world to hear.

“Frankly it’s just a lot of work to make and record your own music,” Gerth said. “Logistically, it was very challenging to get our entire band to record all of their parts owing to our busy schedules, but it was also very technically challenging to try and put together a track that sounded even remotely professional.”

For Mix22, Vitale said they had to accept imperfection, otherwise the song never would have been finished.

“Being too perfectionist was the first thing and the biggest thing for sure,” Vitale said. “Whether that’s with things not being quite where they should be, or maybe the mix is not exactly what we thought, or the time of release isn’t exactly how we wanted it to be, but at the end of the day, what we decided was we have nothing out there right now so we just had to embrace the spontaneity of it.”

The Schizmatics worked on their song for about a year and used a makeshift recording studio, according to Listro.

“I turned my closet in my house into a little recording studio, so I have a desk with my monitors and my computer,” Listro said. “Then when we recorded drums, we emptied out Owen’s entire room and put mattresses up against the walls and put blankets over things so we killed all the echo in the room. It took a whole day and we did all four songs that we’re releasing.”

Mix22 had been working on “Heartbeats” since May 2024 but has also been producing other songs written by the guitarist and vocalist, Thelen, according to Vitale. Thelen quit his job to work on music full time.

“We actually haven’t been working exclusively on this song since May,” Vitale said. “We’re actually looking at another release, hopefully next month. We’ve probably got 20 or so songs that are in various stages of completion at the moment, but basically this song was one of Michael’s oldest ideas.”

Listro said Hillsdale is at the heart of all of the songs they are releasing.

“The whole thing just feels very Hillsdale to me,” Listro said. “I really love that. I think regardless of what happens with our music, I’ll always be able to look back on it, and it will very much remind me of this time, and Hillsdale in general. I’m really excited for that when I’m 45 and showing my kids what I did in college.”