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BIO: Big Tiggles is an Atlanta-based musician and Army combat veteran who crafts honest, emotionally charged electronic music rooted in folk storytelling. His songs, often born from poems or acoustic ideas, blend heartfelt lyricism with energetic, cinematic EDM for those who feel deeply and live fully. An emerging underground EDM star with over 235,000 Spotify streams since he joined Spotify in late October, he is proving that he should not be overlooked.

I’m from the small town of Cheraw, South Carolina, the home of jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie.

What’s the story behind your artist name, “ Big Tiggles”?

Big Tiggles was just some weird name I came up with back in the early internet days of the late 90’s, early 2000’s.  It became my gamertag, my name in most games, my Twitch name, and now my artist name.

As a fellow Military veteran, how has your experience as an Army combat veteran influenced your music and creative process?

I don’t know how much being a combat vet has changed my creative process, but it definitely influenced my exposure to different cultures and music. The biggest takeaway I do have from it is that I’ll never play “Living Our Love Song” ever again because my platoon sergeant in Afghanistan was obsessed with it. 😅

Did you create music or DJ during your time in the Army? If so, how did those experiences shape your journey as an artist? 

I wrote music, never lyrics, and definitely kept playing guitar all throughout the Army, but I didn’t get into DJ’ing until after I got out and was still living in Colorado Springs.  I was probably a terrible DJ, but it was extremely fun, and playing guitar is just one of those things that will always bring people together, especially if they are also musicians.

Are you involved in the music scene full-time, dedicating all your time to creating and promoting your music?

Yes.   I’m completely retired, so I spend most of my free time writing and producing music for myself and other artists.  I lucked out, and I was able to find friends who could sing; some are absolutely phenomenal.  Promoting music has to be the worst aspect of being an independent artist, as you have to juggle so many things that it can take some of the joy and fun out of it, but if you want to maintain 100% control over your creations, then it’s the weight you have to bear. (UEDM 100% agrees with this)

When did you first start learning how to play the guitar?

I started learning how to play guitar when I was around 13 on a really cheap Ibanez acoustic that I swear was strung with barbed wire.  I had an instructor for about a month, Kris Houser, and after that, I just watched Van Halen’s “Live Without A Net” concert VHS tape and taught myself how to play.  My music tastes changed as I aged, so I’ve gone from hair metal to metal, to folk, to classical, to blues.  

Do you play any other musical instruments?

I am attempting to learn how to play piano, but I am god-awful at it.  It’s frustrating learning another instrument when you’re older and already good at one, because you just want to put down the instrument you’re learning and go back to what you’re familiar with.

Overall, what is your musical background?

My parents usually had music playing, especially on road trips, classic rock mainly, and hair metal.  Most of my musical knowledge I learned from either finding something interesting, like the Candyrat music label, which has some of the best acoustic guitar players in the world, or just by hearing specific songs that triggered something in my brain.  I don’t have perfect pitch, but I do have relative pitch, so it’s not that difficult to hear something and start playing it on guitar.

Were you ever in a music band or group?

I was not. I have a very abrasive personality when it comes to certain things, and honestly, if people saw me in public, they’d say I’m not a very approachable guy since I’m covered in tattoos, a shaved head, beard, etc.  I’ve just always found ways to replicate what a band would do for me by myself, i.e., using the body of an acoustic as a kick drum or just putting a microphone in a wooden milk crate so that when I stomp my foot it imitates a kick drum as well.

Do you think this gives you an edge in the EDM scene?

Honestly, it's almost a double-edged sword.  Pianists have a much easier time when producing on a DAW as they’re just playing straight into the software, whereas I’m usually transcribing what I wrote on guitar into the DAW piano roll.  I know I could get a MIDI controller guitar, but I just never have.  I do think that my love of guitar has helped me mold my weird genre fusion of folk and EDM, or, as someone just commented on a TikTok video I put up, “Farm House”.

What first got you into producing electronic music? Who or what were your biggest musical influences growing up?

First electronic influence has to be Tiesto, he’s an amazing DJ and producer, when I heard Adagio, it kinda blew my mind.  I started fiddling around with Fruity Loops Original when I was in my teens, and honestly, to this day, it’s still the only DAW I use.  I’m so familiar with it that when I try to use other software, it slows my thought process, and I might lose an idea.

My style is definitely my own, there haven’t been many EDM guys that incorporate a lot of acoustic guitar into their music ever since Avicii (RIP) and it’s definitely been a weird challenge trying to match up guitar techniques with EDM drops and hell just checking the boxes when you are you pitching to Spotify I never really know what to pick for the song.  I’m kind of a hermit, so I have no nightlife. Visually, I’m colorblind, and my emotional songs are either sneakily laced into songs that sound like EDM jams, but the lyrics are pretty dark, or they are just shelved until I decide to release an EP of all the raw songs that don’t really fit my signature sound.

Are there any genres or artists outside of EDM that influence your style

This would be a massive list.  John Butler, Polyphia, Spiritbox, Jinjer, Illenium, the twitch streamer Arilyna, as she’s an amazing pianist, you guys should check her out.  NF, Hopsin, Sleep Token, John Bellion, Tommee Proffitt.

What Genre are you currently producing?

I’m strictly doing my acoustic/EDM fusion, aka “Farm House,” as that one commenter put it, for my Big Tiggles brand.  I produce and write a wide gamut of genres for other artists, ranging from country to rap to Latin and more mainstream EDM styles.

What do you want people to feel and do when they listen to your music?

It might be overused, but I like my music to be an onion.  I want the music itself to illicit a response from the listener, either catharsis or euphoria.  That’s a wild gamut of crying or dancing, but I also want them to listen to a track later on and realize that the song was just an EDM bop that actually hits on some dark subject matter or personal issues that most people can relate to.  My song “Borrowed Time” definitely exploded, and it’s a very upbeat song in Bb Major, but it’s all about how we are all living on borrowed time, and we don’t know when our time might run out, or we might actually know when our time is going to run out so it’s just all about appreciating everything you have. (UEDM thats deep!) 🤩

What sets your current music apart from other EDM artists? 

I think it’s just the blend and the raw nerve I try to expose when I’m writing the lyrics for my tracks.  I’ve had quite a large number of people call me an emotional terrorist because I lure them in with upbeat EDM, and then the lyrics start, which creates the inner turmoil of happy sadness.

And how would you describe your sound to someone hearing it for the first time?

I like Farm House music. As Yeedm is a caricature of both EDM and country music, it’s not an actual blend that respects both genres.  I struggle with describing my own songs honestly, which definitely makes pitching my music hard, but obviously it works as I’m right around 70k monthly listeners on Spotify after 4 months, so I’m filling some void that existed in the current music scene.

Are you a DJ?

I used to be, but I have seizures and other health issues that I haven’t really tried to pursue here in the Atlanta area.

What music production hardware or software do you use to make music?

FL Studio is my DAW; have a Scarlett 2i2 for recording my guitars and mics, a collection of about 10 guitars, two physical guitar amps, and lots of Neural DSP packs for guitar and vocal software modeling.

Which music software and/or DAW do you prefer for music production, and what makes them your top choices?

I have to say FL Studio all the way, I’ve tried Logic, Ableton, ProTools, and Sonus One. Sonus One, which I think was free prior to their acquisition by Fender. FL Studio is my top choice just because I’m so familiar with it that I can sit down and get a skeleton of the idea in my head very quickly.

What is your favorite music Plug-in and why?

I’m gonna have to cheat and say there are two.  Serum2, as it’s the best synth plugin out there, and there’s a reason it’s basically the industry standard.  The other plugin would be Izotope Ozone because it lets you really tweak every aspect of your track's sonic profile.

Do you mix and master your own songs?

Absolutely!

How do you start a song? Do you begin with the melody, the drums, or the bassline when building a track?

I usually start a track with a chord progression or melody that I either intentionally wrote or just stumbled upon while hanging out playing guitar.  The drums and bass require more work to ensure your track performs the way you want across different speaker setups. Melodies are usually the roadblock for most people, so if I catch one in my head, it’s definitely the first thing to put down.

How do you approach making kick drums and bass stand out in your songs?

The kick and bass in my tracks I make stand out just by using the science of music, knowing what frequency say the note E3 sits at, and using that knowledge so that I can have the bass and kick hitting you right in the chest but not cluttering up the low-mid to mid range where your vocals or melody might sit, depending on the vocalist and the key of the song.

How do you go about finding the perfect kickdrum, snare, or clap?

We all know the answer to this; we all doomscroll through folders or make the sound itself.  I’ve gotten mine mostly organized, so I tend to use the same sounds, but I’ll layer them in different ways. I know there are a few tracks of mine that have, like, four kicks layered on top of each other, just with slightly different effects, to create the ideal sound I was hunting.

Who does your vocals?

I was blessed with amazing friends who can actually sing, and they love the whole process, well, not the stage where I’m asking for the 50th take because I’ve rewritten something. I definitely have a few cursed songs that I could never make work, and I didn’t want to get killed by my friends lol. 😂

Are you singing in your songs?

There are one or two where I’m still singing up on Spotify; my vocals are definitely helped by some plugins, including Neural DSP’s Mantra, which is just amazing.

How do you approach blending your vocals into your tracks? Do you use techniques like EQ carving, reverb, or delay to help them sit well in the mix?

Glad you asked this question.  I actually run a Discord and curate two Spotify playlists, and I use all three to help other artists and producers.  I mentor them on getting a proper mix, killing dead space on a track, and implementing the “rule of three”. Some artists are receptive to constructive criticism; some are stuck in their ways and don’t want to learn, but that's why there’s that wild statistic: 78% of artists on Spotify have under 50 monthly listeners.  I understand standing by your art and creation, but I’ll never understand the younger generations' odd refusal to be taught or mentored.  I’m in my 40s, and I’m still consuming YouTube production videos, techniques, etc on a daily basis.  I had to get my younger friends and Google Gemini to teach me how to use Instagram or TikTok, but I learned because I understand that people in 2026 have zero attention span, so you have to be putting yourself out there constantly. (UEDM agrees with this)

What techniques do you use to make your basslines stand out in a mix, or to give your kick extra punch?

Something not enough people do when they are finalizing their mix and getting ready to master is to kill everything under 20hz, you can’t hear it and not many speakers can push it, but when you’re watching your EQ you can see that most basses and sub bass are peaking hard at like 18hz which is throwing off the entire balance of the track when it comes to mixing and mastering to hit the magical LUF’s value of streaming platforms.  Cut those dead bottom frequencies out, and you can push your song even harder, achieving more loudness, but without having to increase the DB’s or gain.

Do you mix your bass at the same volume level as your kick drums?

Is this a bait question? I can go on a rant and tell everyone out there to stop using your kick drum like it’s a bass.  A kick drum isn’t the bass! The bass is the bass! I have a drum bus and a bass bus, but they aren’t at the same level.  I used to do the traditional sidechain, but lately I’ve been using Kickstart2 by Nicky Romero, which is a phenomenal plugin for doing some wild things with sidechaining. Bass and kick are usually the last things I mix in, as I want the melody, chords, and vocals to be balanced and not clashing. Then I mix in the drums and make sure that everything but the kick and snare gets some stereo width. The bass is last. 

What’s one production tip you wish you'd known when you first started producing music?

Watch, learn, and listen to literally everything you possibly can about producing the type of music you want to produce.  If you have a favorite artist, start really analyzing how they do their arrangements and song composition, don’t plagiarize it obviously, but learn the structure.  The most important thing, other than that, is to figure out what your signature is, which is incredibly hard unless you have some wildly unique voice or style.  You think EDM 2026, and you can identify a Marshmello/Alan Walker/Illenium/FredAgain/Avicii/David Guetta track usually within like 20-30 seconds, which is crucial for artist recognition, as you’ll gain fans that didn’t pick your song playing on the random radio playlists but will save it because they recognize your signature.

How do you decide when a song is “finished”?

This kinda connects to the previous question.  After I’ve mixed my track and I’m mostly happy with it, I walk away for 24 hours so the song's familiarity wears off and I have fresh ears.  I come back to it after that rest period and usually realize the mix is absolutely terrible because I had been hearing the same track on loop for 14 hours the day before.  I have a solid group of fans I bounce rough cuts off, and I’ve gotten up to like “Jump v14” because having other people listen to your track eliminates any emotional attachment you might have or any bias.  I definitely have released songs that I knew were going to bomb and not do well at all, but they were songs I wrote as a form of catharsis for myself, and usually if something resonates with me, it might resonate with someone else. 

What music-producing advice can you give someone who is trying to break into the EDM scene? 

Don’t come into it with an ego.  You will be quickly humbled by whatever route you take. If you’re a producer, your DAW is gonna have a learning curve; if you’re a DJ, your deck is gonna kick your ass for a while until you learn it.  Be a sponge, absorb everything, and educate yourself as much as possible. (UEDM good advice!)

What strategies are you using to grow your audience and make sure your music stands out (make sure your music gets heard)?

Well, when I started, I honestly used (and still use) Snapchat to kinda grassroots my music.  I would add everyone the app suggested and send out just mass messages about the tracks I was working on.  Networking now on IG and curating two vastly different playlists, one is Indie Folk Storytellers and the other is EDM, lets me meet different artists and hit different audiences.  

Your song ‘Borrowed Time’ has achieved over 74,000 streams on Spotify in a short period. What do you think helped the track gain so much attention?

The golden goose.  I think that song just hit at the perfect time, Christmas Eve, where people were with families and reminiscing, and usually by that point of the holidays, if someone hears Mariah Carey one more time, they’re gonna snap.  I honestly don’t know; it was the first track I really promoted as I had learned IG and a little bit of TikTok.  

Your new song 'Turn It On,' released in 2026, has already surpassed 34,000 streams. What marketing strategies or creative approaches have helped you successfully promote your music and reach such a wide audience?

I just try to show the human behind the music, give people sneak peeks and rough cuts of tracks.  Humanize the artist, who, prior to me making the short-form content, was just my skull persona.  People want to connect with the artist, and there are some “tactics” to help that happen, but that’s something I only really tell people I’m mentoring, as I don’t want any fans to realize that I did it to them lmao.

Have you encountered any scams or questionable promotion companies offering to promote your music for a fee?

Every day on Instagram, good lord, it's everywhere.  If you log on to social media and constantly see ads for the same agency, I’d avoid it.  Avoid anyone who promises a number of streams for a track.  There are definitely reputable promotion companies out there, but they’re pricey for that very reason.  I have an amazing relationship with Daimoon Media, and I’ll always recommend them for artists who are launching a track and want it to come out of the gate with that boost so it triggers the Spotify algorithm gods.  I’m not affiliated with them or get kickbacks or anything; they are just the only ones I’ve tried that I stuck with due to their professionalism and results.  Submithub is a grab bag; we’ve all gotten the copy-paste responses from curators of “the vocals didn’t really catch me,” even though it’s an instrumental trance track.  Don’t do anything influencer-based; that’s a waste of money and time, and for the love of God, stop embarrassing yourself trying to go viral.  

The trillion-dollar question.  Now, before I weigh in on this, I really do wish people would stop accusing producers who have content showing studio setups, instruments, monitors with their DAW on it playing the track, hell, just in general, of their music being AI.  It’s a massive insult to the person’s talent and skill that they’ve honed over many years. I’ve had to play the guitar riffs in my own tracks on camera just to get people to shut up; it’s disrespectful and annoying as hell.  I understand what AI can bring to basically anything: coding, art, writing, automation, music, etc.  I view it as a tool, the same thing that Diplo and multiple EDM artists have said.  It’s a more advanced version of like Midiwizard and Chordwizard plugins, like they can give you an idea, or you can bounce an idea off it.  I don’t think it’s something that will eliminate artists, and I have a rough history with it as I’ve had autotune pop up as AI, Mantra plugin flags as AI, it’s just the current boogeyman of music.  I liken it to when T-Pain cranked autotune to the max and created his classic sound, but there are still people who don’t understand that autotune is used in almost every single song; they don’t notice it because it’s not at the max T-Pain setting.  I know they did a study in 2025 showing that 97% of people can’t tell if a song is AI, but oddly, those people will suddenly hate the song they loved just a second ago if you tell them it’s AI.  I think it can be a good tool, but it doesn’t replace the producer and artist who have to put in the work to make a track that resonates with people.  I’ll probably catch some hate mail for this, lol.  I will say that Suno and any other company that lets people make and export entire tracks raise their prices exponentially, as I get flooded with so much of the same lazy-ass AI tracks daily for my playlists.  I think the words neon shadow glow streetlights give more PTSD than firefights in Afghanistan, lol. 🤣

What’s the biggest challenge for underground artists today? 

It’s the same challenge facing Twitch streamers, literally anything entertainment.  You have to earn those first, like 100 fans that are diehard, and then you have to bust your ass to grow.  You’re not entitled to success just because the guy with 5 million followers can be a ghost on social media and stream one day a week; it doesn’t mean you can.  That dude earned his seat; you have to come into this knowing that you’re going to have to work your ass off, be clever, and learn quickly.

Does AI help speed up the creation of song cover photos or bios?

I mean, what doesn’t AI speed up? You’ll hear the same argument against AI from digital artists, and I give the same advice: you need to find your signature so people know it’s your work.  

Where do you see your Music taking you in 2026 or 2027?

My goal is to hit 100k+ monthly listeners by mid-April. I don’t really want anything out of my music monetarily; it’s now become more of a mental game of “well, if I can hit 5k, can I hit 10k?” and I’ve just been doing that. I want to see how large I can grow.

Are there any new songs, EPs, or Albums releasing this Spring or Summer?

I have scheduled releases through May. January and February were hard months for me mentally, so I just wrote and wrote and wrote.  The unplugged version of Turn It On came out on February 27th, Tether comes out on March 06, 2026, and we’re going to see what happens with Tether and when to resume the schedule.  I don’t want to cannibalize a track's audience if it’s still on an upward trajectory. Tether is the TikTok accident song where I laid a country vocal over my dubstep track instead of the correct vocal for a different song, and it’s honestly the first thing I’ve posted on TikTok that people have responded to on a level that I just said, “Holy shit.”

Where can I find your music?

I mostly use Spotify, but it is on every platform that streams music, and even in apps like Snapchat.  I would use YouTube for lyric videos, but they’ve been less than helpful in getting art tracks replaced with actual music videos, so I’m still working on that angle.

Any closing statement?

If you want to be successful, however you measure it, be hungry and prepared to work on your craft nonstop.  Be a sponge, learn and listen to everything you hear.  People online are harsh because people use it as a shield and aren’t getting punched in the face anymore. 😂 Step outside your comfort zone and work with a variety of artists if you get the chance.  You can become excellent at 1-2 things, don’t try to become the one-man show (even though you have to be when you start), or you’ll burn out.  Take breaks, step away, and NEVER FINISH A TRACK AND MASTER IT IN THE SAME DAY. (UEDM 100% agree with this)

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