N96 test drive: Jessie Torrisi

Watch Jessie record her album and tour her favorite Brooklyn spots on Nokia viNe.

We gave you the N96 to document your life and record the making of your album for a couple of months. What was that like?

Well, it was weird, cool, funny, self-indulgent and a little embarrassing, to be honest. But the camera is little, so people don't really get nervous. You can sit there and be natural, which is really what you want.

There was a lot of fun footage to choose from.

Yeah, I like to have fun, and that sense of looseness, I think, translates on stage. I like to have a good time, I don't really care about how it's supposed to go, is it a new song, am I ready or not. I'm just going to go out there and rock and roll, I guess.

You used Nokia viNe to record some of your favorite places in New York before you moved to Austin. What did you think?

To me, the Nokia viNe thing is really cool because it sort of captures the madness of New York City. Just to see all the places you go in one day is pretty hilarious.

It's like, home, coffee, office, meeting on the other side of town, leave work to practice at the studio for an hour, see my teacher on the other side of town, send out emails to make sure my friends are at the show, then go back to Brooklyn and pick up somebody's microphone that I need that night...all in one day.

I've had this joke for a long time, that if they could attach little red dots on our backs and see where we go in one day in New York, we'd just look like this crazy swarm of angry bees. So I think it's fun when I come home after a long day, and I look at where I went. No wonder I'm exhausted.

And it's cool because I have friends all over the world, friends who are living in South America, friends who live in Europe, my grandparents. So it's fun that I have this viNe that I can send to everyone as I say goodbye to New York, and, you know, here comes the next phase of my life.

What else did you do with the N96?

I have enough of an artist personality that the best I can do some days is get out of the house with my keys and my wallet. So having a camera, a video camera and a voice recorder, it's with me and it gets me to do things I wouldn't otherwise do.

I found it's really, really great for music. I can go back and look at shows and see what I sound like and look like performing, because the experience I have when I'm doing it is so different.

Or I'll walk down the street and have an idea, and I'll just record it. Or wake up first thing with music in my head, and maybe I'm not near a piano or the studio, but I can sort of beatbox it into the recorder.

It's also good for working on songs in progress. If you're just figuring it out, you capture it as it's going. Then later, when somebody can't remember what happens when you get to the bridge, is it an A-flat chord or a D-minor seventh? You go back and it's all there.

Has technology changed the way you approach the creative process?

The cool thing about today's technology, to me, is that it's a lot easier to be creative. I mean, not if you're checking your email all the time and always texting your friends. You have to make time for it where you shut out everything else. But it helps you remember ideas, and the thing about creative ideas is they're so spontaneous, and you think you'll remember them, but you don't. So technology can be really helpful.

I definitely believe it's not so much about being polished as it is the soul of it. These days, almost anyone can have the technology it takes to record, edit and produce an album themselves. But I have to tell you, I'm still enamored with technology that has been around for 40 years, especially because it's my first solo album.

It's so cool to get in the studio with an electric guitarist and just sing off ideas, like, [sings guitar riff], and the next thing you know he's doing it. And you say, "Make it sound...a little bit spookier." And then he presses a pedal and there it is.

It's like seeing the ideas in your head, like splattered paint on a canvas. And you think, that looks good. I didn't know I could do that.

You'll have to keep us posted on what you do next.

Okay. I'm off to Panama for a while, then Philadelphia, then back to Austin. Bye for now!

See more Jessie on Nokia viNe >

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See the Nokia N96 product page > See the Nokia N85 product page > See the Nokia N79 product page >