TN:183 Arlo Parks & Baird

Arlo Parks and producer Baird

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1:00Hello, I'm John Kennedy, and joining me for this episode of Take Notes is Arlo Parks with producer Baird to talk about how they wrote, recorded, and produced the album Ambiguous Desire. I was joined by Arlo in Studio One at Strongroom in London, and Baird joined us online from his garden mid-heatwave in L.A. And it was wonderful to speak to them both and get a glimpse into their working relationship and their friendship. There is such a great bond between the two of them, and it seems like they have so much fun when it comes to creativity and music.

1:35Arlo is calling L.A. home at the moment, and although she was in London with us, she clearly loves it in L.A., and I think that has really informed this new record. I think also that she's been enjoying going clubbing a lot in the last couple of years, and this has led to her exploring the history of dance music and digging deep into club culture for inspiration. And it's great the way that they've combined that with Arlo's sense of melody and storytelling. It's really very effective. As usual, we filmed the episode, so if you'd like to watch it and see into Baird and Arlo's Ableton sessions,

2:07head over to patreon.com forward slash tapenote. There really is a lot to see. By joining us on Patreon, you get access to all of our video episodes, exclusive content not in the audio podcast, and the chance to ask our guests questions, among many other things. Thank you as well to our partners at Tape It. Tape It have recently released a brand new Denoiser plugin, the Tape It Denoiser. And it does exactly what it says on the tin. We've been using it ourselves, and it's become a really useful tool. It's been getting a really positive reaction as well.

2:38People have said how natural the results sound and how well it performs against other denoising tools that they've used, which is great to hear. It's also currently half price, even better. So head over to tape.it forward slash denoiser to give it a go. But now, without further ado, let's get started.

2:59Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard, but not the pipeline? That's bullspend. And marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions. My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive-sounding metric I had. Impressions. Cut the bullspend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com slash campaign.

3:30Terms, the conditions apply.

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Background on Arlo and Baird

4:06Arlo Parks is an indie pop singer-songwriter from West London. Arlo's music career took off after uploading demos to BBC Introducing, quickly attracting industry attention and leading to deals with beatnik records and later transgressive. Praised for her emotive guitar hooks and poetic lyrics, her music explores themes of mental health and sexuality while capturing the experiences of her generation. Her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, arrived in 2021, won the Mercury Prize, and was also nominated for two Grammys.

4:38This was followed by My Soft Machine in 2023, which became a UK Top 10 hit. Her third record, the electronic-focused Ambiguous Desire, arrived in April 2026, working with producer Baird and additional collaborators including Paul Epworth and Samfer. Baird is an artist and producer raised in Baltimore and based in Los Angeles. As an artist, he has released a trilogy of EPs, Bird Songs Volumes 1 to 3 via EQT recordings, and a trilogy of albums with his brother Gabe under their moniker The South Hill Experiment.

5:11As a producer and writer, Baird has also shared his talents with artists including Kevin Abstract, Brockhampton, Danny Brown, Maxo, and most recently, Arlo Parks. Today, I'm joined by Arlo at Strongroom Studios, and Baird joins us remotely from his home in LA. And what better way to start than by hearing something from Ambiguous Desire. This is Get-Go. I'm moving under strobes on the floor Maria's standing there holding both her heels

5:43Sequins on her jeans Yeah, she looks unreal I haven't seen around here for months I make my way towards her Yeah, she looks so lost Yeah, she looks so lost Yeah, she looks unreal Says I could only tell you this I don't know what the hell I need

6:14I kinda wish I wasn't me Yeah, baby, can you pull me out Yeah, could you stay and dance with me Yeah, I don't wanna ever leave I knew we had it from the get-go

Opening Ambiguous Desire

6:37It is Get-Go by Arlo Parks from Ambiguous Desire, the new album, and I'm very pleased to say that I am sat in a studio at Strongroom in London with Arlo Parks. Hello, Arlo. Hello. Thanks so much for having me. I'm such a fan. It's great to have you here. Oh, that's good. That's great to hear. And connected to us online, zooming in from the other side of the world is Baird. So, hello, Baird. Welcome. Hey, hey. Thanks for having me. Tell us where you are, Baird. I'm in Los Angeles, California. And you're outside. I think this is the first ever outside interview we've done, apart from live events at festivals. So, I can see a nice brick wall behind you.

7:14Yeah, yeah. I'm in my garden. I'm in my garden. And we've done a DJ set in that garden. That's what it reminds me of. We had a pretty sick party here, yeah. Issa was DJing amongst the tomato plants. I was. I was, indeed. I love that. That's fantastic. So, the scene of your rave in the garden is also the scene for this episode of Tape Notes. Very exciting. Yeah, I rent the aftermath of the rave. Well, this is the best Wi-Fi I could give you, so I'm outside. And probably your first and last ever outdoor Tape Notes podcast.

7:46I don't know. It's quite nice if you're comfortable and we're comfortable. I can hear the birds. It's all good. And so, you're outside, but this is in the location that you recorded the record. So, this is actually outside his house, but we recorded the record in downtown LA, just about like 15, 20 minutes away. Right. Okay. In Baird's studio there. Yes. And you've worked with each other quite a lot. When did you record the record? Yeah. So, we recorded the record over the past like two or three years. We met when I was making my second album. So, specifically the songs Pegasus and Devotion, Baird and I worked on together. And then we started spending more like one-on-one time together, just experimenting. And then we locked into this little world. Yeah. In like, when was it? Like 2023? I want to say.

8:35Yeah. And now it is here. And Biggest Desire. And now it is here. It is real. And we're going to look at three of the songs from it. And the first one we're going to look at is Senses. So, maybe if you could give us a blast of the master, that would be a fantastic bird. We'll get a sense of the idea of the song. All right. All right. Bye.

9:03Bye.

9:08Bye.

Constructing Senses

9:13Bye. I told play when she chained Hit myself in awe and women Needed things to reach towards But now I'm here Feeling super bad about it

9:45Trying to find the courage Turning up the shower on the cold If I tell you that I'm trying It is Senses by Arlo Parks from Ambiguous Desire featuring Samfer, although he hasn't come in yet. We'll find out about him in just a moment. So how did this song start? Yeah, so it began, I believe, with that drum break. I want Baird to play the breakdown of all those little layers in a second But the drums and then the guitar tone actually in this song specifically

10:19Very much informed the guitar tones we used on the rest of the record Like this song was made in this little magic period Where we're trying to understand what the album actually sounded like So we had that guitar and the drums And then I was kind of just like mumbling along on the microphone And freestyling and trying to find the shape for the melody And then the lyrics flowed out really quickly But these are some of my favorite drums on the record, Baird Baird had some magic Yeah, yeah, same Had some magic going when he made these I think we just got really lucky

10:51Yeah A lot of things will start with just like throwing paint at the wall And seeing what sticks So there's like some drum sort of chopped up break things And then, yeah, kind of layered in some more I don't know what this is And is this all in the box bed? Or are you Have you got a kit in the room that you kind of fiddle about with? We do have a kit in the room I think it comes in later

11:21A little live like ride texture But for the most part We're just chopping things up With the Ableton sampler Just, you know Will you play like one layer, second layer, third layer Because I want people to understand The way that it all kind of lives together Yeah, okay, so here's just like A hat That kind of ticks along A little ride This one we call the functional snare This one is the new jack snare

11:52It kind of has a new jack swing This is like sort of a tom kick It does change pitch Over the course of the song, as you can see So it kind of tries to match the chords a little bit These little snare rolls This is a sort of chopped up ride break, I think It has a little tambourine in it And then another one So that all together kind of

12:24Forms the groove Yeah And how are they processed? Or are they processed? They're barely processed at all I have a tuner on this one Which, you know, isn't doing anything They don't really seem to be processed at all I feel like we have all these Like almost happy accidents Where, like even when it comes to the guitar tone And like the combo of pedals That you had on the guitar I feel like we didn't like record A dry run in that It's just like, that's how it is

12:55Which is a joy for David Wrench Our mixing engineer But so much of the magic, I think Happens when I hear a sound that inspires me Or there are these textures That we're kind of dreaming up in the moment And that's what excites me enough To want to write So we rarely kind of sit I mean, we never sit at a piano or a guitar It's always us kind of jumping around the room And trying to find something that sticks So an immediate response to what Baird was playing in Yeah And do you have a sample library

13:25Of all those different parts That you can dive into? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty disorganized But I have like tons of different packs That I've downloaded over the years And some stuff that I've recorded I do record my own breaks a good bit Try to do that regularly Those don't always make it in But it's good to do those anyway And then just like kind of whatever happens Like this sounds absolutely ridiculous And it's going to be kind of quiet Can you hear this sound? I'll turn it up a little So what is that?

13:56That's just like a really nice texture That we stumbled upon And then put it in the entire song Yeah That sounds about right For our production style It's always But that's the thing My favorite records are the ones That have these little textural Found sounds That alone Sound Pretty thin And like they're not doing that much But if you took that out of the song I swear it would sound different It falls apart The whole mix would fall apart It does It would fall apart Without the weird little Space age thingy It's Yeah It's like an

14:26I have this old Krumar keyboard Just like a cheap Italian Kind of 70s Keyboard And it has a chorus setting on it Which is either like 120% on or off There's nothing in between And when you leave the chorus on And just crank the inputs on it But don't play any notes You get these little crackly Kind of swirly sounds And I think then we threw it through some Through some delay it looks like So yeah Just kind of whatever happens in the moment We try to run with it

14:57And not sit there tweaking settings too much And can we hear that The guitar then That you were mentioning Arlo Yeah That goes on top of the drums Yeah so You can hear actually Issa's vocal in there You can hear the drums In the guitar track also And who's playing the guitar there?

15:29Bed Right I'm playing the guitar there Yeah It's going through some pedals And we were never able to find this tone again It just happened once I think it was I have an Ibanez Like electroacoustic Nylon string guitar And I must have had it super loud Because it's You can hear like the microphonics Of the The pickup is almost working as a microphone You can hear the drums You can hear All those reference vocals And that's why I think I was kind of finding the melody As you were playing Because I think it often happens Quite symbiotically

16:00And I feel like I love Your chord choices Bed And they always inspire me More than anything I come up with So I feel like you always hit this groove And then I start singing And then you might have like Have that guitar looped And then start working on the breaks And it is this really Dynamic process Because I feel like it's this runaway train And we try not to think about it too much And we just like Build layer upon layer So was this all happening in In one session then? Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah

16:31It's all pretty instantaneous And I also think you should give yourself credit Because sometimes I'll play a chord And you'll be like Dude I have such a distinct memory I was like I don't like that one You were like I think it sounds gorgeous I was like No Different one Yeah But I think it is It's just intuitive as well And I think that we like Challenge one another Because we have very similar tastes But then when they deviate You'll be like I think this is cool And I'm like Hmm And then you try And I'm like Fair Or I'm like

17:02Still no And you're like Fair Yeah, yeah, yeah And vice versa And vice versa Yeah, exactly The song kind of evolves Over the course of its duration But we should hear the guitar And the drums together now That we've got a picture Of both of those There's something A cool little trick That I think Because I was told to nerd out As much as possible Please do Doing this And I'm a fan of the show So I know people Get into the weeds But the guitar starts In the intro in mono And then Obviously it's It's a guitar DI So it's mono But then We use the little

17:33Soundtoys micro shift To widen it As the drums come in So you can kind of hear It starts in the center And then jumps out wide And then it kind of Spreads as the drums come in So I'll play that With the drums Yeah, great And then I feel like

18:14The bass Really subtly Gives it a lot of Propulsiveness And obviously In this song I feel like The way that the vocals Are stacked And kind of come alive With the production Gives it a lot of momentum But bass Especially on this record I feel like Bass and drums Were really the backbone Of like The shape of it Yeah And especially I think With Samford's part And having to blend The two together We had to find Really creative ways Of like

18:44Making it One world Yeah So maybe we should hear Arlo's vocal parts Or some of them And then hear about How Samford Was brought into the picture Do you have the scratch one? Is that what I sent you Last night? Yeah, yeah I have a reference So at some point We had Yeah, all those elements Going and then I vowed that I would never share these But because I love Tape notes I will So this was the freestyle

19:16That I had Where I was just Kind of finding the shape And there were no lyrics Yeah So this is great This is you responding To the music That you've been Working on Okay That's enough of that But I just thought it was Important to show how

19:46Also The only line That I had Was like Dulled my senses Senses kept coming back As like this lyrical motif And I didn't have Any of the other words So The title of the song Or You know The emotional center Of the song Is usually the first thing That I sing And then I build things Out around that But yeah We can play the actual singing That sounds good now Yeah, yeah Feeling super bad about it Trying to find the courage

20:18Turning up the shower all cold If I tell you that I'm trying Is it better than it is Is it better than it is I can't find the world I can't find the world I can't find the world I can't find the world So now we start to hear Samper Mm-hmm And we hear Bear too Bear's BBs are on here Yeah, yeah I don't know if we need to isolate those We don't need to isolate those There's some very absurd Like reference Backup vocals

20:48That ended on to the With the English accent Songs Yeah, yeah I was trying to sing A reference for Yeah No, we don't have to go into it But he sounds really good Bear, I love your singing Don't put yourself down Thank you, thank you So in terms of Layering up the vocals You know, how far Do you go with that Before getting Samper involved And at what point Did you start thinking About a second voice Having him on the track I mean, I feel like most Almost none of The vocal tracks

21:19On this record Of singles Like everything is Kind of doubled, tripled I feel like it's my weird Superpower to be Extremely precise With doubles Right, Bear I feel like I can say that It's actually crazy No, I've never experienced This with another singer Where you can sing Start to finish Not like punching a verse Like start to finish The whole song Twice without hearing it And then you put them together And they sound like John Lennon-esque Vocal doubles It's quite strange Honestly, because When I was making music In my bedroom

21:49I didn't understand That you could comp things I thought you had to sing it Perfect start to finish So if I ever made a mistake I would just start The entire thing again As a teenager So I kind of honed the skill Of just making it perfect Every time But yeah, so we had I mean, you actually came up With that descending melody That ended up being The kind of core of the chorus But I had kind of We had layered a few of my vocals And then we had the harmony in And we were listening To that EP Dior

22:20That Samba has And also some of the work He has with Subtract Because we were kind of Slowly becoming inspired By the idea of club culture And, you know, mixing Quite emotional voices And quite soulful voices With these more electronic textures And Samba has always been The touchstone for that For me And I've always been Such a massive fan And I felt like That descending melody Kind of reminded me Of him in a way And I wrote him A little letter Being like

22:50I think you will understand Me and this record

Sampha joins the track

22:53And he said yes Fantastic So maybe we should hear That descending melody And so maybe We'll also think Sampha Yeah When we hear it Okay, here's the Just without Without Sampha I can't find No love No love For myself I can't find No love No love For myself So is that Baird? Right Yes Yeah So that's Baird Guide Your guide vocal

23:23Yeah, yeah But also a response To what was going on Before we get into Sampha Maybe we should hear Some of these These recordings Of your vocals So we can hear The thing That you were just Talking about The layers Yeah Yeah They're in there as well I'll just isolate those Maybe add in another one Yeah They're slightly panned out And then a third one

23:57And these are all Separate takes Yeah But they are identical Yeah Yeah And then And then four stacks of me Which we don't need to isolate Necessarily But if we add those in It just It's an octave below Oh, it's not No love No love For myself And is there a particular Processing or chain Around your voice recording About a recording? Yeah, I feel like we We established one As we went

24:28Along For me I always enjoy When my vocal Feels like it's Kind of embedded Into the tapestry Of the music But also still Having that definition So it took us a while To figure out How much Reverb made sense And also to have A kind of Signature Sonic imprint Vocally That felt specific To this record Maybe more so Than the texture That I had In my previous records

24:58And I think That's also Part of The new world That we were exploring Sonically Because my records In general Before had like Three or four elements Vocal Pretty dry And like in the front But I wanted To kind of sit back Into it a bit And have it feel A little bit more Kind of fluid And living within the music Rather than being Stuck in front Yeah And so given That instruction How did you achieve That then?

25:26It's a bit like I don't know It's kind of different For every song But on this one It looks like There's a pretty simple Basic I made a preset Called really Really basic Vocal chain As a starting point Which is just Compress A little A little tune A little EQ A little compressor And a little Slap back delay Which is Initially just intended To kind of make The recording process More you know Fun And then Sometimes that just Ends up staying on there So there's that And then like A little EQ At the end

25:57And then The thing that's I think Kind of unique To this song Is this We have a bunch Of sends going on Where we're sending The vocal out To these kind of Strange spaces This one's called Underwater space So you kind of hear A bunch of things Are going to it But it just gives A little watery texture And there's a doubler There's a little Plate reverb And then like

26:31A little delay Well I guess It's not on the Vocal there But there's a delay At certain points And we kind of Automated it on and off Depending where we Wanted it So yeah I mean that's the Does that answer The question Yeah I think so Sounds great And so So now to Samfer So you wrote In this note You said You're the guy Yes And did he get Back to you Straight away Or what did he do He did He did get back To me pretty quickly And is he Somebody you know Yeah we'd worked Together But more just Kind of jamming

27:02And finding ideas Because we hadn't Like put out Anything together Before But I'd always Been a massive Fan of him I feel like him And Dev Hines From Blood Orange Are kind of my Like black British touchstones Like they're Two of my Favourite artists And so yeah I reached out To him And then he Invited me To the studio That he has And I kind of Saw him Figuring out The melody And the lyrics In real time Which was really Special Like he had Some like niche Afro future

27:32Film being Projected on the Wall And it was Like this Meditative Moment of Just like Seeing him Going round And round The chords And figuring out That shape And then he Added in some Piano at the End And I love His choice Of chords Is incredible And he I mean How would you Even describe it But I feel Like the way That he Approached his Verse Was It was very The way he Approached the Chord progression Was like Kind of Experimental And like Kind of Challenging To blend

28:03Into the Rest of The song So we Had to Be creative With like Making it One world Together But I think Because his Voice is also Quite It's very Himself But still Is quite Malleable And we Were able To kind of Blend My takes With his Takes Quite Effortlessly And kind Of Make it Feel like This almost Blessing At the end Of the song And placing It at the End Allowed us To To make It sit Well Together Because it Can be Hard when You know You've Made this Full song

28:34And someone Else contributes A piece Like you have To kind of Create the Puzzle Yeah Yeah Because we Hear him As the song Picks up Yeah Exactly And then he Seems to be Providing a Backing role Really And doing that Descending line That you were Talking about But then There's this What starts Like a bridge But it's Like the Final section Of the song And then he Comes into Full voice Yeah And where's His studio These days It's in Hackney Right Oh okay So you had to Come back to London Yeah

29:05I spent quite a Lot of time In London So I was I was Cruising around But it was Really nice to Be there In the room With him Because I Think you Get a Specific Kind of Magic When the Collaboration Feels like In person And you're Bouncing off One another And you know Chatting and Laughing And it feels Like a really Nice memory Yeah Brilliant Well I think We should hear Some of that So what's The first element We should hear The piano Just the vocal What do you Think Bed Well he starts To kind of Creep in in The second Hook He's in the

29:35First hook Too but he Comes more And more Present Let's see And then Another layer With some Delay And then Maybe a few More Until we Get all Of them That's not

30:16Sampha That's a Reference That's Stayed in And it's My falsetto Incredibly out of tune Another central Gorgeous vocal I think there's Almost a duty To have The ugliest Stems possible Result in A beautiful Sounding record So That's why It felt like Painting to me Because there Were so many There were so many Layers to it And like Even that drone That stays in Throughout Even though There are These pieces That feel Like A little bit Out of order And there Is a chaos To it

30:47It all Makes sense On the canvas That's how I like to Think about it With this one Sorry I interrupted The flow Go on No no no So I'll just Play a section Of the bridge And then we can Kind of get Into the elements Of it Yeah That'd be great

31:24So that gives you a sense Sort of his section Yeah Can we hear that Can we hear that piano On its own Yeah here's his piano And would he Sing and play At the same time No he was figuring out He was figuring out His verse first Yeah And then I was obviously like Oh can you add A little bit of piano And he was like Okay I'm gonna try And figure something out And like He's so humble

31:55He doesn't know That he literally Changed music But anyway The piano The piano came afterwards And I think it was really It was really lovely That it kind of Followed the shape Of what he had created And I like the idea Of you know Even sonically We're kind of Passing on The torch From you know Baird's production And piano And allowing him To kind of Fully fill the space Of the song Yeah It was sort of A back and forth Because he initially Sent this verse With different chords And then I laid Like a reference piano In underneath His vocal

32:25That was this one Which is a very Kind of dark and mellow It's kind of poorly played But it's following the melody And I had to chop it up And then We sent that to him And he sent back The kind of bright Beautiful Classic Kind of Sampha Piano sound So then We blended those two Together

32:56And it kind of Registers as one piano I think in the final record But It's actually two

33:12So pretty Yeah Sounds great Isolated doesn't it Yeah Yeah That's so good What else should we hear Before moving on I'm really interested By what you were saying About Dev And Sampha As being Kind of key Reference points for you As a black British artist And their voices Because you have Such a distinctive voice

33:43Of your own Thank you And it's really interesting Because those three artists With you included You're all Black British artists But you sing In a particular way Yeah That is only you And while you might Listen to all sorts Of different kinds of music You don't try and Follow it Or copy it No Yeah You've all three Managed to find Your own individual voice Yeah Definitely And I also feel like Both of those Artists Have music That You know Orbits around

34:14Really personal topics Whether it's You know Sampha singing about grief Or You know Dev Hines singing about Blackness Or feeling like an outsider Or like these really Personal intimate topics And I think that's also You know There's that spirit of it And also their taste As producers There's something Really Specifically them About the choices They make With In terms of Drum choices In terms of You know Vocal treatment And processing So I feel like That was also important To keep in mind With my record That I wanted there

34:45To be A really Undeniable imprint Where you would know That Like you could hear Someone else's snare And be like Oh that sounds Kind of ambiguous desire You know That's what I wanted Fantastic Anything else Musically That we should hear Before we move on To another song I think that's That's Basically it I think Will you play The drone Because I feel like The other two Also have drones So I want to Oh yeah Where is that There's a Particular synth That I guess We kind of Threaded through A lot of the songs

35:16On the record To try to make it You know Cohesive And have its own Its own world Here it is So you can kind of Hear it swelling up In the pre-choruses And what synth Is that Baird? I think it was A Labs synth Yeah Labs is like A free Plugin That's I guess Like Sample libraries

35:47I think they've now Been folded into Splice And I don't know How to use it anymore But It was something We were using For a bit Yeah It's a sample Based synth I mean I think most Things that I Tend to gravitate Towards are Sample based Rather than Software And I love How it kind of Just Almost just Drones And like Has a life Of its own Throughout the Entire song And there's Something It like Kind of Pokes Pokes out And recedes But it's Always Kind of Like This body Of water That's Like Finding Different Shapes I think That's Important In all The songs

36:18For there To be Something That's Kind of Alive And like Popping out Of place A little Bit Too Much At Certain Points That Like Keeps It Feeling Like A Beating Heart You Know Yeah I think Musically Too It's Like With a lot Of the Songs In this Record We sort Of Realize That Like If you Can't Boil It Down To Five Or Six Essential Elements And It's Not Something Not Working So There's Like The Guitar The Bass The Drums The Synth And That's Kind Of The Core Of The Song That Little You Know Crinkly Chorus Noise Sound Is Is A Really Nice Textural Bed But If

36:49You I Think We Found When You Start To Add Too Many Things We're Kind Of Realizing That Maybe The Production Isn't Actually That Strong So If You Can't Boil It Down To Just A Few Characters Then Try Different Characters Definitely I love That Yeah Really Interesting Right Let's Have A Blast Of The Ending Bed And Then We Can Move On To One Of The Other Songs We've Got To Look At Today Cool

37:34Women In Eyes I Swim From My Life Away From The Demons But The Clarity Lies In The Direction Of Pain Through The Flames It Is Senses By Arlo Parks With Sam From Ambiguous Desire There Are Two More Songs We're Going To Look At Jetta And Heaven Which Will We Look

38:04At Next Let's Go For Jetta Okay Jetta Is The Next Song We're Going To Look At We're Going To Have A Little Break And We'll Be Back With Jetta In Just A Moment You Know That Moment Where You Thought Everything Was Silent And Then In The Mix You Hear Hiss Hum Distant Voices Electrical Buzz A Constant Low Level Background Wash Oh No Thankfully Tape Bit's New Denoiser Handles It For Instant Studio Quality Sound Just Drop It On Any Mic

38:35Track And It Lowers Or If Needed Completely Removes Any Background Noise To Scratch The Surface It Analyses Audio In Small Slices Creates Checkpoints Every Six Seconds And Instantly Re-adopts Save Settings As You Move Through Your Track So It Adapts Seamlessly To Changing Noise It Was Trained On Years Of Real World Recordings With A Simple Brief Work On Any Source Not Just Voices And Don't Introduce Audible Artifacts So Whether It's Instruments Full Band Sessions Podcasts Live

39:05Recordings Or Long Takes With Evolving Noise The Tape It Denoiser Can Handle It All To Find Out More And To Get A Special Launch Offer Of 50% Off Head To Tape Dot Hit Forward Slash Denoiser And Hear The Difference For Yourself That's Better

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Writing and sonic palette

39:53The

Writing and sonic palette

39:54Next Song We're Going To Look At From Ambiguous Desire By Arlo Parks Is Jetta But Before We Get Into That I've Got A Question From One Of Our Patrons On Patreon Arlo This Is From William Card Who Says Arlo

40:15Writing Project Do You Follow Any Process For Expanding Your Sonic Palette If So What Advice Would You Have To Do So That's A Great Question Will Thank you I Feel Like I'm A Music Fan Above Anything Else And I'm Listening To Music Every Day All Day And We Do In The Studio Also We Take Breaks To Blast Whatever We've Been Listening To And For Me It Happens In A

40:47Lot Of Different Ways I'll Spend A Lot Of Time On NTS Or Digging Through YouTube Or Going To Record Shops And My Practice As A Writer Were Kind Of Coming Together As One Big Exploration So I Try And Expose Myself To As Much New Music As Possible And I Get Some Good Cuts From Bed As Well Yeah Likewise I Think Most

41:17Sessions We Start By Just Playing Each Other A Few New Toons Which Will Be Funny Because If We Work The Day Before I'll Play Something And I'll Be Like I Think I Showed That To You I Love It Though But Yeah So

41:40Beginning Of Every Project Yeah So A Rich Personal Cultural Life Is Important Very Important Curiosity Yes I Like That Fantastic All Right The Next Song We're Going To Look At Is Jetta If You Could Give Us A Blast Of The Master Baird That Would Be Great Absolutely

42:10Back

Breaking down Jetta

42:15In A Night Bad Cigarettes Cash Phone Living In Fiction For Tonight Jumped Into My Jetta Then We Wrote Together Telling Me About Her Date It Was Kind Of Tender It Felt Like Surrender Getting Close To Corners I Been Thinking

42:45About The Way I Tried The Night While Thinking About The Way I Give The Chase Thinking About The Way I Can To Touch Cause I To To The Journeys The Journey To This One Is Interesting I Feel Like I I Remembering It Correctly Bad But You Might Have To Help Me With The Timeline But I Feel Like The Song Was Written Before We Had Properly Locked In The

43:16Direction That Was Slightly More Electronic And Had That Really Strong Palette Established Cause Wasn't It Over A Very I Remember It Was Over Something Else And I Remember Being Like I I Not Super Sure That It Is Undeniable Because Undeniable Was Almost Our Mantra But It Was Over Guitar And There Was A Break And Then You Went Away And You Tinkered And Then You Showed It To Me Again And I Was Like Okay You Right This One Was Touched By God Yeah Yeah We Made I Guess We Made A Lot Of

43:47Songs For This Album And So Sometimes There Would Be Something In One That One Of Us And The Other Didn't And And And Vice Versa But Sometimes It

44:06Time Yeah This One Was Kind Of One Of Those I Think We Had The Break And Some Semblance Of The Guitar Part But It Wasn't Really Doing It And At Some Point I Went Away And I Have Like A Yeah I Was Just Sitting At

44:36And There Was Something Kind Of Like Dark And Sensual About It But I Feel Like It Took A While For The Guitar Tone To Be Dialed In Similar To Senses I Think Like That Became The Backbone Of

45:06The Entire Track And On Several Tracks On The Project So He's Really Really Good He's A He's A Source For Sure He Is A Source So What Should We Hear First Then In Terms Of How You Created This Well The Very First Thing You Hear In The Song Is This And It's Again Just Kind Of Like Me Taking Up The Duty Of Trying To Get The Most Absurd

45:36Would Necessarily Sound Good But This Is Like I Think It's Plucking The Strings In The Headstock Yeah It Is I Remember You Doing That Yeah Yeah And Then I Guess If You Play The Guitar Line And Then Maybe Do The Layers Of The Drums Again I Think That Will Make Sense The Backbone Of Things Because It's A Similar Process To With Senses Where You Know We Had That Drum Break That Felt Propulsive And You Know Because I Was Listening To A Lot Of Trip Hop And Massive Attack And You Know DJ Shadow

46:06And All These Artists Who Are Very Rooted In Like The Breaks And The Drums Of The Spine Of Things And Then You Came Up With These Chords And I Remember Being Like Hold On Yeah Because My Whole Thing Is Like When I'm Sitting Down I'm Like Okay I'm Getting Into It And When I Stand Up It's Like Time To Go SM7 On I'm Ready I'm Ready Yeah Worth Mentioning To This Is The Microphone We Use For The Entire Project Excellent I Love That So The Mic You're Talking To Us In LA In Your Garden Is The One That Arlo Sang

46:36Into Ambiguous Desire Baby Yeah DIY Yeah It's Just Whatever Is Quick And Inspiring It's Not Really For Us It's Not Speed Yeah Momentum In The Studio You Know But Maybe Do The Drums First And Then Do The Guitar Yeah Okay So We Have This Thing Kind Of Chopping Up The Break Then We Have This Thing Which

47:07Is Actually A Drum Break For A Song Of My Mind That I Never Put Out And Then Just Had This Kind Of Backbeat Break Thing Layered That Into It So I Guess That Was Like A Yeah Homemade Sample I Forget What Song We Were Listening To There Was Some Like James Blake CMYK Arrow Yeah But You Were Also You Were Talking To Me Remember We Were Talking About Baltimore Club And You Were Telling Me About The

47:37Fact That There Are Like There Is A Small Pocket Of Breaks That Find Their Way Into So Many Of These Songs And I Remember It

48:05Just Just Just Just Like Little White White Noise Blasting Which Kind Of Just Perks Your Ear Up When You're Listening To It And That's The Core Of It I And Later On We Layer In Some More Kicks That Sound Pretty Bad When They're On Their Own We Layer In This Like Little Skitter Scatter Sound Which Isn't Even On A Delay It's Just Hitting The Same Sample Over And Over Again Which Isn't Like Even In Time With The Song Exactly But It's

48:35Just Having Those Little Imperfections Kind Of Make It Alive More Human Or Alive And Yeah When Everything Is Super Locked In Obviously It's Not It's Not Going To Groove Strange Little Bell Sounds And Yeah So Then All Together The Drums Kind Of Have And Then The Next Thing Was Getting This Guitar So

49:05It's Originally Like A Guitar Part I Played On A Baritone Guitar Just A Home Made Baritone Guitar It's Very Poorly Intonated And So We Couldn't Really Use The Original Take Because The Sounds Weren't Great And Ended Up Just Replaying It Note By Note With Some Notes Kind Of Swelling And Some Notes Not So That's Kind Of Just Very Straight Forward But Then You Have And

49:36Then Like Some Of These Guys Using A Pitch Pedal I Think The Pitch Fork So That's All Together And A Little Chorus This Is A Free Chorus Plug-in That Everybody Should Have Use it On Pretty Much Everything So Yeah That's Kind Of The Guitar And Chuck The Drums Under That Yeah Yeah

50:17There We Go I Think Later On We Added Some Live Drums Here You Can Hear That The Ride That's Just In The Studio Some Claps It's So Dynamic I Think These Are My Favourite Drums On The Album I Could Just Let That Go On Forever So Yeah So Last Time With Senses You Were Responding To The Music You Started Singing

50:47Melodies And Then Created Words Out Of Those Yeah Is It The Same Approach For Jetta Yeah It Was Quite Similar I feel Like I Had Those Chords And I Started Freestyling This Melody But Because The melody Is A lot More Intricate I Had To Think For A bit Longer About The Story To Chords To Chords Chords Has Chords Chords A Journey And I Was Reading This Book Called Raving By Mackenzie Walk Which Is About New York Queer Club Culture And She

51:18Had This Passage Where She Was Talking About Calling An Uber With Her Friends And What They Were Wearing And What They Were Drinking And The Anticipation For The Night Building And That How The Drums Felt to me and that's how the chords felt so i had to take a bit of time to you know document some of my own nights that i had with friends and that's why it starts with like you're packing a night bag cigarettes cash phone and it's the beginning of this story so it took me a bit more time to come up with the lyrics but i'm proud of them on this one yeah and and storytelling seems to be a

51:51fundamental part of of arlo parks and the kind of songs that you write very much so and i think that especially with this album making process i really wanted to have more patience and have a bit more time with it so it allowed me to wait until i had a story or a moment that i really wanted to freeze and immortalize more on immortalize later because of the voice note at the end um but yeah i i was really patient as to what i wanted to say and we always said that each song had to feel essential

52:23on the record it needed to be a song that you know someone on the reddit thread would put their hand up and be like this the one for me and would like go down to the death for that so yeah this is one of those for me yeah that sounds great and uh and jetta what does that word uh well it's it's the car it's the car yeah yeah yeah it's like jumped into my jetta then we rode together yeah i feel like for me even the album cover you know it's me in the driver's seat of a car glancing back and it is this album that feels like it's about journey and it's about these kind of fleeting

52:56moments of intimacy uh and there's something about i don't know i love naming songs after like colors objects people um and there was something about the jetta that felt like quite an ordinary car object but i just love the idea of the car carrying a lot of meaning and carrying you to one of the best nights of your life that's so exciting isn't it so it's so important one of the best nights of your life it was i had so much fun yeah and and yet in a way i mean it's quite a short song it's only

53:30like two minutes 49 i've written down the time um but it's interesting because near the end the beat kicks in harder and you kind of get into a more of a club kind of environment and then you end it yeah i remember that do you remember the when you went to the jamie xx show and then afterwards i remember you came back to me with a bounce of it with this kind of like force of the floor breakdown and i remember you were like is this too much question mark and i was like no i'm

54:01obsessed and i think for me it was important that we committed to moments like that you know this the way that the outro is shaped i wanted it to feel like no you're in the club and then you're in the smoking area and then you hear these little fragments of conversation and that is actually a voice note from a night out with my friends and the voice at the end is me maybe maybe we should hear that yeah hear that isolated the big kick comes in we'll set up the scene yeah the big kick so here you leave to the smoking area and you can hear the music still in the background

54:54and so that is yeah yeah so it was actually i think a video that i took it was a video on a night out yeah with my friends because i think i just watched the documentary maestro about paradise garage in like late 70s early 80s and there were all these little fragments of interviews and club goers leaving the club and having these kind of like elated faces and the little chatter in the background so i felt like having a voice note from one of the nights that i'd actually lived would make the

55:27song feel more alive and lived in so yeah that's me at the end yeah excellent and at that point are you leaving the club then is that the end of it i mean because it sounds like it's just about it's just about to get good no but that's the point of it i feel like especially because you know it comes towards the beginning of the record i want it to feel like it's a portal to more life rather than it feeling like the ending yeah yeah yeah it's kind of setting us up and kind of leaving us hanging but also giving a sense of of the potential of the impact exactly yeah and i also think that

56:01a motif that we used on this one of that kind of like repetitive vocal chop of my voice was the beginning of us experimenting with using my vocal more as an instrument and like sampling it a lot more and having also my vocal feel like something more percussive and adding momentum rather than something that was meant to be the star of the show yeah yeah are we able to maybe hear that as a illustration yeah there's several layers of them so there's this one

56:34we have a note that that one's just like a sampler instrument um this one i think it was just you singing right we have some effects m auto pitch free free plugin um a little chorus on it and then that one as well which is we a sampler i think it was like a reversed moment of a vocal or something and we chopped it up and tried it and pitched it around and those kind of all together

57:04end up gelling quite well with the guitars

57:14i feel like there were times also where like i had an idea for a vocal chop so i just like did the same thing again and again and again and then we like actually made it it was me being like something like that's the thing yeah but it's kind of magic and fun to like come up with the idea and then you know execute it a little bit more properly but i like the kind of messy figuring it out version that we have at the beginning yeah yeah and then will you play the outro bed yeah we have this this funny thing happening we basically took the all the music and put a filter on it

57:53right here and so you can see the filter kind of moving down and then underneath that we have a track that's labeled socialite ben's limo too so that comes in at the very end and you can obviously hear

58:24other's voice i feel like someone was trying to play like we were all just clamoring about the bluetooth someone really wanted to play a madonna song i think right so you're all in this limo yeah how many people do you think there were a lot of people in the limo and also it was definitely not our limo so i don't know why we were in there i don't know whose limo it was no yeah so that's why that's part of the mystery almost and then beneath that there's also this little

58:52kind of a found sound thing

58:57where i had to kind of line up the the kick drums to match the kick drums of our song so it kind of makes it all you know it's just like a trick but together it really sounds like you're in the smoking section of the club

59:17so it's you know it's all an illusion

59:21fantastic and but so the song is about uh the excitement of the big night and the possibilities of the big night but are the best bits in the smoking zone definitely yeah i feel like this whole record is exploring the in-between and the kind of like snatched little moment of magic i feel like it's rarely the nights where you say you're gonna have the best night ever where you actually do i think it's the kind of accidental magic moments that you'll kind of reflect on a decade from then and be like remember that night when we're in that person's limo and you don't really know why it was amazing

59:55hence the ambiguous in the exactly mystery excellent so we've heard the end of jetta the next song we're going to look at is heaven we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with that

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1:01:38so the next one we're going to look at from ambiguous desire by arlo parks is heaven but just for clarity baird has now retreated from the sunshine in the garden and has moved his operation inside because it was getting too hot and it was affecting the computer so the picture is slightly different bed's now inside in his apartment we can see you in all your beauty now all your beauty so thank you very much for that and crystal clear audio as well yeah so let's have a blast when he said beauty

1:02:09you are beautiful don't worry thanks so let's have a blast of the master of heaven and then we can dig into how you created it okay

Creating Heaven

1:02:29i wish i wish i had the language to tell you the way this feels you're inviting me like the star of my arm under the bridge watching kelly spin plays my friends spilling out into the streets

1:03:03Parties in the summer breeze Concrete washing with metallic grease Let's get involved Let's get involved Party gas and gasoline My friends spilling out into the streets Let's get involved Let's get involved

1:03:34Until the dawn breaks Just a Little Taste of Heaven by Arlo Parks from Ambiguous Desire. Arlo, how did this one start? So this song started with a night out that I had with my friend Kelly Lee Owens and she was supporting Caribou at this secret set in LA under this bridge called the 6th Street Viaduct Bridge which is quite a dramatic kind of cement beast and it was such a magical night there were so many little fragments that I picked out

1:04:06whether it was my friend's pink Adidas shoes or you know the vodka Diet Cokes my other friend was drinking there were all these little fragments that felt quite cinematic and I wanted to capture in a song and later that night I kind of journaled all the little details down as I usually do and the next day I kind of brought that into bed and I had a really clear sense of the story and the palette and the songs that were being played that night so it felt like really direct like directly lifted from something I'd lived.

1:04:39And did that impact the style of music you were going to create for that? That you needed something that somehow connected to that? Definitely because I remember she dropped this remix of Everything in Its Right Place by Radiohead and also played that song Set the Roof by Hudson Mohawk and it was these synths and these drums that felt like they kind of tore you apart there was something really raw and intense about the way that those songs sounded when they were blasted really loud

1:05:09like you could feel it in your body and so I feel like with the bass and with the drums and just rhythmically we wanted it to be something that you could move to and that you would feel in your body. So I was definitely picturing what it would have been like if we dropped this track at that set as we were making the song. Excellent. So then how did you go about creating the right kind of music? Yeah, I mean I feel like we started with the drums, right? Yeah, we usually start with the drums. I think we had this like hat and snare loop maybe we've got that vocal sample in it.

1:05:40Just this much I think, yeah. And then it was the piano, right? Yeah, so we had this loop going and we'll sometimes jam on something for 20 minutes before we even like stumble into the or longer, you know, before we find the main idea. At some point I started playing this piano which is just like this old out of tune piano at the studio. And the fact that it's slightly out of tune means that it's a magic

1:06:11that can never be reproduced. Even like when we're doing a piano live we had to take the samples like note by note of this specific piano in the studio because nothing sounded quite like it. It's magic. It's magic. It took forever. But yeah, we now have a virtual piano. Yeah. That sounds exactly like that one. And now you've got a virtual out of tune piano. Exactly. Brilliant. But I think that pairing the kind of slightly wonky piano

1:06:41with those kind of driving hi-hats was almost a motif I think for the way that I was approaching the production because I liked the idea of having something propulsive and rhythmic with something that felt kind of alive and imperfect. And I'm realizing now that like the collision of those two things is very much what we look for when we're thinking about the production and the songs. So I have this little mumble track I think that I sent you Baird last night that we can share briefly but the melody came first

1:07:12and this is kind of what I freestyled over the piano and the drums that Baird had put together.

1:07:32So this is how all my songs start You can hear what I'm trying to find Yeah. It's also worth mentioning I think sometimes we'll do quite a lot of that kind of mumbling and then afterwards listen and be like oh that feels like an exciting moment that feels like an exciting moment it's not like oh here's the song obviously from the start Oh yeah no definitely not because then we have that thing that we coined springboarding where you find this one specific part

1:08:03that feels really you know whether it's a verse or a chorus and then you kind of oh play that on loop and then sing along with what I've just made and then kind of just throw myself into the abyss of the next section and see what happens. So it's this pretty experimental kind of free form way of coming up with sections but you're right no this is not just me magically doing it completely from scratch it takes a long time and it's really hard Yeah because I think for people watching it maybe it looks like we just have this project that looks I mean it doesn't look perfect

1:08:34but it's you know results in a song when in reality like this is me after deleting all of the unused tracks and all of the scrap ideas and sorting through all the you know different melodies and mumbles things that we try and then most of what we try doesn't work and then the ones that do are what we cobble together into the song Exactly and I think those mistakes and I mean they're not even mistakes but those attempts are essential because A they're something that we sometimes revisit later and B

1:09:04I think they're part of like the stepping stones to the final form and I think it's important to kind of not judge those weird choices or those things that sound really bad because they're kind of part of the journey of arriving to a song that sounds good Yeah yeah and then do you find the right phrase that fits that sound Yeah exactly I think with this song it was interesting because I had a sense of you know the people that I'd been with that night you know the green light across the dance floor and this notion of you know

1:09:34this whole record I feel like is wrestling with the idea of being present and the idea of you know being able to accept fleeting moments of joy as fleeting and being okay with that and I remember on the dance floor I was having such an amazing time and there was a twinge of you know oh this night will end and I'll have to go home and it will be over so I was kind of competing with two different forces one that was like just dancing with reckless abandon and the other one that was kind of aware of its ending so even when it came

1:10:04to the production I think having these kind of contrasting forces instrumentally I guess kind of linked to the way that I was feeling or the emotion that I wanted to bring across so what else should we hear from the music you can hear whatever you want to hear I mean I think I personally I feel like the bass the kind of live bass that like weaves through the verses and then I feel like the quote unquote drop is its own separate thing but I want them to hear

1:10:35the way that the bass kind of feeds in through the piano that you put together yeah well this is a funny one because the bass is out of tune oh because of that note oh my gosh some of the notes are out of tune until like the very last day and Issa kept being like yo we gotta remember we gotta go back and tune that bass that was this one note this one note that was killing me probably for like a year but then the whole time we realised that we were thinking about different notes and then it was really easy to fix and I can't really hear bass notes that clearly sometimes sometimes I'll put an 808 and I have like the pitch of them

1:11:06you can hear like the bass and the piano working together here something else that I think is kind of cool about this is we have this like random track labeled Jingle Jangle with an H with an H and it just sounds like this it's kind of this chopped up little delayed I don't even know

1:11:37where it came from but again it's just kind of like letting these little rhythmic textures inform the rest of the groove so that's not so yeah so you're kind of trying to imitate found sounds with drums and combine them together so then should we get into the drop into the quote unquote drop yeah well I mean it's interesting because I in general at least like I think my choruses or the way that I approach choruses is usually this kind of jump off point where things

1:12:07become like a lot more lush and there's a lot more layers and you feel kind of buoyed up and I like this idea of you know you're feeling like you're being pulled down into the underworld somehow and we had a few different versions of what that one line was going to be so I remember for a while it was like whatever you say or something and I was like that doesn't sound I was like what does that even mean but the syllables were so specific that we had to find the right thing and then yeah until the dawn breaks felt like it made sense yeah I think there's no shame

1:12:37in rewriting things that you just laid down in the moment to kind of get the feeling out like I think yeah isn't the story that yesterday by the Beatles was originally scrambled eggs yeah that's the classic line I love that I always think of that as like you can't do any worse than that maybe I almost want to well just I guess highlighting the fact that the bass in that moment is still very much a live bass so I feel like you know I was reading an interview that Bjork did about Post and she was just talking

1:13:08about you know wanting to make electronic music very much with a band and with organic instruments so I like the fact that that's a live bass and maybe yeah just show the layers one by one of what creates that atmosphere cool okay so let's go into here so yeah as you said the bass is just it's just like a squire jazz

1:13:39bass I think and are you playing that bit yeah yeah yeah but it's like an amp simulator on it and it is that a different instrument to the instrument that was playing bass just before that the more sinewy bassline it's the same instrument as this but the processing is slightly different so with this one I even you can see I even took some of the lows out of it to leave more space for the kick whereas

1:14:14with the instrumental section bass we're adding a ton of lows in using this basement plug-in and so this one takes up yeah a lot more space so it's the same track but I think I played it all the way through and then just put that into a new one with new effect so that it could kind of jump out more and then on top of that I think this is something that's kind of crucial we're like unbaking the cake here but there's a vocal texture that comes in that you probably don't really register but it's

1:14:44actually really loud and sounds like pretty bad on its own I mean it sounds interesting but it sounds great I love this one it just sounds like a wasp or something and is that a loop buzzing around and yeah I can find what it was let me just drag it out to the end I know I feel like that's just me oh yeah it was reversed it's some scratch vocal take that we like reversed and then chopped

1:15:15into that but then once you hear that you kind of can't unhear it in the there's also these little guys I love the little whip they're like little whips I love them yeah yeah the little zip zap and then little zip zaps having little atonal things because obviously it's just holding on one chord for like four bars so then as it comes in there's also that

1:15:46thing which kind of helps it just feel like you're descending into the moment and I think the crucial part of this section as well is you know the slightly more deconstructed kind of abstract flourishes that Baird is playing on the piano afterwards because I mean I was thinking a lot about Duval

1:16:17Timothy and thinking about the way that his piano playing has always felt really alive and for me you know we had this quite like muscular straightforward you know anti-chorus almost and it felt important to have something that kind of felt like it was dancing above that kind of pretty murky muscular sound so Baird on the magic piano was creating some shapes and you went for a while and then we kind of went through and spliced the correct cards I probably did like three

1:16:48or four takes you can hear my headphone bleed in there too kind of imitating the vocal motif and that just kind of sits on top something else

1:17:25that I hadn't really tried before but in this track we pitched the kick drum so that in that post it goes from there to down there and just kind of the post to me feels like this kind of like the most relentless part especially on a big system you like that 30 hertz frequency or whatever it's just like overwhelming definitely and I also I feel like those subtle changes made it feel like you were kind of

1:17:56journeying and even the moments that feel maybe a little bit more repetitive like I think Baird you're really good making these slightly unconventional changes that do a lot even though they seem quite minute I always think it's really interesting on this track and on the album as a whole that combination of both the club elements but also more abstract more mellow more chilled out elements too so there's a contemplative aspect to every song and the

1:18:27whole feel of the record but there are these other elements which put it in a different direction and it's almost like you evoke the club on this record exactly it's inferred in a way and I also think that even with moments like that piano I really had a strong vision of what parts of that improvisation kind of reminded me of certain feelings and I feel like I was able to kind of pinpoint the ones that felt like they worked because it was all sounding beautiful but there were ones that I

1:18:58don't know evoked how I felt that night and also I love making a song the night like the day after it happened because it still feels so fresh and to be honest I feel like this song really took most of its shape that day like 80% of what you know what I mean we barely really changed it so much I think we tried a lot of different things that day some like really obnoxious synth basses I remember because we were listening to were we listening to Loved by Fortet probably listening to Fortet pretty much listen to that

1:19:28song every day yeah same still love that and so when you made or started this song that was the day after this big night out yes so did you go straight into the studio did you give yourself any rest or yeah no it wasn't it wasn't actually particularly late I feel like that night when I got home is when I started journaling all these little details and it was also when I started thinking about you know wow the moments that I felt the most moved by the music I experienced was when there were no words where the

1:19:59music was the thing that was speaking itself and that's not something I'd experimented with as much in my music to kind of allow it to speak and allow it to be in the drums and the synths and the collisions so you know I remembered that feeling and I noted that down I noted like the space between in my journal as like the final bit of the entry so I went into the studio with a sense that that was going to be you know the north star of the process yeah really interesting is there anything else we need to hear from heaven any weird and wonderful little moments

1:20:30I like to show all the weird things that people are going to be like what is that this is a vocal sample from a band I have with my brother called the South Hill Experiment and I had like some acapellas from an album we'd made and that kind of underlies the whole song you hear the beginning and the end and the drops and then another one happens at the end the bang bang there's the bang bang there's this one which only happens at the very end but I was thinking of like the gates of heaven opening yeah nice

1:21:05yeah there's little like out of time drum fills it's like a loop I made called perfect Jesus disco 120 bpm love you know who knows but there was something yeah there was something so immediate about this one and I think that's why it's probably my favourite on the album because we really didn't overthink anything and it just felt so good I feel like we were just dancing around to it when we made it immediately which usually I feel like it takes me a

1:21:35while to like peel myself off my chair and be like okay yes it sounds good this one I was like we did something yeah and like I feel like my manager called me in like a happy frenzy from like the A25 or something being like this sounds crazy I remember we got the car we got the car that's what I mean from Ali yeah he was like the pianos sound like birds I was like I love that yeah excellent should we have a blast of the ending just to round this off and we've got a couple more questions for you after that cool

1:22:14I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that I love that We'll be right back.

1:23:13We'll be right back.

1:23:43We'll be right back. Distortion, fuzz, overall signal chain. So some detailed information requested by Teddy. Oh, man. Because we didn't use any of the guitar from... Because I started Dog Rose on my computer. And I remember you finished it with me. I feel like we erased everything that... I mean, I don't know if we kept any parts in. But do you remember any of this? I don't remember. I don't remember what distortion I would have used. The Devotions one, I think, was DI guitar.

1:24:14It wasn't going through an amp or anything. It was just straight in. It might have had a formant shifter on it, shifting it down or something. But, man, I don't know. It might have been the cheapest distortion pedal you could get. It might have been the most basic one, honestly. It might have been a DS1. But I don't know. I don't have a great collection of that sort of stuff, of pedals. I feel like when I started, when I made the Dog Rose demo on my computer,

1:24:47it was all probably stock logic stuff. So anything that made its way onto the final recording from that was just whatever happens when you go logic, distortion, and the first thing. Brilliant. Yeah.

Studio gear and advice

1:25:01So going back to the questions we ask everybody who comes on Tape Notes. So the first is a tech question, whether there's a piece of kit that is pertinent to this particular record that you couldn't do without or something that, in general, you love to use. I mean, for me, what comes to mind is probably the Juno, the 106 we used for Two-Sided. Yeah. Right? Because that day, it was the only thing that worked. And I feel like the limitations of only having this one synth

1:25:34and it feeling exciting in the moment is what made my favourite song on the record. So I have fond memories of that. And then, of course, the SM7, which is all I use and will ever use. I've tried so many other mics that are fancier or whatever, and I just, I'm a creature of habit. SM7 for life. What about you, Bird? Yeah. Okay. Well, I know I just said I don't like guitar pedals. I have a crazy collection of them. But there's one called the Pitchfork, which is a fun one that lets you pitch your guitar.

1:26:09And I have the miniature version, the Pitchfork Pico, I think it's called. And that kind of got us some cool textures. You can use it subtly and just use it even as a chorus, or you can do octaves. And some of the bass tones are actually just played on the guitar. You can get cool harmonies. So, yeah, I think that's a really fun pedal made by Electro Harmonics, I think. And the Juno, I don't even have a Juno, but my friend has one. And so we borrowed it because I was like, a lot of the references that we were listening to had that sort of sound.

1:26:39And I think it really elevated the project. So, yeah, the Junos, you can't go wrong with that, for sure. The other question we ask everybody is about advice, whether you have advice that you would like to share with people. Advice? Tips you've been given or maybe lessons you've learned. I feel like maybe that limitations are a strength. Like you can do a lot with a little. And sometimes you make better music when you don't have that many different things to reach to.

1:27:10Kind of what you were talking about, Baird, where the song only needs so many characters. And if you have too many, it means that they might be the wrong characters. So, you can do a lot with a little, is my bit of advice, I think. Yeah, that's great. I think for me, this is just my personal approach. And it's not necessarily right or wrong, but my advice would be that keep in mind that it's easier to make something simpler or more down the middle than it is to make it saucy or cool after the fact.

1:27:42So, I would rather start a song and have it be sloppy and maybe impossible to listen to, but there's something really cool there. And then kind of straighten it out and make it more down the middle later on. It's harder to kind of add sauce later or make something cool after the fact if there isn't something strange. So, if your choices are either be too middle of the road or too strange, always go with too strange because you can only kind of go one direction in the process, I think. Go stranger, go weirder. That's a great way to end it.

1:28:15Fantastic. Thank you so much to both of you for your time and effort involved in putting this all together today. I mean, it's always interesting trying to do transatlantic calls and long chats as we do on Tape Notes. So, thank you very much, Baird. And thank you, Arlo. Thank you. Thank you, guys. A real pleasure to speak to you. We should choose one more song from the album, a kind of outro piece. Oh, I want to choose Two-Sided just because we talked about that moment. I would love to play that, yeah. Excellent. This is it then. This is Two-Sided by Arlo Parks.

1:28:46Thanks again. Thank you.

1:28:52Thank you for listening. And in particular, thanks to all of you who have signed up to support us on Patreon. I'm just one part of the team that brings you Tape Notes and it relies on your support. Access to Patreon includes the full-length videos of new episodes where possible, ad-free episodes, and detailed gear lists, among many other things. If you'd like to join, head to the link on our socials or website. For pictures, highlight clips, and behind-the-scenes content, head to our Instagram or YouTube channel. And on Discord, you can join the growing Tape Notes community.

1:29:22Once again, thank you for listening. Until next time, goodbye. Bye.

Closing with Two-Sided

1:29:26Bye. The heat and mud dog, my head is so cloudy You know how I feel, tell me it's two-sided The heat and mud dog, my head is so cloudy You know how I feel, tell me it's two-sided

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