TN:188 Tame Impala

Introduction to Tape Notes

0:00Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+. What are you waiting for? Hop on. The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+. This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt.

0:22Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu, now streaming on Disney+. Read PG-13.

0:30Blowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand, when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

1:00Hello, I'm John Kennedy, and joining me for this episode of Take Notes is Kevin Parker, the man maybe better known as Tame Impala. Kevin joined me remotely from his studio in LA. I think it's just like his home from home. It was a couple of days ahead of the start of the US leg of the Deadbeat Tour, which by the time this comes out will be well underway. I was lucky enough to see the London leg, and it was absolutely fantastic. In the conversation, we covered all sorts. There are some great demos and fantastic production techniques.

1:32Kevin was so open about his music making process and has a real attention to detail. I should mention that in this episode, you'll only hear two of the tracks that we spoke about, My Old Ways and Loser. There will be a breakdown of a third track, but that's going to have to be something to sink your teeth into later in the year. The full video episode is available to watch on the Tape Notes Patreon page, where you can look into Kevin's Ableton sessions, so head over to patreon.com forward slash Tape Notes to check that out.

2:02Kevin also mentions his use of voice notes during the conversation, which leads nicely into our sponsors Tape It, the iPhone recording app designed specifically for musicians. Tape It has lots of fantastic features to help with the songwriting and all-round creative process, including creating markers, layering upon existing notes, and recording in stereo. Quite a few of our guests are already using Tape It, and maybe that could have been useful for Kevin, as we'll find out. Anyway, if you'd like to try it out for yourself, you can download it for free or get a special offer on the pro version.

2:35Just head to tape.it forward slash Tape Notes. But now, without further ado, let's get started. Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+. What are you waiting for? Hop on. The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+. This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt.

3:07Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu, now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.

3:15Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great, till the CFO sees them. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out. In. Dashboard. Confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand, when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

Kevin Parker and Deadbeat

3:44Tame Impala is the electronic and psychedelic rock influence project of Australian singer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, Kevin Parker. After playing in bands around Perth in his teens, Kevin launched Tame Impala in 2007 as a home recording project. Signing to Modular Records in 2008, he formed a touring band to perform the tracks live, ahead of releasing his acclaimed debut album, Inner Speaker, in 2010. By the time his Grammy-nominated second album, Lonerism, appeared in 2012,

4:16Tame Impala had become a huge critical and commercial success. While releasing the albums Currents in 2015 and The Slow Rush in 2020, Kevin has also shared his talents as a performer and as a producer with artists including Justice, Gorillaz, Thundercat, and Dua Lipa. The fifth Tame Impala album, Deadbeat, arrived in October 2025, with the singles Dracula and Loser becoming worldwide hits.

Listening to Afterthought

4:40Today, I'm at home in Morden, South London, and I'm joined by Kevin from his LA studio. And what better way to start our conversation than by hearing something from Deadbeat. This is Afterthought. I'm at the crazy, senses betraying me, are you parading? All your love is to pay me, you only call me to drive you to safety, but you never stay, must be so easy to play me. I can be emotional, if you need me to tell me,

5:15What do I say to turn this around? 99 days, you think I know how I can be emotional, if you need me to tell me, What do I say to turn this around? I beg you don't make me say it out loud No matter what I do I'm an afterthought to you

5:47It is Afterthought by Tame Impala from the album Deadbeat, and I'm very pleased to say that connected to me online on the other side of the world in Los Angeles, California, is Kevin Parker of Tame Impala.

Touring and Cancellation in London

6:05Hello, Kevin. How are you? Hi, man. I'm good. I'm better now that we've got all this set up. I know it's been quite an epic set up, and I'm so pleased that we are connected to you because originally we were meant to talk to you back in May when Tame Impala were on tour and were playing in London. And unfortunately, I think you were ill or one of the band was ill and you had to cancel at the last minute. But we've managed to connect to you in the US just before the US tour and the North American tour kind of kicks off again and you go back out on the road.

6:36So thanks for giving us your time. Of course. Yeah, no, of course, stoked to be doing this and I'm glad that we finally got to. Yeah, apologies about cancelling in London. I think with tour, tour can either be totally hectic and really difficult to do anything or just the abyss, you know, where you're just sort of like wandering around, not really part of the real world. Yeah. I think I was also trying to rest my voice because it was that part of the tour where my voice is starting to complain. Yeah, yeah.

7:07Well, I got to go to the show that night and it was an amazing show. I really enjoyed it. Oh, cool. And it was great to be able to kind of put this album in context.

Creating My Old Ways

7:15So now, in a way, I mean, Deadbeat came out back in October of 2025. That seems quite a long time ago and we're going to dig into three of the tracks from the album and the first of them is My Old Ways. So maybe if you give us a blast to the master, we'll start talking about how you created it. Sure. So I'm just going to drop it from the beat drop. How about that?

7:40The intro is quite long otherwise. So... Back into my old ways again Back into my old ways again Back into my old ways again Thought I would never go back But just this once A little present for holding out so long

8:14I could not have ever thought of it two days ago Don't think I would forgive myself Just a little taste of my old ways by Tame Impala from Deadbeat And it's interesting, you skipped the intro I always wondered whether that intro was the demo of the song because it kind of sounds like that in a way Yeah, you are spot on there It wasn't... It's not the actual demo I went back and re-recorded it

8:44but it was in the same place that I recorded the demo which was my living room with the piano in it Yeah, I would have kept the demo but I wanted it to be stereo So I went back and re-did it But yeah, yeah No, you're spot on And do you do demos then, Kevin? Is that how your process works? Or do you create and just launch straight in? What do you normally do? I mean, for me

9:15the only thing I could possibly call the demo is a voice memo on my phone The demo is the memo So I used to carry around an old dictaphone with me like an old reporter's dictaphone which was my kind of... Before I owned an iPhone that was my sort of like oh, quick, shit, quick gonna get this idea that I just thought of and I'd sort of sing into it or strum a guitar into it and when I got an iPhone I promised myself I wouldn't ditch the dictaphone because it had this kind of cool sound

9:46but, you know, convenience just sort of, you know, did its thing So now I've just got, you know, like yeah, thousands of little bits and bobs on my phone that are just me mumbling into it and that was one of them And, I mean, I mentioned how long ago Deadbeat came out so back in October 2025 but the actual recording process and working on these songs and creating them how long ago was that? And it's my old ways it opens the album where does that sit in

10:16the creation of the whole record? Well, the voice memo that I have here says 7th of January 2024 Right? So, it would have been around the time that I was starting songs for this but I was only working on the album for about just over a year or two years So, yeah, yeah So that doesn't seem that long ago So, tell us about My Old Ways to know what happened first Well, to be honest I don't really remember so let's listen to the voice memo

10:47Let's listen to the actual one So, it would have been the piano riff, obviously playing it quite aggressively there Here we go Usually the voice memo is me working out the song as I go Like, I'll have the idea

11:18and rather than go to the piano and work out how I want to play it I'll hit record to get all of that Just in case I Just in case in learning how to play my idea I forget my idea That happens a lot, actually There's a danger of like, recording something recording an idea in that, like, as you like, it exists so sort of, like simply and perfectly in my mind As soon as I start singing it it starts affecting the memory of it You know? So, I like to record it then sit down and then just sort of, like record myself working out

11:50what the hell I was thinking You know? So, with Wild Ways as you can imagine it was the piano riff I guess I always just had I imagined it as this sort of, like looped piano house sample You know what I mean? One of those sorts of things which is what it ended up becoming But, yeah So, that voice memo is basically me working out how to play it And then, was I singing there?

12:23Yeah It's so funny because, like that piano in my living room in Freemann, Australia is, like one of my favourite places to be Just, you know like, the house is empty and you can just hear the piano ringing throughout the house It's kind of like every time I listen to a voice memo it's recorded there or this song, in fact I just I'm back there You know?

12:53It's a really just a really nice experience for me which which is kind of the point oh well one of the points of having that as the intro to the song and the intro to the album was that it was just so exposed you know? And authentic which was uncoincidentally one of the things I was going for in this album you know? As a musical artistic you know concept Yeah, totally So when you've got that and you've kind of got that whole idea down

13:24how do you decide what to do next? Uh that is up to the ways of the universe my friend I mean the journey of a song going from like a demo where I start working on it in my studio as opposed to my living room that is when it can take any turn at any point or you know the rest of the song needs to be written um

13:54so yeah I just sort of like let it go where it wants to go is how I would I know that's like a very vague answer but um yeah I mean just staring at the the session now which I have open it's funny that sessions always start the same they start with like one track one channel or just a couple of things and like just and by the end by the time you're finished with it it's a it's a cityscape of channels and ideas and bits and How many have you got on there or how many how many channels

14:25or how many tracks on my old ways uh let's see this one 96 wow but it's 96 but also songs go through a lot of different like stages with me so a lot of tracks are just like ideas that I had and then muted them but oh it actually looks like most of these most of these are being used so I'd say 96 include not including the um the reference tracks I put at the end which are Levitating by Dua Lipa sometimes I put in like um just like reference audio just to sort of like get my mind back into the real world

14:55working on a song I found that to be really useful as a as a producer and as an artist as well um you know like working alone you can you can get lost down the rabbit hole and you do and that is one of the joys of working alone or working on music with anyone really is just getting lost in it um but you can get lost down the wrong you can sort of like lose track of what is you know um what is music that's gonna be suitable for the world to listen to yeah

15:26you know so um so I like to I like to go back and listen to just other people's music alongside mine just for the you know and Levitating happens to be an amazing mix so yeah

Piano and Electronic Drums

15:37so with Mild Ways what happened next so we heard you mucking about on the piano in the living room yep well I think it was a way I went back and recorded my piano properly and when I say properly I would have got a like a stereo zoom recorder because it was in my living room it wasn't in my studio so I probably would have just got this um field recorder you know one of those sort of like xy um microphones stereo microphones and just put it next to me

16:08because I wanted to capture the the realness of the piano I feel like whenever you um whenever you record a piano properly people sort of like stick microphones in the in the thing they get this insanely high quality sound I definitely wanted this sort of like roomy you know um standing next to a piano sound um so I just would have gone through and recorded all that and then taken it back to my studio and started putting it with drums where are the drums let's hold let's solo the drums yeah

16:43um with this album I was really really into um electronic drum beats that were recorded in a kind of more organic way which sounds really wanky but um I was really obsessed with sort of putting things through guitar amps and achieving this sort of like distorted blown out um drum drum sound you know um so yeah like yeah it's just a matter of me layering a few different drum machines percussion

17:13yeah well do you want to illustrate that and which drum machines are you talking about here sure well the the main part of it is is sort of what I refer to as the deadbeat sound which is an 808 going through a guitar amp mixed with a um analog drum synth which is a Vamona DRM1 those two synced together and then just sort of like

17:44I'm just blasting them in the studio and recording them in various ways that's that's just what that is so I tried to make that the basis of a lot of the tracks on this album just as a way to give it this um sonic personality I the album before this one was was the slow rush and that was me really sort of um capitalizing on having lots of different ways of making drum beats you know which

18:15which there are these days there are infinite ways to have drums sound whether they're real drums or sequence drums or whatever so I just thought this album I just want it to be this really condensed palette that would make it sort of more recognizable the idea was that like I wanted it to be that people was I wanted to make the is this it of um of electronic music this album yeah um and by that I mean you know it's like the songs on that first strokes album you could be a block away and you hear it playing you could instantly recognize that it's a song off that album

18:46because it's just so sonically recognizable the personality is is just unmistakable um and so I guess as a reaction to music being so diverse and and uh you know all over the sonically all over the place um I would describe music made these days I just wanted to make something that was one thing you know and just take that one thing for a whole album that was kind of the thinking

19:16or the feeling I should say yeah yeah that's interesting and it's interesting that you know in a way the sound can reflect the feeling as well and vice versa that you can create a certain kind of feeling using sound so so I mean you've got your door open um as it were I wonder if you could maybe run through the different channels and your thought process as you were putting these things together yeah I mean as I said I didn't really I haven't really opened this session up for a long time um

19:46so it's kind of like me revisiting it in real time as well I think like one of my new kind of joys in music is making electronic beats um and electronic beats are you know they're not easy I find because they have a purpose which is to be as like driving as funky and as danceable as possible

20:16and the fact that they are so repetitive makes it so much harder to make something unique you know like with a rock song let's say you have a whole song to build up an idea rhythmically with drums you know you you have the whole song to sort of like do different fills and the sort of the the organicness is built into the fact that it is a human playing it right um

20:47whereas with electronic music it's like one bar you've got to you've got to convince the the listener or the dancer or whatever that this is good enough to dance to in one bar and I love that as a challenge yeah that's kind of the way I see it so yeah I was really into like the cabasa on the offbeat it's kind of like techno thing the where is it

21:18that sort of like offbeat cabasa it's it's in it's in so much techno music that I love and obviously this song is pretty slow for a techno song it's 110 bpm but for me that as a common thing is just like whenever I hear it I'm like fuck yeah you know it really does it for me what else that was a second cabasa what do we got here yeah I mean yeah there's just so many little

21:49yeah as you can imagine and is the way with electronic beats it's just a matter of layering these like tiny small little blips in the right places yeah to give it personality and to give it a feel yeah yeah yeah personality and evolution as a way of evolving the song so it doesn't feel like it's just you know like because that's the sort of the not the paradox but the thing with electronic music is that like yes it is repetitive

22:20but it should always feel like it's evolving it should never it should always feel like it's sort of like going somewhere so yeah yeah I mean I feel like I'm talking about the basics of electronic music here no but it's interesting because see we had a question through Patreon from Lewis Brideson who says how has being an acoustic drummer influenced your approach to tracking and processing drum machines and in a way what you're saying is that being a drummer but you like creating electronic beats but at the same time you're imagining your creation of them

22:51like a drummer drumming along to a track in effect you're trying to create that humanity to it exactly what's so funny you know it's actually a really interesting question and a lot of the time I have found that being a drummer and being a someone who's making electronic music I have found that I need to like unlearn a lot of things that I learnt because with being a drummer

23:22there's these sort of like I guess like rules or things that you automatically do you always play the hi-hat right the hi-hat is the thing that's sort of like your right hand going constantly and so when you're making beats it's sort of like okay here comes the hi-hat but it's like you know approaching electronic music as an electronic producer that's like it's not the hi-hat doesn't have to be on eighth notes every eighth note you know it's just like that's a really basic example but sometimes the way

23:52to make the best electronic beats is to forget that you know anything about playing drums I guess like ironically hopefully that answers it yeah no I'm sure it does so let's evolve this track further so you're playing around with the drums you're trying to find the right rhythm yeah and you're trying to fit that alongside your piano that you've yeah you've established yeah I mean as with a lot of songs on this album I wanted to make sure that it stayed minimal

24:23but I with me and what I sort of am able to do and what I've done in the past it's so easy just to like layer things up quickly and just make this sort of like insanely dense piece of music but given that it's I want it to feel electronic and I want it to feel danceable it was going to need a lot of discipline not to just layer all those synths I mean yeah at the end of the day there are synths laid through it but I wanted it to feel like it was basically just drums

24:54and that piano riff you know for me it was just so therapeutic to make music that only needs those things you know like that only needs a few ingredients and in that way it would feel more like the music would feel more like brushstrokes you know like I'm obsessed with music that feels like brushstrokes and by that

25:25I mean music that sounds like it's just had sort of like there's been an idea and the idea's been done without much thinking about it just like Frank Ocean music I feel is sort of brushstrokes music Serge Gainsbourg you know where you listen to it and you feel like you hear you hear the idea you hear the idea without it being too tainted by sort of like perfecting it and overthinking it you know

25:55that's kind of how I see music like brushstrokes music that is that has a brushstrokes quality music that isn't thought about that's just sort of felt and just sort of like done in the spare of the moment you know so part of that was just sort of going like no this song is going to be the piano loop and the drums and then there's going to be some other things coming in and out but that is going to be the basis of the song and if you want a more complicated song fuck you if you want you know the song has obviously has verses and

26:26pre-choruses and choruses and stuff it's not that it's just sort of like the same thing over and over but yeah yeah and obviously you know there are words and there are meanings to those words yeah exactly when you were from the start you were humming a few vocal melody ideas and you know at what point do you finish finessing a track and then think of the vocal or are you doing that all at the same time and well in this instance what happened the the part

26:56that I realized that I had a song see I've got tons of voice memos and tons of demos but the moment that it became okay this is going to be a song that could go on the album was I just I said the my old ways line I was listening to it and I just came up with the line back into my old ways again and it felt right and it I felt like it fit the music I'm really into sort of like songs that where the lyrics fit the

27:27music in some conceptual way and so that's when I knew that I was onto something it's like this idea of you know the sort of chords go off and this other thing the song gets sidetracked and then it's like back into my old ways again and then it just goes back to the start so that's a looping idea of sort of being stuck and realising that you're always going back to square one and that you can't actually get yourself out of you think you're evolving you think that you've left this thing that

27:58you do behind and then suddenly it's there again and you're there again and you haven't changed you haven't evolved you're that same person so I loved how that idea with the music and the structure of the music fit together and that's so that's how I knew I was like okay cool I've got a song you know because and like as the song builds and it evolves there's this part in the you know

28:34to me to me this part feels very chaotic and swirling like I'm almost imagining someone hallucinating you know going into a bit of like I I wish we did a video for this song because it would have been kind of trippy that was the part of the song where sort of like little synth parts are coming in repetitive is this it yeah so there's sort of

29:05so just bringing all that stuff in with a sort of with a crescendoing intensity crescendoing frequency the pitch goes up wanted to create this sort of like build tension and chaos that way in the song as though

29:36it's someone going into a bit of spiraling basically yeah yeah it's interesting how you know the music helps explain that and show that you know and I'm fascinated by this because in some ways you know this is your joyful place this is your joyful place that you've got to you're working on a track that you love the sound of and it you know you were saying how when you hear it now it takes you back to that moment where of kind

30:06of discovery in a way and you're in this lovely groove and in this it reminds you of one of your happy places you know in your living room with the piano and at the same time you know the song has that aspect that you have in your work where you're admonishing yourself you know you're kind of telling yourself off you know and it's it kind of runs through the album doesn't it where you know on the one hand you're in this joyful place because this is your place of creativity and then there's this other side to your personality that is nah I'm stuck in my

30:38old ways I'm here I am again I can't get out of the rut I can't but it's that human element that allows people in emotionally I think as well that they identify with those words and see themselves in that experience and it's a kind of interesting juxtaposition in a way that's going on within your own life because at the same time you're in this joyful creation phase yeah but I think that for me I need to be in that place that I love and feel comfortable

31:09to be able to be comfortable about exposing myself lyrically and expressing the feelings that I have about myself or anything that is self-admonishing or whatever word you used yeah yeah for me it's like like being in a room full of people like songwriters and bandmates or musicians or whatever that is not the place to be singing and writing introspective

31:39lyrics especially like these sorts and for whatever reason I have always found it extremely therapeutic to write lyrics like these extremely if I wasn't able to write songs where I'm singing this kind of thing I'd be a very different person you know I'd be a much less emotionally stable person for me it's like it's therapy you know yeah yeah and it's great because you you get to express that vulnerability which people

32:09relate to and in a way it allows them to get into your world and see themselves in your world totally but you it's a fascinating kind of juxtaposition isn't it but and clearly a necessary process for you as well because you need to to do it to get to be stable and happy yeah the thing that I also find interesting is how often well how important the music is like rhythmic and upbeat

32:40how like how important that part of it is you know it's like that for me that's part that's the other juxtaposition is that I've never been that interested in writing songs that have those sorts of lyrics where the music is also quite sombre and depressing for me it's like that sort of that emotional fragility in the words combined with something that has

33:11movement to it for some reason just fits so well you know it's sort of like it's probably people who have theories about that you know about why that works but for me it's always like part of that emotional release is the groove and the you know like I don't always dance I dance when I'm on my own in my studio no one can see me but even like walking down the street with a pair of headphones on you know listening to really sort of upbeat music but those sort of lyrics for me that's like that's the apex of music

33:42and going back to the technicality of it how do you record the vocals you know what's do you have a pattern a particular process or a particular microphone or a particular chain that you like to use well I feel like every album I have tried to like upgrade the way that I do it and wanted it to be more professional and I always just go back to the same thing which is sitting in my chair holding

34:13an SM 57 you know yeah like I bought like a U47 clone which sounded incredible but I couldn't hold it you know which I didn't realise was such an important part for me just holding a mic so it ended up just kind of being the same microphone along so as with the drums with this album a lot of the vocals I've ended up running them through a guitar amp or sang straight into a

34:44microphone plugged into a guitar amp so songs like end of summer it's actually singing into an SM SM57 wait did I say SM57 before I meant SM7 right I think you did say 57 but no sorry sorry too many numbers that's fair enough can we hear the vocals on this song

Vocal Layers and Processing

35:07on my old ways yeah of course back into my old ways again oh do you know what someone's going to sample that through this podcast we'll play a tiny bit but we'll keep talking and spoil it for them that's that's alright I will say that as a producer and as a mixing engineer I've gotten better at working

35:39with my vocals every album I think this album they sound the best I can say that quite confidently thought I would never go back but just this once a little present for holding out so long I also and do you I mean for the performance you find yourself relying on the SM7 and being able to hold it in your hand to perform and then once recorded do you process it after that

36:09or do you like to have it processed to a certain point when you're recording so you feel the way you want it to sound I record through a compressor it's usually just it's funny I've got this old 165 DBX 165 that I used on the drums on the first two albums and now I just record vocals through it I just love the love the the compressor but I compress after that I do all the I do all the pop stuff you know

36:39let's pull them up you know there actually there's not there's not that much on this one literally it's just compression and EQ and the compression is quite stock standard yeah yeah I wish I had more to say about what I did with my vocals but it's it's astoundingly boring yeah but maybe we could hear what what's there oh yeah sure I tell myself I'm only

37:10I mean if I unmute the effect you mute the reverb and the lands I tell myself I'm only human are those doubled they are doubled yeah with this track

37:40I wanted to keep the main hook single because I wanted I wanted it to sound like a sample back into my old ways again that I wanted I wanted it to sound like it had been plucked from some old record you know something yeah so sampled so I purposely didn't double track them I usually double track all my vocals but for the sake of that I wanted to keep it just sort of bare and yeah but the verses are double tracked in fact

38:15with this album I started doing something that I learnt which was hardpan left another set of vocals are hardpan left and right and they're quite whispery so it's like hardpan whisper vocals which again is kind of a pop trick you know to get that extra width and to get that sort of like ASMR-y texture in either ear layering sort of mixing that in with the doubles the two doubles sort of

38:45that are more in the centre so there's four vocals in that but yeah right would you be able to build them up for us yeah sure so the lead I tell myself I'm only human the double coming in and the whisper so you can assuming the podcast is in stereo you'll be able to hear you can't you almost can't hear the hardpan whispers it's just this sort of added

39:15textural sibilancy whispery thing yeah should we should we hear them together now yeah oh that was I tell myself I'm only human so this is just the whispers I know why I said never again temptation they're also quite filtered there's not a bass in them a lot of treble it's just this sort of like mid-range you know mouth not to

39:46sound gross but you know yeah yeah all the ASMR stuff quite heavily compressed too right and then is there reverb then put on the whole track yeah with this album I started setting the effects as a separate bus altogether so again I'm not using anything special with these effects I started using the Soundtoys

40:17Echo Boy a lot with this album to be honest I don't know why I didn't hadn't got into it before I was like the last time I was kind of using like the currents and slow rush was kind of just like built-in Ableton delay in Echo and Echo Boy just has it has a really nice thing going on you know it has this interesting stereo image that I can't quite put a finger on it's just it's the way you want your vocal delay to sound

40:47that and like Valhalla Room a bit of like Ableton Spring Echo I was really impressed by the Ableton what do you call it Convolution Spring Reverb so that is on most tracks yeah and that's really it you know there's the I didn't want to get to

41:17experimental with the vocals on this album I just wanted them to be quite clear in a lot of songs I just I put some decapitator on the vocals just for some grit songs like Dracula but that is it really honestly yeah there's parts of the song you know like you know obviously as with everyone one of my favorite things to

41:48do is layering tons of vocals together I know what's coming ain't so shocking always fucking in fact I'm glad I'm having the opportunity to play all these because a lot of time when you're working on songs and you sort of create these like vocal cascading moments it's nice in the studio just to solo the vocals and just hear this sort of like choral thing that you just did yourself with one person multitracking but you never get to hear that in the song so it's kind of a cool opportunity does sound

42:27great this is like the Bee Gees Kevin Parker yeah I mean that's it that's it that's kind of one of the one of the absolute joys of multitracking yourself is going and then stop rewind stop rewind you know that was the wrong harmony but you know just doing all that and then putting it together and going listening back

42:58to it is one of those fun things to do you know it's kind of like it's magic you know you're as I'm talking I'm saying as a purely solitary experience you know like from when I was when I had my first eight track it was just me and a pair of headphones and a microphone an actual SM57 just sort of like you know recording vocals on different tracks and just dedicating one sort of like dedicating 30 minutes to just singing one note eight or 16 times or whatever and then listening back to it it's kind of just

43:29like wow you know that's one of the one of the joys yeah so there you go yeah it sounds amazing I love that yeah I mean well yeah the one other part that I would talk about is the the solo what's that blade on oh good question uh it would be a roland sh1

44:01it's one of my other favorite mono synths really sort of simple single oscillator thing sounds quite primitive but I love it I love the way it sounds I don't I actually know no other synth that sounds like that um so for me I love this bit because for me it's kind of like it's like electronic doors like I love the doors I love the parts and door songs like um in uh light my fire when it just sort of meanders off into this sort of like jazz

44:31psychedelic noodling part you know like there's no there's basically no noodling in electronic music these days it's all quite focused and repetitive and sequenced so I really enjoy the sound of like electronic music with this sort of like 60s organ solo over the top like

45:07any anything that gives me that sort of like open-ended San Francisco 60s feeling I love just because of all the music that I've grown up with so yeah that was that's kind of one of the things that I enjoy about this song is that it's it's electronic and it's modern but it has those sorts of qualities about it yeah yeah yeah totally and it's great because if you listen to it enough then the listener ends up kind of singing or humming those parts to themselves you know and they're waiting for them and they enjoy it

45:38just as we enjoyed Ray Manzarek's little solos or whatever exactly exactly so let's just round up my old ways by having a blast of the ending of the song sure turn the reverb back on there I just

46:08noticed there's a quick mention for the Kevin Gregorian choir there you

46:45go I also I wanted to make sure there was that little me getting off the piano sound right at the end this that's me getting off my piano stool it's meant to sort of be full circle to the start of the song which is sitting down at the piano yeah that's so good crazy concept but it's so great to hear all those different parts isolated and as you say I mean I understand when you open up the session suddenly you hear all those joyful moments that you had when you were making it of course

47:15fantastic right we're going to take a quick break and the next one we're going to look at is loser loser star wars the mandalorian and grogu is now streaming on disney plus what are you waiting for hop on the must see galactic adventure comes home on disney plus this is the way our only chance is to work together i like this kid always wear your seatbelt star wars

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Production Insights and Dave Fridmann

48:24the next song we're going to look at from deadbeat is loser but before that i should remind you that we're connected to kevin parker across the other side of the world kevin is in los angeles california it was a difficult technical setup he is armed with two microphones in front of him and he's giving us insight into these songs before we start kevin i've got a couple of questions that have come through via patreon the first of which is by colby keys and colby asks what separates the good producers from the great

48:54producers uh well i mean i would only be able to tell you that if i was a great producer which i don't think i am i think that you know the thing the thing that i admire about producers who are great is that they have developed a sense like knowing where to go with a song sonically

49:26rhythmically musically knowing what is missing knowing what has to happen to direct a song to being finished i think is the most valuable thing about being a producer at the end of the day no one knows what's gonna sound cool before you try it like you know people have ideas like should we try this test let's try this as with sort of like great great like creative directors you know

49:56because like really i mean depending what what sort of producer you're talking about because obviously the word producer in music can mean a lot of different things it could be the producer in the sort of the quincy jones way of looking at it or the sort of skrillex way of looking at it you know but either way it's just it's just you're the director you're directing how to bring this song to life and knowing where to go and where not to go is the hardest part it's the hardest part yeah

50:28i'd say that's one of the things that separates the great producers from the good yeah but that's the first one i can think of yeah no no it's something that i'm still trying to develop you know yeah and that's very interesting and a similar angle oscar november asks is there something you learned from dave fridman that you still think about today not necessarily just when it comes to mixing but in the overall production as well uh definitely definitely it's funny like i was i was in

50:58his studio what 10 years ago plus and i still um when i'm working i still have memories of being back there and hearing things that he's saying and just like little sentences or phrases that that you know that are like reusable in different sessions or different uh mixing processes i mean like a lot of the stuff like i never really got to see dave as why i haven't yet got to see dave as a producer i've only worked with him as a mixer he was

51:29sort of like all right kevin what are we doing now you know so like a lot of the stuff i learned from dave is mixing stuff um which i still use today like his use of like saturation compression the way that he is able to get things like smashed but still dynamic is a real skill yeah he he's able to do a lot of sort of like opposing things at the same time as like using reverb that doesn't just like wash out a mix you know i don't know it's difficult to

51:59describe but but um and there are lots of them i i find myself a lot of the time um just remembering an experience that i've had with dave yeah that's really great though and then also just sort of like also just listening to the music that he's done that's kind of one of the reasons that i like love him in the in the beginning like you know flaming lips music um mgmt listening to those albums just listening to the albums it's like you can hear the the the the

52:30the influence that dave has had on those recordings for sure and they're so they're already influential to me yeah yeah really interesting right okay i think we should hear a blast to the master that would be great let's do it

Listening to Loser

52:43so much for closure i lost composure i get the message

53:20i learned my lesson tried to correct it i think i wrecked it it is loser by tame impala from deadbeat and in some ways kevin this song has had a second

53:59life through its inclusion in spider-man brand new day suddenly people are hearing it again yeah for the first time or a lot of people anyway yeah do you feel that way that it's had that chance uh absolutely yeah it's it's bizarre the universe works in strange ways doesn't it like like loser being number one globally or whatever in streaming was not on my bingo card for this year that's just that's all i can say but yeah i'm you know what for whatever reason i'm happy people get to hear it you know oh totally that i'm happy that many people get to hear it and and you know it's great it's great i mean anything that keeps the music alive and keeps it

54:38reaching it reaching new people and and reminding those who might have heard it before as well it's like oh god yeah that song is so good and going back to it it's a great thing when and how did loser come around well i'm not just i was just gonna say really quickly i'm i'm so glad that we're getting to do this song i'm so glad we're getting to go through the stems and everything because yeah i just never have i never had before and like people were never gonna get to hear all the things in isolate in on their own um which i thought was criminal

55:11um yeah okay sorry what was the question before that uh well i guess how did loser start you know what

Recording to Tape in New York

55:20what happened no well it started as a demo it would have been that riff you know uh the riff as as as you know it you know that's that that that would have been what song started with and i sort of i was i was in new york as i was telling you before with my friend lauren and we did a few days and this might have been first or second thing we started recording unlike dracula though this song is almost completely

55:54just as we recorded it there and that is kind of unheard of for me to just record a song at a studio multi-tracking without much else going into it there's like i sort of had a bit of production and stuff but the song as i recorded it then is basically how it is and we we were recording to his tape machine um lauren's incredible at recording music he really is he's just he's just like one of

56:26those people who understands how sound and audio and tape and distortion all these things interact with each other he's um he's a real analog head so the studio diamond minded in new york it's kind of it's built for that you know um and i was chasing a lot of that kind of just like distorted tape sound for a lot of the album and what is absolutely criminal about about this song is how few people

56:56have said how good it sounds it's the most incredible tame and parlous sounding song out there i'll say that objectively it like i was remember i was mixing it and i was like well actually you know what i was working on the album and i had a bunch of songs going on my set at ableton and the way i produced them and i did a bunch of stuff with lauren and he did some sub mixes just some sort of mix downs and i got back to my studio and when i would play something that i did with him loser for example i was playing loser and it just sounded three-dimensional just sounded

57:28sounded like there was it was there was sounds sort of that sounds had like different amounts of depth i was listening to it was it was incredible and i still think it sounds like that you know so that's the drums the other the other crazy thing about this song is that i i went in recording with him with this idea of like okay i want to i just just for an experiment i want to record the real the real traditional uh one-man band why i i wanted to do the stevie wonder thing i was like

58:01which is basically like you just go in you just you play drums to nothing to nothing and then you hit stop and you go back and you play over the top of them and you layer the song like that and so i i i i've basically never done that because i've always multi-tracked with like a on either my computer or an eight track where you can just sort of have a drum machine going so for for a lot of songs i worked on with him i would just start with the drums just as a way to just to like just to pull myself kicking and screaming out drag myself out of the way that i've gotten comfortable making music which

58:34is like oh just make a few little loops here and then we'll go and record some drums and get some loops i was like no we're gonna do it start to finish and so that's kind of like how the song really ended up is um you know uh there's almost no looping and and the thing that i learned immediately was how difficult that is it's so difficult difficult to record over yourself but also to tape i got real bad red light fever you know it's like

59:07when the tape is rolling suddenly you're not the you're not the you're not the jet musician that you thought you were because there's this thing of like oh if i fuck up the drum part now you we can't go back and punch in the drums because that is all there is so we're starting at the start of the song you know and it's like you're trying to be the um groovy uh natural feeling musician that you know yourself to be meanwhile you're just like anxious about being three quarters of the way through the song you haven't fucked up yet you know it's like man it was it was something else

59:40but that is also part of what creates a different kind of sounding song is that that sort of like tension and the the mistakes that are in there they're mistakes i just listening before i heard some stick clicks there was one you know do you think it's in the performance as well that tension you know your your kind of fears in a way or red light fever you know but it gave it a kind of an extra element that helped articulate what the

1:00:14song's about uh yeah i guess so i mean yeah sure the the way that the song the groove of the song and the way the music goes is meant to be all that's that's all part of the theme of the song that's sort of like quite sort of uh whatever word you want to use you know that groove that's quite slow and dredgy drudgy i don't know you know it's like it's meant to embody not like the loser but

1:00:44someone in that situation so as promised i just want to you know just all these silly guitar parts and stuff that lauren recorded i just think um you know on their own like they're not they're nothing special oh that one's great sounding that's that's the thing i'm just i'm so proud of how

1:01:13how all these things just fit together um musically that is and so i like for how far above like i'm just i'm going to talk about sound for two more seconds for how far above all other um tame impala recordings i think this is i don't think it gets enough credit but that's fine i love the way that you're reveling in this in a really honest down-to-earth fashion no it's just really nice to see how happy you are with it and and the experience of recording you know setting

1:01:44yourself that challenge to record in that way and rising to the challenge and getting the results that you were after yeah sure thank you it's good and in some ways there are elements of this song that seem like throwbacks to early tame impala in a way no that even though the overall sound of it doesn't sound like that but just those those guitar elements and that the drum elements that you know were such a vital part of those those early recordings absolutely but i mean what's funny about those early recordings is that they were recorded like in a speaker was recorded more similarly

1:02:19closer to how i did you know dracula or any of the other sort of like electronic it was recorded in an electronic way where i was oh actually you know you know what that's a lie that's a lie in the speaker was recorded quite sort of start to end non-looped i should say but um yeah yeah i guess you're right that is true but i think it is one of those things that went when you first emerged and then we learned that you know it wasn't a band performance it was a one-person performance you

1:02:51know because it's it sounded like such an alive band playing together in in the room yeah but it was it was in effect but you playing to yourself yeah uh well yeah that's the thing i've always been uh i've always been the best accompaniment to myself like i know how to play with myself um just looking at it like i i did sort of like get in like so i must have played to a click because there's a click here i think we yeah we bounced the click to tape um that's what we would have

1:03:22done and then played to that and then i must have gone through and sort of tried to fit it into a an ableton session on the grid anyway sorry i'm just thinking out loud here but it's an interesting tempo with loser i think no it's because it's a especially in comparison to some of the other songs on deadbeat yes of course i guess that was probably would have been one of the internal conversations that i had with myself around the time is like does a song like loser fit on the album because of how different it sounds instrumentally and i guess in the end it was like the fact that

1:03:57the song is called loser and the theme that it has that that makes it belong on an album called deadbeat you know um what's what's funny about the song loser right is that loser was the last word of the song to be written so i had all the lyrics um the lyrics the song because the song isn't really about being a loser it's not it's it's about feeling like you have up and feeling like an idiot if the song

1:04:30was if the song could be called fucking idiot it would have been if that fit you know um it's about basically about a a scenario of misreading the situation right and doing something stupid and and immediately paying the price and so saying i'm a loser is basically a way of saying i'm i'm an idiot like forget about me you know i'll see myself out i'll see myself out you know uh i'm a loser like sorry

1:05:04that is the the essence of the song and so i went through a lot of different words that could have fit there a lot of different words and loser was the one that i just in the end felt it fit the best and it was the most striking and and was it was an interesting way of saying what the song is but can you remember any of those other words did you have you still got recordings of them um no no i don't think i recorded them i just would have gone through them i probably had a list

1:05:37somewhere um that's the thing like so few words fit in that except what had to be two syllables for starters yeah i don't know i'm a up i'm a i'm a uh i'm a bozo like you know like uh take your pick really you can you could yeah um do you know what deadbeat was one of them and that's why i had the word deadbeat written in my notebook and that's why i ended up being called the album i just realized that right i'm a deadbeat it was like that doesn't fit you know but i but it was but for some reason it was

1:06:11just written on a page with no other words on it i must have just gone like i did be right out there and then gone back and opened the page and just had deadbeat written there and that was the moment i realized that the album was going to be called that but what i was doing is looking for a title for what would end up being called loser yeah so there you go it's interesting because it seems you you put an awful lot of effort into your lyric writing you know it's something you kind of struggle over you know definitely not necessarily struggle with but you you you kind of toil over it to get it right

1:06:42and yet one of the ways that you perform it and bring it to us it feels as if it's in the moment and you're just sharing these thoughts now with us because of the way that you you enunciate and because it's a nice laid-back delivery to to how you deliver a lyric sure and yet clearly now you've you've worked really hard over these things to get the right the right phraseology and the right you know words and terms of phrase and and it it's a nice kind of contrast because there's a it's

1:07:15almost as if you know that there's a an apparent casualness to the way tame impala presents but behind it there's actually a hell of a lot of work and a hell of a lot of thought goes into it to to get it so casual oh man yeah do you know what you've you've summed it up quite well there i think that's quite a that's a good point i i um i put a lot of effort into making it sound like a lot of effort has been put into it you know to sound like it because i like i i love music that sounds

1:07:48spontaneous and unlabored on you know what i mean um yeah that was a big sort of uh motivator and an idea behind this album was making it sound like it hadn't been labored on because because you know i sort of like more and more i'm known as this sort of uh you know um meticulous sort of whatever you want to call it i don't want to say mastermind because that doesn't that's you know but you know

1:08:20and like i i i know that a lot of people see tame impala as that and they want tame impala to be that you know to be that like i i i'm aware that people sort of want me to be the psychedelic radio head you know but the thing is that a music that is intellectual not to say that radio not speaking or running it or whatever although it's like only intellectual um more and more into my life of

1:08:52making music i'm more and more attracted to the to the types of music that don't sound that that aren't sort of like intellectual or or they don't sound like that's the most important part of the music is to is to sort of is is for it to be critically you know important or critically acclaimed or whatever it's just like music that has the right feeling yeah yeah it's i think it's also like a part of me

1:09:23is sort of like rebelling against what i've established you know and so i've i i'm quite i'm quite in love with music that sounds quite um i don't i don't want to say dumb but like like like like lobotomized you know like um be your dog by iggy pop yeah right that's one of my favorite songs and it sounds like they weren't even think their brains weren't even switched on

1:09:54you know it just sounds like such a bonehead simple song but for that reason it's one of the most um um intoxicating pieces of music that i know of the most sort of like makes me feel like i like how i want to feel you know and i think that music um that's the most important thing about music yeah i'm going off on a tangent completely here but um yeah hopefully hopefully somewhere in that that

1:10:25makes sense no i totally understand what you mean i think that probably iggy probably spent days working on honing those lyrics to i want to be your dog no and getting it just right no so yeah and and it's interesting i think the way that your music um affects people was really evident when i saw you at the o2 play and and it seemed like such a celebration in the audience because they they feel so involved in the music and you could see them all really getting lost in it but also collectively too so the little groups of people who've all gone to see you together and and they're sharing that moment again

1:10:59with you but with each other at the same time because they're all kind of involved in it and it i think that that's in a way what you're trying to create with with what you do no definitely oh i think having experiences with music like that or experiences in any way is is the is the sole purpose of music you know not i shouldn't say the sole purpose of music but for me it's the most powerful part of music you know and again not to sort of like sound like i'm raging waging war on uh music

1:11:31that that sort of like requires you to think but so much of music so much of the sort of purpose of music for me is getting lost in it you know um whether it's techno or pop music or psychedelic music for me the the idea the the sort of the modus operandi is escape you know is to just feel like you're out of your body to to to get lost in it which i don't know if it's a coincidence but

1:12:08oh yeah i don't know i don't know music that's made for people to take drugs to

1:12:14you know i thought they go hand in hand like and not necessarily they are the same but there are parallels for me like i've always before even when i was a kid i loved music and music that i could just get lost in it you know and it happened to be what people would call druggy music but i guess it's just yeah i don't know i don't know again i'm absolutely rambling here well back to the song called loser we need to round off i'm afraid so maybe we should hear the end of the track yeah sure

1:12:55can i not lie i feel defeated take it as a sign you're badly needed

1:13:14badly wanted

1:13:25of course the the best thing about um recording music in the studio especially the tape is that there's always little like bits at the end of the the takes where you can like talk yeah you hear you hear people talking oh and there's none you know there's always sort of like oh that was pretty good you know yeah i thought we're gonna hear some but but no it seemed like i was not in the mood to talk so that is loser by tame impala uh the last of the songs that we're going to look at but before

Essential Gear and Creative Advice

1:13:59i let you go there's a couple of questions that we ask everyone who comes on take notes and one is relation to the making of this album is there a piece of kit essential to making deadbeat do you think

1:14:12um well i i always tell people my message is always like it's not it's not about what you use it's how you use it or this is what you do really um but i would say my trusty prophet five synth that's the synth that makes up about 70 of dracula and all those sort of sounds um across the album that's all prophet five um i was just really into the idea of uh using only a handful of synths and

1:14:45that one just it just got it was just the one next to me the whole time so you know if you remove the prophet five from the album there wouldn't be much left you know not to say that i wouldn't have used a different synth you know what i'm saying it's just like it was the one that was there yeah yeah yeah totally and we always ask um people who come on take notes whether they have any advice that they would pass on to other people or things that they've learned along the way and you now kevin have been doing this for a long time and it always seems to me that you've really followed your own vision you know your own way of doing things uh you know that's one of the signature things that

1:15:21tame impala have have kind of achieved that you you pursue it whether you knew you were pursuing it but you get a you're your own man in effect well i mean advice in in what in what realm like the sort of the producer um well just yeah for creative people listening in to no tip for you to know that you would think you know what i if there's one thing i've learned along the way um it would be this um um i mean not to sound preachy and and not to um make it sound like i'm trying to wrap up the point

1:15:57i was making before but think less and do more you know i feel like the times in my life where i've been the most creatively fruitful is when i've not been bogged down thinking about what i'm doing you know i think just do more just don't give yourself time to second guess it and write more songs make more songs start more songs um sometimes you think you know how something's going to end up before you start and so many so much of the time you you're wrong you know so many times i go like i'm not

1:16:32going to record that melody it sucks and then you do it and then some reason you just realize you were wrong and it was the right melody and vice versa so no there's no producer in the world there's no songwriter or producer in the world who knows how good something's going to be before they start it you just have to you know suck it and see yeah just have to try it yeah i love that that's great kevin thank you so much for your time and for the effort involved in in communicating this way uh via the internet to the other side of the world of course um and i have to ask so you've got quite

1:17:05a setup there already in la so have you been based in la for a a while to acclimatize before going back out on tour or have you been recording yeah this is kind of like our um i'll stop off i've been here for two weeks right between tours so we usually spend a couple of months in la each year uh yeah but at the moment we're kind of just sort of i'm just here until we start tour in four days time yeah um but yeah i've got my little studio here it's not it's not it's not like the one i've got back home but it's it's great yeah right well we will let you go let's choose one more song from

1:17:41deadbeat a kind of outro piece um an end credits piece as it were oh um any suggestions what should we go for oh if it's the end of the segment you should just do end of summer i guess the last song

Outro and End of Summer

1:17:53on the album okay that seems fair enough kevin thanks again so good to speak to you of course thanks for having me this is tame impala with end of summer thank 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 take 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

1:18:24other 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 take notes community once again thank you for listening until next time goodbye everybody knows how i feel about you so you can act surprised if you need to

1:18:54and i am still your friend if you think it's worth it it just means that i'll see you when i see you i could not deny it was overwhelming

1:19:35star wars the mandalorian and grogu is now streaming on disney plus what are you waiting for hop on the must-see galactic adventure comes home on disney plus this is the way our only chance

1:20:08is to work together i'd like this kid always wear your seat belt star wars the mandalorian and grogu now streaming on disney plus raid pg-13 audio ads that connect display ads that stand out run them together on spotify and unlock incremental reach for your campaign you you