TN:189 Bonobo

Sponsor message

0:00Running a small business means I wear lots of hats. When I put on my hiring hat, I can count on LinkedIn Hiring Pro to make it easy. LinkedIn Hiring Pro helps manage my hiring workflow, puts my job post in front of a unique network of professionals, and matches me with the best candidates for my business. I can also share my job with my network. No other job site lets me do that. No wonder most small businesses say they'd use LinkedIn Hiring Pro again. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free on LinkedIn today at linkedin.com slash quality.

0:30It's football season, and you can now get almost anything you need for game day delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a running back delivered, but you can get baby back ribs delivered. A strong defense? No. A strong deodorant? Yes. The six-pack of abs? Nope. Six-pack of beer? Yes. Get almost, almost anything for game day delivered with Uber Eats. Official on-demand food delivery partner of the NFL. Order now. Alcohol 21 Plus and in select cities. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

Introducing Bonobo and Distance in Static

1:00Hello, I'm John Kennedy, and joining me for this episode of Tape Notes is Simon Green, the man maybe better known as Bonobo. I was joined by Cy at Platoon Studios to dig into his latest record, Distance in Static, and it was great to catch up with him again. We had an amazing conversation a couple of years ago where Simon dug into his work from across the whole of his back catalogue, and it was great to hear about his process for his new work this time, how he's updated things, and also what he's now drawing influences from.

1:31We dug into all sorts, from the sessions with his collaborators, including Aruj Aftab and Nicole Miglis, as well as all of the ways Simon treats his samples. Lots to see in this episode, so if you'd like to watch and see Simon's Ableton sessions, you can do that over on the Tape Notes Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash tape notes. Cy also mentioned how he uses Tape It, the iPhone recording app that supports the podcast. He's obviously very well known for his use of sampling and field recording, particularly when it comes to his drum and percussion programming, and he very kindly gave us a tour in Tape It through some of the sounds that he'd been sampling recently, some of which actually made it onto the album.

2:10Tape It have supported us for over two years now, so it felt like a real full circle moment, hearing a product that we believe in being used as such a key part of our guest process. So, thank you Simon. And as a special celebration, and thank you to tie in with this episode, for two weeks only, the team at Tape It have created a huge discount for Tape It Pro, 50% off, so if you'd like to get your hands on that, then head to tape.it forward slash bonobo. Now, without further ado, let's get started.

2:44The new LinkedIn Hiring Pro can't undo your last hire, the human postponer. They were the master of one phrase, I'll circle back on that. But three months later, you were the one doing all their work and wondering how big that circle is. But LinkedIn Hiring Pro can take the hiring load off your plate by automating the hiring busy work from the initial job post to scheduling interviews. Hire right the first time with LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Post a free job today at linkedin.com slash quality. It's football season, and you can now get almost anything you need for game day, delivered with Uber Eats.

3:20What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a running back delivered, but you can get baby back ribs delivered. A strong defense? No. A strong deodorant? Yes. The six-pack of abs? Nope. Six-pack of beer? Yes. Get almost, almost anything for game day, delivered with Uber Eats. Official on-demand food delivery partner of the NFL. Order now. Alcohol 21 Plus and in select cities. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

Simon Green career overview

3:46Simon Green, a.k.a. Bonobo, is a British musician, producer, and DJ. Having played guitar and drums in bands since his teens, a passion for DJing led Simon to electronic music production. His debut album, the trip-hop-influenced Animal Magic, appeared in 2000 on the label True Thoughts. Continuing to experiment within the world of electronica, his fourth album, Black Sands, released in 2010, brought Simon increased commercial success and became an essential for music fans. Now considered one of the genre's defining voices, Simon has released eight albums, two of which were UK Top 5 hits, and he has received seven Grammy nominations.

4:25His acclaimed live performances, including Glastonbury and Coachella, have been credited with redefining how electronic music can be performed live. His most recent studio album, Distance in Static, arrived in September 2026. Today, I'm at Platoon Studios, and I'm joined by Simon. And what better way to start our conversation than by hearing something from Distance in Static.

Listening to Drift

4:48This is Drift. This is Drift.

5:19This is Drift. Hi, Bonobo from the album Distance in Static, and I'm very pleased to say that I'm in the company of Simon Green, a.k.a. Bonobo.

5:56Hello, Si, how are you? Hey, I'm good. How are you doing? Thank you for coming back, Si. Thanks for doing another episode of Tape Notes. Thanks for having me back. It's a real pleasure. It's an honour to be invited back again.

Dissecting the opening track

6:06I need to satisfy my curiosity. So that's a bit of drift, but what are the voices, those vocal bits in that? Those are from sort of, where are they from? They're from various places. One of them is from this sort of like archived folk thing that I found in a record store in Los Angeles. And it's just sort of like incidental kind of chatter between the band, between sort of takes of a song. So it's not really a kind of, there's no real sort of lyrical context to it.

6:36I just kind of found these little bits of these people being counted in or just sort of like told to kind of like run the take back. And I just kind of felt it fitted quite nicely. Yeah, it sounds great. Distance and Static is the new album. I guess, what were you trying to do this time around? I was trying to figure that out for a really long time, whether to be trying to do something that was a bit more sort of specifically in one zone or try to be a little bit broader.

7:08And I felt like this was maybe the last chance I get to do a sort of kind of more kind of like broad, multi-genre kind of bonobo record, really, before I kind of maybe switch into doing something a little bit different after this. So there was a lot of kind of internal conversations with myself about what this record should be. And I just ended up doing the thing that I default to, which is just kind of making music for the sake of making music and then let the kind of answer maybe present itself.

7:40So I made so much music over the last sort of two or three years. There's like two albums worth. And I felt that this was the kind of the most representative of that time. So it's quite a long, I think it's like the most tunes I've had on an album. There's like 14 songs on this record. And then there's like another album's worth of it. It's kind of ready to go. Right. A partner album. Yeah, maybe. I haven't figured it out yet, but there's definitely more music than usual this time around.

8:12And it seems that there are a lot of collaborations on this record as well. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's kind of ended up that way. I think I didn't really set out to do sort of a collaboratively heavy record, but it's kind of ended up being, yeah, it's quite a few vocal features. But I think it's balanced quite well. There's been some sort of some big sample moments as well. So it's quite broad. And I think it sort of really has quite a lot of breadth sonically throughout the whole thing.

8:47And the first track we're going to look at is Me and You, which I guess has what you could describe as a big sample moment. Yes. Rather than a vocal collaboration. Yeah, totally. This one was actually, this one was in place. So last time we met, and I think I'd had Expander, that was the one that we were talking about, one of the songs we were talking about. I think this one was already done at that point. And it was like the first kind of piece in place. But yeah, I've been sort of sitting on this one for a while. I didn't actually finish it until quite recently.

9:18But yeah, it's been sort of like sitting there on the hard drives for quite a long time, this one. Interesting.

Making Me and You

9:27Well, let's have a blast of the master. Yeah. And then we'll dig into how you created it. Yeah. Let's have a blast of the master.

10:01Let's have a blast of the master.

10:31Let's have a blast of the master. is me and you by bonobo from distance in static so what came first with this song uh the first

11:07thing that came was this um it was like a sort of granular keys thing which is the sound you can hear at the beginning and that was from a synth i believe it's called quad was it quadra quadra so i had like a a few roads chords that i kind of pulled out of my own collection of recordings that i'd done and i kind of like fed a few chords into this granular synth and um kind of created that sort of rhythmic that rhythmic sort of melodic polyphonic thing that starts the

11:38whole track can we hear that yeah i can actually pull up an old session i think this was the first session before i kind of bounced everything into audio so i can play the the keys thing on their so i think this was the keys on their own the roads chords and then here's this this uh granular synth quanta that's what it's called so you have these envelopes

12:09where you can shape the granular sections and it's polyphonic so you can kind of be up here as well i think that was all i was doing it was kind of these two notes so that yeah that was the original sound um which ended up being i said i bounced a lot of this uh and then kind of chopped it into

12:41that part there so that's kind of taking some edits of the output of that synth and then just kind of chopping them rhythmically into that and what's creating the rhythm there it's a sort of time synced envelope here on this synth it's been a little while since i used this synth actually but i think it's i think it's tempo synced

13:11these grains here you can change the shape change the shape of the filter it's great because i can see your screen i can see it in action as well as hear it in action yeah okay so here's yeah this is this is the sync section otherwise it's just kind of like unsynced but you can change the envelope shape this is the grain shape and you can sort of move the position of the actual wave file which is here

13:45and then you always dial in a little bit of randomization which is kind of what makes it gives it some more movement yeah that sounds good in the low end too actually it all sounds amazing and this is quite easy to get a hold of yeah i'm just actually kind of like going down a rabbit hole yeah it's quanta it's quite easy to get a hold of that

14:17yeah yeah yeah i'm pretty sure uh yeah it's uh i don't remember audio damage there you go right yeah i've used that for quite a few things actually but it's really good for taking sort of big uh textural polyphonic sounding things and then kind of getting something more rhythmic out of it because it has this really nice sort of envelope shapeable looping thing yeah and it's polyphonic so you can really kind of get some interesting stuff from putting kind of fairly random sounds in there yeah well it sounds sounds fantastic so you've got that going and then you're thinking what should i do next

14:50yeah so are you doing this all on your laptop or this was all on the laptop this this was sort of i wasn't i remember not being in the studio with this this was just sort of like in my house i think just at my kitchen table which is where a lot of stuff generally gets kind of started because i think with that like you're not too getting too bogged down with the the the sonics of things i think if you're just making music on a laptop on the laptop speakers it's really just about ideas and melodies and it's like does this loop sound nice with with this snare pattern or you know a guitar sample being

15:26sort of reharmonized with these notes and i think that's really just the kind of the key of to not be distracted by mixing and sonics and you know the the attacks of the kick drums it's really just like is does this idea work do these two sounds work together and i think that's that's kind of where this uh this was started so um i think after i got this what i usually do the thing i normally do is have some sort of like rhythmic loop like this and then i'll try and look for some reharmonization

15:58i'll try and sort of just play some chords around it and see what feels good and i think this was what i came up with

16:10so that felt like a nice way to kind of reharmonize what was going on with that sort of like granular loop thing and this was uh sinplant

16:23which has completely changed settings now i've opened it

16:28yeah so this is simplant which i love

16:36it has this sort of this element where you can kind of feed samples into it and it will kind of recreate all these different variations which you can then use um so this was i think me just sort of feeding a piano note into it and it created this kind of alternative patch which i which i love it has all this kind of like noise and dustiness to it yeah it's like where has all that noise come from yeah it has this sort of like dna

17:07interface thing so you can kind of go in and so yeah that was the patch i used um those two things i think originally there was this harp sample from a session i did with uh my friend lara which didn't make it in the end but which i quite like but i feel like there's a lot of that sound elsewhere on this record so maybe this one didn't need it

17:41yeah it's interesting isn't it because obviously that sounds lovely but there's a decision-making process that yeah you go through stage by stage there is and i feel with stuff like that with those kind of sounds i feel like i've really i i lean into them too easily and i i notice a pattern of like well i'm going to try and get some nice kind of plucked strings in there because it's kind of a default for me so i think this time it's been sort of an exercise of restraint of not doing what i would normally kind of reach for certain types of sounds especially like acoustic kind

18:12of like really sort of loose acoustic sounds i mean they are on this record of course but like i just feel like um that works nicely but i don't think this tune needs it yeah um so that decision was made what did you do instead um well instead i just kind of left it really um i kind of did nothing i'll uh i'm going to pull up the other session because this is kind of where this is about where this one leaves off i kind of i bounced that grand leader thing and got rid of the synth so i didn't actually go into the main session now this is great because it's a good illustration

18:43of the whole process no as yeah it's almost like you've got to relinquish that session to move on yeah totally i i find that with stuff like that i i like to bounce things pretty quickly because i think at some point it's like you say you have to make a decision at some point and i think like with that granular stuff it's like okay that's done now um i don't want to tweak that anymore and let's kind of use that as a as a stem to move forward to the next thing so i think just like locking things in with audio bouncing midi and you know to a larger degree stemming things out quite

19:17early on and then using the stems as a kind of as a new palette can be quite freeing as well because then you're not sort of bogged down by going back to having access to all these parameters you have to sort of like commit to something and i think that's that's a good way of of um organizing a workflow it's not having a sort of a thousand undo options and just actually sort of commit to something and move forward with it um also sometimes you know when you get sort of updates and things and midi instruments don't load anymore and you can kind of like so i think committing things to audio early

19:52is is a nice practice so yeah i think from here i was building up i mean the drums are the the the big thing here this is sort of the intro part of the drums pretty straightforward there's this little thing here which is called finger break and i think that's just me tapping on a microphone or tapping on a table that's a great name

20:21yeah it was just sort of like doing some i think just like yeah some table drumming um and just layering that with the with the other percussion um i think something i talked about last time as well just like laying kind of like recording um sort of foley stuff on my phone and layering over the yeah the drums do you edit it into a nice pattern yeah totally this so again this is probably bounced from from me kind of you know taking these little sounds and kind of moving them kind of programming them programming them into place over the other drums and then bouncing that so

20:55now this is a sort of you know this is a kind of like a bounced kind of four bar pattern um that just sort of layers over the other drums it's quite subtle but it adds it adds a sort of nice kind of humanized texture likewise with these other little kind of random hits

21:19and are they actually made sounds those are the ones some yeah i think there's um and these are these are from everywhere yeah these little kind of wood blocks and yeah wood blocks rim hits mostly sort of wooden stuff or just definitely very kind of acoustic kind of sounds that have passed through the air into a microphone at some point yeah and then combined with the kick drum yes the kick drum just sort of like underpinning the tempo really

21:56and then there's these other things here uh these more kind of textural elements so this is all modular stuff this is from the um morphogen is it morphogen it's uh again more kind of granular things it's just like feeding um i'm not sure the original sound sources but it's kind of it's little loops morphogenes that make noise um modular and it just sort of blurs granular samples into each other and you can kind of pitch things and the things are sort of pinging

22:28around in adjacent octaves and i just kind of like with the modular stuff i kind of record i kind of make a patch and then i just like record it and then have it in a folder of sort of modular samples rather than sort of trying to do a whole through composed thing with a modular i'll i tend to just sort of like use it to kind of farm all of these sounds and then i kind of like can sort of pull them up up for moments like this which is yeah same kind of thing here i guess so that just layers up over all

23:01of these and there's a few little things that are sort of the pitches are bending and making these really interesting little kind of variations yeah like that for example which is the sort of the you know it's like a a delay speed being slowed down which were the other stuff kind of and then what's this something over here as well oh yeah this is the symplant symplant chords

23:50so this is everything that's not the uh that's not the riff

24:12and when you're creating all of those things what are you trying to achieve in terms of adding all of those elements i think it's it's um just really trial and error like seeing what sounds good and sort of layering stuff up um just trying to create textures until it sort of sounds full enough i guess at the same time you know it's like balance not trying to overdo it not trying to cram too much stuff in there but i felt like um the modular stuff in particular has um a sort of generative randomness to it so you know you can record a sort of 16 bar

24:48pass of the kind of modular granular things and it's never quite the same so i think what it what it really brings is this this lack of repetition i think every bar is going to be slightly different and i tend to do that here with the sort of chopping different sections of this of this um um granular piano reel um so as we go through this kind of little whatever 16 bar pass nothing is quite the same everything's changing slightly we're never really getting sort of trying to move away

25:20from you know complete repetition um and trying to keep things a little bit freer yeah i think we need to hear it in context so yeah so

25:57yeah and there's the and there's the sample yeah so you have to tell us about this yeah so i've i think i've spoken about hugh tracy before when i see her last time um i don't remember what i talked about last time so i don't know if i'm going to end up repeating myself too much that's not a problem

26:16but um i have access to this this this archive of hugh tracy who did a lot of field recordings in africa between sort of the 20s and the 70s he was a um he was a uk uh sound archivist um but this one is from one of these recordings this is from um malawi um and here's the original thing

26:52that's it in its kind of raw form um so i think i slowed things down a little bit if i take all these effects off uh you just see what i did just by editing before any effects went on um it would have looked a bit like this i guess

27:39and then later on there's this other

27:49so that's just the sample edited before any effects and other processes and it's interesting because it's got percussion you know in that they're stomping their feet and clapping their hands so is is that a challenge or is that going to be part of no i think that's that just adds texture yeah um and i kind of like that things aren't very precise and there's a lot of background stuff and i think it just it adds you know when you once you apply a kind of very synchronized rhythm to

28:23something it's nice having these sort of more kind of off-grid moments happening in the background as well it kind of it creates it it creates a bit more sort of a bit of a looseness to it yeah but yeah so i was already pretty happy with this part you know the intro this whole sort of the vibe of this was yeah was already kind of like quite nice so when i figured i know i was i was trying some samples i think i was just sort of digging around trying various vocal samples or whatever it was and then this kind of landed and i just remember being really kind of uh stoked about it because um it just

28:57fits so nicely so now i had these sort of like a and b sections yeah so i felt like a good moment when i sort of realized that the sample was gonna work yeah it sounds great i'm intrigued to know what else you did to the sample then yeah you know having done your editing and slowed it down well here's all of the things so there's i mean there's a little bit of compression on there i don't think that's really bringing a huge amount wide enough because i think these these i think what i did yeah i monoed it first because it has this quite strange phasing thing going on in this recording

29:31so when i put the mono i use utility in ableton to just put everything into mono which kind of

29:48so now it's it's i can sort of like start from zero uh in terms of like processing the stereo width so um this thing i use a lot i don't know if i've mentioned this before uh wider um and it's just a i mean there's a lot of things that do this but this is it creates width by just sort of delaying one side very slightly and you can take sort of um monophonic sounds and make them feel a bit wider so that's what this was uh there's some valhalla reverb on there a little bit more compression

30:21and then the filter i think yeah the main thing is like the filter coming in

30:33so that's also if i just saw it

30:38so yeah it's a little wider

30:42i think it's been filtered in i'm throwing a few um

30:48throwing a few effects returns in here like these little reverb kind of like again it's that pitch reverb thing

30:58and then harmonizing with these piano chords

31:05this is the cp yamaha cp roads like the little series of uh reissued keys that they did

31:16and the thing about this is i have like an actual road sitting here in the studio and i have this little sleepy one on the on the desk because it's because it's right there and it's just closer yeah i mean this is a sort of i think a big lesson in hardware it's just like i just used that because it was there instead of the real thing that was like across there a distance of two or three feet yeah yeah just plugging in one cable is is the difference between using the real thing

31:46yeah and did you need to tune the sample in any way i had to stretch it a lot i think um there's there's quite a lot of uh time stretching going on and kind of making things fit and editing um there is some pitching as well uh the original was this yeah

32:13yeah i'm pretty sure i kind of did some

32:18yeah like these little kind of micro edits here

32:22just to fill the space yeah because when you're sort of shopping even if there's nothing happening you need to have the atmosphere of the sample carrying over the silence otherwise it's going to sound

32:36so you need to have even just finding a little bit of kind of air even if there's nothing happening um i'll kind of like look for these little tails just so there's something between

32:49something between the sound so you're not getting these little cuts yeah um which i find it's the same most of editing any kind of recorded audio it's just having the having those little moments of space between the notes just kind of like keep the atmosphere of the recording present even if it's not actually doing anything it's um it kind of creates a kind of continuity throughout the sample and makes it feel natural and sound natural yeah like we're all still in the sort of same room where this sample is happening yeah and so back into the track you were saying creating a and b

33:22sections within the song so you can build up with what you've already done change the game as it were with this bit and then and then merge the two yeah i think that's that's kind of really the magic isn't it it's just like having these these you know here's the a section the b section and then here's this sort of way that they both come together um which is kind of after the you know all the drums and the bass kind of come thundering in on this section here uh and then we start kind of introducing the the earlier elements and the sample together and that's kind of yeah let's let's hear

33:55hear that that build up again uh uh uh

34:25uh and there's a great aspect to the bass sound because it's kind of soft but impactful at the same time yeah which is quite interesting how do you achieve that and so there's a couple of layers

34:55here I think this is just like a single a single bass hit from somewhere yeah so it's just I think just that on its own but then it's layered with so this one's sort of the more textural I think with bass it's like having a very clean sort of just a sine wave at the bottom and then

35:26you can sort of layer it with a more kind of textural thing at the top which you can you can add a bit of width to let me suppose you have a bass in mono but like if you layer a more kind of mid-rangey thing over the top of it and then you can make that a little bit wider and you can kind of combine them to kind of create something a little more a little more solid which I think is what's going on here and do you cut the notes yes yeah yeah so the editing is really um really specific here um all these little fades are very precise to kind of create that sort of

36:04to create those transients and I think even here you can see there's like you know that they're fading in um so it's not rather than side chaining they're very sort of like specific because the kick I mean the interaction with the kick is quite significant as well so they're slightly off the kick so you can allow the kind of transient of the kick to hit first and then you know you can see there's like a little bit of silence or a little bit of fade in for the bass yeah let's hear that again i love the fact that you you resist the harshness the potential harshness that can come with some of

36:57these sounds but I think that's one of the keys that makes it so palatable and and why people return to it again and again I think yeah it's all it's more in the character of and the and the swing and the shuffle and the sort of you know it's really kind of like what gets your shoulders moving more than um more than a kind of like aggression of the sonics um so yeah this is this is very sort of yeah nothing's really hard like none of these sounds are really like like in your face heavy even the snares are quite gentle and the bass is quite gentle but it's

37:29really just about a rhythmic thing right it's just about kind of making something groove and kind of just getting your getting your shoulders moving yeah it's the shuffle and the swing of the drums and just sort of like restraint really I guess yes it is quite uptempo and is yeah yeah it's quite fast I mean yeah it's like 132 which is not a territory I kind of hang out in that much um so it's on the yeah definitely on the faster side

37:59yeah yeah it's interesting but because of all those different elements it doesn't feel like it's super fast yeah because it has the I think the sort of the swing and the shuffle that sort of makes it feel a bit looser and it's yeah you don't you don't sort of like feet because you can some things can be like 125 bpm and feel like really heavy and um in your face where this is yeah it's got it's got sort of a bit of a swing going on we've got a few questions for you from our patrons on patreon um ben blackadder asks I know you do your swing manually but how much do you

38:31evolve that within a track I feel like I can hear it shifting hmm yeah it's true I don't definitely don't use swing templates I kind of I I think at this point I kind of understand what swing templates do so I just sort of mimic that on my own and they're not necessarily staying the same throughout the track um and what I'll do is I'll take maybe I don't know how many bars like four bars eight bars and uh I'm not repeating that same swing pattern throughout the whole thing um so I'm I'll actually

39:02sort of I'll move every snare within that sort of eight bar field so things really don't I know it feels like a sort of an insignificant amount but I feel like accumulatively it makes things feel like they're not kind of locked in to the same groove again if you program drums in sort of like polymeters so you know the hi-hats can be sort of programmed in a three bar loop over a snare pattern that's in a five bar loop over you know I mean the kick's pretty consistent but um you can kind of

39:34create these these moments of of movement where things aren't necessarily all kind of resetting to one at the same time everything's kind of resetting on its own yeah at its own pace so I think there's a lot of that going on here as well but it it makes it feel more human as if yeah somebody's actually playing this and then shifting it a little bit and it's it's subtle but I think I don't know I mean maybe I don't need to be sort of microscopically adjusting all these snares but I feel like it kind of creates it creates some sort of um exactly some sort of humanization to it all yeah anything

40:08else we should hear from me and you um what else happens here I mean the second part is like yeah it's just more of this granular stuff really yeah it's just sort of like the second the second kind of go around is slight variation of the first

40:39really but yeah I wanted to have these kind of impactful moments where yeah it's just very stripped back which worked quite well in a sort of in a club environment I've been playing this one out um for the last year or so and it's been going down really well and I think there's a sort of there's a familiar people don't know what it is but there is a familiarity to it I think that people sort of react to that yeah and it has a hypnotic quality to it in a way

41:09that when once you've listened to the first kind of minute and a half or something you're kind of locked into it and then because you've shifted around a little in the second half then people can let loose and express themselves yeah totally it's just sort of like let's just sort of explore these these sounds kind of in a few different ways um in the second part really yeah fantastic maybe we should hear a blast of the ending to to round things off yeah

41:59so fantastic so fantastic so fantastic so Fantastic. That's so good. Right, we're going to take a quick break. The next song we're going to

Sponsor message

42:33look at is Fire on the Water. Imagine Plugins by Soundbetter is the world's first no-code platform for designing, building, and selling your own professional plugins. And I have Shahar Gilad, founder of Imagine Plugins, here to tell us more. Hi, Shahar. What's the idea behind Imagine Plugins? Hey, John. So the idea behind Imagine Plugins is to empower creators, be that engineers, producers, brands, content creators, to create their own plugins much more easily, affordably,

43:04and faster than ever before, and then to commercialize them. So how would I go about making a plugin? You would drag and drop some of the dozens of high-quality DSP blocks we have in there, modulators, utilities, set the settings exactly the way you want them, no AI prompting, audition and hear it real-time in the browser, full hands-on control. Then you flip a tab to create the GUI, design the plugin. You've got faders, knobs you can choose from, or you can upload your own graphics to make it all bespoke. Then you hit a button and build it, ready to distribute, copy protected, and you can sell it. And we don't keep a cut. So whatever you sell, you keep. You

43:38pay us a one-time build fee, and that's it. It's exciting on so many levels, creatively and potentially financially. It could revolutionize plugins. So we're really excited about helping artists and creators earn more. That's what SoundBetter has always been about. And I think selling software might be one of the paths forward. So if you've ever wanted to design and sell your own plugin, now's your chance. Head to imagineplugins.com forward slash tapenotes to try it for yourself and download their brand new vocal effect plugin for free. Running a small business means I wear lots of hats. When I put on my hiring hat,

44:11I can count on LinkedIn Hiring Pro to make it easy. LinkedIn Hiring Pro helps manage my hiring workflow, puts my job post in front of a unique network of professionals, and matches me with the best candidates for my business. I can also share my job with my network. No other job site lets me do that. No wonder most small businesses say they'd use LinkedIn Hiring Pro again. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free on LinkedIn today at linkedin.com slash quality.

Discussing Fire on the Water

44:37The next song we're going to look at from Distance in Static by Bonobo is Far on the Water. But Si, before we get into that, I've got a couple more questions for you that have come through via Patreon. Philip Ackerman says, when did you first feel emotionally ready to release music publicly, even before you felt technically ready? I don't think I ever really felt ready. And sometimes I still don't really feel ready. I think, but honestly, I think that's a good, uh, that's a good place to be because I think that

45:08vulnerability is what makes the music interesting. If you kind of like, I remember when I made Terrapin, which I think was the first piece of music that I was, I felt was good enough for other people to hear. It was really difficult for me to play it to people because I just thought it was like so personal. Um, but there was a vulnerability in that. Um, and I think that probably translates, um, to people listening to it. Right. I mean, it's, it's, um, you know, if you feel something about it, then hopefully other people do too. So I think kind of also maybe even just kind of,

45:40um, embracing that, uh, that feeling of music, never being ready to play to people. Yeah. So what do you need to push you into that position? Are there people in your life that you always share your first recordings with and think, I'm going to get feedback from? Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, when something is working, right? Cause it, you can be working on music on your own, which you often are. Um, but it takes someone else being in the room to really understand your own relationship with it. Um, because you instantly know when you play music to people, whether it's good or not, or whether it actually

46:14kind of, uh, means something to, to you or to them. And everyone will say like, yeah, this is great, but you know, when they mean it and you know, when they don't mean it. And I think just having, there's just the act of actually playing music to people that you trust is really important. And, uh, and I mean, there's, there's instances where I've had songs that I didn't really feel, or they're just kind of like sketches that I didn't really feel were that great. Um, I spent all this time focusing on certain tracks and then I sort of like play something quite throwaway to somebody and it's suddenly like, wait, what's this? This is the

46:47one, which actually this next song is actually quite a good example of that. It was just something that I didn't sort of think was worth, um, pursuing as a, as a sort of an idea, but, but it sort of resonated. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. And, and is it, you know, the ability to go and obviously play things live, but also DJ songs you mentioned with me and you that you've been playing it out and you've seen a great reaction to it. Yeah. Yeah. And conversely, there's other stuff that you think is going to really like slap when you play it out and then it just kind of lands on the dance floor. Not quite the

47:20way you imagined. So you have to go and rethink this, but yeah, it's, it's really like, um, you never know until you sort of share music with other people, how it's kind of, how it, you know, how you feel about, I think it changes your own relationship with it as well. Yeah. Um, and Gary has been in touch to say, what is it like collaborating with the likes of George Fitzgerald or Teed? Um, how would you normally approach a studio session together as a collaborative session because you both excel at bringing the emotions to records, but does one focus more on beats, et cetera? And also any tips on working as two producers

47:52on one project? Yeah. I mean, this is an interesting one because I feel like when producers are working together, everybody's sort of bringing the same kind of skillset, but even just working with, even just like spending time in the studio with another producer, um, and just watching people work, you're always going to learn something. So for me, I kind of, I like these sort of studio hangs because there's always something to be learned from someone. Even if you don't end up making a song together, you kind of get an insight into someone's process, which, which for me is like always valuable. Um, so every time I've hung out in a, in a, in a studio with, with producer

48:27friends, um, you kind of get switched onto something that you didn't know about before and kind of take that with you. Um, I'm in a case of like, you know, some, some songs that have ended up being collaborations have started as sort of somebody, either me or them being like, I'm kind of stuck with this idea. Like, where do you think I should take this? So starting from, I don't like to start from scratch. I always like to kind of have an idea that either I feel like I can't take any further to get somebody's input on or vice versa. It's all like coming into somebody else's situation

49:00where either kind of, they can't move forward with the track and sort of offering some guidance. And I think that's, that's, that's where those, a lot of those collabs come from. It's those moments. Yeah. The next song we're going to look at is Fire on the Water featuring Arujaf Tup. So maybe if we have a blast to the master of that, we can find out all about it.

Listening to Fire on the Water

49:19Fire on the Water, theная garden san arms. Fire on a rescue in the water. Fire on a母 Head, thetreичего, the vegetables, the vegetables. Fire on a wall. Fire Let's go, fire on a holy sand. Fire on a Tao相hh. Fire on a village saja. Fire on a Sabbath. Far away, the one who was sitting on my heart, was only on my heart.

50:12Such a beautiful track, just a little taste of fire on the water, and you mentioned, Sai, that you weren't sure about this idea,

50:44or you shared it with someone and they said, hang on a minute, that's really good. Well, yeah, the process of this was quite an interesting one, because Aruj and I had spoken about making music together, and I think we were really excited to write a couple of songs together. So we got together in the studio. I was in this beautiful place in Northern California for a few weeks, and Aruj came in for a couple of days. And we had spent the first day making another song, which I love, which will come out at some point down the line.

51:16And then we still had this second day. So we kind of like demoed a couple of things previously before meeting. And the second day we went to the studio and we tried to sort of like start working on the second idea. And it wasn't really working. It was like, should we just take a break? And we came back and we're like, let's just try something new. Let's just kind of like from the ground up. And I was just sort of flicking through a few things. And I had that morning just, I had this guitar, which I kind of got about six months ago. And it's this sort of baritone rubber bridge guitar

51:49with a couple of pickups on it, which kind of became quite a major part of the sound palette of this record. But I was in the studio, it was some unfamiliar outboard stuff, trying to get this guitar to work, basically trying to like figure out how to record it. And so that morning just on my own as a sort of like little exercise in trying to like figure out how to get the guitar, I was just doing this absentmindedly recording these layers of these loops. And they weren't supposed to be good. They weren't supposed to be like for anything.

52:20And it was just like, it was this one here. And it's noisy and you've got all this kind of like buzz and hum in it. And it's not played very well.

52:36I wasn't trying to do anything. Anyway, I just kind of layered up a few.

52:41And how were you recording these? This was sort of DI into a compressor. And then from the compressor into... Because I think I tried to set it up with an amp, but it was too noisy. So I was just like, okay, let's just go straight in, straight in the box. And that's kind of what it was. I mean, there's some process on this. If I turn that off, then it's just... And I layered up a few.

53:19And then I kind of... The thing about this guitar is it's sort of... Because it's a baritone and it's flat wound, it sounds very bassy. And you can kind of... It sounds like a plucked cello. Or it's like a plucked viola sometimes. So I had those little... I had that. And I just played it to a rouge. And she was like, wait, what's that? And I was just like, this is nothing. This is just me messing around this morning.

53:44And she's like, what if I take the lyrics that I was trying to... We were trying to do on this other song and we apply it to this. And then the whole form of this song just kind of like fell out in about an hour. And really the whole tune is built around this loop. There's some percussion in here which is just very kind of glitchy.

54:20What is it? What are those sounds? So this little percussion loop, let's have a listen. I think it might even be modular, honestly. It's very wide. You see there's like a lot of delay from the left to right.

54:38But yeah, it's just very scratchy kind of... Just transients, really.

54:45But it's so hushed, so quiet. Yeah. And there's this, whatever this kind of like steady thing is with a few variations of velocity.

55:01And then the guitars. And then the vocal.

55:11And so did Arouj just start singing the lyrics that she had before or had you already called those and you tried putting them over? No, no. We... Yeah, we were just sort of trying this lyrical idea over this loop. I mean, eventually, this is the vocal stack that we ended up using. But there was a couple of sort of demo takes first just to sort of like get the arrangement. But it happened really quickly. Like the whole thing kind of came together just like that afternoon. And then it was like another day of me sort of mixing and finalizing stuff.

55:41But yeah, it was such a simple idea. But like once we got that loop and the vocal in place, it's like I kind of know exactly where to go with this. Could we hear the vocal on its own? Because Arouj does have one of the great voices of our time. Yeah, absolutely.

55:59And so working with Arouj for the first time, you know, how do you discuss how she wants to be recorded? You know, how her vocal should sound or is there a vocal chain that she likes

56:30that she wants you to use? Yeah, yeah. I mean, she knows her own voice and she knows kind of like what mics sound good. You know, she's definitely sort of very knowledgeable in like recording and vocal stacking and what tones sound good. But the main thing here was kind of getting the space. And I think what's... The thing I think works quite nicely about this is because this guitar part is so lo-fi and kind of scratchy and noisy and the vocal is so clean and wide. And I like that sort of juxtaposition.

57:03I think it could be one way or the other. You could either have like this very sort of cinematic instrumentation and a sort of more of a kind of lo-fi vocal recording or in this case, vice versa. You know, we've got this sort of like lo-fi instrumentation with a very clean upfront vocal. So I think that's kind of... That's a nice contrast like having this like super clean vocal. Yeah. At the top of this quite scratchy guitar. Yeah. And then the song develops and strings are introduced.

57:34Yeah. So the strings were from another session. There's... I did... Sometime last year, I did a day in Studio London with some strings. It was a quartet. And I kind of had all of the parts that I wanted for the record. And we just sort of did a day of just recording all the strings at once for the record, which is kind of like how I've worked for the past few records. It's like, I know what I need from... for string parts and I'll just kind of go and we'll do it all in the same session.

58:05But for this one, it wasn't... These strings were actually from the same session as the first track on the album. It was called Cycles. Which I have just remembered. So it didn't take much to kind of move those strings around. So there's... Which I kind of like because this is like the third track of the album. So there's a sort of continuity from the first to the second track. So these strings weren't specifically recorded for this track. It was a sort of...

58:36I think... Oh yeah, they're just one semitone pitched up. Stretched as well so they kind of fit.

58:45Yeah, so there's edits between all of these sections. Yeah, it worked really nicely for this part. Yeah, totally. And this was all later after you'd recorded with Haruki.

59:16Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'd added these sort of the day after. And so when you're working with her, is she handing over the reins to you and said, right, you do what you want with this? No, it was cool. I mean, the arrangement and the vocals were quite collaborative. I mean, she definitely... She had her arrangement for the song and these were the verses. So yeah, I mean, it was... The arrangement was pretty collaborative. You know, she had a good idea of like how this could work structurally.

59:48But then all the drums and the bass and the strings was sort of like... I kind of liked this idea that it had this very sort of like intimate first half and then it sort of opens up with a lot more instrumentation in the second half. And I like the idea that it kind of... It holds off. It's like very minimal for the first half of the song and then sort of... There's a lot more impact when everything kind of comes crashing in. Yeah. Maybe we should hear that contrast. Yeah. Let's go from here.

1:00:19And is this a real kit? This is a few layers. One of the layers is a real kit and then there's other layers of sort of sample drum brakes and there's some other hits

1:00:49and other percussion. But what I wanted with this was to make it so it's a lot of like acoustic textures but to program it in a way that it doesn't sound necessarily like it's played live. You know, there's a lot of kind of manipulation in the drums and chopping breaks in the way that I used to on my earlier stuff where it was, you know, from this kind of more like MPC cut and paste perspective where stuff is, you know,

1:01:20it's like it's live drums but you can tell that it's being sort of chopped and edited and reversed and so I wanted to kind of have that those kind of textures in the drums. It's a real combination in a way. Yeah. It's quite interesting because I think it feels really live, you know. Yeah, which is kind of what I wanted too but then I was sort of, you know, there's moments here where it's sort of meant to remind you that it's still essentially kind of like programmed music.

1:01:55Like these little edits here.

1:01:59In fact, there's like a little horn stab from the drum break in there which is in tune with what else is going on. Amazing. And what's it like working with someone like Haru Jim in contrast to say me and you where you're in your zone with your vocal sample and you can play around with it as much as you like and when you're in the room with another artist, you know, it's quite a different feeling I imagine. Yeah, but I mean, we were both so excited about this song

1:02:29when it happened. Yeah, and we saw this is kind of day two or three of us kind of hanging out and making music together so like by the time we got to this point I think we were just sort of really kind of locked in and yeah, it was a real like it was a real pleasure working with her. I mean, she's so great and as a songwriter and a producer, you know, she's familiar with how everything comes together, you know, her songwriting has really developed and it was a really great experience

1:02:59and we were so excited when we sort of came away from this. Yeah, we were just like texting each other about how excited we were about this song. Yeah. You know, I spent a couple, I took it back home and spent, you know, more time kind of refining it and just mixing and getting the drums kind of sitting right and we had a couple of like little remote chats about vocal mixes and just tweaking things and yeah, yeah. Well, it's so great and in terms of of those tweaks, you know, what's the process behind that?

1:03:30You know, how do you go about that? Is it just listening and thinking, oh, it needs to be changed? Yeah, as always, it's just sort of sitting, yeah, a lot of it is just listening. It's just kind of listening again and again and being like, how can I get those moments to feel more impactful? Like, what's the kind of, I mean, this little turnaround here, which just feels quite subtle, but the way the drums come in. So one, two,

1:04:01in, like that could have, that could have happened. I would have probably spent an hour figuring out what's the best way to introduce those drums, you know, is there sort of a silence? Is there a little, and I ended up with that sort of like ride snare in, but it's stuff like that really. It's just kind of sitting and listening and trying things a different way and like, what's the, what feels like the most kind of impactful way to do things. And again, with the bass, it's like, there's this kind of big Moog low-end thing going on,

1:04:34which I think I've doubled with the piano. Oh no, that's, that's another guitar part, but there is a, oh, there is a piano in here. Yeah.

1:04:43Yeah.

1:04:48It's amazing hearing it isolated like that because within the song you don't necessarily pick up on it. Yeah, totally. It doesn't, you can't actually hear these parts when they're in with everything else and there's all the strings as well.

1:05:04And this thing, which is interesting, which is the, that's the guitar part, but it's like, it happens, the next time it happens I've pitched it up an octave. So it sounds like a piano. Which is this one.

1:05:25Yeah. So I think when that, when that happens in the song, the people I've played it to are being like, oh, pianos. And it's actually just a guitar that's probably pitched up. And how do you mix it to make it feel cohesive? Do you do the mixing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Again, it's just listening. I mean, you know, getting just the balance of, you know, I spent a long time getting these drums to kind of,

1:05:48there's a few elements going on here. There's, there's this drum break, which is chopped from a live kit. This is from my guy, Jack Baker, who plays in my live band. He sort of sent me a folder of drum breaks.

1:06:05So this is quite sort of edited.

1:06:10Some reverb on there to give it some space. I think this group is called, this group is called Frums. It's a typo.

1:06:19And then there's this break here, which is a break I, a drum break I used to use quite a lot on my second album, Dial M from Anki. So this is kind of almost like a little bit of a throwback, this one. Right. Yeah. And then there's those, those sort of edits.

1:06:35Amazing that you still have that drum break to hand. Well, it's so dense, it's like there's so much going on in this, in this, in this like, I think it's like a sort of almost like a 15 second drum break. So there's so much going on there that I kind of ended up using it for a whole album once. So I thought I'd bring that one back as a sort of a bit of a throwback. Brilliant. And then there's a few little hits that I've kind of like extra reverb-y on the snares. So yeah, really, I mean, the mixing is just, you know, it's quite as simple. There's not too much

1:07:05going on in this, in the Moog bass.

1:07:12And there's this little, this little guitar thing that's going through a lot of tape modulation.

1:07:23Yeah, it's just layering stuff up and then there's the strings.

1:07:30And then all of those, all those same guitars from the intro, this, this, this, this guitar loop just sort of like,

1:07:40it just goes through the entire, ah, there's some extra glitchy bits here. It's a little becussive. Shall I turn them up?

1:07:53All this stuff.

1:08:04Fantastic.

1:08:13I love that so much. You mentioned you recorded in Northern California. I read that you recorded in Neil Young's Broken Arrow. Broken Arrow. Yeah, Broken Arrow. Is that where you recorded that? Yeah, that's where this happened. Yeah, yeah. I was kind of like, I was in there for quite a while. It was a really, it was a really good creative period actually. I was in there for like, I think about a month in total. It was really just sort of like living in the woods. Yeah. Pretty isolated. It was great. That sounds really interesting. I didn't know he'd let other people come in and record that.

1:08:46Yeah, he doesn't live there anymore. Right. But the studio is still there. This was like in the middle of winter. So it was this very cozy environment in the kind of redwoods and there's a log fire in the studio and it's sort of raining outside in the trees.

1:09:01Yeah, so it was nice. I just, I sort of didn't, I didn't leave that place for some weeks at a time. And there's a couple of people who sort of came through, you know, Rouge was there for a few days and that's when, that's where we kind of, that's where we did this one. Yeah. So they were able to step into this nice environment. Yeah, yeah, and you sort of, you know, they stay, there's like a guest house so you can stay and, you know, it's a really, it's a really good environment because I'd spent so much time sort of working on all these songs and from elsewhere,

1:09:31but having this condensed period where I was just in this one space for sort of, you know, it's kind of like staying there for a couple of weeks at a time. So it was, so it was a really kind of focused period and I think like a lot of the record really kind of came into focus. during that few weeks. Yeah. Excellent. We're going to take a quick break and the next song we're going to look at is Talk To Me. Mm-hmm.

1:10:16more time sorting applicants and more time talking to the right people. Let's do it. You're irreplaceable, Jane, but another you would be great. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free on LinkedIn today at linkedin.com slash quality. It's football season and you can now get almost anything you need for game day delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a running back delivered, but you can get baby back ribs delivered. A strong defense? No. A strong deodorant? Yes. The six pack of abs? Nope. Six pack of beer?

1:10:47Yes. Get almost, almost anything for game day delivered with Uber Eats. Official on-demand food delivery partner of the NFL. Order now. Alcohol 21 Plus and in select cities. Product availability varies by region.

Building Talk To Me

1:10:58See app for details.

Building Talk To Me

1:10:59The next song we're going to look at is Talk To Me featuring Nicole Miglis. But again, before we get into it, Si, I've got a couple of questions from Patreon. Paul Licata, what are your thoughts about standing out as an artist as AI becomes more prevalent? Do you see this as a threat to electronic music? Why or why not? Oh man, that's a big one, isn't it? It is. One that's probably going to kind of change by the week, I imagine. I have not engaged with AI at all.

1:11:30I think the only time that I've actually used it is to sort of like split stems. But yeah, this is the thing. I think it's going to be very easy to sort of generate convincing music amongst any genre. So I think really that the only way to stand out and what's left is, you know, it's a human story, right? It's your own personality and it's your own story and it's your own kind of, it's your own imprint on the way you do it.

1:12:01And I think that's the kind of thing that AI is not going to be able to really take away. It's just your own way of telling your own story. Yeah. So I think it's maybe going to be more, you know, music is going to become more personality driven, I think. It's just going to be more about the individual and about the kind of, the story of the artist, really. Yeah. It will be interesting to see what happens. Boosie Bickering asks, you always seem to capture these little fragments

1:12:31of ideas, whether it's a melody, texture, rhythm or field recording. What does that process actually look like day to day? Are there any tools you end up relying on a lot for that? Well, funny you should ask.

1:12:44I do. I use the, I use the tape app for quite a lot of stuff. Um, yeah, I mean, I voice notes are a big thing and often it's like just hearing interesting sounds when you're kind of out and about. I've recorded everything from like washing machines to sort of escalators to kind of like birds. Birds is a big one actually. But yeah, I mean, I'll often kind of just record stuff on my phone and archive it. And sometimes that's that, you know,

1:13:15Rosewood, that started from, from a voice note of a piano riff on my old piano in my old house that I was just kind of tinkering about on one day and I just pulled that in as a sample source. But yeah, it comes from everywhere really. Do you have any illustrations of the tape it's in action? Yes, I do. Let's see what we've got here. I've got a few favorites. There's so much nonsense on here. There's also just a lot of me humming with no, um, you know, it's like as an idea, but there's no reference of where the one is or like what it's supposed to be. And in the rest of my head,

1:13:46there's all this harmony stuff going on. There's not, you know, you listen back to it. It's like, what is this? Um, what was this supposed to be? For example, the first song on the record, I recorded as of a piano on my phone, which I then kind of like layered into, I just kind of airdropped it into the session. And then I put all of that and then I put all of that onto tape, actual tape. And then there's a speaker on the output of the tape, of the tape player, which is like not even the output. It's just this sort of monitor reference speaker,

1:14:16which I held a microphone in front of. So I was really just sort of going through all these layers of just recording things onto a phone, onto a tape, recording the speaker output of that tape. And that was like the, that was the intro of the record. And there's also like a string quartet that's been recorded onto tape and recorded through a microphone from the tape machine. Um, but one of the layers was this, this piano, which I recorded on my phone.

1:14:43Um, I think that's the lid going up.

1:14:51And you can kind of hear the Ableton kind of click in the background, but the, the idea of this wasn't to sort of, again, it wasn't like I'm making an album. It was just like, okay, I'm just going to record this piano idea.

1:15:03But it just sounded like, I just kind of like the, the emotion of it. And this is what ended up being,

1:15:14I didn't get all the notes exactly right. But that was it. That was like, um, yeah, I mean, that was a sort of, a kind of recording on my phone that ended up, ended up, being part of the, uh, part of the album intro. Yeah. Amazing. And have you got any of these Foley, uh, examples? Yeah, probably. We might have to wade through a load of me humming. I'm just imagining you just walking down the road and thinking, hang on a minute. And then whipping the phone out and recording. I mean, kind of,

1:15:45yeah. Let's see. Uh, oh, this is some paper. This, I think this was just an interesting, this was just a very nice sounding piece of paper.

1:16:00I mean, that's it, but I may or may not use this for something, but I think, you know, you can slow that down and put some transient stuff on it and it can be some sort of percussive element. Is it packaging or is it? It's packaging. Yeah. I think something got delivered to my house and the paper that came in. I'm just like, oh, this sounds really nice. I'm just going to record this before I, before I responsibly recycle it. Um, and what's this? This is, this is a train in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo. Wow.

1:16:37So, oh yeah, that's the barrier. It's like the train barrier comes down in the little.

1:16:45I could hear you using. Yeah. Yeah. This part, definitely. So yeah, that kind of thing. Brilliant. Yeah. Exciting. It's like, and that is almost like a travelogue of your exciting international global life. Yeah. And you can label everything so you kind of know what, and also sort of, I mean, it identifies what the instrument is, which is cool. Fantastic. Before we get into, talk to me, I've got one more Patreon question for you from Ronnie Peterson. Who says, how long did it take you to find your sound? As people say,

1:17:15as I'm nearly two years in and I can feel it slowly forming. I would say about two and a half years. You're almost there.

1:17:26It really depends. I don't know. I think it's sort of, once you figure it out what it is that you're trying to say, I think it just sort of slowly comes into focus. But when it does, it's sort of like you understand what it is that your sound is. I think for me, I was really just trying to say something that I couldn't really identify. And then I think a couple of songs happened and I kind of made a couple of tunes very early on that felt like, okay, this is it. I feel like this is what I'm trying to say. And you just know, when it happens, you know,

1:17:56I think. And you sort of make something that you have that sort of, it's a very euphoric feeling when you make a piece of music that you really can stand behind and sort of believe is worthwhile. But yeah, when it happens, it's, I think you can identify it when it happens. Yeah. So keep going, Ronnie. You're nearly there. Almost. Yeah. Fantastic. Right. Talk to me is the next song. Let's have a blast to the master.

Listening to Talk To Me

1:18:22Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

1:18:38Let's have a blast to the master. Talk.

1:18:44Talk.

1:18:48Talk.

1:18:51To me.

1:18:55Look in the way and down. But love don't break down. It's hard to say nothing.

1:19:06Break or follow. Look in the way and down. But love don't break down.

1:19:18Talk.

1:19:21To me.

1:19:27Cause no one's up to watch it like you do. Like it, Lord. A little taste of Talk To Me featuring Nicole Miglius. Am I saying that name correctly? Yeah, you are. Yeah, you are. I think that's how I've been saying her name for all these years. How did this come about?

1:19:57So this one, I was saying earlier about how that Me and You song had been around for the longest time. This one has actually been around maybe a little bit longer because this, this came about on tour of Fragments, kind of like after a show one night. Actually, before I, I'm going to put up a very, very old session when it was still called Milano because that's where the demo was made. So Nicole and I were about to go on stage in Vienna in a venue called Gasormita, which was like a big sort of like Gasworks former thing.

1:20:35But it had these very reverberant backstage corridors and she was doing her vocal warmups and I kind of interrupted and the reverb was so nice that we started harmonizing anyway. But again, it was like on the phone. I recorded this, I recorded this, this sort of vocal of us just sort of, and this is really pitchy on my part because I'm not a singer, but we were just doing this for fun. So that's just me and Nicole, I'm the lower part and you can hear my tour manager shouting like 10 minutes in the background.

1:21:14I mean, I, Melodyne did a lot of the heavy lifting on my part here. Oh, there he is. 10 minutes. So that became, um, that became the kind of basis of, of the thing really. So I think after the show or I think it's the next day, I don't know, but, um, yeah, I just had a night off and I was, it was kind of like rainy and I was in a hotel and I just sort of started messing around with this, with this vocal recording and I just kind of, okay.

1:21:47So this, this is, there were so many versions of the song, um, this is why it kind of like took many years. Cause I was like, those are the version I actually played on boiler room like two years ago, which is not the one that ended up being on the record. But this, this was the, this was that vocal sort of processed a bit more. And what is the processing?

1:22:18The processing. So I would have tuned it in Melodyne. I don't think I have that on this session, but yeah, I would have kind of just tidied up the, uh, the tuning on Melodyne. Um, and then I was just sort of drenched everything in loads of reverb. Um, so I put stuff in a group here. Yeah. Valhalla shimmer, which is just like a massive kind of forever reverb. They're just, you know, infinitely huge. Um, what else is on here? Actually not a huge amount, maybe a bit of EQing.

1:22:50Um, yeah, there's this soothe plugin, which is sort of a kind of, uh, EQ that, that sort of works. It works itself out a lot of the time. Um, and there's a bit of compression. That's it really quite a lot of compression by the looks of it, but mostly it's just that shimmer reverb kind of creating all that space. And then there's this stuff, which is, um, these sounds here, actually, if I find you that this was from, um, these synths here, this was a bounce from, um, a sort of like low pass.

1:23:39Gates thing that I was doing. So I had like a pad sound. If actually, let me see if I can open up that last session again, so I can show you. So I think I was just playing some chords and then I was triggering a low pass gate with a high hat program. So.

1:23:59Oh yeah. So you see this filter here, this is being triggered by something. Let's see.

1:24:09Where is the source? This is being triggered by.

1:24:24So I think this has been triggered by like one of these high hats up here. This one maybe. Oh yeah. This is called triggers. So this is triggering the filter on this track.

1:24:47Yeah. You can be very surprised. You can be very precise for that. So you can affect the sort of, um, the velocity of the high hat that's triggering that filter. So it can be, you know, there's different ways of doing this now. I mean, there's like shaper boxes come along since, since I did this, which you can be very precise with. There's also, um, there's some other stuff that will do this, but for the purpose of this, yeah, I was, I was using a kind of high hat pattern to trigger that filter. And that was, those were the two main elements of this, um, was the vocal and then that, that sort of, um, low pass trigger thing.

1:25:19Yeah. And then in terms of the development of the song, so you're obviously fired up by that sound and the vocals and there's a lyric that Nicole sings. Yeah. Yeah, totally. So with the, with the, with the lyrics, with Nicole's part, it was the vocals from somewhere else. We had sort of, I sent her some sort of demos of, of music that I'd worked on. Um, cause I think on, on tour, I think one of the ways to sort of keep yourself occupied and, and, you know, I'm always, I'm always working on music whilst we're on the road. There's a lot of downtime. There's like tour buses and hotel rooms and stuff.

1:25:51So I find that like, I'm just in Ableton most of the time in, in, in the downtime. Um, and I, I kind of like made all these little ideas and I sent some stuff to Nicole. I was like, do you want to just like try sort of jamming some rough vocals and stuff? And she was doing the same thing in other parts of tour, you know, and like backstages and downtime in other places, just recording scratch vocals. So she sent me a little pack, a little folder of scratch vocals from other demos that I'd sent her. So it was just kind of a vocal I'd had, um, which I managed to fit.

1:26:22Uh, I just kind of like dropped it into the session and, and I don't know if there was much tuning that, that happened, but it worked really well. So yeah, the vocal was not actually recorded for this tune. It was like, it's, um, it was from another, another project.

1:26:52Oh. and so is this a scratch vocal this is scratch rock so there was there was actually a few

1:27:31different vocal comps because once i kind of put something together from the scratch vocal i took it to the coal and then we re-recorded some of it but not all of it and i think there were parts we sort of you know she uh has some input into how it should be arranged um a little bit and so we re-recorded some parts of the vocal we left some parts of the vocal um so it was a little bit of a cut and paste from a few different vocal takes to kind of get to the final thing but it's the shape of it was kind of there from the scratch vocal pretty much yeah i love i love for

1:28:05how happen chance so many elements are you know that um you know you just like the sound for the reverb in a hallway then oh let's let's try this out this will be fun and then record that but that inspires something else you take it yeah always honestly i think most of the music i make has started from just sort of picking up an instrument or sort of playing around with a sound you know i think i i find it sort of a little bit daunting and intimidating to try and um approach an idea from start to finish without without anything you know um i feel like most of my music comes from

1:28:39experimentation or just kind of finding sounds or i have to stop have something to kind of jump off like whether that's a sample or a loop or like the textural thing in in um you and me it's just like having that initial sound and it's usually just one sound or one loop or one sample that that kind of kickstarts the whole process and then it's like okay where do we go from here and like yeah it's mostly experimentation yeah yeah and and going back to the scratch vocal how much of that did you have to edit or you know is it finally edited yeah i think the original vocal was um there was quite

1:29:14a lot of it and i think i ended up using i found the talk to me phrase and this little this little run that comes into the into the drums like like that was those are the kind of key parts to me it was like that talk to me and those and those those two elements yeah and then in terms of creating that song then in terms of the the pace and the tempo of it and you know the shape you're going to give it you know what decides that i think really i was i was trying to get everything um so this is when

1:29:46everything's in it's like the drums and the synth and you know that's that like rhythmic synth that's coming in like that to me was kind of that was feeling really nice how are we going to describe that so kind of slightly garagey it is a little bit yeah it used to be a lot busier i think there's that there are so many versions of this song um i kind of like

1:30:18finished versions of this song like two years ago and i wasn't happy with it it was like too busy and i actually was speaking to dj koze who i played it on boiler room and then he messaged me about it he's like what's this song he's like yeah i don't know it's like i i have this song but i don't know if it's finished i don't know what to do with it it's like a little kind of i don't think it's quite there yet and he's like can you know do you mind if i try something with it so i kind of sent him the stems um and he sent back this very stripped

1:30:48down uh more kind of garagey version but like a lot of the harmonic elements that were were taken out so it was really just sort of drums bass and voice and i think that was kind of really inspiring uh in terms of knowing what to do with it after that because i feel like my original version was way too busy there was too many drums there's too much going on and i think him sort of doing this version where he just sort of stripped away everything was like okay that's what it needs it needs just less it needs me to just like take all of these parts out and just kind of have it a

1:31:20bit more a bit more bare bones so i think the version that i ended up with was somewhere in the middle of those two version of the original version that i played out and um the version that he did yeah is there anything else we should hear from talk to me um i guess just the ending where everything kind of uh everything is all sort of in together um there's this there's the stack of arpeggios from uh corg monopoly so it's all these kind of like interweaving arpeggios

1:32:02and do you create all of those individually and then yeah bring them together yeah so that's there's four layers and i think i'm just sort of like you know i kind of like that's like a latch mode so they can open decays and filters and then i just sort of did that four times

1:32:37four different takes of it so they're all slightly different oh yeah it's a different melody so yeah they're all just kind of nice excellent well let's have a blast the ending and we'll get into those questions that we ask everybody on okay don't you know the things that you do

1:33:30do you think when you're making songs that there's a destination you want to get to in terms of how you round it up i think like i'll do i'll do a mix down and also like do a final arrangement i'll be like okay this is because you know i mean this is i think this is a kind of very relatable thing to a lot of musicians is never really knowing how to finish anything

1:34:03but what i do is like okay what if i wanted to go and play this tonight or i wanted to go and like go for a walk and listen to my headphones like what if i get it out of the environment of the studio or the space that i'm working like i'm going to do a mix of this one way or another in 45 minutes from now and then whatever that is like that's that's a version right whether it's finished or not i think i'll take that version and i'll just sit with it and allow things to sort of annoy me about it and like what would i fix like if imagine this is finished what would you and you're allowed to fix

1:34:38five things like what are those five things and i think i do that a lot of stuff where i just sort of sit with mixes and just let them ask those questions let them sort of like annoy me really for a little while and then i'll just go and fix those things and it's like okay well that's something that's like yeah yeah and i think that's that's mostly how i kind of overcome that sort of last stage of finishing stuff yeah yeah that seems like a clever approach um how do you approach reverb and space

1:35:08in your music um oh how do i do it i just um i feel like you kind of need to assess the needs of each part right some things don't need reverb some things do and i think earlier on when i was it was very easy to just drown everything in reverb because reverb makes everything sound great but to make things feel more personal to make things feel more upfront and more kind of um intimate you know it's less reverb so it's really just kind of establishing where you want things to sit

1:35:42in the space um i find with a lot of very kind of light sounds i'd like to put them percussive stuff like really close up front and the very kind of small intimate sounds without any space and then put big things like snares kind of like reverb on snares and reverb on kind of loud parts to kind of create you know create more kind of grandeur to them and then small parts can be a lot more intimate so it's really dependent on what the part needs um i also think of reverb like a panning and reverb like

1:36:15a tree right and sonically like the trunk is the base and the kicks and then as you get further up into the branches and the leaves things can become more peripheral and things can become a little more sort of you know you can play with the placement a little bit further um and with width and uh and reverbs really interesting getting to the questions that we ask everyone i mean you you've answered these questions before but no it's a different time yeah again maybe they've maybe the answers have changed i think well because we're looking at this particular project so is there a piece of kit or gear

1:36:47essential to creating this album well yeah maybe i mean i think this guitar that i mentioned i think that is quite sort of significant to this record i mean there's there's lots of stuff i think the fragments was was really there was a lot of modular stuff um and i think that was a record that was made in the pandemic and and modular was a way to sort of like kickstart those those ideas but for me like i i've kind of like i came from a guitarist background when i was younger i was in like a lot of bands and i've neglected the guitar for years i mean i've played bass in a live show but

1:37:21yeah i kind of got this this guitar this sort of rubber bridge baritone guitar from the store in la um and it was the guitar used on the fire on the water i used it as a song with ichico alba which um i use this guitar to write everything and it sounds like um i think i mentioned before it sounds like you're sort of plucked a plucked kind of viola or cello when you play it on the low end um i think that was really inspirational to kind of like write stuff even if it didn't end up being the the in the final thing it was a really nice way to sort of like create a lot of textures that i the kind of

1:37:57textures i look for which are sort of plucked strings and sort of harmonics and uh and those kind of those kind of sounds i feel like this guitar was just sort of quite important to create a load of those textures yeah and when you bought it how much um exploration of it did you do before you decided right i'm gonna buy this you know or did you walk in and say right oh i like to look at that well i knew i mean i think it's a sound i think that sort of rubber bridge sound is something that's become quite popular in the last few years so you hear it on a lot of like lo-fi kind of more

1:38:30indie songwriting music um with any new instrument when you the first thing you do with it is going to be the best thing right i feel like there are certain things that sort of just inspire you you know whether it's a new piano or a synth or something like those those first moments of exploration are probably going to be the best things you do with it because it's still it's inspiring you to do stuff so i feel like with this with this instrument it was like the thing that was trying to capture that those moments yeah the other question we ask everyone is about advice

1:39:04whether you have any advice that you would share with us with regard to creativity or yeah i mean it sounds as cliched as it is i guess sort of just being authentic is the only way and especially when we're talking about the ai thing i think just having figuring out what it is you're trying to say and just sort of be authentic to that and sort of have some vulnerability in your in your music and don't be you know i think sort of vulnerability in in the creative realm is like is is one of the most important things right just sort of don't be afraid to kind

1:39:39of um you know express an idea if you believe that you have something to say then then figure out what that is and and then just express it i think that's the only the only thing that sort of that we that we've got left after uh you know uh sort of like human creatives yeah yeah very true si thanks so much for spending your time and going so deeply into the creation of your music it's been fascinating to talk to you thanks for having me again it's been a pleasure um we should play one more song from distance in static um an outro track one of the songs you have mentioned

1:40:11cycles which is the opening track to the album i was thinking even though it's the opening track to the album because you were talking about how you know you recorded the piano on your phone and initially and maybe that would be a good choice or if you've got a better suggestion yeah cycles is good so the the first two there's an intro and then the cycles but they're essentially the same piece um and the intro to the album is all the stuff with the tape and the pianos um so actually maybe that's the one yeah yeah it's just like an instrument a very sort of like mellow uh intro to the album so the intro into cycles yeah okay yeah excellent thanks again si and this is

Closing thoughts and album outro

1:40:46does the intro have a title or is it just dawn dawn right okay so this is dawn from distance in static by bonobo 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

1:41:17detailed 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 once again thank you for listening until next time goodbye

1:42:03it's football season and you can now get almost anything you need for game day delivered with uber eats what do we mean by almost well you can't get a running back delivered but you can get baby back ribs delivered a strong defense no a strong deodorant yes the six pack of abs nope six pack of beer yes get almost almost anything for game day delivered with uber eats official on-demand food delivery

1:42:36partner of the nfl order now alcohol 21 plus and in select cities product availability varies by region see app for details nfl football season is here which means when you switch to verizon it feels like because you get nfl sunday ticket from youtube on us when you buy an eligible 5g phone on select unlimited plans which means you can watch every out-of-market game every sunday afternoon and it's all on us now that's the verizon way to kick off the nfl football season right

1:43:06switch and get nfl sunday ticket from youtube on us only with verizon