Staying true to your own barometer

Hello, I just want to let you know that we're running a quick TakeNotes audience survey and we would love to hear from you. Whether you're a casual listener, a Patreon subscriber, or you've just discovered the show, your feedback will help shape the future of TakeNotes. And as a thank you, anyone who completes the survey will be entered into a prize draw to win native instruments complete 26 Ultimate, including Contact 8, Guitar Rig 7 Pro and lots more. There's a link to the survey in the show notes and in our socials bio, and it'll take less than five minutes to complete. The survey closes on the eighth of June and we'll announce the winner on the ninth across Patreon and Instagram. Thank you. Hello, I'm John Kennedy, and joining me for this episode of Take Notes is Jack Antonoff, Producer Extraordinaire, to talk about how he wrote, recorded, and produced the album, Eyverone , for 10 minutes, by his own band, Bleachers. Throughout the conversation, Jack demos a huge amount live in the studio, constantly, soloing tracks, adding effects in real time, reshaping sounds on the fly, and experimenting and demoing as he talks through the sessions. It was a really fascinating look into the way he plays around with ideas and captures energy in the moment. There is a lot of music in this one. So if you'd like to watch the interview and see into his Pro Tool sessions, then head over to Patreon.com forward slash tape post, as well as full video episodes. Membership also gives you behind-the-scenes content, entry into our monthly gear giveaways, and the chance to ask our guests questions. Thank you as well to our partners at Tape It. The team at Tape It have just released their new DNoiser plugin, which does an incredible job of removing any unwanted background noise from recordings while keeping any source sounding completely natural. We think it's great and it's currently half price. So head over to tape.it forward slash denoiser to check it out. But now without further ado, let's get started. Jack Antonoff is an American producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Having performed, produced and written music throughout his teenage years, Jack first came to mainstream attention in the 2010s as part of the band Fun with their global hit We Are Young. He has since become one of the industry's most in-demand producers, often credited with shaping the sound of contemporary pop through work with artists including Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar, Lord, Lana Del Rey and the 1975. He has won 13 Grammy Awards, including three for Producer of the Year. With Bleachers, the band Jack founded in 2013, he has released five studio albums and toured globally with their latest record, Everyone for 10 Minutes, released in May 2026. Today I'm at Platoon Studios and I'm joined by Jack. And what better way to start than by hearing something from everyone for 10 minutes? This is Sidewa ys. Giving it your way Shouting Hello Pass ers Until that our ancestors , spent the night hall way And I fell in love with you It is sideways by bleachers from everyone for 10 minutes, the new album, and I'm very pleased to say that I am in the company of Jack Antonoff once more. Hello, Jack. How are you? I'm fine, thank you. How are you doing? Good. It's about two years since we last spoke. Yeah. About the last bleachers album. Everyone for ten minutes has just arrived . What happened? What what were you trying to do with this record? I was trying to bring people together . With particular people in mind or the world? Uh particular people in mind . Right. And the that's a very specific uh criteria for who those people are, which is people who are tired of of uh running on like the fumes of cynicism . Feel me? Yeah, yeah, I do, definitely. You know, are there individuals involved as well? Because in some ways, listening to the album, listening to the songs, they do seem to be appeals to different people in your life. Yeah. But they the people in my life I don't you know, if I write a song about someone they're always um they're always like a a placeholder for a bigger concept. You know, I never I very rarely write a very, very specific song. Like the other night in the hotel room I wrote a song uh just on my guitar about like my aunt and uncle who Oh such a beautiful story. They uh my aunt they're both dead, but uh they're great. My aunt Elaine was in a horrible accident and she lost the use of one hand. And then she met this guy, Herbie, who was also in a had ph physical issues and he only had the use of one hand. And the way they fell in love is you know the buses, those horrible windows on the bus. The school bus. Do you have that in the UK that you have to like push both sides? Uh I'm talking about no? In America the school buses you have to like push two things. You need two hands to open and close the window. Right. And so they fell in love because well they fell in love because they fell in love, but th th when they met they were both on the school bus and and w she used her working hand and he used his working hand and they could have opened and closed the window together. It's a beautiful metaphor. So I was writing about that last night and um I was thinking to myself, this is so specific, but it's really not about them. It's about the concept of uh complet ion, you know, complete completing someone else in a very l literal way in that metaphor. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Well we're getting ahead of ourselves. They're both dead on that. Sometimes I find like the people who who have the hardest time in life have the best perspective and are often like the most positive. I try to think about that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Well we're gonna dig into three songs. Too much too soon? No, no, no. That's that's fascinating. We're gonna dig into three songs from everyone for ten minutes. And the first one we're going to look at is I'm not jok Yeah this song is I I really wanted to show you this song um and it might be it might be very different than other sessions because there's nothing in it. Yeah. Which is why I wanted to show it. Yeah. Well let's have a blast of the master, and and then we can see the nothing that you're talking about. I'm not the type to ask you about last night or old pick up lines you heard And I'm not the time to ask you about the ones who came before me, baby I'm just glad you're lying to me, baby. And I hope if you don't feel love like She held the door , picked up the phone, started the call, took me out Just a little taste of I'm not joking by bleachers and I can see the door jack. You say that there's nothing in it. It looks quite simple. Yeah. But what are the ingredients and who is playing? Yes. The reason why I wanted to look at the session of the song is because it's so often about manipulation and I think last time I was on the podcast I was showing you writing echoes on the master and things like that. And this is an example of um of the opposite. So you're looking at a mix session and you know, you're you're looking at what happens if you record a song in a room with a band , and then do a few, you know, takes on top of it with some interesting things. So so we're in a studio, we're in a studio and uh outside of Rome, and a lot of times my favorite recordings happen when I'm not trying to do anything. You know, if I'm listening to like a slight record and hearing how the the band sounds and I get all these ideas in my head of oh it's dirty and heavy compressed and blah blah blah or whatever. And then you go in with that influence, you you get shit. You know, or if I hear street hassle and those strings sound so cool, and then I go and I want to express that garbage, right? But i if you just with yourself or with the band or the musicians and you just do things, you find your own versions of of those things. So we're in this studio in Rome. I I was there 'cause my my wife was working in Italy, so I thought, oh how fun, let's get the band to come out and we'll, you know, drink tomorrow during the day and record. And it was like a really cool thing to do. I mean no no one's ever u upset about being in Italy. Right? Yeah. Totally. Um right? Yeah. Well no, I'm a fan. Right. I'm a fan. So we get there and it's like I'm so out of my element. You know, I usually record Electric Lady or at Tamarin, you know my studios or I'm so locked in. So it's not I'm not being obsessive. I'm not like this is what I want, these are the mics I want. Yeah, mic the drums, I don't care. So what you get when you have that, my goal was to make some demos with the band in the room. So the drums have f four microphones, right? I was taking one kick . One top snare , one bottom snare , one overhead . Nothing really you know going on plug-in wise. That's that's what was coming in, right? So so we got that and then say okay Zam you play the bass . Sounds like someone getting ready to play the bass, right? It's not a bass tone to write home about. It's just rhino. Cool, cool, cool. Let's keep keep moving. Get get the piano up, get the piano up, right? Stereo pair. You know, once again, a little EQ. If I turn it off, you don't even hear a difference. You know, so I could turn off every plugin in the session, it would sound no different. Going on are essentially just carving here and there for a little bit of uh energy. Um Mikey's on the B3, right? We have three mics on the B3, which were the ones set up. Sounds like a B three. What I love about this song and where I'm at in a lot of recording is I'm not in in certain songs I am, but but in this song, I'm not trying to show you, oh you,'re not you're never gonna guess what I did with Speed 3. You know, we put it through like a lossy and then we re-amped it through a copycat, then we spun it around and played it backwards on the pioneer, you know, and it's just I'm free of that. I'm just in the room with someone playing a B3. And it's an interesting thing I'm going through, and and maybe some people are too, where I feel the most shocked by the least pretense, but that might just be a reaction to the the the world in general . The horn players, which were overdubbed, I have them room mics and close mics. But once again, you know, my instinct with horns, like let me take, for example, like this Evan horn, right, which has nothing on it, has little EQ taking out some mud, but essentially nothing, right? And let's actually make it nothing. There's now nothing on this horn, just how it recorded. So that's Evan playing obviously some bleed, so he's he's live with Zem. Normally I'd take that horn, right? I always like you know, like young Americans and I,'d take it, I'd double the track. You know, maybe if I was in a nice studio, I'd do this with tape, offset it, and just automatically kind of bowie it. Right? And then I'd probably go even further. You know, now we're starting to get, I mean look your face, like now it's exciting, right? This this is an exciting horn sound, I'll go even further. I'll offset it with some even harder panning. Then I go even crazier probably, right? Like I put like a chorus on one of them. Really go to town, you know, I'm really in my young American zone now. Now I'm having fun, right? Now I might like put it in a bus , you know, and get even more interesting. Once again, if I'm in a studio I'm probably doing these type of things more with tape. Start writing and let me see mix you know really start to make a sound that is fucking thrilling me in my headphones with this horn. And by the way, I'm obviously doing all this to show you what not to do on this song. But you know. Hold on, so now got this automation, I'd probably put like a doubler on it and even mess with some trim Point is, I'm not gonna delete all that. That's like cool, like what a cool horn sound. I'm feeling all of it. So the opposite of what I was looking for in in this song. And it and there there was some accidental nature to it in the sense that I was just recording the band and and thinking I was making demos. But often you arrive somewhere and you later realize why things are cool. And in the case of this song, it's like hearing everyone just completely as they are is so cool. So just an example, you know, but that took me so far away from this. Which now that we hear the two back uh you know and forth of me you know doing some interesting production versus just hearing the the the player, that's more interesting to me right now. It wasn't two years ago, but now I just hear I hear Evan, I hear Zem in the distance. And maybe all this is just a fucking reaction to culture and the concept of interesting sounds being more duplicatable than they ever were that I just want to hear the band. So back to where we were, I got my horn section, this was overdubbed. So the basic live tracks, which we'll start with was piano, bass, drums , b three, and I'm kind of writing the song in real time. So this is what we start with so did you when you were in Rome in that studio, did you have this song? Had uh was there any idea of this song? I had ideas, but I kind of wanted to work it out with the band. Yeah. Have them make chord changes too. Yeah . But But often you know, like some songs you want you want everyone just firing, some like you feel everyone figuring this out. This song is about figuring something out. I I I often do get literal, so it's like you know, when you want what you get you get, when what you want, it's the heaviest to know that it's really on. You know, that's the time to hold on, that's the time to hold tight. This idea about you know, uh I write a lot on the album about falling in love. What about this idea about falling in love? Like it's this like massive test, right? Like, okay, now it's really happening and and now everything you do matters. I feel that way, you know, when you're when you're single and you're out there looking, it's like you're you're messy, you're doing this, it's kinda all lol . You meet your person, it's like, well then it really matters. It's like when you get on the stage or when you get behind the mic. Now what you do and say matters because there's something at stake. It's a huge point of how I see the world these days is what's at stake. You know, most things I read, there's no stakes. You know, so I really am passionate about things where the stakes are high. So I wanted the band to be serious in that way, but not so serious that you you lose all the edges. The song is about drifting on the edge and staying the line. Uh so we practiced it a couple times and then and then we did this take. And like I said, the bass being the best example of I would never pull this bass tone up and be like, whew, that's the tone, right? But you put it all in context and all those transients and in and that you know kind of like earny ballness in the bass is just singing so nicely with the flatness of the drums . So I I have this right and the first thing I do is just get on the mic and at this point I was really into just singing on a 58. You know, you you get in zones and you're just like I don't want to be in no booth of the 47 right now, I want to be on a fifty-eight. I want to feel like it is live. I want the transience of when my lips hit the mic. You know, you lose that with this, right? Like, I'm not going to eat this shit. You know, like be weird. It'd be like pornographic if I put my face in this mic. If I had a fifty-eight, I could have a thing practically down my throat, you know? Yeah. So once again, I'm gonna turn off every plug-in just to show you that there's really nothing happening. I'm just glad you're in a tone be ing all every door for your love You really hear the fifty-eightness on like lines like door. I'm not choking it with love it for sight . Good Lord I found you Once again all I'm doing on you know bunch of plugins going on but they're just kind of making it louder. So this is what I have, right? This is what I'm sitting there within Rome. The first thing I do is just I'm like, alright, this is giving me some kinda sonic happiness as a worm gun feelings. So I just start to la yer some backups. Started the car . Vicked up the phone . That's the time the whole time I start to think, you know, I I think if I have it instead of warm gun lot a really hard panned. You got to hold on oh draw the line Don't run away Don't lose your crowd Just starting to build like a little choir of a man talking himself in the mirror. Time to draw them big light It ain't time to roll. Don't run away. That is the tit us thing. Don't lose your graph. So i is that all you? Yeah. Yeah. And was that done in Rome? Was yeah. So that was done the same day? Right away, yeah. Yeah, yeah. What you get . When you get what you want. And sometimes I love like there's such a great like sixties energy of like singing at yourself in different voices, like you know, I'm here and I'm I'm singing this important song, but then my backups are me like yelping don't run away eh up there don't lose your ground when you want what you get . It's voices. When you get what you want. Different characters. And so that's the record I have that I leave Rome with. And the only thing we tracked afterwards in Rome. We put the horns in. Yeah. Which do a really important lines at the end. Shut it out, shut it out Shut it up, shut it out. So that's what I leave with, right? It's it's it's just a wonderful recording of the band in a room and a guy reckoning with having something to lose, right? That's the song. Take it home. There's just something missing. I don't know what it is, right? Song started like this at the time . I thought it was unspecial . It didn't put me somewhere special. You know, I knew we were in Rome and I knew that drum sound is only four mics and it's so fucking cool, but it's just didn't put me there. When the song gets to the end, I was so locked in, I was like, how do I how do I foreshadow how important this song is and then it's not just a band in a room, there's something bigger happening. So then cut to a separate thing, which is I always think about instruments that aren't being used enough, you know, and then they get used and then you forget about them, right? So like on this record I just I th I I thought a lot about the harpsichord, the harmonica and the clavichord 'cause it's like I don't hear these things anymore and I love them. I bought a harpsichord and a and a weird little clavich And I just started messing around and they came to my house. And you know, it's probably took about an hour, but I pulled them up and recorded a few different takes, you know, some takes Stereo room mic, nothing on this . Some extra takes doing like some flourishy things. Just kind of playing around the notes. And then this clavichord thing, it's like it bends. You know, the harder you hit the notes, they bend. It's kind of wild, so I start doing this stuff Sort of Eastern. You put them together, and I was like, oh, this is cool. Like this is a world. And that's when I decided, okay, let me let me start the song. Let me write a line. And so I wrote this part . Which I'd also just watched Amadeus, you know that movie? Yeah. And so I was kind of imagining myself with Yeah, and then I put at the beginning and then I heard that thing, which is the importance of what the song was right from the top . And then the drum entrance. Oh. And then the band is sort of its own thing. So there's this, and then the harpsichord and the clavichord, this whole world are just gone, and I'm left with my Rome recording . I'm not the time . And it was it was so simple it took one second to a few tracks on the harp and clavicord, but Jesus Christ . That's like that's like whatever and this is like my mind like opens into like a whole world. And then they don't play much of a role, the harp score and the clavichord throughout the song, but they really take flight in the end, so. Can we hear those in context then? Yeah, so the end they kind of pop back out. And then I bookend the song with the with them It's almost like in the harpsichord and clav chord, I don't hear a person. I hear like a little chorus of like angels being like this is important . Give me your attention. Yeah. Whereas the song I hear the people so clearly . And so, you know, it's so basic when you look at the session and it took no time at all, but it was just about the the playing and the choices of essentially how to take a song that's just uh you know, most important is the song and it's one of my favorite songs, but a band in a room presenting something and then one or two other elements that just make it m more than the sum of its parts. Yeah, yeah, totally. And and those words, you made them up on the spot. I mean it's it because it's quite a deep song. I had them like I had little ideas in my head. You know, I sometimes you get like like I had the idea like explaining like I don't really care what happened before. I don't know why, would I? You know, so I that's that's one thing where I feel out of step with other people, you know. And I just had that idea, like I'm not the type to care what happened before. I'm just happier here now. And then the chorus just kind of came out in real time. You know. I'm not joking. You know, I I like this idea that like there's no wink. Like, you know, if I s if I wrote a lyric, it was love at first sight. Seems like there's like a wink in that. So I liked just being very uh direct with my sincerity. And then the whole end that just kind of came out of nowhere I just started, you know, shout it out, shout it out, shout it out, shout it out. When you want when you get when you get what you want. And I kinda said that 'cause it made me smile. Like a flip on like Rolling Stones or something. Yeah. This is the heaviest when you know it's really on . It it wasn't write 'cause there's things I s I say in my head. I wasn't trying to write a poem, I was trying to put on record the my you know, my own mantras. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. And we we we've got a lot of patron questions um from our patrons today and one comes from Joel Scoda says and it kind of relates to this in a way Hi Joel. Do you typically start with music and then develop the lyrics or vice versa? When you develop an initial melody, do you have an artist in mind versus knowing it is for bleach I I let it all go. You know, I I try to do things, but they I fail when I try . You know? And then the things that I try to do I always end up fucking with and then they become something I wasn't trying to do and that's when they're interesting. You know, I think the best way to answer that question is to know what you're doing in the stud io is a bit boring. You know, you're always trying to find the accidents. Um once you know what you're doing, you kinda the magic leaves. It's why I love playing synthesizers I'm not acquainted with because I get my best takes when I was like, you know, it's why the golden age when synthesizers first came out, we get the most incredible recordings of them. It's when people learned them and became tasteful and understood what all the oscillators and filters we' doreing and how to play with them that they just get they sound like spa music, you know? So I just love doing things I don't know how to do. Yeah. Yeah. And and by taking yourself to Rome, bringing the band, putting yourselves in that studio helps kind of it shocks the system. Yeah, I don't know how the board reads the mics that you know so I love going home w once the once the it's there and then you know trying to yeah you just you don't you don't you you want to be scared and and afraid and unclear and hear yourself in new ways and it's not a job that that expertise is interesting in. I hate when anyone claims to be someone who knows exactly what to do with a song or with an album. Because if someone says, Oh, I know what to do with this, I think, well, that can't be the most interesting idea if you're sure. And that that's how I approach all this stuff. Bit frustrating sometimes. Yeah. Um, shall we have a another blast to that end so we can round things off for um not too much? Yeah, I guess the song really takes flight in the last rant. Took me on Shal ala Shall I la fun Shut it out, shut it out Shut it up, shut it out Shut it out, shut it out Oh you got to shut it out When you want what you get When you get what you want It's the heaviest When you know it's really on That's the time to hold time to hold on to hold As the stakes get away Kinda join and be like It ain't the time to roll away That is the time to stand every truth . When you want what you get , when you get what you want , all of that fear comes out in the big one I'm not j oking at all I'm not joking by bleachers and it was really interesting seeing that session and how you recorded it but also to see no what you see as a very basic recording in terms of the ingredients, but also to illustrate what you could have done was really interesting to see. W also the speed that you worked and quickly double track those brass parts, you know, put a little effect and and You you know what you can do and often your body just does it and then you feel bored because you've done it. Um so you just know it's like a gut feeling. And it's the most important thing with recordings because it's all this like circular thing. You know, the genes get bigger, the genes get smaller, you know, back and forth, back and forth. And so you're just looking for the thing that shocks you. It's it's you know, there hasn't been much sonic in vention at this point in about twenty or thirty years from a frequency point of view. Right? So if you think about the history of recorded music, there are literally new frequencies like the TR eight oh eight changed music, because that the frequency did not exist. You know, you listen to George Martin records, they're not there's no sub on that literal frequency. So, you know, and then you get into crazy sampling and chopping all this stuff. But we've reached this point, like a lot of things in modernity where it's like the form is set. So it's just about what you do in it. So now I'm just looking for corners of it that are like really interesting in that moment that that feel absolutely shocking. And and to me a lot of, you know, live, simple recording bones and all do that right now. But I feel very, very um uninterested in anything that is trying to shock me outside of em emotionally. Yeah. You know, it's a bit like food, right? You know like we did it all. You know, like we we we did like Asian, Mexican, Polish cuisine all jammed into one egg with foam shooting out of it and everyone's like you know and now it's just c sort of like well just give me something really heartfelt. We're gonna take a break. Cool. The next song we're going to look at is which we got two to choose from which do um let's do uh we should talk. Okay, excellent. That's up next . This episode is supported by the Masters in Songwriting program at Trinity Larban, with a right produce release philosophy at its center , the course is designed to give you the knowledge and community to build a lasting and successful career in the industry. To tell us more about it, I'm joined by Dr. Tony Briscoe, Music Production Module Leader for Popular Music at Trinity an. Hi Tony, thanks for speaking with us. Can you explain how Write Produce Release shapes the experience of the course? Hi John, thanks for having me. So Write Produce Release is really at the heart of the MA in songwriting at Trinity Lab an. The idea is simple. Students don't just study songwriting in theory, they actually do it from start to finish. They write original material, developing skills in melody, harmonies and lyrics. Then we move to production, building confidence with using DAWs and shaping their tracks into something more polished and professional. And finally they released music, exploring identity and technology while also learning a practical side, such as you know, the IP, building a brand, mapping a five-year career plan, all of that kind of stuff. So by the time they graduate, they're not just leaving with ideas, they leave with a finished portfolio and the confidence to stand behind that sound. And it's very flexible. This isn't a traditional full time in one room masters, is it? No. So it's it's it's the one thing we're really excited about is that the course is designed as an online first, which makes it ideal for working musicians and global students who can't relo cate. Uh and then in the summer everyone comes together in London when intensive writing camp, modelling on the professional industry writing sessions. Amazing. Who do you think the Masters is designed for? Well the good thing is that it's really for anybody who's serious about songwriting and want to build a sustainable career. We see emerging artists who want to build a credible portfolio. We also welcome working musicians who want to sharpen their production skills or better understand the business side, which is really really important these days. So if you're driven, curious, and ready to release music is a great fit. And actually release music while you study, the songwriting masters at Trinity Larban might be your next step. To find out more, head to trinitylabin.ac.uk. That's Trinity L A B A N. ac.uk and search The next song we're going to look at from the new bleachers record everyone for 10 minutes is We Should Talk. But before that, let's have a couple more questions from our patrons on Patreon. The first comes from Lucas Howard who says how do you stop hearing a track as a bunch of individual parts and start hearing it as one cohesive thing? When I listen back to my own stuff, it feels like I'm reading a Word document instead of experiencing a s ong. Uh well everyone has their own barometer. For me, yeah, not to knock anything you're you're doing, Lucas, but maybe that means you're not done. Maybe that means there's too many things, maybe not enough. I don't know, but I always have a moment where I leave the studio. It's g em well important listen outside the studio and well I'm walking around or driving and I hear something and think that's just one thing. That's just a song. And there it is in its best outfit. It's yeah, it's like a person when do you look at someone not see you know their dumb shirt and their dumb hat and their weird shoes and they're this and it's like, oh nice outfit. You know, you just it's just a feeling. So sorry for the an annoying uh answer, but I think you just you know and you know. And if you don't know, then you're still working. Yeah. Yeah. Um Brian Valentin Hall, I hope that's how you say name, Brian, uh what is your best aha moment this year in learning a new production technique in any door or last year in 2025 ? Uh I feel I've been doing a lot of like like treating the vocals completely separate from the track, which has been a big aha moment because I usually love to like have them be in relationship to the track. You know, like have you know certain reverbs like connect. So there's frequencies that are similar and then some different. So they're like of the track and also other uh standing above, but also sitting in. And lately I've just been I don't know, maybe it's a bunch of Lou Reed recordings I've been listening to, or like later Beatles stuff where the vocals are just completely you hear the overdubness in the most specific way. Uh is this an aesthetic that has been really fun for me and yielded some really cool results. Interesting. Right. Um let's have a blast of the master of We Should Talk and then dig into it . We had a band, we had a life, we had dreams. In a van, we wrote our own Bible supreme. Then you got a house alone, a wife and a kid. And those dreams turn to memories, and that's where it ends. But I still feel our pack running through my head. Yeah, I still feel our pack. Every time I'm on the edge, we should talk We should talk we should a little taste of we should talk by bleachers from everyone for ten minutes. And Jack, when I was listening to this, I immediately thought, oh, who's he talking about? And and it sounds as if you're you're particularly citing a person or a particular era. But then I realised just how many different projects and bands kind of you've been in, you know, and it could be any of them in a way. Who did it make you think of that you need to talk to? Well uh there's lots of people in our doctor Freud. Yeah, no it it's it that's why it connects because it makes you think that's it. relevant because like all the songs we were talking about this before, it's like I tell a personal story to ask a bigger question. If I tell a personal story, it makes my asking of the question have weight. You know, if I wrote a song that was just like, you know, who do you need to talk to, Wiley? Who do you need to talk to? Be real with yourself. Look in the mirror. Who do you need to talk to, man? You know, it's like shut the fuck up . When you put yourself on the line, it makes the question fair to ask. Uh so I I had this idea of uh I had an idea for a song but you know before I wrote a song. I I had it like a poem. I saw it in my head, like okay, like three different people three, different phases of life, no fuck you, no pointing figure, just like we lived a life together and now it's gone. We should talk. It it it it's not even there's no wisdom in the song. It's just how weird. I would assume you're thinking of someone right now. Assume everyone in the room is like you live a whole life with someone, and you it's I guess it's weird to admit that people come in and out of your life that some people are for seasons and some people are forever. You don't admit that when you're with them, you know, like all you guys sitting over there, it's like, you know, there is this idea you we'll know each other forever, um, but you won't. And someone will do something that you know, won't be evil but will sever something and you'll put on all your defenses of why you don't talk to them anymore, but then time will pass and they'll just be like, no, they're not evil. We just we're just not in each other's lives the same way. And then the concept of we should talk, I I liked that. That was how I was, you know, it was a poem. It was like, we should talk. I just saw it as a button. I didn't think it was this like massive chorus, which to me it turned out to be a very anthemic chorus. Uh, but I just felt compelled to write about it. More in like a how weird. And I also thought a lot, I listened to the stre et a lot, how people talk. And everyone, you know, I just notice these days is just like, oh yeah, he's such a fucking beast shit. Oh yeah, well she's a narcissist. Oh well fuck them. You know, like they don't know what they're talking about. Well, have you met his dad? Of course he's a in such piece of shit. Well, I mean look at his cousin. Like she's a fucking, you know. So much just like the tenor of how we communicate is basically shit talk. It's become a a a national or global language. Um, it's extremely boring because it ends the conversation. This happened to me. Well, they're a piece of shit. Bye . You know, it's well , what if people aren't evil? Well then I guess you have a little bit more to think about. You know, what if time passed? What if you played a role in that? What if not everything what if not everyone who leaves your life isn't trash? What if the what if you played a part in that and what if you admit that and then what if you f figure out how that's been a gift you've brought in good ways and bad ways to many relationships. So I just there's no I'm not calling anyone out. I'm just telling three stories. First one is someone I played music with who I no longer play music with. How weird is that? We had this brotherhood of music. That person's still one of my closest friends, but I was talking about that thing, you know? How odd. Next one is an old relationship. You live a whole life with someone and then it's just gone. The the last one is a newer friendship that, you know, had a really tough course, and you know, I liked on that one saying , you know, sort of admitting you miss, you miss it. It felt like the last button on it. But I wanted the song to feel like running and moving, because it's about how life you're just moving, and and and some people stay with you and some people don't, and that's weird. And I wanted to feel tense, and I wanted it to feel hopeful, and I wanted to feel tense, and I wanted it to feel hopeful, and I wanted to feel tense, and I wanted it to be accessible on both of those angles constantly. And the way I thought about that right off the bat was I start with just some rhythm. Yes, I'm on the M1. I like the drums on the M one. That's just M1 drums. There's no there's nothing on this track. They all have their built-in sort of early nineties Shania Twain reverbs. Kinda sounds like the start of like a song like This Kiss or You're Still the one. You know, just and I like to do a track, you know often I'll just pull up the on one and be like, let me mess around. So many bad sounds in there that can become cool sounds uh in the context of a song. So it's like, okay, cool. It's a good vibe. And then I just thought about just creating a bed for myself. So the first thing I do, you know, I wanted to create tension. So what creates tension. An ARP. You know? Something steady, something n unmoving. Where's the snow gonna go? Yeah. Is it gonna go north or south? Is it gonna get better or is it gonna get worse? And it just sits there. It feels tension, you know, it feels like you know John Wiley walks into a room and there's a man with a mask on . Is it his brother or his murderer? You know like so I I like that, but I like that there was tempo and and and you know, and then right away bring the band into the room. Okay, cool. Now I hear some people . And then from there it's just about, you know, sketching out the song. So so the next thing that happened was Zem started playing bass . And that brings in kind of like that more joyousness . I play guitar on top of it, kind of following all that . So at this point, I'm like that's what I get on the fifty-eight, and you know, just crank up the tune to start going. We had a band, we had a life, we had dreams . In a van, we wrote our own Bible supreme. Then you got a house alone, a wife, and a kid, and those dreams And I just kinda start singing my poem I wrote, you know, not really thinking about it. Um But the real aha moment was, you know, I'm like running through my head. Soon as I said we should talk, you know, I remember we didn't know where to go from there, and that's when we realized, you know, to go to that suspended feeling That's such like a clearing moment , uh like so introspective . I think about Born to Run a lot. Uh the chorus is translate I was baby born to run. Bruce is great at this. Uh I'm on fire. These these sort of like tiny choruses. So sometimes I write a tiny chorus and then I think to myself, oh I gotta write a chorus. And then I go home and it's not that I say, Oh, I just wrote the best chorus of all time. I just say I don't really want anything else. That's the whole thing. Like, what am I gonna do? Like, we should talk. Trying to lift it. It's like that's the goddamn chorus. Running through my head. Yeah, I still feel our pack. Every time I'm on the edge, we should talk. The whole goddamn sentiment. There's nothing else to say. I guess I could say it again . We should talk. And then I could get a little cue with it and just say we should . We should. And I was so happy with it because it kind of came out of nowhere. So then I start doing little things. So then it's like okay, well, let me let me make it a little more We should talk. Which clearly wasn't even set to the right tuning, but it's cool. Put another We should talk. A few other voices. We should talk. Just make it a little bit more of a moment so it's like you know we're going from feel our pack every time my money is we should talk. It just makes it a little bit more triumphant. And as soon as I heard that We should talk . I was like, oh, cool. That's the whole goddamn song. You know, and then it and then this thing happens a lot. This is like how a lot of songs that I've really loved how they've been recorded. And so that led me to the next bit which is first thing we played it on was a trace. I think it's a Cuban instrument. You know that guitar? No, I don' it's got three strings yeah and it lives in that sort of 12 stringy mandolin world and then I doubled it with a baritone six string Playing up high, which is kinda weird. Then another baritone on top doing this . Just kind of being a piece of shit. And then a direct ov ation, which is a really interesting tone. Kind of gives you like Lindsay Buckingham tones. So now I have all these like sort of static y, weird hitting baritones and traces. And they're following along and then also giving me my line. And they're a bit sloppy, but in context, you know the slop when you have something that's really programmed is they add a little like something like fleawood mackey like a little just like They had like uh yeah, it's a little life to it, but I really kept thinking about this like a folk song. I remember telling everyone that they're like, what are you talking about? You know, but just like where it's like here's space, like I'm singing, nothing's going on. I'm not singing, a lead happens, which is just very harmonica ener gy. But that that's the core pieces to this. And then once I have something incredibly tight, you know . That art makes it so rigid that then it just became about finding bits that could just throw it off a little bit and get on the mug with some delay . You know little bits here and there. Yeah, that's just a mug with delay. Told the drummers to go in and just start messing around with some fills . Just moments that don't take away from how tight we are, but can just remind you that we're not living on this grid . And that's something I do very often. So if I mute everything and just kinda give the I guess we could call them like uh like personality bits, they kinda sound interesting on their own because everything is so tight in a song like this. And so I'll do a lot of tracking that's just just vibe. Just like literal vibe tracks. And they kind of even though they're all different instruments, they're really doing the same thing. Almost like almost like if my band was an orchestra warming up, is how I see it. So right there you have uh noise from uh model demog. You have my drummers just literally just whacking around on the drums, you have uh a direct ovation, you have baritone guitars, you have trace, you have a banjo that is played, and it's just a big shitstorm that I can pull in and out to take away from the rigidness. Yeah . It's a totally fucking different song. But in context the grid is so locked with with my M1 drums that um that's that's that's the big trick of this song is is is using all that to take you in and out. I want to show you one more thing which is really exciting, which is I wanted to have a long note somewhere, so I was like, okay, hold on . I heard like a like a you know, like a long note that was like not really in key, but just hovering around the key. And so we turned the space echo. We just turned the return really loud and and I turned the uh not even the echo but the verb up not the verb, sorry. No verb, all echo. So I could just uh play with the time of it and just found the pitch, and that's where we got this down, which is only a space echo . Just a space echo feeding back and me just diving and finding the pitch. But it's so suspenseful cause it's not it's this give you some key . It's just out of tune, but it's so satisfying And was playing with it . And it was just the final piece that just um can we can we hear that in the context of the whole scene? Yeah. We should talk about it. Like delightfully out of tune. It's like almost like the looming concept of we should talk is that sound, like it's dissonant. But but that that that to me is like, you know, sometimes with this one it was that rigidity that I started with of, you know, gridded M1 drums and the ARP clock juno. Yeah, that's like some new order shit right there. It's like I had just wanted to present like absurd humanity, out of time drums, banjos, you know, bad tuning cause that shit's so locked. It felt like the um the point of the song, like you know, life goes on, jibba jibba jibba jibber jibba jab. You know, life goes on, I'm on a track, I'm on a track . I can't be taken off this track, right? You know, I'm I'm moving, I'm moving , I'm moving. And then but then like these like things happen that don't really add up completely and throw you in different directions Yeah. But you need the structure because that helps you tell the story and make those contrasts. Well it's no matter how it sounds, it's a folk song. You know, three th ree blocks ending the same way, three different stories all servicing the same point, the very end, one human moment of but I really miss hanging on each other's words speaks to everyone in the song. Yeah, but I I love writing a folk song and then producing it in the opposite way. Yeah, yeah, and it has tension and release. You were looking for tens ion, you keep the tension throughout the course of the song. Yeah. The release comes which we should talk. But then there's also further release because of all these extra ingredients you're chucking in. Yeah. Um and it keeps us hooked and interested. But there's a there there''ss this lovely payoff in a way, you know, the the the hope that is offered at the end. And I mean when you immediately started recording those vocals, did you put any processing on your vocal or anything? I put a shitload of tune on it, which is the only song I sing through tune. There's nothing really else on it. You know, it's a little bitty cue or whatever, but it's just a 58 and just in the room trying to like sketch out this idea. And sometimes I write with like a little bit of tune on, but I never keep it. I always then want to go in and get like a really human vocal take. But you sometimes you work in opposites, like this song is so personal and the story is so personal that I felt like the tuning made it feel like sadder, like I was trying to figure something out. I don't know. It just it just really st struck me and I just I just wanted to um you know when I when I did it it other ways it just didn't have the same duality of like you know, me stuck in the machine was more exciting on this song than trying to do this like incredibly organic recording, which is more the theme of the whole album. Yeah, yeah. I feel like thatim.es Somet when I hear tuning, I'm like, oh, tuning, whatever. And then the sometimes I hear it, I'm like, oh, the person's stuck in there. I wonder if we'll ever get out. That's how I hear myself in the song, trapped. Yeah. Yeah. Trapped in in the uh forward motion of life. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. I've I I've always find it fascinating when you think that you can represent that thought through sound. Yeah. It's never what you think. You know, it's like, okay, tune, vocoder, um, digital, cold , uh you know, messed with, fixed, perfect. Rarely, you know, when I hear tune somet,imes it often like Yeah, like I said, it makes me feel like a soul is trapped somewhere. So you know, someone screaming, get me out of here in auto-tune, it would be very interesting. You know, uh uh someone screaming get me out of here into a a a fifty eight with nothing on it, I would be like you can leave. Door doors open. So you play with them and and you and you find things. And and you know and those rules never add up correctly, but in different songs And it's so crazy, specifically vocal treatment, because it's so tied to lyrics, obviously everything, but specifically vocal treatment, God what what reverb can do to a s you know, if you play the song. You know, if I had um house alone, a wife and a kid, and those dreams turn to memory. If I had like a spring on. Then you gotta have some I think. Very cool tone, but like totally impersonal at that point. You mean if I had like uh my favorite slap, like a Echo Boy, right? If I had that on. In a venture screen, then you gotta have a song I think. Very cool tone, extremely not personal compared to what I need, you know, and so all these vocals, and I have all these different vocoders and They're all that man stuck in there. You know, I'm either stuck behind the autotune, I'm stuck behind the TC helicon. All these things. Let's see. The Superman song. It's like I liked it. The song is inertia in its own way. You know, I'm not like I don't have a plan to get out. I don't know how I got in. I'm just standing in the moment just being like here I am and you and I don't talk anymore. There's not like and so I'm gonna do this or like fuck I wish I didn't make that left turn. It's just it's the song is stun ned. It it's the song is like stunned. I'm just there and I'm just like we had this, we had that, and now we don't. We should talk. We did this, we did that, now we don't, we should talk. It's so um uh stunned so so digital effects really became a good friend to me in in in that context but once again i didn't go home and think i'm gonna do this song stun and oh the arp the the arp means mov of the stuckness of it all and then I'll present it through TC Helicon and a VC 10, you know, uh old vocoder and auto-tune. So I'm mixing past and present of like machine . It's not. It's just you hear it and you're like, oh, that's what it's doing. How cool. But you know, I think the whole like happy accent thing is so annoying when people talk about that. But it is very true. I feel like every studio thing is like, oh yeah, I d I dropped my coffee in the piano and then it was like, uh let it be. Whoa, you know, it's like it's annoying, but it is true., you You know John left the room and he came back and he was like there was a blackbird on the window. You know, like it it is it I get annoyed when I hear people on shows like yours be like yeah, tell those stories. Like someone broke the base . And that's how we wrote closer by nine-inch nails . Written by nondescript British person. Yeah, but it's true. You know, it's just fucking around with the band. I got this little folk song, we should talk. There's the vocoder, it's plugged in. Zem just starts playing this bass thing. You know, and by the way, a hundred times we do this and it doesn't work. Got a little song, everyone plays it. Yep. I'm bored. Yeah. But it is true. And it's annoying. Because it it it it it projects something that is annoying. But that but that's what it is. It's more I think our culture now has made it more annoying because if you look at like what a lot of us see, so much of the world is. And you too. This is how I built a table. And you can too. You know what I mean? Yeah. This is how I took my body from unhealthy to healthy. You know, this is how I took my face from fat to skinny. And it's like that's not ever works. You know what I mean? Like I didn't have hair, now I have hair. Like I wanted song, I made song. And so I think there's a frustration because the the world presents itself to be very figure outable. I I'm me too. Like sometimes I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me how to fucking do it. Great. And so when some motherfuckers there being like, yeah, I don't know. We were whacking on the things and something was half unplugged and it made this cool sound and blah blah blah and the space echo was feeding back and it was out of tune and somehow it worked. It's just like oh what? But that's the job. It's so powerless, you know? Anyone who wants to tell you how to do it isn't very good at doing it. A lot of cool tricks, you know. I like living life. That's why I like making music and writing. It's like there's things to remember, you know, don't be mean, don't point the finger outward. If you're pointing the finger outward, point it inward. Well recorded things are pretty cool. Great players are cool. You know, there's no shortcuts, but most of the time, a lot of the greatness does come from r randomness that you can't you can't plan for. Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, you do it. You put yourself in the position and you're doing it, which is how those moments arrive. That I would ever impart onto anyone is to do it. Dedicate your life to doing something. One thing. Not doing a million things like shit, but doing one thing. I make music and I and I make music in in studio, I make it on the stage, I do, I do whatever, but I make music. I think about music all day long. I think about life becoming music. And and that's the only thing that I've noticed is that if I take my hand off that wheel, which I don't often, but the few times I have, I don't I don't feel myself, I don't hear myself. If I stay really focused, I can live in utter frustration. But the music happens. Yeah. Let's have a blast of the ending and we'll have another break and then we'll look at a third song. We should talk I love all the different random sounds with in that. So cool. Um right, we're gonna take a quick break and the next one we're going to look at is dancing. Yeah . Tired of background noise ruining your recordings, meet the new tape it denoiser, the plugin that automatically profiles your noise and removes it cleanly without touching your sound . No artifacts, no degradation, just your recording as intended. Drop it into any door as a VST or use the desktop app to clean files outside your session. Quick, easy and flexible. To find out more and to get a special launch offer of 50% off, head to tape. it forward slash denoiser and hear the difference for yourself . The next song we're going to look at from everyone for 10 minutes is dancing, but just before that, I'm going to ask another Patreon question, this time from Aditya Saputra. What is something you do in production that people wouldn't notice but actually makes a huge difference ? Um recording way or muting a lot of vocals. So like sometimes the impression of a lot of things is more powerful than a lot of things. So I'll I'll be specific. So if I want like a it sound like a big vocal part with a lot of people, it's like often you're like you know, five track, ten track, you know, bunch of harmonies, pandemic here, here, a lot of vocals, right? And then you get into the session and you're looking and mixing and you realize that you're kind of hitting those sonic walls. So you know if you mute half of it, it actually starts to sound bigger because there's more space for those vocals to go places and for each one to be more heard. So that's something that , you know, if I if I played A and B, you might not hyper notice, but it's doing a very like subtle thing where it's like breathing by being uh less. So there's a lot of like at the end like muting and making sure that stacking is doing what I want it to do, not what I think it's doing because I stacked it. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Right. Let's have a blast of the master of dancing and we can find out how you created it. Think about it when you think about it , you think about it when you think about it . Scaling in ice wall, trying to move on Things seem to fade, now things need to fade now Living with heartbreak, there's no solution Things seem to fade now, things need to fade now So just a little taste of dancing there by bleed This is a really interesting song and I'll show you how I did it, but I recorded it twice and then I realized the best version was the two of them on top of each other. Which made sense later because I you know, Elliot Smith used to he didn't just double track his vocal or guitar, he would do the performance twice, guitar and vocal. And it created a really interesting phase. And so it's a very, very sad song about you know it's a it's about death, but the different you know, so so often with grief it's uh I I I miss you, I'm scared, I'm broken, you know, that kind of world. And this is an angry run. How could you let me do this alone? And then the line is Glory to the ones who are left, hallelujah. So all of us who are stuck here on earth Sounds like But yeah, it was an interesting place to write from. Like I I've written so much about grief and death that I I'm just interested in exploring different angles of it. Usually I stay in the very wistful place of passage of time and that when you lose something after a lot of soul searching, what you're left with is how lucky you were to have something worth losing. That's what you're in that's what I'm often left with. Is to have a rich life is to have is to put yourself on the line and that y you know, you have to kind of get messy and have things worth losing. But there's this other corner of it which I wanted to write about. I had this lyrics scaling an ice w all. It's like you know that feeling like you know, like trying to run underwater. I was looking for like a better metaphor for that, and I thought of scaling an ice wall was so sad. And in the metaphor, I don't have like picks, you know, I'm not like it's not like a Netflix documentary where I'm doing it well. I'm just like trying to scale an ice wall. And it's a much darker view on life. So I had this this general poem, you know, how could you let me do this alone? Um it's the interesting place to write from, you know, a bit of rage at the at the dead person. Um there's also hope to it because it speaks to whatever af whatever is afterlife as a um beautiful place, and this being the stressful place, which the you know, religion in at its best that I've read seems to echo that, you know, that this is the hard part. You know, I guess some of the Christians have hell, that's tough. I don't buy that. Do you? No. No, no, no. I just couldn't tell if you were like yourself. Which would be fine. But I just like the idea that this here is is the messy part and then afterwards something else. So I liked feeling left in the song. So well how the fuck do you record that? It's tough. Because I want it to be masked and pres ent . So you know I could take you through literally how I recorded it, but the interesting most interesting part is that it's two recordings on top of each other. This is recording one. Actually done at church studios in London. Oh right. Okay. And Crowd Chat. I lived out here for about a month and a half and and did a lot of work on the album. Yeah. And it was really nice to be here. The British people are cool and they understand music in a really interesting way. Or is or I I perceive them to understand music, so when I'd walk the streets and listen to my tapes from the day I would look around and imagine everyone, you know know,ing every word, every Stone Roses Beatles album and you know, Happy Mondays and all the music I love the most. Which I think is probably true, but it didn't matter because it was my projection. So I recorded this is in this way where I pretty much wrote the song. The guitar is detuned and the recording of it is nothing to write home about it. Quick note on double tracking. Without the double, it's too precious. It's actually less sad, the double. It that that dissonance of that rub of not perfectly matching yourself, it actually feels like you know that phrase I'm besides myself. Um that's an amazing phrase. It's about it's about uh dissonance it's about um disassociation. You know, so one vocal trying to move on very present person talking two vocals scaling and ice wall , trying to move it. It's almost like a blurred human. You like feel the person's ghost too. So I I love that first song. But but that is a a double of that one take. No, I think. Oh, you sang it to but but it's not the second version that you're No no that's this is one take so this is this is V1. Yeah. Try to move on. You hear what that song is. And it's lovely. And I was very happy with that song. But when a song means so much to you, you find yourself searching until it's truly that. And and I would say this is is one of my favorite recordings I I've ever done. So I had that version. And then there was another version, you know, I I had got the all my harpsichords and whatnot that I showed you on I'm not joking. So I have all these new harpsichords I get, I go back to New York And I'm utterly fucking around. I'm imagining you donning a Mozart week every time you have one. Um you know and and fuck me for watching Amadeus and becoming inspired. Like y'all can write your think pieces on that, but I am what I am and it led me down a good path. So then I do this version. That is a totally different vocal take. You know, here's my older one and the then the blue one. So so I get I I I use Pro Tools in a very like kindergarten way. You know, in my head , I'm no synest esthetic or I don't have synesthesia or whatever the right verbiage is, but I bass is red. Not because I see it that way, because I've always done it. Bass is red. Vocals are blue. Auxiliary vocals are different versions of blue, right? Guitars are green, uh, you know, auxiliary tracks, you know, noises, sort of candy things are yellow. And in this one, I had to , you know, my other lead vocals are m orange brown, which they never are, but that denoted the old take. So this is take two. And I was thinking about street hassle and songs like how do I take an acoustic song and not make it acoustic song? So just let's just be freewheeling. Living with heartbreak every joy is just a reminder , just a reminder. Someone has just watched Domadeus . And and this is beautiful to me. But it's a little bit of a bastardization of the form of the song, right? Um and so then that's when I call Laura who engineers and it mixes everything with me and you know have one of those hard conversations where I'm like, take this session and this session, these parts of the put them together, you know, like I just get like I need to hear it. So I put the two together. I I put back in my acoustic guitar and my other vocal take, and now these are the two on top of each other. And to me, and it sounds simple enough, but there's you know, this is like the culmination of m so many vocal takes like there was this double track in New York. Living with hop, right? Just kinda like little dead sounding. There's this single track in New York. Living with Heartbreak. Super Dead. There's this other double track from New York. Living with Heartbreak. A little more tender. There's the version one double vocal. Living with Heartbreak. Much more breathy. I just found a space that connected all of those things And once I heard that I started to see a path to finish the song, which was going to be an acoustic song with an incredibly ornate amount of production that would secretly be in there. And so what that looks like is this. You know, when you hear the song, you're mostly living with V1, which is dance. So the first thing I do is I put all my harpsichords back in, which as we just heard are pretty ornate. You have that whole world. You have clavichords . You have the EMU sampl er . Just kind of holding these stagnant notes . That's his Korg. I don't know which Korg that would be, but it's cool. You've guitars . There's a lot of tremolo on them . So this whole world now gets built And I think what I love about it is it feels like a rushing like kaleidoscope of memory. Something happens when you start recording enough things that it becomes unplaceable. Like I cease to hear the electric guitar, I cease to hear the specific harpsichord takes, I the synth, I just hear Yeah just like this kaleidoscope of of memory. And when you put that in all together, And then it's gone. Now you're in an acoustic song. And this is all riding manually. You can see all these rides. Another burst of it. So that was trial and error or trying to play them at the same time and thinking I don't need that now. Well mostly trying to play at the same time, you know, just just making if you look at like this automation here. Just just m you know, basically I treat Pro Tools like I would treat a board. You know, manual automation isn't isn't super common on Pro Tools, you know, because everyone needs to start drawing it, but like it's so, you know, that's what you would do with a fader. You know, you go in, you say, I want this burst to be then go away. And then a bit wild but but so I I automate everything as you can see like that. So you know this is an example of a song where I took an acoustic version and then I took a really esoteric version and put them together and then automated the whole thing so it's just lived as more than in acoustic track. I almost wanted the these like memories to be there. Um and that was also a cool thing I did with these vocals, which, you know, kinda had this idea of like a string part And I thought, okay, this will be the cello. These will be kind of pins aga And then there'll be like some plucked violin going like that. So I kinda wrote this stagnant little string part that I would do and thought I would send it to Bobby and have strings recorded and then I realized, you know, this person doing it drowned in reverb is it's way like sadder. It feels like it's like blips of m memory. So that's a perfect example of like, you know, in my head I'm like, okay, the strings will come in here. And then I do that, not even thinking. You know, it's just one take, but you know, they're kind of pitchy and just doing what they do, and they've got reverb on them to make it kind of sound cool. And then you hear it, and it you know, whenever something gives you a special feeling, like I thought, glory to the ones who were left, hallelujah. And then I hear all these people going dun dun dun, you know. It made me think of all the people stuck on earth. Like that's all of us like running around. Someone's like, uh , and someone's like, and and you know, I wasn't like I'm gonna make this little chorus of everyone running around and trying to have a life. But you hear it and then you think of something bigger than than the music. Yeah. It's great. I I again I, mean we w we mentioned the fortuitousness of of recording and writing and and that kind of ties in with that in a way. You're sketching an idea, you're doing it immediately with your voice because that's the simplest way of doing it. And then you realize, oh no, actually that that reflects. Yeah, well you have these aha moments of like Yeah, like I said, I wasn't like and then you'll hear like all the townspeople rushing around, but I heard it and I was like, Oh it, you know, sounds like a million church mice, you know, trying to it it's just like you have these like almost like cartoon visions in your head, and when you get those, they kind of make you laugh, and that's when you know you've done something good. When you kind of see it like a movie, yeah. But and you know, if you look at how many vocals are on the song too, th this is a really important concept of like how many times and in how many different ways I track the song just to get the right kind of dissonance. So many tracks happening. Living with heartbreak. And it's because we're left hallelujah . Do you think a burden when you think a burden? Living with heartbreak, every joy is just a reminder You know, it creates a very sim ple thing when it's all put together, but sometimes I'll do a vocal take and just like it and sometimes I'll double it whatever and then sometimes I'll just like record a song many many times and you can see here like just sort of grab a few pieces that are nice from this one or this one. You know there's a there's a huge collage here that just ended up being what it needed to sound like. To me, that happens when a song needs to sound like a memory. You know, like I said, uh that sort of kaleidoscope feeling. I think if I sat down and recorded the song in one place it would have been a little re reductive for what it is. It feels like like a a video of like old times with a knowingness playing on top of it. Yeah. I mean you said essentially it's two versions of the song. But but all those other vocals are they from other attempts or basically V one is guitar and a double track . V two is a double track and And Harpsichords, which sounds like this. Living with heartbreak, every joy. I'm singing the little silly. And then everything else, all these vocals below. These are once I get the sense of it. I need a tougher take. You know, I just start adding and kind of sketching it out. But but that was the first time I'd ever done that. Truly taken I I record many different versions of songs, but truly taken two songs, just played them on top of each other and thought, oh that's interesting. Uh so that'll be a trick that will probably never work again, but now it's kinda in my back pocket of like, I don't know, play 'em at the same fucking time. Yeah. Yeah. It does seem to bring two worlds in a way. Yeah. Because you know, the the original occupies that Elliott Smith world. The the second version I mean it's funny. Whenever I hear harpsichord with in pop music, I think of the late sixties and bands like the Left Bank and and that kind of Baroque pop that was around then. And and you're you're kind of bringing those two to together. You know? Yeah, well the harpsichord, you know, it pops up on this album and the clavicord too. They're just lost sounds like oh, they almost became too specific. Yeah. And then they're gone. So there is a literalness to some recorded music where it's like, well, what have what have you not heard in a while? Try that . You know? Yeah. Um let's have a blast of the ending and then we'll have uh a couple more questions for you. I could you let me do this alone to the one who will let Hallelujah It is dancing by bleachers from everyone for ten minutes, and I'm gonna hold you here for another few minutes. Yeah, please. Jack. We have some more Patreon questions. One from Mackie who says how did you build your intuition for music that sounds good and following that, how did you learn to trust that intuition when building out the final work? I don't know how I built it. I've just always had my I've o I've always believed in my gut on stuff and I just follow it's all it's all I have. That's just a daily reminder, you know, just whatever I think when you're first getting involved in music, note absorbing as much as possible learning from that experience can be a good way of having a an intuition. I just love to pla y and I would get lost in playing I still do. And then what happens when I get lost feels like I guess the best way to answer that of an intense question, but I'm trying to think of a way to answer somewhat literally. The things that happen that if the world w didn't exist, you feel like just sound like your soul, or that's all that you have, right? That's that's that's all that there is. So I I I think it's important to let yourself get lost and then admit what excites you and not think about it through the lens of anything else. Yeah. That's that's it. Can't please anyone. Um there's an interesting question from Serena Smith who says you've done so much to help women artists be empowered. So Brina's latest album being a great example. How does that commitment translate into the technical side of the studio, specifically with engineers and producers where women are still so underrepresented. What are the best ways to tackle that gap and ensure the studio feels like a genuinely safe and welcoming space for women to contribute? Um well make all my albums with Laura Cisk , you know, pretty much since I've started. So that that uh lack of representation is very real and the the stats are stunning. But in our little world, you know, it's it's me and Laura making all the albums , so um you know, I think you just you just I think it's as simple as as who you hire and who you work with is is how the shit changes. Yeah. Yeah, and but do you think people should be conscious about that. I mean Laura your relationship with Laura is one of friendship that but that's probably how it began. No, I I started working with Laura because she's the best engineer I ever worked with. Right. There you go. Period. Yeah. Um so you know, I met her and I was making the first Bleachers album and I never had met anyone that good . So that was that. Yeah. You know. But I do think her presence and her genius and her work makes it, you know I think I think opens a lot of doors and you know, you know, a lot of s some of those fields have have have just been like decided that they're male dominated for no actual reason. Um but it seems like you know she's really connected with the school she went to and I think there's a lot more I think there's a lot more women coming up through through Yeah. Certainly hope. Um one more patron question um from Rob Las ker. I feel like a big identifier in your sound of vision is gear that feels timeless, Lindrum, M1, copycat, etc. How often are you experimenting with new gear and plugins versus focusing on what you know works and letting the songs be the focus? Constantly. I just don't like experimenting with something that's like a bad version of a thing. You know, so like if something is like a a new soft synth version of a classic synth, that doesn't interest me a ton. But I I pretty much am vacillating between modern and classic constantly and and I really like the interplay between them too. You know, if you record something incredibly digital, what happens if you put it through tape? Sometimes you get some really interesting stuff just blurring the whole goddamn thing. Which I think is is where we're at. You know, it's a bit irrelevant to me for something to be too placeable. Going on to our questions, so I mean you've answered these before, but get a fresh take. So the general one is about tech, a piece of equipment, or an instrument, or something that was specific to this project to everyone for ten minutes? piece and I used it in very different ways. Sometimes I use it as a harpsichord, sometimes I use it as like a big stacking reverbie dreamscape. And sometimes I use it in place of where I would put something very like sharp and placeable. You know, where I would put uh Celeste or a Glockenspiel or like a tubular belt. So you you find these characters for any given album that become like a through line. And what I love about it, what I love about it literally is that I haven't heard it in a long time. I love how it feels, this like weird tactileness. It's a percussion instrument and a piano kind of in in the same way. You know, you can't blur the notes the way you can with like a piano, like everything is almost like a B3 with the percussion way up. You hear every percussive hit. And it just became a character that I got very excited about, mostly just because I don't see a lot of people using them. You know, so it made me feel uh new and excited and like I was putting this filter outfit on it that that that and I were bringing it on tour and it's just it's just a character now. And you you you f you find these things. I've had them in the past in in different you know, when I was when the first bleachers album was the Juno Six, it just like spoke to me in this way uh and and it wasn't being used like crazy at that time. So this was sort of like before the eighties explosion, so I just kinda was listening upstairs at Eric and playing the Gino 6 and feeling so new about it. Songs are songs. Songs have to be great, period. They have to sound like the soul shooting out. But production is you have to match the excitement of the songs and finding a new piece of gear or something that sets you on fire. Often every album I've ever made is usually one thing that really propelled it. And then I tailor around it, you know, like okay, the drums this or that, blah blah blah. But the Lin , the harpsichord, and the baritone guitar, I would say are the heroes of this album. Those are these like defining factors that shoot out and and like ground it in its own world. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. And I'm always thinking I'm always just sitting online looking for something that you just you know it when you see it. You know, I have I had that moment with the princess guitar where I was like, Oh Love that guitar and I don't see it anywhere and and you're not trying to be different, you're just excited and you just f find something. Um and then often they get used to death and that is what it is. But you know, it's that comfort shock thing, you know, bleachers like the saxophones, the double track vocals, the you know, this like this like heavy, uh hopeful but mourning low end that like lives through things. It's like I love those things that are so honest and comforting to our sound. But then the shock, you know, of like bringing both in. Dancing when we went through that's a perfect example. You do too much of either and you fuck it up. You know, if it if you go too shocking, that it almost feels safe because you're just living in the safety of how bizarre something is. If you go too comforting, it is also safe. So you're looking for that perfect blend. And those things, yeah, that harpiscord and the baritone guitar when I would Our last question is about advice, whether you've learned anything since we last spoke to you that you would share with other people ? Um I I learned the same thing I learn over and over again, but I learn it in different ways and it never doesn't stun me, which is that whatever is going on is irrelevant. If it's going on, it's already over. And it's just so important to not let that pull you and take you in and you know culture and trends and and things that are are happening , if if you pay any attention to them, they just sort of smooth out your ed ges and then you get sort of lost in it. You know, if you care about the tide, then you also have to leave with the tide. And I just always am reminded of that because there is, you know, we we as people who make things can have these feelings of feeling left out or other or just to the left or right of what's happening. That's where you want to be. That's the only place you want to be. That's the only thing that lasts. You know, if you're in the center of what's happening, then you have to at some point be what's not happening. But it's, you know, there's a lot of uh just reinvesting in that concept over and over and over again, like a meditation of just I only have my own barometer and the second I bend that towards something external is the second I'm done . Really interesting. Jack, thank you so much for giving us your time. Yeah, of course thanks for having me for sharing your work. It's been absolutely fascinating. Let's have another selection from everyone for ten minutes to round things off, an outro selection. Alright, let's leave with upstairs at ELS. It's it's the last song of the album, but it's essentially the album ends with I'm not joking, and then Upstairs ELS is kind of a roll credits. It's about being at the studio with your friends. Fantastic. Thanks again, Jack. Thank you guys. And this is Upstairs at ELS is bleachers on Tape Notes. 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 other things. If you'd like to join, head to the link on our socials or websites. 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 . Friends drinking on a road Meow be safe. We got word and we got a way. Me and my friends drinkin' on a roof Now kin's in the sun, they park with lee, smiles and says And two ways to make a left, up the stairs and out the death There's blue and there's rest , there's blood and a rails, see calling that qualified , me gotta G my gun fight, me and my friends are yo we say We gotta worry, we gotta win Me and my friends And we we have lost the plot lane . All my friends are gone . Yeah, we gonna be