Final Thoughts on Production Advice

Hello, I'm John Kennedy and joining me for this episode of Take Notes is Arlo Parks with Producer Baird to talk about how they wrote, recorded, and produced the album Ambiguous Desire . I was joined by Arlo in Studio one at Strongroom in London and Baird joined us online from his garden mid heat wave in LA and it was wonderful to speak to them both and get a glimpse into their working relationship and their friendship. There is such a great bond between the two of them and it seems like they have so much fun when it comes to creativity and music. Arlo is calling LA home at the moment and although she was in London with us, she clearly loves it in LA. And I think that has really informed this new record. I think also that she's been enjoying going clubbing a lot in the last couple of years and this has led to her exploring the history of dance music and digging deep into club culture for inspiration. And it's great the way that they've combined that with Arlo's sense of melody and storytelling. It's really very effective. As usual, we filmed the episode so if you'd like to watch it and see into Baird and Arlo's Ableton sessions. Head over to patreon. com forward slash tape notes. There really is a lot to see. By joining us on Patreon, you get access to all of our video episodes, exclusive content not in the audio podcast, and the chance to ask our guests questions among many other things. Thank you as well to our partners at Taypit. Tay Pit have recently released a brand new Denoiser plugin, the Tay Pit Denoiser. And it does exactly what it says on the tin. We've been using it ourselves and it's become a really useful tool. It's been getting a really positive reaction as well. People have said how natural the results sound and how well it performs against other de noising tools that they've used, which is great to hear. It's also currently half price even better. So head over to tape dot it forward size denoiser to give it a go. But now without further ado, let's get started Arlo Parks is an indie pop singer songwriter from West London. Arlo's music career took off after uploading demos to BBC Introducing, quickly attracting industry attention, and leading to deals with Beatnik Records and later transgressive. Praise for her emotive guit,ar hooks and po,etic lyr ics, her music explores themes of mental health and sexuality while capturing the experiences of her generation. Her debut album Collapsed in Sunbeams arrived in twenty twenty one, won the Mercury Prize, and was also nominated for two Grammys. This was followed by MySoft Machine in twenty twenty three, which became a UK top ten hit. Her third record, the electronic focused ambiguous desire, arrived in april twenty twenty six, working with producer Baird and additional collaborators including Paul Edworth and Samfa . Baird is an artist and producer raised in Baltimore and based in Los Angeles. As an artist, he has released a trilogy of EP's, Bird Songs Volumes one to three via EQT recordings, and a trilogy of albums with his brother Gabe under their moniker The South Hill Experiment. As a producer and writer, Baird has also shared his talents with artists including Kevin Abstract, Brock Hampton, Danny Brown, Maxo, and most recently, Arlo Parks. Today, I'm joined by Arlo at Strong Room Studios and Baird joins us remotely from his home in L . And what better way to start than by hearing something from ambiguous desire? This is Get Go start in the whole and both her heels . Sequins on her cheeks . Yeah she looks like I haven't seen around here for months I know it was she looks so lost . She looks so lost . She looks a real says I could only tell you I don't know what the hell about me I can't only show up in me Hey baby could you pull me up ? How could you stand on ? Hello Apple It is Get Go by Arlo Parks from Ambiguous Desire The new album and I'm very pleased to say that I am sat in a studio at Strong Room in London with Arlo Parks. Hello Arlo. Hello. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to have you. Oh, that's good. That's great to hear . And connected to us online, zooming in from the other side of the world is Baird. So hello Bed , welcome. Hey, hey, thanks for having me. Tell us where you are, Bed. I'm in Los Angeles, California. And you're outside. I think this is the first ever outside interview we've done apart from live events at festivals. So you look at I can see a nice brick wall behind you. Yeah, yeah. I'm in my garden. I'm in my garden. And we've done a DJ set in that garden. That's what it reminds me of. We had a pretty sick party here . Es was DJing amongst the tomato plants. I was indeed. I love that. That's fantastic. So the scene of your rave in the garden is also the scene for this episode of Tape Notes. Very exciting. Yeah, went the aftermath of the rave. Well, this is the best Wi Fi I could give you so I'm outside and probably your first and last ever outdoor tape notes podcast. I don't know, it's quite nice if you're comfortable and we're comfortable . It's all good . And so you're outside, but this is in the location that you recorded the record. So this is actually outside his house, but we recorded the record in downtown LA just about like fifteen, twenty minutes away. Right. Okay, in Bed studio there. Yes . And you've worked with each other quite a lot. When did you record the record? Yeah, so we recorded the record over the past like two or three years , we met when I was making my second album . So specifically the songs Pegasus and devotion Bet and I worked on together and then we started spending more like one on one time together just exper imenting and then we locked into this little world yeah in like when was it like twenty twenty three ? Yeah. And now it is here and biggest design. Now it is here, it is real. And we're going look to at three of the songs from it and the first one we're going to look at is senses. So maybe if you could give us a blast to the master that would be a fantastic bird. We'll get a sense of the idea of the song. I can talk about sent I don't play when she jatting It was something or unwilling A lot feels like a barbell It is sensed by Arlo Parks from Ambiguous Desire featuring Sampha, although he hasn't come in yet . We'll find out about him in just a moment. So how did this song start? Yeah, so it began, I believe with that drum break. I want bird to play the breakdown of all those little layers in a second, but the drums and then the guitar tone actually in this song specifically very much informed the guitar tones we used on the rest of the record . Like this song was made in this little magic period where we try to understand what the album actually sounded like . So we had that guitar and the drums and then I was kind of just like mumbling along on the microphone and freesty ling and trying to find the shape for the melody . And then the lyrics flowed out really quickly. But these are some of my favorite drums on the record Bed. Bed had some magic had some magic going when he made these. I think we just got we got really lucky. Yeah. A lot of things will start with just like throwing paint at the wall and seeing what sticks. So there's like some drum sort of chopped up break things and then yeah kind of layered in some more I don't know what this is and is this all in the box bed or are you have you got a kit in the room that you kind of fiddle about with? We do have a kit in the room. I think it comes in later, a little live ride texture , but for the most part, we're just chopping things up with the Ableton Sampler just, you know? We play like one layer, second layer, third layer because I want people to understand the way that it all kind of lives together . Yeah, okay, so here's just like a hat that kind of ticks along . A little ride . This one we called the functional snare . This one is the new jacksnare. It kind of has a new jack swing. This is like sort of a tom kick . It does change pitch over the chord of the song as you can see. So it kind of tries to match the chords a little bit . These little snare rolls . This is a sort of chopped up ride brake, I think . Has a little tambourine in it . And then another one So that all together kind of forms the groove. Yeah. Yeah . And how are they processed? Or are they processed? 're barely They' theyre barely processed at all. I have a tuner on this one which, you know, isn't doing anything. They don't really seem to be processed at all. I feel like we have all these like almost happy accidents where like even when it comes to the guitar tone and like the combo of pedals that you had on the guitar, I feel like we didn't like record a dry running back. It's just like that's how it is. Which is a joy for David Rench, our mixing engineer , but so much of the magic I think happens when I hear a sound that inspires me or there are these textures that we're kind of dreaming up in the moment and that's what excites me enough to want to write. So we rarely kind of sit I mean we never sit at a piano or a guitar. It's always us kind of jumping around the room and trying to find something that sticks. So an immediate response to what Bed was playing in. Yeah. And do you have a sample library of all those different parts that you can dive into? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty disorganized, but I have like tons of different packs that I've downloaded over the years and some stuff that I've recorded, I have I do record my own brakes a good bit , try to do that regularly. Those don't always make it in, but it's good to do those anyway. And then just like kind of whatever happens, like this sounds absolutely ridiculous and it's gonna be kind of quiet . Can you hear this sound? I'll turn it up a little So what is that? That's just like a really nice texture that we stumbled upon and then put it in the entire song. Yeah . That sounds about right for our production style . It's always but that's the thing. My favorite records are the ones that have these little textural foul sounds that alone sound pretty thin and like they're not doing that much. But if you took that out of the song, I swear it would sound different. Falls apart. The homemakes would fall apart. So it would fall apart without the weird little space age thingy. Yeah, it's like an old, I have this old crewmar keyboard , just like a cheap Italian kind of seventies keyboard and it has a chorus setting on it which is either like one hundred twenty percent on or off. There's nothing in between. And when you leave the chorus on and just crank the inputs on it, but don't play any notes. You get these little crackly kind of swirly sounds. And I think then we threw it through some delay it looks like . So yeah, just kind of whatever happens in the moment, we try to try to run with it and sit there tweaking settings too much. And can we hear that the guitar then you were mentioning all over that goes on top of the drums? Yeah, so You can hear actually East vocal in there You can hear the drums in the guitar track also. And who's playing the guitar there? Bad, right? I'm playing the guitar there. Yeah, it's it's going through some pedals and we were never able to find this tone again. It just happened once. I think it was I have an iBenz like electroac stic nylon string guitar and I must have had it super loud because you can hear like the microphonics of the pickup is almost working as a microphone, you can hear the drums, you can hear all those reference vocal. And that's why I think I was kind of finding the melody as you were playing because I think it often happens quite symbiotically. And I feel like I love your core choices bad and they always inspire me more than anything I come up with . So I feel like you always hit this groove then I start singing and then you might have like have that guitar loop and then start working on the brakes and like it is this really dynamic process I feel like it's this runaway train and we try not to think about it too much and we just like build layer upon layer. So was this all happening in one session then? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all pretty instantaneous. And I also think you should give yourself credit 'cause sometimes I'll play a chord and you'll be like, dude I have such a distinct memory I was like I don't like that one you were like I think it sounds gorgeous I was like no different one but I think it is all it's just intuit ive as well. And I think that we like challenge one another because we have very similar tastes, but then when they deviate, we'll be like, I think this is cool. I'm like, Hm m. And then you try and I'm like, fair. Or I'm like, still no. And you're like, fair . And vice versa. And exactly. The song kind of evolves over the course of its duration, but we should hear the guitar and the drums together now that we've got a picture of both of those. There's something a cool little trick that I think because I was told to nerd out as much as possible. Please do this. And I'm a fan of the show, so I know people get into the weeds, but the guitar starts in the intro in Mono and then obviously it's a guitar DI, so it's mono. But then we use the little sound toys microshift to widen it as the drums come in. So you can kind of hear it starts in the center and then jumps out wide . And then it kind of spreads as the drums come in. So I'll play that with the drums. Yeah, great Yeah. And then I feel like the base really subtly gives it a lot of like propulsiveness ob.v Andiously in this song, I feel like the way that the vocals are stacked and kind of come alive with the production gives it a lot of momentum . But bass, especially on this record, I feel like bass and drums were really the backbone of the shape of it. Yeah. And especially I think with Sampha's part and having to blend the two together , we had to find really creative ways of like making it one world . Yeah. So maybe we should hear Arlo's vocal parts or some of them and then hear about how Sampha was brought into the picture . You have the scratch. You have the scratch one. Is that what I sent you last night? Yeah, yeah, I have a have a reference. So at some point we had all those elements going and then I vowed that I would never share these , but because I love tape notes, I will. So this was the freestyle that I had where I was just kind of finding the shape and there were no lyrics yet. So this is great. This is you responding to the music that exactly working on Okay, that's enough of that . But I just thought it was important to show how also the only line that I had was like dulled my s enses. Senses kept coming back as like this lyrical motif and I didn't have any of the other words . So the title of the song or the emotional center of the song is usually the first thing that I sing and then I build things out around that . But yeah, we can play the actual singing that sounds good now. Yeah Try to find the clothes . Turn it up a shower or cook if I tell you that I'm try ing isn't better than that isn't better So now we start to hear Samford . And we hear Bird too. Beir's beauties are on her. Yeah, yeah. need to isolate this . There's some very absurd like reference backup workers that ended onto the world with the English accent song. He was I was trying to sing a reference for yeah, yeah. No we but he sounds really good bad I love your singing. Don't for yourself done. Thank you . So in terms of layering up the vocals how far do you go with that before getting Samfer involved? And at what point did you start thinking about a second voice having him on the track? I mean, I feel like most almost none of the vocal tracks on this record are singles. Like everything is kind of doubled, tripled. I feel like it's my weird superpower to be extremely precise with doubles, right, bad. I feel like I can say that. It's actually crazy. No, I've never experienced this with another singer where you can sing start to finish not like punching a verse, like start to finish the whole song twice without hearing it. And then you put them together and they sound like John Lennon esque vocal doubles. I think it's quite honestly because when I was making music in my bedroom, I didn't understand that you could comp things. I thought you had to sing it perfect start to finish. So if I ever made a mistake, I would just start the entire thing again as a teenager. So I kind of honed the sk ill of just making it perfect every time . But yeah, so we had I mean you actually came up with that descending melody that ended up being the kind of core of the chorus . But I had kind of we had layered a few of my vocals and then we had the harmony in and we were listening to that EP duel that Samva has and also some of the work he has with Subtract because we were kind of slowly becoming inspired by the idea of club culture and you know mixing quite emotional emotional voices and quite soulful voices with these more electronic textures. And Samva has always been the touchstone for that for me and I've always been such a massive fan . And I felt like that discerning melody kind of reminded me of him in a way. And I wrote him a little letter being like, I think you will understand me and this record . And he said, Yes. Fantastic. So maybe we should hear that descending melody So maybe we'll also thank Samfa. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, here's the just without without Samfa . No love for myself . So is that bad ? Yeah, yeah. So that's bad guide your guide vocal in your way. Yeah , but also a response to what was going on. Before we get into Sampha, maybe we should hear some of these recordings of your vocals so we can hear the thing that you were just talking about layers layers . Yeah, they're in there as well. I'll just isolate those Maybe add in another one? Yep . They're slightly panned out . And then a third one . And these are all separate takes. Yeah , but they are identical . Yeah . Yeah. And then and then forced acts of me, which we don't need to isolate necessarily, but if we add those in it just it's an octave below. Oh, it's not. And is there a particular processing or chain around your voice recording about a recording? Yeah, I feel like we established one as we went along . For me , I always enjoy when vocal feels like it's kind of embedded into the tapestry of the music but also having that definition. So it took us a while to figure out how much reverb made sense and also to have a kind of signature sonic imprint vocally that felt specific to this record maybe more so than the texture that I had in my previous records. And I think that's also part of the new world that we were exploring sonically because my records in general before had like three or four elements vocal, pretty dry and like in the front , but I wanted to kind of sit back into it a bit and have it feel a little bit more kind of fluid and living within the music rather than being stuck in front. Yeah . And so given that instruction, how did you achieve that then . It was a bit like I don't know, it was kind of different for every song, but on this one it looks like there's a pretty simple basic I made a preset called really, really basic vocal chain a start ing point, which is just compression , a little tune, a little EQ , a little compressor and a little slap back delay, which is initially just intended to kind of make the recording process fun and then sometimes that just ends up staying on there. So there's that and then like a little EQ at the end and then the thing that's I think kind of unique to this song is this we have a bunch of sends going on where we're sending the vocal out to these kind of strange spaces. This one's called underwater space . So you kind of hear a bunch of things are going to, but it it just gives a little watery texture and there's a doubler . There's a little plate reverb And then like a little delay . Well, I guess it's not on the vocal there, but there is a delay at certain points and we kind of automated it on and off depending where we wanted it . So yeah, I mean that's the does that answer the question . Yeah, I think so.. Sounds great And so now to Samfer. So you wrote in this note , you said you're the guy . And did he get back to you straightaway? What did you do? He did. He did get back to me pretty quickly. And is he somebody know? Yeah, we'd worked together . We'd work together, but more just kind of jamming and finding ideas. We hadn't like put out anything together before . But I'd always been a massive fan of him. I feel like him and Dev Hines from Blood Orange are kind of my black British touchstones, like the two of my favorite artists . And so yeah, I reached out to him and then he invited me to the studio that he has. And I kind of saw him figuring out the melody and the lyrics in real time, which was really special. Like he had some like niche afro futurist film being projected on the wall and it was like this meditative moment of just like seeing him going round and round the chords and figuring out that shape and then he added in some piano at the end and I love his choice of chords is incredible . And he, I mean, how would you even describe it, Bed? I feel like the way that he approached his verse was it was very the way he approached the chord progression was kind of experimental and like kind of challenging to blend into the rest of the song . So we had to be creative with like making it one world together . But I think because his voice is also quite it's very himself but still is quite malleable and we were able to kind of blend my takes with his takes quite effortlessly and kind of make it feel like this almost blessing at the end of the song and placing it at the end allowed us to make it sit well together. Because it can be hard when you've made this full song and someone else contributes a piece. Like you have to kind of create the puzzle. Yeah, yeah, because we hear him as the song picks up and then he seems to be providing a backing role really doing that descending line that you were talking about . But then there's this what starts like a bridge but it,'s like the final section of the song and then he comes into full voice as it were . And where's the studio these days? It's in Hackney. Right. Okay. Hackney. So you had to come back to London. Yeah, I spend quite a lot of time in London . So I was cruising around, but it was really nice to be there in the room with him because I think you get a specific kind of magic when the collaboration feels like in person and you b'reouncing off one another and you know chatting and laughing and it feels like a really nice memory . Yeah, brilliant. Well, I think we should hear some of that. So what's the first element we should hear? The piano, just the vocal? What would you think Bed? Well, he starts to kind of creep in in the second hook. He's in the first hook too, but he becomes more and more present. I can't find no love, no love for myself Let's see and then another layer with some delay and then maybe a few more fight Until we get all of them . And then that's not Sampha. That's a reference that sits stayed in and it's my fault set are incred ibly out of tune out of so ft It was almost a duty to have the ugliest stems possible result in a beautiful sounding record. So that's why it felt like painting to me because there were so many there were so many layers to it and like even that drone that stays in throughout like even though there are these pieces that feel like a little bit out of order and there is a chaos to it, it all makes sense on the canvas. That's how I like to think about it with this one. Sorry, I interrupted the flow. Go on. Not at all. So I'll just play a section of the bridge and then we can kind of get into the elements of it. Yeah, that'd be great. Grab the ice trip of baby hardens your feelings . So that gives you a sense his section . Can we hear that? Can we hear that piano on its own? Yeah, here's his piano And would he sing and play at the same time ? No, he was figuring out he was figuring out his verse first. Yeah . And then I was obviously like, Oh, can you add a little bit of yan and he was like okay I,'m gonna, try ing to figure something out. And like, he's so humble. He doesn't know that he literally changed music, but anyway the piano, the piano came afterwards. And I think it was really it was really lovely that it kind of followed the shape of what he had created . And I like the idea of , you know, even sonically we're kind of passing on the torch from, you know, Baird's production and piano and allow him to kind of fully fill the space of the song. Yeah . It was sort of a back and forth because he initially sent this verse with different chords and then I laid a reference piano in underneath his vocal. That was this one , which is a very kind of dark and mellow It's kind of poorly played but it's following the melody and I had to chop it up And then we sent that to him and he sent back the kind of bright, beautiful classic kind of sampho piano sound. So then we blended those two together and it kind of registers as one piano, I think, in the final rhythm, but it's actually two So pretty. Yeah, it sounds great, isolated, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. That's so good What else should we hear before moving on? I'm really interested by what you were saying about Dev and Sampha as being kind of key reference points for you as a Black British artist and their voices because you have such a distinctive voice of your own . And it's really interesting because those three artists with you included you're all black British artists, but you sing in a particular way that is only you . And while you might listen to all sorts of different kinds of music, you don't try and follow it or copy it. You know, you've all three managed to find your own individual voice. Yeah , definitely. And I also feel like both of those artists have music that, you know, orbits around really personal topics, whether it's, you know, Sam for singing about grief or Dev Hyn singing about blackness or feeling like an outsider or like these really personal intimate topics . And I think that's also , you know, there's that spirit of it and also their taste as producers. There's something really specifically them about the choices they make with in terms of drum choices, in terms of voc al treatment and processing. So I feel like that was also important to keep in mind with my record that I wanted there to be a really undeniable imprint where you would know that like you could hear someone else's snow and be like, oh that sounds kind of ambiguous desire. You know, that's what I wanted . Fantastic. Anything else musically that we should hear before we move on to another song? I think that 's basically it I think I will maybe play will you play the will you play the drone because I feel like the other two also have drones so I want to Oh yeah where is that? There's a particular synth that I guess we kind of threaded through a lot of the songs on the record to try to make it cohesive and have its own its own world . Here it is . So you can kind of hear it swelling up in the pre choruses . And what synth is that, bed? I think it was a Labs synth . Yeah, Labs is like a free plugin that's I guess like sample libraries. I think they've now been folded into splice and I don't know how to use it anymore, but it was something we were using for a bit. Yeah, it's a sample based synth. I mean, I think most things that I tend to gravitate towards are sample based rather than software . And I love how it kind of just almost just drones and like has a life of its own throughout the entire song and there's something it like kind of perks perks out and recedes, but it's always kind of like this body of water that's like finding different shapes. I think that's important in all the songs for there to be something that's kind of alive and like popping out of place a little bit too much at certain points keeps it feeling like a beating heart, you know . Yeah. I think musically too, it's like we with a lot of songs in this record we sort of realized that like if you can't boil it down to like five or six essential elements and it's not something's not working. So there's like the guitar, the bass, the drums , the synth and that's kind of the core of the song. That little crinkly chorus noise sound is a really nice textural bed. But if I think we found when you start to add too many things we're kind of realizing that maybe the production isn't actually that strong. So if you can't kind of boil it down to just a few characters then you know try different characters . Definitely I love that. Yeah, really interesting. Right, let's have a blast of the ending bed and then we can move on to one of the other songs we're going to look at today. Cool Bread on the ice dripped of bird hard ens your feelings to wear myself fur away swimming in nice swift mother away from the demons that the current lights in the direction of pain through the same It is Senses by Arlo Parks with Sampha From Ambiguous Desire. There are two more songs we're going to look at Jetter and Heaven, which will we look at next? Let's go for Jetta. Okay, Jetta's the next one we're going to look at. We're going to have a little break and we'll be back with Jetta in just a moment . If you're serious about songwriting and building a sustainable career in today's music industry, this is worth your attention. Starting in september twenty twenty six, Trinity Laben are launching a new master's program, the MA in songwriting. Built around a write produced, release approach to learning, the idea is that you graduate not only with a master's degree, but with real music already out in the world, and the skills to keep building a sustainable career. You'll learn the modern side of the industry, things like protecting your songs, building your brand, understanding algorithms , and shaping a five year career plan with Trinity Lavan's professional networks. At the same time, the course goes deep on craft, refining your melodic and harmonic language, exploring new approaches to songwriting, and help ing you define your voice as an artist. Designed for modern artists and working musicians, the course is online first, so you can study from anywhere in the world. And during the program, you'll come together in London for an industry style int ensive songwriting camp. So if you want to sharpen your craft, build your identity as an artist, and learn how to navigate the modern music industry, this could be a great next step. To find out more, head to Trinity Laben. AC. UK that's Trinity LABAN . AC dot UK and search for the MA in songwriting. The next one we're going to look at from Ambiguous Desire by Arlo Parks is Jetter. But before we get into that, I've got a question from one of our patrons on Patreon, Arlo, this is from William Card who says Arlo, since you hosted your show on BBC, I've truly come to appreciate how your music taste and curation choices shape the sounds of your records. In preparation for a recording or writing project, do you follow any process for expanding your sonic palette? If so, what advice would you have to do so? That's a great question, Will it's an interesting one, isn't it? I feel like I'm a music fan above anything else and I'm listening to music every day, all day and we do in the studio also we take breaks to like blast whatever we've been listening to and for me it happens in a lot of different ways. I'll spend a lot of time on NTS or digging through YouTube or going to record shops and just picking at random . And because this record was really inspired by electronic music and nocturnal spaces, I was going out to a lot of club nights and like, you know, choosing and picking songs to play for my friends also . So my practice as a DJ and my practice as a writer were kind of coming together as like one big exploration. So I try and expose myself to as much new music as possible. And I get some good cuts from bird as well. Yeah, likewise. I think most sessions we start by just like playing each other a few new tunes, which will be funny 'cause if we worked the day before I'll play something we'll be like, I think I showed that too . Oh, I love it though. But yeah, so but it is really intentional practice, I think. And it's not just sonically, but also in terms of like literature and cinema . I have that kind of collecting phase at the beginning of every project. Yeah. So a rich personal cultural life is important. Very important curiosity . Yes. I like that. Fantastic. All right, the next one we're going to look at is Jetta. If you could give us a blast of the Master Bird, that would be great. Absolutely. bye City 's cash flow when it fiction falls tonight chomping onommy Janet together tell ing me about her date . It was kind of terrifying. It felt like closed climate I don't think it bubble . I tried the night on finger bubble . I killed the chase tug bubbling , I can't yeah it's just a one Well the journey the journey to this one is interesting I feel like I'm remembering it correctly bad but have to help me with a timeline but , I feel like the song was written before had properly like locked in the direction that was like slightly more electronic and had that like really strong p a leesttteablished 'cause wasn't it over a very I remember it was over something else and I remember being like, I'm not super sure that it's undeniable. This undeniable was almost on mantra , but it was over guitar and there was a break. And then you went away and you tinkered and then you showed it to me again and I was like okay, you're right . This one this one was touched by God. Yeah, yeah. We made I guess we made a lot of a lot of songs for this album and so sometimes there would be something in one that one of us heard and the other didn't and vice versa, but sometimes it would be a question of like hacking away to try to get it. It's not always like a super quick , easy, you know, picasso painting of a production sometimes you gotta really go in. It takes time. Yeah, this one was kind of one of those where I think we had the break and some semblance of the guitar part, but it wasn't really doing it . And at some point I went away and I have like a yeah, I was just like sitting at my kitchen counter with headphones on hacking away. Because you felt it, you knew , you knew. And yeah. And there was something in there was something in the guitar and there was also something in the storytelling and the way that the melody feels there's something almost like percussive about the melody choices itself and there was something kind of like dark and sensual about it, but I feel like it took a while for the guitar tone to be dialed in. Similar to sensors, I think, like that became the backbone of the song . And it was a very different it was a very difficult chord progression to lock in. But is that Simon in the end? Finafi? Is it his take ? In the end, it's my take, but Simon Martinez, who goes by Finafi laid in some really crucial beautiful guitar adornments throughout the entire track and on several tracks on the project. So he's really, really good. He's a source for sure. He is a source. So what should we hear first then in terms of how you created this . Well, the very first thing that you hear in the song is this and it's again just kind of like me taking up the duty of trying to get the most absurd and strange things into the pop music, you know? Or just try ing to make things like you hear them in isolation, they just wouldn't necessarily sound good, but this is like , I think it's plucking the strings in the headstock. Yeah, it is. I remember yeah, yeah. And then I guess if you play the guitar line and then maybe do the layers of the drums again, I think that will make sense as the backbone of things because it's a similar process to with senses where we had that drum break that felt propulsive. And you know, because I was listening to a lot of trip hop and massive attack and you know, DJ Shadow and all these artists who are very rooted in like the bsrakes and the drum or the spine of things . And then you came up with these chords and I remember being like, hold on. Yeah. Because my whole thing is like when I'm sitting down, I'm like, okay, I'm getting into it. And when I stand up, it's like time to go. SM seven on I'm ready. I'm ready. Yeah. Worth mentioning to you, this is the microphone we use for the entire project. Excellent. I love that. So the mic, you're talking to us in LA in your garden is the one that Arlo sang into. Ambiguius desire, baby. Yeah, yeah. DIY . Yeah, it's just whatever's quick and inspiring, it's not really for us. It's not Yeah, momentum in the studio unit itself for momentum. But maybe do the drums first and then do the guitar. Yeah, okay, so we have this sort of we have this thing Kind of chopping up the break . Then we have this thing , which is actually a drum break for a song of my mind that I never put out and then just had this kind of backbeat break thing layered that into . So I guess that was like yeah a homemade sample Forget what song we were listening to, there was some like James Blake CMYK . Yeah . But you were also you were talking to me. I remember we were talking about Baltimore Club and you were telling me about the fact that there are like there's like a small pocket of breaks that find their way into like so many of these songs. And I remember being pretty much that one. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I was just fascinated by the idea that a whole genre of dance music could be rooted in like a few little breaks. Anyway, continue. Three seconds of a band playing well, while James Brown is like, come on, make it funky . I guess the AM broke is the classic . Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So there's this just like a little white noise blasting which kind of just perks your ear up I think when you're listening to it and that's the that's the core of it. I mean, later on we layer in some more kicks that sound pretty bad when they're on their own. We layer in this like little skitter scatter sound , which isn't even on a delay. It's just hitting the same sample over and over again, which isn't like even in time with the song exactly. But it's just having those little imperfections kind of make it alive. More human or more alive. And yeah, when everything's super locked in, obviously it's not going to groove strange little bell sounds and yeah, so then all together the drums kind of have And then the next thing was getting this guitar . So it was originally like a guitar part I played on a baritone guitar just, a homemade baritone guitar. It's very poorly intonated . And so we couldn't really use the original tape because the sounds weren't great . And ended up just replaying it note by note with some notes kind of swelling and some notes not so that's kind of just very straightforward . But then you have And then like some of these guys using a pitch pedal, having the pitchfork . So that's all together . And a little chorus. This is a free chorus plugin that everybody should have . These are online pretty much everything . So yeah, that's kind of the guitar. Chuck the drums under that. Yeah Yeah, that'll be good . I think later on we added some live drums here . You can hear that the ride that's just in the studio , some claps and it's so dynamic. I think these are my favorite drums on the album just let that go on forever, you know ? So yeah. So last time with senses, you were responding to the music, you started singing melodies and then created words out of those. Yeah . Is it the same approach for Jetta? Yeah, it was quite similar. I feel like I had those chords and I started freestyling this melody, but because the melody is a lot more intricate, I had to think for a bit longer about the story . Like to me that chords felt like a journey. There was a sense of anticipation building . And I was reading this book called Raving by McKenzie Walk, which is about kind of New York queer club culture. And she had this passage where she was talking about , you know, calling an Uber with her friends and what they were wearing and what they were drinking and the anticipation for the night building. And that's how the drums felt to me and that's how the chords felt. So I had to take a bit of time to document some of my own nights that I had with friends. And that's why it starts with like you're packing a night bag, cigarettes, cash, phone . And it's the beginning of this story. So it took me a bit more time to come up with the lyrics, but I'm proud of them on this one. Yeah. And storytelling seems to be a fundamental part of Arlo Parks and the kind of song that you write. Very much so, and I think that especially with this album making process I really wanted to have more patience and have a bit more time with it so it allowed me to wait until I had a story or a moment that I really wanted to freeze and immortalize more on immortalize later because of the voice note at the end . But yeah, I was really patient as to what I wanted to say. And we always said that each song had to feel essential on the record. It needed to be a song that you know, someone on the Reddit thread would put their hand up and be like, This the one for me and would like go down to the death for that. So yeah, this is one of those for me. Yeah, that sounds great. And Jetta, what does that word? Well, it's it's the car. It's the car , yeah, yeah. It's like jumped into my jetta, then we rode together. Yeah . I feel like for me, even the album cover is me in the driver's seat of a car glancing back and it is this album that feels like it's about journey and it's about these kind of fleeting moments of intimacy and there's something about I don't know, I love naming songs after like colours, objects, people and there was something about the jetta that felt like quite an ordinary car object, but I just love the idea of the car carrying a lot of meaning and carrying you to one of the best nights of your life. That's so exciting, isn't it? important . One of the best nights of your life. It was. I had so much fun. Yeah . And yet in a way, I mean, it's quite a short song. It's only two minutes, forty nine. I've written down the time . But it's interesting because near the end the beat kicks in harder and you kind of get into a more of a club kind of environment. Well, I remember then you end it. Yeah. Yeah, I remember Beth do you remember that when you went to the Jamie X and then afterwards, I remember you came back to me with a bounce of it with this kind of like fall to the floor breakdown. And I remember you were like, Is this too much question mark? And I was like, No, I'm obsessed. And I think for me, it was important that we committed to moments like that . You know, this the way that the outro is shaped, I wanted it to feel like you're in the club and then you're in the smoking area. And then you hear these little fragments of conversation and that is actually a voice note from a night out with my friends. And the voice at the end is me. Maybe you should hear that. Yeah, hear that isolated. The big kick comes in. We'll set up the scene. Yeah, the big kids happen So here you leave to the smoking area and you can hear the music still in the background . And so that is Yeah, yeah, so it was actually I think a video that I took was a video on a night out yeah with my friends because I think I just watched the documentary Maestro about Paradise G arage in the late seventies, early eighties, and there were all these little fragments of interviews and club goers leaving the club and having these kind of like elated faces and the little chatter in the background. So I felt like having a voice note from one of the nights that I had actually lived would make the song feel more alive and lived in. So yeah, that's me at the end. Yeah, excellent. And at that point, are you leaving the club then? Is that the end of it? Because it it sounds like's just about it's just about to get good. No, but that's the point of it. I feel like especially 'cause it comes towards the beginning of the record. I want it to feel like it's a portal to more life rather than it feeling like the ending . Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's kind of setting us up and kind of leaving us hanging but also giving a sense the potential of the impact. Exactly, yeah. And I also think that a motif that we used on this one of that kind of like repetitive vocal chop of my voice was the beginning of us experimenting with using my vocal more as an instrument and like sampling it a lot more and having also my vocal feel like something more percussive and adding momentum rather than something that was meant to be the star of the show. Yeah, yeah. Are we able to maybe hear that as an illustration? Yeah, there's several layers of them. So there's this one . We have a note that that one's just like a sampler instrument . This one I think it was just you singing, right? We have some effects M Auto Pitch free plugin , a little chorus on it . And then that one as well , which is a sampler, I think it was like a reversed moment of a vocal or something, and we chopped it up and tried it and pitched it around. And those kind of all together end up gelling quite well with the guitars . I feel like there were times also where like I had an idea for a vocal chop so I just did the same thing again and again and again. And then we like actually made it me being like something like b a ba . That's the thing, yeah. But it's kind of magic and fun to like come up with the idea and then execute it a little bit more properly. But I like the kind of messy figuring it out version that we have at the beginning. Yeah, yeah. And then will you play the outro bed? Yeah, we have this funny thing happening. We basically took the all the music and put a filter on it right here And so you can see the filter kind of moving down and then underneath that we have a track that's labeled socialite Benz Limo two we were in someone called Take that to me order. Benz Limo Do they actually ? This is being immortalized . So that comes in at the very end and you can obviously hear Ola's voice. I feel like someone was trying to play, like we were all just clamoring about the Bluetooth. Someone really wanted to play a Madonna song, I think. Right. So you're all in this limo. Yep. How many people do you think? There were a lot of people in the limo and also it was definitely not our limo. So I don't know why we were in there. Limo wasn't yeah, so that's why that's part of the mystery almost. And then beneath that there's also this little kind of found sound thing where I had to kind of line up the kick drums to match the kick drums of art song . So it kind of makes it all, you know, it's just like a trick, but together it really sounds like you're in the smoking section of the club. it's all an illusion . Fantastic. And so the song is about the excitement of the Big Night and the possibilities of the Big Night , but are the best bits in the smoking zone? Definitely. Yeah I feel like this whole record is exploring the in between and the kind of like snatch little moment of magic. I feel like it's rarely the nights where you say you're going to have the best night ever where you actually do. I think it's the kind of accidental magic moments that you'll kind of reflect on a decade from then and be like, remember that night when we were in that person's limo? And you don't really know why. It was amazing . Hence the ambiguous in the time . Exactly mystery Excellent. So we've heard the end of Jetta. The next song we're going to look at is Heaven. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with that . 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 to app clean files outside your session. Quick, easy and flexible. To find out more, and to get a special launch offer of fifty percent off, head to tape. It forward slash denoiser and hear the difference for yourself . So the next one we're going to look at from Ambiguous Desire by Arlo Parks is Heaven , but just for clarity, Baird has now retreated from the sun shine in the garden and has moved his oper ation inside because it was getting too hot and it was affecting the computer . So the picture is slightly different. Bed's now inside, in his apartment . We can see you in all your beauty now, Bed. All your beauty . So thank you very much for that. And crystal clear audio as well. So let's have a blast at beauty. Thanks. So let's have a blast of the Master of Heaven and then we can dig into how you created it. I wish I had the language to tell you away this field this field is batting me like the scar bar or the bridge watching it's been playing Boys in the summer breeze Concrete washing in the tiny breeze . A sky in bow a sky in bow Party Classic Gasoline My friends feeling well into the streets is scared and bone scared Just a little taste of heaven by Arlo Parks from Ambiguous Desire Arlo, how did this one start ? So this song started with a night out that I had with my friend Kelly Lowens, and she was supporting caribou at this secret set in LA under this bridge called the Sixth Street Viaduct Bridge, which is quite a dramatic kind of cement beast . And it was such a magical night. There were so many little fragments that I picked out, whether it was my friend's pink Addie Dash shoes or the vodka dyke coats, my other friend was drinking. There were all these little fragments that felt quite cinematic and I wanted to capture in a song. And later that night I kind of journaled all the little details down as I usually do . And the next day I kind of brought that into bed and I had a really clear sense of the story and the palette and the songs that were being played that night so it felt like really direct like, directly lifted from something I'd lived. And did that impact the style of music you were going to create for that? That you needed something that somehow connected to that? Definitely because I remember she dropped this remix of everything in its right place by Radiohead and also played that song Set the Roof by Hadson Mohawk. And it was these synths and these drums that felt like they kind of tore you apart. There was something really raw and intense about the way that those songs sounded when they were blasted really loud. Like you could feel it in your body. And so I feel like with the bass and with the drums and just rhythmically we wanted, it to be something that you could move to and that you would feel in your body . So I was definitely picturing what it would have been like if we dropped this track at that set as we were making the song. Excellent. So then how did you go about c thereating right kind of music? Yeah, I mean, I feel like we started with the drums, right? Yeah, I usually start with the drums. I think we had this like patent snare loop. Maybe without that vocal sample in it . Just this much, I think. Yeah . And then it was the piano, right? Yeah, I so we had this loop going and we'll sometimes jam on something for twenty minutes before we even stumble into the or longer, you know, before we find the main idea. At some point I started playing this piano , which is just like this old attitude piano at the studio . And the fact that it's slightly out of tune means that it's a magic that can never be reproduced. Even like when we're doing a piano live, we had to take the samples like note by note of this specific piano in the studio because nothing sounded quite like it . It's magic it's magic forever. But yeah, we we now have a virtual piano that sounds exactly like that one and now you've got a virt ual out of tune piano. Exactly Brilliant. But I think that pairing the kind of slightly wonky piano with those kind of driving hi hats was almost ot a mif, I think, for the way that I was approaching the production because I liked the idea of having something propulsive and rhythmic with something that felt kind of alive and imperfect . And I'm realising now that the collision of those things two is very much what we look for when we're thinking about the production and the songs . So I have this little mumble track. I think that I sent you bad last night that we can share closely, but the melody came first and this is kind of what I freestyled over the piano and the drums that Bird had put together. Does how all my songs start ? You can hear what I'm trying to find . Yeah . It's also worth mentioning I think sometimes we'll do quite a lot of that kind of mumbling and then afterwards listen and be like, oh that feels like an exciting moment, that feels like an exciting moment. It's not like, oh, here's the song obviously from the start, you know? Oh yeah, no, definitely not. Because then we have that thing that we coin springboarding where you find this one specific that feels really whether it's a verse or a chorus and then you kind of play that on loop and then sing along with what I've just made and then kind of just throw myself into the abyss of the next section and see what happens . So it's this pretty experimental kind of free form way of coming up with sections. But you're right, no, this is not just me magically doing it completely from scratch. It takes a long time and it's really hard. Yeah. Because a lot of people watching it maybe it looks like we just have this project that looks, I mean, it doesn't look perfect, but it's, you know, results in a song. When in reality, like this is me after deleting all of the unused tracks and all the scrap ideas and sorting through all the different melodies and mumbles, things that we try. And then most of what we try doesn't work and then the ones that do are what we cobble together into the song. Exactly. And I think those mistakes I mean they're not even mistakes, but those attempts are essential because A they're something that we sometimes revisit later and B, I think they're part of like the stepping stones to the final for m. And I think it's important to kind of not judge those weird choices or those things that sound really bad because they're kind of part of the journey of arriving to a song that sounds good. Yeah, yeah. And then do you find the right phrase that fits that sound . Yeah, exactly. I think with this song it was interesting because I had a sense of you know the people that I'd been with that night , you know, the green light across the dance floor and this notion of this whole record, I feel like is wrestling with the idea of being present and the idea of, you know, being able to accept fleeting moments of joy as fleeting and being okay with that. And I remember on the dance floor I was having such an amazing time and there was a twinge of, you know, oh this night will end and I'll have to go home and it'll be over . So I was kind of competing with two different forces. One that was like just dancing with reckless abandon and the other one that was kind of aware of its ending. So even when it came to the production, I think, having these kind of contrasting forces instrumentally, I guess kind of linked to the way that I was feeling or the emotion that I wanted to bring across. Yeah. Yeah. So what else should we hear from the music? You can hear whatever you want to hear . I mean I think personally I feel like the bass , the kind of live bass that weaves through the verses and then I feel like the quote unquote drop is its own separate thing. But I want I want them to hear the way that the bass kind of feeds in through the piano that you put together. Yeah . Well, this is a funny one because the bass is a bad note. Oh my god . Some of the notes are out of tune until like the very last day and Isaac being like, yeah, we gotta remember we gotta go back and two months one note . This is one note that was killing me probably for like a year . But then the whole time we realized that we were thinking about different notes and then it was really easy to fix. And I can't really hear bass notes that clearly sometimes. Sometimes I'll put an eight or eight and I have like the pitch of them . You can hear the bass and the piano working together here Something else that I think is kind of cool about this is we have this like random track labeled jingle jangle with an H and it just sound s like this . It's kind of this chopped up little delayed. I don't even know where it came from. But again, it's just kind of like letting these little rhythmic textures inform the rest of the groove so that's not so yeah so you're kind of trying to imitate found sounds with drums and combine them together . So then should we get into the drop? Into the quote unquote drop. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting because in general at least, like I think my chorus is or the way that I approach choruses is usually this kind of jump off point where things become like a lot more lush and there's a lot more layers and you feel kind of buoyed up. And I like this idea of you're feeling like you're being pulled down into the underworld somehow . And we had a few different versions of what that one line was going to be. So I remember for a while I was like whatever you say or something and I was like that sound I was like what does that even mean? Yeah but the syllables were so specific that we had to find the right thing and then yeah unt,il the dawn breaks felt like it made sense. Yeah, I think there's no shame in rewriting things that you just laid down in the moment to kind of get the feeling out like I think . Isn't the story that yesterday by the Beatles was originally scrambled eggs. Yeah . That's the classic line. I love that. I always think of that as like, you can't do any worse than that . Maybe I almost want to well just I guess highlighting the fact that the bass in that moment is still very much a live bass. So I feel like , you know, I was reading an interview that Borg did about post and she was just talking about, you know, wanting to make electronic music very much with a band and with organic instruments. So I like the fact that that's a live bass and maybe yeah just show the layers one by one of what creates that atmosphere. Cool. Okay, so let's go into here So yeah , as you said the base is just it's just like a squ ired jazz bass, I think. And are you playing that bed? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like an amp simulator on it . And is that a different instrument to the instrument that was playing bass just before that? The more sinewy bass line? It's the same instrument as this, but the processing is slightly different . So with this one, even you can see, I even took some of the lows out of it to leave more space for the kick . Whereas with the instrumental section base, we're adding a ton of those in using this basement plugin . And so this one takes up yeah, a lot more space . So it's the same track, but I think I played it all the way through and then just put that into a new one with new effects so that it could kind of jump out more . Yeah . And then on top of that, I think this is something that's kind of crucial. We're like unbaking the cake here, but there's a vocal texture that comes in that you probably don't really register , but it's actually really loud and sounds like pretty bad on its own. I mean sounds interesting, but it sounds great. I love this one It just sounds like a wasp or something . And is that a loop? Fuzzing around. And yeah, I can find what it was. Let me just drag it out to the end I know. I feel like that's just me. Oh yeah, it was reversed . It's some scratch vocal tech that we like reversed and then chopped into that. But then once you hear that you kind of can't unhear it in the It's also these little guys I love the little whip they're like little whips. I love them. Yeah, yeah, the little zip zap. And then little zip zaps. Having little eightonal things 'cause obviously it's just holding on one chord for like four bars. So then as it comes in, there's also that thing , which kind of helps it just feel like you're descending into the moment And I think the crucial part of this section as well is , you know, the slightly more deconstructed kind of abstract flourishes that Baird is playing on the piano afterwards because I mean I was thinking a lot about Duval Timothy and thinking about the way that his piano playing has always felt really alive and for me , you know, we had this quite like musc ular straightforward, you know, anti chorus almost . And it felt important to have something that kind of felt like it was dancing above that kind of pretty murky, musculine sound so Bird on the magic piano was creating some shapes and you went for a while and then we kind of went through and splashed. Yeah, you can see in the audio files probably did like three or four takes takes . You can hear my headphone bleed in there too . Kind of imitating the vocal motif. And that just kind of sits on top Something else that I hadn't really tried before, but in this track we, pitched the kick drum so that in that post it goes from there to down there and just kind of the post to me feels like this kind of like the most relentless part especially on a big system, you like that thirty hertz frequency or whatever is just like overwhelming. Definitely. And I also I feel like those subtle changes made it feel like you were kind of journeying and even the moments that feel maybe a little bit more repetitive. Like I think Bed you're really good at making these like slightly kind of unconventional changes that do a lot even though they seem quite minute. Yeah . I always think it's really interesting on this track and on the album as a whole, that combination of both the club elements but also more abstract , more mellow, more chilled out elements too. So there's a contemplative aspect to every song and the whole feel of the record, but there are these other elements which pull it in a different direction and it's almost like you evoke the club on this record. Exactly. It's inferred in a way. And I also think that even with moments like that piano , I really had a strong vision of like what parts of that improv isation kind of reminded me of certain feelings and I feel like I was able to kind of pinpoint the ones that felt like they worked because it was all sounding beautiful, but there were ones that I don't know, evoked how I felt that night . And also I love making a song the night, like the day after it happened because it still feels so fresh. And to be honest, I feel like this song really took most of its shape that day. Like eighty percent of what you, know what I mean? We barely really changed it so much. I think we tried a lot of different things that day, some like really obnoxious synth bases and I remember because we were listening to were we listening to loved by Fort e. Listen to Fort. Probably listening to . Pretty much listening to that song every day. Yeah, same still. Lovely . And so when you made or started this song , that was the day after this big night out. So did you go straight into the studio? Did you give yourself any rest or yeah, no. It wasn't actually particularly late. I feel like that night when I got home is when I started journaling all these little details . it And was also when I started thinking about , you know, wow, the moments that I felt the most moved by the music I experienced was when there were no words where the music was the thing that was speaking itself . And that's not something I'd experimented with as much in my music to kind of allow it to speak and allow it to be in the drums and the sense and the collisions . So you know, I remembered that feeling and I noted that down. I noted like the space between in my journal as like the final bit of the entry . So I went into the studio with a sense that that was going to be the north star of the process. Yeah, really interesting. Is there anything else we need to hear from Heaven? Any weird and wonderful little moments . I like to show all the weird things that people can do. What is that? This is a vocal sample from a band I had with my brother and called the South Hill Experiment. And I had like some acapellas from an album we'd made . And that kind of underlies the whole song. You hear the beginning and end and it drops. And then another one happens at the end. The bang bang. There's the bang bang. There's this one happened to the very end, but I was thinking of like the gates of heaven opening . Nice . Yeah . Those little out of time drum fills . It's like a loop I made called Perfect Jesus Disco one hundred twenty BPM. Love , you know , who knows? But there was something, yeah, there was something so immediate about this one and I think that's why it's probably my favourite on the album because we really didn't overthink anything and it just felt so good. I feel like we were just dancing around to it when we made it immediately which usually I feel like it takes me a while to like peel myself off my chair and be like okay yes it sounds good. This one I was like we did something Yeah and like I feel like my manager called me in like a happy frenzy from like the a twentyge five or something being like this sounds crazy. I remember we got the car. We got the car face. That's what I read from Alice. Yeah . Yeah, he was like the piano sound like birds. I was like, I love that. Yeah . Excellent. Should we have a blast of the ending just to round this off? And we got a couple more questions for you after that. Excellent. I think we're all getting lost in our heads and lost in the club at the same time to the sounds of that. That is Heaven Arlo Parks from Ambiguous Desire and we have two questions which we ask everybody who comes on tape notes. But before I do that, we've got one more patron question this time from Teddy Friedman, who would love to know about some of the gear and recording of devotion and dog rose. In particular the gu,itar pedals that Baird used a distortion fuzz overall signal chain, so some detailed information requested by Teddy. Oh man. Because we didn't we didn't use any of the guitar from because I started dog rows on my computer and I remember you finished it with me. I feel like we erased everything that I mean, I don't know if we kept any parts in, but do you remember any of this? I don't remember. I don't remember what distortion I would have used. The devotion's one I think was DI guitar, like it wasn't going through an amp or anything. It was just straight in. It might have had like a format shifter on it shifting it down or something, but man, I don't know it might have been which is like the cheapest distortion battery loss DS one . It might have been the basic yeah, just like the most basic one, honestly . It might have been a DS one but I don't know. I don't have a great collection of that sort of stuff of pedals. I feel like when I started , when I made the Dog Rose demo on my computer, it was all probably stock logic stuff. So anything that made its way on to the final recording from that was just whatever happens when you go logic, distortion and the first thing Brilliant. Yeah . So going back to the questions we ask everybody who comes on take notes. So the first is a tech question, whether there's a piece of kit that is pertinent to this particular record that you couldn't do without something that in general you love to use. I mean, for me what comes to mind is probably the Juno, the one hundred and six we used for two sided. Yeah , right. Because that day it was the only thing that worked and I feel like the limitations of only having this one synth and it feeling exciting in the moment is what made my favorite song on the record. So I have fond memories of that. And then of course the SM seven, which is all I use and will ever use . I've tried so many other mics that are fancier or whatever and I just I'm a creature of habit. Yes, I'm serving for life. What about you, Bern? Okay, well I know I just said I don't like guitar pedals or have a crazy collection of them, but there's one called the Pitchf ork , which is a fun one that lets you pitch your guitar. And I have the miniature version of the pitchfork pico, I think it's called, and that kind of got us some cool textures. You can use it subtly and just use it even as a chorus or you can do octaves and some of the bass tones are actually just played on the guitar . You can get cool harmonies. So yeah, I think that's a really fun pedal made by Electric Harmonics, I think, and the Juno, I don't even have a Juno, but my friend has one, and so we borrowed it because I was like, a lot of the references that we were listening to had that sort of sound and I think it really elevated the project, so yeah, the Juno's you can't go wrong with that for sure . The other question we ask everybody is about advice whether you have advice that you would like to share with people advice tips you've been given or maybe lessons you've learned. I feel like maybe that limitations are a strength. Like you can do a lot with a little and sometimes you make better music when you don't have that many different things to reach to. Kind of what you would talk about Bed where the song only needs so many characters. And if you have too many, it means that they might be the wrong characters. So you can do a lot with a little is my pit of advice , I think . Yeah , that's great. I think for me this is just my personal approach and it's not necessarily right or wrong, but my advice would be that it's keep in mind that it's easier to make something simpler or more down the middle than it is to make it saucy or cool after the fact. So I would rather start a song and have it be sloppy and maybe impossible to listen to, but there's something really cool there and then kind of straighten it out and make it more down the middle later on. It's harder to kind of add sauce later or make something cool after the fact if there isn't something strange so, definitely . If your choices are either too middle of the road or too strange, always go with too strange because you can only kind of go one direction in the process, I think. Go stranger, go weirder . That's a great way to end it . Fantastic. Thank you so much to both of you for your time and effort involved in putting this all together today. I mean, it's always interesting trying to do transatlantic calls and long chats as we do on Take Notes. So thank you very much, Bed and thank you, Arlo. Thank you. Thank you guys. A real pleasure to speak to you. We should choose one more song from the album a kind of outro piece. I want to choose two sided just because we talked about that moment. I would say that yeah. Excellent. This is it then. This is two sided by Arlo Parks. Thanks again. Thank you . 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 episod es where possible, ad free episodes and detailed gear lists among many other things. If you'd like to join, head to the link on our socials or website . For pictures, highlight clips and behind the scenes content, head to our Instagram or YouTu be channel, and on discord you can join the growing Take Notes community. Once again, thank you for listening. Until next time, goodbye. heart is so far in our heart feels of sight of the heart is so clear it's a side of the sides that I really caught share . Her mother has got a few strikes and never really feel home anywhere