Ep.1 Tails | LevelsFM Music Production Podcast - YouTube
[Music] [Music] all right what is your name and or your alias uh my name is spencer reed and my alias is tails awesome yeah and i already know that we know each other everybody um and where do you currently reside
currently i am pretty half and half between atlanta georgia and vancouver island slash vancouver british
columbia but um yeah hopefully hopefully we'll make it down in atlanta more of the year as time goes on cool
yeah i love that yeah if i didn't know you and i do but if i didn't know you and we met in an elevator and i asked you what you do what would your response be it and honestly it always changed if it was you it's not me it's somebody you don't know it's a rando it's random me okay i i usually say when people ask me what i do for a living i do tell them that i'm a producer performer i generally leave out the word dj because i feel like that's the word that kind of people really latch on to in their mind and go oh yeah i know steve aoki like cool
right yeah so i say i say producer and performer um and when people ask of what i usually say indie and hip- hop music which is a bit of a lie because the real answer is electronic music and i say that because most people again when you say hip-hop or pop they know exactly something comes to mind that is pretty representative of kind of what i do but when i say dance music or electronic music they think of crazy machine sounding dubstep and i don't know that's not really what i do i love it yeah ready for the lightning round let's go i love it what's the best song of all time oh damn this is the lighting round okay okay okay uh best song of all time is
gotta be lovely day why um it's just so positive and good message really catchy melody the production for the time is absolutely unreal shout out bill withers can we swear on here is that okay so i'm going to leave that totally up to you okay okay i don't want to like alienate part of your audience or anything i get it um who has the best voice of all time paul mccartney why uh i grew up listening to it and whenever i hear it it's immediate recognization or i recognize it immediately over any voice um i don't know i just love it i love the tone i always tried to emulate it when i was a kid and it's just a voice that's really stuck with me forever oh yeah we're gonna get to that later who is your favorite musical group or
band uh i mean i'd be kidding if i didn't say the beatles if we're talking bands and groups uh hands up who saw that coming uh why um again i just grew up with them i mean my dad had maybe two cassettes in his truck when i was a kid one was the white album the other was like a mike oldfield album tubular best yeah exactly tubular bells but uh the b side was gone and it was recorded over by his his brother making a mixtape of some random stuff so it was just side a of of tubular bells did that have did that make your mind think of something the fact that he recorded over it and you go wait a minute you can record over stuff i mean i wish i wish i could say that but at the time i mean i was already kind of ripping cds and like okay trying to burn cds at home it's not my own music but say that in the next interview say it's that's the
key moment of your life yeah that was the turning point i should go to school for this uh who would be your dream collab um currently i've been on a huge kind of hip hop and pop kind of tip so to be honest it would probably be somebody like asap rocky or maybe even like tyler the creator would be top ones or straight up just flume that's probably be my answer any other day besides the last month or two why uh i'll go with flume as like the main one and just say that he's always been really innovative i think he doesn't really have a specific sound and i love that i think it's a pretty cool trait for an artist to have as much success as him and not have it based around one
specific kind of gimmick or sound i think that's pretty rare so yeah i think it would just be interesting whatever he does it would be something different and something cool flume management that's tails xp uh laptop recording studio laptop for sure love it what's your favorite audio effect um i'm going to have to say like grain delays if i can or i guess just like delay i guess grain delays a bit specific on every ad delays it's a good it's a good specific it's a good specificity or even uh the other one would probably be like frequency shifters i use those a lot i like it what's your favorite plug-in maybe the same answer maybe not like what's your favorite vst plug-in i guess uh favorite vst i've got two that i use all the time um the first one is always most likely gonna be decimort i think
it's by d16 yep it is i love that decimar ii i guess it is that plug-in is unbelievable and the second one has got to be probably the vhs plug-in of reactor i don't know who made it or if it's like a native instruments thing but i downloaded this like little vhs reactor ensemble and it's unbelievable i use it all the time cool that's great i've never seen that before yeah i'll send it to you it's really sick it's free wicked and if it's not you have to edit this part out because it was free for me all right that's the end of the lightning round what did you think of the lightning round um i need to solidify my all-time favorites write them down better remember them because the second someone asked me that i immediately panicked and i go oh jesus there's that's so much room for criticism depending on what i say that's that's kind of the reason for the
lightning round i want to get a little bit of adrenaline flowing so now i can relax a little bit it worked it definitely worked so where are you originally from um i grew up in porto bernie british columbia which if you don't know is a very small town basically right in the middle of vancouver island right because became famous a couple summers ago infamous right oh wait for what didn't those weren't those guys from port alberni those two oh yes yes definitely yeah i i man i actually forgot about that but yeah that would have been what like three years ago now it was a weird story yeah that was crazy so tell us about an early musical memory um i kind of alluded to it a little bit earlier but my my first memory of music and kind of being engaged with music is always going
to be listening to the beatles in my goldfield on pretty much every family drive ever um that kind of transitioned into [Music] eventually like getting my very first instrument my guitar and just learning how to play all the songs on the white album from the beatles just start to finish just hit play on the record and just play guitar the whole way through wow i must have done that like a thousand times when i was a kid did you take guitar lessons or did you pick it up by ear or what i i did and it was like yeah let's learn this classical rendition of michelle by the beatles and it was too hard and it wasn't quite like you know just strumming and like banging on the guitar so right i eventually gave that up because i just didn't enjoy it but yeah that was always like the favorite did you ever revisit those lessons and be like oh i'm so glad i learned this even though i hated it at the time was there honestly yeah i think it definitely instilled in me at least a little bit of
a foundation of music theory even now when i go back to ableton i can't really play a piano but because i did some guitar lessons and a bit of theory when i was a kid i understand all my intervals and how to form a scale and all that sort of stuff i think intervals are more important than scales i i think just knowing that concept sets you off a little bit on your own for sure i think yeah go ahead go ahead okay i was just gonna say whenever i'm talking to people about music theory or composition of melody's chords i'm always talking in intervals never so much like oh c minor like c minor chord with a seventh i'm like okay we've got a root we've got a perfect fifth we've got a minor third i don't really care what the chord is called but just naming the intervals has been more important or like more prevalent for me i agree i i like i figured out i think i learned this from dave gann shout out dave again is that it's you
know each scale the the the distance between the notes is always the same it's just wherever that distance lands that's the note and that's why this one has more sharps or flats than that one or whatever but people tend to just rote memorize each of the scales but it doesn't actually give you the knowledge to know that it's just the interval in between the notes that you have to memorize and then you can figure out any scale at any at any time for sure i mean i still write the like starting on a all the white notes from a move them off my grid and then just transpose that and i know which minor scale i'm looking at and same with c major transpose that around until i find what i need yeah because i don't often write in a key but afterwards when i'm kind of writing chords to complement it or sometimes bass lines i'll determine what key it's in obviously and kind of go from there do you ever use any of those tools like mixed in key has a mixed in key pro now
you can just put on your mix buss and it tells you what the key is yeah i mean i used to kind of do that a little bit um but these days i've kind of strayed away from that i mean i used to export things and pull them into serato which had mixed and key built in it would tell me the key but i don't really trust that anymore i just found like through djing and like performing trying to rely on like what mixed in key thinks the key is and me playing a song being like yeah they're in the same key this is gonna sound great and they're just completely off right it's just my trust has been shattered well that's why that's why the pro version the plug-in is better because it doesn't give you one definite result it shows you the the chances it says this this is really looking like it's you know f but it might be this that's actually pretty handy which is pretty cool it also gives you options right because then you can go oh it's almost a okay what do i need to change it to make it a you know for sure
especially if you're struggling with music theory where it's like you've got an a but you've got this one note in there that doesn't fall into what scale it should right you're missing one little thing that's keeping your music from sounding normal or whatever although i don't know if that's the goal all the time yeah i feel that for sure do you do you remember the first time you heard your voice recorded i definitely do yeah i've always hated it as as does everybody um yeah i watched like a home video of me like playing in a band and went oh my god who is that that's not me what the hell what age what were you um i must have been in like i'd say grade eight or grade nine um which i guess you're what 13 12 14. devastating time to hear yourself played
back on no kidding and i mean that was like the height of puberty you know what i mean that's like right when the voice is changing and starting to sound a little bit funny too dude but i will say my voice pre-puberty when i was a kid was better singing wise right really for sure oh yeah for sure wow that's interesting um what's the first album that changed your life um i'm gonna i'm gonna kind of think of a different i mean the white album is probably the first one but there were there were a few down the road that really kind of like changed my direction in terms of what i liked i went through the huge beatles phase but then to be honest like i bought saint anger by metallica when i was a kid um i don't know why i don't really know why i ended up buying it but i was in like an hmv is that what they were called hmv yep
yeah so i bought that album i liked like two songs from it but i listened to those two songs on repeat over and over and over and that kind of started getting me into a little bit more like an alternative kind of metal thing that led into a whole different world of music cool yeah it's a strange introductory to metallica yeah i've come to learn later that that's definitely not one of their most prized albums it's probably the most creative one yeah yeah i mean i think it was just straight up the song saint anger i think i probably had heard that on like much music if any canadians know of much music i think it's still a thing but yeah i heard it on there and i don't know why i liked it but yeah bought the cd and jammed out i think i bought a drum set at the same time cool so i would just sit there and just try and drum i didn't really know how
but i would just put headphones on and just smash away until my parents told me to stop do you find yourself not afraid to try to play any instrument um honestly if if i'm alone for sure in a room of other musicians i'm kind of like oh let me just play a pretty standard rock beat or the same one technical guitar thing that i still remember from being a kid right but um that's funny yeah i'm usually i'm usually pretty okay with just picking up any instrument and at least giving it a try i don't know i understand like general keys so if i play stuff at least it's not usually like wildly out of tune right usually what's your favorite um to be honest i do i do think about like having a drum set again i think just in terms of pure fun and enjoyment like nothing to do with the music i make or
record just drumming is to me super fun like i love putting on music that i really like resonate with and just drumming along with it um but i think in terms of like what i actually make um i love things like i love like ukuleles i love like kalimbas like even like glockenspiels and like marimbas that sort of thing i love like kind of delicate plucky instruments i don't know why but i've always loved the sound of them i don't really love the sound of like big full pianos or like crazy big guitar tones that are really lush i kind of like a little bit more thin i don't know delicate instruments usually will you do me a favor and and incorporate kalimba and or marimba into one of your next couple of tracks yeah the next one not the next one that comes out but the one after that has like a a pretty prominent
kalimba part and really that's so cool yeah yeah it does and and a guitar um but i mean yeah i don't know how deep to go into this but i i've had a bunch of guitars when i was a kid and when i was back on vancouver island about six months ago i was writing a bunch of new music i had this collection of just nice guitars from when i was young in high school and the one that i chose to record with was my very first ever hundred dollar classical terrible tiny little guitar and that was the best sounding one out of all them my bad i'd like put some new like tuning i think it's like the bridge tuning bridge i don't know put some new parts on it and tuned it up and it was by far the best so cool there's no such thing as a bad sounding instrument it's just yeah appropriate or not yeah 100 like my whole the whole track that i've got called second thoughts
is all on that guitar the whole thing is written on that guitar and then a few like supporting parts on like a 10 ukulele that my girlfriend had wow and those are like i don't know i like those tones yeah and they're just recorded through my laptop mic not even through this just straight into the laptop mike amazing that's so cool do you does that guitar that old guitar hold memories like when you're playing it are you just like oh yeah here we are again you and me yeah you know the whole the whole feel of it right like you play it differently i bet that you play yeah definitely definitely i think like that car guitar i've got an old telly that i really like um that was kind of like my first big purchase in my life if that makes sense i was like maybe 17 16 and was like yeah like a lot of kids in my grade were buying cars and stuff i bought like a thousand dollar guitar instead it was like yeah cool
but awesome yeah how has your musical taste changed over the years and and what if anything has remained the same um man it has changed pretty drastically i think um [Music] the thing that's kind of always stayed the same has really been a lot of like somber more like melancholy songs and vibes i've always loved songs that are a little bit more like emotional a little bit more ethereal i guess those would be the right words for it but i mean it's gone from everything i started with classic rock went into my whole emo and punk phase did all that went into drum and bass like just everywhere i've kind of everything i mean when i met you for the very first time i was a big drum and bass and weird kind of glitchy bass
kid i'd never even heard of hip-hop stuff wow until the year that i met you actually i had been introduced to it that year and now that's like hip-hop and pop and indie stuff that's like my main bread and butter now and shout out to the person who introduced you to that uh shout out would honestly probably be patrick eidlang and brennan lucas back from uh back from nimbus they they were kind of like oh you heard of i don't know dudes like j dilla and like catrinada all these like kind of swung out beat makers that were doing some cool stuff um yeah that was kind of my first intro to that sort of vibe and that sort of style that's so cool yeah do you remember the moment that you decided this is probably back before that obviously the moment that you decided you were
going to [Music] take a shot at music or join a band or be a rock star or whatever your first goal with music was you were going to get into music production and or performance do you remember that um yeah i mean the first the first kind of like stab at that was to be honest like the friend group that i had in middle school and in high school they were all wildly talented musicians [Music] to this day their musical skill and their i believe like their musical genius is crazy they neither of there's three dudes in particular and none of them make music now but a hundred percent sure i mean they do very casually but they were all in my mind extremely talented when i think of like genius musicians i think of all three of them right but um
yeah honestly it was kind of just to try and keep up with them and and be friends with them to be honest it was a huge part of their life and i was interested in music but i sucked i sucked at guitar wasn't a good singer didn't have the creativity like them so yeah big thing was like i wanted to pursue it and kind of go into it more just to to fit in with them and to feel like you know a little bit more equal with them so that was the kind of big drive to to get better at it at least um because they were they were already composing these crazy songs on like logic with a bunch of different instruments and like they'd hear a reference song or an artist they loved and they could immediately kind of emulate it and i had no idea how to do any of that but yeah but you were fascinated with it right mm-hmm definitely i think like over time the only difference was that i just like ended up putting in more time because they got busy with other hobbies
and i kind of step kept on the music thing and changed change kind of genres to be honest i still think like the stuff that i made when i started was much more creative than the stuff that i make now um yeah were these the guys that you joined the band with can you tell us about uh the band you were in yeah so like the very first band that i ever played with it kind of one of the members of that band was one of these guys his name is braley and he was he is still i like he's a genius his creativity is like through the roof but um yeah i mean i was i was just a big beatles fan there was a few other dudes in my school that were and we just started to jam there was some like music competitions and stuff in my hometown through like the local music store um like guitar shop or whatever it was
and uh yeah we just got together to compete in battle of the bands and we loved the beatles so we were just like a straight up beatles cover band and uh we do the whole thing we're a little dress shirt a little tie all had like a big mop of hair and you know black pants little like leather shoes if we could and we would just play beetles um my favorite tales story yeah yeah i mean it went it went pretty deep man like we were we were going to studios in vancouver into like really professional beautiful studios and i think it was even maybe hyposonic do you know jerry wong yeah from damn the diva yeah yeah yeah he so his his nephew is braylee he's the guy that i've like started making music with cool um so we'd go to his studio in vancouver and we'd record beatles covers we did a
stones cover all of it we would just i don't know we took it pretty serious and we we would go around vancouver island and we would win a lot of the battle of the bands and i don't know i think they were they were a little bit rigged because all the kids would come up playing metal we would come up playing the beatles and the judges would be in their 50s and they'd go yep we love the beatles right oh wow that's interesting yeah yeah so that's kind of how that all started and eventually we we all transitioned into a little bit more experimental stuff and i remember one year we played beatles and the next year we came back and we had gotten into these like new york experimental bands and they totally expected like a beatles show and we just played like crazy psychedelic stuff we all bought samplers we all had like one microphone and a tom and we'd like hold it and hit it into the microphone and mess with it on our sampler and like
sing into all these delays and pitch shifting effects and everyone was just like what the [ __ ] are these guys sweet yeah that was a pretty big change who were the bands you were influenced by who were the new york um it was it was dudes like um animal collective i don't know if you know them they were like uh yeah they're like a cool kind of like indie electronic experimental band um patrick wolf was one of them he was like i don't even know where he was from but we all loved him and yeah stuff like that soufflin stevens who like at the time wasn't super electronic but we kind of did these weird electronic takes on his stuff because we loved that as well like that chicago album like that area yeah exactly it was exactly that area so era we would do like covers of chicago but with weird synths and it was fun man that was to me that was like the most creative music time that i've had in my life for sure we were all yeah it was fun man like we would we
would make beats but we didn't know like what sample packs were or drum machines so what we would do is we would listen to like bands that we liked like for example bright eyes we liked him as well or animal collective if they had an isolated kick or snare in their track we would record that from our ipod into the sampler and chop that snare and that would be our snare for our song and the kick and we would loop just parts of songs we liked we were essentially kind of remixing stuff but we didn't really know at the time because this was probably what like 2009 maybe 2010 kind of before i was aware of full-on like electronic music but it was fun man i wonder if i still have any of those old songs from that kind of era you haven't heard it in years there is something that i put out and i it might have been 2010 maybe maybe 2009 there's an ep on
youtube of mine really old but it is pretty hidden um i'm even like singing on it but yeah all the beats it's like there's an erica badu sample in there and i didn't even know who erica badu was i just like heard it and was like oh that's a cool sample it's just like somehow not been copyright striked on youtube but and it's not under the moniker tails right no it's under many many of my old monikers i love one of your old monikers i think it might be that one but it's earlier even there's kind of two eras of the one you're thinking of like one goes even deeper into the singer songwriter weirdness i love it so cool yeah um what is music production um to me it is clicking and dragging and pushing things up and down until it sounds good that's that's what it is to me it's it's
not much um actual playing or musicianship it's mostly mostly a lot of thinking and a lot of problem solving i love it um [Music] tell us about your first live performance that you performed at was it a nightmare or was it awesome um the first one that was like from my current project for tails my first like i guess like dj set um yeah it was actually kind of a nightmare um i was living with a guy out in victoria british columbia who was a dj and this was kind of my introduction to electronic music he was a big drum and bass fan and a big drawing bass dj and i was just making beats at this time he was like well man if you ever want to make beats like for a job you probably have to learn to dj and i thought okay i'll do that so i went out to a gig that he had
and i got up on stage with him and we did just like a straight up vinyl back to back on turntables and i had dj'd for maybe like two days before this the second i got into a club and started trying to beat match like no sync buttons it was like actual records not even through serato it was just straight up drum and bass records oh man i was floundering i couldn't i couldn't figure out if one track was faster or slower than the other i couldn't figure out if i'd started in the right times it was just a nightmare like full-on nightmare every song i would start to bring in and you start to hear that like flamming of the snares and the kicks and it was all off he would just immediately cut it and beat match it for me and start at the right time and be like okay and i would just put the volume up and put the volume down to the other one and that was that pretty brutal that is brutal did you you must have learned a lot from that though right for sure i mean yeah he he definitely
was the dude that kind of taught me to dj and that was like the first kind of point where i was like yeah i need to actually learn you can't just get up there and wing it it doesn't really work like that right um especially at the start dude that caused me to feel fear that story and i'm not even i wasn't even there it sucked man train wrecking in front of crowd is is one of the worst feelings like i mean i've had my fair share of them now but the first 10 20 they're just heartbreaking you leave the stage being like oh man i'm a loser like that sucked how do you feel now when that happens do you just go whatever yeah i'm pretty good at kind of laughing it off now right i usually find that if i if i do make a pretty big noticeable mistake um i'm a lot more comfortable now to just hop on the mic and be like hell what's up guys i [ __ ] up what's up and then just you know start again you know uh it used to be a big oh dude yeah i think it's like it makes
your scent more memorable i think one big good [ __ ] up is is kind of nice that's cool it takes the pressure off and it allows you to uh be a little bit more personable with the crowd just tell them like what's up guys what do you think about that i just [ __ ] up it connects it connects you as a human to them and people love that there has to be something like that it doesn't have to have to be that big a deal but there has to be a connection that's why i've always been a fan of the the sets that are a little bit less produced like the sets where there's like djs are doing kind of like a fully synced light show the whole entire time it's picture perfect every time they play the set they've got choreographed dance moves at this part i'm going to put my hands up and at this point i'm going to say this and i'll i enjoy that to some degree but at the same time i really like seeing the djs and performers i mean if you go to like a travis scott show or something i mean he plays the same song
10 plus times stops it halfway through and goes let's just [ __ ] start it again he does it again and people love it it makes it so much more like hype and so much more fun so i like that kind of vibe a little bit right that's cool um all right i have a guest question that i'm going to ask each podcast and you you know who the guest is it's from uh tamara edelman she said when you have your podcast i want you to ask the guests the guests this question what has been your biggest career high and your biggest career challenge so far biggest career high i think to put it into just one moment was in the end of 2019 kind of like just a few months before covet hit um i was on tour with a group called jerulu
and we were in this thing called base camp i'm pretty sure that's what it was called and it was it was this house apartment in new york that sponsors artists to go stay there when they're on tour so it was this crazy like top floor penthouse apartment that me drew lou and our other buddy duskis were all staying in while we were in new york and we all kind of just stood out on the deck we may have been passing something around but that's not part of the story but uh lyric ideas yeah exactly yeah we were trading vsts and stuff but yeah we all kind of just had a really big moment and i don't know how impactful it was for them but for me it was a huge moment where we all reflected and thought about just how our music had brought us all there and we were in this crazy setting
in the biggest city in america wait is that california is there is la bigger than new york new york's bigger than la i think okay yeah so we were i don't know we were at this top floor and we all just kind of had this moment of holy [ __ ] like i can't believe our music has even given us this opportunity we all kind of just had a moment where we all just looked at the skyline of new york and just had like just to think nobody really talked and we just all kind of took it in that to me was like a really just big introspective moment of how cool just making music on your laptop can be like and and how deeply it can like travel around and all the opportunities it can bring you um biggest career challenge to be honest with you has been like this past few months um which is kind of funny because i mean my my ep is currently rolling out it's like the rest of it will probably uh be out by the time this podcast is out
potentially um yeah so it's it's crazy because it should be a really kind of like big accomplishment feeling time but because of kovid because of no shows because of all these things my career and life path have changed a ton in terms of like how i make money what i can focus on so i mean i've been having like a really really low few months trying to figure out where my rent is going to come from where where my next meal is going to come from because right there's no shows and yeah it's been it's been rough i mean i've been probably working on my own project like the least i ever have and since i started it because i've been having to you know make rap beats and sell them or do more lessons you know what i mean like do like remix rankings and that sort of thing to make ends meet so
that's that's been the biggest struggle this last few months for sure what's your ep called by the way the ep is called photos of the sun cool that's great yeah and it will be completely out on august 6th with bit bird good bird okay cool yeah so a few of the tracks are already out and the rest drop and i guess just like a week and a bit a week and a half but that's so great yeah so i guess it's the culmination of this should be you at your peak and because of the way the world is it isn't working like that and in the back your mind you're like if that didn't happen i would be absolutely destroying the game right now right because i mean when cold you were moving to atlanta because one of the reasons was it's a hub city right i was touring like crazy tour like crazy yeah yeah it's it's wild man like i was really like at a peak i was at a huge high point right before covet hit
and kovid i mean like like a lot of people have mentioned really really like broke it down and kind of like put everyone an even playing field and everyone kind of had to start again like for what six 16 months something like that fans didn't see any live shows they didn't have any like like recent memories or connections to artists that they liked and it became hard to get supported from your audience and your fan base because there was no besides like here's a new song here's a new song here's a picture of me with a dog on instagram it's not really that connectable until you're out in their cities you know like creating memories and getting a bit more of an impression with those people because that's what really gets your like do you know do you know decap he's like a producer he also has like a great kind of youtube channel going and everything
but his big thing that stuck with me over the last few months he said that you really only need 1 000 fans to have a sustainable career and keeping a thousand fans happy and having a thousand fans truly support you is so much more important than having like a massive instagram following a massive amount of monthly streams all that sort of stuff so i've been thinking about that a lot more and like i felt like when covet hit i had been generating a lot of that and because there was no more shows and less ways to connect i lost a lot of that and yeah so i want to plan to kind of like rekindle that and get that going again as the ep comes out and a lot more new music this year but right yeah yeah some people even say 200 super fans is all you need to to you know get a get a decent cottage industry going on where
you can quit your starbucks job yeah and i mean that's that's all it is i mean as a lot of people kind of look at the music industry they go wow that's really really awesome that like you get to do a job doing music which is great it is super fun but it is also tough like you're i mean at my level you're not like living lavishly for sure you know what i mean there's no like there's no like bells and whistles on a usual month it's usually just like bare necessities i mean i don't have to go into a nine-to-five job which is a massive plus it's amazing but yeah it's it's unbelievable but it is also like tough you know but yeah what are you probably best known for um probably still skeleton which is a track i put out at the start of 2019 um i think maybe the end of 2018
yeah 2018. yeah some somewhere around there yeah maybe it was like halloween 2018 something like that somewhere right around there but um yeah i would say that's kind of the main thing the second thing is probably for like wearing a hat like this i mean i remember my first performance is not wearing a hat and everyone went is this tails i thought tails was the guy with the black hat but this is the same one i've had the same two hats that are the same for 10 years since i was in nimbus so so true that's so true i i like tails without a hat but it was shocking the first time i saw you without a hat i had the same reaction i was like who is that yeah yeah that was like a pretty a pretty common comment i heard i think i played like a show from monstercat and like i knew some people in the crowd and they were like yeah the people next to me were like confused if it was tails because they didn't recognize them without a hat and i was like yeah [ __ ] that sucks that's really cool that
should be your logo you should have like a logo that's either the hat or the hat under the headphones and that could be one of your tails logos i think i do want to move away from the hat again it comes down to just like uh i can't afford to get a nice haircut all the time so like keeping that up just sucks you know what i mean that's right yeah that's but uh the hat the hat hides a lot of bad hair right well if any of you listeners out there looking for a new identity apparently tails is giving away his old identity maybe we can maybe we can raffle off the hat on a future episode well i had to retire one of them about a month ago the classic classic one broke the the leather in the back finally wore all the way through no way so we're on we're on number two you didn't throw it out did you oh no no no okay good that's gonna plan to repair it eventually should be in the rock and roll museum um what piece of advice changed your life
um the song torn by natalie imbruglia having a guitar solo at the end the big climax that really hit me when i was maybe 21 20. that was a deep cut for me it's huge love i love that song that's song structures it's amazing it's second to none it's one that's one of my favorite songs of all time but yeah for people that don't know i was one of fortu's students way back in the day and i remember him getting up on a table and jamming out to that guitar solo in the middle of the classroom and to be honest that's probably my most memorable moment of all of nimbus that's what i remember the most is fletch standing on a table talking about is it torn is that the right song it is torn it's a foot classic it is it definitely is just when you
think you can't go any further in the song structure hammer out a couple of choruses repeat all right let's just relax everybody no i don't think so this goes to 11. here comes the guitar solo that's great the whole the whole song structure is amazing i have no idea what's going on with that first verse and the pre-chorus it's just it's maybe a 16-bar verse in there some some kind of shenanigans is going on there but it's amazing yeah yeah i've been i've been diving into song structures lately with a lot of hip-hop stuff and i'm just like what the hell is going on like legit they'll just have like a verse little random four bars with some stuff in it a hook only half of it then nothing for 16 bars and another verse it's just there's no structure and i love it if it works it works right it's all about keeping the listener entertained i think a lot of people don't even think about song structure when they're writing
songs yeah i mean i'm i'm a classic follower of like well try i try to i keep it in mind like the max martin golden rules of songwriting and then trying to flip those into something a little bit more contemporary a little bit less like cookie cutter i guess but right i definitely like live by those a little bit what's your favorite part starting or finishing music oh starting for sure i hate finishing i i need i need a deadline i need someone to be like this song is due on tuesday and then i'm like okay well i guess this is the actual final mix otherwise i'll just go and go and go and go until it's honestly kind of dead i feel like i like like a lot of people mix my songs too far like all the songs i love the mix on they were the ones that were like we need this next week and i'm starting it at the start of the week oh yeah those are the best mixes i've had the
rest are like just mixed to death you know yeah i i realized when i was you know when i first started producing music for other people i would do a rough mix because back in those days you know i didn't have pro tools so i had to do the rough mix at the studio and then email it to the band later on right and just so they could see what we did that day so i would you know they go home it's like three in the morning they go home i wanna go home and i've gotta give them versions of one or three or five songs that we've been working on so i just in real time i just kick snare vocal bass other listen to it once i got really good at that i'd just put the speakers into mono and just sort of go through a mental checklist can i hear everybody in the bad is there anybody that's going to complain about this mix no take it back
out of mono print it same thing on the next song and then i listened to those mixes later after i'd done my mix that was three days long and i was wearing a cape you know with a big neon sign saying i am mixing and i'd listen to that mix compared to the one i did in 30 seconds and the one i did in 30 seconds not only was better than the other one blew it out of the water just absolutely blew it out of the water has everything a mix needs clarity punch simplicity yeah and i was like okay there's something to that like you know for sure for sure man i think the simplicity is the key word there it's i've never heard a song that i absolutely loved and stuck with me forever that wasn't simple there's a lot of songs that i've heard that i i've listened to once and went holy that is the craziest thing i've maybe ever heard it's intense and like it's always like i think the term that
people use is like producer porn or like audio porn you know what i mean it's just so [Music] the mix is shocking in a great way but i never have found a song that's like that that has been timeless that's great you know it's always been yeah more more simple raw songs that have stuck with me and that's what i've been trying to do a little bit more is just like make my music a little bit more raw yeah like an artist i remember an artist that i really like i can't remember who exactly it was but it was on twitter they tweeted something like if i can tell a song has had too much time put into it i don't like it and i went okay i like that artist so i'm gonna put less less time into like just beating these songs into the ground and kind of just let them flow a little bit more i agree i i agree i'm i'm not only a huge i i not only suffer from demoitis all the time i stand behind it i i i know why i love demo itis it's because
that's this that's when the artist is painting that picture for the first time and it's gonna have mistakes but the emotion and the feeling behind it are raw and being captured after you go and refine it and you know exactly what you're doing your um excitement level about it goes down because you're comfortable with it and now you're going to get a better executed performance that's technically better and this is a good thing for pop music by the way um but if it's like a you know a singer songwriter that's that's singing about a breakup i want to hear the first time that goes to tape that's the version i'm probably gonna love and in fact i think i would have loved the first version that they thought in their mind better but it's not recorded yeah yeah i mean i've got a i've had that happen twice on records that i've put out where
the artist went back and re-recorded the vocals and sent them to me and i mean i don't even think i ever talked to them about this but i just didn't use them right they had they had a few words in the original demo that weren't real words they were just kind of like mumbled you know placeholder so i took the real words from the re-recorded vocal like maybe one or two words out of a full line plot that in there like maybe two or three times throughout the song to patch up the lyrics and then i just use the old vocal because i like them way more they were just way more like yeah just raw a little bit more expressive a little bit less perfect and same with one of my songs called ghosted um paulina who's a vocalist on that she sent me vocals that she'd recorded super quickly like just kind of like flash in the pan i guess is the term for that she just recorded them sent them to me i think the bpm was like 135 or something she recorded them at and i sped them up to like
165 maybe even 170 for the original song cool and instead of getting her to re-record them i just used them they're totally sped up they sound like kind of crazy in a weird way but yeah i like that more i think it gives it a cool vibe to it i'll even take vocals that are recorded in a certain speed speed them up like crazy to get the the artifacts of them right print that and then slow them back down or you know just to get them to sound a little bit less like a beautiful perfect pop vocal right cool but that's awesome yeah that's a good maybe that answer could be the answer to my next question so i told you that i wanted you to tell us about a skill that you have or something that you do well this is my fast track assignment shout out fast track assignment and uh i want you to
tell us something that you do well and then give us a method a series of steps we can take to practice that skill for ourselves um all right i to be honest what i like about my music most is usually like like chord progressions with like in conjunction to the melodies um that kind of complement them and to be honest like the way that i do it and have always done it and what i like and i i think what carries a pretty similar characteristic through all my music is yeah the way that i write chords so what i'll always do is step one is i'll choose my key i used to always write in minor keys but now i've realized the joys of major keys being totally awesome as well so no limits anymore
but um i'll literally write up my scale in ableton put it off my piano roll so it's not being played but i can see it and then i'll literally just pick between like three and six random notes from my scale draw them in at random lengths through like an eight bar loop um and just basically arrange a baseline or like the root notes for what my chords are going to be because realistically with my like level of music theory not being super high what i'm looking for the most is satisfying chord movements and for me the main way to get that is satisfying movements in the bass i don't want um i generally don't want my chorus to come in on like something like an a flat or like you know like g or any g flat even because those bass notes to me aren't low enough they're not
satisfying frequency wise you're you're speaking like exactly right okay yeah so when you hear that it doesn't have that like really nice full low sound a flat to me a5 is like the worst note i don't like that note what's the best what are some good notes for for chorus notes uh hitting on d i like honestly anything from like c sharp if i'm writing hip hop stuff c but c sharp all the way up to like like g i don't even like that like maybe g flat or f sharp um i try and make that my one chord my like resolving most satisfying chord or hit in the song fall in between those notes because i do find that to be just the most full base sounds that you can get in the biggest low end you can have um really cool yeah the beauty of that is like your chorus can land on an a flat but let's say it lands on the a flat goes down to like
g flat you know what i mean like you're not going to be quick and then it hits your one chord and that's still no matter when you go to your big one chord moments it's gonna be a satisfying bass note right um and that's what i look for so like my drops do sometimes end up on a higher bass note but they'll go like boom boom boom you know what i mean they'll hit like the right spot and the satisfying one chord eventually um so yeah that's the first step is i choose a key usually between c sharp and like g ish and j sorry just to clarify you move your piano roll out of the way so you can't once you've picked the notes you can't see that and it can't influence you anymore right um i i keep them there i pick those notes i pick those like six notes and i arrange them into just like some sort of movement that i like between those notes basically forming like where my chord progression is gonna go okay and then i do the same thing every time to get started i'll command a i'll select all
i'll duplicate pitch up seven semitones so basically i've got like my bass notes for my chord for my root notes and a perfect fifth and then i'll plug in like standard triads like a major or minor third depending on whatever quality is needed for the diatonic chords whatever it is you know music theory and then i'll take all of those thirds major or minor select all those and put those up an octave so my chord shape is always that when i'm starting it's my root note perfect fifth and then the third is the highest note it's my leading tone of my chord um notably you can hear that like the start of like rushing back by flume if anybody knows that song um that's that chord structure and i love that sound i use it in my leads everything like if i make a lead sound
and it's not just like a single note and people always go like how does what sound how did you make that sound for your lead it's not usually the sound that they're looking for it's that it is that section that basically interval or that chord any any random sound with that chord to me sounds good so i lean on that a ton that's cool this is this is this is gold people yeah so i mean i mean i i use that all the time and the beauty with that is when you have your bass note and the perfect fifth kind of like moving through your chord progression you can start to change that third like the leading note the major or minor third you can start to change that and move that up and down and get really great melodies because i find like a lot of the stronger melodies especially like ones that i've written that i'm happy with they they generally revolve around say you're playing like a c major chord they generally would
revolve around like e like the third you know what i mean like that is always like a nice note for me to choose so yeah i mean that's that's kind of like the basis of how how i'll start every single song is like that chord structure moving it around um yeah that's like yeah i start eventually i'll go in and i'll put in like you know some extra qualities to the chord like make it a minor seventh or ninth or you know what i mean just add them in and and use my melody to pad those chords out if i can like i'll have a simple triad with that inversion and then use like ninths and elevens in my melody to make them have a little bit more of like a feeling but yeah right man yeah the other thing you need is texture everybody everybody needs more texture in the music i do like a lot of remix judging for like a company in vancouver
and the one thing that was always feedback is there's no texture over the chords i think like it always needs that even if it's like a nice clean pop song a little bit of texture goes such a long way and what would you describe as texture um textures to me are things that do not have any rhythmical relationship with the song so things like like the classics are like vinyl crackles or like waves or like you know these vhs hum that sort of thing of some kind yeah yeah yeah i've been like doing them a little bit more heavily lately like messing around with like just straight up sounds that don't have any rhythmic relationship to the song and i find that those are the things that really draw a lot of interest it's like when there's like even like a laser zap that like speeds up through the sound with no accord like
nothing to do with the actual tempo i love that like right it's so ear catching in my opinion right some excitement in the mix right yeah definitely makes the chords it makes some like generally like a lot of my chord progressions are pretty basic but because of the texture over top it it adds a ton of excitement to the chords and a ton of interest to the chords sweet yeah what are you currently obsessed with um currently i'm obsessed with type beats so right like the youtube world of type beats um i've recently kind of like hopped into the world of i've i'm really really i'm listening to a ton of hip-hop and i love making those sort of beats but with a little bit more of like a indie and textural kind of vibe you know what
i mean like something that you would hear like little uzi vert or like trippy red wrap on but with a bit more texture and a little bit more like kind of wooziness and like indie vibe to it so i've been doing a ton of that and like posting a bunch of stuff on youtube like i've been trying to do like a beat a day put it up on youtube nobody really knows about it i haven't really posted anything about it anywhere but they just live on youtube and i'm just kind of trying to build a catalog of beats so when i'm in the studio with people i've got a ton of tracks that i can play if uh yeah yeah if if the opportunity arises that's my goal lately is to connect with um more artists out here in atlanta and get into the studio and yeah see play them some music and see what we can do so awesome uh shout out trippy red and shout out trippy red's clone as well while we're shouting out uh
um what do you still want to learn um to be honest the whole kind of like indie like the really indie songwriting style so dudes like toruimwa and like who would be other like guys like versace people that write they're kind of like electronic singer-songwriters if that's like a good term for it um just how those songs kind of work and how to build those i find like i feel like what i do i do somewhat well but there's a few genres out there that just for the life of me just the composition and the sound selection and all that just they're wild like i don't know i don't know if that's the product of like a band sitting in a room jamming and like that's how you get that sort of vibe but man like yeah
making music that's i'll go ahead so go ahead i was just gonna say making music that's a little bit less linear like not looping as much you know the pre-chorus hits a few extra chords you know right cool would you ever consider singing on your own stuff uh there's a few demos of my of more recent stuff that i've sang on but not so much i love the idea of having lyrics i think that for me as a listener that is something that really like makes timeless music and like pulls up like the listenability and repeatability of a song is is good lyrics and lyrics you can connect with but it's something yeah it's something i struggle with a lot actually because i do want to have my music tell a bit more of a story and have a bit more of a deeper meaning but it's infinitely harder to do that with no lyrics with no one actually kind of spoon feeding you a little bit more of like the story
but uh maybe maybe if if some some better if like izotope makes like a voice changer put in john lennon settings and just sing away and it just turns right into john lennon yeah i'd go for it do you have a list of potential song titles on your phone that you sort of keep or song themes or something how do you do that yeah i i kind of do i have like a ton of notes that are like one-liners or lyrics or song ideas but i i generally never use them i always find like i can never like retroactively tie one of those song names to something new that i'm working on it always has to kind of be something new i usually like something that a friend of mine taught me a long time ago was as soon as you're done the kind of demoing of the song to stop working on it and just really sit and listen to it and
put some some like visualizations in your mind of what that song is trying to tell or what it means to you cool um yeah and that that has been like really helpful to make my music feel a bit more meaningful not only to maybe my audience but to me to make the songs like be more representative of things right that's great which my early music wasn't i was just like yeah trying to make like fun bangers and like whatever happens happens i'll call it whatever like i'll look over the doorknob i can see one of those i'll call it door i don't know it used to be the old yeah it worked um but i tried to avoid having i'm gonna say this and people are gonna go well that doesn't happen all the time in your music but i i try to not make the song title be the lyrics i like when the song title and the lyrics are related but they're not like
i'm not obvious skeleton is like that and one of the new ones i have coming out is like that but i try to stray away from that if i can the problem with that because i love that too the problem with that is you're right it has to be related because otherwise when people go to find it they won't know what to search for right yeah which is kind of cool too yeah they'll search they'll search the the chorus lyrics and it'll be again there's no songs like that and we can't find any of that yeah i think about that too a little bit but yeah it's it's do you want to be obvious or do you want to be secretive you know yeah there's always it's always the line there it's like how much artistic integrity do you want to maintain versus how much do you want to give your music a chance to like be publicly discovered yep like there's always the line there it's like you gotta you gotta balance that very very perfectly in my opinion to have like a
big meteoric career because you gotta have your integrity to a certain degree and you do have to sell out to a certain degree you have to find the mix to uh like i think radiohead probably is the master of that they sold out just enough with a few of their hits that like yeah i think they've done a good job with that but i think you i think you take creep out of the picture we've never heard of radiohead maybe maybe not maybe not yeah they might i mean i think that's like karma police but no one would have heard that without creep code first i don't think that album would come out right exactly yeah right yeah and so i don't like creep is like not even on my list of radio heads or theirs i bet too yes my least favorite radiohead that's the one that propelled them in there and and um you know david bowie and madonna and all those artists did that too like you can and kanye west right you you can't just you can't just lead with like
yeezus right you've got to like start simple yeah yeah i agree i think like i mean i think i think there's that point in in all artists career you know what i mean where they hit that like i mean even back to the like flume had that he's got like from what 2016 or 2017 i think it's say it it's huge it's it's like dwarfs all of his songs by a ton but it got him enough into the public eye that when he started experimenting it opened people's eyes to different styles that they may like that they didn't know they liked right but yeah it's a it's a tough line because i mean you make the wrong step too soon and go a bit too commercial and you're out man people you lose all your cool points you know what i mean yep yeah you're right what makes a great song um to me it is
and this is very maybe specific but it's something that a lot of my favorite songs have and it's the the two- thirds point bridge that has the melody that goes a little bit higher than the rest of the song i don't know why but i've always absolutely loved that and that is like in my eyes like that is the trick that gets people to listen all the way to at least the two-thirds point of your track and a bit further and restart it again because they want to hear that this is fire information people i agree i totally agree i don't know if anybody i mean people know this song i'm guessing but mumbai power from skrillex that he put out maybe 2020 or end of 2019 the whole song repeats pretty like standard and then the three quarters or two two-thirds three-quarters mark the melody in the drop hits literally
one higher note it goes like to the next note up in the scale and i restart that song over and over just to hear that note go one higher and i go oh so satisfying and then i started again um so to me like that is a trait that i like in songs like yeah even lemonade by gunna like the new like dont oliver gonna um more on like the hip hop r b world but same thing like two thirds mark there's a verse where he just goes a little bit harder and like his auto tune just kicks him a few notes higher that's the best part i'll listen to that song over and over just to get to that part that's so cool so that's that's it for me for sure for me that is the new radicals you only get what you give and then he goes to the high falsetto part for the bridge i can't even do it but it's a it's a moment though it's it's such a it's such a tricky
it's such a tricky mind thing where it like works for your business and also makes your song good because like i do believe that that maximizes people repeating it i agree when you put the best part of the song at that two-thirds mark yeah totally at mac you're exactly right because people like i gotta hear that again and it only happens one time in song so the the the most efficient way of getting there again is just listen to the whole thing if you put it if you put it too close to the end i think a lot of people miss it on the first listen i think you're right i i think it's connected to the the fibonacci sequence the the the rule of thirds right yeah exactly 100 exactly i think there's probably youtube videos about that exact like phenomenon music right but i love it i mean it's a trick that works on me every time yeah great answer um what are some non-musical influences you have like architecture or movies or something like that um you know what i actually kind of struggle with this a little bit um
like kind of reigning in what my influences actually are outside of music like the weird thing is is like when i go for like a walk and like listen to like like a hip-hop album that's when i'm most hyped to like go write the music that i make which is to me seems unrelated but there's a connection somewhere in there that's making that happen so just other genres of music are inspiring for your genre of music yeah big time like i i don't generally like if i listen to a full electronic album i'm not in the mood to go home and make electronic music i don't want to do that i'll listen to that and digest it and love it but it's listening to randomly i don't know why but it's it's more so hip hop and pop that i'm like yeah i want to go and make like a cool tale song right but um i i like i mean photography as well i do like a very specific type of
like imagery and like photography that that i do think like probably translates a little bit into my music um it's a little bit more like just like old classic film like you know just like the grainy fujifilm like vibrant color photography i i do really like get drawn towards imagery like that also like setting i think like there are certain people's like studios and like home studio rooms that i look at and i look at that room and go wow i want to make music because basically i want enough money to furnish my studio in that way but yeah plants like take care of a ton of plants here i don't know if they really inspire me to write more music but i mean they're definitely a good like thing to focus on when i'm taking a break or you know keep me a little bit more sane
but yeah if you want to what are yours hey i'll answer the questions uh if you want to see tales and plants go to bit birds twitch last twitch stream which is you plan live and there's just a ton of plants there and that's your house those are all your plants right i just uploaded it up to youtube today too moments before we hopped in this call oh perfect so it's on the tails youtube page tails youtube page okay awesome do you have a custom url for your page i don't yet i think you need to hit a certain metric to get that it's a hundred hundred subscribers so you can just go your settings okay yeah okay i need to change that i'm sure tails is gone but you should do that after this video where people are gonna go and grab it before you do yeah straight up sell it to me for a thousand bucks in fact i'm gonna put that on my list of things to do um i'm influen i'm influenced by a lot of things nature chakras uh cedar that's why i love your one of your old handles oh yeah okay um
just a question is is the over your i guess left shoulder is that the chakras those are that's sacred geometry but very connected though so chakras you know part of the meditation and your your spiritual body and the sacred geometry is all about you know i guess musical math for for lack of a better term the math of the math of nature right i wish we were taught how math and music were connected in high school because i would have paid a lot of attention instead of paying no attention at all yeah yeah do you meditate a lot flitch i would love to tell you yes and i'm working on it um i meditated before this good i mean it's a lifelong thing you know it's like uh you gotta start it and keep with it forever to have like good benefits so i mean as long as you're doing it every once in a while and not letting it slip like completely
out of your life you're on the right track you know i aim for just eight minutes if i can just do eight minutes try for eight minutes a day then you're you're doing it if you can go 20 minutes those are better sessions but eight minutes is enough to disconnect you from the traffic and the concrete for enough time for you to go oh that thing that i've been worrying about is not at all important to me in my life whatsoever i forgot about that yeah yeah i had a student once who was really deep into meditation and he would like he was always the first one in class but he would like come into class just like oh yeah man like he would usually do i think like something like half an hour every morning and some days he'd be like oh man i just got so into it like i just was there for like an hour and 15 minutes today and like it was crazy i was just like man i don't know how you do that i always fall asleep if it goes longer than like you know my body's just like yeah i mean you're trying to sleep that's what we're
getting from this so i always just end up passing out which is also good because if you need to sleep you need to sleep the dalai lama says that the best that sleep is the best form of meditation because that is also meditation it's just i would believe it if it came from him he said it i believe it i love it um okay so we're just winding down here i just have a few more questions so advice what advice do you have for my listeners our listeners because this is a co-production between you and i um for people that want to get into music production for people that just started off in music production for people that are music fans that might be interested in poking around with ableton live or making songs or something what what advice would you give to them um i don't know i don't know how you oh sorry if you guys hear a bit of thunder going on or sounds thunder lightning every day here in
atlanta um pretty much yeah um i don't know how much fish will like this one but honestly youtube university totally maybe really really really figure out what you want to do before you go to a music school if that is what you're thinking really really think about it 100 agree um yeah get to i mean set some i would say set some benchmarks for yourself meet them on your own and then determine if you want to go to a music school because uh i think you can go really really one of two ways with music schools and if you don't go into it prepared i think you often go away that you don't want i think you you usually get the opposite result where you come out disliking music and just like in the music industry um
so yeah get to a certain point um i would say don't go to music school as a complete beginner do do a lot of homework and get yourself to a certain level before you go that's great advice shout out levels by the way just settle levels yeah and when you're ready to learn come to levels yeah exactly um i i agree with you i i think that's that's not just music production and all of these lessons i realize are life lessons not just music production lessons but that's a good rule of thumb for life too when you get involved in something immerse yourself in it and find out if you like it first before you sign up for it right like for sure yeah i think i think like music instruction and like production instruction that comes off the tongue a little bit weird um is really really beneficial and really great once you're at a certain level i think if you go into these sort of
things because i mean like i do this as well i was like a sad thing it's like music instruction so like as somebody that gets paid from that i'm not trying to like i don't know i don't know what the word is here but it's really important to go into it knowing what you want to get out of it before you get into it because i've had a ton of classmates and students that came in for maybe the wrong reasons they didn't know what they wanted they didn't have any specific direction going into it and ultimately found themselves with a worse relationship to music and more confused than when they went in so yeah i think like yeah i just think that's important to like assess what you want before you hop into a 30 000 university or or anything it doesn't even have to be that i i 100 agree that's great that's amazing advice i love that hell yeah
um what's a book we should read or an audio book we should listen to if you're a person like me that's not much of a reader um i'm currently reading a book about forming new habits um i think it's called cosmic habits which is pretty good so far um essentially like i just go to bed too late and i want to break that habit and like you know get into a little bit better of a lifestyle but um [Music] i wouldn't i guess i would i wouldn't say i recommend that that's just like the current one i'm reading um this is like a this is like one of those like greatest song of all time questions for me where i'm like oh [ __ ] i should have thought about i should always know what my my most recommended book is um damn i don't know like anything from terry pratchett
because my girlfriend will listen to this and vouch for that terry pratchett fan um yeah i don't know i think some a book i feel like this is like a little bit of a basic book now but like sapiens um that came out like quite a few years ago harare yeah maybe something like that i thought that was pretty pretty eye-opening just to like the human condition like the history of humans but yeah i don't know my my book recommendations have never been good everything i've recommended my girlfriend to read she's like that was absolutely terrible recommendations are tough because there's such a even youtube video recommendations right as soon as somebody's like hey i got a youtube video i want you to watch i just go uh i recoil in horror i'm like i don't i don't even trust my recommendations of my own favorite youtube videos yeah oh yeah the second you start watching something you think is awesome with somebody else you realize oh [ __ ] maybe this isn't a good
video i mean like sucks and they're like i know this is 20 minutes long but stick with it you're like how could you be so unaware of what's going on here um yeah speaking of habits though i i i listened to an audiobook recently called atomic habits and it's probably the same that's great that's what i was maybe that's the one yeah did i think i maybe said cosmic habits but i think that was it atomic habits that's the one i'm current i'm like i just went through it right now i really like that yeah okay good i'll finish it and i i i sorry go ahead oh no no i just i just said i'll finish it i was on the fence whether i should continue with it but it's good it really helped me it really motivated me to get this podcast going which was quite a bit of undertaking for distribution and technical stuff and um and i also paired it with uh an audiobook or a book called the 12-week year which i think you should check out have
been recommended hell yeah it's really cool yeah i liked i like there's one piece of advice that stuck with me already from it that is kind of like my like kind of like shining light of i should probably finish it which is instead of developing new habits by just rigorously trying to do them more so like determine what type of person you want to be and more so focus on instead of habits so much to get there like focus on being that person like if you want to be a person that is creative or you know what i mean like has this certain lifestyle then you should start adding and removing things from your life that help you kind of go towards that lifestyle and being that person instead of like i don't know just like exercising every day right just for the sake of exercising you know right you should have like a a vision behind it a a a reason that you're doing it more than just a
bunch of tasks that you do that exactly yeah yeah and i like that i like that idea like yeah just making it like pick a few things that you really are passionate about i don't know if the book even kind of says this but this is like more so what i've like maybe taken from is like pick a few hobbies in a lifestyle that you want and the type of person you want to be and just i don't know delete the other [ __ ] and you know move towards those things that actually like matter to you more and like yeah i don't know i don't think the book quite says that but but books are kind of what i'm getting from it a little bit that's good the books are supposed to influence you to come up with your own thoughts so that's that's true that's good um what should we learn to master this is sort of my last question until we move on to your call to actions calls to action what should we master um
i would be hypocritical if i said something like your emotions and your thoughts because i mean [ __ ] how would i know what that's like you know what i mean um but um i would say like for all the anxious people out there learning to master just the art of calming down like with with your own methods whatever they be is extremely important whether it be meditation whether it be exercise whether it be whatever you need to do i think last 10 years for me have been literally the the process of figuring out what calms me down i think like yeah that's like for the anxious people i'm sure something you think about a lot but yeah just like i i wanted to be made clear that i'm not saying if you're anxious just try
calming down right that's like the dumbest thing but like yeah master like the skill of calming down by whatever means you have to to do that right that's great yeah um okay tell us about what you're working on like if my listeners want to hear your music and they want to follow you what should they do what should they what should be their first introduction to tales um head over to my youtube page and watch the create together volume 2 set currently that is all of my newest and unreleased music um the whole set is 30 minutes of original music which is the first time i've ever done an all original set so i'm super proud of that um and on the technicalities yes there are two songs from other artists in the 30 minutes but we'll forget about that for
a minute now yeah they're not just going to type tales into youtube and find you so what tails x beats yeah tails x beats or tails create together um those will both bring it up um if you do search tails music or tails dj i'm pretty sure we're within the first like one or two results um which is good the other thing you're going to find is obviously sonic from tales singing songs but um yeah that's that's the most recent kind of project um besides that if you're not a youtube person i'm heading over to spotify and literally just searching the word tails should be the first result my new ep will be coming out on august 6th uh you can go listen to the first few singles currently they're all out uh with the label bit bird who gave me this really dope shirt the other day it was a dope shirt create forever good motto
yeah thank you so much for doing this i love you you're an amazing person and you're an amazing artist and i'm so happy that you are going to be my first guest hell yeah it's been a long time coming man we've been talking about doing this for a super long time so i'm stoked that the ball is finally rolling and i'm excited to watch it just pick up speed and keep going thank you so much i i tell you i'm excited for that too is there any last thing you want to add or say to the listeners um whatever footage touches turns to gold so get in early guys which is which is awesome he's been an incredible mentor for me since i basically got into electronic music um but it's not limited to that i mean fletch you're kind of a jack of all trades seem to know your way around every in and out of every industry and genre i don't know i mentioned an obscure genre and you know some crazy
deep reference of something in there every time so it's always impressive and yeah i'm hyped to uh be the first guest on here and i'm hyped to listen to the rest of them as they come out oh thanks so much um and that's only because i'm old by the way when you're when you're old you you are a wealth of uh references that's the only good part about being old no i'm just kidding it's great everything's great about you i'm worried man i'm gonna be 30 next year and i'm not i'm not coming close to hitting that yet people are like yeah this thing from two years ago i'm like what oh i don't know anything no how about this i was 30 before 9 11 happened yeah just to put it into perspective for you yeah i mean my girlfriend is like five years younger and still i feel like i'm like talking about things and she's like what the hell is that right it's only five years difference but i mean a lot changes pretty quickly these days yeah it's so true like as you get
older the time just spins like this like i remember being 20 at work and going how long could an eight hour day be right and now eight hour days are like eight minutes like i'm like oh like like i am currently gearing up for the big changes that are gonna happen in 2012. like that's my that's where my brain's at on the timeline like i'm like i wonder what's gonna happen the alien's gonna come out at 2012 is the what's gonna happen and it's like oh that was nine years ago that that already happened it's like really so really i don't know if you if you've ever watched it or maybe it's a youtube video or something it's about the theory of time going actually faster as you get older how from your first birthday to your second birthday is 50 of your life right from your 90th birthday to your like even your 100th birthday that whole 10 years that's only 10 of your life so yeah a little bit relative to how old
you get yeah but yeah it definitely is proving true for me every year goes by i think of oh yeah in a year i'm like oh that's not very far away it's just a year but when i was 10 13 like those ranges i was like oh my god i can't wait a year for anything right there's no way i can't even think of a year that's too long yeah but totally well it's exciting for you because 30 is as i'm sure you're aware because your brain's gearing up for it it's a big deal right um but i think it's great i i think that the best thing about 30 is you sort of look back at people in their 20s and go what are you so worried about just be yourself who cares what other people think about you like like that's the first decade of i think i don't care what other people think of me and then 40 is like i'm certain that i don't care what other people think of me and then you get up to 70 where you're
like i'm not gonna wear pants in public anymore i don't care what anybody thinks like that's amazing right yeah oh yeah oh yeah man i'm i'm getting there already i used to like be like oh man i got i gotta run and eat healthy for vanity reasons and now i'm just like [ __ ] man i just want my knees not to hurt and i want my like lungs to feel good every day yeah new goals you know framing it differently same [ __ ] but just frame differently i love it so much okay thank you so much episode one tails [Music]
[Music] you
