Ep.4 Brock Wilson | LevelsFM Music Production Podcast - YouTube
[Music] [Music] what is your name and or your alias my name and my alias is brock wilson wilson's the middle name i love it uh what made you choose your middle name for your artist alias um i had had an actual alias before and it was
just like i don't know it kind of just like developed as i made music more and when i started making music having an alias it kind of like colored your perception of how your music should sound you know like your alias has a name and your music's gotta fit that fit that uh that kind of brand or whatever so it was frustrating for someone who likes to like change their music and like work with different genres and stuff i like was always changing my alias name like all the time so at some point i was like i really just want to use my actual name but heatherington is like kind of ridiculous to try and you know like if i ever play festivals i can't have people shouting heatherington that doesn't work very well and i was talking i was talking to my sister and she was like why don't you just do brock wilson i just use her middle name i was like yeah actually that's pretty good like that's like you know it works it's short i was like yeah that's let's just do that that was it yeah that's great um when if if we met in an elevator and
you didn't know me and i asked you what you do what would your answer be i just say artist just artist and then you know if they asked me to elaborate i'd say i make music and i like to draw and paint and stuff and i mentioned i'm in school for architecture and that would kind of just be the the general thing oh we're going to get to that everybody i'm in school for architecture you can't just leave that on the table without getting to it but are you ready for the lightning round okay yeah what's the best song of all time oh [ __ ] [Laughter] that's crazy i don't have an answer what's going to give you an answer what's one of the best songs well you want to know what the first thing that came to my mind when he said that was um it is the lightning round after all yeah [ __ ] you know what's funny is i can't even remember the name of the song i just remember how it goes it's tim and paula song the really really famous team in paula song off the
first currents okay yeah from currents okay um people just drop that in the chat because i know the better unless i know the better that was it i think that's one of the best like indie songs at least ever it's so good why have you heard it yeah i think so but i can't remember that one i just think it's so well structured and well put together and every single time like it starts off with the guitar riff and then it just goes like it opens up and like the eq you know full range full spectrum the drums come in and it's so sparkly and every time i hear that it's just like gives me chills it's so good and it's just such a catchy song so good and it's dynamic you know it's not the same you know same pop structure all the way throughout it changes kind of like the two not the tomb but like the mood of the song towards the end and it ends on a on a different note than how it started this is a very good song we got him fired up in the lightning round already folks um who has the best voice of all time
who has one of the best voices of all time one of the best voices i got to tell you man i'm terrible with these kinds of questions i can never recall stuff like this this quickly this is the reason for the lightning round this is to bring adrenaline into your system i don't know i don't know i don't know i for some reason the frank ocean came into my head i love it it's a great answer see that's all i got great answer who's your favorite band or musical group of all time or one of them band or musical group um i don't know tame impala team impala yeah tim and paula this thing is all the people i like who are like kind of bandy or like they're solo and then they tour with the band i mean i guess i like caribou a lot caribou does that as well okay who's up there yeah paul is kind of a solo artist really with a yeah solo artist and tours
of the band that's the deal yeah right right right uh cool i think i saw caribou like caribou's been around for a long time and they used to have a different name right that guy manitoba i think manitoba i saw him when he was manitoba yeah he's coming to vancouver again soon actually cool come to commodore um who would be your dream collaboration why'd they say it like that who would be your dream collaboration there you go that's a good one i have a little list actually there's a few people kirby was one of them i'd love to collab with caribou um sam gelatry i'd love to collab with sam gillitry that's a good one um why uh i don't know i feel like he's had this really interesting journey through through music where he started doing the really wild like he kind of started off that like super wild uh cryptic sound soundcloud beat vibe uh and now he's doing stuff with his vocals and he's found a way to like
really make something super unique uh and i it to me like when i hear his new ep it just feels like everything he's done has led up to this ep and it's just this culmination of all of his different styles and i don't know i just i i think it's like really admirable and i really like the style of it it's super unique lido's another person too i think lido's really cool his new album is really cool arca is really cool john hawkins john hopkins is super cool yeah there's a good list of collab things there but i love how you have a list yeah oh yeah got it uh laptop or recording studio laptop i knew you were going to say that uh what is a no-brainer for me what's your favorite audio effect hmm i don't know i i might be boring and just say eq i do a lot of eq'ing reverb's good you know keeping it basic i do like flangers too i'll use flangers every so often
but i might have to just stick with eq eq is a classic all great answers yeah um what's your favorite plug-in vst or au i have an eq that i really like i don't know how to say it though it's like luf something or other something i don't know what it's called it's a little like analog it's a free vst analog eq and it's got a little button that says analog and a 10k or 20k button oh cool put it on all my vocals and just turn turn the 20k up like halfway and it's got super sparkly sparkly sounds oh yeah buddy oh yeah that's what you're looking for yeah i love the sparkle on the vocals as well i really like sign plant okay what's that a sine wave generator it's uh no it's it's s-y-n plant and it's a it's like it's like um it's a synth but you can't really make anything on it very easily it's basically a bunch of really funky presets and the interface is like a plant okay and there's like a dial in
the middle and you can kind of like expand it yeah it's it's super weird but you get a lot of really cool sounds out of it uh which song sounds great like mixing or the lightning round lightning round which song sounds great [ __ ] noise yeah something by noisier nausea insane sound design uh i'll go with uh what's it called [Laughter] it's a lightning round everybody never remember the names i have no idea about song titles at all yeah even even anything by john hopkins and the singularity album i think is incredible sonically actually i'm going to switch it to john hopkins i love it yeah okay why let's go emerald rush by john hopkins we'll leave it at that there's there it is why because the first time i heard his music
i had never heard anything like it before and i had i started listening to it like a little over a year ago after having made music for like five years so like i felt like i'd kind of heard a lot already so to be like that floored and that surprised by something was like so special yeah i was blown away and the whole album's like that too and i was like all right and like ever since he's been my favorite artist just because of that like not only did it have like a shock value which is cool like but shock values you know it's like whatever but it's really well written like he's a brilliant songwriter and he wrote a really good album from it so great yeah so i love that so a combination of a great song plus what do you mean by shock value excitement uh uh originality i mean yeah and ideas aboriginality and ideas that are that are new i guess like there's one part in i think it's neon pattern drum one of the songs i think that's the song it's he has a synth and it kind of like collapses into this really distorted
kind of almost like a gross sound and as it expands back into the full sense the drums kind of like fall out of it i don't know how to explain it but it's like it's such a weird like idea and it works so well um there's all sorts of stuff like that just like all throughout the album so that's the shock value for me it's just like a really unique take on you know like introducing your drums into a song i love it you know what my favorite thing about you is so far during this what takes you three hours to get through the lightning round i love it it does so great yep um okay so right now where are you currently located uh in eastbound vancouver love it and where were you born i was born in charisdale like not like in carousel but i grew up until i was six i was in carousel then i moved to port moody and i left port moody when i was 20 or yeah
19 or 20. i mean i grew up in port moody basically these are all places around vancouver yep awesome um can you tell us about an early musical memory kid yeah at the old house my parents used to play music in the living room and my mom played piano as well so like we always grew up with piano in the house but i remember i for some reason i remember a record player i don't even think we owned a record player but that's what i remember um just like something playing music in the living room and i used to like when i was like i don't know younger than six four or five i'd walk through the living room from like you know upstairs were here i'd come down quickest way to the kitchen was just to turn quick but i'd take the long way through the living room so i could hear the music and i would always like dance through the living room living room provided no one was around to see and that was that's like something i remember when i was really young that's really cool do you remember what the music was no idea no idea no idea yeah do you remember the first album that you bought
with your own money or maybe it wasn't your money but you went to the store or you went online or wherever and you sought out an album that you wanted what was it um i don't know because like it's like going to a store and buying an album i was i was already kind of past that like i was already just downloading stuff from itunes right but the first music i actually bought with my own money was when i was in grade six i bought carter one two and three all in this at the same time oh yeah all the same time but all the lil wayne albums yeah that would have my parents deleted them [Music] really yeah they saw they saw like some of the song titles and they're like yeah you shouldn't listen to this when you're 11 or whatever yeah so they deleted them who who was right in that situation were they right or were you right well it's complicated because i had a song on my itunes called [ __ ] moneyweed and i was 11 or 10 or something and you know i
don't blame them for seeing that and and deleting it but i didn't like it because of any of the lyrical content there was a sample like he'd sampled an outcast song for the intro of that song and i just loved the sample and i can't remember the name of the outcast song um but that's all i cared about i would just rewind the intro all the time just to hear the sample um so you know they deleted it because of the song title but i didn't listen to it because of the santel just like the sample at the beginning did did them deleting it make you want it more like did that make it like this taboo thing you're like hold on a second i think lil wayne's on to something here or did you just like how did you feel when they deleted it you just go to youtube you know it's like of course it doesn't make a difference yeah i got youtube converters you know i got an ipod i'll figure it out right that's so different i love it it's so weird um do you remember
the first time you heard your voice recorded and then played back to you what was that like i hated it yeah i hated it because i tried to take a video of myself like playing guitar and singing when i was like 12 and i hated it and i also tried recording like music like my voice when i was 11 or 12 as well like tried making beats and recording it and it didn't sound good but i thought it did and i like put it out whatever that meant back then put on soundcloud and share with my friends on facebook and i just got so much [ __ ] for it it was so bad you know it wasn't like super inappropriate i wasn't saying anything i shouldn't have said but it was like just really bad and i got made fun of a lot for it so i stopped making music like entirely for like years yeah wow yeah because i started making music the first time i started making music i was like 12 years old and i was in propellerhead reason reason four and
i was pretty into it and i was into like dubstep at the time it was also into like a lot of like rap music but yeah i made stuff and i put it out and i was like all like cocky about it and i'm like yeah you know i do this now and i just got [ __ ] on wow so it was like really discouraging um and yeah that's like began the the years of self-esteem issues like after that because i thought it was something i was good at and like i was terrible at it so right yeah in retrospect were you okay at it or or well no not really you were like it was like the first few songs i ever made right right terrible they're of course they're gonna be terrible yeah you know like unless you're you know like if you were someone who made music for a long time you could maybe be like yeah like i can see like he might have like you know maybe he can play piano or something but like you know like if you were to show it to someone else they'd be like this is garbage right so but i was 12 i didn't know any better
that's amazing so what year how old were you when you went back to it how many years did it put you off 17. i didn't start doing it again 17. five years wow yeah and i was so like in between i would like maybe kind of go back to it and like you know play with play with reason a little bit but like i was so nervous about having people hear it like i remember one night i was just playing piano with my headphones on upstairs so we had like a digital piano and i just had my headphones on i was like jamming on the piano for like half an hour took my headphones off put it down and then my parents are downstairs like that was really nice brock and it wasn't in my headphones the whole time it was just like playing over my speakers and i just freaked out i was like i can't [ __ ] believe they heard me and i was like freaking out about it so i was like super super conscious about having people hear it because it's like you know like it's right for me like music is like super super vulnerable and personal like those are when i play piano it feels like emotional for me right it's not just like a thing you know it's not casual
so for me to sit there and play piano for half an hour it's like almost like you know not to sound like corny it's almost like an emotional experience for me to do that oh cool so then you know someone was listening in on me have this like intimate experience by myself it's like almost like i feel like my privacy was violated or whatever it's like a really weird thing to explain but yeah i freaked out um and just like locked myself in the room and they were like what they're like i just gave you a compliment you [ __ ] that's so funny um do you think there's actually sorry go ahead go ahead it was uh when i was 17 i was in a law class and trey was writing music on ableton in class and i was like oh is that ableton like i heard about it and he's like yeah yeah and like that was when i kind of started picking it up again was when i saw trey mess around with ableton shout out trey austin shout out trey austin and um i
was like i bought it or i didn't buy it i downloaded it because i was like you know i'm not gonna stick with it because i you know whatever i had like so many reasons to say no or excuses to say no and um i got the 30-day trial and i was like every single day got home from school forgot about all my homework and just like mess around ableton i did that for you know i extended the trial for like 90 days or something i did that the whole time so cool and my parents were like should we buy it and i was like yeah i think you should buy it now and i was like i think i want to do this now and like ever since then like especially from then until like i don't know from then on for like two years it was like constant like just like every hour i was awake i was in ableton like it was so much i it was ableton in my dreams like this ableton screen of my dreams like every night it was so obsessive um and obviously i've cooled down a lot with it but like yeah it was crazy that's so cool
yeah it's wild it's a good story that's great man i had a problem with call of duty there about 15 years ago and i had the same problem i've seen call of duty in my dreams waking up and throwing fake grenades but it's way better to be obsessed with ableton live for sure because you're actually doing something right yeah it's not funny shout out call of duty shout out ableton call of duty um [Music] the next thing so do you remember the album that changed your life for the song that changed your life um um i mean most recently it was the singularity album john hopkins i could say that one had a big effect there's like an album that comes along every so often that really like floors me for me i think most recently was the sam gelatry ep it's only four songs so uh the caribou album suddenly that really floored me because i didn't really know what caribou was about i thought he was like an indie artist so i put it on the car and within four songs
i was like holy [ __ ] like this is not like what i expected at all um how would you describe it how would you describe it like genre wise genre wise um it's definitely maybe like if you were to really like pigeonhole it i'd say like inditronica maybe um but there's a bunch of stuff in there some like pretty like like a lot of hip-hop elements and um some funk stuff a lot of house um but then there's also some like kind of singer songwriter the first song has no drums and it's just like him singing over like some sine wave melodies that are really cool um cool so i'd say indie tronica i guess but yeah that one the arca self title album i thought was really really cool um i think another one that had an impact on me when i was younger was live love asap asap rocky because of all the clams casino produce
stuff oh yeah so i've heard that clams casino is like my all-time favorite beat maker um and i love the stuff he does now too but um yeah he did a lot of stuff for that album and the instrumentals like one of my all-time favorite songs from like when i was younger was demons by asap rocky and it was a clams casino song and i was just listening to some of the old clam casino stuff like a couple weeks ago and the demons instrumental came on and i swear i almost started crying like it was like so like so sick i was like wow i forgot about this like such like clamshell sick yeah i remember hearing some of that stuff and really loving it yeah that's great yeah it's really really cool do you remember the moment that you decided you were going to make a run at music production or being an artist like not the first time not when you were 12 but like when did when did that all turn in your mind where you're like i'm
i'm gonna do this um i don't have an exact like day but i remember it was like towards the end of high school because it was like i was just really stressed out about finding out what i was gonna do as everyone is like coming out of high school they don't know what's going on yeah um so and i wasn't like a good student because i just i couldn't wrap my head around anything i didn't enjoy anything and i didn't think i was good at anything so i you know i was like there's not really any option for me aside from something artistic because i was the only thing that i knew i was good at and i knew that i enjoyed doing so i was like you know what like music's been a lot of fun lately like i'll probably take some time off and work on music and that's what i did and then i was like you know what i could definitely do this like and even now you know like being an artist is a lot more than just creating art you know like to be a professional artist it's not really a lot about the artistry but about you know using the other half of your brain that does the [ __ ] you didn't like and like
what made you want to become an artist in the first place you know it's all the marketing and branding and like yeah you know all the music industry [ __ ] um but yeah um yeah it was just towards the end of high school i guess was when i was like i wanna wanna make music and it's a tough sell to the parents say hey i i think i'm going to pursue a career in music to be honest they they understood it because they knew i mean they they knew me pretty well uh and they knew how much i hated everything else like how much i hated school right um and they knew that i wasn't gonna go straight into you know a type of profession they knew i wasn't gonna like go like hey i'm gonna you know work in finance or something like they knew that was just not gonna happen because i never showed an interest in it at all i like the only thing i showed interests in were like kind of like more more creative solo stuff you know i like things i could do
by myself and things that were creative so when i was like i want to give this a go they're like yeah you're young do it so that's great they were really really supportive about it and yeah it was really good for them to do that that's really amazing shout out your parents shout out my parents um [Music] what is your favorite instrument do you how many instruments do you play do you play a lot of instruments yeah well not a lot i i played piano guitar when i was younger i had like lessons for piano guitar um i'd say like my go-to for when i right now is piano like i'll just like mess around but you know i'm not writing like full piano compositions and the songs i write it's just like like an 8 or 16 bar loop or something like that um but i play piano for most things trying to work on getting guitar into some more of my stuff i have like a little bit of guitar i was decent at guitar never really good at it um my guitar skills were always just like lessen stuff so i'd learn a song and
be able to play a song but i never made a lot of stuff with guitars right whereas i've made a lot of stuff with piano um but those are like the two you know i've like kind of messed around with like other stuff but nothing i don't own anything other than piano and guitar so what's your favorite sounding instrument whether you play it or not or maybe something you've i don't know i've really like but for me like my favorite one of my favorite sounds is hearing a piano in a big space yeah hearing a piano like all of the stuff i'm writing now it's like i have like uh uh like emulation reverbs where it's like i guess they're not really emulation i guess they are but um because yeah like a you know cathedral reverb put it on a piano plug-in and that's like pretty much everything i do now just sounds so good just love the sound of that space yeah yeah that's awesome i love that
um how do you think your musical taste has changed over the years and and what if anything has stayed the same um it's changed quite a lot um i would say when i started writing music it was very specific i it was definitely a lot more electronic stuff and as i got better with producing i became really snobby about it and i was like you know like i was like i could say this song is bad for this reason and like i could i could finally critique music from like a different point of view and it was like and now i look back at my that's really [ __ ] stupid but [Laughter] you know if you like it you like it it's as simple as that but um but uh yeah so like my tastes were very specific for a long time because i would hear a song and hate it for a stupid reason especially mixing reasons i couldn't listen to songs i had bad mixes because it just like you know whatever
offended my you know sonic ability or whatever the [ __ ] it was you know i was just like really snobby about it um but now it's it's i'll listen to anything and i think the one thing that's been definitely the most consistent is just melody i just really like good melody and hearing new melodies like melodies that aren't super uh melodies that aren't popular i guess i don't know there's some sometimes you'll hear a song where the melody takes a turn that you didn't expect and that's like oh it kind of piques your interest because it's like if you expect it then you've probably heard it before um if you don't expect it then it's new and that's exciting um do you like a good rhythm do you like a combination of new and unexpected in your melody do you like a little bit of familiarity and then how to twist off yeah yeah i mean and like i like a lot of minor key stuff too i've never really connected with
like uh kind of like upbeat songs oh i like funk more now though like that's something i've gotten more into but i can't like i can't like naturally write anything like that like right um which is kind of a bummer because i like the way it sounds but like if i go and i try and write something like that it's not not any good so right maybe in your 30s and 40s you'll be able to move into a more uh major mood what's the best live show that you've ever been to i am gonna go ahead and say porter robinson worlds because that was kind of like a big big turning point for me as well that also kind of inspired me to start writing music it was i went to music festival squamish valley music festival they're no longer doing it anymore it was the first music festival i ever went to and i went because a lot of like rappers i really liked were on there like a lot of people were on there and it was just me and some friends from
work and we had just finished up like drake had just finished and we're like okay like what else is there to do and i was like i think porter robinson's playing and i was like oh [ __ ] like i used to listen to to porter in high school when i was into skrillex and we went to porter and it wasn't anything like i remember because worlds was so drastically different than the stuff he had done you know when i was younger um and there's so many moments in that show that just like totally like blew me away um and anyone else who's seen the world's live show knows what like what what it's about like there's a lot of shock value but it's also just like big and loud and energetic and like he described it as i hit that album as kind of like a lightning in a bottle kind of kind of vibe so there's a lot of energy in that show and it's very sensitive and very melodic and seeing that was really cool there was also one song he edited for that show called
unison that he had put out with a spitfire ep and in the spitfire ap i never really liked like the climax of that song so it wasn't like melodic enough for me i was like oh like okay you know there goes the melody that really nice like melody that it carried into it but in the live show he carried it all the way through and they just made it massive and it was like [ __ ] finally like there it is like i've been waiting years for this moment so it was so sick and that was like that was like he also has very very strong visual presence in that show so it was like kind of an eye opener for me because i was like wow i didn't know like you could do that with music like i didn't know you could have music be that visual and it was kind of like weird i was like i should have known that but i didn't and like there's a really good example of it so for that reason worlds is probably the best live show i've seen just the biggest impact do you do you play live have you played much live is is playing live a big part of your future going forward here
um i've done some djing and it's a lot of fun but the music i make now is not really dj appropriate so if i were to do dj shows then it would just be like i'm just like playing a house set for fun or something like that um but i don't really know i'd like to play like i'd like to tour at some point but it's like now that i'm moving into other other um other fields it's like i don't know if it's as likely i don't know if we'll have the time you know music for me is like it needs to be fun like it needs to be something i really enjoy doing otherwise i don't want to you know i don't want to make i don't want to make it a chore so and like trying to brand myself and market myself and all that it it's it's work it's not fun so um we'll see i don't know i do like i always plan out like whenever i write a body of work i always make all the live edits and i plan out what the visuals would look like you know i plan for it but um i
don't know if it's likely i'd like to though maybe to give you a really weird cryptic answer i love it yeah now i when i first met you you were really into porter robinson you said that name all the time and i pretended i knew who it was uh for your sake and um and then and just the vibe i got from you you're always using ableton live you're always sort of focused on electronic music i didn't think you were really into vocals i don't know maybe you were at the time but i just didn't know it and then i heard your new stuff you sent me a whole bunch of stuff on soundcloud like volumes of stuff that was sort of this unlisted stuff and you know like i've been doing this for a long time when i get volumes of stuff to listen to i'm usually like okay cool i'm gonna go through all this stuff and i just start at the top and i started going through it and i was blown
away man i was like this is really amazing stuff it's really original i really personally like it like i would listen to this i would put this music on which i think is the biggest compliment i can give music and and it had vocals on it and it was you singing and i was like what i had no idea i thought you were like headphones able to live midi all day yeah was there a change or were you always like that no i mean i always like to sing along to music like that that's always been like that and like like i said when i was younger i made music with my vocals as well but um i was like pretty convinced when i was writing electronic stuff that i didn't have a good voice so i was like you know it's all right i'll source other vocalists and then i realized how much of a chore that was it's hard to find vocalists because
when you're a new artist starting out you know you basically just have to find friends to work with because there's always this like two-way relationship whenever you're working with someone is either they like your music enough to not really care that you're a smaller artist or you have something else you can offer them for their career you know so i my music was still pretty young it didn't sound polished and i didn't have any following so there was no one i could really work with so at that point i was like you know like i guess i'll just try and do my own because i know what i want like i know what i want vocals to be i know what kind of like lyric lyrics i want kind of um and if i hire a vocalist then i miss out on some of those things um so then i just started i think was the first one i did a couple i did a i did one where i just like put the vocals at the end of the song and it was okay
but it was you know i still wasn't kind of uncomfortable with it and then i just started messing around with distortions on my vocals just because it hides it you know hides it better um and i did an ep where i put like three of the songs three of the songs have vocals and i kind of buried the vocals with distortion a little bit and i sent the ep to mad zoo matt zoe's label and he took it and i got a lot of compliments on it and it was fairly well received and at that point i was like okay like this is kind of like legit you know like he's a really well established artist and it's received by a lot of received well by a lot of people like maybe my vocals actually are okay um and then from then on i just like wrote more and more vocals took the distortion off put it more up front and now when i write stuff it's like vocals are on everything cool yeah
wow what an amazing uh experience that must have been going from hiding your vocals to going okay i've got some validation here yeah pretty much were you ever in the back your mind were you ever thinking i'm gonna temp these in and get somebody to redo them or when you committed to doing your own voice where you're like okay i'm just gonna see if it if i could just hide it but it'll be me i think i just i think i just hit it and tuned it just threw auto-tune on there right and yeah i think that's what i did because my vocals like my vocals then i wasn't as good as singer then as i am now like because i sing so much on my stuff now i'm a better singer um so like before it was really just like you know i'm hitting a couple notes to get a melody across the lyrics across and i'm tuning the [ __ ] out of it um and that's what it's gonna be and that's what it was but now it's like now i'm trying to like really test my vocal range and like see what kind of runs i
can do um and like just have more fun with it and you know when you pull it off it's really [ __ ] exciting because i was like holy [ __ ] i didn't know i could do that and there it is it's recorded and now people can hear it like i can prove that i did it so do you think the biggest uh change there is confidence yeah big time yeah honestly making music had such a huge impact on my confidence like a massive impact because all through high school i had like no self-esteem at all like zero um because i was like not interested in the subjects therefore i didn't do well in them and because i didn't do well in them i didn't think i could do well could do well in them so i just thought i was bad at everything like i thought everything i did in school was i was just bad at it um so i was like wow that really sucks like i'm not gonna be able to have a profession because i'm so bad at everything um and then when i started making music and i started like playing my music for other people
and like think like getting into environments that i thought everyone would be better at me than better better at it than me and realizing that i was actually good and that i was in some cases better i was like oh wow like that's different like that's interesting that i actually you know like might have a leg up on some people um and i just kept with it and i got much better at it and then when i got you know like the validation from labels and they were like yeah you know we want to we want to sign you and i was getting this recognition i was like holy [ __ ] like i'm actually good at something and i was like this is something i'm actually quite good at and like at that point i was like maybe i can apply this attitude to other things and maybe like a lot of this time it was just attitude that you know i thought i was bad at something and now i'm good at it and you know that comes full circle to a lot of you know a lot of things we can get into later but yeah it had a huge huge impact on my confidence i love it in a good way yeah attitude change your attitude i i find
and i've been finding a lot even more lately that when i'm talking about music production i always catch myself and realize i'm i'm talking about life like you can apply these same the same thing i'm saying you can apply to anything else just like you said when you you can you can do these things and apply them to other aspects of your life once you've seen them happen musically it's a little easier right um but i think you're right i think you can apply things to other aspects of your life and it's all kind of connected it's all it's all one thing your confidence in music is your confidence in life and your creativity in music is your creativity in life and yeah it's it's it is yeah it's it's definitely connected like that it's it's had like and the way like it's man like sometimes when i'm like just in my day-to-day life like when i'm at work and stuff and i'm like like 15 year old brock would not believe who
23 year old brock is like i just think of that some think that sometimes because i'm like i would not have the confidence to put myself in these situations and now it's like i feel totally free of a lot of the social anxiety i had when i was younger you know i can right now i'm bartending at a restaurant downtown and it's a very social job obviously and i love it like in before like that kind of thing would freak me out because i would be so scared of questions like what do you do and like you know like what are you studying and this kind of thing because back then i wouldn't have an answer for it because i was just you know didn't do well in anything you know that's interesting um can you do you want to tell us or can you tell us about uh what you told me earlier about uh what you're studying now do you want to talk about that yeah yeah so right now i am studying architecture um or design and architecture i guess is
the the name of the program so so cool it's uh right now it's just a diploma um because i didn't have the high school grades to get into the ba uh obviously and um but the diploma guarantees entry into the ba program oh cool and the ba program is just bachelor of architecture and design um and then there's like an add-on i was thinking of doing that was a ba of creative intelligence and innovation which i thought was cool um but it would take on like another year something i'm looking at but yeah that was architecture was another thing that i liked when i was younger it was just another design thing i really liked car design when i was younger too those two things i was really into really into cars like that was my first like major design obsession um but yeah like didn't you know end of high school didn't have didn't think i was able to do a profession so i just didn't do it but now i'm like i definitely can do it and doing well in it so it's so great
that's how it goes you know i i love uh how other things connect to music and and architecture is definitely something that's been on my radar lately and there's a famous quote by van gogh that says i only heard the first part before before but there's a second part music is liquid architecture architecture is frozen music that's really cool it's so cool it's so true yeah like when you when you look at a really well-designed old building and you see the flow of it and how everything connects together and the foundation of it there's just a lot of really cool parallels i think there totally there are a lot yeah there's a lot and you know a lot of um like one of the courses i'm in right now is a history course and a lot of these ideas came up
in uh like the humanist movement in the renaissance like there was one guy um alberti leon batista alberti who was kind of like the first architect and he related a lot of his design and like building proportions to musical harmony and you know there i can't remember exactly how but there was a like a paper i had to read that it was basically just a whole thing about like someone going to a show or whatever like a like a theater and found a way to relate it to to architecture but there's a lot of like overlap and especially around the time the idea of architecture emerged it was you know it was the time of of theater and music and art so there's there's a massive overlap at least in the attitude or the um not the attitude but what's what's it called what's the word i'm looking for here
um [Music] the atmosphere ah no it's not quite it's uh not aptitude right no uh vibe put put your uh put in the comments what you guys think this is gonna be you have to write it right now because obviously if you wait to hear brock's answer i know it's not going to be the same i guess in like the uh not like the fundamentals you know i don't know i've totally lost a train of thought now anyways a lot of overlap a lot of overlap i'm going to go i like it yeah um i think music and and especially sound uh is really a really really big part of our lives way more than we realize and it's really integrated into anything and and aside from that van gogh i hope i'm not butchering his last name but aside from
that famous quote the one that just keeps coming back to me every day that i realize is so important is the nikola tesla quote uh and again i'm gonna i'm just paraphrasing here but it's uh if you want to understand the secrets of the universe uh look at energy frequency and vibration everything's vibrating everything has a frequency everything has energy and uh you know i i love that you know that quote and and you know he's a pretty smart dude from from what i'm a fairly fairly clever guy um i love the fact that the thing i decided to pursue when i was 17 years old is is right on the money right the music who knew that music was going to be so important that sound was going to be so important and uh you know you see it how how important sound and music is to to
people especially people that aren't like us because we take it far too seriously and we're so zoomed in on it um but people who just think it's magic right it's just this magical thing that occurs and they have no idea how it's done and you uh you and i have a little bit of an idea of how it's done um barely but it's still it's still magic but we we can sort of see you know how we can see some of the parameters of that magic um and i i love i love the fact that it's so important to people and it's such a big part of our lives it's so great yeah it's it's you know like i feel like you have the same feeling where it's always felt like there was you know like there's always like the what's it called the saying or not the saying but like to have uh to say that music like flows through you you know what i mean where you hear it and you it's not just like you're hearing you're hearing someone you know like drop a pencil on the floor like you heard that but it's not like with music it's like
it's much more intimate like there is there's so much more to it than just hearing it um and you know like something like just in that last little bit where you were talking i remembered the other day i was listening to one of the songs off of phantom brickworks the uh bibio album phantom brickworks and i always meditate to that album because it's just like really long lulling ambient songs and um the second i put the headphones on and it started i just instantly imagined like just buildings like just a lot of like built form and it was so clear and i was just like holy [ __ ] that was cool i took my headphones off and i started drawing and i was like that's insane like i wasn't thinking of architecture all day the second i put the headphones on and heard you know just that that cord or just that that sound it instantly put this image of my head of like almost like like a like a florence in the renaissance architecture like just that
kind of like you know like the brickwork and like skinny alleyways like that kind of thing like yeah yeah but it was just so ob so immediately apparent and obvious and i was like wow what was that like how come you know what i mean like that it was just so weird and like i get that a lot like not like that obviously but it's wild you can trigger those trigger those ideas and like possibly reincarnation yeah right yeah that's legacy legacy brock that's when you were known as wilson brock right 100 years ago 200 years ago um i've got a question from a mutual friend of ours tamara edelman cool she said when you start your podcast i want you to ask your guests this question what has been your biggest career high and your biggest career challenge so far i can say my biggest career high came
like a week ago cool i oh you know what i don't know if i can say it yet actually [ __ ] um well i don't know it's not it's just like it's not like a like a label thing or anything like that it was just like a really really good experience with a fan where i don't know if i can say i guess i will because it's like whatever but um a fan had basically asked me to sign something for them and they said it's a gift for someone maybe edit that part out because i i don't know how big of a fan they are i don't know if they're gonna end up watching this but um they uh they had sent me a cd to sign and they had printed my cover art for my blue ep on it so i you know it was the coolest thing that someone had put in the work to get a cd print my cover art on it send it to me in vancouver get me to sign it
um and i was like this is so [ __ ] cool i was like that was sick like that was that was like a check off the bucket list for me like i had like that that was it felt really cool that i was able to impact something like that and like every time i'd say like a lot of the career highs or my career but like the highs of being an artist are just like having people reach out i love i love it when people dm me and say i love your music and like i've had people say their music has big impact and like that's the kind of thing that like is really reassuring for artists because you don't really hear a lot of that and like being an artist professionally is kind of like it's kind of like an egotistic profession in a sense because you're just always marketing yourself and you have to think about yourself a lot um and you know like when you're thinking about yourself that much it's like is this really you know like am i really like making the best use of my time thinking about myself this often but like at the end of the day
you know some like all the people who listen to my music like it for a certain reason and for you know that three minutes they get to like you know hopefully enjoy themselves and that's pretty cool because there's you know for me a lot of people who do that and i don't know that's a high for me it's just just like getting to know that there are people who like are impacted positively impacted um that's great that would be a high challenge-wise i think the biggest challenge for me is just trying to do all the marketing and [ __ ] like that i hate it i don't like doing it because it feels like you know like in order to market it you got to be like i have something no one else has like that's the kind of attitude you have to have and that's just not an attitude i really like agree with that much because it's like you know i don't want to feel like i don't want to have people feel inadequate because you know like i figured out i was good at something other people can figure out they're good at something and like it's just so weird a weird thing for me to
like broadcast ego it just like it's uncomfortable right um so i'm still trying to work out a way to like really find a way to market it and just like be really casual about it and you know not trying to be cliche you know it's really hard it's a hard thing to do you know it's easy it was easy for me to find like an artistic voice for music but it's really hard for me to find it with like publicity and marketing and branding and stuff like that right so i've i've been going through the same sort of you know situation where i i started my own business and i've obviously obviously got to market it same things come up for me i don't want to be like all salesy it's just not my personality right um but one of the people that i've been sort of influenced by you know seeing how they did their business is this guy named graham cochran shout out graham graham cochran and uh he he sort of frames it in a way like it's not about selling yourself like that think about that person who you were just explaining that came up to you
and got the artwork printed out and and was turning it into art do it for them like do it from their point of view not from like a sales point of view but from a like a service point of view like you're providing people with this thing serve them do it do it from a service place and that kind of resonated with me i was like right like you can you can provide people with this information they they want it some people don't want it and that's fine but the people that do want it it's kind of your duty to serve it up to them on a on a plate right and when you kind of when you recontextualize it that way it kind of makes sense and and another thing you know another point of view talking about architecture and design i know you're interested in that and so am i super into into design i'm realizing now when i'm 50. um probably too late is um
yeah it's not too late is that's part of it too is is the sales aspect is is you can look at it from a design point of view you know yeah you know and that and that for me is exciting it's like i'm designing this thing not from like uh not from a place of like i'm gonna move more units but from a place of like here's this other element to this thing that is also art that is also designed that and world building i love it and stuff that connects where it's like you know in the case of your artwork the artwork and the music connect the first time i really saw that to a point where it blew my mind was tycho you've seen tycho right yeah you remember finding i'm sure like everybody did finding taiko in the youtube suggestion sidebar and then realizing that this guy did the artwork and the music that in itself is amazing but the fact that they just click together like lego
and you couldn't imagine one without the other that type of stuff where you're like world world building like you said world building that's so cool so my favorite artists are the ones who can do that kind of thing who are like either so so ridiculously good at combining everything musically like bibio can play a billion [ __ ] instruments cool and but also he's big into photography and all the videos for phantom brick works are his i think so cool i assume but um yeah you know that's what that's the coolest thing is when you really can like build a world around it and yeah that is the best way to look at it is if you're designing something because you are i mean really like you know any of the artists who you know you consume are essentially i mean depending on how you look at it they're designing something for you to buy or for you to uh you know like it's a proof it's a product like that's a terrible word for hippies like us but
it's products right it's all products that people are consuming i mean it used to be it used to be crazier you know people used to buy compact discs and albums for 15 a unit at least the the cost of entries a lot less now you're just paying some streaming service uh you know a minimal amount of money for access to everything um but you still have to it's still about the the way the the product is is wrapped up with the artwork and the the video if there is any yeah all that yeah totally what are your thoughts on nfts i don't know enough about them to be honest i i've kind of looked into them a little bit and i was into it briefly because i was like some money here and you know i'm painting a little bit this might be something i could you know tap into but i was like you know what like i really like physical art you know like you know looking at something looking at a piece of art physically versus looking on a computer very different and you know there's a lot of artists i
saw an example the other day someone on twitter talking about nft is one of the artists i follow and he's like one of the best examples i can give as to why you shouldn't do nfts is to look at a rothko painting and he said you look in a museum and you see a rothko painting and i think that's mark rothko is that is that right let's do a little do a little look real quick trying to pretend i'm hybrid basically like uh more abstract stuff whereas if you look at it on you know yeah mark rothko um if you look at it on a computer you know it's it's confined to a really small space and it doesn't have near the you know near the impact saturation you know it's not in a space that you know the artist had thought about it being in it's just on a computer screen and you could be in you know in the [ __ ] bathroom on your toilet looking at it it's not the same thing as walking in a museum and seeing it so i think physicality is super important for art
um you know that's just my opinion though i'm not you know like a developed artist i don't paint very often i don't draw that often so it's like but that's the way i like to engage with it and so i had a really brief interest in it just because i thought i'd be able to make some money off of it and i'm you know as an artist you're always looking for more ways to make money off of off of art but um yeah it was pretty short interest although i don't think that i think nft music is probably or not nft music but um yeah nft music is more promising you know i like audience does their their token and they i joined audios a while ago and one day i logged in and i had like 10 000 audio token coins or whatever they're called and i was like wow where'd that come from and apparently it's because i was you know since i joined from day one i was one of the higher users um and it i got like 1400 out of it i paid my rent just like that because wow i was using this website and i was
like okay like because you're you're listening on it or people are listening to your music on it both because i was active on it and because it was you know it's kind of like and i don't know i don't want to compare it to soundcloud or you know make any comparisons like that but it is similar in the sense that it is like a web browser streaming service kind of thing and it's meant to be more of a community around it um they have a discord and stuff um but yeah i think it's probably more promising for music that's really cool man 400 bucks it's amazing i know i didn't do anything i just opened up audio and was like holy [ __ ] that's really good i i think you told me about it i think i do believe i have an audience account um but i i haven't checked it maybe i should check it maybe there's 1400 bucks in there waiting for me give a look you never know what piece of advice changed your life
um sounds simple but um i i don't have a single you know phrase from a single person but something that i hear consistently is basically just to stick to your guns do what you like and um you know like if you like it enough other people will like it you know like that's that's some that's more of a motto or like a personal opinion i guess than advice i got but it is someone had told me that at some point you know what i mean like someone put that idea in my head and i think it's a really good thing for artists to keep because the point of being an artist is you know well not the point but one of the reasons you're an artist because you want to inject your opinion into into things you know what i mean like if you're an artist you have to have an opinion like you have to have something to say um and if you're constantly being influenced by other people and doing the same thing as other people you're just
joining a collective you know that you don't have as much of an individual voice um and i think that and that's the kind of thing that travels into or not travels that transcends every you know every border of art whether it's music or architecture or you know painting graphic design whatever any of that you have to be able to inject opinion um i forgot what you asked me i know that's great it's great and also you also in all those things you just said you also need to at least be aware of the fundamental rules it doesn't mean you have to abide by them but exactly it should serve as a reference point if nothing else right yeah or know the rules so you can break them it's a good good thing to know yeah it's great i love it um what about a technology that changed your approach
um i don't know i i mean i mean i'm pretty ableton live yeah i mean that was but ever since i got ableton live i've stuck with it you know ever since i started making music i haven't changed how i made it it's always a midi keyboard and ableton even at one point i for like the blue ep i did i don't know if i wrote any of that on a midi keyboard i might have just drawn it in i might have done that whole thing on a laptop and a microphone so cool but the uh the stuff i'm writing now i'm doing midi because it's it feels better to to use an actual piano um but yeah i mean honestly it's the same thing now too that i'm trying to draw more i don't want to get the ipad and do the apple pen thing i just like physically drawing it feels better you know what i mean so some things are just you know with art i think you have to kind of like trust your gut and be intuitive and if you don't like doing something you don't like creating a certain way and it doesn't like you know it doesn't feel right for you or you don't feel that you can be as like seamlessly creative then i think you just should
just like you know stick to what you know in that sense it's good to like try new things obviously and learn new softwares but you know like for things like getting ideas across and you know like trying to like really really showcase like like a like a light bulb idea you know that kind of thing you know it's not worth it to like sit around and try and figure out something that you're not comfortable with in that moment it's better just to like use what you're comfortable with so yeah i mean that's kind of how i've always worked is i found something that i liked ableton i got good at it and i've kept with it i didn't see the need to get any gear just use ableton plug-ins for the most part um i think that's kind of the best way for me at least that's so cool um i would suggest checking out remarkable two it's a tablet that you can draw on that feels like paper you can draw it's really cool they're super expensive uh remarkable if you're looking for sponsorships for brock or i we are both available for that um but it's really
good like i because of the price i thought about it for a while but it's it's actually perfect for a a note taker like myself right yeah it's pretty good yeah um okay let's get to the fast track assignment let's talk about something that you do well that the listeners can learn from you about how they can sort of do their own research on their own or or learn how to do that thing themselves yeah um so for me i didn't write anything specifically like you know this is how i do drums this is how i write a song left to right or whatever because that kind of thing you know is this is part of figuring out uh what you like so for me like them like if i were to try
and like break down what i like to do as an artist and what i want to do in the future i would start with saying it's important to find out what you like and how you connected to music or your art in the first place so when i was writing a lot of music or when i started writing a lot of music i was writing a lot of electronic stuff and sound design stuff um but i didn't like going to concerts i didn't really like going to live shows because i to me like i've said earlier this like music is very like vulnerable and personal so being around a lot of people and hearing it and like experiencing that was uncomfortable for me i like to be alone with headphones on when i listen to music so for me that part finding out what i liked was that i didn't really it didn't really make a lot of sense for me to make club bangers or you know like festival festival music
when i just wanted to like lay down in bed and listen ahead listen to music with my headphones on so at that point was when i kind of realized i wanted to write yeah what's interesting about electronic music is the freedom but something i maybe don't really care for is like the insane energy of it you know i'm more relaxed that's what i like and i'm going to start looking in that direction um so that was kind of the first turning point for me with music um the second thing i would say is really important is to try and integrate your talents and interests so um once i kind of figured out i didn't want to write as much electronic music i realized maybe i should start you know using vocals in my music but i'd had a lot of issues finding vocalists so i started just trying out my own vocals and you know they they weren't spectacular but that added another element to my music
that wasn't there before and now i was you know i was able to produce the beat sing on it master it and send it out everything was this you know this nice little package that i was able to do myself and that way it's very much you and you're gonna have elements in that song that are uniquely yours and they weren't touched by anyone else so there's no other opinion injected into it other than your own um and i think that is like really special and i think now my music the music that i make but you know future i'll send you some of the stuff i'm doing now it's very much me and it doesn't sound like you know like yeah maybe one of the tracks here is fundamentally a house song but it it's it's my house song you know what i mean and that's because of integrating you know my vocals into music and you know i've always like to draw so i'm just drawing my cover art now that's another thing you can pull in so
whatever it is you like you know it can be other instruments you know if you like go-karting take videos of go-karting and make that your music video you whatever like little things like that is something that can really personalize your brand too but also just you know it can it'll make you happier if you're doing all the things you like and finding a way to put them together it's a really really cool experience to be able to do that totally um the third step i had written was to develop your voice your artistic voice and integrating all of those elements is something that can really help develop your voice and it's just something that takes time you know you'll figure it out at some point i remember when i'd started writing music i was scrambling so hard to try and find my sound and everything i wrote sounded like something someone else you know because i was like super into certain labels so all my music i wrote you know for the first couple years sounded like music that would release
off bit bird because i like bit bird so much that was kind of what was going on there um but after a while i like after i wrote that the blue ep i was like oh this this really has a sound now like this is something this is like my voice in this ep like it's very apparent that this sounds like me and now i can't even shake it i can't write anything else that doesn't sound like my voice because you know i don't know it's there i've developed it and this is something that takes time but it's something that's really important if you want to display display your opinion um so yeah develop your voice and find a way to to to share it i guess find mediums that work you know and then i guess this kind of ties into my fourth point which is basically just to find a way to market your voice or develop a brand around it and i think that's kind of an ugly word
for artistry i think a better way to put it is to develop a world sounds kind of corny but it's a really good way to put it because you know if you're an artist you have an idea of what your music looks like or what your art sounds like or you know anything like that like you you create in this in this head space and you have a very clear idea of what it is but no one else knows what it is and it's super super special and unique to you and you know that it's different and you know it's unique and you know that like people there's there's huge opportunity for people to enjoy it but they can't see what you see so i think part of the challenge as an artist and part of growing as an artist is finding a way to expand that world outside of your own head and finding a way to get other people to view it in the same way that you do which is hopefully special and i think that finding your demographic is
something that i've had a lot of trouble with because i've still i've still had a lot of trouble finding a way to get you know the world out of my head and on to instagram or something you know like sometimes it's really complicated you know finding an audience isn't always complicated but finding your audience is you know maybe a little bit harder if you're not making pop music or you know what's trendy you have to find a way to get it to appeal to the people who think like you do um and sometimes that's difficult but yeah i would say those are like my four points and like what's usually on my mind as an artist and like how i like to create and you know where i want to go um and i think you know all of those ideas were presented to me at some point by someone and i think they've stayed with me because they appeal to me as an artist and i think they're very very useful
and you know if you're an artist if you're a singer or a songwriter or a painter or whatever animator these are all really useful ways to to grow i think to grow and to learn as an artist those are all great points we could do we could do episodes just going off on each one of those points because they're so important and amazing i just want to focus on on one of them your third one i believe so when you're branding yourself when you're coming up with your you know your voice on instagram or your your persona and all that stuff because i i this that resonated with me because i've been going through this myself is coming up with with that you know what that looks like it's almost like you're going through the same thing again you did with music where you're trying what other people did you measuring your references you're you're
putting out your first version of it your first song isn't that great your first instagram post isn't that great it doesn't it's not quite your vibe even though at the time like i look back at stuff that i thought was gonna be you know i've been developing my instagram thing my first run of my my next feed of my instagram posts is going out today automatically i think so maybe even like right now yeah a minute ago i think it was supposed to go to instagram and but i've been developing this stuff for months and i've been i've been finding uh you know what looks what resonates with me is my brand it's just like you said it's all the things i love it's the you know if you like go-karts then use the go-kart video so i've just been incorporating all of the stuff that i love into my brand and uh it's super fun and when you do it that way it makes sense and when you look back at the stuff you did a year ago or six months ago it's
hilarious like it's like i i look at the first version of my logo that i did in canva and i was like this looks pretty good i don't even know if i have to hire anybody to refine this it's laughable like it's hilarious it's the same thing it's the exact same idea as my logo is now but it's done by me not knowing anything about anything like it's it's hilarious like that could be my nft i can see your new logo now it's i think it's a lot better it's the steps right yeah and and it's also the the leds like the going into the red but i got i got a guy on fiverr to to design that um shout out a6 um and he's he's just great but you know i gave him the raw idea of my non-designer self that i did in canva and i said make this a real thing and he did you know he made he he just adjusted it and took my raw
idea um and and doing going through that process is when like i think i mentioned it before is when i realized i'm a designer like maybe we're all designers here like i've never wanted to be into graphic design but after messing around with canva for a year it's like i love it i love this i love this thing that's called copywriting which is when not not like the ownership of songs but copywriting is when you write copy meaning you write the stuff that goes on instagram or you write the content of an ad and it's there's a whole art form called copy writing that i didn't know existed until i turned 30 then i became obsessed with it i thought i wanted to be a copywriter there for a while and then i just bailed on it and now like it's coming back into my life as this really important thing but it's all all these aspects of design and music and architecture and copywriting it's all it's all art and it's all amazing i love it all
anyway i just i just went off on a rant there too there you go everybody there's a rant from both sides of the screen um i really loved your answers on that it's great thank you um what are you currently obsessed with um i don't know i mean i think it's hard to say because it's always been like i was obsessed with cars then i was obsessed with music you know now i think i'm doing a few different things where i have you know like a bit of a music career going i'm studying architecture so a lot of my focus like the majority of my focus right now is just on architecture um and thank you it's pretty cool i'm
pretty stoked i've finally decided to do it um but yeah like now that i'm learning a lot about kind of like the the origins of architecture and kind of where the idea of architecture as it is today emerged and learning like kind of like the thought process behind it um i just i don't know like now i look at buildings when i walk around and just want to [ __ ] them up and make them look different you know like like uh one of the assignments i have is to take a case study case study building and basically edit it and give a reason to why we edited it and i've just been thinking about that like what can i do that's just gonna make it look so so like so different and like but makes sense you know like the other day i was driving in the car and i was thinking of like a lot of the buildings i draw are very asymmetrical really curvy and like kind of just like blobs like big clay clay blobs to be honest like that's that's what that's what immediately occurs to me and that's what i like
um and you know like probably not very realistic in regards to building code and safety and stuff like that because everything looks hand molded and stuff but the other day i was driving i was like how like could can you bend glass on an industrial scale like can you can you do a whole big weird looking glass thing with one one pane of glass and i have no idea you probably can't but i was like that would be really cool and it's just like now i just have this like kind of this like really weird asymmetrical amorphous blob house form stuck in my head and everything i design looks like that so i guess that's what i'm obsessed with yeah yeah it's just drawing blobs i want to see that glass thing come to come together yeah that's cool i mean but yeah i don't know i mean i guess right now to generalize it i'm i'm drawing not drawing even i'm just thinking a lot about architecture and like where it can go and you know like how to build something really unique and original and still you know be respectful for your neighbors you
know not be the [ __ ] with the mcmansion next to all the little you know gable roof houses like i don't know like there's that's what's really cool about architecture is there's there's just it's a big field you know like it's the same thing with music but um with architecture it's i don't know man like it is big there's a lot of opportunity a lot of ways you can go a lot of places you can go you have to you know appeal to different landscapes you know like and you know i don't know i i guess my head's mostly in architecture nowadays and i'm just really excited to learn the software and and find ways to express it you know like it right now i don't really know 3d that well at all and you know i can can do a lot of like square stuff you know like straight edge stuff in 3d but i don't know how to do any of the stuff i actually want to do in 3d so hopefully over the next year or so in school i'll be able to learn how to do more curvilinear forms and be
able to start posting those and sharing some of my weird blob ideas that's so cool is there like an ableton live or a pro tools of architecture there there must be right yeah um uh i did a course in autocad before before coming to this school and autocad is kind of i think it's more industry standard in canada because it's from a canadian company revit and they do 2d and 3d and autocad and i just didn't learn i just learned 2d but now what i'm learning is rhino and i think rhino is like more of a international standard um and there's 2d and 3d in rhino and it's pretty chill it's like a fairly intuitive software it kind of looks like ableton too it's like it's like a better looking blender as well it's and it's geared towards architecture um but yeah that's what i've been dealing with um in one of my courses is just rhino learning rhino um and it's it's definitely i would say that's probably the industry standard
what do you still want to learn in architecture in life i don't know anything just whatever you don't get i'm hoping to learn anything you know my second favorite thing about you i mentioned the first one earlier on but i love how you rebel against all my questions you don't want to answer any of them i and i love it i love that attitude it's a great attitude it reminds me of me i think that's why i love it so much yeah is he yeah i give you a question and you're like you just want to pick apart the question you don't want to answer it you want to get inside my head and ask me and answer why i asked such a question i've gone in trouble with one of my teachers for doing that because he'll he'll come into the breakout room and be like what's your answer for this and i'm like well so here's da da da da da and i'll start explaining and he'll be like bro shut up man like just give me the [ __ ] answer already like oh and uh i don't know it's not something i do on purpose and like you know i'd answer the question more clearly if i could but i don't even
remember what your question was now i don't want neither do i i don't care it doesn't matter it was irrelevant you took it in a better direction don't listen to anybody including me just just be yourself um what makes a great song in your humble opinion in my humble opinion uh i think just being authentic and being not original necessarily but just being uh like honest i think honesty is really good in music because the more honest you are the more you uh the more personal it is um and you know you can tell when you listen to a lot of like overproduced pop music it might have like a traditional pop structure into a lot of people that's good but like it's not an honest song and like it's it's it's made you know honest an honest song can be any genre any sound any length you know you can you can listen to someone play piano for half an hour and be like that's [ __ ] brilliant because you can like sense the honesty in it and you can
understand where that person is coming from um and to me that's why i think that's what makes a good song it's just being honest about like what you're writing so great can you think of an honest song right now that you love that you're you could use as a reference point for that i have to go to spotify and look i can't come up with anything on top of my head that's that's fine let's just hear somebody my lessons not a big deal um one of my questions here is what are some non-musical influences example architecture or movies we've covered that the whole the whole time i love that so great um what about some advice what advice do you have for up and coming music producers um you've given them a ton already but i guess like i don't know because i still feel like i'm up and coming so it's like for me the biggest things were really just trying to be honest with with my music you know like i feel like sonically i'm
fairly developed like i feel like i have a sound i have something to say i think the music is okay you know i don't really have to do much more developing my music um you know but i will just as you know i get older but uh brand wise i have a lot lot to do a lot to do with like brand and marketing and stuff like that like that is i there's a lot to figure out there but i mean advice i would say like the most important thing for me was just like it's cliche it's corny but uh don't listen to your critics listen to your fans it's a good one or listen to yourself you know like yeah you know like if you have a song you really like and you show it to you know all your friends and they don't like it but you know it's good then it's good you know like if you like it someone else will like it and um just trust your gut i guess it's all fairly basic advice but it's good advice that's great do you have any audio books or books that we should
maybe listen to or read i'll be honest another cliche i read the walter isaacson biography of leonardo da vinci that was a good read i'm really happy i read that it was the first book i've read in like years and years and years and i read it a couple years ago and it put me onto books again and cool it kind of changed the way i thought about things um that one was really good uh and another good book that i i don't know it's an audio book that i liked was limitless by i think his name is jim quick and it basically is this guy who when he was a kid he suffered a traumatic brain injury and he had to learn a whole bunch of [ __ ] how to learn how to reduce it and he was a very slow learner because of his brain injury and as he got older he had to find ways to learn better learn better erlich bozer another really good good book um but he had to find ways to learn better and
this he basically discusses how you know he had a lot of set limitations that were you know physical like he had a brain injury there's a there's a pretty good reason to be a slow learner but he was able to find ways around it and you know now he's very successful he's basically a brain coach for celebrities or whatever um a lot of you know like his book is a little bit gimmicky it's a lot of like you follow these you know this program and you'll be limitless you know it's i almost i almost didn't listen to it the first way through just because the beginning was so so like that but there's a lot of really useful information and it's a really inspiring thing to listen to um and you know he's right like a lot of what we think we can't do is just because of just limitations that you said except for yourself it sounds silly but it's definitely true so true and you know like i i went through that too with not thinking i was getting anything and then becoming good at stuff like you know and i was like well there's a lot of things
that i probably thought i wasn't good at and i could probably do now you know like right i'm doing well in my courses now and it's architecture's a profession that scared me in high school i didn't think i'd do good in it in high school and you know here i am yeah so you know a lot of it is just having to do with your limitations so yeah i think that was that was a good one too but i definitely recommend the walter isaacson biography of leonardo da vinci i [ __ ] love that book it's so good i also did the steve jobs one just out of curiosity and that one was interesting too you know talking about you know design and like and marketing and stuff yeah there's a lot of good information information about design marketing in that book um i just bought the audiobook it's probably the same on the steve jobs yep yep it is that's what i did i didn't read the steve jobs when i read the leonardo one uh i'd listen to the steve jobs one it's a long one it's like 27 hours 28 hours something like that wow but it's interesting this is definitely interesting
all right let's uh let's move let's start moving towards the exit here and i'm going to ask you to give us like your call to action so maybe mention something that you want to mention that you're working on and maybe where can my listeners go where can our listeners go because this is our podcast brock where can they go to find out more about you um so i mean if you want to check out my music you can just go to spotify under brock wilson um i'm not posting a lot of art and stuff right now i'm hoping to it's busy school schedule work and all that stuff so i'm kind of just trying to develop a catalog you know develop some stuff and have some stuff to post and posting posting is exhausting for me because i still don't have a good good rhythm for it so i would say if you want to listen to my music go to spotify sometimes i'll post like
little clips of unreleased stuff that i'm working on on my instagram story so that's another place too uh follow me on instagram i think it's brock wilson artist right now i am basically just trying to keep up with schoolwork i have a lot of stuff to release though a lot of stuff um so yeah um so right now it's basically all about kind of finding a home for that stuff i want to release because the self-release stuff is kind of exhausting right and you know it's nice you know you get to see all your money pretty quickly but um labels you know pretty much all of my following came from my first label release and that was years ago so i gotta start doing more label stuff i think um but yeah i mean what i'm hoping to do is is get some cool architecture designs and also learn some of the 3d software's better so i can try and create like a walkthrough of some sculpture or
house that i've rendered and score it that's what i want to do right now um because that's just like fun content that shouldn't take a lot of time um but yeah i don't know i'm just trying to keep busy with with the architecture school right now i can't wait to see where that goes in the future i'm pretty [ __ ] excited yeah that's so cool man uh okay anything else you'd like to add for my listeners i feel like we covered a good chunk we did we covered a big chunk i love your answers i love your attitude you got an attitude you got a punk rock attitude i do i really like it i really like it i'm gonna start acting more like you would that be okay oh i i would be honored should i give you a shout out and and when people go are you a little bit more surly than you usually are should i say yeah shout out brock wilson or should i just own it myself and just pretend whatever feels right i'm gonna shout you out
okay cool okay everybody that's it brock wilson [Music]
