JESSE ZURETTI: Composing for Marvel, why talent isn’t enough, and the composer’s mindset

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host,

Speaker 2 (00:00:06):

Eyal Levi. This episode of the URM Podcast is brought to you by URM enhanced our tier of premium content. That's everything you need to know to deliver world-class mixes. The core of URM enhanced is our library of fast tracks. Each one of the fast tracks is a video course that dives deep into a specific area of recording, mixing, or mastering in a level of insane detail that you're just not going to find anywhere else. A few of my personal favorites are drum tuning with Matt Brown, creating ambience with Forrester Seve, and recording metal guitars with John Brown. You get instant access to over two dozen fast tracks. That's over 50 hours of content when you join U rm. Enhance, and we're always adding new ones once per month. Actually, URM enhance members also get access to our mixed rescue series where we open up one of your mixes performing little surgery and explain what we're doing every step of the way.

(00:01:00):

And last, but definitely not least, URM enhancement members have the ability to book one-on-one Skype sessions with us and some of our friends. It's your chance to get a detailed mixed gr, some career advice or whatever else you want to find out more or join URM enhanced. Just go to URM Academy and click the get enhanced link. Welcome to another episode of the URM podcast. We've got an old friend of mine here today. His name is Jesse Zuretti, and if you are a member of URM, then you'll know his band, the Binary Code from Portfolio Builder. I met him in 2013 when I produced his band, and I was immediately struck by how damn talented this dude was and his ability to get heavy, incredible guitar tones is up there with some of the very best I've ever worked with. He is phenomenal with guitar tones, this sound massive. And in the past few years, he's really, really leveled himself up. I mean, he started writing music for Marvel. He's also written a great blog and is in the process of starting a podcast. But I mean, what else do I need to say? The guy has gone from being a guitarist in a local band to composing music from Marvel, and I brought him on to talk about that transition. So I'll shut up. Here it goes. Jesse Zuretti. Welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:02:31):

Welcome to the Jesse Zuretti on my End podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:34):

Thanks you for having me. I just got confused for a second. How are you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:02:39):

I'm pretty good. I'm sick, so I apologize for sounding mucusy and gross Coronavirus Budweiser virus.

Speaker 2 (00:02:46):

Really? Yeah. You're hung hungover. No, absolutely not.

Speaker 3 (00:02:49):

Okay. No, it's probably a remnants of the NAM virus.

Speaker 2 (00:02:53):

Oh, well that was Coronavirus,

Speaker 3 (00:02:55):

Was it really?

Speaker 2 (00:02:56):

No, I'm kidding. That wasn't Coronavirus. I didn't get sick this year. I actually haven't gotten sick in a really long time. I feel sorry for all of you. Who did? You moved from New Jersey to Denver. Why Denver?

Speaker 3 (00:03:10):

I've toured through here a bunch of times and I really liked what it looked like scenery wise. And I also have family here, and I had quite a handful of close friends that lived out here, but it was really just like a reset stepping stone type of move. I knew before I moved here that it wasn't going to be my landing spot. I knew that I was eventually going to end up probably on the West coast entirely. I just needed to work my way out. That way I'm close enough where it takes an hour and 20 minutes to get to LA by plane. So yeah, that's pretty much it. And yeah, I'm looking forward to getting out of here.

Speaker 2 (00:03:45):

Did you find yourself in LA a lot more often these days?

Speaker 3 (00:03:48):

Oh yeah, absolutely. More than I could have ever imagined. I mean, I was in California half a dozen times, I guess within four or five months. So yeah, I might as well go out there.

Speaker 2 (00:04:01):

Do you think that the LA thing is BS or there actually is all the opportunity people say there is.

Speaker 3 (00:04:08):

I think there's opportunities for people who are already working their way up the ladder. I don't think that there's a lot of opportunities for people who want to go out there and figure out what they're good at. So I don't think you can just say, oh, I'm in a metal band, or I'm a guitar player who's pretty decent and just show up to LA and all of a sudden turn into something. I think you have to go out there with a plan because it's just oversaturated with talent and people who are after the same thing. So I think it's still there. I just don't think it's there for anybody.

Speaker 2 (00:04:37):

That idea of showing up to LA with talent, that's a very outdated idea. That's what Axel Rose did in 1984 or something

Speaker 3 (00:04:49):

When it was an eighth of a billion people less.

Speaker 2 (00:04:53):

Yeah, I think that idea of showing up and just being like, here I am, doesn't quite work anymore. That's actually the reason that I've never moved there or haven't moved there yet. When I was dropping out of Berkeley and a bunch of people that I knew were about to go to LA to begin their music careers, they were like, what are you doing? And I say, I'm going back to Atlanta to start a band in a studio. And the response was pretty much from a bunch of people, I thought you were serious about your career. And I was like, I am. That's why I'm not going to LA yet. And out of all those people, maybe 20 that I used to hang out with back then, two of those people who went to LA ended up with music careers. And I would say that those two would've had careers no matter where they went because they're that good. It speaks to that idea that the other 18 just showed up to LA like, here I am, let's fucking do this. And LA didn't agree

Speaker 3 (00:06:05):

It, spit 'em out, made 'em homeless. Maybe

Speaker 2 (00:06:07):

It spit out most of them. Most of them don't live there anymore. A lot of 'em are back to where they lived before that. And this is not judging them or anything, it's just that I agree that just showing up from ground zero, that's a tough move. I have seen people do it, but I've seen people do a whole lot better if they're already established when they go there.

Speaker 3 (00:06:31):

Agreed. Yeah. And also too, I don't really think there is a place to go if you're looking to just make it on a skillset as much as it is a really solid business strategy, having a reason to go somewhere, being in demand and also seeing a path for yourself instead of just saying, I'm really good. Hopefully if I go there, somebody will acknowledge me and make my career happen for me. That's just not going to work. I don't think there's a single place in the whole world where that exists.

Speaker 2 (00:06:59):

Did you ever have that fantasy that your skill would be enough?

Speaker 3 (00:07:03):

No. I've always known in the back of my mind, I'm very humble about my talent level, where I've always known there's somebody better than me and why would I just get picked out of nowhere? And I think when you're realistic about who you are as a person, it's much easier to be, I guess, calculated with your decisions that you make instead of kind of ego-driven.

Speaker 2 (00:07:25):

Well, yeah, because you're not living in some illusion that your talent is just going to convert everybody like a magic spell or something.

Speaker 3 (00:07:38):

Yeah, exactly. I mean, how often are you actually impressed by musicians anymore because of how many musicians out there can do the same thing?

Speaker 2 (00:07:47):

Not very often.

Speaker 3 (00:07:49):

Brandon Ellis, you and I talk about him all the time, it's actually impressive to watch him play guitar against somebody who's just really good at playing their instrument. He's born to do it, and it stands out in a way that I don't think people who otherwise maybe 15 years ago would've been considered God tier musicians would've stood out. But now it's like a Brandon Ellis type of person's the one who's going to really stand out.

Speaker 2 (00:08:15):

And let me just say that Brandon Ellis, he stood out to me like eight years ago.

Speaker 3 (00:08:19):

Yeah, agreed. Same when he was a little kid.

Speaker 2 (00:08:22):

That's not to say that musicians these days aren't awesome. It's actually the opposite. I think that the overall level is the highest it's ever been, which just makes it that much harder to stand out. But at the same time, while I feel like the bar is super high, I think the majority of people, the majority in recording too fucking suck. And so if you're good, if you're hardworking and you're good and you're honest with yourself about where you can fit in, I think that it's a lot less saturated than a lot of people realize. It's oversaturated with people that suck trying. It's definitely not oversaturated with people that are awesome trying though. There's not that many people qualified for actual positions, in my opinion, from what I've seen,

Speaker 3 (00:09:15):

What it comes down to for me is what's going to make you stand out if everybody's on that same level. It's like a great equalizer at this point that everybody is kind of good at an instrument or something. So what's going to make you stand out? And then there's a band like Lepers where everybody's a top tier musician individually, but they also write music that matters and is going to stand the test of time because it's not focused on trying to impress strictly just other musicians. It's got a purpose to actually serve a milestone, so to speak. It's got a purpose to it. So I don't know. It's really weird. It seems like, I'm sure sports are the same way too. Oh, that guy can jump this high and dunk or something. It's like, yeah, well, 50 other people could do that too,

Speaker 2 (00:09:57):

By the way. Yeah, lepro is incredible, but it doesn't feel like there used to be this much skill when I was coming up, there wasn't this much skill and it was hard back then to make it. It was always hard to make it in the music industry. That was always close to impossible, maybe harder back then because there wasn't the internet the way it is now. But I don't remember there being this much skill. I remember, I realize I'm going back and forth between saying that most people suck and that overall skill is higher than ever. And the thing is, I think both of those things are true. Somehow. I think that both of those things are absolutely true.

Speaker 3 (00:10:43):

I think you could suck at using your skill.

Speaker 2 (00:10:45):

Yes, I think that's a good way to put it.

Speaker 3 (00:10:47):

Yeah. I think you can be an amazing guitar player who can do things that nobody else can do on an individual level, but you can't apply it in a way that's going to actually resonate with people to take you to the next level of being that type of musician. I think the Guitar Hero of today is also a really good songwriter, whereas the Guitar Hero of the nineties, the G two or whatever, G three touring guys, Satani and Steve and stuff, those guys were really amazing musicians at their time and innovative, but nobody was like jamming, surfing with the alien on the way to work.

Speaker 2 (00:11:25):

Hope not.

Speaker 3 (00:11:26):

Yeah, I know. But now you have guys, Misha, where it's like he's a really good guitar player and Lays a really good foundation for his whole band. Like everybody in Periphery is really talented. And they're also, technically, they're all guitar heroes in the same capacity as a Steve I where they're influencing the musical instrument industry, the software industry, and they influence how guitar players think and write music. It's the same thing, but they have more of a collective skillset to offer for influence than a Steve I does. And that's not to say anything bad about Steve. I love some of Steve i's stuff, and I think what he did for guitar paved the way for a lot of these guys. But I just think that if anything, an aspiring musician who wants to be noted as being this influential person, if they want to be in that position, they also have to really find a really good way to apply their technique and skills instead of just being really good at taking Instagram videos and shredding.

Speaker 2 (00:12:22):

I agree. Actually, the podcast episode that I just did with Michael Montoya is just a perfect example of someone who isn't like the craziest guitar player ever, but figured out exactly what he's good at and how to use it and has built a career off of that. And that goes a much longer way having a limited skillset that you know how to use the fuck out of goes way further than having a much broader skillset that you're not really sure how to use.

Speaker 3 (00:12:52):

Michael's, the one from the Metals sucks dinner at Nam, right?

Speaker 2 (00:12:54):

That's correct.

Speaker 3 (00:12:55):

Yeah. He's killing it. I was looking at his Instagram, all the people he is working with, and he's a riff dude. He's not trying to do something that's beyond his natural skillset. I think we all have a musical voice that comes out naturally that we say, oh, that was really easy and I'm actually really good at that. Maybe I should just focus on making that better or not that it was easy, that it came naturally to me to become good at that skillset, so why didn't I work on that? And it's like he saw that he's a really good, I guess chord progression arranger would be a good way to look at him. He writes hooky progressions and rhythms. And when you're good at something like that, why would you then switch over to learning how to sweet pick with your guitar behind your head? That seems counterproductive. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:13:41):

And he's using the hell out of that skill.

Speaker 3 (00:13:43):

Yeah, he can take people who are really good at doing the guitar shredding behind the head thing and then also teach them like, Hey, man, that's really cool, but maybe you should dial it back a little bit. Maybe it'll work really well over this chord progression that maybe a shredder isn't going to understand. I think a lot of shredders tend to lay a foundation that supplements the shredding instead of thinking about how good it's going to actually sound. And that's where Michael comes into play is he can say, here's how simplicity is going to make this much better for somebody who doesn't care about how good a guitar player you are.

Speaker 2 (00:14:14):

When I think of your guitar style, I've always thought that your rhythm tones or spectacular, you're one of those players that can hit one chord and it just sounds godly. You don't really shredder anything and you don't need to. Did you set off on a tone quest with your right hand or anything? Or is that just something that just came to you naturally?

Speaker 3 (00:14:38):

I think the conversation that we're having right now, I had with myself a lot when I was younger. I used to be really into shredding. I used to really obsess over trying to become Alan Holdsworth and I was really Wayne Krantz and Pat Metheny, and I really wanted to be like those guys. But I realized how far away I was from it, and I would say to myself, I don't know, man. It seems like people care more about the riff seat. Why don't you just focus on that? And it just seemed like I was able to have a real conversation with my ego and say like, dude, I don't think this is where it's going to go for you. And I also came from a really competitive market of music in New Jersey because when I started binary code in 2004, bands like Dellinger Skate Plan, and I mean God forbid, was also really relevant back then.

(00:15:25):

There was no competing with that. So it's like, why am I going to do that? Why don't I just write music that's good, but maybe dial back the shredding and kind of leave it out? So I kind of abandoned shredding about actually 11 years ago I stopped with the shredding. It's just not for me that it wasn't my path and I was just really honest with myself. So I focused on having a really strong right hand. And also too, to give you credit, you and I had conversations a half a year before we started tracking moons blood in 2014 or whatever it was, and you told me 13. Yeah, 2013. So you told me, Hey man, you need to make sure that your right hand matches your left hand. You need to pick hard. You need to use heavier strings. You need to really focus on your vibrato and bending and be really in tune with this stuff.

(00:16:12):

If we're going to make this record come out, I wanted to know how am I going to show up to this and do a good job in your capacity? I could always kind of sense with engineers, there's this frustration when musicians just show up thinking they have it all figured out and the engineers like, dude, you have no idea what you're doing and this is terrible. Can you give the guitar to the other guy who actually knows how to play guitar? I didn't want that to happen, so I just listened to you and I worked really hard at making sure that everything sounded good together, and I play guitar a lot unplugged, so I don't actually rely on tone to make the guitar make a sound. So I think it translates really well when you do actually plug in. It's a little bit more honest when you're not plugged in.

Speaker 2 (00:16:55):

So you actually try to make the guitar sound a badass just by itself in the room as is the instrument?

Speaker 3 (00:17:02):

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, I play most of the stuff that I wrote on the record that you and I did, I wrote on acoustic guitar.

Speaker 2 (00:17:09):

That's something that I wish more people understood that when you get these really, really sick sounding tones on records, generally I'd say nine out of 10 times the parts sound sick because that's what that player sounds like.

(00:17:28):

Them alone in a room, that's what they sound like. That's the sound that they create with their hands on the instrument. And then the engineers just putting it in a context, but that actual sick ass feel and tone that's not created in the, that's coming right off the instrument, and the best players do that. That's why when people buy tone packs, like camper tone packs or they used to buy pod farm tone packs and they get something from a great player that sounds great, and they think that they're going to sound that great, and then they load up that Kemper profile and they don't sound anything like their hero. They're like, what's wrong? Did I just get ripped off? Is this actually their tone? It is, but you can't profile your hands.

Speaker 3 (00:18:24):

Yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. I mean a guy, you tell people, it's very unlikely your other guitar player is going to record on this, and I didn't have a guitar player at that time, but you made it very clear upfront, if you have another guitar player, there's no way he's going to record, so I don't even know why he needs to come down to Florida. And then you have all these other bands who show up and they pitch the idea

Speaker 2 (00:18:46):

Of like, oh yeah, wait, wait, I told you that the guitar player in your band that didn't exist shouldn't come to Florida.

Speaker 3 (00:18:52):

You were foreshadowing me. We were having a phone call while I was driving. And you were like, yeah, dude, if you have another guitar player, I don't know who's the better guitar player, but that's the guy who should come down to Florida, basically.

Speaker 2 (00:19:03):

Oh, okay. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:19:04):

Yeah. Because you were like, he's probably not going to record if he's not going to be as good as you are with the riff, so there's no point on having him take off work and sending him down. You gave me this whole rundown and I was like, oh, no, dude, actually it's just me. So we're good. But I know that you've also recorded bands who kind of pitched you the idea of how important the other person's role is in the writing, and then they show up and they suck, and then you end up making the guy who's actually good at playing guitar record everything anyway. I mean, look at decapitated, right? What's his name? Vaslav the guitar player. He doesn't have to worry about that. He's got everything figured out so he doesn't have to argue with somebody, and I think a lot of bands have to deal with that where it's like they feel bad that the other guy might not record, and then it becomes this whole big thing.

(00:19:48):

I dealt with that recording our newest record. It was a huge issue and I kind of had to allow it to happen, so to speak, because of all the politicking that goes that's involved in being in a band, and sometimes it worked out in our favor because my other guitar player on the recording actually played really well and he crushed it, and I'm very lucky that he did that. But I knew I thought of you in that scenario, in that you would've been like, I don't really care how good you are guitar dude. It's not going to sound the same. You're not going to have the same hand technique.

Speaker 2 (00:20:17):

Yeah. I think that one of the ways that I went wrong as a producer is that I never figured out really how to massage that in a way that didn't end up

Speaker 3 (00:20:31):

Making you the bad guy.

Speaker 2 (00:20:33):

No blowing bands up. So I fully support producers only letting the best person play. Absolutely, a hundred percent. That's what you should do. There is no other way, in my opinion. However, there's a consequence to it that if you go too hard and you make them hate each other, just because someone might be real sensitive and get offended, have their feelings crushed, and then they have to be in the band and remain in the band, so the band stays together and promotes this record that you made. You don't want to basically throw any grenades into their relationship, which you could if they're very dead set on both guitar players playing and you're dead set against it. It's a weird situation to be in. However, I think that all the best producers have figured out how to psychologically make it happen.

Speaker 3 (00:21:31):

It's funny you don't think about this in the capacity of an orchestra. Who's the better cello player who's going to be, everybody has to kill it on a metal record.

Speaker 2 (00:21:40):

You would be surprised. But it does happen with orchestras. I remember in the nineties, my dad had this situation with an orchestra where it basically was dealing with a revolt from the players because he did this thing where he would move the best players of the front and hide the shitty players in the back. It worked. It sounded great. He strategically placed all the worst players in the hardest to hear spots in the hall. He figured out exactly where the weakest points were, and he moved them there, and then he moved all the best players to where they would basically be the, I guess the majority of the sound. And of course, all the awesome players loved him and loved that. But since awesome players are always the minority, the majority was not pleased. And a lot of people who kind of had their seat for 20 years or something suddenly got moved to the back and they weren't too pleased about it. And it kind of started a whole thing, a whole little controversy, lawsuits, even

Speaker 3 (00:22:57):

When you get moved, it's almost like reality tv. It's like, what do you mean I'm voted off the island? Are you kidding me? Nobody's going to want me to endorse a product or be in the next symphony that's going to pass through town or something because you moved me to the back and it's noticeable

Speaker 2 (00:23:12):

Basically. But I guess it kind of goes back to the same thing. You have to figure out a way to make those moves without causing revolt, and maybe it's impossible. Maybe a producer's role does involve them getting hated to some degree, and it's unavoidable.

Speaker 3 (00:23:29):

I would've to agree with that. I mean, you're not just a person who knows what sounds best and how things are going to, you're a director as much as you're a producer. So it's like you have to be able to tell people what to do. You deal with so many different personality types, especially in music. But I think the thing that's really interesting that maybe not a lot of people who are going to listen to this will understand maybe as much as you would, but the worst player in a really good orchestra is still going to be one of the best people in that whole state.

Speaker 2 (00:23:58):

Yes, that's true.

Speaker 3 (00:23:59):

And them not being that good. The thing that's weird is a lot of the times with a symphony, especially when it gets into the hundred piece kind of arena, is it's not even about how good they are. It's about a volumetric filling of sound that's necessary. And you can use those better players who have better finger tone and have better, maybe they have better bow technique or something on a cello. You put them in the front and they're maybe the lead guitar tone against this kind of wall of sound that's necessary to make a symphony actually makes sense and have a purpose. So it's so much more, I guess, sonically complex than anything. I think a four or five piece metal band can really understand, and it's a world that just blows my mind. So being in your dad's shoes, I mean, you're making decisions like it's a war who's going to be on my front lines? I still need these guys at the back though.

Speaker 2 (00:24:57):

Yeah. I mean, they weren't fired. They were just moved to the back. Should have been fired.

Speaker 3 (00:25:02):

Yeah, it's an ego thing.

Speaker 2 (00:25:03):

Oh, it's definitely an ego thing. A hundred percent an ego thing.

Speaker 3 (00:25:08):

I bet you an orchestra doesn't exist where everybody's on the same level.

Speaker 2 (00:25:12):

No way. How is that even possible?

Speaker 3 (00:25:15):

Tina Gua is a good example from Han Zimmer's Orchestra. She's first chair cello. There's no way that everybody's as good as her in that orchestra. And also it won't sound good.

Speaker 2 (00:25:25):

That's why she's first chair.

Speaker 3 (00:25:26):

Right, exactly. And that's a necessary position to be in, and it's more than just an ego thing where it's like, well, I'm clearly the best here. It's like, well, we can't have all of you. We need to have these people who are supportive in their lack of skill against her. It is a necessary component to this sounding full. So it's really weird. It's a strange place for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:25:48):

I can tell you with great certainty that those first chairs and concert masters, and they get hated a lot.

Speaker 3 (00:25:57):

I can't imagine

Speaker 2 (00:25:58):

Not normally the most popular kids on the block.

Speaker 3 (00:26:03):

You and I were talking, I did some work with Amy Porter who played with your dad, the flute player. I asked her about that because she was first chair and she does so many high level things and she's like, yeah, not a lot of people liked me when I first started because she was getting all the good seats and they kept moving her up. She was playing musical chairs basically within the same year, and she had to basically wait out a full changeover of most of the people in the woodwind section by her, had to kind of revolve it out for her to feel comfortable being in her position.

Speaker 2 (00:26:38):

So there had to be basically a new set of people who didn't know her as the

Speaker 3 (00:26:43):

Yeah. Well, with flute too, it was probably four or six people, but they had to be so damaged by the circumstances that they had just fizzled out, and then when she got new people in there, it was easier for her to be kind of in command with people who didn't have that competitive perspective. I guess

Speaker 2 (00:27:00):

Until a Yun comes in, that's really, really sick.

Speaker 3 (00:27:05):

Then it gets thrown him under the bus,

Speaker 2 (00:27:08):

Then the story repeats itself. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:27:10):

Exactly. Did you see Parasite? Did you go see it yet, or I did.

Speaker 2 (00:27:15):

I saw it.

Speaker 3 (00:27:16):

What did you think of the score for it? Do you remember it?

Speaker 2 (00:27:18):

I don't remember it. If that tells you anything.

Speaker 3 (00:27:20):

Yeah, I don't remember anything about it, and I actually liked the movie when I saw the movie. It was before it got a nomination, so I saw it in an art house theater in Denver and I left, and not one part of me said, that's going to win an Oscar, but I thought it was really good. I was like, wow, that was really clever. I don't even know how I'm going to be, how can I explain this to people? Most people thought it was a horror movie, but the one thing I don't remember is music at all. I dunno. I was wondering if you remembered the music.

Speaker 2 (00:27:47):

I don't remember the music, and I remember having the same kind of feeling as you about parasite. It was cool, but I didn't watch it and say, damn, this movie's going to do it. I didn't have that feeling at all. Is it a South Korean movie?

Speaker 3 (00:28:04):

Yeah, south Korean.

Speaker 2 (00:28:05):

That's what I thought. I guess the thing is I've seen lots of South Korean movies and lots of them are really good, and they've been really good for a long time. So this isn't a surprise to me that a good movie came out of South Korea. I think that it's a surprise to most people that are freaking out about it. I think the majority of people who freaked out about it never have watched a movie with subtitles before. The fact that a movie was subtitles could have been really good, just blows their mind. I think that that's the majority of what's going on with Parasite. Yes, it's a really good movie. Cool. It is. But there's a lot of really good movies from South Korea. I encourage anyone who has only seen parasite and is freaking out about it to go and delve into South Korean cinema. I actually don't think that parasites one of the best ones, but anyways, cool that it won. At least it wasn't a shitty movie that won. But no, I don't remember the score at all. I remember the score from Choker though,

Speaker 3 (00:29:13):

And I think you and I had conversations with the people where it's like, you don't understand that this movie is going to win very pertinent things. Did I think it was going to win Best Picture? No, absolutely not. Would I want it to? There was a part of me that thinks yes, but I knew that collectively it just didn't have that overall effect on everybody enough to the point where I think that that would make it win an award. However, if somebody saw that movie and didn't think Joaquin Phoenix completely destroyed every other person who was on the ballot, they have serious delusion issues because I mean, there's just no touching it. And even the score, I mean, Hilder is just too connective to the stuff that she does. I mean, dude, she destroyed it this year. She won for Chernobyl. She won all of her awards for that as well. So it's like she's a force to reckon with, man. I have a feeling that she's going to keep doing good stuff too. I don't think she's going to end up doing the next Batman or something. I think, well, maybe, but you know what I mean? A big huge budget Warner Brothers movie. I don't think she's going to quite step into that territory. I think she's going to stay true to just doing stuff that's really good.

Speaker 2 (00:30:22):

Well, really good and really dark. I realized there was something about her sound I was watching Joker that sounded really familiar. I really, really liked it. I was like, where have I heard this before? So that sounds like Sicario, which I really, really like the score for. It turns out that that's her.

Speaker 3 (00:30:41):

Yeah, the cello glissando.

Speaker 2 (00:30:43):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:30:44):

That really weird. Yeah, no, I mean she's amazing and I think that that plays a huge role into why she's so good at composing music is because she has a connective element to music Beyond film score. She's done work with Sun, the drone metal band. She's done work with all sorts of different weird bands. I feel like the best composers have worked in a band capacity like Han Zimmer. So what do you mean

Speaker 2 (00:31:10):

By

Speaker 3 (00:31:10):

Connective? I think she gets the emotions from the stuff that she's actually seeing. Hilder has not only the classical training and the background to do the science and math behind what works, but I think she also emotionally can, she's almost like an empathic music composer. I think that's pretty rare. I think that's what Han Zimmer is too.

Speaker 2 (00:31:28):

Danny Alman too, right?

Speaker 3 (00:31:30):

Right. Ing Boingo. Yeah, Han Zimmer. Johann Johansson who did Sicario with Hilder. He also did Mandy. He's a metal guy. He was in a post metal band. I feel like there's a huge level of a common denominator in between why these people are so good and why it works. I don't know if Alan Vetri played in a band. I'm willing to bet he didn't. I believe he probably played piano in a jazz or classical capacity if I were to guess. But that would probably set them apart for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:31:58):

So Hanser plays guitar, right?

Speaker 3 (00:32:00):

Yep. Guitar player.

Speaker 2 (00:32:01):

Okay, that's what I thought. So I think there's something about understanding the world of rock and metal, the energy of it

(00:32:10):

And how it affects people. The sheer volume, first of all, this is something that I've noticed a lot of classical people don't understand. There is a lot of powerful music in the orchestral world, but you cannot compare it to what it feels like at a show with an incredible system that literally rearranges your insides. It's like a different level of force. Understanding that I think is a big part of why Han Zimmer's music is so bombastically powerful. He gets that type of energy from I think his understanding of those types of music. You don't hear that type of bombastic energy in traditional orchestral music that's not coming from there. The most bombastic that orchestral music gets is like 75% of where Han Zimmer goes. At most.

Speaker 3 (00:33:07):

It's probably a very mathematical and theoretical implementation of that dynamic change too. There's probably, it's a pencil and paper move more than it is like a natural occurrence because people in orchestras are performing music written by somebody else. So it's like they don't really have a say in how that music arrives at that point. Whereas a band can kind of determine those things while they're kind of working on it together as a group.

Speaker 2 (00:33:33):

Yeah. Do you know if Han Zimmer writes at the guitar?

Speaker 3 (00:33:38):

I think he has. I'm pretty sure when he did inception, he picked Johnny Mar because he was working on time, and I believe he picked Johnny Marr to come in and take the arrangement further because he saw an opportunity to let somebody who had the tone that he was looking for take over because what he was doing, it just kind of, have you ever seen somebody pick up a guitar and their fingers in their hands just kind of look like they're scared of shit to make a move? I think that's what he is as a guitar player, and I think he knew Johnny Mar had more musical confidence, so he had him come in and translate it a little bit better. You can hear that confidence in a recording for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:34:19):

Oh, he's the perfect guitar player for that.

Speaker 3 (00:34:22):

Yeah, especially the stuff he did with The Smiths, I think you can really hear that Han Zimmer is not letting go of his early roots of being inspired by King Crimson and David Bowie and talking heads and stuff. I think you can really tell that he's still really connected with that stuff in the music. He uses synthesizers still against classical arrangements a lot of the time, and I think that's what makes him so kind of hard to touch, not trying to be anybody else so much. I think he's just like, I would've written this for a band of four people, and I was able to make it much more grandiose by adding 90 more people to the fold.

Speaker 2 (00:35:01):

I think that's also one of the reasons that a lot of traditionalists talk shit. They think that he's too simplistic. God. Yeah. It's pretty funny. I don't even know how to respond to that. I've heard that before.

Speaker 3 (00:35:16):

It's one of those things like, well, you're the best. Oh God, I couldn't deal with somebody saying that. I would just laugh. I couldn't respect somebody who said something like that. For some reason,

Speaker 2 (00:35:25):

Chase is subjective, but I feel like regardless of all that, there's an objective standard of quality that people should recognize.

Speaker 3 (00:35:34):

Yeah. Well, I feel that there's a lot of things that are subjective, but I don't think broad sense success is subjective, and I feel like,

Speaker 2 (00:35:43):

No, it's not.

Speaker 3 (00:35:44):

Yeah, so like Han Zimmer, you can say whatever you want about him, but I think on the level of success, everybody wants to work for Han Zimmer in any capacity possible. Most of the composers out there who are getting smaller gigs, smaller meaning not huge budget, million dollar films, they're getting a lot of their gigs through being an assistant or an arrangement composer or even just an engineer or something to Han Zimmer, and then Han Zimmer will be like, Hey, why don't you just do this? I don't have time for it. And that's what the dude from Westworld did. He was just a guy who actually knew how to do his job really well and worked underneath Han Zimmer. So I don't think everybody's doing that with these traditional classical people. I don't think they see the level of respect that Han Zimmer has from the entertainment industry as much as maybe somebody like, I don't know who's a modern composer. I don't even know. Do they matter anymore? I'm just kidding.

Speaker 2 (00:36:43):

Not really. No. Right.

Speaker 3 (00:36:44):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:36:45):

Man. Let me just tell you that back when I used to go to the symphony all the time and my dad had to do a world premiere of a modern peace, Jesus Christ, those were always the worst nights ever. Some professor of composition at some school won some prize to have their peace performed by a real orchestra kind of thing, or some winner of some grant or something. God, those pieces were always the worst pieces of shit I've ever heard. It was horrifying, and I know that I'm not the only person who thought, so I remember my dad would memorizes everything that would memorize those. It just wasn't worth the effort.

Speaker 3 (00:37:33):

That's almost like the greatest insult. It's like, yeah, he memorizes everything, but he was like, well, I think I could erase that from my mind.

Speaker 2 (00:37:41):

That's exactly right, man. Some of these were fucking horrendous.

Speaker 3 (00:37:48):

I think I get it. Musical pontification where it just doesn't arrive at a point, and you can tell that it's just very theory and practice kind of stuff,

Speaker 2 (00:37:56):

And super atonal just for the point of being atonal, just definitely super academic. I have always thought that the orchestral talent moved to Hollywood. The great composers of today are in Hollywood film.

Speaker 3 (00:38:15):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:38:15):

They're not writing for orchestras, they're writing for movies.

Speaker 3 (00:38:19):

I would have to agree with that a hundred percent. I also think that there's going to be a huge shift in what a composer is because of people like Hilder. I think Trent Resner is going to be dictating a new wave of people who are going to aspire to be in those positions, because I know you weren't a huge fan of Watchmen, but I can listen to the score, all of them. There's three or four different albums for it. I can listen to 'em like music, that's really rare to do where you can put something on and you can use it as background for doing something, or you can use it in an academic sense where you're listening to it for, because Atticus always brings in the classical side to things a little bit. It's actually enjoyable music that I think a lay person could actually listen to.

(00:39:02):

It might not be right away. I don't think that people know how to get into composing yet still, but I do think that he is going to be a huge part of this shift with Hilder as to what a composer actually does for a movie. Because you're seeing it more and more with horror movies too, where you're seeing people get hired to do these jobs who come from a band essentially, and I think that's going to be the future. I know for certain Trent, Trent Resner and Hilder are huge influences on why I'm doing what I'm doing and I want desperately to be doing what they're doing, which is making music they actually enjoy, but making it more grandiose by inviting more elements into the equation.

Speaker 2 (00:39:41):

You just said something interesting. You said most people don't know how to get into composing, so how do you get into composing? I assume you meant professionally,

Speaker 3 (00:39:52):

Right? Correct. Yeah. Not just winging it. What's a good step? I've had to answer this question a lot and it doesn't really change. Step number one is networking. And I think you and I have talked about this at great lengths just for sport, basically as friends, but if you're not capable of networking yourself as a personality, there's absolutely no way that you're ever going to get a foot in the door with people who make decisions like music supervisors, for example. They're just not going to be sold on you as a person, and that's going to translate into their confidence and investment in you as an individual who's going to be able to make this incredibly expensive product, which ends up being a TV series or a movie or an animated series or whatever it is, and they're not going to have that confidence in you if you show up and you're a dick or you're arrogant or you don't listen, you don't ask questions, you don't make eye contact. All these really important networking skills that makes a person good at communicating effectively with people. That's the step one for me. It doesn't matter how good you are if you can't meet people who can take you through other doors. And I think at the end of the day, that's what being a good person or being a good communicator and being an actual human being is what's going to get people into the head space where you can actually give people music in the first place.

Speaker 2 (00:41:13):

Sucks that That's so true. That's the truth. Basically, I think in any field in the arts that the true in business too, the people who network the most go the furthest. Agreed. Yeah, it's absolutely the truth. I guess it's something that people don't want to necessarily hear because I think a lot of artists are introverted weirdos, but hey, so are

Speaker 3 (00:41:41):

We. Yeah, you got to train yourself out of

Speaker 2 (00:41:44):

It. Yeah, exactly. How have you trained yourself?

Speaker 3 (00:41:47):

Honestly, it kind of came naturally to me to communicate with people. I don't have a hard time doing it, and it's not to say that my business partner and my drummer Austin, that he ever had a hard time communicating with people, but I think that you don't realize how good at communicating you are until you meet somebody who's like an expert networker. And he, in order to take himself out of his comfort zone and become better at networking, he's 24 years old and he now books flights to gigantic video game conferences so he can go meet video game developers so he can work on their stuff because a video game composer, and before that, he was like, I have no idea how to even have conversations with people. So he just said, I'm going to print business cards, which he made their little thumb drives with all of his whole catalog on it, and he went to these things as a very young adult, and he started doing this two years ago, and he just made himself get comfortable talking to people by talking to as many people as humanly possible.

(00:42:50):

But that's where I would say I would start getting better at it is making yourself go to these things you and I think are selectively introverted. I think we have the ability to be extroverted if we need to be, and I think some people don't have that choice, and the only way they can break down those barriers, even if it's just incrementally, is by putting themselves in environments that are really uncomfortable. And that's really the only way that you're ever going to get out. You're not going to be able to watch a YouTube video on it for sure. It's implementation. You have to put it into action and do it, and that's a huge part of it. I mean, if somebody really sucks at speaking, they could do a public speaking class or something, but I really don't think that's going to work

Speaker 2 (00:43:34):

Well. I know that I call myself an introvert, but I have never had a problem socializing when I need to.

Speaker 3 (00:43:42):

Agreed.

Speaker 2 (00:43:43):

I feel bad for people who can't do it at all. The thing is I'm not always a fan of it. I have a very short tolerance for bullshit, and I'm not into small talk and a lot of things that people like to small talk about are the last thing I want to talk about, and I don't even know where to begin about a lot of things that people like to small talk about. So there's always a challenge there, but I still figure it out, and I've made a lot of effort over the years to overcome my disdain for it, and I've gotten pretty good at it. And I think that if I can do it, most people can do it. And frankly, they have to. If they want any sort of career in production or composition or in a band or whatever, they're going to have to figure it out.

Speaker 3 (00:44:36):

It's step one for me always to, people had people ask me how to get into composing, and the first thing I tell them is, you're going to have to network. There's no point in me telling you anything else beyond that if that's where you fall short with your skillset. Because if you can't do that element, it just doesn't matter. I just don't know. How are you going to go to California and go to a screening or something and network with people there? Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to just go talk to every person in a room of 150 people who are just in a movie screening and try and talk to people who you have no idea who they're going to be or what they're going to end up being able to offer you, but you have to roll that dice. It's kind of like that minesweeper game. It's like there could be a hundred people in a room and three people are actually going to be somebody worth talking to. And I don't know that. I know a lot of people who are willing to make the sacrifice to go do that and step outside of their comfort zones that far. So it's like that's step number one. And then step number two is brush up on everything. Then it's followed these other rules basically. But that's where it all starts.

Speaker 2 (00:45:43):

Dudes and bands too. Usually there's one or two go-getters in every band who help the band get to where they are. And then there's everybody else who just played their role in the band. But a lot of people in bands don't actively network. Usually most people in bands just kind of do their thing in a band and are happy that the band is successful, just kind of do that only. And so they actually have very little clue on how to network like this. It's interesting. You would think that people in bigger bands would just know how to do

Speaker 3 (00:46:20):

It. Yeah, I think the concept of somebody who's in a successful metal band, I don't think that they're going to be able to take their practice and ideology into the composing world as easily because I don't think that it translates super well. But I do think that it helps if you're that guy, if you're the Misha of the band, where you can be entrepreneurial at heart and also be really good at communicating with people and humanizing people, and also really good at networking and providing something in return for people's investment in you.

Speaker 2 (00:46:54):

So why do you think that, I guess the discipline or the skills from being in a band or the rules don't necessarily translate? I'm asking because so many people are like orchestral music and metal. It's the same thing when they're wrong. So wrong. What do you mean that the rules don't translate?

Speaker 3 (00:47:15):

I think with being in a band, I think that there's a huge lack of actual industry level professionalism within musicians. And it's because being in a band is

Speaker 2 (00:47:28):

A lot, it's pretty bad.

Speaker 3 (00:47:29):

I just think that there's not business ethic. And when you find a band that does have somebody who's got a really good understanding of business, like Ben from Dillinger Skateland, for example, he can have a conversation probably with Steven Spielberg. You know what I mean? That's such a different thing. And then with being in a band, I think it's a lot of people who are really good at being at a sleepaway camp or something. We're all bros by the end of the tour, and that's where our networking comes into play. And it's like, well, you're not going to be able to bro down with people who are wearing a suit and tie at a film event. That's just not the way that goes. You're going to actually have to find ways to articulate your business offerings to people in a way where they don't feel like you're sleazy. A lot of people who are really sleazy in the entertainment industry. You also have to be human, and you have to offer something that seems unique. And I think that that's much harder to do when you bank so much on just being somebody who likes to have fun. And you can relate to the musician side of being in a band. And I think that that's just not, it just doesn't fly

Speaker 2 (00:48:31):

Well. Yeah, the majority of band networking is just how much can you hang out and party?

Speaker 3 (00:48:38):

Exactly. And that can translate in a huge things For some people, it can be a stepping stone for filling in for a band that you tour with, and that's great. If that's what you want to do, that's a great thing for you. But I just don't see that translating, unlike the business professional side of things, it just doesn't, it's not the same thing that's not going to get you in the door of Wall Street or something. It's such a different personality type. You just have to have a lot. You have to be very diverse with yourself as a person. And if you can't be that way, just, I don't know what the odds are, how many people become composers these days? It's really rare.

Speaker 2 (00:49:14):

Yeah, it's absolutely rare. I do know that a lot of people want to do it.

Speaker 3 (00:49:19):

Absolutely. Yeah. Especially your URM students seem to all collectively who I've spoken to, are really interested in it and so much that they are actually taking steps into wanting to learn how to do certain things, not just on the mechanical side of things, but also in the business ethics side of things too. And I think that that says a lot about your students in particular who do this versus somebody who thinks that they haven't figured out because their band can fill a 400 capacity venue. Who thinks that that's going to translate into something? I think being capable of understanding that you're still a student no matter where you are at in your life, I think it really helps people along the way.

Speaker 2 (00:50:02):

I think a lot of people forget that, but we definitely hammer into people's skulls that they need to get the business side of this right, and they need to be real people and they need to socialize and they need to network, and they need to take that part as seriously as the musical part, otherwise they're lost. I think it's not going to happen. You could be incredible and it's not going to matter because if you can't make human contact with people, nobody's going to give your music a shot, the end. So you have to get that side under control.

Speaker 3 (00:50:40):

Yeah, I think ultimately that trying to aspire to become a composer out of the blue without really having it as a part of something that you've wanted for a long time, I think that it can end up backfiring on somebody miserably. I think that it can dishearten them from wanting to continue pursuing music in the capacity they were before. It's like some days somebody just says, I want to be a composer, because they saw something or saw there's an opportunity in it, and maybe they didn't think about that for years and years the same way they did about their band. And then they try to do that. I think it can really shatter dreams that are even behind the composing thing. It can really make you take 10 steps back and it could be a pretty dangerous thing to try to do if you really want to do music in any capacity. So you have to be very realistic about where you are as a musician and also more than anything a creator, I guess. Alright. So how did

Speaker 2 (00:51:34):

You get realistic

Speaker 3 (00:51:35):

About it? The opportunity came to me in a very fortunate way, and it didn't happen upon the first try, and I was just really humble about the fact that it didn't come together. And

Speaker 2 (00:51:47):

What do you mean?

Speaker 3 (00:51:47):

I was asked to do something and somebody else got the gig and I didn't let it end there basically. And I just maintained composure about my disappointment, and I got asked to do something again later on because I handled it well. And what I did ended up being good enough for a whole team of people to ask me to do more of it. And I honestly didn't think that I would become a composer. I've always really appreciated Han Zimmer in particular, and I've always wanted to integrate that into what I write for myself personally. But I never, in my wildest dreams thought that one day that would translate into becoming anything more than just a guy in a band. But I did that again, I did that thing where I listened to myself and I saw people saying that they really liked what I was doing for something where music is generally not pointed out like an animated series, for example.

(00:52:41):

And it told me like, well, maybe I am actually good at this and maybe I should continue on with it. And then I just saw more doors opening up and I keep following them, and I'm not where I want to be by any means. You know what I mean? I'm not even on the step yet of where I want to be as a composer. However, I do know that it's what I'm supposed to be doing based on how much has come my way because of what I do for work. So I'm just very intuitive and listening to myself, and if anything, you can kind of see it like this. I always thought that my band was going to be a band that got signed and started doing all this touring and stuff, and I thought that we had this really sharp opportunity to do that.

(00:53:19):

And I was able to be realistic with myself and pivot because I found that maybe I individually can actually become successful with music, but maybe not with being in a band in the sense of being successful as a band can get. But I focus, this is all I do. I only care about this. I network. I constantly am trying to get better at what I do. I don't stop working. Even if I'm not going to release something I compose still in case I stumble upon something really good. And yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's really weird. I feel like my circumstance is really unique in that maybe it's not a good influence.

Speaker 2 (00:53:58):

Why?

Speaker 3 (00:53:58):

Well, I guess it kind of comes down to the fact that my band, the music that we made and the new record that we have coming out this year was good enough for a person who heard it to say that you're probably going to be good composing music outside of this genre. Would you like to try it? That's kind of weird. That doesn't really happen to a lot of people. So I feel like that's an unfair reference.

Speaker 2 (00:54:21):

Well, it doesn't happen to a lot of people because their music isn't good enough to make someone think that.

Speaker 3 (00:54:28):

Yeah, and it's subjective, right? Of course it's subjective, but hey, you know what? We can actually dial this back to, I stopped shredding. I just focused on writing good music in my estimation what I think good music is, and somebody else agreed with it, and they were willing to invest their confidence in me because I wrote this record that's coming out for us. And they were willing to invest in that skillset of writing for that style of music into, I think this will translate really well into composing in a completely different capacity. And it did. And I'm really lucky that that happened. And now because I saw that opportunity, I'm capitalizing on it.

Speaker 2 (00:55:08):

I think a lot of people would've gotten the opportunity and not capitalized, maybe not even realized how big of an opportunity the opportunity was.

Speaker 3 (00:55:21):

I didn't know how big it was at first either, to be honest with you. It took me about a year because I've gotten so hard on myself about what success looks like and how much people actually care about what I'm doing. And I just started writing for myself, and I stopped caring so much about other people that even seeing people say that something I did was good, really didn't register to me too much. And I also, I come from a family background. My dad never really communicated how proud he was of things that I did. So I've never really counted on people for their approval in the first place. But I've done that even less so over the last couple of years. And it took me about a year to realize, honestly, it took more opportunities popping up from what I've done to actually prove to me that I need to really focus on what I'm doing.

(00:56:11):

Being asked to speak at the LA Film School is a really good example. Talking to future directors and cinematographers and maybe even composers. I have no idea what those kids are going to turn out to be, but that's where legitimate people come from. And they asked me to come talk to these kids, and that made me say, well, they respect what I'm doing. Am I doing something good? I have no idea. Should I keep doing this? And yeah, I don't know. It's definitely very strange. It's really hard to capitalize on something if you're unsure of it.

Speaker 2 (00:56:41):

So you needed to get evidence from the outside world before you were sure that you should move forward.

Speaker 3 (00:56:49):

Yeah, correct. Exactly. And it keeps picking up more. The rock keeps rolling and picking up more moss, so to speak. So it's like as that keeps happening, I think at some point you've seen it too, when you started URM, you can tell just based on the ideas that you have from work that you've already done, this is going to be huge. You can already tell that that's going to happen. And when that starts to, when you can see that path, when you actually know your path in life, I think it's much easier to take risks and to invest more unsure confidence into things. Where I'm at right now, it's like I'm still, I saw Michael Montoya, his interview with you. He has imposter syndrome. I still have that. I know you must have that at least once in a while. I think it happens for people who actually, who doesn't succeed doesn't. Right, exactly. Well, I think there are some people who think they're God's gift to Green Earth.

Speaker 2 (00:57:39):

Well, they're fucking psychopaths.

Speaker 3 (00:57:42):

Yeah, they're stuck playing at a fucking flea market or something, playing flamenco guitar. But yeah, I think that that still occurs to me once in a while, but there's a lot of reminders that are beyond what I'm seeking for. I'm not necessarily looking for approval anymore, but it's coming my way. And I think that that speaks a lot about how the career is starting to develop. And I think that that's indicative of me not giving up. Here's binary code, like a band we've talked to. I don't know how many record labels in it just never comes together for me. And binary code somehow is the reason why I am composing right now. You have to pivot at some point, know your strengths and weaknesses. If you're that guy who's in a band, who's the guy who's pulling all the weight, and you see a window of an opportunity to take a step up to level up as you put it in a different direction, just do it. You can do both if you really want to, but you also need to do what's best for you as an individual. So that's kind of what happened.

Speaker 2 (00:58:38):

Yeah, I think that having projects that don't work out or that don't work out the way you wanted them to really give you good perspective on how to recognize when something is working out. Because my band never got that big, it definitely didn't get as big as I had hoped it would. And it was kind of a similar thing, no matter how hard I worked or how hard we worked, something was always in the way. Something just didn't come together. Something just got fucked all throughout. We had great opportunities and great things happened, but there was always something that would prevent the next level or that just wouldn't connect with people. But with URM, it was super clear that it was going to work right away, no question. And basically I equate it to the feeling of swimming against the current or with the current, you know, can feel it. And if you're swimming with the current, everything's going to go way better.

Speaker 3 (00:59:52):

That's a good way to put it actually. I never thought about it like that.

Speaker 2 (00:59:54):

Yeah, I think if you're swimming against the current, you're just going to tire yourself out. You can put, if you have a band like Binary Code or doth, you can put all the effort you want into it and make it as awesome as possible. And if it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be. And there's very little you can really do about it. I think some projects are just kind of cursed in a way.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):

Yeah, agreed.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):

There's just something about them that's not going to allow them to move forward, but it's good to know what that feels like so that you know what the opposite feels like. Because when the opposite is going, you'll find that doing one fifth of the effort gets you 10 times the results.

Speaker 3 (01:00:41):

Yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. That exactly what you just said is a hundred percent accurate.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):

Yeah, it's crazy. And not saying that we don't work hard at what we do now, but it's the difference between grinding and grinding and grinding and getting back close to nothing for your efforts versus grinding and getting rewards and then grinding more and getting more rewards and more feedback and more momentum, and seeing an actual input and output, like input this work outcome, these results as opposed to input all this work and outcomes Jack shit, basically.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):

Yeah, like the ROI, your return on investment.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):

Yeah, ROI. That's should have just said that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:30):

So I think the thing with doth as an example, and maybe you could even say binary code too, is I feel like in the first place, any level of this is nothing against anybody else in your band. I swear to God, I don't know those guys. I've talked to Amil before, but I think record labels invested in you a lot individually, not your band. They invested in your band for sure, but I think the investment was made into you as a person because they knew that you were the captain of the ship. You were writing a lot of the music, you had the vision, you had the networking skills, you were the face of the band, so to speak, in the industry sense. And I think they invested in you. And I think that that speaks volumes about where the investment was put in the first place. Maybe nobody said that, but I think that that's the reality of it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):

Well, I think that everyone in that band is super talented and

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):

Agree. A hundred percent yes.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):

And they could still go on to do great things and they're all super talented dudes, but I definitely was the person who was going to LA and networking with the labels and doing all that shit, and it was my mission in life to move the thing forward. And a lot of things kept happening. Basically, the universe kept on telling me that it wasn't going to move forward, and it kept getting all these signs that it was cursed, and I still just kept on fucking pushing forward and flying to New York and flying to LA and sending the emails and doing all that shit. And maybe you're right. Maybe that is what the people were investing in. I mean, I've always said that you should invest in people, not skills.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):

Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):

When you're hiring somebody, you should invest in the person you shouldn't hire based on skills you should hire based on character.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):

Well, yeah, imagine there was an angel investor for people that when you were starting doth, they were responsible for putting money in your band's hands. I feel like they would've been saying, I'm investing in Al because maybe doth isn't going to work out, but this guy has really good ideas and he has a good mind and he's entrepreneurial at heart. And I think that with all of these combined elements, maybe if this doesn't work out, I can still be invested in this person and see if other things come to fruition from it. And that's happened. I was watching Silicon Valley the last season, and there was, or maybe it wasn't the last season, but Richard Hendricks is kind of like this. He's an up and coming version of a Steve Jobs type where he's got these brilliant ideas or he is more like one of the software engineers who got really big.

(01:04:19):

And there was a moment where Gavin Belson, who is basically the Steve Jobs of the show, said something, I'm not invested in Pied Piper. He was like, you know what I'm invested in. And then Richard Hendrix thinks to himself, he's like, is it me? And Gavin Belson goes, no, God, no, of course not. You're an animal. It has nothing to do with you. I feel like that can go two different ways where it's like either the person's invested in the overall product of the band and the whole project itself, or it can just be in an individual. You know what I mean? And sometimes it's both. I do think with Doha a big part of it, I would just be willing to talk to Monty Connor and ask him, dude, how much of it was that you knew that Eyal was going to deliver and do what's right with that band and you could count on him. And then how much of it was that you just also loved the band? I'm sure there was a balance to it, but I have to believe that Monty would say that he invested in you a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):

Yeah, what a mistake. Oh, you know what he told me when he heard my band's first demo, he told me that we should bury it so deep that nobody ever finds it and completely disassociate ourselves from it. It's one of the worst pieces of shit he's ever heard in his life. Oh my

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):

God.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):

Was that the stuff with the electronic drums?

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):

Yeah, the earlier stuff and wow, it was, I sent it to him and after we were signed, I didn't get the reaction I thought I was going to get. That's fucking amazing. Yeah, it was fucking brutal.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):

I mean, bands are even lucky if a guy responds these days, but could you imagine there's a guy who's got an automated response that says some shit like that to you? Oh my God.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):

Well, the thing is that one of the reasons that I've been so brutal with certain people when I think it's in their best interest is because people have been that way with me, and it's always been a good thing. Monte Connor telling me that shit, that's not the only time that he put me in my place. He put me in my place a few times and it was always a good thing. I've been put in my place by people over the years in very brutal ways, and it was always a good thing and I always appreciated it. And for instance, when SKO wouldn't let me play guitar on certain parts of a doth record, that was one of the best things that could have happened because it made the parts way better to have the other guy play them. But also years later, when I was in that position of choosing the guitar player to play on a part, I had the experience of being in those shoes and thinking to myself, well, if I dealt with it, you can deal with it grow up. Which I don't think always went over too well, but I've always thought that some of the best teaching that I've ever gotten from people has been fucking sheer

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):

Brutality. I think actually I told Ben Ov when we were thinking about who's going to record our record, and we talked to Zeus, we talked to a lot of people. Ultimately I was like, I think Al is the guy, because in 2005 I recorded with Eric Rutan and you want to talk about fucking brutal. He's got that. I kind of hate the like, oh, I'm from fucking Massachusetts, bro. But Eric Rutan's got this New Jersey thing about him that I very much understand in how he handles things. And he told this one dude who was on our record, he was in the band at the time who couldn't play the part, and the guy was getting frustrated. It was my fault that he couldn't play his part. What do you mean? So I recorded left side guitars and then this dude wanted to record right side guitars and he couldn't match what I was doing.

(01:08:32):

And then Eric opens the door to his little waiting area where you hang out while people are recording and he opens the door with sweat on his brow, almost furious, and he's like, dude, you got to come in here and fucking record this part. This guy can't record. And he just just was like, alright, dude, hop out, you're out. And then I came in and I've recorded the part and it matched up and it's like that stuck with me a lot at that level of militants and recording that way changed everything for me. I had recorded with Jason Zuo and Jesse Cannon before, and it's very different approach, and they're great at what they do and that personality works for certain people, but I gravitate towards what you gravitate towards, which is brutal honesty. Just tell me what the fuck I need to do, man. You don't need to sugarcoat it for me. Let's just do it. That works for me, and that's why we ended up recording with you. So I think that people need to understand that when you select somebody to record you, you have to understand their personality type.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):

Yeah, absolutely. If your band can't handle that sort of thing, don't go to a producer who's known for that for being that way. There are producers who are much more about the band is who the band is, and they play the way they play and this is what it is, and I'm going to do the best with what they're presenting me

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):

Like a Steve Evetts.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):

Steve Evetts is a good example, or Kurt Ballou, and they do a great job with what they're given. So that's not to say that one way is right or wrong. Their way of operating is foreign to how my brain works, though. I do think it's interesting. I love Kurt's records, so I don't think that it's a wrong approach, just it blows my mind. I could never do that. There's definitely something in how he thinks that's different than how I think.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):

Maybe it also is with him too, is he's investing in the band a lot too, because we asked to record with him and he very politely said, this is really cool stuff, but I don't think that I can invest myself in it. And he said no. So if he does actually agree to do a band, maybe he's capable of seeing past the functionality because he thinks the music is good. I have no idea. I can't imagine, to be honest with you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):

Yeah. I think he only does projects that he's going to be able to do his best work with. So I do remember us talking about that, that he's not going to take a project where he's going to have to record it the way that I would record it, because that's not the way he likes to do things. So if it's a band that is going to have to be pieced together and good bands get pieced together, that doesn't mean it's a good band or a bad band, but if it's not a band that fits into his style of working, then probably going to pass on it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):

And he's actually much more diverse than people actually know. Yes, he's very diverse. Yeah. He did this band Krueger, who I think is still one of the best bands that nobody knew about, and that's for whatever. Maybe they were cursed or whatever it is, things just didn't work. Dumb band name, I don't know. But they were amazing and they sounded like Gojira a lot, maybe even like This is Sacrilege. They're one of my favorite bands since I started Binary Code and I love Go Jira, but Kruger might actually be a little bit more interesting than Go Jira. They're not as good as Go Jira, but they're really fucking good and really good players, and Kurt was able to get a Go Jira sound. That blows my mind to this day. It still does because I think of Curt as Converge or Doom Writers or something really organic and natural sounding, but he was actually able to do something that was a bit more aggressive, and he also did animosity, which was Naveen from Entheos. It was his kind of a Death Corps band back when he was 16 years old or something. He's done so many different things, so it's not like he's not diverse at all and he just does stuff. He's like, I could make this sound like a Kurt Blue record. I think he knows what works for him.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):

Yeah, yeah. I definitely know that he's a diverse producer. He was telling me about something he recorded that was just a bunch of typewriters. Oh God, like 24 typewriters or something.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):

It's going to be the top 10 for decal metal albums of the year probably.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):

He made it sound really cool, but I don't mean that to say that. I think that he only takes one style of project. It's more just that if he doesn't feel that he can do his best work, he's not taking the project.

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):

Yeah, agreed. That's a lesson all on its own, right? I mean, there are so many people out there who are, I'll record anything you inquired. I'm doing it if you'll have me. It's like you got to learn how to say no. That's a really important lesson

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):

At a certain point, but

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):

Right. Yeah, not in the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):

Not at the beginning. At the beginning. You got to learn how to say yes to every single fucking thing you can possibly say yes to. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):

Even in composing too, if you're really desperate to get into that world, well then start hitting up film schools and stuff and finding that kid who's got a really limited budget, who needs you. I've done this, and you'll score something for two, $3,000 and put in way too much work into it for that return. But you need something to show. You got to have something to show people if you want to get more business. So that's kind of a part of the process is saying yes at the right times and then learning eventually your value and saying no when you need to.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):

The thing is that you got to learn to do way too much work at some point anyways. Whether the budget's big or the budget's small, you always are going to end up doing way too much work. And so if you cut your teeth doing way too much work for no real return and you just get used to it, when you're in a good situation and you're doing way too much work, you won't freak out and you'll appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:33):

I agree with that a hundred percent. Actually, it blows people's minds sometimes if I tell them, yeah, a work week for me can be 70 to 80 hours. That's pretty average, actually. I mean, I take breaks when I need to. If I need to take a day off or something, I'll do that, but I hate quoting the fucking Geico commercial, but it's such a pertinent quote, but it's like when you make your vacation, your vacation, you don't mind what you're doing. It's a part of the process. As long as I'm not sitting here filling out insurance papers for fucking Best Buy or something, I'm happier sitting here for 70, 80 hours a week doing what I'm doing, knowing that it's going to be better for me. And of course, the overall goal is to not have to kill yourself to reach a result, but I think that's, it kind of comes with the territory.

(01:15:21):

I think when you can do your craft that comes natural to you for a profession, I think that you obsess over it. Working with Aaron Smith on the binary code record, when he was working on some of the synths stuff that he started doing, when we flew out to Seattle to record with him, he would spend a full day on 30 seconds of audio making it sound good with synths. It blew my mind. I was like, well, I guess that's normal. I guess that's something to learn from this. And I do the same thing. I'll obsess over three tracks out of 60 for a composition sometimes and just spend a whole day on it, take a break, come back the next day, get back at it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):

Okay. So what is the typical workday for you

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):

With composing? I have worked in a very strange capacity for composers. Sometimes I don't get visual lock, which means I don't get creative assets right away, so I have to start composing without any kind of visuals. You might get something like,

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):

So you just have to invent something.

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):

Yes, you get cues. So you might get a zero to 30 seconds, I need this 30 seconds to 45 seconds. This is the tone. And you might get cues, but you do have to create a lot from your imagination because a lot of the times, for example, if somebody's working on a high budget film, they're going to be working to stuff that looks like shit, and it's not going to be very imaginative stuff. You're going to see a big green screen and you're going to see good looking actors trotting around doing shit that's going to end up getting CGI

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):

In really weird costumes and dots all over their faces.

Speaker 3 (01:16:51):

Exactly. Precisely. And that's not really a good environment to gain musical inspiration from, so you really have to rely on how your brain can translate what you think is appropriate. So if I'm lucky and I have the visuals, it works really well for me. But this is actually something a lot of people know too, is that a lot of composers actually end up becoming sound designers for the stuff that they work on. So I did do a lot of sound design, which is making sound effects and all those different things have to come into play as well, which is actually a huge advantage for the overall outcome of things because there's a higher level of quality control where I can see how these things work together. Nothing drives me more nuts than when you hear music in a certain key and then a sound element is added that's out of key and it just doesn't work. I'm like, why wouldn't they fix that? And it's like, oh, two different people worked on it

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):

And someone can't hear it.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):

Right, exactly. Yeah, it's going to bother somebody maybe subconsciously or it isn't pleasing. So if I'm lucky and I have creative assets, I just start mapping everything out. I do have a template that I use in Cubase that uploads. I have different ones, so if I'm doing orchestral stuff, it'll upload an array of Spitfire, a lot of Spitfire stuff, and it takes a while. I feel like a good hour of that is just loading programs and letting the computer function at its best capacity with how much stuff is open, and then I just start focusing on the visuals. I really start paying attention to the research I've already done on a character or the scene or whatever it is, and then I start mapping things out. There is a lot of note taking and a lot of, I guess you could call it grunt work stuff, where it's just making a note about, okay, this character should sound like this, and then I create a whole stem of here's all the different things I think of when I think of this character, and then here's actually what people think about them. So there's a lot of that pen and paperwork and then just start cracking into the vsts.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):

What do you mean by Here's what I think of when I think of this character?

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):

Here's a good example. The Captain America thing was the last thing that I did for Marvel in 2019, and it was an animated thing, and his story, it starts out where he's like the skinny kid and it takes place in the forties, and I was obsessed with the score for Watchmen, and I said to myself, how cool would it be to do Marvel shit that sounds like Trent Resner and Atticus Ross. And I started thinking to myself, but you can't just start doing industrial synth heavy work to Captain America. That doesn't make sense in 1945. So then I started thinking about, okay, it's 1945, it starts out in black and white. What kind of music makes sense to that era? And then I had to start thinking about

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):

Techno clearly.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):

Yeah, techno is perfect for it. Yeah, I need that dead mouse kick drum going through the whole thing. So then I started thinking about what is the overall frequency spectrum of something that works in 1945 if somebody were listening to this on a radio or something, and then I start taking notes on, okay, cool, it's black and white, got to have some kind of low fidelity, and I just start mapping things out. But then also, captain America, he's patriotic. So I thought of snare cadences and different type of using tune tracks, orchestral for the snares specifically, because snare drum for an orchestral composition is much different than a mapex snare for a periphery record or something. So I start tying all these things in together. Tempo and pace starts coming into play. How fast is the animation moving? What frame rate is it moving at? I start syncing that up best that I can, and nothing is better than I have to tell you this. Deni Villano, the guy who did Blade Runner and 2049 and

Speaker 2 (01:20:36):

Sicario and prisoners

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):

And prisoners, and he's doing dune and arrival. If you try to compose to his scene cutting, they're perfectly lined up to tempos on the money, like 120 BPM. It's really weird. So often a lot of people who do editing and stuff actually compose to rhythm, which is really helpful for somebody who's writing music. So I spend time figuring that out. But yeah, you think about a character like Captain America, you have to figure out what makes that character who they are, and how do you make that sound? And I didn't want it to sound like goofy, like Navy music. I didn't want it to sound like a Cort or a sea trumpet or something. That sounds super typical. I wanted it to have that darkness and kind of, I guess triumphant sound to it, but also make it sound appropriate to what I wanted it to sound like. So where would you

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):

Find the darkness in a character like Captain America,

Speaker 3 (01:21:32):

His girlfriend dying.

Speaker 2 (01:21:33):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:21:34):

Yeah. So he thought that she died, and I wanted to play off of that, and that was a huge inspiration for him through the Avengers was he kept looking at his little locket and looking at it like, oh no, I get to live all these years. I was frozen, and I'm really bummed out. It's like a whole mental thing, and that's a big part of the story for that animated series, and also Red Skull, red Skull's a pretty dark character. That's like your Marvel Hitler basically. So yeah, it's a lot. You have to do a lot of analysis of things that are beyond the music in order to understand better what this is supposed to end up turning into.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):

How does that translate into something that as an emotional impact and is not just an academic exercise where you're checking off the boxes. You could be like, all right, what's the scenario? What's the tempo? What did people listen to in this era? What does the character look like? What's he sad about? What's he happy about? And kind of go down a checklist, but that doesn't equal good music. That just equals a checklist. How does it get to actual music?

Speaker 3 (01:22:45):

I guess for me, a big part of, I've had some conversations with people who are kind of newer to what they're doing. Maybe they're a director or something. I just have to remind them that there's a reason why they chose me to do what I'm doing and that they have to trust me, and they hired me because I can do this spread of work, and that's what I'm good at. I also was very fortunate with Captain America where I've actually implemented the Trent Resner, Atticus Ross methodology of electronic and synthesized elements with orchestral and organic. You just have to be confident in what you're doing and hope that that confidence translates into the music and the people like what you're doing. There's a lot of checking in.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):

So it's just once you do the research, you're just going for it and hopefully it works.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):

Yeah, I would say so. I mean, could you imagine the director of that shitty ass X-Men movie, dark Phoenix? They hired Han Zimmer to do it, and he gives them this amazing score that he believes in, and the guy's like, well, I was actually thinking more like this. I think at some point Han's going to be like, well, listen, you hired me, so if you want somebody else to do it, you can do that. And that's not a good way to look at it. But if you can think that way, you hired me, so this is what I think works for this. If it doesn't work, tell me, and I can try and make it fit more appropriately. That did happen to me with Marvel. I did something for Daredevil, and they said it was too dark and I had to revisit it and dial the darkness back.

(01:24:13):

I actually posted that at one point. I showed people what they considered to be too dark, and all it really was is I had somebody singing soprano and alto over it in a really somber kind of giorgi leg, Getty kind of style of way, and they were like, nah, that's a little too much for me. So I dialed it back and I picked up the pace and stuff like that, but I was on the money with the tone. It was just, they were like, it's just too dark. Can you bring it back a little bit? Is there something else we can do? So I picked up the pace, changed the key, moved it around a little bit, rearranged, transposed, et cetera, and it came together. It's not always going to be a hit, but I think most composers have really good success rates. At least that's been my experience in talking to other composers. It's been my experience personally. I've had one out of every over 50 compositions I've done at this point in the last two years, been sent back to me for being too dark, and that's it. In that industry in particular, I think they invest in your professional skills

Speaker 2 (01:25:08):

As in they know that they like what you do before they say yes.

Speaker 3 (01:25:14):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):

So they've got good confidence that it's going to work.

Speaker 3 (01:25:18):

Yeah, exactly. So they'll know maybe it's not going to be on the money on the first go, but they know that they're going to be able to get there at some point.

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):

Yeah, okay. That makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:25:28):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:25:28):

I mean, why would they work with someone they didn't have confidence in?

Speaker 3 (01:25:32):

I think sometimes it can be very political, to be honest with you. I think that there are music supervisors out there who there is some politicking involved in it. When you get on a higher scale, when you start working with a studio like a 24, the music supervisors there are much more diverse and you have an ability to find good people to work with. But then I think there are some in-house supervisors at bigger studios who hire with a political ideology within the landscape of the entertainment.

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):

So you either have to be on the right side of that or not, basically.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):

Yeah, sometimes there's political stuff and it happens, and I think that it just transcends the music itself.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):

I think with the political stuff, what I've learned is when it's going against you or when you're not part of it, there's not much you can do. So just find a different opportunity.

Speaker 3 (01:26:25):

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, in some instances they might even have somebody come in who is the right person for the job, and then after discussions with a whole marketing team and a production team change their mind when it comes down to starting to serve the creative assets to the composers to start working on, and that happens a lot more than we probably know about. I'm actually willing to bet you we'd never know when that really happens unless you're actually a part of

Speaker 2 (01:26:50):

It. I mean, why would we find out?

Speaker 3 (01:26:52):

Well, didn't Han Zimmer just take over doing James Bond? That was a pretty big, we all noticed it. That was a very noticeable thing. I think that was,

Speaker 2 (01:27:02):

They made a big deal out of it.

Speaker 3 (01:27:03):

Yeah, I think that happens sometimes, but for the most part, we don't hear anything about it. So yeah, there's a lot of politics involved in it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:11):

I mean, most people don't give a shit. I just think with something as big as James Bond and as big as Han Zimmer and it happening at the very last minute, people are going to be like, why is Han Zimmer getting involved in James Bond four months from release?

Speaker 3 (01:27:27):

He is a bad motherfucker, and he can do it,

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):

And clearly something wasn't going right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:33):

That happens with actors too, change outs. They'll change somebody out last minute. They'll be like, yeah, this shit wasn't working. Get 'em out of there. Or the actor does something really shitty that could affect the marketing campaign. And they're like, well, we're not that far into this. We can get them out of this. That happens a lot, too.

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):

I mean, you got to do it If it's not right, it's not right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:53):

Yeah, I think that happens musically a whole lot more than we're aware of. And probably in the band scene too, in the middle of a recording, I know that happens in RB for a fact. Somebody comes in to play keyboard on a Kendrick Lamar record, and then they're like, well, I think Robert Glasper would do a better job. So they have Robert Glasper come in and he just plays a Rhodes piano differently, and they just deleted the tracks that the other person did get him out of here.

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):

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Speaker 3 (01:30:28):

That just reminded me of something that you and I talked about when we were in Glendale. I just mentioned deleting players out of a session and then hiring somebody else to do the job. We talked about when you write something, if you don't stand behind it, if you're kind of questioning it, to actually delete it physically off of your computer for good, so you never come back to it again and waste your reputation on something that's not up to your standards, subconsciously, it's not good enough. So why are you going to keep it? Why are you going to hock it on somebody else because it's a good idea? No, you don't believe in it, get rid of it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):

I don't remember what we said, but I agree with that. I mean, the thing is, I've always seen deleting players off of something the same way that I would treat deleting one of my own bad ideas off of something. A lot of people take it a lot more personally, but to me it was always just get rid of it. So I have this thing I fucking hate hoarders data hoarders. I have a thing against it. There's a couple family members of mine who were hoarders, and it kind of scarred me like serious hoarders, and I have a very anti hoarding mentality. You were at my house in Florida, you saw there's no minimalist. I like minimalist simple things. I like them to look good, but I don't like lots of shit everywhere. And I feel that same way about ideas. I don't like hoarding ideas. If something's not good enough, don't keep it around for later. That's like a hoarder's mentality. It's like keeping a piece of trash around. You might have some use for

Speaker 3 (01:32:11):

A mummified cat.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):

Yeah, I might be able to sell this at a yard sale or something.

Speaker 3 (01:32:19):

Small gain.

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):

Yeah, I feel like it's a hoarder's mentality to hold on to bad ideas.

Speaker 3 (01:32:25):

Agreed. Yeah. I mean, I think Jordan Peterson had a really cool part of his book. One of them was like, if you don't have a clean room, how are you supposed to go out into this world and make a difference? If you can't, the place where you actually spend some of your time of your day sleeping, if it is a total wreck when you walk out the door, is your brain a wreck? There's too much shit. How do you catalog all these different ideas? It's almost like a data version of somebody who's got a brain that doesn't really have focus and is kind of maybe too scattered for its own good. So if you work clean and you have a clean environment and everything you do translates from one thing into the next, you're a minimalist, or you're clean and tidy and you don't have a lot of things, your file sessions are really clean. You don't have a lot of crap, you don't stand behind. I feel like it really translates into many other different facets.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):

Absolutely. So are you ruthless about cutting ideas?

Speaker 3 (01:33:20):

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:33:21):

Have you always

Speaker 3 (01:33:22):

Been? Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, without a doubt.

Speaker 2 (01:33:25):

Just if it's not good, just fucking kill it,

Speaker 3 (01:33:27):

Man. I've stopped rehearsals of a song and be like, I don't think we should play this. This is dumb. In 2010, we were getting ready to do some shows after we did a tour with revocation, and I remember jamming with my drummer on something we'd been working on for weeks, and I was like, man, every time we play this, actually it wasn't as good as the first time and it's not getting any better. So we just abandoned it,

Speaker 2 (01:33:49):

Man. I remember I joined a band once, some summer back from school. I joined some band and there was a song that just always pissed me off. And after 10 practices, and I was like the new guy, but after 10 practices, I was like, can we please do something about this song? It's just like two riffs back to back, to back to back to back to back, to back to back. Something's got to happen. And they flipped out on me, got very, very, very angry and very threatening, and I was like, you know what? Fuck you. So I took my shit and I left. But the moral of the story was just that you got to be willing to cut stuff. They never went anywhere because I think they were one of those local types that I called Forever Local who I checked in on them 10 years later and they were still playing those songs.

(01:34:49):

So that whole thing about the dude freaking out on me about ditching the song or fixing the song that was a lot deeper than I realized at the time, they kept on playing those songs for more than 10 years at the same level. And I see that shit all the time. It's one of the first things I look for actually, if I'm crit somebody or advising them on something, is I try to figure out if they're doing that in any way, shape, or form. Are they holding on to something for way past expiration? Are they getting precious about their material? Are they doing anything like that that I consider to be undesirable? And if so, then I'm going to call them on it. Because I think that it's one of the most self-limiting behaviors that a creative person can do. If something's not up to par, fucking throw it away, the trash that it is.

Speaker 3 (01:35:55):

Do you think the new Christopher Knoll movie Tenet is going to be applicable to how you can perceive as a producer or as a creative, how you can perceive the future and futility of something, how it's like everything, they can see things in reverse, the bad thing happens, and then all of a sudden it starts unveiling where this future is going to be. It's like playing with these guys. I'm guessing it was like The Strokes or Radiohead, who was it? And then you make a suggestion and you're like, well, this train is going to derail. I better get off of this thing immediately.

Speaker 2 (01:36:29):

Well, yeah, I hadn't been making suggestions that entire time, so this was my first time making a suggestion. Oh

Speaker 3 (01:36:35):

God,

Speaker 2 (01:36:35):

That's terrible. She was like, fuck you, Mr. Berkeley, man. Got some big fucking ideas, don't you? And just went on and on and on and on and on. I was like, all right. Fuck you, and I'm out of here.

Speaker 3 (01:36:48):

Were they actually good though, in this scenario? If they didn't do that and they were willing to work with you on that, what do you think the potential would've been? The

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):

Potential was real.

Speaker 3 (01:37:00):

So that's a huge indicator of a failing bent.

Speaker 2 (01:37:03):

That's why I was playing with them. I thought it was good, but

Speaker 3 (01:37:05):

That's a huge issue.

Speaker 2 (01:37:06):

Yeah, that's not going to go anywhere. And you can't have that kind of mentality in a project that's going to go places. And hey, if you're listening and you have a band member that's like that, kick them out.

Speaker 3 (01:37:22):

Give 'em an ultimatum.

Speaker 2 (01:37:23):

If you have a business partner that's like that, get a different business partner. Those kinds of people are the worst kinds of people to work with because they will hang on to bad ideas. It's a life jacket and they're in the middle of the ocean or something. They'll hang on to bad ideas as if it's saving their life or something, and there's just no reason for it. I know that a lot of people listening are probably going to be like, whoa, sounds like my band sounds like my studio partner or whatever. And if so, yeah, just get out,

Speaker 3 (01:38:06):

Make the right decision for it for sure. And it is that easy, by the way. It is that easy to just make a decision like that. I mean, I recorded with you and a band member who will remain unnamed was an issue. And actually that happened twice. There were things that you knew from an objective perspective that we're going to be something that hindered the band down the road. And in one of the instances, it didn't even get on the record. And then on the other instance, they did get on the record and they did their job. Maybe not to the best of their ability, but ultimately down the road, it would've been a huge issue. And I made those decisions with people who had been with me for quite a while, and I did it in an amicable and professional way where it didn't cause huge dissonance between me and these people. And we'd been doing it for a long time at that point. But sometimes you just have to make a decision if ultimately you want to survive the circumstance, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:39:04):

Absolutely. Make a decision. It's hard though. I remember in high school I had that local band with the Bad singer, which I think is every local band to some degree, but I had that band with the cool music and the really terrible singer, and I was so scared to kick him out. He was a lot older than me, and I thought I was going to get my ass kicked, but I was 14 and he was 18 and hung out with criminals and stuff. So I thought that I was going to get killed, but also I was just scared to kick him out, and I should have just kicked him out. My band could have been so much better, but I learned from that to not let projects get dragged down because individuals suck. So I learned that in high school. And so by the time I was onto other bands, I was already pretty ruthless with my thinking.

(01:40:03):

I met a lot of people along the way who did not share in that level of brutality. But like I said before, I treat myself that way too. If one of my ideas isn't good enough, I will kill it too. So I don't care where the bad ideas coming from, if it's coming from somebody else or it's coming from me. It's just got to go. And if someone is arguing for bad ideas and it's that much of an issue, then they've got to go. The sooner that I think someone is comfortable with navigating situations like that, the better off they'll be. People probably think that I sound really, really cold right now, but at the end of the day, you do need to ask yourself why you're doing what you're doing. I always saw it. This person is poisoning my future, basically. So I saw it as an attack on my entire future, and when I framed it that way to myself, it made it really, really easy to do what I had to do. This person's lack of commitment, lack of quality control, lack of ability is basically going to hinder me from everything from achieving everything that I'm working my ass off to achieve, and that I've dedicated the last number of years to fuck this person. They don't get a say.

Speaker 3 (01:41:42):

Yeah, it ultimately, it affects you, and maybe even them, maybe it's holding them back from being involved in something that just isn't for them. How many people do you think have left bands and they get kicked out, they're not cutting it and they keep going? I don't think it happens all the time. I think a lot of the times it ends for people there, and then they can go focus on something else in their life and do better there, become a dad or start a business or something. Go do something else. Maybe it's not for you,

Speaker 2 (01:42:12):

Which is totally fine. I mean, in the end, it wasn't for me either. I started a business too. It's totally fine. So what percentage of shit that you write would you say gets deleted out of all the stuff you write, you're writing all the time, what percentage of that gets deleted? What percentage actually makes it to somebody's inbox?

Speaker 3 (01:42:35):

This is going to sound super arrogant. So far, I haven't written anything with intent that I haven't sent to somebody, but I have written a lot of stuff for personal use that I delete constantly. You know what I mean? But when it's a job, I don't, well, I take it back. That's a lie. I've definitely started some

Speaker 2 (01:42:51):

Stuff. Fucking liar.

Speaker 3 (01:42:52):

Yeah. No, no, no. Well, within this particular field of work, I've definitely committed to my ideas, but there have been a couple of instances where I'm like, this absolutely does not work for this at all, and I delete it immediately. That has happened. I would say probably two times out of maybe the last 20 that I did that happened.

Speaker 2 (01:43:14):

Sounds like you're getting the bad ideas out of the way when you do your personal writing.

Speaker 3 (01:43:19):

For sure. A hundred percent. Yeah. I also think too that maybe if something's not working very early on, I don't keep pushing forward. So it's like I don't even get to that point where I'm going to commit to printing the session. So if something's not working out within a couple of minutes, I'm delete it. I'll just, it's

Speaker 2 (01:43:36):

That fast.

Speaker 3 (01:43:37):

Yeah, that quickly, for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:43:39):

Good. I'm glad to hear that. I'm not surprised.

Speaker 3 (01:43:41):

Yeah. Does that make sense? Right.

Speaker 2 (01:43:43):

It does. For instance, I think it's similar when you're dialing a guitar tone. If you don't have something good in the first five minutes, then you have to totally change your approach. That doesn't mean that it's not going to take you 12 hours beyond that to refine it that last 5%, but if you don't have something that's 90% of the way there in the first five, 10 minutes, you're going down the wrong path, in my opinion. And I think that that's true of a whole lot of things musically. Of course, there's some things like tuning drums that takes a while. You can't possibly do it in 10 minutes. I get that. I get that you have to put in time on certain things, but there's some basics that if they're not coming together right away, just move on. And I feel that way about songs too, and songs and compositions. If that spark's not there, it's not there. You're not going to create a spark just by beating it.

Speaker 3 (01:44:46):

Yeah. Well, I think also too, you could say that if you keep prolonging the level of effort in something that's not going to be good, you're expending quite a lot of energy that you might not get back. And it can be incredibly disheartening. I'm sure if you're working on something and you've spent days on it and it's just not coming together, that could really hold you back from trying to do more stuff. So it's like, why don't you save your energy? Get rid of this garbage shit that you've been working on and it's bad. Just get rid of it because you really are limited with how much creative energy you can possibly have. Nobody's just constantly cranking shit out every day. So I feel like it's just, even in the sense of looking at your brain like a battery, why would you want to waste so much of your, it's like having an argument with somebody where you're like, I'm not getting anywhere with this person. So whatcha going to do? You're going to drain your phone battery. Having a text argument with somebody, it's like, why don't you just save it so you can go on YouTube and watch a video of something? I'd rather spend that finite time on something that's going to actually be more beneficial than wasting it. Trying to beat a musical dead horse.

Speaker 2 (01:45:53):

Creativity is a finite resource. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:45:57):

Good creativity, at least.

Speaker 2 (01:45:58):

I think any creativity, I think the good part is subjective, but I think it's been objectively studied in how the brain operates, that creativity is a finite resource. You start with a lot and it diminishes over the course of the day, and you have to go to sleep to regenerate it, basically.

Speaker 3 (01:46:20):

And you might lose it overnight. You might lose your train overnight. A lot can change through that.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):

Yeah, absolutely. So because it works that way, I think you do need to be selective of which ideas you run with because yeah, if you just run with any idea that you have bad ones too, you're might be expending a lot of energy on shit that's going to get you no return. And yeah, I can see that would be very disheartening. It's almost like a self-preservation move to throw away the bad ideas.

Speaker 3 (01:46:57):

Yeah. You're just being fully conscious of maybe a lot of people just function on autopilot or something. But I feel very connected to my moves in my strategy. I don't know if that's learned or if it's inherent or it's just a part of the process of getting older and learning more about myself. But I feel very connected to time as a concept and the way that I perceive it. So in my day, if I feel like something's becoming a waste of time, then it must be a waste of time. And I need to stop doing it as soon as humanly possible. Otherwise it's going to affect what little time I have left in the day to get things done. And I think that if there's a way to develop that level of consciousness and wearness of how you function as a human being, that if that exists in book form or some kind of a podcast or a talk or something like that, I would definitely, even as a person who's becoming more conscious and aware of those things, I would want to learn how to do that even better. Because at the end of the day, we don't get to take any of the shit with us to the grave. You know what I mean? We all don't live forever, and there's not a lot of time to get shit done while we're on this planet. So you just got to try and limit your time wasting efforts.

Speaker 2 (01:48:10):

I mean, understanding that no matter what you do, you're going to be wasting some time in there. Agreed. Yeah. You can't possibly be at your best at all times.

Speaker 3 (01:48:18):

Yeah, agreed. And sometimes something might seem like a waste of time, and then ultimately it wasn't. And those things do happen, but I think they're pretty few and far between

Speaker 2 (01:48:28):

How many days on average out of a week, would you consider to be inspired, got the spark kind of days, and how many of them are just it because it's a job and it's going okay, but it's not necessarily inspired, but you're doing it anyways?

Speaker 3 (01:48:49):

If I'm being completely honest with you, I'd have to change that from a week to a month. I would say probably two to three days out of a month. Am I really on the money with my inspiration where I'm like, oh, I really want to do something right now, and then the rest of it is just forcing myself out of my comfort zone plan. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it might even be less than that, to be honest with you. I don't have hypomania or anything like that, but I definitely feel like creatively I work when the mood strikes unless I have a deadline and deadlines are tough. That's a whole other element of creativity is when you have a deadline for something and you have to convince yourself. I actually sometimes might find some tool. I have some tools for giving myself inspiration. I might pull up maybe the Dark Knight soundtrack or just pull something up for inspiration and hope that that regenerates or recharges something in me, and it doesn't often happen, but just because something's not inspired doesn't necessarily mean that you're not going to do a good job at it, but I definitely think it helps to work when that mood strikes and I'll sacrifice all social aspects of my life for those moments when they do happen.

(01:50:01):

I don't give a shit what's going on. Oh, sorry, mood strikes. I'm going to spend this whole day, cancel a date, cancel a hangout, whatever it is, and get to work. Because those moments for me, honestly don't come up as much as I would like for them to come up. So yeah. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (01:50:18):

Yeah, absolutely. Did you have to learn how to manage that?

Speaker 3 (01:50:22):

Yeah, I think I'm still learning too. I think it's still a part of the process, but I'm becoming more aware of prioritizing myself in the professional sense over things that maybe won't be as wildly beneficial. So it's still kind of a theory and practice.

Speaker 2 (01:50:42):

Yeah, I think it's naive to think that someone that composes or writes or does something creative for a living is going to be inspired all the time, and that there's inspiration linked to output. I think inspiration is a bonus when it happens. That's awesome. That's great. That's kind of totally a bonus. If you were to only work when that happened, you wouldn't work, never work, you would never work, and therefore you wouldn't get good enough to be able to do it for a living and you'd be less inspired to work, less motivated to work, and it's a bad road to go on to try to only work when inspired. Obviously inspiration's great. There's nothing like it, but if you wait around for it, you're going to be waiting around forever basically.

Speaker 3 (01:51:33):

I wonder if you can get to the point where you're so successful and don't rely on constantly hustling and taking on projects to build the life that you want. If you can get to the point where you can only work when you're motivated, but I can't imagine that that really, I just don't see anybody in the positions where I want to be who are like that. I can't see Denny Elman or Han Zimmer doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:51:57):

Look at Han Zimmer right now with the Bond movie. We all know that he only has four months to put it all together, so that's not a joke. That's real life. Dude has four months at this point. It's a lot less than that,

Speaker 3 (01:52:14):

And there's so much that goes into that.

Speaker 2 (01:52:15):

Yeah, he got the gig at the end of last year. That's no time whatsoever, so he doesn't have time to get inspired. I mean, I know that he's amazing, so he's going to figure out whatever tricks he's got up his sleeve to get himself as inspired as possible. I am sure he is going to do every single thing in his power to be at his best, but I don't think that he has the luxury to wait around for inspiration. And that's a dude at the very, very top doing one of the biggest movies you could possibly ever do.

Speaker 3 (01:52:54):

I think in his particular instance too, that the reason why he is where he is is because he probably shuts down everything outside of what the task at hand. I think he shuts it down. If he was a football fan, which I have this weird feeling, he probably is not, I don't think that he's probably the type of guy who would spend a Sunday watching the Super Bowl or something like that when he has work to do. I think he is like, oh, yeah, sorry. I can't do that doing this. Hey, are you doing this? Nope, I have work to do. I think it's just constantly people would be met with this brick wall that's built around him when he's in his element, when he has something to do. Whereas some people are like, well, on Sunday I'm going to be for four hours. I'm going to be watching the Super Bowl. It's like, well, good luck with that ethic. I don't know how far that goes with people to be honest with you. You got to really shut down, especially if you have a deadline, what are you supposed to do? That's not a lot of time. I bet you within that timeframe that he was given, if he was told he has four months, there's probably a month and a half or two months of actual composing within that, and then there's so much more

(01:54:02):

Around that I can't even imagine. That's horrifying. He's probably got a huge team on this one though, still. Yeah, it's insane. That's frightening. But he's the guy who's going to do

Speaker 2 (01:54:09):

It. I remember hearing an interview with Danny Elfin once where he said that whenever he's about to do a score, he has a going away party at his house.

Speaker 3 (01:54:23):

Wow, that's brilliant.

Speaker 2 (01:54:24):

Yeah, because he's not going to see his friends or family for about three or four months.

Speaker 3 (01:54:30):

That sounds super accurate. Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:54:32):

Yeah, so he does a going away party and then that's it. He goes in the cave.

Speaker 3 (01:54:37):

That's a sacrifice you have to be willing to make. I would do that in a heartbeat. I already feel like I'm doing that as is me. I spend most of my free time thinking about my future and things that I can do for it, and I try to surround myself with people who can kind of echo chamber back to me, things that are relevant to inspiring me, and I don't spend a lot, I don't talk about sports with people. I don't talk about shit that has nothing to do with me. I'm not interested in things that aren't going to make my life. I'm not comfortable yet, and I assume if I got to that point where I was given a task, one of those guys, a huge task like that, I would probably be in the same. I would probably not even fucking tell people and just disappear. That would be more my style. I'd be like, sorry guys. Sorry you haven't heard from me for five months or whatever. But I completely relate to that, and I think that that makes the stocks of Danny Elman go up so much higher for me for some reason.

Speaker 2 (01:55:33):

To me, that doesn't even seem like a sacrifice, like you just said

Speaker 3 (01:55:36):

At

Speaker 2 (01:55:36):

All. You've got to be willing to make that sacrifice, but in my mind, that wouldn't even be a question. It doesn't seem like a sacrifice. However, I do know a lot of people who would consider that a sacrifice, who would have an issue with that. I know a lot of people who I can hear their voice in my head right now being weighing real life against a commitment like that, and I'm just thinking that in my mind, that kind of thing has never been an issue.

Speaker 3 (01:56:07):

Yeah, agreed. And also too, it's one of the main driving reasons behind why commitment is such a concern for a lot of people. I am in a position now where this career started developing while I was single, and it couldn't have happened at a better time because I don't need any distractions right now. And you can still socialize infrequently if you want to, but for the most part, that can be a huge distraction as can having children, I have no interest in having children specifically for the sole purpose of I am not comfortable enough with my goals where I'm willing to let something become a complication in my determination to finish things that I need to do or grow and expand. And the more elements you add into that and the more complications and different facets of life that people have about their lives, I think the harder it is to commit to something like that. If Danny Elman, does he have kids? I have no idea, but if he does,

Speaker 2 (01:57:07):

I have no idea.

Speaker 3 (01:57:08):

That would be really difficult. That's like being a soldier. It's like you're not going to see that person for six to nine months, and it's like that's a huge commitment, and it's probably tough to tell people, avoid adding too many complicating elements to your life, but I mean,

Speaker 2 (01:57:24):

Give your dog away.

Speaker 3 (01:57:25):

Yeah, give your dog away. Yeah, exactly. Or hire dog walkers. Yeah, I think that it makes life much easier if you can just limit how complex your structure is. And it feels really like my drummer and I talk about this where it's like we're both single guys and do we really want to be complicating things right now with anybody's bullshit, it's really hard to commit, and that's what most people want who don't have bigger goals is they want commitment and they want to build futures based around the dependency of another person. And I think being as independent as humanly possible will make it much easier to commit to a Danny Elman move. I'm going away, guys. Sorry you won't see me for a long time.

Speaker 2 (01:58:09):

The podcast I did with Susan Rogers, she talked about that a lot. I don't know if you've heard that episode, but she's a fascinating lady. I think she's in her fifties or sixties, and she was talking about how she made the decision to basically be a bachelorette for life because she wanted to be committed to her work as a scientist and an engineer. A hundred percent get it. I've known a few people who have kind of been that way. I know a CEO of something that's pretty successful who made the decision to not have kids. His kid was his career, and I get it makes sense to me.

Speaker 3 (01:58:50):

My career is without a doubt in my mind, my child. I've said that actually to people before when it starts getting complicated for them, I very upfront like, this is what I'm going to be doing all the time, and if I don't respond to you or whatever, if that's a problem. And then after seeing that happen enough times, I'm just like, what is the point of this? Why am I even bothering? I should just focus on my shit and then if there are windows for it to happen, that's what I'll do, but I don't see a point in making things more complex. Is Susan Rogers, just by chance, does she have anything to do with Berkeley?

Speaker 2 (01:59:24):

Yes, she's a professor there.

Speaker 3 (01:59:26):

Oh, okay. I thought that name sounded familiar.

Speaker 2 (01:59:28):

I'm going to have to listen to that one. Yeah, and she used to engineer for Prince. She's a neuroscientist. She's a professor at Berkeley. Did

Speaker 3 (01:59:35):

She do anything with psychology?

Speaker 2 (01:59:37):

No. Well, I mean she studies the brain, but no, she doesn't do psychology.

Speaker 3 (01:59:42):

I definitely know who she is from Berkeley alone, but I have to listen to that one though.

Speaker 2 (01:59:46):

It was driving a Hyundai trying to keep up with a Ferrari, basically having her on the podcast. She's so much smarter than me. Jesus Christ, she's fucking smart. I don't normally speak to people that fucking house me in the intelligence department, and it was just like, holy shit. She's smart. Yeah, you should check that one out. It's good. But she talked about it too. She's so dedicated to her work. That's just, that's her thing.

Speaker 3 (02:00:20):

Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's just a different way of approaching things. It's just people feel different levels of success in different ways, and for some people, they never feel the full potential of what success is for a long time, if not ever. And I think that people who are really committed to seeing it through and trying to find success in feeling accomplished, it just might take a really long time. I don't feel like I'm there yet. I have so far to go.

Speaker 2 (02:00:48):

I can tell you I don't feel like I'm there yet either at all. I still feel like a complete fucking

Speaker 3 (02:00:53):

Loser. It becomes even more difficult when you can find ways to really outlining what it will be to define what success is for you. I'm sure you're similar to me in that there's a monetary figure in my mind that will make me feel like I've become successful with what I'm doing and I'm not there yet.

Speaker 2 (02:01:12):

But that's bullshit because I guarantee you that if you got that figure, that figure would no longer make you feel successful,

Speaker 3 (02:01:20):

Then I'm going to have to double it. Yeah, exactly. That is actually what happens. People get a job and then they're really excited to be making $14 an hour, and then they get a raise and it becomes 18, and then 18 is not enough, and then 22 and then 30, and it just keeps going up. So

Speaker 2 (02:01:34):

I know that this is true because I have hit financial goals in my life that seemed crazy both through personal income or through revenue. It's happened several times where there's been some financial milestone that I built up in my mind, and then I hit it eventually and

Speaker 3 (02:01:56):

You normalize.

Speaker 2 (02:01:57):

It just didn't seem so big once I actually got it, and now some of those goals that I used to have, if I were to hit those numbers, I'd be panicking,

Speaker 3 (02:02:10):

How am I going to survive?

Speaker 2 (02:02:11):

Yeah, it'd be like, how did things get so fucked up? So I think that I don't actually believe that there's a number that can make you feel whole.

Speaker 3 (02:02:22):

It's good to set goals though. If you say to yourself, in five years, I want to make $300,000 a year with music, and then five years you reach, maybe you reach it earlier than that, but then you have to reset your goal. You can't just keep saying, this is the pinnacle for me. Actually, what you can do is then once you start reaching a goal with one facet of your business, then why don't you try and add a different spoke to the wheel of income? You know what I mean? I feel like the most successful people that exist on this planet have multiple sources of income. So then you can just stretch it out into a different arena and start doing something else. Like Chris Hemsworth. It's like, does that guy really need to make more money? Well, of course he does, because now he's made so much money playing Thor. He wants to make sure that that is sustainable and continue. So then he's stretched out to a different source of income, and he made that exercising service that he has where he's like, here's all my secrets from building my Thor body or whatever. And it's like you just find a new way to generate more goals that are relevant to what it is that you're into.

Speaker 2 (02:03:26):

I think some people would say, well, someone like that is so rich that they could stop working. Aren't they successful? And obviously it's a certain type of person who gets to that level and then still keeps on going. That's what got them to that level in the first place was the fact that they're goddamn relentless. So I kind of think it's one way or the other. Either you're satisfied or you're not. And if you're not a satisfied kind of person, you're never going to be. However, the beauty of it is that you'll probably go a lot further because you're never satisfied. So it's kind of a catch 22. I think it's really tough to have both. I don't think that you can be satisfied and also go very far because being satisfied will make you slow down. So it's going to always have to feel a little bit unstable about things. But I've thought of success as me feeling like I'm at my potential, and so I'm not even close to that, so I don't feel successful at all. I've also thought of success as can I quit now, do something that would get me canceled and then live the rest of my life at the level I live at now? And the answer is no,

(02:04:42):

So I'm not successful. That's kind of how I define it,

Speaker 3 (02:04:45):

And even people who are getting to that point where they have an out and they can leave something, your brain just starts shifting. You start normalizing, and then your brain shifts and starts perceiving things differently. I don't know. I think you're right in that you can't be a person who can reach a point and be comfortable and also be somebody who is going to push things to the next level. I just don't think they exist. I think it's personality types. It's very A and B, I don't think there's an A, B, and CI think with careers, I do think that maybe somebody can become really successful too in other people's opinions, but maybe not. There's always a step further that you can go. So if somebody gets to a point, let's say somebody becomes a billionaire, they could become a trillionaire. You didn't reach that high. Do you own a country? Do you own an island? I don't know. I think it can just be, it's just infinite. So it's either A or B. For me, the way that I perceive it based on our conversation, I haven't really thought about this too much.

Speaker 2 (02:05:50):

Yeah, I think you're right that it's in the eyes of other people. I know a lot of people who would say, why don't you just stop? You have enough. But I just think it's not in some people's nature to stop

Speaker 3 (02:06:03):

And also what's enough.

Speaker 2 (02:06:04):

There is no enough.

Speaker 3 (02:06:05):

Yeah, I don't know what enough feels like, because also too, if you're doing what you love, how can you stop doing what you love? That doesn't make any sense to me. You know what I mean? I love film and I love music, so it's like, what am I supposed to do? I reached a certain level of success, so I should stop doing it. That doesn't make any fucking sense to me at all. I

Speaker 2 (02:06:26):

Mean, that's why you should never listen to what other people have to say about your

Speaker 3 (02:06:30):

Career. A hundred percent agreed.

Speaker 2 (02:06:32):

I started ignoring that kind of stuff actually a long time ago. High school actually, when I first started sharing my goals with friends and started getting really weird feedback, why do you want all that? Or You should just be happy with this, or You should do something because you enjoy it. Or them telling me their opinion on what I should do didn't sit right with me. And I kind of learned then to just ignore other people's opinions about my goals and my ideas of success, and it served me well to ignore those people. For instance, some people very close to me doubted me with URM and were really intent on letting me know how difficult it would be or how unrealistic it would be or things like that. How I had a good thing going, why drop that? People who were just being concerned, they cared about me. Why drop a six figure career for something? And if I hadn't, I think hadn't had the practice of just ignoring that kind of bullshit, maybe I would've listened to them. So don't ever listen to other people's opinions on your goals. In my opinion,

Speaker 3 (02:08:00):

Sometimes don't listen to them when they're positive too. I've had the experience.

Speaker 2 (02:08:04):

No, never listen to them. Positive or negative,

Speaker 3 (02:08:07):

Positivity should just be one of those things where you just absorb it and move on. But don't let it inflate, because I've always, if somebody's like, yeah, I think it's great what you're doing, it's amazing. It's like, yeah, I'm still going to do this anyway. It's good, man. You don't have to. I appreciate your support, but it's not going to dictate the decisions that I make going forward, and sometimes even the negative stuff can actually be fueled to prove people wrong. It's a weird example, but the movie Dolemite is my name with Eddie Murphy. That whole storyline from that movie I found so incredibly inspiring. For some reason, he was just like, you tell me I can't become a comedian. He became a comedian. Tell me I can't put out a record. He puts out a record on his own. Tell me I can't make a movie.

(02:08:49):

He makes a movie, and he built a career doing that. It's amazing. Everybody kept telling him no, and he can't, and he kept doing it. He's like, well, fuck you. I'm going to do it anyway. And he does it. The best part about it's he never did everything that he wanted to do, and he didn't look back and tell everybody, I told you so you're an idiot, blah, blah, blah. He was just like, I'm really happy that I did accomplish things, and that's all I needed. It's not to prove anybody wrong, but at the same time to prove that you can.

Speaker 2 (02:09:19):

Well, yeah. To yourself though.

Speaker 3 (02:09:20):

To yourself. Yeah. Nobody else matters really. If you're really dedicated to something for the right reasons, you don't care what anybody thinks good or bad really for the most part.

Speaker 2 (02:09:29):

Well, the thing is, if you're going to believe that negative opinions are bullshit, then you have to believe that the positive ones are bullshit too. You can't be selective about not listening to people. In my opinion.

Speaker 3 (02:09:41):

You're

Speaker 2 (02:09:41):

Being dishonest. A hundred percent. So yeah, if people are full of shit with their bad ideas, then they're just full of shit anyways. I've always thought that people being discouraging of my ideas just meant that they didn't understand them fully, but when they were positive about them, that didn't mean to me that they understood them any better either because they could never see it the way I saw it in my mind. So in my opinion, it would be fruitless and pointless to go to other people for advice about my goals or aspirations or anything. So I've rarely ever done it. Anytime that I've done it, I realized that I was just trying to massage my ego

Speaker 3 (02:10:31):

Agreed,

Speaker 2 (02:10:32):

And I would realize that while I was talking to the person about the goals was realizing, you know what I'm doing here? I'm just trying to get a dopamine hit by talking about my goals because I'm making myself feel like I'm getting something done. When reality, I'm just getting my ego massaged because nothing's actually moving forward. What this person says to me now isn't going to make any bit of difference, and it's going to have no bearing on the actual outcome. They don't actually understand what it is that I'm trying to do, and they don't matter in this equation and need to stop doing this. I need to stop going to other people with my goals rarely ever do.

Speaker 3 (02:11:16):

You're ultimately in control of your outcome. For the most part. You pack your own lunch, you're in charge of what happens on your day to day, and somebody else a agreeing with that. Unless they're a person in your industry, it's just not going to change anything. And if anything, it can be really unhappy where it misleads you to thinking that you're doing enough and you should just keep doing what you're doing where instead of hearing somebody say, I think it's really cool, but maybe you could dial back to going out and partying or some shit. It's really rare that you ever get a breadth of information behind somebody's support or lack of support. It's usually very cut and dry, and it's kind of just like, where's this coming from? How is this constructive for me in any way whatsoever? So it's just good to ignore it from everywhere, and I still deal with that.

(02:12:05):

I still have people in my family who really care about me, who are saying things to me, what are you going to do? Because I'm moving to California. They're like, what are you going to do when you get there? And it's like, what the fuck do you mean? What am I going to do when I get there? You think I'm just going there and I'm just going to live in a tent while I'm there. It's like I have a plan, but it's like that person has actually communicated to me as well that they just don't really understand my industry and my career. So they're just showing their concern. So at least they were able to articulate that. But I don't think everybody does that.

Speaker 2 (02:12:34):

No, because they don't understand that. They don't understand.

Speaker 3 (02:12:37):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:12:38):

Yeah. I feel like I got on this tangent because a lot of people come to me for advice. They come to me for advice, and every once in a while I think that it's a valid conversation, but I feel like 90% of the time, they're really just trying to get me to affirm whatever it is they're coming to me with, they're not actually coming to me for advice and they're going to do what they're going to do anyways. So really they just want to hear themselves speak

Speaker 3 (02:13:05):

A sounding board,

Speaker 2 (02:13:07):

Like a sounding board. And I don't think that's a positive thing, honestly. I think we know what's best for us.

Speaker 3 (02:13:15):

Yeah, it's like use your intuition. If you feel like you're going to ask somebody, you trust a question and your mind plays a whole scenario where I've done this with you before. I'm like, Hey, dude, do you think it's okay for me to talk about my career and my communicated wins and to do these things? Because I was really unsure of myself, but in my mind, I knew when I asked you that you were going to say yes. And it's like, why didn't I just fucking listen to that and just do it?

Speaker 2 (02:13:38):

That's exactly right.

Speaker 3 (02:13:39):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:13:40):

Just telling you what you already knew.

Speaker 3 (02:13:42):

Exactly. Yeah. If you can just find a way to trust your, you have to learn to know when you're inner dialogue that happens is something that is trustworthy. And if you can't identify that, then work on it. You got to learn when to trust yourself, I guess. And I knew when I asked you that question, I knew that what your answer was going to be. I just figured, how did you know? Because of the way that you speak about other things, the way that you talk about success and how you perceive success, it just lined up so much with, we had already had conversations that were irrelevant to this where I knew what the answer was going to be. And then I knew that if I asked you, you saying yes to me would be somebody stamping the approval book. And it meant like, oh, cool. You can now enter the gates of whatever it is you're going to, even though I knew,

Speaker 2 (02:14:35):

But you didn't need that.

Speaker 3 (02:14:36):

Right? I didn't need it. Exactly. That's what's crazy about it is I should have known. And honestly going forward, I've had moments where I just trust my gut instinct now, and I just say, it's okay for me to do this, and it makes it easier to make decisions about what I think is right or wrong based on that information.

Speaker 2 (02:14:53):

Good. Yeah, you should. You know best. I mean, nobody else is going to know for you,

Speaker 3 (02:14:59):

And you also have to stop giving a fuck what other people think. That was a huge lesson for me too. I was like, I got to stop caring about how people perceive what I'm doing. It's like people are really cool with you posting or sharing your accomplishments as long as you're not killing it. And then as soon as you start killing it, it starts bothering everybody. And that's something I had to really shed with that experience.

Speaker 2 (02:15:22):

Yeah, I kind of went through the, people see me as one thing, and I see myself as this one thing. How am I going to explain to them that I'm now this other thing? And then I just decided to not give a fuck.

Speaker 3 (02:15:42):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:15:42):

I have a whole social circle who know me as a guitar player who were not very accepting of me as a business person. They can go fuck themselves if they have a problem with it, but it took me a little bit to come to terms with that.

Speaker 3 (02:15:57):

Yeah. I think it takes a lot of people time to do that. It is really weird though, to place value on people who don't really matter. Why do we do that? Where does that come from? I don't understand. And I think it's everybody does that for the most part. It's really hard to shed that ideology. But it is weird though, thinking it also sucks when people communicate to you that they're bothered by what you do. I have had that happen to me before where somebody I was talking to busted Me too. Yeah, they bust your balls about, that's a humble brag or something. It's like, what the fuck do you mean? That's a humble brag, dude, I worked my ass off on this thing. Why is it a humble brag that I did this work? I had somebody actually just randomly, I swear to God, this is a fucking true story, and I've forgiven the person since then because they've apologized.

(02:16:45):

But they sent me a message randomly after not talking to 'em for a long time, just saying, you're a piece of shit. They just said You're a piece of shit. And I'm like, what? And then I said, what did I do? And before I could even give them an opportunity to explain themselves, I said, go fuck yourself. And I deleted them because I'm like, what does it even matter? And then I talked to them years later and they said it had to do with me posting about an article that I wrote for reverb, and they didn't like that I was successful. And they explained that to me, and then they apologized and they had better introspection on the situation. But I'm like, what a weird fucking thing to happen. How many people call you a piece of shit in their mind because you're doing something that you're passionate about and you're proud of? It's so weird.

Speaker 2 (02:17:31):

I've gotten those quite a few times. One of the first times was in 2004 or something. No, it was like in 2005 or something like that. It was just like, fuck you for what you did to those guys. You're going to learn. It's like, what? So I guess I had kicked some people out of the band a few years earlier, and we were starting to get attention, and some rando from the local scene just decided to tell me that I was terrible. And I've gotten those every now and again, sometimes more often than not, sometimes, not that often, but someone just hitting me up to tell me what a piece of shit I am or something I'm doing. It's fun.

Speaker 3 (02:18:23):

It's a really odd thing to have happen, but it's like the first foray that you have into success is when people start hating you for your accomplishments. You see that where people just say nasty shit. They don't like seeing somebody succeed. Some Israeli Mexican guy I know once told me losers hate winners said, it stuck with me since then and it won't go away.

Speaker 2 (02:18:45):

It's true. It's absolutely true. It did bother me at first when I would get those attacks, it took me a moment to not give a shit when they happened, they would happen, and then they would ruin my day. I would let them ruin my day, and I'd play what they said in my head and think about it and debate it with them. And then eventually I realized this really fucking stupid. It was generally when that would happen, I would go check out who the person was and be like, why am I engaging with this person? And then even when it's happened from people who aren't complete losers, it is still like, who gives a shit? I know I'm all right. It's weird.

Speaker 3 (02:19:30):

Do you think that your level of how bothered you are by something stems from a measurement and comparison to that person? That definitely helped me feel a little bit better about hearing those words. That one time I was just like, well, who the fuck are you? Why the fuck does your opinion of me matter? What are you doing with yourself? I know that's egotistical, but what else am I supposed to do in that situation? Let that person call me a piece of shit and be bothered by it. Why should I do that?

Speaker 2 (02:19:57):

I don't know. I get what you're saying, but I have had people who are not losers come after me and it doesn't really bother me anymore, and I can't say, what are you doing with your life?

Speaker 3 (02:20:09):

Because they're killing

Speaker 2 (02:20:10):

It. They are doing something with their life. So it's more just like, fuck this person. Who cares what they think? They don't matter the

Speaker 3 (02:20:18):

End. That's a good lesson to take from it. Who cares if they're successful or not?

Speaker 2 (02:20:21):

Yeah. I mean, they're just as big of an idiot as anybody else. They just happen to be successful. They don't know what they're talking about. Just because they had some success with something doesn't make them God, their opinion doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me.

Speaker 3 (02:20:39):

Agreed.

Speaker 2 (02:20:40):

I had to basically train myself to think that way. It took a little while. I call it a success because pretty good at thinking that way now.

Speaker 3 (02:20:48):

Yeah. I'm definitely getting better at it too. Even having this conversation right now, I just learned that I do somehow measure somebody's criticism of me based on where they stand, and I should really try and continue to rework. It's like I'm halfway there. I'm capable of saying to myself like, Hey, listen, you've done shit. So maybe what people think doesn't matter to you, but I have to take it a step higher where I don't know how I would respond if a hero of mine told me I fucking suck. I don't know how that would affect me. So I need to prepare for that.

Speaker 2 (02:21:23):

The next step is to disassociate it completely from any accomplishments to where it's just, it doesn't matter what anybody says regardless. You'll feel much more free when you get it to that point. It's more difficult. But the thing is that if you're comparing, say that you're comparing yourself, someone says something fucked up to you that you don't know, and your initial reaction is to compare yourself to them, then that means it is bothering you because you're going into, you have a defense mechanism that's going up. So I think it's better to try to figure out ways to not let it bother you, and then if it doesn't bother you, then it doesn't matter who the person

Speaker 3 (02:22:08):

Is.

Speaker 2 (02:22:09):

So think, I mean, feathers bouncing off of armor, basically.

Speaker 3 (02:22:15):

That's a good way to put it.

Speaker 2 (02:22:16):

Yeah. I mean, this is all easier said than done. I've seen huge celebrities talk about that shit ruining their day. I think I saw George Clooney talking about it once. People that are in the public eye on a serious, serious level still get bothered by it.

Speaker 3 (02:22:34):

It's kind of like Joe Rogan. He's like, I don't read. He tells all of his people who come on to a show, don't read the comments. Why do you do that? Why are you doing that to yourself? Don't make it harder for yourself. Just ignore that shit. Who cares?

Speaker 2 (02:22:46):

I understand where he is coming from.

Speaker 3 (02:22:48):

Yeah, agreed.

Speaker 2 (02:22:49):

I mean, you're just opening yourself up to pain. And I definitely do think that anyone who starts to experience some success in their life, they will immediately start to feel the hate. And there's a lot of dumb memes about this and stupid songs about this sort of thing, but it actually is really, really true that especially in this type of field, the moment you start moving forward, people will try to pull you down. But to me, that's like a good gauge that things are working out. So rather than let it bother you, take it as a sign that you're getting somewhere, because if you weren't getting anywhere, then these people wouldn't be coming after you.

Speaker 3 (02:23:35):

Yeah, right. It's like a tall poppy syndrome type of thing. It's like you're clearly the king of the castle, and your whole environment that you're around is bummed out that they're not where you're at.

Speaker 2 (02:23:45):

Yeah. I mean, also people go for the easiest target.

Speaker 3 (02:23:50):

You

Speaker 2 (02:23:51):

Are being seen as a target. It means that you're visible.

Speaker 3 (02:23:55):

Yeah. That's a good way to look at it. Yeah. If people are putting you down, it means it's because they've seen you and they've seen your work. And sometimes you're going to see positive, sometimes you're going to see negative, but if you just see positive all the time, you're probably not really killing it. What video exists out there on YouTube where it's all thumbs up and no thumbs down when it's like a million views?

Speaker 2 (02:24:17):

I don't know. A single one.

Speaker 3 (02:24:18):

Yeah, exactly. There's always going to be somebody. So I guess a good thing to do about it is to just pretend like it's kind of funny or

Speaker 2 (02:24:24):

Just ignore it.

Speaker 3 (02:24:26):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:24:26):

I don't know. Any movie, any song, any band, any success that doesn't have the haters coming after it. I've never seen it.

Speaker 3 (02:24:38):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (02:24:38):

Agreed. Since the internet started. So it comes with the territory. The thing is, I think that it's shocking to people when they're first starting to feel success. I think that to people who have been successful for decades or whatever, it's like, yeah, whatever. But I think if you're in your first few years of it, it's kind of shocking because it's a level of hate that you're probably not used to in regular life. So it can be kind of, I don't know. Shocking is the best way to put it, I think.

Speaker 3 (02:25:10):

Yeah, agreed.

Speaker 2 (02:25:11):

Yeah. It's kind of fucked up to receive hate on that kind of level, but what are you going to do? I mean, the option is to not be forward, and then no one would notice you.

Speaker 3 (02:25:25):

Well, yeah. And also too, most people on average, I'm sure, build from nothing. And when you come from nothing, you have this beginning where you feel unsure, and then if the business starts to succeed or your endeavor starts to succeed, it's kind of like it's a surprise all on its own. So when you start seeing negative stuff to it, it can also be a little bit shocking. So yeah, it's definitely an interesting thing to see. It's weird to think you should aspire to have haters,

Speaker 2 (02:25:52):

But it's true because it means that you're getting somewhere,

Speaker 3 (02:25:55):

Right?

Speaker 2 (02:25:56):

Seriously. Have you ever seen any product, movie, song, celebrity, sports, star singer, decision maker, anyone who's done anything in this world who doesn't have an army of haters?

Speaker 3 (02:26:14):

No. I mean, there's people who criticize saints like Mother Teresa or Gandhi. There's people out there who are digging for evidence to find negative aspects of those people.

Speaker 2 (02:26:25):

Yeah, I've seen that.

Speaker 3 (02:26:26):

Yeah. So I just think it's a part of the game.

Speaker 2 (02:26:30):

Yeah, exactly. I really like the score for X-Men first class. I think the score is fucking awesome. It's so minimalist, but just right, and I posted about it once, and the level of animosity that came my way over posting that I liked, it was kind of ridiculous. And people were just going nuts about how I shouldn't like it and how it's not complex enough of a piece and all this stuff. And it's like, you really, really care, really care so much about this score, but you didn't write it. And that's it. The end. You didn't write it so

Speaker 3 (02:27:11):

Well. Those people are fucking idiots because Henry Jackman's the shit. I know exactly who you're talking about. The guy who did the score for that.

Speaker 2 (02:27:17):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:27:17):

Yeah. He's a Han Zimmer protege.

Speaker 2 (02:27:19):

I can hear

Speaker 3 (02:27:20):

It. Yeah. He's worked with some of my favorite musicians ever. But I mean, why are people so stupid? I don't get it. Oh, by the way, he's an EDM guy. He came from making music with, and he did synth pop and stuff like that before he started doing film composing. So he's another one of those guys. But it's like, when did everybody, dude, you and I, one of my favorite things between us is a true expert. Everybody's a true expert on this

Speaker 2 (02:27:46):

Shit. I have a Erie that people are not stupider now than they've ever been. I know some people are saying that society's getting dumber. I don't believe that.

Speaker 3 (02:27:55):

I don't agree at all.

Speaker 2 (02:27:56):

I just think that now we have access to every idiot's opinion.

(02:28:01):

So they've always had these opinions. We just never heard about them. Now we have front row seats to everybody's opinion. Everyone who's, it never would used to matter how negative people would get about something. You would never hear about it. This is just some new phenomenon that we have access to every fucking idiot's opinions on stuff. But it's something I need to remind myself of a lot because have an internet company and everything, so to be on the internet a lot, and so I'm bombarded by people's ideas, and I need to remind myself that this is a crazy reality that we live in, where I get a front row seat to everybody's idea about every single thing. And you need to just ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore. People use the internet as kind of just a personal scrap board, like scrapbook, like a personal scrapbook diary, like a public diary of just every single stupid thought that they might have and can't let that affect your life.

Speaker 3 (02:29:15):

Agreed. Yeah. That reminds me of that. I wrote that article recently on social media about how I unfollowed everybody.

Speaker 2 (02:29:22):

It's a good article.

Speaker 3 (02:29:23):

Thank you. I appreciate it. But yeah, I touched on that where it's like, before I did that, you're just getting this digital stream of consciousness from everybody, and I don't really know how thought out and expertly crafted. A lot of these ideas are from people, and I think that

Speaker 2 (02:29:38):

They're not.

Speaker 3 (02:29:39):

They're not. Yeah. So it's like, why I don't even want to see it. If I want to see it, I'm going to go look for it. If I don't want to see it, I'm not going to go look for it. But it's definitely, nobody's a bigger idiot than everybody at this point.

Speaker 2 (02:29:53):

Yeah, exactly. Well, Jesse, I think this is a good place to call it. Thanks for doing this.

Speaker 3 (02:29:59):

Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm glad we got to redo this one, actually.

Speaker 2 (02:30:02):

Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 (02:30:04):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (02:30:05):

You've

Speaker 1 (02:30:05):

Been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.