It’s finally time for the conclusion to last episode’s quest! When we last left off Scot was working to make a song with 2 items he got for $5, and not having much luck. This time, he continues his quest, with a little help from Podcaster/Musicians Alex Goldman and Nick Messitte. 

 

Can even these two musicians aid Scot enough to successfully create podcast music? It’s an uphill quest with a couple of twists and turns along the way.

 

Part two of two.

———-

Hyperfixed

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hyperfixed/id1762447440

 

Nick and Jon Make a Song

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nick-and-jon-make-a-song/id1805865811

 

My Neighbor Totoro Rain Scene:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aWPsKvpcco

 

Yann Tiersen – La Dispute:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JfhL6WIc2I

 

Music from this episode by:

Shawn Korkie – https://www.fiverr.com/shawnkorkie

Komiku – School- https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Komiku/

Raag20 – https://www.fiverr.com/raag20

brrrrravo – Soda Chill – https://www.fiverr.com/brrrrravo

Desparee – Time – https://www.fiverr.com/desparee

Kevin P – Rain Song – https://www.fiverr.com/kevinptm

Hepi Music – Xylophone Song – https://www.fiverr.com/hepimusic_rec

Sahil P – Shower Song – https://www.fiverr.com/sahil268912

Aandy Valentine – https://www.fiverr.com/aandyvalentine

Hey guys!

This is part 2 of a two-part story, part one came out last uhh, well last year. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I’ll do a short recap here, but you can of course go check that episode out for the full backstory. 

Also there are some curse words that I didn’t bleep in this episode, so if that’s a thing you like to know about, there you go.

Okay, now here’s the $5 couch – part two: Making A Song

TPS022 THE $5 COUCH – PART TWO – MAKING A SONG – SCRIPT

Hi, and welcome to The Perfect Show. I’m your host, Scot Maupin. I’m what you might call a perfection prospector, sifting through life looking for little things or experiences that could be considered ‘perfect.’ Join me each episode as I examine one topic that I’m presenting as a little nugget of perfection.

This is a story of procrastination. 

How long can you put off something before you ultimately make yourself do it? I mean, I’ll put my name in there with the greats. I routinely will procrastinate every way possible and drag the process out for an absurd amount of time, you’ve heard some of those on this very show. Now we come to another one that I’ve drug out for years, that’s unfortunately not new, but this is the first one where I’ve procrastinated beyond the bounds of the actual episode I meant to do it in, spilling over into a Part 2, and also my first time stretching out the telling of a story so long it spills well into the next year. 

In part one, I brought you the story of my five-dollar couch from college, and how amazing it was for all the years that I had it. Then I set out in search of new five-dollar items to fill a similar function for me now.

I ended up with a 60-year-old Chord Organ and an 8-foot-long leather bullwhip, along with the brilliant idea to make a song for the podcast with them, despite not having any song-making history, skill, or ability.

So I also enlisted the help of another podcast. That’s right, not only did I procrastinate larger than the bounds of a single episode, and longer than the bounds of a single year, but I procrastinated out wider than the bounds of a single podcast, and looped another show into my nonsense.

[MUSIC CUE]

In Part One, Nick Missette and Jon Birkholz from the podcast Nick and Jon Make a Song gave me a little help with how to make my song, and even offered to work with me on it when I got something a little more together. 

Which means I just had to do the making first. No big deal…

Iinitially, I had gone for the absolute lowest effort path. Where I flicked on the organ and tried just – winging it. Pressing keys and making chords at random or basically random to hopefully find some harmonies or something worthwhile. I played some of those last episode, but it was clear that me just noodling around was not going to be a path to a song.

I use the voice recorder app on my phone all the time to record myself when I have ideas for the podcast. So I decided maybe I could use the same system for songs.

When a melody or something song-related would pop into my head, I would rush to get my voice recorder open and get myself singing or humming it before it was gone.

[PLAY SONG VOICE MEMO (1)

Listening back, some made more sense than others.

SONG VOICE MEMO (2)

Most of these are me singing, humming, or beatboxing badly, but if I happened to play something I liked on like a toy xylophone that was laying around, I’d try to record that, too.

XYLO MELODY CLIP(3) or (4)

And I just sort of continued on this way, noting whenever a tune popped into my head, and since I’ve been working on this quest for a while now, I’ve been recording song ideas for a while, too.

[MORE MELODIES]- Maybe more and more overlapping until they have to be silenced?
More MEMO (2)
More XYLO CLIP (3) or SECOND XYLO CLIP (4)
THEME SONG IDEA (5)
SWISH SHASH MELODY (6)

 

And then, famously, some of the best ideas, for anything, really do strike in the shower.

And I hope we all know by now, to never convince yourself that ‘oh this idea is so good I’ll definitely just remember it.’

So when the next song idea I had happened in the shower, 
I played defense by singing the simple hook over and over to hold onto it, and came right out to find my voice recorder before it shifted or changed on me.

[PLAY CLIP OF MELODY – RAW?] (8) – continue playing under following stuff

I like this one. In fact, I think I hear some potential, maybe in both this shower one and the xylophone melody from earlier. 

What I needed to do next, though, was to play them on this Bontempi chord organ somehow. So I went with a crude but effective system where I put tape on each of the organ’s keys, and numbers on each piece of tape, I numbered the keys left to right from 1 up to 15.
 which key on my organ played the tone in my head. Note by note I worked through the melody, and then I noted down on a post-it a series of numbers that told me how to play it. Black keys get the halfway mark between the white keys, meaning if I needed to play the black key between white keys 8 and 9, I noted that as a 8.5 on my post-it.

It’s a pretty crude transcription, to be sure. It lacks the visual arc of the notes in the melody. It also lacks any pacing information, like how long to hold each note, but that’s not the part I was worried about losing. I could always go back to my voice memo for that. This was just about where to put my fingers.

I called it Shower Song, because it came to me in the shower. I know, titling things is my passion.

My daughter heard me and came by to see what I was up to. She liked that she could follow my post-its and play what I had just been playing by simply reading along. It was actually drawing her in. Now, I’ve seen this kid in piano lessons, and this was getting at something different for her. We were having such a good time fleshing out the song and notation for it that it took up the better part of a whole Saturday morning. 

And the following day, my daughter was at the organ playing around and came up with her own original melody that perked up my ears, so I grabbed a note pad and pen and together we worked through her tune and also got it transcribed down into my little numbers system. 

Here’s what that sounds like:

[PLAY BASIC RAIN SONG CLIP HERE]

It’s short, but it also seems like it could make a loop to use for however long you need. 

So that made three melodies to work with: The Xylophone Song, The Shower Song, and now my daughter’s.

She titled hers Rain Song because the vibe it gives her is like the rain, she said, or specifically like waiting out in the rain in a Studio Ghibli movie. And even before she said that, when she said rain song, the image that immediately popped into my mind was that exact scene from My Neighbor Totoro, where the kids are waiting next to this big furry Totoro creature at a bus stop out in the rain.

[USE AUDIO FROM THIS TOTORO SCENE BELOW THE FOLLOWING]

This audio you’re hearing now is from that scene in My Neighbor Totoro, and the melody of hers is totally different. It’s just the vibe though, I do think that rain vibe is pretty similar. 

And I still felt like it was good to check because 1. We both sort of identified that scene from that movie as the visuals for the song, and 2. I really don’t want to spend all this time and effort thinking I’m making a new song when I’m really just recreating one from somewhere in my memory.

I mean the whole point here is that I make something new myself, though now that I think about it, how do you check that? Is there any way to find that out?? To cross-check a melody against the history of music?            

Do you just wait for something to find you?

The next step in the task would be to get the pieces of these three things recorded, like I did with the rain song before, and fine-tune them all the best I can, before sending them up the line and asking for help.

And for that I’m going to be diving into some new software. To make this show, I take audio that I’ve recorded in different ways with various devices, and then I edit and assemble it in a Digital Audio Workstation, which I’m gonna shorten to DAW from here on out. DAW as in D-A-W for Digital Audio Workstation, ok? 

Well I’ve assembled every previous episode of this show in a DAW called Adobe Audition. That’s the Photoshop company. It’s the program I’ve used to move all the stuff around and adjust the levels and build the show each time, and it works well for these long narrative episodes but it’s not really built for music. 

For that I’m going to need a different DAW.

So, hearing that Nick and Jon use a program called Reaper, I decided to give that one a shot.

And then while I work on these episodes, I usually listen to instrumental music to add mood or just atmosphere while I write or edit, for me that usually means film scores or movie soundtracks.

This time I was listening to Yann Tierson, he’s the musician who did the soundtrack to the French movie Amelie in 2001, and that’s an album I’ve heard every song on exactly one gajillion times before, however this time I notice the melody of one song as it’s playing and suddenly I’m like oh – I think I recognize that.

Here’s the clip from the Amelie soundtrack – called La Dispute:
[PLAY SHORT CLIP OF LA DISPUTE OPENING]

 

See? That sounds like the Xylophone song to me.

[PLAY XYLO SONG CLIP ORIGINAL?]

Do you hear what pinged my brain? What about the chord organ version I recorded?

[PLAY CLIP OF XYLO SONG ON CHORD ORGAN]

And now with Yann’s track sped up and layered on top…

MAKE THIS – 
[PLAY THIS]

What do you think? I dunno. Maybe I’m reaching. Maybe this is something that broken brains do late at night after too much thinking about music.

Now, not only was I unsure how to really make songs, I was also fully worried about my songs being accidental rip-offs of other songs, and how to even know where that line was. 

I don’t know a lot of musicians I can really consult on these types of things, but I do know a lot of podcasters, and one podcaster in particular is very open about how he makes his own music for his show. 

Alex Goldman and his small but mighty team make an excellent podcast called Hyperfixed, which I talked about a couple of episodes ago as my review and recommendation, but Alex also makes a lot of the music for the show himself, and he does it in his home studio using various instruments, synths, and audio pedals. 

I asked if he’d be willing to lend his expertise to this project, and one day Alex was able to jump on a call so I could pick his brain, musically.

ALEX INTERVIEW HERE ~ 11 minutes of clips + VO to connect it

-HI ALEX  _ INTRODUCE YOURSELF ON MIC – HOST OF HYPERFIXED _ MUSIC QUESTIONS -MUSIC PROBLEMS -SO I WANTED TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT MUSIC FOR YOUR PODCAST – YEAH ACTUALLY – 25 MUSIC CUES – MUSIC CUES DEPENDENT ON EMOTION – NEW EMOTIONS – SO I’M CONSTANTLY NEEDING TO WRITE NEW MUSIC – IT’S A NEVERENDING PROCESS – 
-SO WHAT IS YOUR PROCESS FOR MAKING MUSIC? WHAT COMES FIRST?
-FOR THE PODCAST SPECIFICALLY, MY PROCESS IS – AT REPLY ALL CALLED MOTION MUSIC – NEUTRAL BUT FEELS LIKE WALKING AROUND AND MOVEMENT
– GOTTA MAKE SOMETHING SAD OR SILLY – QUICK INSTRUMENTAL THING – MAKE LOOPS -TRY TO LAYER THEM IN WAYS CONDUCIVE TO BEING ON THE RADIO – NOT SO OBTRUSIVE THAT YOU END UP GETTING IN THE WAY OF THE THING YOU’RE MAKING – I DEFINITELY UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE SAYING, YEAH. – 2:24

With Hyperfixed, Alex is a much larger part of composing music for the episodes than he was for Reply All, and I asked about what drove that shift.

-WHEN WE WERE MAKING MUSIC FOR REPLY ALL TIM HOWARD USED TO MAKE A LOT OF IT – NOW WE ARE SO SMALL – NO ONE ELSE ON THE SHOW MAKES MUSIC – I WAS LIKE I KNOW HOW TO DO THIS STUFF – SINCE REPLY ALL, I’VE GOTTEN MUCH BETTER AT MAKING MY OWN MUSIC. – 40 SEC

-WELL, MY NEXT QUESTION I THINK YOU’VE ALREADY ANSWERED. DO YOU MAKE SONGS AHEAD OF TIME OR PLUG THEM IN WHEN YOU HAVE A NEED?  
-THE ACTUAL TITLES ARE SPECIFIC TO THE EPISODE THIS IS MADE FOR – SCOTS THEME – ONCE I MAKE IT, I’M LIKE THIS CAN SLOT INTO A LOT OF THINGS – IT’S HARD MAKING A LOT OF NEW MUSIC FOR AN EPISODE – ONE SONG IF THAT FOR EACH EPISODE – I’M NOT CRANKING OUT LIKE 15 NEW SONGS FOR EACH EPISODE, YOU KNOW – 55 SEC

-DO YOU PREFER MAKING SONGS FOR AN ALBUM VS THE PODCAST
-I LIKE MAKING SONGS FOR THE SHOW -SPEED I HAVE TO MOVE – HVING A DEADLINE IS REALLY HELPFUL – GETTING ANYTHING DONE, REALLY. – 30 SEC

-OKAY SO HERE’S SORT OF THE MAIN THING I WANT TO PICK YOUR BRAIN ABOUT – WHEN YOU COME UP WITH A SONG HOW DO YOU KNOW – OR IF YOU’RE JUST RECREATING SOMEONE ELSE’S MUSIC FROM SOMEWHERE IN YOUR MEMORY
-IF YOU ARE NOT A CELEBRITY IT DOESNT MATTER – INTERPOLATION – CREATE A DIFFERENT SONG -SO I DONT WORRY ABOUT IT TOO MUCH.,- 39 SEC

-HERES WHAT IM RUNNING INTO – CAME UP WITH A SONG – HERES THE BRIDGE – HEART OF GLASS – BLONDIE’S HEART OF GLASS – HERES THE THING HOW DO I KEEP THAT FROM HAPPENING WHEN I DONT RECOGNIZE WHERE I GOT THE MELODY FROM? – 28 SEC PART

-HERES THE THING IN MOST MODERN POP MUSIC – 12 NOTES TO WORK WITH – THATS NOT A LOT – CAN LAYER – GONNA START RUNNING INTO STUFF THAT SOUNDS LIKE OTHERS PRETTY QUICKLY – UNLESS YOURE BRUNO MARS – YOURE ALLOWED TO BORROW – SOMETHING THAT MAKES IT FEEL SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT. – 46 SEC PART – 1:14 WHOLE THING

-WHAT HAS SPARKED THIS CONCERN FOR YOU I WANT TO KNOW MORE – NOT A MUSIC PERSON – MY TASK FOR THIS EP – HAS BEEN TO MAKE MUSIC FOR MY POD – BECAUSE I WAS BUYING MUSIC – AI GENERATED – LOW PRICE POINTS.- EVERY PIECE OF IS HAS BEEN MORE CHALLENGING THAN I IMAGINED – WHAT WAS CHALLENGING – DESCRIBE PROCESS – WHAT YOURE ATTEMPTING TO DO IVE PROBABLY SPENT 15 YEARS FIGURING OUT HOW TO DO AND IM STILL NOT VERY GOOD AT IT I GET HELP A LOT. – 1:16

– I HAVE HAMSTRUNG MYSELF A LITTLE BC THE INSTRUMENTS IVE CHOSEN – WHAT IS THAT – BONTEMPI CHORD ORGAN – DANIEL JOHNSTON – $5 – PLAY ORGAN – SO IM USING THAT AND AN 8 FOOT LEATHER BULLWHIP – YOURE DOING THIS ON HARD MODE THERE ARE MUCH EASIER WAYS TO DO THIS – 1:09

That… continues to be the most common response when I tell people what I’m trying to use to make music.

-THERE ARE ALSO A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO MAKE VSTS – COMPUTER VERSIONS OF INSTRUMENTS -BBC VERSION – ABELTON COMES WITH 15 DIFFERENT – USE THOSE A LOT TOO – THATS AN OPTION – CAN STILL COMPOSE – VOICE CRACKING – PLAY LIKE A PIANO BUT YOU DONT HAVE TO ACTUALLY PLAY YOUR CHORD ORGAN – SOMETIMES TO GIVE STUFF TECHTURE I WILL PLAY A SYNTHESIZER AND THEN A VIRTUAL INSTUMENT – LITTLE HEFT – LOT EASIER THAN DOING EVERYTHING FROM SCRATCH – SAMPLE THE ORGAN – THATS VERY POSSIBLE – CHORDS WITH YOUR VOICE – PITCH IT UP OR DOWN OTHERWORLDLY AND i REALLY LIKE THAT, SO -I LIKE THAT – 2:28

-THANK YOU FOR COMING ON THE SHOW – THANKS FOR HAVING ME. THIS HAS BEEN A PLEASURE. 9 SEC

And then I did have one more clip of Alex that I wanted to include here for absolutely no reason whatsoever:

[CHOP IT UP SO THAT IM SAYING OFFENSIVE STUFF – DO WHATEVER YOU WISH]

Oh, that may come in handy later. But anyway,

Alex helped a lot in updating the way I was thinking about this quest. I still don’t love the idea of making knock-off melodies, but he made some excellent points: everyone does this, it’s a part of music, and it’s a part of time. There are only so many notes, so many combinations. A little overlap should not be a dealbreaker.

Everything is old, everything is new, it doesn’t matter. I just need to make stuff. 

[MUSIC SPACE]

For recording day, I placed my post-it notes, mic’d up the chord organ, and got out any other little instruments or noisemakers in my space. 

I put a metronome from my phone on in one earbud while I clanged my way through these melodies on the Bontemi, a few times each, trying to follow the tempo and the post-its simultaneously. 

Section by section, I worked through each song, laying down the melodies the best I could, eventually getting all 3 recorded.

Then, in Reaper, I lined up the different takes and versions and tried to build the best version of each one with what I had.

Two problems with this: first, my different takes weren’t exactly what you would call consistent. Even with a metronome in my ear constantly, I found that from take to take I would hold notes slightly longer, or play them a little closer together.

The other problem I was having was the overall sound of my recordings. And by that, I mean they didn’t have the robust sound I think of as a full song. I just had like these three stringy melodies. With an orchestra, one melody is handled by many different instruments that are also creating harmonies and chords that really beef up the sound…you know, with orchestration…, but by itself it just sounds, well, thin.

I tell myself that bringing in the other instruments will help with that, so I went and listened back to some of the best whip noises I recorded out at Lake Merritt.

I started laying whip cracks over organ notes and then pitching and blending them. I even got a little bit of granular synthesis in the mix on one song, which is a technique that Nick and Jon introduced me to last episode.

I placed the whips the best I could – which is not a brag – and added some of the other percussion recordings but I don’t know that I was making the songs any better. I mean I was definitely making them busier. There were more notes being hit by more things more often, but it just kept seeming like no matter how much I tried to work the audio, the elements were competing against each other, not cooperating with each other for the song as a whole. 

Here, listen to a chunk of the Shower Song after I had just kept adding and tweaking:
[PLAY A PARTICULARLY BAD PART – KEEP IT PLAYING UNDER THE NEXT PARAGRAPHS]

See?

Does this need more things? Fewer things? I feel like a real musician would know what to do here instinctively, but then again, a real musician would probably never have wound up in this spot to begin with.

[PHONE RING – I ANSWER]
Hello?
[YEAH MY NAME’S ALEX GOLDMAN]
Yeah Alex, I know what can I do for you I was kind of in the middle of –
[I AM THE HOST OF THE HYPERFIXED PODCAST]

No, I know, but 
[WHAT IS THAT?]
Oh, I’m just playing them this song right now
[OOH IT SOUNDS AMAZING]
Oh, you think? I was just saying I thought it was getting too janky but you don’t think so?
[GOD IT SOUNDS SO GOOD]
Wait is that sarcasm?
[LAUGHS]
[ME SLOW LAUGH INTO BACK NORMAL] 

 

So I re-listen and re-tweak things until I’ve heard the songs so many times that now everything sounds off in some way, or it’s possible – maybe even likely – that at this point I actually have adjusted all the pieces enough that now everything really is off in some way – it’s not an illusion. 

Adding more instruments to the mix might have been a bad strategy, or I might have just been the totally wrong guy to pull it off. Either way, when I think I’ve run out of tweaks to make, I send the files over to Nick and Jon along with this:

[PLAY AUDIO MESSAGE TO NICK AND JON – ALL OR PART??]
[CUT MESSAGE OFF EARLY?] – after `20 seconds these songs I’ve been working on – can then run more under the next part and fade it out before the Nick interview clips.

It continues, but basically, I asked them for any help or advice they could give, and then just one short-long time-jump later, Nick Messitte and I hopped onto a call to talk about my silly songs.

And, in classic Scot fashion, we started small-talking immediately, which means I completely forgot to do a typical opening introduction for Nick, so for my first clip we are already mid-conversation. And I manage to baffle Nick right away with …let’s call it ‘my process:’

[NICK INTERVIEW CLIPS]
 -LOOKING AT THE REAPER SESSION -TEMPO SYNCED –  METRONOME NOT IN REAPER – PIRATE MUSIC – 1:29

– FIRST SONG PLAY – DISCUSSION – GOALS ARE NOT PIRATE SHANTY _ GOOD DESTINATION – 58 sec

-ANYWAY LET S GET TO – LET ME HEAR AN ORGAN – MUSIC HOW DO WE TAKE THIS SOUND AWAY FROM PIRATE – I ACTUALLY HAVE 3 DIFFERENT TUNES – THIS ONE IS FAR TOO LONG BUT IT JUST KIND OF GOES –  38 sec 

-MUSIC – SO THIS ONE BUILDS SO SLOWLY IT WILL MAKE YOU FALL ALSEEP – OK LETS HEAR THE THIRD ONE – THE SHOWER SONG –  29 sec

-SHOWER SONG NOTES – THATS ALL ME PLAYING – THATS THE GRANLAR SYNTHESIS – EGG SHAKER – THIS REMINDS ME OF ANYTIME DRAKE SINGS – ITS VERY MUCH LIKE THAT-  55 sec

-I LIKE THE SECOND ONE THE SECOND ONE HAS THE MOST DRAMA – WHY SHE DOESNT THINK ADNAN DID IT – SO LETS START WITH THAT ORGAN – OK –  17 sec

– PLAYING XYLO SONG  – THERE”S SO MUCH YOU COULD DO – 26 sec

– SO WHAT DO YOU WANT TO HAPPEN? – MELLOW IT OUT SO IT’S LESS INTRUSIVE TO USE – START WITH REAEQ – EVER USED AN EQ BEFORE? YES A LITTLE BIT – 22 sec

-EQ TALK – LOW TO HIGH – 5 BANDS BY DEFAULT – SOME EQ DEMONSTRATION – MELLOW IT DOWN – SO THATS THE BASICS OF IT MUFFLES IT – -WHAT THIS IS IS LIKE A VOL FOR EACH FREQ -NOW IM A LITTLE DISSAPOINTED _ DRASTIC EFFECT BC MOST EQS DO – 1:21

-GO BACK TO THAT THING THAT SAYS ITEM EFFECTS AND JUST PRESS IT AGAIN -SO YOU”VE GOT A WHOLE BUNCH OF DIFF THINGS HERE – GO TO FILTERS – ISOLATOR – – MOVE CONTROLS – WAAHS AND WOMPS WHILE IT PLAYS -OH WHOAH – WOW MOVE IT AROUND WHILE IT’S PLAYING – WHAMMY BARS IT – CONGRATULATIONS YOU NOW HAVE 400 EFFECTS LIKE THIS – LETS TRY SOMETHING ELSE LETS GO TO – 1:07

-HOW ABOUT XYZ FILTERS? THOSE ARE SOME REALLY DIRTY THINGS – PICK ONE – OH YOU NEED TO CRANK THE  – OH IS THAT TOO  MUCH? – NO I JUST NEED TO TURN DOWN VOLUME – 30 sec

Here’s where I will interject that Nick was lying to me there, and so I’ve gone ahead and turned down the noise that’s about to happen – significantly – in post. You’re welcome. 

 

– ALRIGHT LETS HEAR – PRESS PLAY – NOISE – OH THATS NOT A GOOD SOUND – NOW MESS WITH THE FREQUENCY – NOW A SHIPPING CONTAINER  -SO ANY OF THESE ARE GOING TO DRASTICALLY CHANGE – SOME MORE THAN OTHERS – GO TO GALACTIC – MORE REVERB AND DISTANCE – VERY BIG REVERB – BUT THERE’S MORE YOU CAN DO UM – 1:05

-SO BASICALLY WHAT I’VE GIVEN YOU HERE IS A TOOL KIT FOR WEIRD SHIT AND A TOOL KIT FORNOT WEIRD SHIT – YOU CAN DO IT WITH REAPER – I JUST WANTED TO GIVE YOU SOME REALLY CRAZY ONES – TWO THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH SOUND – FUCK WITH ITS VOLUME OR FUCK WITH ITS TIMING _ EVERYTHING BOILS DOWN TO THAT – DO I WANT IT TO BE AN ELECTRIC GUITAR? – FOR SOMEONE JUST STARTING OUT THAT’s THE WAY THINK ABOUT THE INSTRUMENT YOU WANT IT TO BE AND THEN ASK MY HELP GETTING IT THERE AS YOU LEARN- 1:11

-SORRY ITS NOT A FASTER THING, REWALLY APPREACIATE YOU TAKING THE TIME – YOU MUST BE FRUSTRATING BUT I VERY MUCH APPRECIATE IT – USED TO IT FROM TEACHING – BUT I THINK THATS THE VIBE RIGHT- 29 sec

-SHOULD I THINK OF LIKE MESSING WITH THE TRACKS INDIVIDUALLY AND THEN BUILD SOMETHING OR BUILD SOMETHING FIRST AND THEN MESS WITH THE TRACKS _ ASK YOURSELF WHAT THE SONG IS SUPPOSED TO DO AND WHAT THE INST IN THE SONG ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING. – IS THIS YOUR INTRO? WHEN YOURE TRYING TO FIGURE SOMETHING OUT? – 35 sec

-YOUVE GOT MINOR KEY – SINGS MY SONG – SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE AT CREATING WHIMSEY – UESTION IS WHAT IS EACH THING SUPPOSED TO DO? – WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING OUT OF THESE THINGS? -THIS IS GOING TO TAKE TIME – THERE”S NO SHORTCUT 

There’s no shortcut looks like maybe the other major lesson I’m learning from this quest, too.

I thanked Nick for taking the time to come on the show and for working with me on music and he said I could send him new versions or questions when I need help.

Looks like I was gonna need to take my songs back over to my music anvil, so I could hammer them into shape a little more.

[CLANG CLANG] Hear that? That’s me in the lab. Working on those songs.

But listening back to them with Nick, I was actually kind of surprised at HOW janky they still were. I mean. I did the best I could when recording them, and then I put a ton of time and effort into moving the pieces around and tightening them up, and I remembered being happier with them, but listening now I felt like super embarrassed by my attempts.  

And more than a little discouraged. It’s clear that I’m definitely not as far along as I hoped or thought I was… and digging back in to try and unbend all the crooked fence posts in the audio was sort of the last thing I wanted to do.

But it was also the next step toward my finish line.

[MUSIC SPACE??]

And then after putting that off as long as I could again, One weekend I finally had all the pieces lined up and decided to give it an actual go. Clear schedule for the entire day. 

Had the reaper session with all the files already on my computer. The table full of instruments to record new takes. Recorders, microphones, cables, headphones. I spread the post-it notes out over the Bontemi chord organ again and …man, it all felt like a prison.

And I realized, the first time I was doing this I was sort of forging my way ahead with no constraints or blueprint. Now it’s different. Now the boxes have already been drawn. I’m just trying to redraw them in the exact same places and make sure I don’t forget any.

It’s become an obligation, sort of a restrictive burden. Where before it was creation and outburst, now it’s recreation and responsibility. 

I went to the computer and tried noodling around on the digital files of the songs and like…same thing. I was really having to force myself. To do this thing. A thing that I’m making myself have to do in the first place. To finish a task I set for myself. To jump over this hurdle of my own design that no one else is invested in.

I did think maybe I’d take to music better than I have – which – of course. I mean, if I were secretly a musical prodigy, I probably would have already discovered that before now –  

I also think I was trying to be clever by putting hard things that I’m not as motivated to do, like learning music, practicing music, and playing music, as building blocks I had to use to make the thing I am motivated to do, which is bring you a podcast with a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. I think the ‘me thinking I was clever’ part of that was that if I want this to work as a pod, and I do, then it would force me to figure out the music thing somehow because without it there is no ending. 

But that was, of course, a silly thing for past Scot to do to future Scot. And a crazy ask. I will always be fascinated by music-making in some ways, in part because I find it so unsolvable, but that’s not the thing that pulls me back to this. 

When I found myself antsy to get back to working on this episode, I noticed I wasn’t ever itching to move around pieces of the song; I was wanting to rearrange or add pieces of the story.  To add little bits, or trim down clips. To do everything except the main thing.

But let’s check that, because I think I may have gotten lost along the way. What…is the main thing here?

Become a musician? – Nope.
Learn how to play music? – Not really even this.
Be able to play a song? – like all in one go? Yeah no.
Don’t use AI to help solve this music making quest. – This one’s still important to me. Maybe the only thing I’ve easily stuck to.
Make podcast songs all on my own? – Now this was an interesting point. Certainly selfishly, my ego wanted me to be able to go oh yeah, I record songs where I do every part myself, and then use them to score my podcast where I also do every part myself, and it all works out so nice and easy and I don’t need anyone, no sir. 

But it hasn’t been nice or easy, and I’ve already called on 2 people for help and still feel so far from my goal. 

I’ve also spent far more in terms of time and energy than I would have spent commissioning these songs with artists in the first place, so it’s not like I really saved myself any money either.

But there’s one more ‘main thing’ thing I always keep in mind when making the show, and it’s to do my best at the end of the day to deliver you a good episode. One where I’m proud of the story arc. Even if it means waiting a really long time to finish it, and even if it means eating a bit of humble pie after an overambitious beginning.

In the end, it came down to trust. I had one bad experience getting AI music and was like – oh no, now I can’t trust anyone, and retreated into my shell. In my shell, I could control all the aspects, make my own schedule, and hey –  shells are known to have pretty good acoustics. [ADD REVERB] But – continuing the analogy, in a shell, I only have what was already in there. If I need or want some complementary skills from someone else, I’m out of luck.  And right now, I could use a bunch of complementary skills a lot more than I could use all this complete control.[Sound of coming back out of shell for that sentence] 

So I head back to Fiverr and start looking for artists, and I just ask directly, in my first message to them, if they use AI in their songmaking, along with telling them the other details of my quest.

I also looked for musicians who had been doing this for more than a couple of years, figuring that if they were making songs for people before AI music, then it’s very possible or likely that they still do it the same way.

I found three artists, set up each one with one of these melodies, and started three orders.

Now, can they lie and use AI anyway? Sure. Would I actually be able to tell the difference? Probably not. But I’ve done my best to be upfront that I’m not interested in that touching my projects, and maybe the move is to just put some trust in these people, human to human, and rely on that.

And I’m also looking to save my sanity here. This has been an open loop in my brain that I haven’t been able to close for so long. But maybe with the help of other people from across the world, we can close this loop together.

And then I can go back to refining the pieces of the story, the part I enjoy and am motivated and passionate about. The part where the hours spent don’t feel like a waste or a grind.

[MUSIC SPACE?]
 
When the first song came back I knew I had made the right call. Not only was it remarkably fast, the collaboration experience was just something I really missed. 

In cutting off any avenues where people might use AI on me, I had also cut off all avenues to collaborate with other people too, a thing that turns out to be a pretty pivotal part of what I enjoy about this whole process.

But that all came flooding back as soon as I hit play.

[PLAY RAIN SONG FROM FIVERR]

This is the first song, the rain song, done by fiverr artist Kevin Ptm. It’s great. He turned that little 20 second melody I gave him 

[SWITCH TO RAW RECORDING FOR A CLIP]

into this.

[SWITCH BACK TO KEVIN P SONG]

I started a practice here, too, of asking the artists what they thought about the project after they finished, and ere’s what he had to say. [REWORD – STILL INCLUDE KEVINPTM’s WORDS?? TKTK]

Then the second song came back and I was floored again. This time for the Xylophone song, which at one point sounded like 

[PLAY VERSION] 

and in my head it was basically this french song [PLAY LA DISPUTE] but now, thanks  to Hepi Music it ended up sounding like this: 

[PLAY HEPI MUSIC VERSION – continue it under the next bit] 

Even just building up like this it’s way fuller than anything I could craft. 

And as Alex was taking about I feel like this could be good ‘motion music.’

[KEEP MUSIC PLAYING AS I TELL THIRD STORY]

Let’s see if it works for the saga of my third song. The shower song. 

I commissioned this one at the same time as the first two from a Fiverr artist named Sahil P. 
Like the others, he says he does everything from scratch, no AI.

His gig also says one-day delivery.

I like his samples, so I hire him and send all the details just like the other songs.

And this guy…you’re about to go on a journey with me about Sahil P.

He says, ‘Okay wait will check soon. Right now I am outside.’

‘no rush at all,’ I reply, ‘take your time.’

So day 1 – this is the day it’s due – I get a message saying – ‘For the update I am working on it man’ 
Okay, no big deal, I think. I said no rush.

Then on day 2 I ask how it’s going…if he needed anything else from me…

He says, ‘Sure man will send you soon.’

After my check-in on day 5 he says, ‘Hey I am working on it will give you an update between 12 hours.’

When I check back on day 6 he says, ‘only mixes are left man.’ 

(SPACE?) …it is decent motion music, right?…

On day 8 I hear back and he’s outside again, this time for a funeral.

He says, ‘bro give me a little time’ and I say fine.

On day 9 I offer up it might be taking so long because my song was so bad, which made Sahil laugh and say no that’s not it and that he will deliver early in the morning.

 ‘Everything is done,’ he says, ‘Just delivery left and some master’

Day 11 I ask are you still there?

He responds ‘Hey bro I am here. Sorry I was busy yesterday. Will sent you tonight. Working on your proj.’

And then, I guess as proof, he sends me a pic of his screen. But by that I mean It’s a photo of a screen. A photograph of an open laptop with a screen that is turned off. There’s an empty water bottle in front of the keyboard. This is the picture of ‘working on it’

He continues to respond only after I ping him.

Day 12 – Bro sorry for the delay i need some hours already working on it promise will deliver you under 12 hours

Day 13 – hey bro having a problem rendering, getting glitches give me some time to fix it. 

The next one is ‘Bro can i send you in the morning today is my off tommorow will deliver you 100%. Will send you tommorow dont worry man. Woke up and send you.

Day 15 he says ‘tonight’

Day 16 I am poking him, saying I bet he hasn’t actually started on it yet. I tell him I’ve started talking with another musician, which was true.

This – actually gets some movement, and he asks me to send him the details of what I want…

(music stop) as in so he could start work on it for the first time. To be clear.

This whole time he had just been putting it off, and avoiding it, which I think he was feeling bad about, but I’m like – actually, buddy. You couldn’t have picked a better project to do this on, because that same thing is sort of the reason I’m here in the first place.

I still stop being as polite and start reminding him frequently that I will have to cancel the order and use someone else. 

And as I was kind of complaining to him about it taking so long, we started bonding over stuff, talking about our day jobs, Sahil is a video editor who wants to do music, I’m an audio producer who wants to make podcasts. We talked about our income and rent struggles, while going back and forth a lot. 

At one point I say ‘I’m worried. You seem to be overloaded.’

Sahil says ‘hey man chill i am guy like you. Just barrier in english.’

Then he sends me a photo of his computer screen, this time ON, with some of my song pieces in it.

It’s exciting, but I’m not holding my breath. I mean, would you at this point?

Day 17 – a message that says DONE with a song attached. 

I almost can’t believe it. 

I ask my follow-up questions about how the project was and Sahil says ‘Hahaha bro, you’re actually a really good person. From the time we’ve talked, I’ve noticed that you have a lot of patience.’ He says he enjoyed my organ track and ‘The good thing is that you played the instrument at a really nice tempo, which made it easier for me to sample and work with.’

So here again is a little taste of what I had given Sahil to work with:
[PLAY MY VERSION CLIP]

And now here’s the new version of the Shower Song from Sahhil P:
[PLAY NEW VERSION…KEEP IT PLAYING UNDER NEXT TEXT]

How cool is this, right? You can hear the little bits kept, and then like the rest is so reimagined, I love it.
  
Sahil did apologize a bunch for it taking as long as it did. Especially since it became clear that he hadn’t really started at all until way late and had been lying. But then I told him how the path that had brought me to him circled a lot around procrastinating and getting behind on a project, So I might understand what that’s like pretty well, and that’s part of why I was so patient and didn’t cancel the order earlier, because I really did want this to work out.

I also found out the real reason this may have been taking so long, which was Sahil was sort of in a standoff with Fiverr over funds they wouldn’t give him, and my order payment wouldn’t have even gotten to him if he’d completed it. 

So we worked out a very human dance indeed, and after he had already sent me the files, I was allowed to unilaterally cancel the order due to how late it was, and got my money back for it. Sahil had given me his paypal over on instagram which I had gotten to through his YouTube – I mean, by this point we had been messaging all over the place.

But also at this point I had the completed song and the money back, and it was Sahil’s turn to put his trust in me, because I could have just vanished. But I sent him payment and a tip to do my part for humans keeping up faith in humanity. We bonded so much that he said I can crash at his spot anytime I am where he lives, in Chandigarh, India.
 

[MUSIC SPACE]

All three songs are finally done. They also sound so much better than I EVER would have gotten them, which means I’m very happy I went back on my original plan now. Changing course got me through my block, past my frustration, and back into my groove. 

Like a lot of things I chew and churn on for far too long, I really should have just made that decision way earlier.

I guess the overarching lesson here for me is one of hubris.

The idea that I could just do every piece of every thing myself, mainly because…I suddenly put forth the briefest amount of effort?

Well, they say pride goeth before the fall. For me it was the winter, spring and part of the summer, too. 

[ALEX LAUGH]

Oh, are you a fan of that joke, Alex?

[ITS SO GOOD]

And I was reminded that when I let my perfectionism turn into procrastination and I put stuff off and tell myself it’s so it can simmer or cook or whatever, it’s just as likely if not more so to go bad or turn stale on me instead.

Nothing new or revolutionary here. In fact, it reinforced some of the first things you learn even in elementary school: the danger of procrastination, the value of collaboration, and the importance of honest communication. 

[MUSIC SPACE]

And with that, the $5 couch, that big orange upholstered giant, finally becomes the next entry into the perfectorium, the index of perfect things. The chord organ and the whip – don’t make it. Nah. 

Maybe the only fitting thing I can do with these things to emulate the couch trajectory is to donate them back out into the world, with the optimism that next they could end up in the hands of people who really need them… you know, like a peg-legged musician looking for that pirate song sound or a super-confident lion tamer who doesn’t mind a whip that gets a little bit shorter every time you use it. 

Then I stop storing these things and moving them around with me, the same way I had to give up my couch when it was finally time to move to Japan, too. They’ve done their job of helping me make this story, which was the whole reason I got them in the first place.

You can see all the entries to the Perfectorium, including this one, at the direct link for it, perfectshowpodcast.com/perfectorium. Spelled how it sounds.

Go to the show’s website perfectshowpodcast.com to see pictures and videos related to each episode. This time I have some more pictures of the couch I found when I went to my parents’ house for the holidays – complete with a picture of teenage me, as well as the pic of Sahil’s computer and empty waterbottle that showed me music was definitely happening.

Thank you to Alex Goldman and Nick Misette for coming on the show, and thank you to Kevin PTM, Hapi Music, and Sahil P for the redone versions of my songs. 

You can find the info and links for all the musical artists in the show notes and on this episode’s webpage, I was so hoping to just be like – the music on this episode is all by ME, but yeah, no. 

As always, if you’d like to contact the show, you can email PerfectShowShow@gmail.com, and find me on any socials I’m on just at my name, scotmaupin. That’s Scot with one t and M-a-u-p-i-n.

Here’s where I usually say to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast. 

The show comes out whenever with no rhyme or reason so subscribing is the easiest and maybe only way to know when a new one comes out.

I’ve also been leaving reviews each episode for other shows to demonstrate the free and frictionless way you can support your favorite podcasts or they don’t even have to be like your favorite shows they can even just be the one like youre listening to at whatever random moment like say just right now for instance…

Today of course I am going to be leaving a 5-star review for Nick and Jon Make a Song. 

Ipad out. Purple podcasts app that just says ‘podcasts’ 

Hit the searchbar – Nick and Jon (J-O-N) Make A song – It didn’t pop up so I’m hitting search… there it is – The cover is this like trippy cartoon image of Nick’s face and Jon’s face that overlap to make a third face in the middle.

Scroll down to the bottom where the stars are and tap ‘Write a review’
Be right back after I type here

(beat)

Okay, Here it is: 

Title: Really Charming. They Know Their Stuff!

Review: Nick and Jon have a great rapport. I like hearing them just shoot the breeze as well as get their music brains spooled up to work some audio engineering magic in the second half. Fascinating and funny. Great podcast!

5 stars.

(beat)

This episode was recorded and mixed at Milky Way Studios in Oakland, CA.

[CLICK OF THE ORGAN COMING ON]

And remember, when it comes down to it, music is really a matter of personal preference.

[PLAY THE WORST ORGAN STUFF I HAVE OR RECORD SOMETHING NEW]

[ALEX – GOD THAT SOUNDS SO GOOD]

No, this was the bad stuff I had to get help with–

 IT SOUNDS AMAZING

[More music]

OH MY GOD, AMAZING

Aw well thanks, Alex. That means a lot coming from you.

HERE’S THE THING
IT MADE ME WANT TO BECOME CHRISTIAN

Whoah, okay. I didn’t expect that…

YEAH I AH IT KIND OF SURPRISES ME TOO NOW THAT I”VE SAID IT OUT LOUD

YOU CAN KEEP THAT IN IF YOU WANT
-LAUGH

Anyway, until next time, I’m Scot Maupin, and thanks for listening to The Perfect Show.

[Outro music – 50 eggs]

CAT CORNDOG INTRODUCE – GREAT NAME – FULL NAME – I DONT BLAME YOUR DAUGHTER

[CORN DOG CLIPS WITH ALEX]