Chic Chameleon Interview

1:44 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? Welcome back to love music more. I am Scoobert Doobert and I am joined with Patrick Froese Welcome to the show my man

1:54 Chic Chameleon Hey, thanks so much for having me.

1:55 Luke F. Walton So I'm super excited to tell the listeners about chic chameleon and all the work that you're doing Maybe you could tell us a little bit about kind of the music that you make

2:04 Chic Chameleon Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so Chic Chameleon, I started this project about I want to say around six years ago, I got a bachelor of jazz and contemporary music and I was like, okay, that's cool, but I want to write like chill indie rock.

2:21 Chic Chameleon And so that's kind of how it started. And then from there, it's like I was listening to a lot of slow dive, beach house, a lot of those, yeah, kind of like.

2:31 Chic Chameleon really great shoegaze kind of dream pop adjacent bands and even some post-rock was in there in there a bit too and I was like man I just like get so inspired when I listen to music like that you know then I was like yeah I just I just started writing music that I liked to listen to and that I wanted to sound like yeah

2:50 Luke F. Walton So freeing to be like, okay, I'm making the stuff that comes out naturally and that I actually enjoy listening back to.

2:58 Chic Chameleon no that's so true i think it was like it was such a departure from uh the degree because i think like a lot of people will go really hard into like jazz and like progressive i was really into like progressive metal and like i don't know a lot of these really cool but very like technical genres

3:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

3:15 Chic Chameleon and

3:15 Luke F. Walton yeah.

3:15 Chic Chameleon then and then from there i just really felt the burnout and i was like yeah you know what i was listening to gorillas melancholy hill because we had to play we were just doing a cover of it and I was like man why don't I just like write music like this like

3:28 Luke F. Walton yeah

3:28 Chic Chameleon this is so cool you

3:29 Luke F. Walton yeah

3:29 Chic Chameleon know yeah

3:30 Luke F. Walton totally well it's funny i feel like i've talked to a lot of people that say they were able to play their fastest and most technical when they were like yeah 21 and

3:38 Chic Chameleon that's exactly it

3:41 Luke F. Walton it wasn't because they like stopped practicing or because they didn't they like my fingers got old it's not like that it's just kind of like

3:50 Luke F. Walton stopped caring about doing that or stopped necessarily like flexing on people i guess i don't know yeah

3:56 Chic Chameleon no that's so true again yeah the flexing i think it was like i remember playing uh joshua redman i was doing jazz crimes i don't know if you know that song oh

4:06 Luke F. Walton yeah i know

4:07 Chic Chameleon yeah and i was like just shredding on it and shredding on it and then we played it and then it was just kind of anticlimactic it was like okay like you did it you know but like

4:17 Luke F. Walton yeah

4:17 Chic Chameleon what did you feel from it like I don't know that's kind of where I love music to begin with is like you know where what can you feel from it how can you you know enjoy it and then I found I was like really getting into progressive jazz but I don't know if I was I think I was also enjoying it but maybe it was maybe it was more just playing it that that kind of burnt me out I think that might be what what happened you

4:40 Luke F. Walton yeah

4:40 Chic Chameleon know

4:40 Luke F. Walton totally I mean in I was I was listening to your music before the show and then also, you know, bands that you're talking about very familiar with. And I feel like.

4:49 Luke F. Walton in this genre picking the like right six notes that you want to play over every chord is like a really big decision and you want it to feel effortless but it ends up creating the jazz and the interesting harmony in an effortless way because you're just kind of like diddling on these six notes but the way that everything's moving around and the gravitational balance you add complexity through like a super simple thing which i i really enjoyed

5:14 Chic Chameleon Oh, sweet. Yeah, yeah. I like how you described that. I feel like I never would have thought of it like that. But that is, it's a very interesting picture.

5:21 Luke F. Walton yeah i like to think of so like one of my best friends he's a he's a drummer and i was asking him because he's you know got crazy jazz chops and stuff i'm like how do you do all that how do you think of that and he's like well you just kind of like think of like patterns and shapes between the different instruments and then in terms of the rhythms i'm like

5:38 Luke F. Walton okay cool cool that you can do that but i've tried to apply it to guitar and it kind of helps of like what is the relationship of things what is the gravity of the music how are things looping and changing and like the colors of the music all this kind of stuff i think yeah it can unlock new things new ways of playing or thinking about a part

5:58 Chic Chameleon totally totally and even just like like i don't know thinking about like the gravity of the music i like that uh how you said that is it's it makes you think about yeah like what is the gravity of the music and like where can it go and like what does that even really mean you know

6:13 Luke F. Walton yeah it's just evocative but i mean like music music itself because it's uh you know time-based it begins and it ends and so there's like a birth and a death and then there's stuff in between

6:25 Luke F. Walton and so much of like what we're doing with song form is like when does it repeat how does it repeat what parts repeat what notes keep coming back where is the home where is the away how away does it go like jazz is like how how out can it get so i feel like these are like some of the main levers that we have to make people feel stuff and also some of the levers that make it be like a genre i feel like some listeners are probably hearing this and going okay shoegaze maybe they've heard that before but like

6:52 Luke F. Walton Like, what does that even mean? Where does that come from? Or dream pop? Like, what makes pop dreamy? How would you define it? Or like, what grounds you in those terms?

7:01 Chic Chameleon Yeah, that's a really great question. I think for like the... For shoegaze, I think the original idea behind shoegaze is quite literally like gazing at your shoes. I think a lot of it had to do with pedals.

7:15 Chic Chameleon So like, you know, guitarists, you know, who are doing like these crazy like loud kind of fuzzy but reverberant soundscapes, they're kind of like looking at their pedals and they're kind of just looking around and, you know, adjusting things as need be, you know, kind of.

7:30 Chic Chameleon kind of creating this sonic soundscape that's just you know huge and uh and then i think the other the other part of it is like the listener you kind of zone out you know so you're kind of also gazing at your shoes you know you're just kind of sitting back and you're just kind of enveloped in this wall of sound and this huge you know soundscape so i think it can kind of mean a couple different things but that's like the i think that's where the term came from i'm gonna i don't know if i'm gonna get shot

7:56 Chic Chameleon but No, i don't know if I that's think you're what yeah right. but yeah that's that's kind of like shoegaze to me anyway i think that's sort of where that came from and then dream pop i don't know i guess it's maybe a little bit more coordinate when it comes to like you know vocal melodies um a lot of like uh repeated patterns on like synths and stuff arpeggios and stuff like that so i feel like yeah more in the the pop world where you have a bit more like you know

8:23 Chic Chameleon maybe a little more listenable i don't know yeah

8:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah, like radio friendly or playlist friendly, I guess.

8:31 Chic Chameleon yeah exactly and i love just like kind of kind of skirting along the lines of just yeah just like kind of being in both of those worlds i really like you know like getting to the heavy stuff uh but i also think i gravitate more towards just making something that's just yeah just like kind of like a couple nice

8:48 Chic Chameleon you know major seventh chords get some minors in there you know and get some yeah just some like arpeggios and stuff you know just make it kind of nice like i love ear candy so that's

8:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah, it's

8:57 Chic Chameleon yeah

8:58 Luke F. Walton a good way to put it. Ear candy, ear candy. Yeah, like... The dream pop soundscape-y kind of stuff, I love that because it puts you in a space and it puts you in a mindset and it's fun to produce and it's fun to enjoy. I understand why you would gravitate towards that world.

9:18 Chic Chameleon Yeah, I love it. I think it's so great. I love like specifically just like listening to it, finding new artists that are part of that world. That's like, that's my favorite. I love that.

9:28 Luke F. Walton Yeah, it makes total sense to coming from like a jazz perspective, just like you said a major seven where most chords like three notes and you're able to add in that fourth note and sometimes a fifth or sixth of because you have the ethereal place to put it. It's not necessarily like a dense.

9:43 Luke F. Walton cluster of dissonance or something like that it's you have the spread you have the reverb you have the things the twinkles up top and I think it allows you to reach into that space without it yeah coming across as jazz

9:56 Chic Chameleon Yeah, I think, yeah, that's so true. I feel like, I think it's like a space where like.

10:01 Chic Chameleon adding those color tones can kind of thrive because you sort of have the space to do it you know it's like you know say you strum a chord but it's ringing out for a certain period of time or you're kind of staying on you know whatever chord you're on you can add those sevenths and ninths and like you know sixths and just like all these beautiful color tones that maybe they would get like lost if you had a faster rhythm or

10:24 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

10:24 Chic Chameleon if you didn't stay on the chord as long but Yeah, definitely love that.

10:29 Luke F. Walton That's a really good point. Yeah, like tempo allowing you to do more with the notes and like space allowing you to do more of the notes too because yeah you're right like acdc sounds the way the acdc does because it's like has to be in a stadium and they're big chunky chords and they're moving and they're churning like you can't really put a bunch of twinkly notes up on top

10:50 Chic Chameleon Yeah, yeah, try to put like a minor ninth on your Your five chords.

10:59 Luke F. Walton the challenge to the listeners yeah

11:01 Chic Chameleon Yeah, yeah, exactly.

11:02 Luke F. Walton so i really love uh canada and the canadian music scene as somebody that uh grew up there could you tell me a little bit about like what it's like uh did you study like music growing up or How did that look?

11:16 Chic Chameleon I actually went to a country school. So

11:17 Luke F. Walton Oh,

11:17 Chic Chameleon yeah,

11:18 Luke F. Walton cool. Yeah, yeah.

11:19 Chic Chameleon yeah. So it was like very, very small school. I think it was pretty limited opportunity in terms of music education. We had like band class. So I was the drummer in band.

11:28 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

11:28 Chic Chameleon Actually, I hit the big drum before I got promoted to the main drum set. And that was kind of mostly my experience in school. There was like a special project or something like the where you have your time to go play guitar I also did that which was great but pretty limited because it was a country school our graduating class only had like I want to say like 22 people

11:49 Luke F. Walton Wow,

11:49 Chic Chameleon in it which

11:50 Luke F. Walton just crazy.

11:50 Chic Chameleon like yeah it's like tiny right so yeah that's kind of like uh that's where it came from and then I just kind of always knew in high school was like I want to go pursue music after this and uh then I moved up to Edmonton I think one of the main reasons I went is because it's like it's like i just felt like i need to go find a network of musicians and well like where's the closest place i could do that you

12:11 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

12:11 Chic Chameleon know yeah i um i

12:13 Luke F. Walton played a gig in red deer once

12:15 Chic Chameleon no you did oh you did crazy

12:17 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

12:17 Chic Chameleon wow

12:18 Luke F. Walton At least

12:19 Chic Chameleon when was that

12:20 Luke F. Walton a decade ago, if not longer. Yeah.

12:23 Chic Chameleon no way oh that's so cool what do you remember the name of the bar at all or

12:27 Luke F. Walton It was like a, it was like a. community center or something it was

12:31 Chic Chameleon super Okay.

12:32 Luke F. Walton bizarre we i was on a tour um i was opening for the doobie brothers um and it was like it was like the biggest facilities that they could fill but a bunch of people were i don't even know who the promoter was how they pulled this off it was like a bunch of like non-traditional venues or like hockey stadiums uh we played we played dawson creek we played all sorts of just kind of like moose jaw ah it

12:55 Chic Chameleon oh

12:55 Luke F. Walton was great i

12:56 Chic Chameleon yeah that's so funny played a gig in red deer that's that's hilarious of all places too that's so funny

13:01 Luke F. Walton know walking around the small town like why don't we go like a little bit more north yeah

13:08 Chic Chameleon it's like let's go to edmonton what about calgary you know oh

13:11 Luke F. Walton exactly we've been calgary we didn't play edmonton but like the one of the biggest cities we played was regina

13:16 Chic Chameleon okay okay yeah yeah that's too funny how

13:19 Luke F. Walton i know i

13:19 Chic Chameleon did how'd you like Calgary was Calgary yeah

13:21 Luke F. Walton like calgary yeah i like calgary a lot i actually really enjoy i'm i'm big fan of canada a lot of my favorite like like indie bands canada like uh i don't know if you know half moon run i'm sure you know mother mother i like them better than like before the major label contract but you know i'm a i'm a hipster indie kid

13:38 Chic Chameleon hey no don't we all right Ha, ha, ha,

13:41 Luke F. Walton exactly

13:41 Chic Chameleon ha, ha.

13:41 Luke F. Walton but i love i love canadian music and like i think there's a reason i don't know what it is exactly it's hard for me to sometimes put my finger on but maybe it's just i feel like when i was in canada i would hear cool music in cool places there's like cafes like i feel like in the united states we're kind of like

13:56 Luke F. Walton You have the clear channel or Spotify station that you play in this type of cafe or that type of restaurant. And then Canada felt like more I was just getting exposed to more stuff that I wanted to Shazam and keep

14:09 Chic Chameleon yeah

14:09 Luke F. Walton in my toolbox.

14:09 Chic Chameleon yeah yeah that's interesting that's uh that's a that's an interesting experience yeah i feel like it's less people and the scene is so much smaller so then they try to fit like more of an eclectic mix like you know it's just like not It's

14:22 Luke F. Walton That's cool.

14:22 Chic Chameleon not quite as curated because there's just so many less people, I think.

14:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:25 Chic Chameleon Maybe that could be it.

14:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I get that. It seems like there's just popular support for independent music at a level. I don't really

14:34 Chic Chameleon definitely

14:34 Luke F. Walton know who this is.

14:34 Chic Chameleon yeah yeah yeah totally there's a lot of uh uh like college radio that yeah yeah totally there's a lot of uh uh like college radio that supports and then there's some independent radio too and i find yeah they're very they're very supportive of like like in Edmonton we have CKUA and they're like super supportive of like everybody I know who's in a band so it's like it's so nice to have that totally

14:52 Luke F. Walton so good that's so good and those things can be like pillars of a scene and like this whole recording studios and stuff like that actually i wanted to ask you Ask you, what's your recording process?

15:01 Chic Chameleon Oh, yeah. Here we go. Let's go. So yeah, recording process. So I kind of do everything myself. I built this studio back in 2020.

15:12 Chic Chameleon Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was mostly mostly out of necessity because I think 2019 was my graduating year from college and I was like, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go play shows. And then and then that ended up not happening.

15:25 Chic Chameleon at all you know because you like okay there's nothing else to do in 2020 and I was like you know all right well if I can't do everything that I love doing then uh let's let's work on the back end of chic because I was just starting off the project so I was like okay I was working a lot and I was like okay I have all this money there's nowhere to go there's nothing to do I'm just gonna like invest in gear so then I bought an Apollo I bought my computer I bought some mics renovated a spare bedroom kind of make

15:52 Chic Chameleon Kind of made like this studio. I just started recording all my stuff. I usually I'll kind of like write

15:57 Chic Chameleon like sitting with my guitar that's like generally where like it starts like i'll have a riff and probably like a vocal melody and then from there i kind of like record that guitar in usually direct or through the amp if i if i mic it up and then from there it's like i just kind of start playing around with it adding things sometimes that vocal melody comes in sometimes i completely change it and then i usually do like drums and vocals kind of last after everything else is

16:23 Chic Chameleon just drums yeah like yeah kind of glued in um yeah yeah and i just found that's i don't

16:27 Chic Chameleon yeah know if it's the best or the worst process but it's just like it just seems to be how it ends up you know so yeah

16:33 Chic Chameleon yeah yeah i like that that's so interesting drums last because so are you playing just with a click or are you playing with like temp drums how are you kind of like setting the groove as you're recording without having a full like drum part going

16:48 Chic Chameleon yeah i usually use a click for everything yeah um yeah so guitar and everything else is generally already in the click and

16:55 Chic Chameleon cool then it's usually because i'm kind of messing around with the form for a long time you

16:59 Chic Chameleon yes know yeah totally totally right so then i feel like oh i don't really want yep

17:03 Chic Chameleon to like i don't want to add drums in and then have to edit them after you know so it's like i kind of do it in one shot at the end do a bunch of takes of drums sort of compose along the way because i because

17:13 Chic Chameleon yeah I like I think drums is like I think it's like my favorite thing to play so

17:18 Chic Chameleon yeah it's you know so it's just like it's like the fun part at the end of the process where I just get to like

17:23 Chic Chameleon that's bass for me i like to do bass at the end because it's exactly the same thing it's like my favorite part so yeah

17:28 Chic Chameleon yeah oh that's awesome I know it's just like oh this is the thing I'm like super comfortable on I can just have fun with it settle into it you know Yeah.

17:37 Chic Chameleon What makes Toto sense too because once you put drums on a thing it really is like the spine's here the song has order and a space and it is kind of a pain to chop it up and move it around and i get it i think i'm gonna steal that i'm gonna try doing a song drums last that sounds fun yeah

17:52 Chic Chameleon yeah no it is fun i think um i usually put in like midi drums you know in the beginning or whatever just to get sort of an idea um but then it's always like it always feels so real when you throw those real drums in and you're like oh man like like this song doesn't sound like a demo anymore like

18:09 Chic Chameleon Yeah. this is this is a real track now you know So true. What do you use for your snare drum?

18:13 Chic Chameleon it's a pearl snare and then i have a cb kit from when i was 10 i Cool. have like the same one from when i was a kid and then i just learned how to tune them a bit and then i just threw i have a sm7b the one i'm using right now this is the one that goes on my snare and then uh yeah and then i use 57s uh on i only have only have four mic inputs so i

18:33 Chic Chameleon sweet just i try to try to make do with uh with creative those totally constraints they can they can breed beautiful things yeah

18:40 Chic Chameleon yeah so i have like hi-hat mic uh snare mic uh kick and then i have like one overhead kind of over just kind of like kind of diagonally over the top of the kit and then yeah i just try to just try to make it work that way so

18:53 Chic Chameleon no for sure i mean and i think that people hearing that that might be intimidated intimidated by recording that can help free them like you can get a great drum sound with four mics uh

19:04 Chic Chameleon yeah you just don't wait until you have all the fancy preamps or whatever to get started like get started

19:09 Chic Chameleon no now oh that's so true yeah i had a bit of recording experience because i did like the recording or some recording classes in school as well and then of course we're working with like you know a 24 channel api like beautiful

19:22 Chic Chameleon yeah of course exactly like just just the best of the best yeah and then you know like seven to ten mics on your drum kit you know and then it's like going from that to being like okay i'm out of school i don't have access to anything like that anymore probably never will maybe i will you know but it's like how can i make do and like get music out there that this music oh it needs to get out there so like how can i make that happen with like limited you know resources right

19:49 Chic Chameleon totally and like think about art our version of limited resources is somebody's infinite resources uh

19:54 Chic Chameleon Yeah, like so not that long ago true. so um yeah but like I think I got this way when I was trying to figure out how to record where you try to read everything and research and be like okay like what do I need to get what's going to make me all set up and it's like recording's not that way so much of it is

20:13 Chic Chameleon like learn do act figure out a placement get to know your gear and then add to it and then replace stuff but like if you wait for the perfect rig and mic locker and setup you're just never going to record anything

20:25 Chic Chameleon yeah exactly it'll all just sit there waiting for the next piece and then you'll never get anywhere yeah i think that's another really important thing just like starting where you start like you just you just have to get started like so if you're out there and you're recording and you're like oh this is this is just a demo this isn't good enough it's like you know what maybe just release the demo you know like throw it on soundcloud like move move on from it you know if it's

20:51 Chic Chameleon i feel like there's like this like ceiling like if you're as if you just finished something as good as you possibly could have and you you don't know what to do to make it any better and you're sort of out of ideas it's

21:02 Chic Chameleon Yeah. like that's fine maybe just like release it and be done like you know like letting it sit there it's not going to do anything for anybody so it's like why not just like you know if you don't want to throw it on spotify like anything like that like just throw it on soundcloud like at least you got something something out like you

21:18 Chic Chameleon Yeah, know yeah and then from there it's like just try that again that whole process and you're probably going to get better than last time and your ceiling is going to be you know a little bit higher and then you can just keep repeating that and like I found like that helped a lot actually get stuff out there because otherwise it just sits on your computer forever and it's

21:37 Chic Chameleon it's so sad it's like this needs to be out there you know yeah yeah exactly you can always scrub it if you wanted to later yeah

21:42 Chic Chameleon yeah totally who really cares like i'm trying to own my own embarrassing past of just like bad music that i made when i was in high school whatever it's just like let it be i think people will cut me some slack if they listen to the current stuff and they'll at least know like hey this guy used to be bad and he got good

22:00 Chic Chameleon yeah yeah it's like hey man yeah i used to be super bad but like you know check out my new album yeah

22:06 Chic Chameleon exactly exactly you could do this too look how bad i was think about how bad how much better you are than i am and think about where you'll be exactly

22:14 Chic Chameleon no that's so true and then yeah i think that's such a good point like nothing is like it's not like you can't get rid of it like if you really hate it in the future just just delete it just get rid of it you know who are you hurting you know it's all good

22:28 Chic Chameleon right and if somebody's gonna roast you for something that you really so you're like you're like first starting out like whatever let let them because they clearly haven't done it the people that have done it like they have skeletons in their closet of embarrassing demos they're there

22:43 Chic Chameleon yeah yeah no that's that's so true too it's like just just let them because why not yeah

22:49 Chic Chameleon exactly those are the people that don't make stuff and that's fine the people that don't make stuff they comment on things all the time but you should take that with a grain of salt listen to the other people that have have gone through the gauntlet

22:59 Chic Chameleon no that's so true yeah and like the people who've gone through the gauntlet they're always like way more understanding because they've gone through it you know

23:07 Luke F. Walton Oh, sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast. What I'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars, share it with your friends. This is like the most important thing for this podcast to grow. So if you want to do this, you go into the podcast screen,

23:18 Luke F. Walton right? You click on the dot dot dot on Spotify. Under there it says rate show and you go and you click it.

23:24 Luke F. Walton Five stars if you could do that for me That's the best way for the algorithms a lot of stuff to share it out with the world I know that it's a lot to ask but if you could please please please just please just hit those three dots and a five star It would really help us out and helps us, you know, get the get the word out and spread the love of music So thank you.

23:40 Luke F. Walton If you're listening on YouTube, you know what to do like subscribe all that good stuff. Thank you so much And here's the rest of the episode

23:47 Luke F. Walton Every single person that's made an album had a point where they hated the album.

23:52 Chic Chameleon yeah yeah that's that's really humbling oh i know and you get to that point you're like this is the worst thing i've ever done i didn't know i could do i can't do any worse and then you come back you're like oh it's fine yeah

24:04 Chic Chameleon yeah exactly you're like actually it just needed a little time yeah totally Yeah, but it's so important not to give up during those stretches because that's where it tries to bite you, the resistance. It tries to pull you down.

24:20 Chic Chameleon Yeah, no, I think that's like that's like the longest stretch like the gauntlet of

24:24 Chic Chameleon being somebody who releases music is like when you're in that those final mixing stages or like you know midway through a mix or something like that it's like that's when you want to give up more

24:35 Chic Chameleon Yeah. than anything because you're like this is awful no one's gonna like this you know and then it's like I've done that too where like I release the song and I'm so like I don't know self-conscious about it I kind of hate it and then I come back a month later haven't listened to it in a month and I'm like I listen to it, I'm like, oh, it sounds great.

24:53 Chic Chameleon yeah yeah Like, great what was I so afraid of, you know? exactly exactly and also there's a there's a quality onto its own of the thing that you made then like for example i've worked with mix engineers that like to sound replace anything that they don't think is up to their bar because they want to just have like a great kick drum it lays in the mix really well all this kind of stuff and i'm i'm

25:16 Chic Chameleon i do not feel that way if the artist like gave me a kick drum like that's the kick drum we're gonna make it work you know even if it might be worse it's like this is how genres are made it's

25:26 Chic Chameleon Yeah. like people accepting an artist's decision and making them work i don't know i think that there's there's like an element of people can undercut their coolest decisions

25:35 Chic Chameleon through the second guessing or somebody else second guessing them like you can polish especially a debut into absolute oblivion very easily yeah

25:44 Chic Chameleon no that's so true that's so true i feel like you really hit the nail on the head with that it's just like why would you get rid of all of the uniqueness of your song right

25:53 Chic Chameleon right like anything that's unique and like human it's like that's what makes the song so sweet and it's like yeah maybe maybe it's not it's not perfect but like why why are we striving for perfection in our recording too like nothing like i know you want it to be really good and i agree with that like perfection is such a fleeting thing it's like

26:13 Chic Chameleon it's so boring you know Yeah. like why would you why would you want this perfect kick that you know is a sample that you got rid of all your original kick and you threw in sample kick and your snare is now perfect because it's not yours and it's like man it's like there goes the heart of the song like now this now it's gone it's like so why why even try that like just you know

26:35 Chic Chameleon I totally it is a dance though because like you're saying the difference between the demo and the record that's a really hard thing to grapple with too it's like you want to release the record not the demo you want to give it enough due and attention that you're like yeah someone should listen to this but you don't want to over sand it or over polish at the same time

26:54 Chic Chameleon I think yeah I think it's like this balance of trying your absolute best to get the best possible product you can and then also just being okay with it that it's not going to be as good as you thought it was yeah I think that's where the magic is it's like you have something as good as it can be like that you can do and then

27:13 Chic Chameleon and then you have the uh follow through to let it go i think that's where like the magic is because it's like beyond that it's like okay if you never let it go no one's ever going to hear it it's not going to do anything if you polish it too much yeah like you said it's it's going to be you know polished into oblivion and you get rid of all the cool parts that make it unique and cool so like why would you why would you do that either you know

27:36 Chic Chameleon Totally.

27:37 Luke F. Walton I want to ask you about film and TV placements and specifically the film Picture It and what that kind of experience is like, what it's like to hear your song in a film and how that happened.

27:52 Chic Chameleon Oh, yeah, yeah, man. Okay, so that was a few years ago now. I think that was maybe 2022 or something like

27:59 Chic Chameleon Cool. that. Yep. I hope it was. I don't remember. That's funny. And yeah, that was just my first single, Dreaming of Heaven. I put that one out and found this thing that's like, oh, we're looking for local music that we want. I want to add to this film and I was like oh cool that sounds sweet so I just I pitched it to somebody and yeah they came back to me they're like yeah we think this song really fits in our movie and we'd

28:28 Chic Chameleon Cool. love to use it and I was like that was so like out of the blue it felt like because pitching stuff it's always just like such a hail mary you're just like okay like you know gonna throw this out there probably won't hear anything back and then when you do you're like oh cool it's like it's actually gonna do something like that's sweet

28:43 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

28:43 Chic Chameleon you know absolutely yeah it's a funny thing. that also can can make you hear a song differently right like when it's set to picture

28:49 Chic Chameleon yeah totally i think it it changes like you have your own context i think as the artist and like you have your own idea of what exactly this song is and it means something to you but it's like completely different to somebody else and then like to like a music director who's like throwing that into their movie it's like

29:07 Chic Chameleon it's like it's like a totally other context too because now it's like the context of the person in the movie or you know something like that so it's like kind

29:14 Chic Chameleon Yeah, of removed but it's there's still context which is cool yeah

29:18 Luke F. Walton i'm curious too like movies obviously there's have a whole bunch of people working on a movie you're making most of your music on your own have you involved other collaborators do you work with other people for mixing mastering you do it all yourself other co-writers things like that

29:18 Chic Chameleon I'm curious too, so um first EP was just me and I did the mastering for that too and

29:38 Luke F. Walton Cool.

29:38 Chic Chameleon I don't know I don't know if I recommend it I think for certain styles of music I think like getting all the way to the end of your mix and having like a final mix is like super sick and then for the mastering I'd say it's like really good to get really good to do it yourself like at least once so you know what it is and you know what you

29:57 Chic Chameleon what you want like you know generally like kind of what you're going for but sometimes i feel like with the mastering thing it's like it's a good idea to like give somebody else like somebody else with a different perspective a fresh set of ears somebody else is going to like finalize it for you and then because i feel like you're already like so close to the project it's like maybe it's not the best thing for the project at that point you know what are your thoughts on that

30:21 Luke F. Walton Completely agree. yeah i didn't like mastering my own work also

30:24 Chic Chameleon Yeah.

30:24 Luke F. Walton not a great mastering engineer but part of it is just like took it kind of as far as i wanted to take it now i'll make it loud i guess but it's really hard to yeah come in with a fresh sense of dude like working with other mastering engineers it'll come back to me like dude this is super bright it's like i didn't even notice because i was just so in it i was trying to make the song the way it was and that day that week i was just in a really bright mood i don't know

30:48 Chic Chameleon Yeah,

30:48 Luke F. Walton and like

30:48 Chic Chameleon yeah.

30:48 Luke F. Walton this isn't gonna fit the rest of the record it's like thank you or like you make some big mistake uh in in the export because you're just so burnt and then somebody else can catch it and be like your bass is not you don't have any bass in this song or something bizarre it's just like oh right forgot to unmute that there's like weird things like

31:07 Chic Chameleon Oh, when oh,

31:07 Luke F. Walton you're totally

31:08 Chic Chameleon I

31:08 Luke F. Walton burnt out you just do stupid crap and having someone else in the process can save you a lot of pain yeah

31:15 Chic Chameleon think that, yeah, that's, yeah, that's, that's a good point. Just on that. Yeah, it's like, yeah, you're so close.

31:22 Luke F. Walton but

31:22 Chic Chameleon There's just no, there's no room anymore, you know, to like,

31:25 Luke F. Walton you're right

31:25 Chic Chameleon you're too close at this point. And it's like, maybe you heard it a thousand times. in the mixing already you

31:32 Luke F. Walton yeah

31:33 Chic Chameleon know

31:33 Luke F. Walton for

31:33 Chic Chameleon so like you've

31:33 Luke F. Walton sure yeah

31:34 Chic Chameleon already heard it that many times and now you're gonna do like kind of like a bigger larger mix to it like it's just like man just you know just give it away somebody else can catch

31:44 Luke F. Walton yeah

31:44 Chic Chameleon some mistakes that you might not be able to even hear anymore you know

31:48 Luke F. Walton well there's the whole saying of if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together

31:53 Chic Chameleon Yeah.

31:53 Luke F. Walton for bands and things like ours it's like you can do both you can go alone and make the the record and then go far and go together with like a team with mastering with whatever the other people that you invite into this process really help you continue doing it

32:11 Chic Chameleon Yeah. I think that's a really good point, too, because like. yeah i feel like when you're starting out you're you'll try to go as far as you can alone and then at a certain point it's like there's just so many jobs i feel like

32:24 Luke F. Walton yeah

32:24 Chic Chameleon the

32:24 Luke F. Walton there's so many jobs

32:25 Chic Chameleon more you the further you go the more jobs there are you know so it's just like oh it's at some point you need somebody who's like a professional in all of these other things that you never really wanted to be a professional in to begin with you know

32:39 Luke F. Walton you try to specialize in something the world of being an artist is like like yeah so many hats it's crazy you just add more all the time

32:46 Chic Chameleon I know it's always another hat and you're like okay I got to get it like good at pitching now and I got to get good at this and then at a certain point you're like yeah maybe a little help would be good that's nice right

32:54 Luke F. Walton exactly turns out i'm bad at some stuff i have weaknesses it's like dang

33:02 Chic Chameleon Yeah, it's like man, I'm an indie artist, but I have weaknesses this isn't so this isn't what I was told

33:08 Luke F. Walton it is it is what it is and yeah the more hats you wear the the more weaknesses you'll find you'll be able to polish some of them maybe into like

33:17 Luke F. Walton i'm okay at something you can go from like really down here to okay but to get something that's a natural weakness all the way up to a strength like that is a slog and probably requires more hours than you're putting into it

33:28 Chic Chameleon more hours than you have time for you know it's like gotta get back to the recording part but it's like man i'm like pitching for days and you know doing all these other things and it's like oh man

33:38 Luke F. Walton yeah it's the juggle it's the balance and you want to water all the pots but you can't do it all equally you only have so much

33:43 Luke F. Walton much she can give and um and then there's the other side the negative side of the things that you like you gravitate towards versus the things you should do you kind of shun and then that can create weakness strength things that are um or or just like ignored procrastinated things they can be ultimately like really damaging to artist careers

34:04 Chic Chameleon Oh, so true. Yeah, I think like there's a lot of things that A lot of people don't want to do that or like kind of vital for the indie musician like you gotta be You know, you gotta always be promoting you gotta do like

34:19 Chic Chameleon like shows you got to do like so many different things and it's like yeah if there is a weakness in one or just like you don't like doing one of them then it's like it's good to have have people that have your back on that too and like they're like either push you or help you with the things you don't like doing exactly

34:34 Luke F. Walton exactly and know when to do which yeah

34:38 Chic Chameleon yeah

34:39 Luke F. Walton yeah that's so real um speaking of shows i saw you have some uh some festival festivals coming up could you tell me a little bit about like how your live performance looks some of the things that you're looking forward to oh

34:49 Chic Chameleon Yeah, totally. So we just came back from my favorite festival,

34:54 Luke F. Walton yeah cool

34:54 Chic Chameleon a sled island in Calgary. And that one, oh man, I love that festival so much. Pale Hound headlined and Feeble Little Horse as well. So I was really stoked to see those bands because like I've heard them a lot. I've listened to them for years. And I feel like they would never come.

35:11 Chic Chameleon um to like calgary or edmonton ever again so it's like it's it sled island kind of curates and brings in all these awesome artists that you wouldn't typically ever get uh around here like i feel like there's like this like people will go to vancouver for the tour and then they'll go to toronto and then everywhere else in canada is just kind of avoided for for like a lot of like the smaller indie artists or like not stadium tours but you know the smaller tours it's like

35:37 Chic Chameleon super cool to like get those artists in and then I just like I go down there and yeah so much fun

35:42 Luke F. Walton That's so cool you're able to be a part of that. What's your live performance kind of like? How do you go about it?

35:48 Chic Chameleon Yeah, live performance. So I have a band, I have a bass player, drummer, I'm the guitarist and vocalist, and then I have a synth player and she also does backups. So that's kind of our lineup right now.

36:00 Luke F. Walton Oh,

36:00 Chic Chameleon Recently,

36:01 Luke F. Walton cool.

36:01 Chic Chameleon I got like a vocal pedal. So I've been trying to like kind of incorporate that a little bit more. I feel like for like dream pop and shoegaze kind of in that world, it's like really important to have the vibe like really down.

36:13 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

36:13 Chic Chameleon So I kind of need to invest in some reverb and delay on the vocal that I can kind of curate rather than the sound guy,

36:22 Luke F. Walton Uh

36:22 Chic Chameleon you

36:22 Luke F. Walton -huh.

36:22 Chic Chameleon know, the sound tech. So I just felt like, you know, it's like a little bit more enveloping that way.

36:30 Luke F. Walton That makes total sense. And I actually think that's a really interesting thing where people that are touring and they can bring their own sound, they're able to curate that or have that in the...

36:38 Luke F. Walton the tracks to the computer so it runs from thing to thing but yeah when you're playing clubs you're relying on the house to provide that they're they're not going to do anything or they'll do some weird stuff like i've had people just throw like dotted quarter note delays on the vocal and then just beat happen in the back what's

36:56 Chic Chameleon Yeah.

36:57 Luke F. Walton going on why does it sound like this

37:00 Chic Chameleon yeah no that's yeah that's exactly it i think i was i think i was kind of sick of not having the control when

37:06 Luke F. Walton Right.

37:06 Chic Chameleon it's like such an important part of my sound and

37:08 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:09 Chic Chameleon i was like okay you know what i just got to invest in whatever vocal pedal i can and like just make that decision myself because they're just not doing it for me like i you know you just can't you can't rely on somebody for like something that important and like i feel like i would try to tell

37:25 Chic Chameleon sound tech's like hey like i want like a plate reverb or i want like this really washy sound but then they're always like dealing with feedback so i feel like the inclination is always to kind of go soft on it too which is you know that's like a choice so that you don't get feedback which is of course their best interest it's also my best interest but you know we're gonna we're gonna get some verb on there now

37:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, exactly. You just print it right in.

37:51 Chic Chameleon Yeah, yeah, exactly.

37:52 Luke F. Walton So Patrick, this show is called Love Music More and this segment is called Love Music Why. I'm curious, why do you love music?

38:00 Chic Chameleon Oh, man. I just feel like... music for me I think it can really get me out of a really negative headspace I'll always use it for that I think that's like when I'm not feeling well or not feeling good or not stoked I think that's when I gravitate towards music the most yeah it's just like it just can get you out of that headspace or just kind of even just be there for you in that headspace which is which is cool you know and that's kind of always what I've

38:33 Chic Chameleon I've used it for and now I feel like oh like if I could do that for other people too in my music and kind of you know like be there with them or get them out of that headspace or at least you know hang out with them in the headspace I think that's like that's kind of my main goal with that with the music

38:50 Luke F. Walton That's really nice. Yeah, being able to take people on those emotional journeys or put them in places, take them out of places, sit with them in places. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing.

39:00 Chic Chameleon Definitely. How about you? What about yourself?

39:02 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I mean, it changes day to day. And I always think about it because I ask so many guests. I've talked to probably 100, well over 100 plus people and ask them about their music answers. And I think the biggest thing for me is that it is. In my humble opinion, the coolest of the art forms. And I also think that art is the most human thing we could possibly do.

39:24 Luke F. Walton And so therefore, it is the coolest thing a human can possibly do. Make music, do something that is emotional and logical. It's all of the things, you know, it requires time and energy and also is transcendental.

39:41 Luke F. Walton at the same time like i think that's a really cool thing we're like some things are craft some things are art and music is both craft and art and it's ephemeral it's not like a painting where you're like i made this beautiful thing or a sculpture like look at david it is come with me on a journey i'm going to take you on this journey i trained my whole life to take you on this journey and now it's over and we can go on it again though

40:06 Chic Chameleon Yeah.

40:06 Luke F. Walton it's like it's such a cool crazy thing it's something that can span culture can span tuning systems all of the stuff that we talk about on this podcast just because it's like the richest most infinite like language itself but cooler it's way cooler than language because language is like formal it's stuck in grammar and music sort of is but it also isn't and how cool is that it's like a paradox every time you find out

40:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:33 Chic Chameleon No, that's yeah, that's great. I like thinking of music as like its own language to,

40:38 Luke F. Walton Totally.

40:38 Chic Chameleon you

40:38 Luke F. Walton For sure.

40:38 Chic Chameleon know, it's just like, you can almost like navigate more emotion through

40:42 Luke F. Walton Oh,

40:42 Chic Chameleon music

40:42 Luke F. Walton yeah.

40:42 Chic Chameleon and through regular language, you know,

40:44 Luke F. Walton Oh, yeah.

40:44 Chic Chameleon and it's like, I love that part. I love that. You

40:47 Luke F. Walton Me too.

40:47 Chic Chameleon know? Yeah.

40:48 Luke F. Walton And I like, I really believe that if we met an alien, they'd be able to get down.

40:55 Chic Chameleon Oh, yeah.

40:56 Luke F. Walton I don't know if we'd be able to talk to them, but I think there would be some level like either we might have to pitch. to pitch everything way up or way down for them to be able to groove with it but i i think that if like you're an intelligent entity anywhere a god an alien even some animals you know i like i like watching the elephants get funky yeah

41:14 Chic Chameleon Yeah, that's awesome. Oh, yeah.

41:17 Luke F. Walton i

41:17 Chic Chameleon Yeah, no kidding.

41:18 Luke F. Walton just think it's in the universe it's in our in the universe itself's bones and it's also something you can logic about too which i think is really cool where it's not just like so missed you mystical that's like we can't do anything it's like no we can also like do music theory so I

41:30 Chic Chameleon Yeah,

41:30 Luke F. Walton can learn it totally. and I can get better at it every single day Yeah,

41:36 Chic Chameleon Yeah,

41:36 Luke F. Walton it's crazy.

41:36 Chic Chameleon I love that whole,

41:39 Luke F. Walton yeah, Yeah.

41:39 Chic Chameleon the music theory of things where it's like, okay, here's the theory, this is why, but then there's kind of like that unexplatable part of it that why people love it. It's just like, and I love that there's kind of the interplay of both of those things because it's like they can both coexist and, but like you just can't describe it sometimes like that's what I love about music. Dick.

42:01 Luke F. Walton me too me too i mean even something as simple as there being notes it's like yes and no like there are frequencies and they you can move them fluidly in between like you could pitch everything up or down 99 cents and there's all of this room in between there's even room in between the sense and there's still octaves there's still stuff to grab onto but there's a lot that's arbitrary and a lot that's not and the fact that it's both is

42:27 Luke F. Walton Why? you you can't find the end of this rope you just keep pulling yeah

42:33 Chic Chameleon Yeah, and I love that. I'm just gonna keep pulling that rope

42:37 Luke F. Walton exactly it's uh there's like a myth of like the golden chord i think it's like a greek thing where you could pull and even that would tug on the gods and i feel like music the arts is that golden chord of something that like it's kind of crazy that we even have access to that we can even participate in and that's why yeah everybody should make music everybody should do it all the time time

42:56 Chic Chameleon 100% agree yeah

42:57 Luke F. Walton so where can people listen to your music where can they watch you play live where can they get in touch

43:02 Chic Chameleon got lots of stuff on streaming so Spotify Apple music all that stuff YouTube you can check chic chameleon out there we also are playing a few shows so if there's any Edmonton listeners we got some shows in July we're playing taste of Edmonton and we're playing another show at the black bar in July 19th I mean, it's got an album that I'm just finishing up right

43:24 Luke F. Walton hey

43:24 Chic Chameleon now. great It's about to

43:25 Luke F. Walton yeah

43:25 Chic Chameleon be out.

43:25 Luke F. Walton yeah right

43:27 Chic Chameleon So I'm excited for that to come out.

43:29 Luke F. Walton can't wait to hear it nice

43:30 Chic Chameleon Yeah, I think it's end of August slated for.

43:33 Luke F. Walton yeah good time it's always a good time to release a record yeah awesome well i can't wait can't wait to hear it such such a great time uh connecting patrick and uh definitely let's let's keep in touch i can't wait to hear the record

43:45 Chic Chameleon Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me.

43:48 Luke F. Walton Until

43:48 Chic Chameleon All

43:48 Luke F. Walton next time.

43:48 Chic Chameleon right. Take care.