An Interview with Danny Wolf

0:01 Luke F. Walton Prehistoric appreciation. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Music 101 podcast. I am here with very special guest Danny Wolf. Welcome to the pod.

0:21 Danny Wolf Hello there, Scoob. Thanks for having me.

0:24 Luke F. Walton We're going to talk about all sorts of stuff, but definitely the perspective of being a drummer, being a musician, multiple projects, doing mashups, remixes, all sorts of fun internet stuff, and just kind of what it's like to be like a musician in 2022. Awesome. Welcome. Thank you.

0:45 Danny Wolf Yeah.

0:45 Luke F. Walton Would you like to just kind of start maybe talk about some of the projects that you've been in throughout some of your IG handles or whatever you'd like to kind of like just give the picture so that people know what makes Danny tick a little bit?

0:56 Danny Wolf Yeah. All right. So I guess first and foremost, I'm a drummer. I'm also a producer, recording engineer. I've been getting into editing videos and

1:11 Luke F. Walton Cool.

1:12 Danny Wolf I have my own band called Wolf in Love, which is me and my partner Danny Love. And also I tour as a drummer in a bunch of different projects like Great Good Fine Ok. I've toured with Rhye. uh gavin turek um john k so just to name a few and

1:36 Luke F. Walton Awesome. And you're based in LA, right?

1:38 Danny Wolf i'm based in la yeah glendale right now yes

1:41 Luke F. Walton Glendale, nice.

1:41 Danny Wolf so

1:42 Luke F. Walton Cool. So with all of that multi-level experience, let's hone in on kind of like the first stuff. Did you start as a drummer? Is that how you kind of like entered into music?

1:56 Danny Wolf i always wanted to be a drummer and uh you know since like elementary school and unfortunately everybody else wanted to be a drummer too so when i tried out in school i guess it was fifth grade is that that's probably when you start

2:11 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

2:11 Danny Wolf and

2:12 Luke F. Walton it sounds about right.

2:12 Danny Wolf yeah so uh i didn't get the audition so they put me on clarinet or not clarinet and i did clarinet for a year and didn't like it so then i switched to saxophone

2:27 Danny Wolf Cool. And I ended up playing saxophone throughout all of high school, alto sax, and always wanted to play drums and like kept on trying to, you know, bother my band teacher, you know, like, just let me play just a little bit. And finally they let me play in the marching band.

2:46 Danny Wolf Oh, cool. Yeah. So What instrument? I Are you playing snare? did the quints, those drums.

2:53 Danny Wolf Oh, quince, quince. Yeah, Yeah. the five toms basically. And so that was my first time in just like playing in a music situation, in like a school situation.

3:05 Luke F. Walton Okay.

3:06 Danny Wolf And then I got into the jazz bands. So I just, I kept on practicing and I was like, I can do it. I can really do it. And so finally they let me play in the jazz bands and I fell in love with jazz. From there, you know, I just kept practicing.

3:23 Danny Wolf uh and then went to music school at the University of Miami and continued my studies drumming there so yeah

3:34 Luke F. Walton Love it.

3:35 Danny Wolf so that's how I started I guess

3:37 Luke F. Walton Do you think that by starting on an instrument like alto sax, it's like a solo heavy instrument, improvisation heavy instrument, do you think that like changed the way you listen to music as a drummer?

3:49 Danny Wolf I think so. Yeah, because I had that foundation in playing notes, you

3:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

3:57 Danny Wolf know, instead of just rhythms. So I was, even from the beginning, I was listening to music, I think a little bit differently than other drummers who were mostly focused on rhythms, you know.

4:09 Luke F. Walton Yeah, totally. I totally get that. I'm always fascinated by the different paths and the musician that it turns you into, you know.

4:16 Danny Wolf I feel like drumming is such a can be such a melodic instrument like I Yeah. from you know your kick drum is like the low frequencies you can think of it and then it's got also all the way up to the highest frequencies so that kind of helps as a mixing engineer too because just thinking about all the different frequencies

4:42 Danny Wolf Yes. just a drum set like Yes. because like other instruments i feel like it's more it's more focused

4:47 Danny Wolf Oh yeah. Big time. Like guitars, I can make a guitar that big. exactly yeah so but the drum set is typically

4:55 Danny Wolf Great in a mix it takes up the whole frequency range so yeah point. Really great point. And I also think that a lot of people don't see the connection between rhythm and pitch in the way that everything is emitting frequencies. So everything is actually pitched. It's just whether or not you perceive it as being pitched.

5:15 Danny Wolf Totally. And so I actually studied, do you know Ari Honig? He's a jazz drummer. And he was like my favorite drummer, I guess when I got out of college.

5:28 Danny Wolf Okay. And he, I ended up taking a lesson with him and he kind of got, I don't know, famous for being able to play melodies with

5:37 Danny Wolf That's yes. drums yeah Yes. Yes. I was like there's a there's a light bulb in there. Okay. Yeah, I remember. Yeah. He's that guy totally

5:43 Danny Wolf and just so I took like I think I only took one lesson with him but it was really interesting to see how how he thought about drums so melodically and unlike anybody else you know he was he was able to play really complex like jazz bebop heads

6:01 Danny Wolf right that's it was really incredible so he was a big inspiration for me a really great point i also like i i like i'm super obsessed as a mixing engineer too with like the harmonic series about like how like there's no just one note unless it's like a perfect sine wave synthesizer but like

6:19 Danny Wolf everything has got all these other notes and you just get to decide what you're highlighting and what you're minimizing with eq saturation all that good stuff even compression um i find it so interesting like toms are like the purest notes on the drum kit but like even like a crash symbol has got a fundamental frequency

6:37 Danny Wolf cymbals are typically very complex where yeah you're right so toms you can it has a specific pitch usually you

6:46 Danny Wolf Yeah. know when you're hitting a tom it's like it's this there's like one note that's very pure there's

6:51 Danny Wolf Yeah. overtones too but it's yeah as you said it's it's probably the most pure of all the drums

6:59 Danny Wolf Right. That makes sense. And it makes sense why, like, if you were a drummer that's like looking to play melodies, like straight up melodies, then you could like really put the toms to work.

7:10 Danny Wolf exactly yeah i remember he was talking that even the pitches when Hmm. he plays these melodies the

7:17 Danny Wolf Yeah. pitches aren't even as important as the melodies so he Huh. was playing songs he

7:24 Danny Wolf Okay. would he so he would for example like he played i can't even think of a uh just like a song or just like mary had a little lamb he's like the Peaches are not as important as the rhythm, you know? I guess not the best example.

7:41 Danny Wolf No. I guess it could work, you know, just like based on the different toms. Totally. But I get what you're saying, too, of like there's a certain arc and shape of a melody that's even more important than the notes themselves.

8:00 Danny Wolf Yes, exactly. That was his point. And you could tell what the song was just by the approximate pitch of the toms. So, yeah.

8:09 Danny Wolf That's really cool. That's really cool. yeah i feel like i feel like sometimes people feel very like rigid about pitch because like piano you know like we grow up with a piano it's like the most rigid possible thing but even pianos they go out of tune but

8:22 Danny Wolf Yeah. you can still get like even on i played a terrible um side of the road in a back alley by a beach town piano um you could still make out melodies it was completely out of tune but it was like there's an arc there's a warbliness there's a vibe

8:41 Danny Wolf Yeah, Yeah, interesting. that's very cool. So in terms of going from like studying in music school and then going to apply it and going out on the road and doing like session work and recording and all that kind of stuff, what was like, what was the biggest thing that you kind of took away from school like in terms of mentality or in terms of like growth mindset? So that you could like go out in the world and keep learning cool.

9:11 Danny Wolf Yeah, I think it was a lot of learning was from just my peers and just they were so inspiring to me. People like Luke Melman, who you did an interview with,

9:25 Danny Wolf Yeah like, it was like being able to work with them and make music together and just taking that and.

9:33 Danny Wolf putting it into different situations and it's interesting like at school you don't really realize what it's like to be a professional musician in the real world it's

9:43 Danny Wolf Hmm. like because you have to take all the things you all the skills you learned and it's like okay now now this is a job now i need to start making money and uh these days it really helps to uh just broaden your horizons and you can't a lot of times you can't just be a drummer you

10:04 Danny Wolf Mm know you have -hmm. to also uh be a mixing engineer or a producer and and a lot of the times it's the guys that can or ladies that can do you know a whole bunch of different things are the ones that are successful so yeah i feel like it's just being able to open your mind and do as many different things as you can

10:29 Danny Wolf yeah i like that i like that and i agree where that diversity of skill and it also makes you better at your own instrument too like like we were just talking with frequencies you know you think different luke

10:41 Danny Wolf Yeah. Yeah. was luke was saying something very similar about synthesizers and like as a keyboardist he was saying that you know

10:52 Danny Wolf he he learned more about playing keyboards becoming a mixing engineer because then he was thinking more in terms of frequency pockets you

10:58 Danny Wolf Hmm. know Yeah. rather than just like what cool clusters or what cool notes can i use it's like no i need i need some space right around 250 hertz it's like oh this you

11:07 Danny Wolf Yeah. know yeah Yeah. I, I see mixing as it's, it's almost like a puzzle, you know, especially if you're

11:17 Danny Wolf just being the mixing engineer on a project and you're given a bunch of puzzle pieces basically so it's you have the drums you have the bass you guitars or synths and then vocal and you just have to find where each of those instruments fit in the frequency range

11:37 Danny Wolf Yes, exactly. And where they reinforce and subtract from each other. Yeah, exactly.

11:44 Danny Wolf Yeah, like, Yeah. like, Two instruments can be in the same frequency, but, you know, maybe you can pan them to the sides, like

11:53 Danny Wolf cool. guitar and piano, maybe the guitar will be on one side or piano will be on the other.

12:00 Danny Wolf Good point. Exactly. Create that separation by using your two ears when Yeah. they are stepping on each other or when they're occupying the same space.

12:09 Luke F. Walton I'm curious about your flow for mixing. Do you like to mix with a lot of things solo? Do you like to mix with a lot of things on at the same time, some sort of combination? What's your flow? How do you...

12:20 Luke F. Walton When you just get that fresh session where it's all these tracks, your first time hearing it, how do you jump in?

12:26 Danny Wolf Yeah, so when I'm mixing, first, usually I just, I always ask for a reference mix. So I listen to what the artist wants the song to sound like. And that's kind of like my... my framework that

12:43 Luke F. Walton Cool.

12:44 Danny Wolf i'm working off of and

12:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

12:45 Danny Wolf i always put that in the session i put it at the bottom and then i'm able to solo between that and then the mix that i have going um i usually work with like up I'll put some stuff on the stereo mix or

12:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah, cool.

12:59 Danny Wolf just like some mastering plugins just to boost it up. And so I know what it's basically what it's going to sound like at the end.

13:08 Luke F. Walton So just just for those that don't know what that is. So that's basically the thing that everything goes into. It's the it's that master that stereo mix that you're throwing some limiting some stuff to increase the volume and do you do anything else like saturation or anything or is it mostly focused on volume?

13:23 Danny Wolf Usually. I'll have at least one saturation plug-in I'll have a compressor like

13:29 Luke F. Walton Cool.

13:29 Danny Wolf Shadow Hills and

13:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah, totally.

13:32 Danny Wolf then isotope ozone I'll usually have at the end that's that's usually my last plug-in or

13:39 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yeah.

13:40 Danny Wolf a multi-band compressor yeah the DMG limitless kind

13:47 Luke F. Walton Okay. Yeah.

13:48 Danny Wolf of go to one these days

13:49 Luke F. Walton Nice.

13:51 Danny Wolf But yeah, when I'm mixing, I usually, if there's a drum set in it, that's Yeah. what I start with.

13:57 Danny Wolf Oh, I really yeah. want the drums to, I want to get the drum sounds first. Yes. That makes sense.

14:04 Danny Wolf When I'm producing, it's different. I usually don't start with drums, actually. But I'm thinking rhythmically. But when I'm mixing, it's typically I'll start with the drum set.

14:17 Luke F. Walton love it i mean drum set informs so much about genre yeah

14:21 Danny Wolf Yes. Yeah, I agree. And just like getting the track to really hit and then everything else can kind of fit in place to get the drums sitting right.

14:31 Luke F. Walton yeah so you're getting those transients you're getting that that that thing that's going to drive it all and then everybody can lay in with it uh one of the things that i i've been doing more recently is just like mixing super quiet to hear the conversation between the snare drum and the vocal um

14:47 Danny Wolf Hmm.

14:48 Luke F. Walton like i've been thinking a lot about how you know most popular music is fundamentally the conversation between the vocal or whatever's acting like a vocal and the drum kit you know everybody else is dancing along but that's the conversation you know

15:02 Danny Wolf Yeah. Making sure the level between the vocals, I feel like. Yeah, that when you listen to it at a low volume you want to be able to hear the vocals and they're you know If they're cutting through then you'll be able to hear it at a low volume

15:19 Luke F. Walton cool yeah it's a really good point i want to talk i want to talk about your project um and it feels like kind of disco revival which i am 100 here for i actually think that's kind of like what the world needs right now is a little bit of like dance party

15:35 Luke F. Walton uh like i want i want to hear like some like 16 minute versions of your songs you know so like i just want to talk about that like that kind of genre your project kind of what what inspires you there and um and like maybe maybe some artists that you like kind of look up to and emulate or have drawn inspiration from well

15:56 Danny Wolf Yeah, well,

15:57 Luke F. Walton from

15:57 Danny Wolf so

15:57 Luke F. Walton love yeah

15:58 Danny Wolf that's the product that I have with Danny. he is very influenced by artists like Whitney Houston and

16:08 Danny Wolf love it yeah Prince and the band name actually was inspired by Hall & Oates so oh cool nice yeah right

16:18 Danny Wolf it's like all right let's just take our two last names and put them together yeah

16:21 Danny Wolf and you have cool you have cool last names yeah there we go yeah and I think you know we we both are really into dance music and

16:33 Danny Wolf uh-huh yeah um so that's that's like a big inspiration you know we're trying to when we play live it's a lot of energy and we want people to dance that's

16:45 Danny Wolf totally that's yeah i completely feel that completely feel that what do you what do you think about uh like as a drummer

16:58 Danny Wolf like drawing from dance music from across the ages like how do you approach that like do you do you like listen to Daft Punk and the way they program drums and then you're like oh I could like do that but like add a little bit of you know like hollow notes or cool

17:14 Danny Wolf Yeah, so as far as drums with this music is it started a lot of the first songs that we wrote were very sample based.

17:27 Danny Wolf um you know like uh i would use splice a lot and um the oliver pack i don't know if you're familiar awesome

17:36 Danny Wolf Oliver Peck, yeah. and just drum sounds are amazing so i i was i was taking a lot of samples and building building the drums off of that and uh they actually these songs started as remixes so

17:53 Danny Wolf Hmm. Cool. i i got really into when i first got into production i was doing a bunch of remix contests so

18:02 Danny Wolf Yeah. i would go onto sites like uh skio music is one of them metapop in Cool. daba music and just like i some of the times i would just get the stems and just try and build tracks around that yeah

18:23 Danny Wolf Cool. and so when i when we were first starting the bands i i was like danny i have like a bunch of these tracks they're they're remixes but like i'm gonna take the vocals out and then see what you can do over it yeah

18:39 Danny Wolf Cool. And I think it was a lot to do with I was just getting into production and I was kind of nervous about

18:46 Danny Wolf Uh starting -huh. a song from scratch like I just had never really done it before. So drawing inspiration from like the top lines of other songs to put my tracks to a certain place.

19:02 Danny Wolf I love that. That's a fun backdoor way to like start something from scratch without starting something from scratch.

19:08 Danny Wolf Yeah, I That's good. was always I think just like nervous about starting. from nothing you

19:19 Danny Wolf Oh, know right yeah. Well, you're not alone. You're not alone. I hear so many people, the two hardest things to do is start and finish.

19:27 Danny Wolf yeah yeah um so yeah i think our whole first ep was was songs that were that started as remixes yeah

19:36 Danny Wolf Cool. um but yeah you were asking about the drums uh i think eventually i started being like well i should start using my drum set more because i'm a drummer

19:50 Danny Wolf You could do this, yeah. and i should start recording my own drums and uh so i i would usually start with a sample sample drums like i would come up with the beat and then i'd try and double it with drums and like combine the two whether it was hi-hats to like give it more of an acoustic feel where

20:15 Danny Wolf Mm hmm. just like doubling with the snare drum stuff like that yeah Do you approach drums differently from the computer when you're programming the drums versus from the kit?

20:27 Danny Wolf very much so like when I'm working on a computer Yeah. A lot of people that program drums, they'll use like, like a pad or something and

20:41 Danny Wolf Mm they'll play hmm. it. Right. But I always just drag and drop samples. Yep. Me too. Me

20:47 Danny Wolf Yeah, too. I just, I just felt way more comfortable just building a drum set that way.

20:55 Danny Wolf Yes. Okay, I'm not the only no one. you're not the only one i totally resonate with that because

21:01 Danny Wolf Yeah, yeah. because like then like it makes me think more about like grid and the elements of the grid rather than trying to

21:13 Danny Wolf like sometimes the drums are supposed to be the framework that you build other stuff on rather than like when i'm playing on a pad i'm going for hooks and then i feel like the drums like go to a like an area that's like very look at me i'm the drums rather than being the quarterback or the like backbone of the whole thing when i drag and drop and place it in i don't know yeah

21:37 Danny Wolf Yeah, I think because I'm doing a lot of drag and drop samples and stuff like that, it's kind of the same thing. You know, I'm treating it like just another instrument instead of like. Trying to perform something.

21:53 Danny Wolf Yes, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. I'm the same way. And I think it's funny because a lot of people don't really understand what drum programming even is because there's like a misnomer that it's just loops or drum machines.

22:07 Danny Wolf Right. But most of the people that are drummers that I talk to are like... Yeah, like sometimes they'll use loops, but it's mostly like a labor of love like no I want that hi-hat here

22:19 Danny Wolf Yeah, right, Super specific. exactly. Yeah. And find, yeah, finding like sometimes, especially with things like hi-hat or snare drum, like most notes,

22:30 Danny Wolf Yes want them to be somewhere in between the actual grid. Cool. Yes um using like the swing quotient in

22:39 Danny Wolf uh logic or -huh uh something like -huh that exactly no that's a great point ghost notes are the hardest thing to program but the most rewarding thing to program when you nail that it's because it's different it ends up kind of being otherworldly like yeah it's like it's like okay that's somewhere in between a real drummer and a digital drummer and that's a that's a pretty hip place to be

23:01 Danny Wolf totally totally yeah And when you start playing drums on top of, like, Yeah. samples and stuff like that,

23:12 Danny Wolf Yeah. even though you're physically playing it, it still sounds okay if you chop it up and line it up perfectly.

23:22 Danny Wolf Hmm. It gives more of an acoustic feel. That's a good point. Because you're playing in a live room with the sounds bouncing off the walls into the mic.

23:33 Danny Wolf Love that. Yeah. Love that. In terms of like dynamics, programming with dynamics, do you like, like say you're doing an eighth note.

23:40 Danny Wolf a hi-hat or something that could be eighth or 16th depending on where you put the snare but um but like doing that like are you are you modulating up and down the the volumes do you look for like different samples to create like different timbral effects or do you kind of like stay more static like you know traditional dance music where it's just kind of like the same sample across the whole grid

24:03 Danny Wolf yeah i think it's kind of all of all of those things Cool. like with hi-hat some like sometimes i could take the same hi-hat sample and you can take like the the ones that are supposed to be quieter and maybe pitch it down a little bit

24:18 Luke F. Walton Ooh, okay, yeah.

24:19 Danny Wolf also you can do the gain yeah so gain it down pitch or or even uh take take like an eq and cut off cut off the tops yeah

24:31 Luke F. Walton Nice. So that it's getting darker on those non-dominant beats.

24:36 Danny Wolf yeah you're you're kind of trying to recreate what it would be like if you're actually playing a hi-hat there but

24:44 Luke F. Walton I like it. I

24:46 Danny Wolf it

24:46 Luke F. Walton like

24:46 Danny Wolf has

24:46 Luke F. Walton it.

24:46 Danny Wolf a slightly different feel because it's it's all electronic

24:49 Luke F. Walton Yes. And I think that's cool because I don't know. with in the same way that i felt when i actually touched some analog gear i understood my digital gear that much better it's like oh i understand what that knob's supposed to do and like now i know how to use that knob on the computer i feel like a similar thing with like drums like even if you don't play drums if you're programming drums like get behind a kit just put your ear next to some things and hit some stuff

25:13 Danny Wolf Yeah, exactly. And yeah, they'll both inform each other.

25:17 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah it each grows the other um

25:21 Danny Wolf Yeah.

25:21 Luke F. Walton i want to talk a little bit about touring and then after that i want to get to um your awesome mashup kind of like evolution of your remix career onto this like awesome digital media but first let's talk some touring uh what what do people not know

25:39 Luke F. Walton that are like thinking like oh I want to go on the road like this is what I want my life to be like what what do they not know about touring the the stuff that is not on the spotlight

25:50 Danny Wolf Okay, well, first of all, it's very little playing and a lot of. loading and unloading

25:58 Luke F. Walton Yes.

25:58 Danny Wolf up and down but

26:00 Luke F. Walton Right,

26:00 Danny Wolf very

26:01 Luke F. Walton right.

26:01 Danny Wolf little playing you're we like to joke that you're basically a professional truck driver that

26:11 Luke F. Walton That's a good point. You're a professional truck driver and like play

26:16 Danny Wolf has a hobby of uh yeah

26:18 Luke F. Walton sometimes.

26:18 Danny Wolf every day

26:21 Luke F. Walton Exactly. Yeah. What about like you get into a new city, do you go hotel restaurant and keep it chill or do you try and like explore the city a little bit? What's your flow when you go into like a new place?

26:37 Danny Wolf So it usually depends if you're, so I've done like some bus tours and

26:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

26:45 Danny Wolf with the bus, it's nice because you wake up in a city.

26:50 Luke F. Walton Yes. Right.

26:51 Danny Wolf So that allows you to have more free time in

26:56 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

26:56 Danny Wolf the city to explore, you can grab some food. A lot of the times when you're in like a van, which is normally how I've toured, you're driving during the day and

27:09 Luke F. Walton Yes.

27:10 Danny Wolf then you get to the city. and you you get to the venue you load in takes sometimes it takes two hours and

27:18 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

27:19 Danny Wolf load in sound check and then you go eat and

27:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

27:23 Danny Wolf and then when you're done eating it's almost time to play basically so there isn't too much free time to explore if you're in a van but the nice part is that you really get to see the country because you're driving and you get to see the landscape of the country more.

27:45 Luke F. Walton That's a good point.

27:46 Danny Wolf Yeah.

27:46 Luke F. Walton Definitely. Yeah. I don't know if people understand that the primary value of a tour bus is being able to have a professional driver that drives you at night.

27:55 Danny Wolf Yeah.

27:56 Luke F. Walton That is awesome because then you yeah you wake up and you're in your place and you can actually do stuff and go for a walk be

28:02 Danny Wolf Right. Yeah.

28:03 Luke F. Walton a human being yeah

28:04 Danny Wolf The tricky part is that it's very difficult to sleep. Well, for some people, it's difficult to sleep on the bus.

28:11 Luke F. Walton yeah totally

28:12 Danny Wolf For me, I was I was pretty good at sleeping on the bus until you get to the city.

28:19 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

28:19 Danny Wolf um which is usually like five six in the morning and

28:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

28:23 Danny Wolf all right you know turns

28:24 Luke F. Walton Starting and stopping and turning. Yeah. Yeah.

28:28 Danny Wolf and then it's like you're up you know

28:30 Luke F. Walton I agree. My first bus tour that I ever did, I went to lay down in my bunk and the sound guy stopped me because I was going to lay with my head facing the driver.

28:44 Luke F. Walton he's like if we stop too hard you're gonna break your neck and i was like oh my god

28:49 Danny Wolf a thing to learn yeah on

28:52 Luke F. Walton don't poop on the bus

28:54 Danny Wolf the bus yeah that's very important um and also which i learned the hard way is don't drink the water i

29:02 Luke F. Walton oh you

29:04 Danny Wolf ended up getting a coli yeah

29:06 Luke F. Walton did oh my god

29:10 Danny Wolf yeah yeah

29:10 Luke F. Walton dude we

29:12 Danny Wolf it was it was bad um yeah i

29:15 Luke F. Walton just saved a bunch of people's lives right there don't drink the water and don't sleep with your head facing the driver yeah

29:21 Danny Wolf had so i had a water bottle that you know it had a filter on the top and they told me you know don't drink the water but i was like oh well i have a filter on my water bottle clearly it does not uh take out the e coli so Yeah.

29:40 Luke F. Walton all right i want to talk about your um your mashups because we got we got another like five minutes or so here let's let's talk these mashups uh do you feel like that was a evolution of your your remix days um and and talk about like i know that people are really responding well to them i think they're super fun where did this start what was the goal and then like what has it turned into

30:01 Danny Wolf so it actually started as a fluke i was just in the car with my fiance and she just she said to me you know i i just heard at work uh the fleetwood foxes like one of one of your favorite bands and i was like and i just started laughing i was like oh my god i need to make a mashup of those two things and and so she is a comedy writer

30:27 Luke F. Walton Oh,

30:27 Danny Wolf yeah

30:28 Luke F. Walton perfect.

30:28 Danny Wolf so she helped me make that first video and

30:32 Luke F. Walton Cool.

30:32 Danny Wolf so it's you know Fleet Foxes and Fleetwood Mac and so yeah so we filmed it and I didn't I really had no expectations and put it up and then

30:48 Danny Wolf You know, it just started blowing up and then Robin Pecknolds from Fleet Foxes reposted it.

30:56 Luke F. Walton No way yeah

30:57 Danny Wolf It was just. it was crazy so I was like all right I guess I should make more of these yeah

31:02 Danny Wolf yes that's awesome i love it the yeah just and it just started blowing up from there it was crazy for

31:11 Danny Wolf the power of just those little those little ideas and actually doing them you know like that that's the magic is you actually followed through i feel like a lot of people have like come up with like a funny pun combination but then they just like you know like god that'd be fun to do someday

31:25 Danny Wolf me it's like as soon as I get an idea I need to do it right away or Cool. else if I wait too long then I'm just like I don't care I'm not gonna do that so

31:35 Danny Wolf Great and advice. I get an idea like I probably got home and I was like we have to do this now we need to film this right now yeah

31:42 Danny Wolf And look at what it does. Look at what it does by making that call. I love it. and then after that so then I was like all right well I posted this video where I was like, I reached out to, you know, the people, the followers, and I was just like, you come up with ideas for mashups.

32:05 Danny Wolf Uh And -huh. that way I can. hey i can do like on instagram you could do like the quote video

32:11 Danny Wolf Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah. and Right. i feel like that really helps too because it got a lot of people involved also

32:18 Danny Wolf Cool. so everybody's like trying to come up with their their favorite mashups of two bands yeah

32:23 Danny Wolf I love it. You create that audience engagement, you create content and and you get to like like play with something that people already love. I feel like that's special.

32:33 Danny Wolf it's it's been fun and i i see it it's also like a puzzle it's Cool. Another very

32:38 Danny Wolf puzzle. similar to mixing because uh you have two bands so you come up with the you know the title basically and you're like okay which two songs work together and uh it's it's you can't just use any song it's it really needs to be songs that are either in the same key or you can pitch the keys but it's it's it's

33:04 Danny Wolf Yeah, super weird then you lose it right that makes sense. um or what i found the best is if the uh like the lyrics are in like the relative minor so like if the track is in c major and then the vocals are in a minor it gives the the lyrics like a different feel like

33:25 Danny Wolf Yeah, that's cool i think that the fleetwood foxes one the fleet uh the song give i guess um is in a major key and the fleetwood mac songs in a minor key just gives the melody this whole dark flavor to it yeah

33:44 Danny Wolf i love that i love that that's that's a great point and that that's yeah i mean part of the value to like

33:51 Danny Wolf study music theory or whatever is to like understand just the it's a bag of tricks and like that's pulling from one that i think some people with relative major and minor it's like i don't want to touch that it's like no look at look at like you're using it music theory in like a hilarious way that's leading towards really happy people on the other end that's that's a beautiful thing yes

34:11 Danny Wolf Yeah. And it's like with those with those mashups, it's basically. I just use Melodyne and

34:18 Danny Wolf Mm use -hmm. the iZotope RX and that allows you to isolate the vocals. It's just like the craziest technology.

34:28 Danny Wolf Amazing. Yeah, it's called music rebalance. And basically you could just put whatever song you wanted to it and then you can isolate the vocals, you can isolate the drums, you can isolate the bass. It's like, it's crazy. So just with those two tools, I could. Make most of the mashups.

34:49 Danny Wolf Love that I actually did something very similar for artists that I work with called try they wanted me to do a remix, but they didn't send me anything so just do a remix yep

35:00 Danny Wolf Yeah, exactly. For those remixes, you can take any song and just isolate the vocals.

35:07 Danny Wolf and the drums when you do that sound wild and so sometimes i'll use them i'll like take i'll rip out the drums and like fate but

35:14 Danny Wolf I'll have to try that. it sounds crazy because it's got a bunch of artifacts in it because like we were saying the drums are such a wide spectrum of frequencies there's artifacts all over it You take that and like throw into a stereo phaser or something like that and it seriously feels like your head is like spinning. It's pretty sweet.

35:31 Danny Wolf I'm going to need to try that. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time, Danny.

35:36 Danny Wolf Thanks so much for having me. This was fun. Love it. And I'd like to recommend to all of the listeners or watchers to check out Danny's Instagram as well as Wolf and Love and all of the stuff that Danny's working on. Cross music video. The whole ecosystem of what we do.

35:54 Danny Wolf Yeah, the wolf in love is wolf ends love you. Y-O-U. Check it out. Check it out. We'll throw that in the bio too.

36:03 Danny Wolf Cool. So thanks a lot. Thanks so much. Take it easy. And if you have any questions, reach out to us on Instagram or whatever. We'll be happy to answer them. Thanks a lot.

36:13 Danny Wolf Cool. All right. WALA