An Interview with Harley Eblen

2:34 Luke F. Walton What's good everybody? Scoobert Doobert here. Welcome back to Love Music More. I am joined with Harley Eblen. Welcome to the show, Harley.

2:41 Harley Eblen Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

2:43 Luke F. Walton I'm really excited too. I'm so excited to talk about how passionate you are about playing strings and then your journey on how this happened. So that, you know, at the end of this, everybody can walk away and just appreciate strings, like get hyped when they hear strings in a pop song or when they see it live. So, um... How did you kind of get started? What kind of hooked you on music?

3:04 Harley Eblen yeah so I I've loved music like it's it's a lifelong thing my mom said that when I was two days old she put on a Stevie Ray Vaughan CD and I stopped breathing and just like focused

3:14 Luke F. Walton Yes.

3:15 Harley Eblen in and listened so

3:16 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

3:16 Harley Eblen I feel like it's an affliction I've had since I don't know about day one but day two at least

3:21 Luke F. Walton That's so good.

3:22 Harley Eblen um but I still remember being in first grade and they handed us a recorder for the first time and that was the first time I'd been handed an instrument it's like one of the only memories I have from that period but it's It felt like a knight being handed a sword. It felt momentous. And from there, it just snowballed until I'm in a recording studio in my home. Yeah.

3:46 Luke F. Walton I love it. I love it. And you had such an interesting journey kind of chasing this musical dream and ending up kind of where you are. How did you start off? So you started off on Hawaii and then kind of like. like would from there what is that like kind of music education and community on the island

4:05 Harley Eblen Oh, that is such a good question. So I started playing violin in the third grade when I was nine years old, cello in the fourth grade. That was when we got to pick an instrument. I was fortunate. I went to a Waldorf school and it's a private school. A German philosopher came up with the whole concept, but it's very focused on art and music.

4:28 Harley Eblen hence recorder in the first grade and violins and all of that stuff but i i really pursued that i i heard cello on the radio for the first time when i was like nine or ten and i was like that's the thing i want to do like

4:40 Luke F. Walton Cool.

4:41 Harley Eblen game over i'm going to spend my life doing that um but as i grew up there's an amazing symphony in hawaii it was called the honolulu symphony when i was growing up but i think they went bankrupt and now it's that's the Hawaii Symphony,

4:55 Luke F. Walton Okay.

4:55 Harley Eblen but I had a teacher who is a cellist in the cello section of that

4:59 Luke F. Walton Amazing.

4:59 Harley Eblen symphony.

4:59 Luke F. Walton Cool.

4:59 Harley Eblen And so I was really fortunate to have great education, both in school and out of school. But as I got older and got deeper into music, I got really kind of disillusioned with classical music in a way and stepped away from that. There was a period of my life where I listened to the bookends of it were like. Shostakovich and

5:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

5:23 Harley Eblen Britney Spears and

5:25 Luke F. Walton Cool.

5:26 Harley Eblen not a lot in between Yes. weirdly but

5:29 Luke F. Walton Yes.

5:30 Harley Eblen I ended up finding Scottish Irish and bluegrass music and got really fascinated by that kind of left classical music behind for a while and there are

5:40 Harley Eblen tight like really small niche communities in Hawaii of those genres that were open welcoming and really warm and brought me into them when I expressed interest

5:51 Luke F. Walton What age were you at that point?

5:53 Harley Eblen Oh, good question. Probably 16.

5:55 Luke F. Walton 16 okay so you're kind of coming out like you're

5:58 Harley Eblen Yeah,

5:58 Luke F. Walton figuring out your own style now you've

6:00 Harley Eblen exactly.

6:00 Luke F. Walton got that you've got the background okay yeah

6:02 Harley Eblen I had the classical training. It felt good to be able to play the instrument, but I was like, I'm not being given opportunities to express things that I'm really feeling.

6:12 Harley Eblen And that wasn't a distinction I knew how to make at that point. But looking back, that's definitely what it was. So from there, I pursued. the celtic and bluegrass stuff you

6:23 Luke F. Walton If

6:23 Harley Eblen know

6:23 Luke F. Walton somebody's starting off with music, do you recommend – sometimes people want to try and find their voice really, really early on when they're kind of picking up an instrument. Do you recommend getting your chops up and then getting the facility and then finding your voice? Or how would you recommend that if you had to do it over again?

6:40 Harley Eblen you know what i wish someone had told me that there was no wrong way to do it because The thing I find most value with, in hindsight and right now, is time with the instrument.

6:54 Luke F. Walton Okay.

6:54 Harley Eblen And it does, there is a level on which it has to be quality time. Like you can't just noodle around all the time and expect to progress. So I am appreciative to classical music for that structure within which you... If you follow it, you can't help but progress.

7:11 Luke F. Walton Okay.

7:11 Harley Eblen But the thing that held me back more than anything was feeling resistance to picking up the instrument in the first place. And that's one of the biggest things I had to learn how to overcome in my journey. So I don't think there's a right and wrong answer to that.

7:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah. I like that. I think it's interesting too, talking to musicians that have trained with

7:34 Luke F. Walton like symphonic players or people Yeah. that have like a really strong pedagogical backbone and tradition and then you have like rock guitar it's like hey you know you hire the alcoholic dude that plays in the cover band and off you go you know i

7:48 Harley Eblen Totally.

7:48 Luke F. Walton i

7:49 Harley Eblen Yeah.

7:49 Luke F. Walton always find it fascinating because obviously no wrong way but there is a real strength to to like playing and growing in a tradition that's been around for hundreds of years and then you can take that and go wherever you want

8:01 Harley Eblen The interesting flip side of that is

8:03 Luke F. Walton Yes.

8:03 Harley Eblen there's a book by Seth Godin. This feels like a tangent,

8:06 Luke F. Walton Nope.

8:06 Harley Eblen but I'll bring it around. Seth Godin called The Dip. And he talks about, I'm going to butcher the synopsis, but the idea of whenever you start something. You start out feeling like you're great, and then you learn what you don't know, and that, I think he calls it the trough of despair.

8:23 Luke F. Walton Good. Yes.

8:24 Harley Eblen And then the idea is that you decide whether or not it is this thing is worth the labor of climbing out of that trough towards excellence. And literally the example he gives in that book of something that might be too competitive to be worth it is classical cello. yes and

8:43 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

8:43 Harley Eblen I read that and I was like are you kidding me um but it's kind of true you mentioned the hundreds of years of that history of the pedagogy and because it is so rote because there is such a factory like a conveyor belt system there are thousands of great classical cellists being churned out I will never be able to touch the ability of any of them So for me, it was about finding a voice.

9:09 Luke F. Walton Mm

9:09 Harley Eblen So

9:09 Luke F. Walton hmm.

9:10 Harley Eblen it's kind of blending those things, which is, again, why I think there's no right or wrong answer to that question you had.

9:16 Luke F. Walton Totally. And I like that. And I think that's the appropriate response to that variable of there. Is it ever increasing number of greatness, especially in terms of facility?

9:32 Luke F. Walton So how can you, you know, use this where it's not necessarily like sports or something like that where it's like, oh, that guy's just faster than me. You know, I can train a little bit, but they're just genetically, they're going to be faster than I am.

9:45 Luke F. Walton In the creative arts, you can be more creative, you can be more distinct, you can pull in different cultural influences or travel or do different things to grow as a person that then grows you on the instrument that no one can replicate.

9:58 Harley Eblen Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's my whole career now is based around having a perspective and a voice, not necessarily being technically the best.

10:09 Luke F. Walton And I think that's what people listen to and enjoy and want.

10:15 Harley Eblen It's taken a long time to get comfortable with that idea. But yeah, it really is. It's what I gravitate towards in music. It's like, I don't like when I'm listening to like sad indie folk. I'm not like, wow, what a phenomenal guitarist.

10:31 Luke F. Walton Right.

10:32 Harley Eblen Like, we're not asking that of that. It's about the expression. It's about the connection.

10:37 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And I think that there's like if you're talking, you know, arcs of practice and arcs of progression, I think there's something good, though, about wanting to be a young shredder.

10:50 Harley Eblen Yeah.

10:50 Luke F. Walton and then getting over it because then you get like you get chops you know you can throw down that 360 dunk if you want to every once in a while um it's usually not appropriate but it's nice to have that in the bag um so it's funny it's like i'm a slower guitar player than i used to be but i'm a much better guitar player than i used to be because i actually play stuff that people want to hear or just

11:07 Harley Eblen Totally.

11:08 Luke F. Walton like just this song you know yeah

11:10 Harley Eblen I mean, there was a time in my life where I could perform a cello concerto. great.

11:17 Luke F. Walton Mm

11:17 Harley Eblen I was

11:17 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

11:18 Harley Eblen a student, but I could do that.

11:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

11:20 Harley Eblen And it was a challenging piece of repertoire that I worked my ass off to make happen. And then I left that. And then there was a period of time a few years later where I could walk into a circle of bluegrass musicians and like be trading licks and it would get to me and I would be able to hold my own.

11:38 Luke F. Walton Yes.

11:39 Harley Eblen Again, not necessarily the best in the circle, but like it's. learning how to do those things neither of those things are what my innate expression would have been without learning them but now i have those colors those idioms those palettes to draw from and it's like it's it's necessary yes

11:58 Luke F. Walton Yes. I love that. I've been doing a lot of podcasts and talking with guests about like AI and all that kind of stuff. I think that this is the secret missing magical thing, you know?

12:09 Harley Eblen yes yeah i could I have some AI rants that are probably going to look stupid in a couple years.

12:16 Luke F. Walton That's what we're here for, you know, shoot

12:18 Harley Eblen Totally. Yeah.

12:19 Luke F. Walton our shots.

12:20 Harley Eblen Yeah, but I mean, I feel like AI, everything I've seen from AI, and again, this is going to change next week by

12:27 Luke F. Walton 100%.

12:28 Harley Eblen the time the show comes out,

12:29 Luke F. Walton Yes,

12:29 Harley Eblen but it

12:30 Luke F. Walton yes.

12:30 Harley Eblen takes the things that collectively us humans have created and finds the average of them that fits. the circumstance that it's being asked to create something for. That's

12:44 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

12:45 Harley Eblen my rudimentary understanding as a musician.

12:48 Luke F. Walton I like it.

12:48 Harley Eblen But that inherently is not stepping out ahead of what our culture has done, our cultures and our art forms have done. And I feel like more and more moving into the future that that's going to be our job. Like

13:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

13:05 Harley Eblen things are speeding up the cycle, the pace of creation is speeding up.

13:09 Luke F. Walton Mm

13:10 Harley Eblen It's

13:10 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

13:10 Harley Eblen our job to find new limits of what can be accomplished. And I think as long as we're doing that, we are useful as humans. And it feels weird trying to justify our use,

13:23 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

13:23 Harley Eblen but I mean, I feel like that's kind of, that's where the conversation is right now.

13:28 Luke F. Walton and it's it's becoming a weird synonym for bad or mediocre when somebody goes oh that feels ai like that's almost one of the worst things i could hear somebody say about my music um

13:39 Harley Eblen Yeah,

13:39 Luke F. Walton unless

13:39 Harley Eblen I can see

13:39 Luke F. Walton it

13:40 Harley Eblen it being

13:40 Luke F. Walton actually

13:40 Harley Eblen like was AI.

13:40 Luke F. Walton ai yeah like i said i am doing ai music as a separate side project but like my real music um if somebody tells me like oh yeah that sounds like lyrics are ai generated it's like oh god that's the exact like worst thing it's worse than it being bad

13:55 Harley Eblen Yeah.

13:55 Luke F. Walton You know? Yeah.

13:57 Harley Eblen No, and I feel like in an interesting way, I'm noticing that like, oh, that sounds like AI is kind of replacing, oh, that sounds like auto tune.

14:07 Luke F. Walton Cool.

14:07 Harley Eblen Because

14:08 Luke F. Walton Okay.

14:08 Harley Eblen there's,

14:08 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:08 Harley Eblen there was and still is some of this idea, but it's starting to go away that auto tune doesn't require skill.

14:16 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:16 Harley Eblen And I feel like culturally we had a moment of awakening when we all did you watch T-Pain's

14:22 Luke F. Walton Of

14:23 Harley Eblen Tiny

14:23 Luke F. Walton course.

14:23 Harley Eblen Desk concert you

14:24 Luke F. Walton Yes.

14:24 Harley Eblen knew I was gonna say that yeah

14:25 Luke F. Walton Totally.

14:26 Harley Eblen that was everyone's moment and I watched an interview with him later the Netflix show This Is Pop there was an episode

14:32 Luke F. Walton Okay,

14:32 Harley Eblen on auto

14:33 Luke F. Walton know it

14:33 Harley Eblen -tune

14:33 Luke F. Walton too.

14:33 Harley Eblen which blew

14:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:34 Harley Eblen my mind but

14:35 Luke F. Walton Cool.

14:35 Harley Eblen T-Pain said That came out, everyone was like, wow, he can sing, and his only response was just mad. He

14:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:44 Harley Eblen was like, of course, you thought this whole time I couldn't sing.

14:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:49 Harley Eblen So I feel like, I don't know, again, might change,

14:53 Luke F. Walton Mm

14:53 Harley Eblen but I feel like in 5, 10, 20 years, we're going to look at, oh, those lyrics sound AI, and it's like, well, yeah, you use AI to push your own ideas farther to be a sounding board. And it's like people have vocal styles based

15:08 Luke F. Walton Mm

15:08 Harley Eblen around auto-tune. One of my favorite examples right now is Gracie Abrams, because she is making pop folk music that intuitively would want to be very stripped back, very authentic, very like voice into the microphone into your ear. But she leans into this auto-tuned sound that just makes, like, it takes my breath away.

15:30 Luke F. Walton Yes.

15:31 Harley Eblen So it's a tool to make art.

15:34 Luke F. Walton Yes. And it's interesting how there's going to be more conversation between the mediums as they grow. like, you know, you like have Hatsune Miku, which is like. virtual artist you have um these vocaloid artists and that has influenced japanese music um and the ways that vocals are phrased in japanese music and

15:53 Harley Eblen Yeah

15:53 Luke F. Walton quantized and stuff um and then you also have like the um vibrato kind of style that's coming in right now have you noticed this or it sounds like a goat almost it's like a perfect sine wave

16:06 Harley Eblen like the the singers i feel like the example of this is like singers that are growing up listening to autotune vocals not knowing they're autotuned and learning how to sing that style it's i think that's so exciting i think it's so it's incredible

16:21 Luke F. Walton yeah

16:22 Harley Eblen like

16:22 Luke F. Walton it's

16:22 Harley Eblen i

16:22 Luke F. Walton bizarre

16:22 Harley Eblen could never do that that's such a skill

16:25 Luke F. Walton there's also an example of um when so when i was learning playing guitar I didn't really understand effects process because I didn't have one I didn't have the money or whatever I was just trying to play songs on electric

16:35 Harley Eblen Mm

16:35 Luke F. Walton guitar

16:36 Harley Eblen -hmm.

16:36 Luke F. Walton and I learned how to play a bunch of stuff that was a bunch of delay pedal stuff but I just learned how to play it

16:43 Harley Eblen Yep.

16:43 Luke F. Walton and then I brought it to my guitar teacher he's like whoa that's crazy like how are you doing that but it's like I just like wanted to play it and I didn't have a tool and I didn't even know it was a tool that made it so it made me more uh gave me more facility on the instrument than uh the original player weird

17:00 Harley Eblen There's something so exciting about being too dumb. And I mean this in a good way. or too ignorant maybe ignorance

17:09 Luke F. Walton Get yet

17:09 Harley Eblen better

17:09 Luke F. Walton ignorant

17:10 Harley Eblen to

17:10 Luke F. Walton and it's

17:10 Harley Eblen ignorant

17:10 Luke F. Walton a better word.

17:11 Harley Eblen to

17:11 Luke F. Walton Yes.

17:11 Harley Eblen know that what you're trying to do should be impossible like

17:15 Luke F. Walton Yes. Yes,

17:16 Harley Eblen it's so liberating and so exciting and i feel like in my own work i'm trying to relearn how to throw out my ideas of what is possible and just try dumb things Because it's led me some fascinating places. And it's like, yeah, it's one thing. It's more natural when it's a kid not knowing better.

17:39 Harley Eblen But like, how as an adult, as a professional, can I reignite that curiosity and just like, I wonder if I can do that.

17:48 Luke F. Walton How have you gone about that?

17:51 Harley Eblen I mean, ask me in 10 years.

17:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah, there you go. Yeah.

17:55 Harley Eblen It's, yeah, it's a process. Like I've realized. I'm someone that likes structure and systems and repeatable processes. And I've noticed that in whatever I do, the more repeatable the process, the less exciting the result in a way. So I throw myself really improvisationally at projects. Someone will send me a song. And what I do for a living is I'm a string arranger.

18:23 Harley Eblen So people send me productions that are between 50 and 80% of the way finished usually, and I will sit down and try ideas. The thing that I try to really focus on in the process, I try to be really intentional about the start.

18:38 Luke F. Walton Okay.

18:38 Harley Eblen Because the first things I do start forming the scaffolding that I can build the rest of the project on.

18:46 Luke F. Walton What's good guys Scoobert Doobert here for the Love Music More podcast and I want to let you in on a little secret one of my favorite new things Minuendo Lossless Earplugs So these are really really really cool I've got two of them here It comes in this awesome sweet box But it comes with a bunch of little goodies Like carrying case tether Cleaning tools But the real tech Is in these little tiny lossless earplugs

19:12 Luke F. Walton My favorite thing about it is, one, you can swap out any of the included tips. So depending on the size of your ear canal, we're all built different, you can get a nice, comfortable fit. But there's also this little lever on these adjustable versions that can go from 7 to 25 decibels of cutting.

19:28 Luke F. Walton So depending on if you're listening to new metal or jazz, you can just hit the little lever and adjust in real time, and I think that's really, really cool. You know, for the longest time, I was listening in those awful foam earplugs, and it makes the music sound like that.

19:41 Harley Eblen that it just cuts off all of those high frequencies and so I was always tempted to sneak them out a little bit oh it's my favorite song no earplugs and you get hearing damage you have tinnitus after the show and then you come back you want to work in the studio and guess what your ears aren't right and that's why I love Minuendo because you can just pop these in and have full full full fidelity with these lossless earplugs they're two different versions one is adjustable with a little lever and then this one is fixed

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20:20 Harley Eblen So I try to be as daring and uncomfortable and adventurous in those first ideas I put down as possible because then they push me even farther.

20:33 Harley Eblen If I get something weird down and then I'm like, I like it, but how do I make it work?

20:40 Harley Eblen Then I'm working backwards from something that makes me uncomfortable instead of being like, oh, this is a C chord. Here's my C E G. Do that. What's the next chord? Like I try to do a top down instead of a bottom up approach with my string arrangements.

20:55 Harley Eblen And that's a moment where I really feel like I can just grab a bucket of paint and like hurl it at the wall and see like, oh, that's that kind of looks like a horse. Wonder what I can do with that.

21:09 Luke F. Walton I like that. And I think there are a lot of artists, visual artists that do exactly that, like Oh, start

21:13 Harley Eblen really?

21:14 Luke F. Walton from a point of chaos of like fluid dynamics, and then you're going to frame around it and turn it into a thing so that it allows you to unlock both sides of your brain and also utilize that process oriented logical trained approach around the artistic.

21:32 Luke F. Walton free chaos and i think that is a that is a that's a beautiful way to get to a releasable bit of art rather than just a experimental bit of

21:41 Harley Eblen art it's fun yeah no i i really enjoy the process like every day when i come in here and like get paid to do that i'm like really is this is this actually my life i feel really fortunate

21:56 Luke F. Walton love that I, I, and that's, that's a hard thing to maintain because it's so easy to just get used to stuff. You

22:05 Harley Eblen Yeah.

22:05 Luke F. Walton know, that's just what we do as people get

22:06 Harley Eblen Yeah.

22:07 Luke F. Walton used to stuff, but to cultivate

22:08 Harley Eblen No, I,

22:08 Luke F. Walton that.

22:08 Harley Eblen that's actually, that gets at a really, a practice that I try to be really intentional about is it's

22:16 Harley Eblen so easy to get caught up. I mean, I guess at its core, it's just a gratitude practice, but. It's so easy to get caught up in wanting more like I just redid my studio desk now a sit-stand desk I can raise and lower it amazing like

22:30 Harley Eblen Right. Right. Yeah. yeah it's nice but like it didn't change my life it's still my desk that I come to and work at it's like oh maybe like the next version or the bigger studio or the nicer house but I like I try to center myself and walking in here and being like this room i've

22:47 Luke F. Walton Yes.

22:47 Harley Eblen dreamed about this room for 20 years and it's mine and just like taking a second sitting sitting out on our porch the other night while my partner and i were talking about um our future and finances and all of this stuff we're like an hour deep into this conversation trying to problem solve and i just took a moment i was like we're sitting on a porch

23:11 Harley Eblen drinking a glass of wine watching the sunset and this is our space i'm like this is amazing like

23:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

23:20 Harley Eblen by any metric i set out for myself except for like a couple little pieces that are icing on the cake i've made it like i work in music my partner works in theater and we are making a living like that is beyond cool But it's easy to forget if

23:38 Luke F. Walton Yes.

23:38 Harley Eblen you don't stay grounded in it.

23:39 Luke F. Walton And it's easy if you're not there to lose hope or to not, you know, see that in the future. And I think hearing these stories to be like, it is possible. It is still there. It might

23:50 Harley Eblen Yeah, totally.

23:51 Luke F. Walton be very hard. You're not, it's not going to absolve you of all stress and all financial pressure, but there is, there is like a light in this tunnel and it can be pretty sweet at the end of it. Yeah.

24:00 Harley Eblen Yeah, no, I can speak from experience. It does not absolve you of all stress or financial pressure.

24:05 Luke F. Walton right

24:05 Harley Eblen but like any job has the paperwork any job has the like i wish i didn't have to do that it's like i'd rather the overhead that's unpleasant with this than anything else ah

24:17 Luke F. Walton yes the magic for me getting this space because i got the space four or five months ago um is getting a door never i haven't had a door and so there's there's just this like element of like i can shut that at any time day or night i can make at least you know maybe not playing my drums but

24:36 Harley Eblen Yeah.

24:37 Luke F. Walton like i can make a pretty like good amount of noise and no one's gonna be bugged i can be weird i can fail and there's

24:43 Harley Eblen Yeah.

24:43 Luke F. Walton no element of like my neighborhood through my paper thin walls are going to judge me or my wife is going to be like on a conference call hearing me try to do beach boys background vocals you know like that they don't she doesn't have to do that anymore it's great

24:56 Harley Eblen I mean, that actually brings up something that's so important. like having a safe place where

25:02 Luke F. Walton yeah

25:02 Harley Eblen you can just try things like

25:04 Luke F. Walton yeah

25:05 Harley Eblen i i tend to be a little closed door and secretive about my process and i'm sorry i just saw a guy with a leaf blower show

25:13 Luke F. Walton it's

25:13 Harley Eblen up outside my

25:14 Luke F. Walton cool it's

25:14 Harley Eblen window

25:14 Luke F. Walton not that

25:14 Harley Eblen okay

25:14 Luke F. Walton loud it's not that loud

25:15 Harley Eblen cool my apologies

25:17 Luke F. Walton it's like the

25:18 Harley Eblen they

25:18 Luke F. Walton universe

25:18 Harley Eblen usually move along within like a minute or so um but yeah the space where you can go to close the door even if the leaf blower sound is coming in being able to try things and know that if it doesn't work, no one else in the world ever has to hear that thing you just tried.

25:37 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

25:38 Harley Eblen And getting to that place and then realizing, oh, it was never about other people hearing it. It's about me hearing it. How do I get comfortable with sounding bad for myself?

25:51 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

25:51 Harley Eblen Because to get to anything good, it sounds really bad for a while. Just learning to lean into that and throwing trash down until there's one piece of gold.

26:04 Luke F. Walton Love that. And there's that it's like a practice room kind of thing where, yeah, you're not supposed to sound good when you practice.

26:14 Luke F. Walton being able to apply a little bit of that in the recording studio side is really cool because usually recording studios are these high stress situations where a bunch of people are looking at you you're on the clock you're having to perform and that's part of the reason why people typically did so much pre-production work work you hash out every note you're going to play you practice it a whole bunch of times and then you go in the recording studio but you lose a little bit of magic and like the beatles i feel like we're one of the first bands to be able to go in the recording studio and fail

26:44 Luke F. Walton or get high or mess around and finish the day without anything and then come back and then lay down the most beautiful thing you've ever heard or throw a party in the recording studio and bring different energies um that's that's a unique thing that we have as home recorders as like you know people on a laptop is we can access that stuff that used to be rarefied air only for the top one percent of bands we can now capture some of that magic in our home studios it's crazy

27:09 Harley Eblen And I feel like... I feel so lucky to be there. There aren't many people exploring that energy with string arranging. And I feel so lucky to be in this like really tiny niche and then even more niche when you think about cello driven string arranging, like,

27:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

27:27 Harley Eblen like subset of subset of subset. But again, with string arranging, it used to be you hired a composer and arranger. who came in, wrote charts, you got, you hired a union string section that was as big as your budget could handle. Sometimes two players, one, two players, sometimes a quartet, sometimes like an eight, 10 piece.

27:48 Harley Eblen If you had a really big budget, you hired like the full orchestra, you rented out like the Abbey Road, East-West Studios in LA, something like that. And it was... You hit start on the clock and you're paying like thousands of dollars and

28:03 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

28:03 Harley Eblen the time is ticking and you don't have time to mess around like that's the first time the composer and arranger hears.

28:11 Harley Eblen their work in the room that's the first time the musicians are reading it's like you have to capture that magic in one thing there's a beauty to that and

28:21 Luke F. Walton Totally.

28:22 Harley Eblen i really love it but i feel so fortunate to be in a moment in time with the resources and the projects that allow me to just again throw ideas at the wall and hear them in context immediately and be like oh if i pushed that way to the back of the room if i saturated that in reverb and maybe even just Even distorted it a little bit. What would that do?

28:41 Luke F. Walton Mm

28:42 Harley Eblen Like

28:42 Luke F. Walton hmm.

28:42 Harley Eblen getting to like paint a little bit more abstractly. It's kind of a new thing in this space and

28:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

28:48 Harley Eblen it's so

28:48 Luke F. Walton I

28:49 Harley Eblen exciting to get to be a part of figuring out what it even looks like.

28:55 Luke F. Walton love that. I love the idea to have you're wearing multiple hats at once. where I was reading some Beatles stuff and they were talking about how George Martin was getting judged by the string players and he was trying to like have him win him over and you know you can picture it like these hottie like British guys yeah

29:15 Harley Eblen string players are not the most um uh they're a judgmental group sometimes

29:19 Luke F. Walton yeah it makes sense it makes sense top of the top I get it and certainly that's its own kind of energy too but the idea that you can you know design the recipe and then cook it that's

29:31 Harley Eblen Yeah.

29:32 Luke F. Walton that's a pretty special cool thing to uh and it also gives the ability for you know people that maybe aren't as advanced in their careers like me to be able to hire you and be like

29:43 Luke F. Walton you know rather than i need a hundred thousand dollars to be able to pull this off it's like no i can actually get strings on my song we can actually

29:49 Harley Eblen Yeah.

29:49 Luke F. Walton make this happen we can start experimenting early and craft a sound around it yeah

29:53 Harley Eblen Yeah. One guy in a room at home is a lot easier than like a hundred union members on the clock.

30:00 Luke F. Walton for sure for sure exactly and there's places there's places for both don't

30:04 Harley Eblen Totally.

30:04 Luke F. Walton get me wrong but

30:04 Harley Eblen Yeah.

30:05 Luke F. Walton but it is uh and also it gets what some somebody that i had on the podcast uh said it gets more of your your stink on it and i like that

30:12 Harley Eblen Oh,

30:12 Luke F. Walton where it's like

30:13 Harley Eblen I love

30:13 Luke F. Walton you

30:13 Harley Eblen that.

30:14 Luke F. Walton know like if i play drums guitar and bass it's like there's a bunch of my stank on that thing um

30:19 Harley Eblen You

30:19 Luke F. Walton you

30:19 Harley Eblen know know what?

30:20 Luke F. Walton yeah do

30:20 Harley Eblen I might have to steal that because

30:22 Luke F. Walton it i stole it from him i don't even remember who said it yeah

30:26 Harley Eblen so funny. Because even the moments where there is one note or a simple chord, I try to think about what the song is doing in that moment and just

30:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

30:40 Harley Eblen hold an intention in my head and somehow even if I'm not conscious of it it comes out in my playing in ways that are often too subtle to hear in one take but when I layer that five times ten times twenty times I'm like oh that's the thing that's happening Where I don't even, I might not even know it when it started, but that intention held across multiple tracks,

31:03 Harley Eblen like you start to feel it as builds and it like actually makes something a little bit magic happen in the song.

31:11 Luke F. Walton Agree. Those are really hard things to quantify. I feel the same thing with recording engineering.

31:19 Luke F. Walton the new way to do it is to slap on a bunch of saturation stuff after the fact but the old way that it actually happened was little tiny bits of saturation all across the parts of the cable you know signal

31:29 Harley Eblen Yeah,

31:29 Luke F. Walton chain this cable's a little busted this preamp gets this little weird thing like all of that an aggregate becomes a certain kind of saturation than just slapping a saturation plug-in on your master bus does a very different thing both

31:42 Harley Eblen mm

31:43 Luke F. Walton are fine both have their own sounds they're both cool but it's

31:45 Harley Eblen -hmm

31:46 Luke F. Walton like understanding that a little bit where you can have additive things in the playing in the personnel in the recording engineering all of that adds up to a closer thing to your final vision or something that has never been heard before um

31:59 Harley Eblen Yeah.

31:59 Luke F. Walton and i like sharing these things because as a listener you might just be like yeah there's strings on there you

32:04 Harley Eblen Yeah.

32:04 Luke F. Walton don't think like okay no the string players like got this in their head and they're layering around that idea i love that

32:11 Harley Eblen Yeah. And I mean, part of the reason I got. into this like

32:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

32:15 Harley Eblen it was an accident I wanted to be a music producer like and it just didn't work like um but even from the time I was a kid like when I was living in Britney Spears world and in Shostakovich world um I was realizing even then that there was a disconnect And I would hear strings in pop and be like, but why are they dumb? Like, why are they boring?

32:41 Luke F. Walton Wow

32:41 Harley Eblen There's nothing happening. And then I was like, oh, that's like MIDI instrument. Oh, oh, that's like a simple part. Oh, time constraints, budget constraints. Oh, that was just a texture they wanted late in the game. Realizing all of these things. But like, as I studied music more and got deeper and more had more experience in different areas.

33:01 Harley Eblen it would bother me more and more that disconnect that I was hearing and so at a certain point I was just like all right if this has been pissing me off for like over a decade I

33:14 Harley Eblen should probably try to put my money where my mouth is and figure out if it's actually doable like if I think I can do better can I um and that's been like such a fun journey because like I was as a listener trying to decode that as well um it took me a long time that

33:32 Luke F. Walton And I think that's why it's so important to cultivate taste and opinion and then, yeah, see if you can do it.

33:38 Harley Eblen taste is the whole thing like i i've held things from both Ira Glass, the producer and host of This American Life,

33:49 Luke F. Walton Uh

33:49 Harley Eblen and

33:49 Luke F. Walton -huh.

33:49 Harley Eblen Victor Wooten, the bass player.

33:51 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

33:52 Harley Eblen They give similar advice.

33:54 Luke F. Walton Cool.

33:55 Harley Eblen Victor Wooten, I took a workshop from when I was like 16. I brought an electric cello to a bass workshop.

34:01 Luke F. Walton Cool. Love

34:02 Harley Eblen Totally

34:02 Luke F. Walton it.

34:03 Harley Eblen outside my comfort zone, but I learned so much just from being around him. But I remember him saying, you can tell.

34:10 Harley Eblen when someone has spent their life in a practice room because they can play but they have nothing to play about he said you have to learn the instrument you have to get the expression through the instrument second nature but then you have to live life and you have to have something to express in the music um and I quit the cello for seven years

34:36 Harley Eblen Like I didn't play for nearly a decade and I came back to it and I realized that after coming back to it, I had so much more to say.

34:49 Harley Eblen And then the thing that ties into that, that Ira Glass said is there's the taste gap. I think about the taste gap a lot. You get into making something because you hear something in your head. or see something, feel something, whatever it is that's not happening that you want to have happen, that you want to make exist. And then you try to make it and it's nowhere close.

35:14 Harley Eblen And the gap between what you're making and what you want to be making is... working to close that is the entire journey i've gotten really comfortable with the idea that i'm never going to close that gap if i ever close that gap i've lost because

35:29 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh.

35:29 Harley Eblen that's a failure of taste like if the end all be all of music to me is what i'm making that's just ego like

35:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah.

35:41 Harley Eblen i don't want to ever unconditionally love anything i do i want to see the next step that I can take in it. That's where the

35:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

35:49 Harley Eblen joy is.

35:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah. I get that. I think the only place that I might disagree with you on is that I think I'm finding a little bit of the closing the gap is the areas that I want to remove myself.

36:06 Luke F. Walton like there's the counterpoint of this stank thing like i just saw a nate smith play with britney howard he's a great drummer uh yeah ridiculous um

36:15 Harley Eblen that had to have been a great show

36:16 Luke F. Walton it was insane it was insane is it humphreys which is this open air um venue in san diego right next to the base there's all these yachts and stuff coming it's awesome um but yeah on this this fantastic night and it's like

36:30 Luke F. Walton he's the gap i'm trying to close my drum programming my drumming i just want to sound like that like

36:35 Harley Eblen Yeah.

36:35 Luke F. Walton every single thing that he played live in front of me was as good or better than anything i would have spent days on programming or really thinking about it's just his instincts are there and so there's this almost this weird feeling of like oh he's the gap like i just want him to play on my stuff like

36:54 Harley Eblen Totally.

36:54 Luke F. Walton what am i missing her out for so i i agree with you i like i i i think that is it but i think also like the fun of figuring out where you're holding yourself back where your technique is holding yourself back where budget or network is holding yourself back like all those things closing it and i guess if you close it all the way I think it's time to start a new project probably, you

37:19 Harley Eblen Yeah, totally.

37:19 Luke F. Walton know, like maybe you've culminated that thing and, you know, maybe that's why people do their country record or something, you know, like, I don't know.

37:29 Harley Eblen Yeah. No, and I actually I feel like what you just said completely fits in because like for me, as I was saying, like I was trying to be a producer. I was trying to make records for people from the ground up and do everything.

37:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:42 Harley Eblen I got told no. And so for me, part of closing that gap was realizing this one slice is

37:50 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

37:50 Harley Eblen what I am most knowledgeable about, experienced at and passionate about. Like this is the dragon I feel

37:57 Luke F. Walton cool.

37:57 Harley Eblen like I could chase for the rest of my life.

37:59 Luke F. Walton I like that.

37:59 Harley Eblen Like this one thing. And ironically, narrowing down and getting better and better at one thing has

38:06 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

38:07 Harley Eblen put me in positions to be on better and better projects where

38:11 Luke F. Walton Yes.

38:11 Harley Eblen other areas of like, oh, I wish that aspect of this production was better and like I'll work on something and I'm like, oh my God, that's the guy like that's the guy that I love who does drums or guitar or bass. And it's like, oh, that's so cool that I'm adding strings to that record.

38:30 Luke F. Walton Love that. Love that. And I totally resonate because, and sometimes it's the wrong economic decision where like for me, I was making my money playing guitar for other people going on the road. i wasn't super passionate about it i also don't think i was that good at it because i just like i liked mixing it up too much i'm an artist like i wanted to be an artist and

38:52 Harley Eblen Totally.

38:52 Luke F. Walton i just i don't think i was super good at sticking to the script or wearing all black and kind of tucking in the back i just wasn't so i had a lot of gigs where it's like hey dude like maybe tone it down a little bit or you know it's like but i want to you know like i know this song so well now i see this other thing i could do

39:09 Luke F. Walton you um and so like took a big step back monetarily when i decided to work on production in this project and stuff um but i'm so much happier and again like i agree like it's this is the thing that yeah i could chase this for the rest of my life couldn't chase that for the rest of my life

39:26 Harley Eblen Yeah. I mean, like, you can leverage. ability you can leverage whatever capital you have to

39:33 Luke F. Walton Mm

39:33 Harley Eblen make more

39:33 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

39:33 Harley Eblen money like

39:34 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

39:34 Harley Eblen that would have been in that moment the session guitar player Yeah. the road guitar player but

39:38 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

39:39 Harley Eblen then you can also leverage that capital to buy even not monetarily more excitement more joy more passion more flexibility free time whatever whatever that is um yeah and like i i my my business doing this is

39:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

39:57 Harley Eblen on a steady growth trajectory but like it started out in the negative i'm

40:01 Luke F. Walton Right.

40:01 Harley Eblen not gonna lie it wasn't

40:03 Luke F. Walton Totally.

40:03 Harley Eblen like i it

40:04 Luke F. Walton Of course.

40:04 Harley Eblen wasn't that i jumped into this because i'm like dang i could make a killing with that

40:09 Luke F. Walton Right.

40:09 Harley Eblen It was like, I want to earn a living in music and this is a corner where I think I have something to say.

40:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:15 Harley Eblen I think I can genuinely add something if I work at this. So let me see if I can do it. And that's been worth it for me.

40:25 Luke F. Walton On that point, I'm so curious when you are approaching arrangements. So I liked your idea or your kind of central conceit of starting with something that makes you feel a little more uncomfortable, that's a little more avant-garde, that pushes the rest of the arrangement. I love that. When you're layering on that, when you're actually doing the arrangement part, you know, in this case, the like alto and tenor voice kind of

40:49 Harley Eblen Yeah.

40:49 Luke F. Walton thing. How are you filling in the gaps? How are you are you trying to write counter melodies? Are you trying to play two chords? Are you trying to stay out of the way? Are you crossing voices? Like, is there a set of kind of rules or you're just kind of following instinct? Like, how do you actually go about filling in the gaps?

41:04 Harley Eblen Yes. Um,

41:06 Luke F. Walton Cool.

41:06 Harley Eblen every, everything you just said,

41:08 Luke F. Walton Sweet.

41:08 Harley Eblen um, it, I can identify the thing I did. in hindsight like i have just enough formal music theory training i think

41:18 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:18 Harley Eblen i like left college after music theory one and two um that i can like think about it look at the thing and be like oh that's that kind of resolution or that cadence or oh i'm doing that thing but it

41:31 Harley Eblen i try to be as driven by taste as possible so the way i train myself i've made playlists of string arrangements that i admire And I listen every day, even

41:42 Luke F. Walton Cool.

41:42 Harley Eblen just for five,

41:43 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:43 Harley Eblen 10, 15 minutes,

41:44 Luke F. Walton Mm

41:44 Harley Eblen whatever it is.

41:44 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

41:45 Harley Eblen But

41:45 Luke F. Walton Mm

41:45 Harley Eblen like, I put things I want to do in my head. And as often as I can while I'm working, I reach for those things, like as direct quotes or influences, whatever it may be. But when I go to fill something in. Um, I don't think I mentioned this, but I spent five years playing guitar focusing on writing songs that was in the gap where I'd quit cello.

42:10 Luke F. Walton Cool.

42:10 Harley Eblen So I try to think about what is the song doing? What was the intention of the writer? What is the intention of the performer? What's the intention of the producer? Sometimes it's the same thing. Sometimes they're different. Sometimes it's all the same person or not. But I try to think. What are they trying to accomplish here?

42:29 Harley Eblen What have I added to it? And how do I help them bring home the message they're sending in this moment? And so that fill-in process. is often really gut sense and

42:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

42:48 Harley Eblen emotion driven so i'll listen to something and think i like the way that moves but it's not warm enough it's not grounded enough or it's not driving enough do i change it do i add more um and so often i love I love a melodic line with a third below it or above it moving

43:10 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

43:11 Harley Eblen in parallel and then breaking apart at some point that's like that's a really powerful tool that I reach for a lot in my work but have to be sparing with it because if you overdo it can be too much I think a lot about voice leading about

43:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:27 Harley Eblen how to move from one chord to another and I will lay down ideas listen back and if they're not quite working but it feels close my my trick I don't know if I invented this but I

43:43 Harley Eblen i i actually a vocal arranger um that i've worked with suggested trying something like this but i opened it all in melodyne i i sprung for the 500 version of melodyne so i It could have that

43:55 Luke F. Walton is so

43:55 Harley Eblen feature

43:55 Luke F. Walton worth it. It's so worth it.

43:56 Harley Eblen so worth it

43:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

43:57 Harley Eblen oh my

43:58 Luke F. Walton one

43:58 Harley Eblen god it's

43:58 Luke F. Walton of the most powerful tools out there.

44:00 Harley Eblen It didn't hold me back not having it. I used the free version of Melodyne that came with my DAW for

44:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:06 Harley Eblen like a year or two to

44:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:07 Harley Eblen do this.

44:08 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

44:08 Harley Eblen But once I was able to see chords and voicings and movements and how they interacted within Melodyne just taking audio and being able to visualize it, that was a game changer. But so I will literally open everything I've thrown at the wall in Melodyne and think and look and I'm like, oh, that's why that's clashing.

44:26 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yeah.

44:26 Harley Eblen and then bump it out of the way and then i'll think this could be more compelling what is it doing why is it not speaking to me and then i'll just manipulate things within there and by the time i'm a couple minutes into this and you listen through it it sounds like robot garbage because like

44:47 Harley Eblen I'll throw a cello up an octave from where I played it and it's like insane sometimes that insanity leads me to new interesting sound design ideas but

44:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:58 Harley Eblen usually it's just like a reference so I can retract some Yeah. things like

45:02 Luke F. Walton Love that.

45:03 Harley Eblen I feel like my my process is really around just continuing to throw ideas at the wall and then refining and manipulating however Speaks to me in that moment.

45:13 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah. That resonates a lot for listeners that aren't as aware of each of these concepts. I want to go through each of them in turn. So voice leading the act of moving from one chord or one note to another. There are all these different tendencies. And this is like this is what a lot of the AIs are trained on because these are known quote unquote rules that you can break. But.

45:38 Luke F. Walton There's like leading tones and those leading tones lead you back home or lead you back to a resolution. When you're thinking about voice leading, are you thinking about it in the classical jazz sense or are you thinking about it more in the pop sense of like closest neighbor? That is

45:55 Harley Eblen that's

45:55 Luke F. Walton a good question.

45:56 Harley Eblen a good question i've

45:56 Luke F. Walton I'm

45:57 Harley Eblen never

45:57 Luke F. Walton sure

45:57 Harley Eblen actually

45:57 Luke F. Walton you'd have to interrogated like depends on it.

45:58 Harley Eblen that i

45:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah. No, no.

45:59 Harley Eblen feel like i have the least training in jazz out of those three

46:04 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah,

46:04 Harley Eblen so i feel like it's pretty safe to say that there's not a lot of jazz that comes in there although i did sing in like acapella jazz groups in college so maybe some of that got in there um but Probably pop because I really like clustering.

46:20 Luke F. Walton Me too.

46:20 Harley Eblen I really like bringing voices in together and making them feel inseparable. And one of my favorite things to do is find a way to have a chord be tight and get to the next chord with the least number of parts moving.

46:35 Luke F. Walton Nice.

46:35 Harley Eblen So if I'm looking to find ways of drawing energy through, especially in verses where I don't want to. want to be this is a really broad statement but

46:47 Luke F. Walton Uh

46:47 Harley Eblen where often

46:47 Luke F. Walton -huh.

46:47 Harley Eblen versus I don't want to be the main thing I don't Yeah. want to be bombastic or really picking the energy up I'll try to draw energy through in as subtle a way as possible and

46:59 Luke F. Walton Yes. Yeah. Right. Sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast, but it's time for one more advertisement for myself for this podcast. What I'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars, to share it with your friends. This is like... 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, right?

47:26 Luke F. Walton You click on the dot, dot, dot on Spotify under there. It says rate show and you go and you click it five stars. If you could do that for me, that's the best way for the algorithms, all this stuff to share it out with the world.

47:37 Luke F. Walton 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 would really help us out and helps us, you know, get the, get the word out and spread the love of music.

47:47 Luke F. Walton music so thank you 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 so much of what the complexity of pop music where it comes from is

47:57 Harley Eblen Yeah.

47:58 Luke F. Walton holding something where it might not necessarily be supposed to but now it's like a major six and now okay now that thing is like now there's it's a major seven and now it's resolved and you know it's just the like basically just by not by choosing to not do anything you add a lot of complexity

48:13 Luke F. Walton because other stuff is moving underneath it or above it or in between it and if you just hold something steady a pedal tone that

48:20 Harley Eblen Yeah,

48:20 Luke F. Walton uh that can create its own magic without creating complexity and i think that's a beautiful

48:24 Harley Eblen suspending

48:25 Luke F. Walton thing yeah

48:25 Harley Eblen twos or fours through there. It gives me chills and I

48:30 Luke F. Walton Right.

48:31 Harley Eblen live for it.

48:32 Luke F. Walton I love it. It gives everybody chills. That's the beauty is that everybody watches a movie, everybody listens to a song like those are the moments that, you know, people think pop is so simple. It's really not. It's just using, it's creating the illusion of simplicity. You know?

48:50 Harley Eblen I learned that when I became friends with a handful of pop producers. And I was like, oh, you work so hard at this.

48:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

48:58 Harley Eblen You work so hard to make this sound easy and simple.

49:02 Luke F. Walton The thing that really clicked for me was with like Nile Rodgers and Sheik, he was talking about his guitar playing and he basically was like, you can get away with jazz if you do it quickly on the upbeats and you don't play it all at once. I was like, oh my god, funk music makes so much more sense.

49:24 Luke F. Walton You have this whole bag of extensions, all these things you can do, just don't make them too on the downbeat, don't do them all at once, dance with them, flirt with them. It's like, I,

49:37 Harley Eblen I think I might not be able to finish this interview because that was like such a profound thing for me to hear. That's so cool.

49:45 Luke F. Walton so cool, so cool. I think about that like every time I play guitar.

49:49 Harley Eblen Yeah.

49:51 Luke F. Walton because it you know i'm not a jazz guy either i know some jazz but i'm not good at it i i'm a pop musician i always i always have been and but i want to be able to use all the tools and all the colors all the flavors all the spices um it's the same thing like when i was learning how to play guitar solos and i had a really hard time connecting major scales and modes with actual usable guitar solos

50:17 Luke F. Walton and it took me a while to figure it out but it's like if i just force my brain to think pentatonic simple blues and then think of all of these things as little spices i can reach for and grab then everything got connected everything works but

50:30 Harley Eblen That's

50:30 Luke F. Walton when i

50:30 Harley Eblen cool.

50:30 Luke F. Walton was like trying to write like a like a music theory exercise or something so freaking hard and it just i lost the um kind of meaning um

50:40 Harley Eblen Yeah.

50:42 Luke F. Walton But a lot of people stop there where they lose the meaning and then they go, I don't need that.

50:47 Harley Eblen Yep.

50:47 Luke F. Walton and it's like yo you just missed out on like magenta like you you're like working with primary colors now man like you got this whole spectrum um and when you disregard it you lose some of that spectrum it doesn't mean everybody has to be a music theory nerd it's just saying like experiment with the notes you're given and the gaps in between especially as a you know strings player in melody you probably are looking at uh all of the in-between notes those blue notes those things that aren't quite exactly the

51:14 Luke F. Walton the 12 tone scale because you you can you

51:17 Harley Eblen Yeah,

51:17 Luke F. Walton know you totally. do all that cool stuff yeah

51:19 Harley Eblen Yeah.

51:20 Luke F. Walton right

51:20 Harley Eblen And it's fun to find a way to just like experiment.

51:23 Luke F. Walton uh

51:23 Harley Eblen I just, I saw, I saw a quote recently that music theory didn't ruin me, it just made me insufferable.

51:31 Luke F. Walton yes totally

51:32 Harley Eblen And I really, I really related to that.

51:34 Luke F. Walton i like that a lot too Oh,

51:36 Harley Eblen You

51:36 Luke F. Walton my God.

51:37 Harley Eblen were saying that we were going to break down some concepts and we started with voice leading and then went off on some tangents. Do we remember what the other ones were?

51:44 Luke F. Walton The other one was really just melody. Like, so what melody actually

51:46 Harley Eblen Oh,

51:46 Luke F. Walton is.

51:47 Harley Eblen yeah,

51:47 Luke F. Walton When you're talking

51:47 Harley Eblen yeah.

51:47 Luke F. Walton about autotune, which is a great place for us to jump off of. Melodyne is the software. I know I'm not telling you until a listener. So just in case you don't know, it's a software like like autotune. We're able to reach in and manipulate the pitch, the frequency of a note in a very user friendly kind of nice way.

52:04 Luke F. Walton way it's all laid out on a grid as though it's a MIDI keyboard or a piano shifted 90 degrees and it's a great way to be able to tell like the ways that variety of audio tracks rather than MIDI tracks are interacting with each other so actual physical acoustic sound being able to look at it the way that you would a virtual instrument

52:27 Luke F. Walton and then manipulate it the way that you would a virtual instrument uh and i so my latest music i got um bass clarinet i couldn't afford to like hire multiple players or anything like that i love bass clarinet there's nicole mccabe one of my favorite musicians like i'm down to do it i don't have a lot of time how about you just pay me hourly i'll knock this thing out in a few hours i'm like great do as many tunes as you can whatever like we'll figure it all out let's go um so she sent me back

52:53 Luke F. Walton Feedback basically just full takes of a few songs like I think one take of each and then I took it chopped it up built them into parts and then hard panned it left and duplicated it threw it in the right and then melodined the right version to create the harmony so

53:12 Harley Eblen Yep.

53:12 Luke F. Walton there's only one bass clarinet but I turned it into like a little weird duet of bass clarinets in each ear

53:19 Harley Eblen I love that.

53:21 Luke F. Walton and i love it it sounds really cool it's weird it doesn't quite sound like i hired two musicians it's it's this in-between thing this

53:27 Harley Eblen Yeah.

53:28 Luke F. Walton uncanny valley but it's hip it's different yeah

53:30 Harley Eblen That uncanny valley, I'm so obsessed with right now.

53:34 Luke F. Walton okay

53:34 Harley Eblen Because

53:34 Luke F. Walton cool yeah

53:34 Harley Eblen something, I was just listening to the new Fred again record and I've listened

53:38 Luke F. Walton it's

53:38 Harley Eblen through half

53:39 Luke F. Walton super good

53:39 Harley Eblen of it once.

53:40 Luke F. Walton yeah uh-huh yeah

53:41 Harley Eblen So I can't speak to it on a deep level. But there's a moment and maybe you can remind me.

53:46 Harley Eblen like he says like the vocalist says like stay human or i'm human or something and he just loops it over and over and then starts changing the formant and that formant is like the the easiest way to describe it is like the shape of your mouth and so mechanically altering the tone of the human voice talking about being human on loop like i was trying to eat dinner and i like It

54:15 Luke F. Walton Yes.

54:15 Harley Eblen was like such a poignant statement he was making in that. Like it doesn't have to sound correct.

54:26 Harley Eblen with big air quotes if you're just listening to this but like doesn't have to sound correct if you're saying something with it so

54:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

54:32 Harley Eblen like it doesn't have to sound like a bass clarinet if you want it to be pitched up and take you out of that world of realism it's such a cool effect oh

54:43 Luke F. Walton It is. And there's a weird, so thank you so much for defining formant. I'm going to hit the listeners with one more definition, the harmonic series. So like the fingerprint.

54:54 Luke F. Walton of a musical tone extends sometimes a little below too but above the notes in terms of like a octave perfect fifth I think major third and etc etc you can manipulate that in melodyne which is mind-bogglingly crazy and I've only scratched the surface of that I'm doing it a lot in my AI project I'm

55:17 Harley Eblen Nice.

55:17 Luke F. Walton throwing these AI creations I'm messing with formant and um all sorts of harmonic series stuff just because it's like a good place to do comb filtering on harmonic series in a really stupid context uh anyway burrito bot if anyone's interested um that uh that it's all it's only about mexican food um that but that tool allows you to like reach in and harmonically rich things like a cello or a bass clarinet give you more to play with because there's a bunch of harmonics that you can choose to take in or out

55:48 Luke F. Walton out and like probably probably part of the reason why shifting a cello up an octave sounds crazy in melodinus because there's all this density there's all of this stuff that is having to mathematically shift that it is doing an imperfect job of if it's a pure sine wave it's going to be fine because there's not a bunch of stuff for it to chew on

56:08 Luke F. Walton It's almost fun to give it the challenge of a bass clarinet, a reedy deep thing or a cello, a reedy complex thing that it's going to fail at that challenge and then you can push it, you know, to a new place, a sound that no one's ever heard before.

56:22 Harley Eblen I love realizing how much more in-depth your knowledge of formants are than mine. Like, yeah,

56:27 Luke F. Walton No,

56:27 Harley Eblen I realize I have so much to learn. I love it.

56:29 Luke F. Walton you explained it perfectly. I mean, the craziest thing you could do in Melodyne is you can shift formants 10,000 cents up and down. which uh is so like that

56:42 Harley Eblen I

56:42 Luke F. Walton now

56:42 Harley Eblen know what I'm doing later.

56:43 Luke F. Walton yeah do it it's crazy do it do it what i would recommend is throw an entire two track in it like an entire arrangement and then format shift it 10 000 up 10 000 down and just listen to what happens because it does this crazy thing so like format when you go negative it goes like that it goes deeper into your mouth but at some point it flips back around and then like gets back into the head and almost like it goes

57:09 Harley Eblen Wow.

57:09 Luke F. Walton from an O back up to an E somehow but there's all these digital artifacts

57:15 Harley Eblen it's really cool i've I think used it it's fascinating. uh and some remixes and um it's underutilized because it sounds bizarre kind of sounds awful but it also sounds awesome because nobody is it absolutely

57:26 Harley Eblen Awful for it to be perfect in certain circumstances. it's like the whole concept of tension and release you have you know you have awful to give way to the beautiful and now we have this digital tool to make something even more awful it's like oh sweet let's use it sometimes I've used it for transitions yeah

57:43 Harley Eblen Oh, cool. like Genius. you know something like throw the synth part that has like a lot of noise or something like that into Melodyne and then when you're pushing out of like a bridge or a breakdown into a chorus you can flip that form it up 10,000 and just

57:59 Harley Eblen sweeps like a filter sweep um it's adding all this frequency and harmonic content um yeah sick me

58:05 Harley Eblen I love music. too man it's so fun it's so great So good. So on that point, so I've got one question that I always kind of ended off and the pod with before I get to that, anything else you want to talk about, like upcoming projects, things do you want people to check out stuff that you stuff you might want to plug or anything like that? I wanted to give you an opportunity to, you know, tell the people.

58:30 Harley Eblen Thank you so much. Of I course. am most active on Instagram. Cool. My handle is harleyeblen, how my name is spelled. And what I do there is I talk a lot about... About the string arranging work that I do, I talk a lot about playing the cello and what that brings to people's work. So that's where I spend 90% of my waking hours thinking about and working on things. So if you want to connect, I'd love to chat with you there. That's the best place to do it.

58:57 Harley Eblen I love it. All right. Here's the big question. We led into it, I think, quite well. This show is called Love Music More. The question is love music. Why? It's why are you so excited about music? Why do you love it after all of this? Why is this journey worth it? And why are you excited for the next leg and the next leg after that of this journey?

59:18 Harley Eblen What is it about that? And if you were telling your younger self or something like that, about the future that they would have and the joy that they would find, how would you? How would you put it?

59:29 Harley Eblen I love this so much. There's two parts to this off the top of my head. Yeah. The first is that music is my first language.

59:39 Harley Eblen And just to remind myself of what the second part is going to be, it's dedicating

59:45 Harley Eblen yourself to something and the pursuit of excellence is what I've found makes life joyful for me. Um, so music being my first language, like started this off talking about how when I was two days old, like couldn't breathe listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan. I was just captivated.

60:06 Harley Eblen I feel like in my musical training, I learned how to play notes and melodies and understand chords before I learned words. I had to learn lyric writing later. English feels almost as expressive to me as music, but not quite. When I'm fueling something, when I'm trying to work through something, when I'm trying to share something or express something, music is what does that best for me.

60:30 Harley Eblen So getting to work on projects, whether they're clients' mind or just for fun, the process of giving my emotional self and my whole being over to trying to express something.

60:46 Harley Eblen is i feel really emotional right now it's the most healing thing in my life it's the most powerful and grounding thing it's what makes me feel the most human period um and the thing that makes me excited about continuing with that is that i've carved out this situation in my life where i get to make a living by pursuing that

61:16 Harley Eblen By having people come to me and ask me to take their song over the edge emotionally, 90% of the time that's what the ask is.

61:28 Harley Eblen And so I get to express things that I feel in my first language to try to heighten other people's work. And getting to do that collaboratively, but getting to work alone, getting to dig deep in myself and process things in real time through that.

61:45 Harley Eblen And just pursue getting more fluent at that, being able to have the thing come out right the first time more often than it used to and knowing that that'll keep happening into the future. That pursuit brings me so much joy. So I feel like those two sides of it, just music is everything to me.

62:08 Harley Eblen It's a great answer. Great way to put it. Well, everybody, thank you so much for joining us. Be sure to check out Harley on Instagram and hire, get hired, you know, get some strings on your stuff.

62:25 Harley Eblen We'll have a great time. Thank you so much. It was really good to talk to you. It was a real pleasure and let's definitely keep in touch.

62:32 Harley Eblen Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much.