Keeping The Inner Musician Alive

0:59 What's good everybody Scoobert Doobert here. I want to talk about what a musician actually is and why I think more people should consider themselvesMusicians or at least be open to the idea of being musicians then you might think and

1:33 I really love these kind of philosophical questions of like what is music? What is a musician andI don't want to dwell on that too muchBut I want to at least offer my own opinion and I'll ask other guests because maybe my opinion iswrong, butMy take is a musician is one who orders sound and in many ways an artist is one who orders chaosSometimes the ordering can feel chaotic like a Picasso, but the key

2:06 Element is not necessarily writing great core progressions or melodies the element is using your judgment and your tastetoadd elementsThroughout time and these elements areEverything from frequency is in like the pitch

2:30 The ways that those frequencies can layer as in the timbre the dynamics as in howLoud or quiet something is andThen where they're placed

2:44 Pretty much everything else you do from cool phaser effects to reverbs and delayspitch shifts etcAre all just pulling those three main levers how loud is it what is the pitch what is the frequency and

3:05 Where is it placed in time and if you distill it down to that you can think of a really great example is the tone poemWhich comes from it's really cool.

3:20 I think it's FrenchPerspective ofPatching together different clips of tape To make something that isn't a traditional pop song or a classical song, but it's instead an exploration of sound anda collection of artifactsIUnderstand that sounds very heady, but then just listen to rubber soul and recognize how

3:47 That can be a really satisfying experience in pop music too and I like to think about that ofWhat can the non-musician quote-unquote

4:00 Offered to the musician and a lot of it is thinking outside of the box in a way that the musician can pick up and say ohICan mess with thatBut I feel like there are a few things going on at the same time where yes music is easier to make than everSo there are probably are more musicians now than there ever have been and that's great

4:21 However, I do think that a lot of those musicians are constraining themselves into certain ways of thinking and that's not greatThe vast majority of us will not be successful in the monetary sense, but what can we be successful in?I would say pushing the medium forward doing something interesting.

4:38 Yeah, hopefully trying to make money as well, but That is a byproduct. It's a knock on effect.

4:44 It's something that you have to work for of course and you have to center it and you have to do everythingYou can but fundamentally the artist the core of what you're what you are doing should be protectedfrom the tumultuous outside world and I do think that we all have kind of this flame That we have to huddle around through the wind of things like you know capitalism and greed and expectation and time

5:10 Do you try to keep it alive like a childhood energy?But I think it's even richer and deeper than that and I think that that's a bit of a I don't know like a clicheIf you got to keep the child inside you alive, I think it's even bigger than that.

5:27 You have to keep it the you inside you alive andMusic is a great vector to keep that going some meansTo keep that flame bright despite whatever else is happening And I like I want to extend that to more people, but I'd like to extend it to more people not in the sense of and you can get a million streams on SpotifyIt's like maybe you will and that's cool

5:50 Less in that and more like you can keep that flame or you can find it againEven if it goes out it canRespark music is a great kind of little magic that we all have inside of ourselvesAnybody that taps their foot you're making music. You are structuring sound

6:09 Doesn't even have to be structured in the perfect way like some of my like D'Angelo one of my favorite musicians of all timehe just passed away andSuper bummed about it because I think he had a lot more music left in himBut the music that he did give us is a fundamental. I think he's in my book

6:28 Arguably the most influential musician of the last 25 years of this entire millenniumI think everything coolThat has been released in this millennium isPartly his faultHe's that good, but his passing made me think a lot about

6:47 What did he offer to music itself and he offered a different sense of rhythm a different sense of thinkingWhile still being deeply rooted in Prince and in funk and in history and in what makesThe black music tradition so incredibly powerful in the United States

7:10 It's it's something that defines not only the US but the entire world the entire human race

7:16 And he was so good at distilling that but not just a silly but moving it forward and he was moving it forward in a way that wasimperfect in human andplaying withLike timing and center and pitch center everything those three lovers

7:34 Tamber which like is just basically an extension of frequency like he was singing harmonies in really cool ways like stacking his vocalsRe-recording himself on top of himself in really really cool ways putting them in really cool placesAnd then choosing really interesting dynamicsAs well as like playing with the larger kind of meta-conversation of genre

7:56 But d'Angelo was one of those artists that really was like that's an artistThat's somebody that saw something that no one else didAnd pushed it further moved the whole game forward

8:10 And of course that requires an incredible amount of refinement and talent of which he had all of it

8:17 But I do think that there's a conversation to be had especially now that things are more accessible between the fans

8:26 And the performers where the fans can become musicians themselves and I think that you can becomeYou can let yourself is kind of what I'm saying you can let yourself exploreDoesn't mean that anybody's gonna listen to you.

8:40 That's totally understandablebutJust saying that to be a musician doesn't mean that you have to be perfect or that you have to be great or that you have to be Virtuastic or that you have to be universally acknowledgedWe're have a lot of numbers on whateverThe platform is of choiceBe it in the 1950s with AM radio to now with Spotify

9:05 All that stuff that's passing the things that are true and eternal are did you actually make music?Did you explore that side of yourself

9:15 Did you lay yourself and you don't even have to record it you don't even have to share itLike I was I was talking with a friend about modular synthesizers which is like

9:26 A lot of modular synthesis performances are a little they're blurring the lines betweenAre you playing the instrument or are you just kind of like trying to herdThis like wild beast into a corner that you think is interestingBoth I guess but modular synths you knowYou've got a lot of different patch cables from one module to the next and it's making a lot of boops and beeps

9:47 But you're trying to organize that chaos and in much in the same way that the tone poem worksYou are not necessarily thinking of like a chorus and a verse you're not thinking of like a commercialized packageAgain, not saying that's bad.

10:00 I do that every day and I like itI'm just saying that there are other ways of expressing yourself and I think that Having more people that are doing this not to be successful might be a good thing for everybodyAnd that might be kind of the shot in the arm the music industry needs right now ofLike what are we doing? Are we all just gunning for the same Ford commercial?

10:22 Not that there's anything wrong with it. I want the Ford commercialYou know I pitched a thing recently and it was coolUm, I lost it, but it was coolUh, and you know there are there are politics and fame all these things that go into it and that's finebutI'm not saying that commercialism is bad.

10:43 I'm just saying thatThere shouldn't be I think it's like Picture a classical symphony where you have the musicians that are up on stage and then everyone sitting down in their Sunday bestwatchingVersus picture a blues show where the audience is yelling back at the performersAnd I have been in both situations like I've been a choral person in the large ensemble and I've also been a blues guitarist

11:12 Blues guitarist is way more fun because everyone's yelling at youAnd if you're doing something cool, they're yelling at you more and it's so much more evocative and interesting and it pushes you to different levelsI'm just saying that I think that there's a level of that within digitalThat we can get to where it's not just people are enjoying my musicThey're jumping off of it

11:34 Maybe there's new innovations or things to be had, but I would love it if I was making music and then other people were making music off of thatMusic none of the people were making music off of that music off of that musicEven it was super weirdnot commercialand I but I do think a lot of it isWe have we've pigeonholed our industry into a thing that you become like rich or not successful and there is a binary tree

12:01 You're either a mega artist you are eating nothingAnd I think that that robs us of music itselfBecause how many musicians actually have been super successful in the history of humanity, you know Chopin. He you know one of the greatest pianists of all time one of the greatest composers of all timeHe barely made any moneyWriting his music is all just lessons

12:25 And that doesn't diminish what he did we're all playing it still todayLike you're not a good pianist unless you know some Chopin and play it really wellI'm super excited. I'm gonna go see one of my favorite solo pianists Nobuyuki Tsujii at uh

12:38 Like the Huntington something uh in in Orange County and I can't wait. I can't wait. He's awesome.

12:44 But anywayumI'm just saying likeIt doesn't have to be one or the otherI think that the blues situation where you're yelling at each other versus the concert situation where you're enjoyingAnd you're just specitating both are goodBut in the same way the digital medium and the Trying to achieve versus not trying to achieve anything all of that is good and valuable and mattersAnd we needinterestWe don't need more slop

13:11 We don't need more AI stuff necessarilyBut there might be something there for people that are really inventiveAnd I'm not I don't want to shut that doorI don't want to shut any door.

13:21 I just want more in itBut I want more in the sense of not everyone's just hype chasing not everyone's just trying to make a dollar or scamAn algorithm or scam a search engine Everyone's like actually creating what they think and feel and it is novel because every individual is an entirely novel individualAnd I think that's something that keeps getting lost is what are weI don't think we are simpleAnd I think any

13:50 Anybody that makes themselves simple is denying their own natureBecause we are complex and we are diverseAnd not just in the traditional senseWe are diverse in the sense that no two people are remotely the same

14:07 And if you are remotely the same it means I think at least I don't know this is my opinionI think it means that you're denying some part of yourself

14:15 So I really think that each of us are infinite we are continuous we are not discreteSo what kind of music do you make if you allow yourself to be infinite?

14:26 I ask that question to you just as much as I ask it to me. I don't know. I'll tryI'll probably fail but maybe I'll succeed sometimesBut I want you to join me.

14:37 I don't want it to be a one-way thingAnd I also think that for musicians to succeed especially underground people or independent people like myselfUh having an audience that plays really helpsBecause then you know what I'm doing you know Like you can you can enjoy somethingIt's one of the things I really have enjoyed about the times that I've played in JapanI've gotten to do some cool stuff on guitar that

15:04 Anywhere else I've playedOutside of only musician venues like I had some cool moments in collegeWe're pretty much everybody in the audience was a musician and that opened that unlocks some different thingsLike if you look at like a Jacob Collier performance very similarAnd that's fun. That's really really cool.

15:20 And I'm a little jealous of that not gonna lieumBut if everyone's a little bit of a musician Everyone's more bought in everyone gets the acrobaticsIn the same way that if you played soccer football or basketballYou watch somebody throw down 360 down and you're likeWowAll that to say consider yourself infinite you areWhat can you make show me I want to hear it go to scoobertdoobert.pizza

15:48 Hear my stuff message me at scoobertdoobert.pizza or hit it hit me up in the commentsAnd uh thanks for listening. I'll be back next week. Hope you will be too