An Interview with Luke Moellman

0:00 Luke F. Walton Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Music 101. I am joined with a very special guest, Luke from Great Good Fine Ok, as well as many other things that I am excited to dig into. And we're going to talk about all the things that we talk about on this podcast, production, making music, being in a band right now, going on tour. So without further ado, Luke, how are you doing? Thanks for joining.

0:22 Luke Moellman I'm doing good, Scoob. Thanks for having me on.

0:24 Luke F. Walton For sure, man. I hear you have a tour coming up. That's super exciting.

0:29 Luke Moellman yeah um so with with my band Great Good Fine Ok we're going out uh for like pretty much most of the month of april so

0:38 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

0:40 Luke Moellman kind of just getting everything starting to get things ready for that yeah

0:43 Luke F. Walton That's awesome. Get the rehearsals going.

0:45 Luke Moellman yeah

0:45 Luke F. Walton I saw you had a set list post asking for people to chip in songs they want to hear on tour. I love that.

0:50 Luke Moellman trying to tap into the hive mind a little bit um because it's definitely like you know at this point we just have way more stuff than we can fit into even an hour and a half set

1:01 Luke F. Walton Of course.

1:02 Luke Moellman so we're just trying to find the sweet spot of like you know new things from from the past year that we've put out plus everyone's favorites from the last like six seven years

1:13 Luke F. Walton Love it. Your debut is in 2013. So yeah, you got almost 10 years of.

1:19 Luke Moellman Yeah, we've been at it for a minute here.

1:21 Luke F. Walton Love it. That's awesome. Well, excited to talk about that. I think maybe we should start just talking about what actually goes into.

1:29 Luke F. Walton preparing for a tour because i feel like most people just kind of see the end product they see

1:32 Luke Moellman Mm

1:32 Luke F. Walton the band come through

1:33 Luke Moellman -hmm.

1:33 Luke F. Walton and they see the show but they don't like think about all of the different decisions from you know they like you guys are a duo but then you have additional musicians come play maybe like we could talk about the rehearsals the the experience of like inviting more people into a sound um like for example i'm a solo artist but i want to play with people live it expands things um how do you kind of go about like

1:55 Luke F. Walton finding that fit finding the people that you want to take with you on tour or deciding like are we going to do a duo thing are we going to do a four piece like how how do you kind of like go about like thinking that through yeah

2:06 Luke Moellman Yeah, so I guess when John and I started the project in 2013, you know, after we kind of just made one song together and we were like, this is cool, we should keep doing this and see what else happens.

2:24 Luke Moellman And we sort of got to a point where it was like, you know, starting to gain some traction and things are doing well on Hype Machine.

2:33 Luke F. Walton oh yeah

2:33 Luke Moellman remember

2:34 Luke F. Walton oh

2:34 Luke Moellman that thing that

2:35 Luke F. Walton yeah i remember that thing that was like the

2:36 Luke Moellman like

2:36 Luke F. Walton the

2:36 Luke Moellman totally

2:36 Luke F. Walton godsend when you're like oh we're trending ai machine yeah that was it

2:40 Luke Moellman it's like it feels like it was it was easier to put music out back then because you

2:45 Luke F. Walton agree it

2:45 Luke Moellman know you

2:46 Luke F. Walton was

2:46 Luke Moellman weren't just at the whims of spotify editorial playlists

2:49 Luke F. Walton it was like it was both broader if people don't know what it is like you had like all these different blogs that would post about you and if you got on enough blogs it would aggregate it and then you'd be trending as like

3:00 Luke F. Walton like somebody that you like it had that it had that sense of if you connect with a larger community and then it can pipeline you up to you know people that are just trend watchers it was right a benefit

3:12 Luke Moellman and

3:12 Luke F. Walton of

3:12 Luke Moellman i think

3:12 Luke F. Walton worlds you yeah

3:12 Luke Moellman know the way we had done it is we knew someone at one specific blog that was particularly influential and a lot of other blogs looked to this blog sort

3:23 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah for

3:23 Luke Moellman of as like a tastemaker and

3:25 Luke F. Walton sure

3:25 Luke Moellman uh you know once we got picked up by them like all these other people started to see it and then yeah it just started taking off on hype machine um so yeah it was it was good to get some some eyes and ears on it right from the get-go but

3:40 Luke F. Walton Totally.

3:40 Luke Moellman um we so that was in like you know maybe august or september of 2013 if i'm remembering it correctly and then uh we We got selected to play at South by Southwest the following March, and that was going to be like the debut of, you know, the live show and everything.

4:01 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

4:02 Luke Moellman And we decided that we, you know, we wanted it to be a band in some way. John and I had both played in, you know, various other bands coming up before that. So we knew we wanted it to be more than just the two of us on stage with like tons of tracks going.

4:19 Luke F. Walton Exactly. Exactly.

4:21 Luke Moellman um you know we've always had backing tracks in the live show but we wanted it to be you know something where most of the parts were being covered by actual humans um

4:32 Luke F. Walton Great.

4:33 Luke Moellman and yeah i mean the the band originally was a five piece

4:39 Luke F. Walton Oh, really? Cool.

4:40 Luke Moellman Yeah, it's now a four piece. A couple people have shifted in and out. But yeah, the current iteration of the band, we've been playing with these guys for probably four or five years at this point.

4:53 Luke F. Walton That's awesome.

4:54 Luke Moellman Yeah. And they're just, you know, they're just homies. They're just guys that I went to music school with.

5:00 Luke F. Walton I love it. I love it. How do you go about, like... so i know that this is a hard thing for a lot of musicians and also music fans like i think have a sometimes like a hard time grappling with the idea of tracks like some people are like morally opposed to it other people have like a really hard time even knowing what's in a track or like what's going on how do you like go through that that idea that like process of being like okay this should be a part or this should be adapted or even ignored but this part is so supportive

5:30 Luke F. Walton like a like an arpeggiator or something that like needs to be super locked to the click or I don't know something like that like how do you decide what gets thrown to a musician or gets thrown into the track the backing track on the computer

5:43 Luke Moellman That's a great question. I think, I mean, there's even some instances where like. things will sort of be coming from both

5:52 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

5:53 Luke Moellman um

5:53 Luke F. Walton yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good point.

5:54 Luke Moellman just for like reinforcement or

5:56 Luke F. Walton Right.

5:56 Luke Moellman you know because the thing is like you just want it to sound or at least for me in this setting you know i just i just want it to sound really good and tight and you know full um

6:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

6:08 Luke Moellman i guess the biggest challenge for us is um john does a lot of falsetto vocals and you know those tend to be pretty low volume coming

6:20 Luke F. Walton Sure.

6:20 Luke Moellman into a microphone and this microphone is also on a stage with an actual drum set you

6:26 Luke F. Walton Right.

6:26 Luke Moellman know sometimes only like five feet behind him so it's like this it ends up just being a room mic for the drum set Yes. um so you know Just to make sure like the vocals cut through enough,

6:39 Luke F. Walton Mm

6:39 Luke Moellman we do

6:39 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

6:39 Luke Moellman have like, you know, a fair bit of those on the track, especially on just choruses or things where it's supposed to be, you know. super in your face um

6:48 Luke F. Walton i i hear that like do you also think of like stereo for those kind of sections like that's something that i i always am curious with some some people are mono tracks and people stereo tracks i feel like sometimes one of the beauties of choruses just to make them feel like the a chorus even is like it opens up it's

7:03 Luke Moellman yeah and i think totally um you know that's interesting because some clubs you get into and it's the system is totally mono like like there's there's just no stereo um so

7:16 Luke F. Walton been there yeah

7:17 Luke Moellman actually you know i think the initial versions of everything was uh a little less refined and you know we were just doing tracks out of one stereo output um

7:28 Luke F. Walton nice

7:29 Luke Moellman but now we do it where we have like a stereo pair of vocals a stereo pair of track which is

7:36 Luke F. Walton yeah

7:36 Luke Moellman just everything

7:37 Luke F. Walton yeah

7:37 Luke Moellman else and then um a mono bass track And then if there's any like stereo information that's in the base of the song, I'll just kind of like bit

7:48 Luke F. Walton filter it

7:48 Luke Moellman side

7:49 Luke F. Walton or

7:49 Luke Moellman that

7:49 Luke F. Walton yeah

7:49 Luke Moellman so that it's just like the sides are going into the tracks channels.

7:53 Luke F. Walton got it yeah has

7:55 Luke Moellman And that, yeah, just that way the front of house engineer can kind of adapt

8:00 Luke F. Walton some control yeah

8:01 Luke Moellman things.

8:01 Luke F. Walton that's a good point what do you use uh in terms of like like splitting that and and feeding it out to the board um like to be able to have all those different stereo outputs

8:11 Luke Moellman so it's all it's all running out of Ableton um

8:13 Luke F. Walton Nice.

8:14 Luke Moellman and you know every song is a little bit different in terms of like what what's within the Ableton session that I have access to to be able to turn up and down sometimes it's like you know we're in the tech rehearsal before the tour and it's like I'm literally sitting there uh printing out just what should be in the track and it just comes out you know as a two track you

8:37 Luke Moellman But other times I have like a little more control where I have just various stems that I'm kind of rebalancing and then sending out of those outputs.

8:48 Luke F. Walton very cool and then the actual like hardware that you use like coming out of ableton on a computer obviously coming out of ableton and then sending it out to the board do you have like a audio interface or something like that

8:57 Luke Moellman Yeah,

8:57 Luke F. Walton that works out

8:58 Luke Moellman so we use this thing, it's called the iConnectivity.

9:04 Luke F. Walton Nice.

9:05 Luke Moellman What's the name of it? It's sort of like specifically built for, you know, doing live stuff

9:12 Luke F. Walton Oh, neat.

9:12 Luke Moellman because it has a redundant USB input. So you can actually have two computers plugged into it at once. And as soon as it, you know, loses connection to one, it just flips over to the other.

9:25 Luke F. Walton Dang, that's awesome. How cool

9:27 Luke Moellman So,

9:27 Luke F. Walton is that?

9:28 Luke Moellman so,

9:28 Luke F. Walton I love

9:29 Luke Moellman you

9:29 Luke F. Walton it.

9:29 Luke Moellman know, yeah,

9:29 Luke F. Walton Yeah, look that up because I'm totally going to steal that from you.

9:32 Luke Moellman we don't, we don't use that. We don't use that feature of it, but it's

9:36 Luke F. Walton Yeah, totally. But it's cool. Like play audio,

9:38 Luke Moellman the icon activity play audio 12. So it just says

9:41 Luke F. Walton 12.

9:41 Luke Moellman 12, 12 mono outputs.

9:43 Luke F. Walton That's awesome. That's awesome. I'll have to check that out. Speaking of Ableton, I want to talk a little bit about DAWs because I just had some people kind of hitting me up on Reddit.

9:55 Luke F. Walton shout out to um people that message each other on reddit which is like not a very large community

10:01 Luke Moellman Yeah.

10:01 Luke F. Walton like i have like you know like seven followers or something on reddit maybe a little more than that but those are like holy crap i have reddit followers who call each other on reddit um but anyway uh some people were sliding in my dms asking me about where they should start going into audio production and wanting to look at a digital audio workstation DAW

10:24 Luke F. Walton what's what's your take on it obviously ableton has got some some benefits for live i'm loving what they're doing with like the community and the

10:31 Luke Moellman Mm

10:32 Luke F. Walton ability

10:32 Luke Moellman hmm.

10:32 Luke F. Walton to like quickly build plugins and stuff like that so i kind of feel like ableton might be the future but i just wanted to pick your brain on it what do you use

10:39 Luke Moellman Yeah.

10:39 Luke F. Walton what do you prefer different

10:40 Luke Moellman I

10:40 Luke F. Walton things for

10:41 Luke Moellman use,

10:41 Luke F. Walton different situations

10:41 Luke Moellman I use Studio One.

10:44 Luke F. Walton cool sweet

10:45 Luke Moellman I've switched over to that in 2018 from using Logic for probably 10 years. And I've always kind of used Pro Tools off and on in

10:57 Luke F. Walton Uh

10:58 Luke Moellman the background.

10:58 Luke F. Walton -huh. For sure.

11:00 Luke Moellman I think the first one I ever used was a combination of Fruity Loops and

11:05 Luke F. Walton Nice.

11:05 Luke Moellman Acid Pro music.

11:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I had Acid Pro music. That was my first doctor.

11:10 Luke Moellman Yeah, yeah, loop town. so i would like use the the demo of fruity loops to like export loops because

11:18 Luke F. Walton Oh, cool.

11:19 Luke Moellman there there was no restriction for that you just couldn't like save a song you

11:23 Luke F. Walton That's funny.

11:23 Luke Moellman know and then i would kind of construct them in ableton or

11:27 Luke F. Walton I love

11:28 Luke Moellman acid

11:28 Luke F. Walton how all those weird, like... product demo or like software demo things end up creating like i do the same thing where like i have this i think it's called twang strum and it's a spring reverb and it's ridiculously expensive but it lets you demo it and then like bounce things out but every once in a while i'll just have like this epic white noise swell i just think it's so funny how like

11:55 Luke Moellman like i think i actually snuck one of those white noise swells into one of the songs is like that is hilarious of this like

12:00 Luke Moellman Oh, it's not just a burst. It's like it's like an ocean wave. yeah totally that just kill it like takes over all of your audio but i think it's funny how those things end up like on like definitely not intended but they end up sparking creative workarounds

12:13 Luke Moellman Right. that's Yeah. kind of fun cool that's cool so so definitely um i'm mostly a pro tools guy but i'm probably switching after this record probably to ableton just from what i've been seeing from my friends but yeah

12:25 Luke Moellman Yeah. Ableton does seem really cool. I guess I've only really used it as a way to drive our live show.

12:34 Luke Moellman That's the only way I've used it too is I've only used it in like the actual Ableton live capacity like yeah Yes,

12:41 Luke Moellman Right. Yeah. So I, you know, I feel like I know it pretty well, but I haven't, you know, I don't think I've really taken it through its paces in a creative sense.

12:53 Luke Moellman yeah You know, I'm not. I'm not so hip to just like all the kind of sound mangling possibilities that exist there.

13:01 Luke Moellman Oh yeah, it's pretty incredible and it seems a little bit more... i don't know like geared towards super fast workflows and um

13:10 Luke Moellman Mm like hmm. i they have like really nice search bars and stuff like that for for plugins and things which i find kind of attractive instead of like on pro tools i'm like going through

13:20 Luke Moellman so studio one is has all of that stuff you're talking about like it has all the search it's very uh drag and drop

13:26 Luke Moellman Nice. it's it has melodyne integrated into the interface so that's fun you can literally click like you know any region that you want to melodyne hit command m and it just pops up

13:40 Luke Moellman oh that's nice that's really nice can you um so for people that don't know melodyne is like auto-tune but um a lot more uh control at least in my experience

13:50 Luke Moellman yeah yeah so that's a lot more hands-on yeah yeah and and you can also do like crazy stuff with it i've i've been really enjoying playing with formants in melodyne like yes

14:00 Luke Moellman that whole the whole thing down at the bottom where you can you know adjust the structure of all the levels of the individual harmonics

14:07 Luke Moellman crazy that stuff exactly thing has some pretty nuts like sound design possibilities

14:12 Luke Moellman totally i did um so i have a hyperpop song that i did with did with my friend called 5g baby and like literally the entire song is just a like pad that was created out of like a chant and people playing in a playground and stuff but like pitched it into the key and then messed with the formant and the harmonics and stuff like that and then it turned into it's a weird synthesizer um it's very unsettling but because it's hyper pop that's kind of what you want i guess

14:40 Luke Moellman Yep, exactly. so anyway i want to talk about um like creative workflow and like production arranging kind of stuff like that um sure so

14:48 Luke Moellman um how do you usually you know start a song does it come from different paths um like how do you kind of get into that mode of experimentation and you have a blank session how do you start to fill that up same

15:01 Luke Moellman man it's it's kind of different every time i yeah think same for me yeah it's like i'll just it'll be whatever i'm kind of into at that moment like you know

15:15 Luke Moellman do you feel like you like this is this kind of my my process like i all have some nucleus i don't know what it'll be it might be rhythm might be synth might be a guitar part a vocal line whatever and then i'll just kind of like dance around that that nucleus do you have kind of like a similar process or do you like plan things out more and more pre-pro

15:33 Luke Moellman sometimes you know i will if i know i'm kind of like going into a uh you know concerted writing effort time period i'll uh i'll sort of just like set some stuff up for myself like give myself some parameters like maybe build a template to use

15:52 Luke Moellman what does that what does that look like like a template in terms of like form or kind of like just the different tracks

15:57 Luke Moellman like more just like uh these are the synths i'm going to use like here's a bunch of like tracks with like weird vocal effects that i can just like you

16:05 Luke Moellman Okay. know throw a vocal down onto it and it'll like do something fun um Okay. That's fun.

16:12 Luke Moellman yeah but just like you know a few of like the synths that i that i'm using most um and then yeah that that way like you know when i sit down to actually just come up with stuff i sort of have a bunch of stuff ready to go

16:28 Luke Moellman Nice. you Um, yeah. that's cool so you're basically like taking some of the like production and like arranging like workflows and separating them a little bit so you can be more creative on the actual part writing while making some of the creative decisions ahead of time in terms of like at least starting sounds just starting sounds

16:49 Luke Moellman So I guess like to give you a little context, yeah the way that it's usually happening. is like you know i'll be in the room with

16:57 Luke Moellman Mm-hmm. uh with john with Yeah. other writers as well um Cool. and so there's you know it's usually just like okay cool like what are you guys feeling today you know

17:08 Luke Moellman Yeah. um sometimes like someone will just throw out like a feeling or like you know any kind of thing to just sort of inform what the vibe is sometimes i'll just be sitting around you know

17:21 Luke Moellman playing different patches and someone would be like whoa that's really cool let's

17:24 Luke Moellman Nice. uh make something out of that Cool. and Yeah. Yeah. it just sort of you know once you like once something gets sort of thrown out that everyone sort of grabs onto um i feel like you just kind of take that and run with it

17:38 Luke Moellman Love it. That kind of sparks, sparks that like collaboration. yeah exactly yeah Um,

17:45 Luke F. Walton then moving on from there so like say you you like wrote a song you have kind of a demo a general kind of vibe maybe not everything is all fleshed out how do you take that to that next level like that pre-mixing but like that yeah

17:57 Luke Moellman Are we talking finishing?

17:58 Luke F. Walton that the finishing like that is before the polishing that that that kind of super fascinating to me because like i a lot is talked about about like mixing and mastering a lot is talked about songwriting but what about that that middle gap like

18:14 Luke Moellman how do you take it from there to there yeah So you mean like after you have sort of the whole song mapped out more

18:25 Luke Moellman so like or less? like like that that that like kind of liminal area of like you have the song form you have the lyrics you have the melody you have most things tracked

18:34 Luke Moellman and now it's kind of like time to add in the sweeteners add in maybe like a bass track or finalize some things you know like maybe there's some stuff that's like oh that's a demo synth like i want to dig deeper into that sound that moment

18:47 Luke Moellman yeah where it goes oh from being a demo to being like a record like the thing that switches it over to being like real

18:53 Luke Moellman i wish i wish that that was just like a moment like that that just happened it's uh it's uh more often than not like just a lot of hard work

19:04 Luke Moellman Yeah. a lot of experimentation a lot of like you know sometimes in the in the initial session i'll get lucky and i'll pick some good sounds that i can really just sort of run with until it's done um but yeah i mean

19:24 Luke Moellman i feel like most of the time it's sort of like okay this is really good but it could be you know better and just kind of have more of a purpose uh

19:34 Luke Moellman Mm-hmm. sonically and you know just be more of the right sound because i feel like uh you know it's really easy to just fall into the trap of like trying to keep mixing something and tweaking the sound

19:47 Luke Moellman Yep. you know with eqs and everything like that until it works right but i feel like uh the easy the the more direct route is just to figure out the right sound

19:58 Luke F. Walton That's a really great point and something that I did want to talk to you about. I think the hardest thing for me is synth design. I know that might be...

20:06 Luke Moellman one of your greatest strengths can you talk about like the reason why it's hardest for me is because it is so easy to change at least with software sense i feel like that might be one of the benefits for analog sense but like it's so easy to be like no completely different like fundamentally changing the waveform the even like everything about the processing choosing a different software center just like infinite possibility how do you like when you're doing synth design try and

20:35 Luke Moellman make that process like more uh less sporadic or like how do you find how do you find like

20:43 Luke Moellman Yeah, that's right. the sound or do you just kind of like hunt and then end up stumbling on something or is it like way more intentional i'm always curious all

20:51 Luke Moellman All of the above, honestly. of the above yeah totally totally Yeah, it's sometimes I'll be, you know, I'll need.

20:59 Luke Moellman i'll have a section of a song that just you know needs like a really specific kind of sound maybe

21:04 Luke Moellman Mm-hmm. there's like you know some reference that i'd really like and For you sure.

21:09 Luke Moellman know kind of geeking out trying to get something to just fit in sort of the same way Okay, and

21:14 Luke Moellman yeah. um yeah like a lot of times i'll just sort of rapid fire make like a bunch of different versions of

21:21 Luke Moellman Okay, it sort that's smart. of That's like copy cool. the track down and just try it on a different synth try it with a different patch like try it you know what i mean and then um go through and edit after the fact like take a break from it come back and then be like maybe you know one of these by itself is the best one or maybe like this one with like a tiny bit of this one under it

21:42 Luke Moellman Great. um maybe it doesn't need like these other layers so Yes. like that's one approach another one is just uh you know being like i'm gonna do this with the juno Cool. like i'm gonna do it with the profit

21:56 Luke Moellman Right. and just sort of like zoning in maybe a lot of times i'll have the midi sending out to the actual hardware synth

22:05 Luke Moellman Okay. so that i can then be um you know adjusting the envelopes and the filters in real time

22:11 Luke Moellman Great way to do it. Yep. and i think that sort of gives you it's it always is going to give you something that's a little more human um even if it's like a super quantized part if you're there like actually moving the knobs um

22:24 Luke Moellman Yes You know, you're kind of like helping it to breathe with, Mm hmm. you know, the vocals or whatever it's accompanying.

22:33 Luke Moellman Yeah, I like I like that, too, because you're kind of just like you were talking about with those like arranging songwriting sessions, finding moments to kind of separate out the process. I find that really valuable, too, where it's like, OK, I got the part.

22:45 Luke Moellman let's get the sound and then you can route that MIDI over to an actual analog synth or something like that where you can start like tactilely that it unlocks something for sure.

22:55 Luke Moellman Yeah, I think having just having the right part is a big that's like the most important thing having the right notes.

23:08 Luke Moellman like making sure the notes are like taking up the right like if the voicing of the chord is like off in

23:13 Luke Moellman Yeah. like too high or too low that can throw things off if it's like too spread out when it needs to be more clustered together

23:21 Luke Moellman Yeah. that can throw things off Yes. um but that's yeah it's just all down to like how that part fits in against like you know whatever else is going on the bass and the vocals and

23:33 Luke Moellman That's something I also want to talk about. I've only recently started to consider myself a mixing engineer.

23:40 Luke Moellman Mm hmm. I mean, like I've always done, I've been doing production for the last 10-15 years or something crazy, but I always hand it off my productions to somebody else to clean it up to do the adult work.

23:55 Luke Moellman Right. Like, go ahead and make it real, make it sound better, make things not step on each other.

24:00 Luke Moellman Last two or three years, I've been really trying to focus more on mixing and last like year and a half in particular.

24:06 Luke Moellman um and i feel like it's changed my sound and like the way i approach arranging and i want to see if this is kind of similar to you because just what i'm getting from your answer is it kind of give me that vibe but now i think more in terms of frequencies even the notes sometimes like like you're talking about like those glue tones like the the things that are going to be like reacting to the other instruments and like sitting well in a mix and filling up the sonic spectrum all that kind of stuff you i love what what you do in your band of like

24:38 Luke Moellman the feeling of being incredibly full and then cutting it more sparse i feel like you do a great job with a contrast and your level of fullness is higher than i think um some people are able to get to like because then it sounds cluttered i never feel like your stuff sounds cluttered it just sounds bigger like you have like curtains that open up and it's like wider now and it's brighter and it's got more things going on when you're arranging do you think

25:03 Luke Moellman slightly from that mixing engineer side and do you think that like your your time on the technical side has influenced like your musical creative arranging brain yeah

25:14 Luke Moellman I think, yeah, they definitely both sort of influence each other because there's a lot of crossover between the two. So I actually I have a background in, you know. writing music for a big band jazz

25:32 Luke Moellman Cool. big band Cool. and I didn't know that. That's uh awesome. and some like orchestra writing i did that in college a

25:37 Luke Moellman Awesome. bunch and Yeah. uh yeah so i guess that that sort of just got me thinking about like okay we have these different sort of sections you know you have five saxophones you have four trombones you have four trumpets um they

25:51 Luke Moellman Yeah, all have different like ranges there's like different things that sound good together you can have like maybe two saxophones a trombone and a trumpet doing something and like you know split up the band into all these different groups

26:04 Luke Moellman for sure. But yeah, I think doing that and like just maybe even more so with my background as a keyboardist,

26:14 Luke Moellman Okay. you know, you just you start to hear like when just you start to learn those harmonic sort of relationships,

26:24 Luke Moellman Okay. like how what's the lowest you can play this kind of a voicing.

26:31 Luke F. Walton Okay. Yeah.

26:32 Luke Moellman it starts sounding muddy you know like what's how far can you push that

26:36 Luke F. Walton Uh

26:37 Luke Moellman um

26:37 Luke F. Walton -huh.

26:37 Luke Moellman and i think that's that goes a long way into into like you know helping things be feel big or small yeah

26:46 Luke F. Walton It's a good point. That's a really good point. I am a bit obsessed with the idea of scale. I think it's one of the most interesting parts of arranging and mixing and the way that they fit in together. What do you think about like in terms of the way bass plays into that? I always kind of feel like that's for me at least is like that's my scale button. It's like whether or not the bass guitar is

27:09 Luke Moellman totally

27:09 Luke F. Walton in it that I fix

27:10 Luke Moellman well

27:10 Luke F. Walton it super it's loud.

27:10 Luke Moellman sort of like it sort of informs um how high above it you can build in

27:17 Luke F. Walton Okay,

27:18 Luke Moellman a way you

27:18 Luke F. Walton that's interesting.

27:19 Luke Moellman know what i

27:19 Luke F. Walton mean I'd like to hear more on that. How so? Is a foundational thing like the whole tower will collapse if you don't have that foundation? Or is it something more about the harmonic series that it opens up?

27:31 Luke Moellman yeah i mean i think it's just well it's like how loud how loud and how low is the bass

27:37 Luke F. Walton Okay.

27:37 Luke Moellman and um you know how much what kind of a bass is it too like do you need to hear the harmonics of it like does it need is it like a super clean like 808 sub bass where

27:51 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh.

27:52 Luke Moellman you sort of need to like leave a lot of space above that frequency wise so that it cuts through when you hear Yeah. it or is it like a more rich like electric bass with a pick that's that's gonna cut through more and you can sort of use it almost as a percussion instrument

28:08 Luke F. Walton Totally.

28:11 Luke Moellman Yeah, I feel like what the bass is and what it's doing is going to inform a lot of the things about the mix.

28:18 Luke F. Walton That's a great point. I totally agree. I'm doing a weird thing arranging wise that I think it works for me. I'm not sure if it would work for other people who are like in a more collaborative setting, but I'm recording the bass last, like even after final vocal. Sometimes I'll have like a ghost bass in there, but oftentimes I'm just like kind of flying blind dropping the bass as like the ultimate.

28:38 Luke F. Walton ultimate glue guy because i feel like that's you know i like i'm a more of a fretted guy like fretted

28:43 Luke Moellman Yeah.

28:43 Luke F. Walton like guitar bass guy and that that's like

28:45 Luke Moellman Yep.

28:45 Luke F. Walton i guess my equivalent to like what you're saying on keys is like at the very end then i have more of a perspective like oh this needs picked bass or this needs palm That mute on

28:55 Luke Moellman makes

28:55 Luke F. Walton the

28:55 Luke Moellman a

28:55 Luke F. Walton last

28:55 Luke Moellman lot of

28:55 Luke F. Walton note

28:55 Luke Moellman sense because,

28:56 Luke F. Walton i

28:56 Luke Moellman you know, I feel like you sneak a lot of melodic action into your bass parts.

29:01 Luke F. Walton want it to be like quasi counterpoint with some of my bass parts like i

29:07 Luke Moellman yeah yeah

29:07 Luke F. Walton want it to dance with the melody i don't think i always pull it off but that is at least my goal 100

29:13 Luke Moellman right i mean i think i spent a lot of time thinking about that too sort of in like a you know especially when you like listen to like you know james jamerson or some of that like yeah motown stuff it's like just the way that the base serves the melody i think is super important and can just totally change the feeling of a song.

29:36 Luke F. Walton totally and it and it opens you up i think to be simpler in other like domains when the bass is being that supportive

29:45 Luke F. Walton um yeah i love how like i don't know there's there's this there's this like sense of like at least one of the things i'm trying to get to is like

29:52 Luke F. Walton sampling music i'm trying to inform my own music by the way that people sample other people's music like trying to be recursive about that like think about like how would i sample myself and then like how do i part right around those kind of ideas i feel like that's a similar conversation to that like mixing arranging conversation the conversation with like other genres and stuff like that like can you talk about maybe places you draw influences places that um like songs that you're into are you even just

30:19 Luke F. Walton or even just playing like some stuff on on your spotify that i sounded pretty cool and before we started recording you talk

30:25 Luke Moellman Oh,

30:25 Luke F. Walton about some like

30:26 Luke Moellman yeah.

30:26 Luke F. Walton some of the like maybe places that would surprise people be like oh you know i'm like really into like 18th century polka or something yeah

30:33 Luke Moellman My number one favorite band of all time is Steely Dan.

30:37 Luke F. Walton awesome

30:40 Luke Moellman It's, you know, being like a jazz head, it's sort of. it's uh you know it's jazzy but it's also like just super precise and um you know they they really like spared no expense and just getting like the absolute best band and performance for every single track on every single album

31:02 Luke F. Walton Yes.

31:03 Luke Moellman um yeah

31:03 Luke F. Walton I'm more, I think I'm a Gaucho guy. I think that's my number one. Where do you fall in terms of nice?

31:10 Luke Moellman i would i think i would agree i think that it just seems like sort of the arrival point of it you know i'm definitely a big fan of like the the fag and solo stuff also from the 80s

31:22 Luke F. Walton Totally.

31:22 Luke Moellman uh the night fly specifically

31:26 Luke F. Walton Awesome. Super good.

31:29 Luke Moellman yeah i mean i love asia too

31:31 Luke F. Walton yeah

31:31 Luke Moellman asia

31:31 Luke F. Walton for

31:32 Luke Moellman and asia

31:32 Luke F. Walton sure yeah

31:32 Luke Moellman and gaucho yeah

31:33 Luke F. Walton cool cool same page here it's

31:35 Luke Moellman nice

31:36 Luke F. Walton like i mean bernard purdy is the reason why i started to try and play drums i'm still not really a drummer but um he's he's at least the person to blame for my my yeah ambitions

31:46 Luke Moellman i mean yeah couldn't yeah he's he's just the best

31:51 Luke F. Walton totally totally um so yeah i'm i'm with all that let's talk a little bit more about kind of that mixing process now so like you got you got the tracks down you got the sounds locked in um obviously there i don't know i mean obviously do you have some mixing along the way like are you kind of like shaping these things along the way or do you just kind of come to it fresh at the end yeah

32:12 Luke Moellman yeah no i think you know even starting on the first day like as the demo is going down it's i'm mixing it i'm mastering it you know

32:21 Luke F. Walton cool you're cool you're right yeah you

32:22 Luke Moellman i'm

32:22 Luke F. Walton got like the

32:22 Luke Moellman just like

32:22 Luke F. Walton limit

32:23 Luke Moellman what does

32:23 Luke F. Walton on

32:23 Luke Moellman this the sound like when it's loud am i is it like yeah because that that'll tell you right away if like you know your bass is too loud or like something's just really out of whack

32:31 Luke F. Walton that's a good point that's a really good point

32:34 Luke Moellman Yeah, so I like to throw that, you know, just ozone thing

32:37 Luke F. Walton Cool.

32:38 Luke Moellman on there and do like the autopilot feature and have it just do whatever, you know, the robots think should happen.

32:45 Luke F. Walton Cool.

32:45 Luke Moellman A

32:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

32:45 Luke Moellman lot of times I throw things up onto Lander, which is another AI

32:50 Luke F. Walton Yep.

32:50 Luke Moellman mastering service that's actually quite good, I think, you know. sometimes it's it's not like perfectly what you want but it it'll always sort of give me some information like you know your mid-range is maybe a little too clustered or you know things that i should maybe take another look at

33:11 Luke F. Walton Yes.

33:11 Luke Moellman um so yeah in a way that those things sort of uh just save me time of you know things that i might realize if i like took a month off from the song and then came back to it or if i you know sent it to a friend and had them listen to it

33:26 Luke F. Walton helps

33:26 Luke Moellman it's

33:27 Luke F. Walton you get that like kind of new perspective yeah

33:29 Luke Moellman yeah it helps you get

33:30 Luke F. Walton cool

33:30 Luke Moellman some some objectivity to it that's uh

33:33 Luke F. Walton a good way to look at it i like that a lot actually um my my first few records are released with lander masters they

33:40 Luke Moellman hey i mean i'm yeah

33:42 Luke F. Walton don't sound great i think they're like it sounds fine i don't think anybody's gonna be but there there is like a noticeable i have a song called moving to canada and everything after that like instantly sounds better because i'm using a real mastering engineer here for the rest but yeah

33:58 Luke Moellman there

33:58 Luke F. Walton i

33:58 Luke Moellman are Great Good Fine Ok songs that have been lander sometimes

34:01 Luke F. Walton love it i love it sometimes

34:04 Luke Moellman sometimes it sometimes it

34:06 Luke F. Walton it

34:06 Luke Moellman just wins i don't know it

34:07 Luke F. Walton i agree i agree i

34:08 Luke Moellman depends

34:08 Luke F. Walton always

34:09 Luke Moellman a

34:09 Luke F. Walton i lot always

34:09 Luke Moellman on

34:09 Luke F. Walton ap

34:09 Luke Moellman like what you put into it

34:10 Luke F. Walton that's

34:11 Luke Moellman i

34:11 Luke F. Walton true that's

34:11 Luke Moellman think yeah

34:12 Luke F. Walton that's the whole thing right is like i i think um I think one of the most interesting things about like mastering chains in particular, do you do your own mastering or at least kind

34:24 Luke Moellman I

34:24 Luke F. Walton of some of it?

34:24 Luke Moellman do. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the things that I mix for other people, I also master

34:28 Luke F. Walton Cool.

34:28 Luke Moellman with

34:29 Luke F. Walton That makes sense. I feel like a lot of people do that.

34:30 Luke Moellman Great Good Fine Ok stuff. I like to get it mastered by someone else

34:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

34:34 Luke Moellman since

34:34 Luke F. Walton same. Same. I'm on the same it page.

34:36 Luke Moellman spent so much time with it, you know.

34:38 Luke F. Walton Totally. I think it's so interesting how like. I don't know. I've gotten, I've developed like a really good relationship. Riley Knapp is the guy who masters my stuff. He has a, he has a, or he had a project, RKCB. That's really cool. And he's making other music too. He

34:57 Luke F. Walton he's like has a certain vibe that like now i find that mixing for like i hear like okay this is what he will kind of do i have

35:06 Luke Moellman Oh,

35:06 Luke F. Walton kind of a it's

35:06 Luke Moellman interesting.

35:06 Luke F. Walton almost like i'm mixing to his mastering chain somehow you

35:10 Luke Moellman Cool.

35:11 Luke F. Walton know it's like after a year and a half or something like that you start to like get a get a vibe i feel like the same thing with lander like after you put stuff in the lander after a while you start to like think like oh no that shaker is going to be too loud if i lander this this or you know

35:24 Luke Moellman yeah

35:24 Luke F. Walton something you

35:25 Luke Moellman exactly right

35:25 Luke F. Walton know right

35:25 Luke Moellman you get an idea of like how things are going to come back so

35:28 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah for sure um on the mixing process do you do you like to like solo stuff listen to things on their own things in groups i know everybody's kind of got their own like some people leave the vocal on the entire mixing session do you have any sort of like preferences

35:45 Luke Moellman i guess this question really would only have to do with like things that i that i get just

35:50 Luke F. Walton yeah

35:51 Luke Moellman you

35:51 Luke F. Walton yeah exactly

35:51 Luke Moellman know as just a mixer right um

35:52 Luke F. Walton as a mixing engineer right that makes sense

35:56 Luke Moellman yeah i guess you know usually i try to get the drums sounding good for sure i think that you know just really sets the vibe of of the record uh drums

36:11 Luke F. Walton do you

36:11 Luke Moellman and bass

36:11 Luke F. Walton do

36:11 Luke Moellman and

36:12 Luke F. Walton you do

36:12 Luke Moellman vocals

36:12 Luke F. Walton drums like all at the same time or do you like go super hard on like kick snare and then bring everybody in or

36:18 Luke Moellman it it sort of just depends on the song like if it's if it's like a actual kit with multiple mics you know there's like things i'll do with like gates and stuff like that just to clean it up a little bit um and for that i will probably solo things

36:34 Luke F. Walton yeah for sure same

36:38 Luke Moellman yeah i mean if it's if it's like an electronic like just a bunch of samples and stuff

36:43 Luke F. Walton yeah

36:43 Luke Moellman yeah maybe it's just like a balancing thing or like slight eqs um i actually i'll show you this thing so

36:49 Luke F. Walton go for it oh

36:53 Luke Moellman this is this is what i use like when i'm just sitting down and like doing a mix soft

36:59 Luke F. Walton cool that's awesome dope

37:01 Luke Moellman tube console one so the top part is kind of just like uh you know All the components of a channel strip from

37:10 Luke F. Walton Yep.

37:10 Luke Moellman any console. So you have like the, you know, input gain, high cut, low cut. The first dynamic section, which has like sort of like a transient designer thing, like attack and, you know, decay and a gate as well.

37:30 Luke F. Walton Cool.

37:30 Luke Moellman And then EQ, compressor. And then there's a there's a drive knob,

37:37 Luke F. Walton Nice.

37:37 Luke Moellman which will depending on what type of like console you have loaded into it, sort of like, you know, emulates whatever sort of harmonic distortion or saturation you would have gotten from, you know, using an SSL or a Neve or whatever.

37:52 Luke F. Walton For sure.

37:54 Luke Moellman And yeah, I think that using that just. really helped me kind of get faster um

38:00 Luke F. Walton Yes.

38:01 Luke Moellman i feel like before i started using that you know it was harder for me to do a mix in one day uh

38:10 Luke F. Walton For sure.

38:10 Luke Moellman yeah but but now i feel like you know it's just so hands-on you're just you know making decisions and before you know it it's like wow this this is starting to come together

38:21 Luke F. Walton yes i love that that like you're saying it's not quite a switch but you feel that like the tides start to turn you know there's always there's at least for me there tends to be a dip where it's like what have i done like i need to start like and then it all kind of comes together it flips over in

38:35 Luke Moellman like

38:36 Luke F. Walton a bit

38:36 Luke Moellman the uncanny valley yeah

38:37 Luke F. Walton yeah totally i i end up there a lot um but you know that's okay there's there is a there's a value of living there every once in a while too

38:45 Luke Moellman Totally.

38:45 Luke F. Walton um yeah i i uh i i think it's so interesting like talking to people that are involved in every stage of that process and then also people that are have moments of isolation like i'm doing that too now where i'm just mixing people and it's such an interesting like kind of

39:04 Luke F. Walton brain bender to an extent at least for me of like well i wouldn't have made that decision but like do i want to now force this synthesizer into like my world and like saturate the hell out of it or anything like that or like let it be its own thing like

39:19 Luke F. Walton How do you approach that as a mixing engineer? Are you just trying to like make the song like the best it possibly can be? Or do you feel like you're kind of putting your own thumbprint on it? I feel like I'm putting my own thumbprint on it, like just to be honest.

39:31 Luke Moellman yeah i think i

39:32 Luke F. Walton A transparent

39:33 Luke Moellman think it's

39:34 Luke F. Walton mixing

39:34 Luke Moellman yeah

39:34 Luke F. Walton engineer.

39:34 Luke Moellman it depends on like it depends on the song it depends on like how it was recorded it depends on the artist just

39:42 Luke F. Walton For sure.

39:42 Luke Moellman and i think like and i think like but you're probably right a lot of that is like what you know how does it affect me like what does it make me think what does it make me like want to change about it but

39:55 Luke F. Walton right right

39:56 Luke Moellman um yeah i mean i do i do spend a lot of time uh a being with the rough mix that

40:07 Luke F. Walton That's

40:07 Luke Moellman came to me

40:07 Luke F. Walton smart.

40:07 Luke Moellman because

40:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah, totally. I do that too.

40:08 Luke Moellman um you know i feel like everybody spends a lot of time on their stuff before you get it and uh you just want to make sure that you're not um taking away any of the magic that

40:21 Luke F. Walton Right,

40:22 Luke Moellman was

40:22 Luke F. Walton right.

40:22 Luke Moellman there Just for the sake of like cleaning things up or

40:25 Luke F. Walton yeah

40:25 Luke Moellman whatever.

40:25 Luke F. Walton exactly exactly that um on that point tom mics are always really tricky for me because like on a real live drum kit there's so much bleed in a tom mic and you maybe hit the tom twice in the whole song so i my instinct

40:40 Luke Moellman Yeah,

40:40 Luke F. Walton right

40:40 Luke Moellman Tom mics kind of just generally don't sound good

40:43 Luke F. Walton totally that's my instinct to just clip that off and then we're good but every once in a while especially if they didn't have like a room mic or they didn't have something like that right you clip it off you're like oh it's so clean now um and you're not sure if that's what they were they were looking for so one of one of the things i

40:57 Luke Moellman Yeah.

40:57 Luke F. Walton want to talk to say to the listeners is like at least from my perspective don't be scared to process your stuff or like make decisions before the mixing engineer like it's so much easier like from my perspective if if somebody sent me their drum track and they clipped out the toms they're like okay that's what they wanted great that's what they're looking for if they

41:15 Luke Moellman Totally.

41:16 Luke F. Walton have the room mics turned on or off this is a big deal for me is like when our room mics on um like just like you were talking about with tracks like the backing vocal like coming in on a chorus it makes it feel more like a chorus sometimes having a room mic completely changes the dynamic of how the drum kit is interacting with everybody

41:34 Luke Moellman Yep. Yeah, I mean. yeah like send us less tracks like

41:40 Luke F. Walton yeah

41:40 Luke Moellman make decisions

41:40 Luke F. Walton yeah exactly

41:40 Luke Moellman you

41:41 Luke F. Walton people

41:41 Luke Moellman know yeah

41:42 Luke F. Walton are scared and i i was too and i get it because you don't want to like mess up because you think okay the mixing engineer knows more and yeah a lot of times they will in terms of like very specific technical things yeah

41:51 Luke Moellman but you also know like what sounds good

41:54 Luke F. Walton exactly

41:55 Luke Moellman If it sounds good, it is good.

41:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah, that's it. Hyperpop has been really fascinating to me because it is like the ultimate expression of if it sounds good to you, it's good. Like my mastering engineer friend, he said that.

42:10 Luke F. Walton he was sent something that was clipping the like um not unlimited it was clipping the logic thing by like 24 db or something like that and he's like that's what he wanted so then he mastered that and it sounds unlike anything i've ever heard because it is intentionally insane and

42:28 Luke Moellman Yeah.

42:28 Luke F. Walton there's some there's something there it's like kind of punk rock i like it

42:32 Luke Moellman totally yeah yep

42:33 Luke F. Walton yeah so like yeah make decisions um and your mastering engineers will uh will know which path because there's there are like infinite paths for us to take it's it's good for you to point us in the right direction because oh man doesn't

42:48 Luke Moellman yeah i

42:48 Luke F. Walton suck when you're like no you gotta do it all over

42:51 Luke Moellman sometimes though like you know your job is to like kind of mute things here and there

42:57 Luke F. Walton That's

42:57 Luke Moellman like are

42:58 Luke F. Walton true.

42:58 Luke Moellman there

42:58 Luke F. Walton Yep.

42:58 Luke Moellman too many things going on maybe they didn't realize that like this part by itself could sound as good as it does

43:04 Luke F. Walton That's a good point.

43:05 Luke Moellman um

43:05 Luke F. Walton Right.

43:06 Luke Moellman and like you know there's

43:09 Luke F. Walton Nope, I like

43:10 Luke Moellman there's

43:11 Luke F. Walton it.

43:11 Luke Moellman like a lot of it's like every song is just totally different

43:13 Luke F. Walton So true. It's so true. And that I feel like that for me is summed up why mixing is fun. is it's always different and it's way more creative than I gave it credit for.

43:26 Luke Moellman yeah it's it's fun i think because it's hard

43:29 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

43:29 Luke Moellman it's

43:29 Luke F. Walton it's super hard.

43:30 Luke Moellman like if you're the type of person who likes trying to get better at hard things then like mixing is is

43:39 Luke F. Walton Mixing is for you.

43:40 Luke Moellman right up there yeah

43:42 Luke F. Walton Enjoy. Enjoy a life of pain and pleasure.

43:46 Luke Moellman Right, but it's like, you know, once you get through the painful part and it just and

43:50 Luke F. Walton Oh,

43:51 Luke Moellman you have that moment where it clicks

43:52 Luke F. Walton it's all worth it again. Yep.

43:53 Luke Moellman Yeah

43:54 Luke F. Walton Not so true. I'm trying to think of anything else that we haven't covered that you'd like to speak on a bit. Talked about the tour, talked about synths, bass arranging, songwriting, mixing,

44:10 Luke Moellman Yeah

44:10 Luke F. Walton a little bit of mastering.

44:12 Luke Moellman I do some graphic design stuff as well.

44:16 Luke F. Walton Let's talk through that. Yeah, the visual component. That's really fun. Yeah, I see you do a lot of like 3D and kind of like immersive kind of feeling like world building kind of stuff. Can you talk about like, how did you end up working it with graphic design? Like, how do you feel like that's an extension of music? It's fascinating.

44:35 Luke Moellman Well, I guess, you know. initially it was you know being in bands even like back in high school it's

44:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:41 Luke Moellman like okay we need a poster for this thing coming up okay

44:43 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:44 Luke Moellman i have a computer i'm gonna figure out how to do it um i don't know i was always sort of into that stuff i remember even back in like third grade i was like the kid who knew how to make uh those giant banners on the dot matrix printer you know where like it would just keep spooling out

45:02 Luke Moellman um love those things so like the rest of the class would be doing like a math lesson and she's like hey luke go make us a the flyer the for this thing we need a banner i'm

45:12 Luke F. Walton That's

45:12 Luke Moellman like okay sweet

45:13 Luke F. Walton cool.

45:13 Luke Moellman um but yeah then the 3d stuff i just kind of started messing with it um you know driving around on being on tour with the band and kind of sitting in the backseat of the van needing something to do you So I just kind of started teaching myself how to do it.

45:34 Luke F. Walton Cool

45:35 Luke Moellman And it's, you know, there's a lot of similarities with music and mixing and producing with, you know, making 3D renderings. It's.

45:49 Luke Moellman there's like a technical challenge to it but it's also it's very rewarding when everything kind of starts coming together um

45:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

45:55 Luke Moellman one of the things that that's really fascinating to me about it is just like you know you can build this environment or you know an object in three dimensions and then start placing lights and then you know shoot it with a virtual camera and then the software will just calculate you know

46:14 Luke Moellman based on all of the you know physical properties of the objects in your scene Mm sort

46:19 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

46:19 Luke Moellman of like what happens to those light rays is

46:22 Luke F. Walton Love it.

46:22 Luke Moellman this a super shiny object or is it like you know is it is it refractive is

46:29 Luke F. Walton the Yes.

46:29 Luke Moellman light going to bend when it goes through it

46:31 Luke F. Walton Yes.

46:31 Luke Moellman and once you once you start seeing all that magic happen it's just like yeah it's super fun

46:39 Luke F. Walton I love that. It's almost like a... similar to like how reverb kind of like a good ir reverb

46:47 Luke Moellman Right.

46:47 Luke F. Walton is all

46:48 Luke Moellman Yeah.

46:48 Luke F. Walton the reflections and dropping your head into a

46:52 Luke Moellman Yep.

46:52 Luke F. Walton space that's really cool speaking of which i love the reverbs on your music i think you do a wonderful job of space

46:57 Luke Moellman Oh, creating thanks.

46:58 Luke F. Walton and it's it's one of my favorite things is when the reverb goes away oh i love that

47:03 Luke Moellman Right. Yeah. Because if there's always reverb, it's like. Yeah, there's no contrast.

47:09 Luke F. Walton exactly i love contrast um so that's that's a really interesting point with like you know virtual cameras i know that that's like yeah obviously that's the secret sauce about these 3d renderings is what you can actually do with it once you're you know moving things around um how about like like animations or like like movement within those spaces like how do you approach that or like think about that um especially like the subtle ones i really think that's cool

47:36 Luke Moellman yeah i mean some of it it's you you just sort of look at the scene and you're like okay what can i what can be animated about this

47:44 Luke F. Walton Cool.

47:44 Luke Moellman like

47:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

47:45 Luke Moellman what can what can move around um a lot of it is uh like you know just sort of like uh these dynamics simulations where it's like you know

47:58 Luke Moellman this object has mass and there's gravity and then it's going to be affected by colliding with this other object um

48:04 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yeah.

48:05 Luke Moellman and so it's just sort of like you set up these constraints and then hit play and

48:09 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

48:10 Luke Moellman it kind of just automatically it does it and it looks amazing um the same thing with like you know fluid simulations like smoke or water

48:19 Luke F. Walton Right.

48:19 Luke Moellman things

48:19 Luke F. Walton Yes.

48:19 Luke Moellman like that um

48:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah, exactly. It's a great point.

48:23 Luke Moellman those those are a bit more time consuming just because it takes the computer a super long time to calculate

48:28 Luke F. Walton Yes.

48:28 Luke Moellman you know especially when you get into like millions and millions of particles flying around

48:33 Luke F. Walton Yes.

48:33 Luke Moellman um but yeah i mean once you once you just Get all the right initial conditions for that simulation and you get the look that you want, it's definitely super satisfying.

48:45 Luke F. Walton yeah it sounds super rewarding really really cool and um starting to dip into some of that but that's more my buddy max um horwich who's doing um some stuff in unity and some kind of like

48:58 Luke F. Walton 360 music videos they were doing where i'm filming on a green screen and then we're putting it in like different environments using like basically which unity is like a game engine vr engine yeah yeah

49:07 Luke Moellman Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that's that's where all this stuff is really heading.

49:14 Luke Moellman the the angle that i'm kind of coming at it from is like it's definitely less real time um

49:19 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

49:20 Luke Moellman like you know it'll take anywhere from 20 seconds to like 10 minutes just to render a single frame sometimes

49:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah.

49:27 Luke Moellman depending on what's in it um and a lot of times you can get something that looks pretty much as good as that out of unreal or unity that

49:36 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

49:36 Luke Moellman plays in real time and you can you know you can like walk around it yeah

49:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah, it's insane. And we're doing the same stuff with the, you know, position of the sun or the virtual lights and stuff like one of the one of the things we just released a few weeks ago has got like a disco ball.

49:53 Luke F. Walton in the middle and just like the way the thing is accurately refract off of this disco ball um that alone is like mind-blowing to me i i feel like it's easy to sometimes consume some of these things and just be like yeah it looks like world but then taking that step back and being like no this is like kind of remarkable that we have gotten so accustomed to like virtual things feeling somewhat realistic

50:20 Luke Moellman yeah i mean it's just we're starting to get desensitized to it a little bit

50:24 Luke F. Walton is that weird it's bizarre but

50:26 Luke Moellman totally

50:26 Luke F. Walton but that's also kind of a fun challenge i think and i think your art in particular does a really good job of like ripping them back out like yeah

50:35 Luke Moellman yeah i mean it's i don't know i feel like when i'm making those things it's just sort of like you know you sort of lose i feel like it's the same as like working on any kind of art where you just sort of get in the flow and you're just totally engrossed in what you're doing you know i just kind of lose myself a bit totally

50:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Isn't that weird that some people have never felt that? I feel like that I want to change that. I would like everyone to feel that feeling.

51:07 Luke Moellman yeah it's definitely an essential part of of being a human

51:12 Luke F. Walton I

51:12 Luke Moellman i think

51:12 Luke F. Walton agree. I agree. So listeners. it doesn't matter what it is but try try and find

51:19 Luke Moellman Make

51:20 Luke F. Walton that feeling

51:20 Luke Moellman stuff.

51:20 Luke F. Walton make stuff and lose yourself in it and um you'll get addicted to it because look at the two of us clearly

51:27 Luke Moellman Yep.

51:27 Luke F. Walton we're we're junkies for um whatever that thing is that flow state it's

51:34 Luke Moellman I

51:35 Luke F. Walton this where

51:35 Luke Moellman think

51:35 Luke F. Walton you

51:35 Luke Moellman you

51:35 Luke F. Walton end up

51:35 Luke Moellman can, there's so many different ways to get there.

51:37 Luke F. Walton yeah i agree like even even like simple things can bring you there it doesn't even need to be like making a high scale art or something like that like i think so many there there are so many paths of that mountain Um, so

51:54 Luke Moellman Yep.

51:55 Luke F. Walton just, just take them, just try and find them for you.

51:57 Luke Moellman That's right.

51:58 Luke F. Walton Um, and with that, I feel like that's, that's probably a good, good place for us to wrap up heartwarming little, um, send off for everybody that made it to the end of this pod. Um,

52:08 Luke Moellman Yep.

52:08 Luke F. Walton so Luke, thank you so much for chatting with me. Um,

52:12 Luke Moellman Yeah,

52:12 Luke F. Walton and,

52:12 Luke Moellman of course. Anytime.

52:13 Luke F. Walton and check out your website. Um, you want to plug anything else? Got the tour coming up. Definitely go check out Luke on tour.

52:21 Luke Moellman Yeah. Yeah. Come on out.

52:22 Luke F. Walton And

52:22 Luke Moellman See if we're playing in your city.

52:24 Luke F. Walton your websites are just great, good, fine, okay.com?

52:27 Luke Moellman Yep.

52:27 Luke F. Walton Sweet.

52:27 Luke Moellman Yeah. And we're on, yeah. Got all the social media. Great. Good Fine Ok on Instagram.

52:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

52:35 Luke Moellman I'm Luke Moellman on Instagram.

52:38 Luke F. Walton Check them out.

52:40 Luke Moellman Check them out.

52:41 Luke F. Walton It'll be worth it. And if you want to hit me up, slide in my Reddit DMs. You can be my eighth Reddit follower. You go to scoobertdoobert.pizza. You can find all of my links there. Feel free to hit us up and send us any questions. Slide in our DMs. All that good stuff. Thanks so much, Luke. Really appreciate it.

52:59 Luke Moellman Sounds good. See you next time.

53:00 Luke F. Walton See you next time.