Dylan Kidd Interview

0:18 Dylan Kidd Oh

0:18 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? I'm Scoobert Doobert. Welcome back to Love Music More. I am joined with Dylan, who is going to take us on an awesome journey as a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer.

0:29 Luke F. Walton We're going to talk everything from music business to making loops, making beats, his own music, his work with Splice. There's a bunch to talk about. Welcome to the pod, Dylan.

0:41 Dylan Kidd Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me on, Scoop. Appreciate you.

0:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah, man, we're gonna have we're gonna have a lot of fun. So the way that I usually like to start this off is what got you into music? Like what was the what was the spark? Like where did this whole kind of thing begin for you?

0:57 Dylan Kidd um I don't think it a lot of stories are like I got bit by the bug and

1:02 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

1:02 Dylan Kidd that was it

1:02 Luke F. Walton right,

1:03 Dylan Kidd or

1:03 Luke F. Walton right.

1:03 Dylan Kidd something I

1:03 Luke F. Walton Like Spider

1:03 Dylan Kidd was just

1:04 Luke F. Walton -Man.

1:04 Dylan Kidd yeah exactly like and there was no turning back and I couldn't like I could picture myself doing a lot with my life but um I don't know I just like playing music growing up I got a guitar when I was maybe like 10 and I would pick it up every once in a while and practice like 15 minutes and the same with drums too you um and my parents just my dad was a radio dj so

1:27 Luke F. Walton Oh,

1:27 Dylan Kidd he had lots

1:27 Luke F. Walton cool.

1:27 Dylan Kidd of really like great cassette tapes and cds around the house um

1:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:32 Dylan Kidd so lots of like motown r&b like stevie wonder played every morning i'd hear like golden lady and my mom would be like wake me up um so lots of great music around the house so i was super lucky with that um but it's one of those thing i just kept doing it and the more you do something the better you get at it it and

1:52 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

1:52 Dylan Kidd like I joined jazz band in high school and then I had like a little friend group and we had a bunch of weird music jokes we were making all the time and then when it came to choosing college I was like I kind of want to see how far I can push the music thing And then, yeah,

2:07 Dylan Kidd just kind of kept progressing from there, just kind of got my foot in the door and just kept going with that idea, I guess, is sort of the overall path.

2:16 Luke F. Walton I love it. And actually, I think that that's an interesting thing to talk about a little bit like I've heard a lot of people say I do music because I can't do anything else. And I actually, I don't I don't personally feel that way. It's nice to hear somebody else who doesn't feel that way. I think that that's kind of like. putting yourself in a box a little bit can

2:32 Dylan Kidd yeah yeah no

2:33 Luke F. Walton you talk on that a little bit more I know that you've probably heard this from other people too

2:37 Dylan Kidd 100% like um I mean I don't know about you but I grew up my mom's like a therapist my dad's an engineer very well educated grew up in a nice middle-class home had a great childhood I was a pretty good student like I was thinking of going to college for like to study psychology or business or something

2:56 Luke F. Walton mm

2:56 Dylan Kidd um

2:56 Luke F. Walton -hmm

2:56 Dylan Kidd but it's kind of like I just wanted to do something a little different at that I thought if there was like a one percent chance I could make music happen let's just like roll the dice and see if it works and I have many interests like I love like working out and I love I just saw Rubik's Cubes as a kid and like I love playing video games like there's so many other things to do like music's great but like

3:20 Dylan Kidd having fun with your friends and doing other hobbies is like the 99% of life so it's like I

3:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

3:26 Dylan Kidd don't

3:27 Luke F. Walton exactly.

3:27 Dylan Kidd know um I could picture myself doing something else but it's like I'm kind of reaching for the top shelf life here even though I could just like pick up software engineering and just call it a day or something but

3:39 Luke F. Walton totally and there's nothing wrong with that either but i i think it's i think it's nice and i actually think that empowers musicians especially if you are um like a multi-instrumentalist producer songwriter like that kind of vibe um to have a diverse life and diverse interest because that that spills into the music and i think that like you can tell um some of like the best artists musical artists for example are like designers or

4:02 Luke F. Walton for film people or people that really focus on like cultivating vision and outlook rather than just honing just like a narrow set of skills which is also cool but depending on what your goals are like sometimes just like rounding out as a person can make you a better musician even

4:16 Dylan Kidd 100

4:17 Luke F. Walton more

4:17 Dylan Kidd %

4:17 Luke F. Walton so than practicing yeah

4:18 Dylan Kidd and they need some yin and yang in their like a

4:20 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah right

4:20 Dylan Kidd lot of my musician friends are just like in their apartments all day and I just can't I can't get with that I need to get out I need like

4:28 Dylan Kidd like go to the gym i need to like walk outside um i need i need some other outlet like music is great but like the guitar doesn't talk back to me it's just an object like i love playing guitar but i need like friends and also like you need like experiences to write on too if you're just not experiencing life you know lyrically you're going to be kind of dry after a while

4:52 Dylan Kidd yeah for sure and it's totally like a spectrum like there's that there's that old like jazz kind of

4:56 Dylan Kidd you know vibe where it's like i'm going to lock myself literally in a woodshed and practice for as many years as it takes for me to come out good and it's like yeah that's an extreme version of one side and then you have the other side of like people that don't actually like play instruments but they're great visionaries and producers and stuff like that and that's kind of the on the other side and i feel like most people like us we want to be somewhere in the middle like you want to be able to shed and practice

5:18 Dylan Kidd Yeah, and do yeah. your thing but also have the vision and the yeah the outside world influence the you have something to write about yeah

5:23 Dylan Kidd yeah exactly and like one of the best things you can do as a musician is play with other musicians like

5:29 Dylan Kidd yeah yeah yeah right i'd rather take someone who is not doesn't have the best chops but knows how to like fit in with a band and knows what the music calls for

5:38 Dylan Kidd yeah then be a guy with all the chops and all the licks and chordal modal theory but like can't fit with a band on just a simple two chord progression like you know just practicing the application yeah

5:50 Dylan Kidd Yeah. And I think that that's an important thing, especially for people that are like coming up or just picking up music to consider because it's naturally like you look to the virtuoso. You're like, I want to do that like crazy stuff. And it's like, hey, like in reality, you're almost never going to play that.

6:06 Dylan Kidd hell Like almost never. yeah hell Like most people don't want you to play as fast as you can in almost every circumstance.

6:13 Dylan Kidd yeah no man yeah like and that's like part of like playing out because i did play in college i played in like a funk band and it was like my first real band and like i found like the simpler i played the better like my bandmates like me and like their audience would react more like my first band was like okay i gotta show off all the stuff

6:34 Dylan Kidd yeah and exactly then like yeah i gotta show them who's what's up yeah playing like some bb king licks man just call it a day

6:40 Dylan Kidd totally totally you know like well that's one of the things i like about like motown stuff is you know i spent a long time just learning how to play guitar with like motown records or surf guitar that stuff's so simple but so deceptive they're like if you don't give it its due it's like now it sounds bad it's it's like the ventures are like a very interesting case for me because like the stuff that they're doing isn't like technically hard

7:07 Dylan Kidd but it is very hard to replicate i love yeah it's that stuff yeah totally like how you play it and just like it's it's also just the tone in your fingers like you

7:17 Dylan Kidd exactly and the know way that you're spinning with the band all that stuff i know i'm i'm totally with that that's

7:23 Dylan Kidd yeah i awesome yeah love the old motown the old stacks records i think those are like we peaked in the 70s musically i think yeah

7:31 Dylan Kidd right totally man no i mean just the power of just like hitting a little triad on the back beats it's like become a part of the drums it's like that is a that is a skill unto itself and it's underappreciated and also underutilized i think

7:46 Dylan Kidd in so modern underutilized dude i think my whole thing of theory of like modern Yes.

7:52 Dylan Kidd music is Yeah. it's all we're in like a very rhythmic centric era and it's all about i'd rather have someone who could play in time really good than someone who like maybe has the opposite like very chop heavy and can play a bunch of notes just like play super good rhythms in time and like you'll get people moving and

8:14 Dylan Kidd Yeah, exactly. especially everything's locked to a grid nowadays so it's like you need to move

8:19 Dylan Kidd Yes. Yeah. And you need to know how to play with that grid. Like one of the recent pods I was doing, we're talking about in front of the beat, behind the beat, on the beat kind of

8:29 Dylan Kidd Yeah, stuff. yeah, yeah, When you're able to do that as a conscious decision, it's hard, especially at certain tempos and stuff to do that. But the people that can do that, those are the ones that really get me moving. I feel like if I've seen a live band and they're playing with that pocket and that's when I start to freak out even more than the notes, like you're saying.

8:47 Dylan Kidd dude yeah i i totally agree yeah yes i love it so um so you went to you went to school in new orleans how was that

8:56 Dylan Kidd oh what was that like it's it was it was great so rad i mean yeah it's like one of

9:00 Dylan Kidd i the best places went um to go to school yeah cool so well i grew up in northern california very like in the tech industry and all that stuff um was kind of what i was surrounded with and going to new orleans was just a totally just like a left turn for me um But it was, I couldn't have asked for a better experience. I mean, I went to Loyola University in New Orleans,

9:20 Dylan Kidd Nice. just surrounded by incredible musicians left and right. You could walk down Frenchman Street or Bourbon Street, which are like, well, Bourbon Street's like a tourist attraction, but Frenchman Street is where all the really bad cats are, like all the great like trumpet players.

9:35 Dylan Kidd Yeah. And you could just bar hop there and just regularly just listen to all these incredible musicians and it was just so

9:42 Dylan Kidd much fun. It's super humbling too because I'm not really a jazz guy, but Mm-hmm.

9:46 Dylan Kidd I had to quickly learn how to like fit in with them Uh-huh. and it was just it was very challenging and um like i said i was in like a band there it was like funk fusion kind of we were trying to be almost like snarky puppy there

10:00 Dylan Kidd Cool, and yeah. uh we played lots of shows around new orleans and tipitina's and helen wolf and um it was just an amazing time for growth i really

10:08 Dylan Kidd Yeah. liked it and it's also i don't know if you've ever spent time in new orleans but it's

10:15 Dylan Kidd it's a little bit of a party city so it's a lot of fun the whole the my college would give us um mardi gras the week of mardi gras

10:22 Dylan Kidd Really? off yeah Cool. because Oh my God. they're just like we're not even trying to get you in yeah

10:26 Dylan Kidd Like, who are we kidding? exactly so it was like an extended spring break sort of thing um

10:32 Dylan Kidd Nice. But it was it was amazing though and I met like some of my best friends who actually moved out to LA when I first moved out here when I graduated and then they moved kind of elsewhere but it was nice to move to LA and have a little pocket of friends here and a little network to start out with.

10:50 Dylan Kidd I love that. Yeah it was it was a really nice transition to go from New Orleans to LA I'm very lucky.

10:58 Dylan Kidd yeah no i know and that's like what a cool um i don't know path to take musically and be able to get those kind of chops um playing with like that kind of jazz and that kind of swing because i feel like there's there's some like really distinct like you're saying like rhythmic things that you can pick up by being immersed in that kind of musical culture um and then come to la where you can execute it and it's like the recording capital of the world still um and and yeah have have friends on top

11:26 Dylan Kidd Yeah, of it too yeah. you know yeah it like built into the city that's awesome yeah

11:28 Dylan Kidd exactly and there was like a little bit of um a learning curve with like going from New Orleans to LA because the

11:35 Dylan Kidd yeah first sessions I would sit in on I had to learn to um kind of simplify a lot of the stuff I was playing too

11:42 Dylan Kidd interesting interesting yeah because uh I wasn't really a session player in New Orleans I would just play in a funk band with my friends so they kind of let me do whatever I want but in

11:51 Dylan Kidd yeah yeah LA they're like I would always play some specific chords that they didn't like like I don't know there's this one chord I always really

12:01 Dylan Kidd Yeah. liked it's it's like like this code right here i Oh, don't know it's like something but every time i use it in a session it would be like can you make it not as like dark and i was oh they don't like this notes so i just

12:16 Dylan Kidd Right. had to like simplify it to the normal minor just like little things like that had to like simplify like what i was doing a little bit

12:25 Dylan Kidd um so i'm kind of glad i got like a little bit of the new orleans world to kind of it's almost like lifting heavy weights over there and then coming

12:32 Dylan Kidd okay over here yeah uh and then -huh just simplify learning yeah and yeah i just make like pop records and stuff yeah

12:38 Dylan Kidd exactly and there are moments in pop records even where you can pull out like some of those colors but especially like in the Nile Rogers kind of way where it's like a little gliss like it's like a little hammer on or something like a slide that like pulls in that color but then it's gone on so it's just that little like hey i've got a bag i've got vocabulary but you're not overusing it yes

12:57 Dylan Kidd exactly yes it is i if you can find ways to like like find little pockets for those things it's really nice actually

13:05 Dylan Kidd totally it's like it like like i i like to think of it like opening your eyes a little bit wider or like having like have you seen like in a movie theater where they widen out the screen because it's like a different aspect ratio or something and the curtains just kind of go out like

13:19 Dylan Kidd yeah i yeah kind of i kind of think of that with like using those those colors and those extensions like for a moment it's like whoa and then it comes back in again i

13:27 Dylan Kidd yeah yeah i that's think it's an art a good form metaphor like that's literally what it's like seeing what the like wider world and then narrowing it again and like yeah

13:38 Dylan Kidd little peek and like if you get it if you're getting all that information all the time and you kind of tune it out or it like just becomes part of that world but then like a little splash of it of it is the thing that makes my eyes get a little wider.

13:51 Dylan Kidd Right. yeah it's cool to know that other people feel that way i don't yeah know if i've talked

13:54 Dylan Kidd yeah to other people no about that very much but that's how i always feel it's such an important part and like i think exploration is like the one of the most important things but i

14:03 Dylan Kidd yeah think you got to explore something and then test it out and see if it resonates with other people or if it even fits into anything like there's lots of chords i really like but does it actually work i'll test it like in sessions i'll though i'll be like does this work and i'm like nah like

14:20 Dylan Kidd yeah totally all totally right let's at least go you're back testing because then when you find it it's like oh yeah that's it it's like it's like i've heard this before this is not mine but of like spices like in food like you're cooking up a meal and you're like oh what what would it taste like with a little cumin it's like oh that's awful it's like okay i'm not doing that again but like every once in a while it's like that was exactly what this dish needed now the whole thing's elevated now it's like a michelin star meal surprised you just a little bit with the flavor

14:45 Dylan Kidd yeah just Dude, that's dang the metaphors man. That's drive them cool. in You gotta the poet school right here

14:54 Luke F. Walton i mean this is these are the things that i think like help i like because i want this pod to be comfy for um musicians and non-musicians alike so like i'm trying i try to like think of ways to explore other mediums that maybe people are a little more familiar with other than music so then they can apply and be like oh yeah i get it like

15:11 Dylan Kidd I can see a painting and now I can see music and be like,

15:14 Dylan Kidd I see the technique or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And it's applicable to a lot of different things and, you know, life and whatnot.

15:23 Luke F. Walton So I want to talk to you about production. So how did you kind of jump into production?

15:30 Luke F. Walton Would love to hear a little bit about some of the artists that you produce for and then like kind of how you got into the world, what your philosophy is on it and what you're excited about right now.

15:41 Dylan Kidd yeah well i mean starting out i just wanted to be a guitar player i was

15:44 Luke F. Walton Cool.

15:44 Dylan Kidd just like i had tunnel vision i wanted to be the best guitar player in the world old and

15:49 Dylan Kidd Yeah. just like be the either session guy or a solo artist or something um but then in college it was freshman year i didn't get into production until like freshman year of college um but my roommate had like logic on his computer and i just had my guitar like in the corner i'd always like be playing and noodling and you know no one would come into my dorm to like jam or whatever unless it was like one of my friends from the band

16:27 Dylan Kidd but not and it kind of i just had like a little light bulb moment like like learn production like

16:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

16:33 Dylan Kidd why just um confine yourself to learning a part of a track aka the guitar or you can make the whole track yourself and

16:40 Luke F. Walton yeah

16:41 Dylan Kidd it's like I kind of just went into a hole like for like three months the summer after freshman year of college I just went YouTube deep dive how do you produce how do you get clean mixes how to make your drums nice how to

16:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

16:55 Dylan Kidd make your you know all the classic

16:56 Luke F. Walton Yep.

16:56 Dylan Kidd YouTube thumbnails how

16:58 Luke F. Walton Yep.

16:58 Dylan Kidd to make your kicks hit kind of stuff

17:00 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:00 Dylan Kidd um and then learned that and then um later on in college I would just like collaborate with other singers while I was there um my first collaboration with with this one singer Caitlin Harris Harris who's super dope um

17:14 Luke F. Walton Cool.

17:14 Dylan Kidd she's I think in Berlin now but she she

17:17 Luke F. Walton Sweet.

17:17 Dylan Kidd was a New York person for a little bit she's also

17:19 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:19 Dylan Kidd from Louisiana um and then after college I was doing that and um just putting my stuff on SoundCloud. SoundCloud's where I got my production start really

17:31 Luke F. Walton Oh,

17:31 Dylan Kidd just

17:31 Luke F. Walton cool.

17:31 Dylan Kidd like those early golden years of SoundCloud

17:33 Luke F. Walton Right.

17:33 Dylan Kidd like

17:34 Luke F. Walton I know. Yeah.

17:35 Dylan Kidd just putting beats on there and like getting feedback and reposting and maybe a bigger person reposted you and just like getting feedback and it was a really nice era because I would put a beat out and see which ones hit like harder and which ones people commented and like really resonated with them more.

17:53 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

17:53 Dylan Kidd um and

17:54 Luke F. Walton What

17:54 Dylan Kidd then

17:55 Luke F. Walton do you think happened to that?

17:56 Dylan Kidd oh

17:56 Luke F. Walton Is that gone?

17:57 Dylan Kidd what i don't

17:57 Luke F. Walton Like, what do you think happened to that? Because it doesn't seem like SoundCloud's got the same energy.

18:01 Dylan Kidd no soundcloud man between like like 2013 to 2019 soundcloud was great you could put a song on there and wake up with thousands of plays and maybe a big artist reposted you or something it's just not the same i don't know what it is i think there are still pockets of like there are still dudes on soundcloud who are popping off just posting stuff in their bedroom like

18:22 Dylan Kidd like you know glaive or eric doa or like i don't know break-ins or like there's lots of

18:29 Luke F. Walton Mm

18:29 Dylan Kidd dope

18:29 Luke F. Walton hmm. Yeah.

18:29 Dylan Kidd people still blowing up on soundcloud i think outside of the like the rapping sphere

18:35 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:35 Dylan Kidd um

18:35 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:36 Dylan Kidd because i'm not as tapped into that but i don't know maybe it's like more algorithmic or everyone moved to spotify like

18:43 Luke F. Walton Right.

18:43 Dylan Kidd around 2018 everyone started putting their shit on spotify instead of like um putting stuff to soundcloud and then it became heavily algorithmic based and trying

18:53 Luke F. Walton Mm

18:53 Dylan Kidd to get into playlists and and now it's kind of a weird gatekeeping vibe because a lot of people might have connections or pay to you know playlist curation or you know there's a whole

19:05 Dylan Kidd oh hooray yeah totally whole different discussion with the playlisting thing but yes not as like organic i guess i mean i don't log on to soundcloud regularly to see like like who's next up kind of whereas

19:18 Dylan Kidd totally i feel like maybe that's what it is it's like that just isn't the audience anymore like because i remember like you get comments and you go back and forth or whatever and now it's just kind of dead you like put something out you get some plays but

19:29 Dylan Kidd yeah it's it's not really back and forth yeah just not the same and i don't know what it is and the ads on soundcloud are really annoying to me dude

19:36 Dylan Kidd totally i have to pay for soundcloud that's whack at least like spotify pays me yeah

19:41 Dylan Kidd yeah at least like i'd rather get paid you know and totally instead of pay you um

19:46 Dylan Kidd everyone has a spotify like pays for spotify so it's a lot better of a user experience and like if i'm on soundcloud on like my desktop and the ad comes i just reload the page and then skip the

19:58 Dylan Kidd Yeah. yeah so i don't even know i'm sure a lot of people do that A but lot of people do that. Yeah.

20:02 Dylan Kidd i i don't know man i think trying to monetize soundcloud maybe they haven't found the right

20:07 Dylan Kidd Yeah. way to do it yet or something yeah It feels a little MySpace-y over there. I mean, not gonna lie.

20:12 Dylan Kidd it is a little myspacey yeah i i don't know what it is Yeah. So you worked on getting your production chops and being able to go faster so you could be in those writing sessions and knock it out. out for rappers and stuff like that is that kind of the the angle that you are you still kind of doing that is or like are you finding opportunity in that or how did that how did that end up evolving

20:34 Dylan Kidd so in college it was mostly I was just trying to make really cool beats at the time I didn't do much collaboration like at all honestly like my college did have a studio that I'd work in quite a lot um and I did get my chops up I was in this one class that it was a three-hour block and one of our assignments was yeah three hours

20:53 Dylan Kidd three hours you got to make a song with this random group of people that we're shuffling through this

20:58 Dylan Kidd cool sweet yeah is your team make a song in three hours but like little things like that was super fun

21:02 Dylan Kidd that is fun right but in the studio i wouldn't use anything i would bring like my two input interface just be like i don't need these compressors and stuff i got everything on my laptop like

21:12 Dylan Kidd exactly you know it just slows you down really a lot of it i mean some of it make some of it does like sound better but how much better is kind of like the like hey if it's going to take me an extra half hour to put on an actual la2a versus just the software the actual one sounds maybe five percent better it's

21:29 Dylan Kidd yeah like is it worth 100 it is it worth it then i don't know right and it's like the music like ideas are fresh you gotta get them unless you have everything already set up and you can

21:38 Dylan Kidd ready go to go that's different yeah flip on a button you know because i like my apollo and i have like okay we need a background channel okay let's like go to the preset you know i'd much rather work in that um um

21:48 Dylan Kidd Yep, but same. um so how it progressed though was um after towards the end of college the band broke up and I was like okay what other skill sets do I have the production stuff I've been doing for about three years let's move to LA and just like work on my own music and try to produce for people and um I would just hit people up on Twitter like I think my first session was with this guy named Mark his artist name is Mars today

22:13 Dylan Kidd an incredibly talented dude very generous and he gave me all my first opportunities when i first moved to la he's

22:20 Dylan Kidd that's great now the dude i did the sample pack with um which cool now we can talk

22:23 Dylan Kidd let's talk about that soon yeah for sure but i would just hit people up on twitter or

22:27 Dylan Kidd Yeah. that's the great part about being in la is like a lot of people are here so i'll be like oh i'm in la you want to come through they'd come through my apartment i was in a one bedroom with my with my friend who's also a producer i took the living room he would come in and add my drum set and like so 10 guitars

22:44 Dylan Kidd classic. it Yeah. was had a bunk bed it was crazy um but uh yeah just moved to LA and just kind of roughed it worked at Target um worked at a coffee shop I was a cook um and just did music as much as I could put out like a couple EPs like

23:00 Dylan Kidd Mm hmm. about one EP a year and Mm hmm. just kind of stayed on the grind and tried to like make sure I was working on music every single day um

23:07 Dylan Kidd Word. Yeah. yeah and just random things would happen like I'd get random opportunities and um um random

23:15 Dylan Kidd it's like the whole artist team kind of stuff or yeah yeah like background commercials or

23:19 Dylan Kidd stuff mostly yeah okay we're okay like background stuff kind of like yeah work for hire sort of stuff or like discovery channel or like the golf channel or like random

23:29 Dylan Kidd sweet what things like kind of that what kind of stuff would they want would they want like kind of like droney stuff or would there be more like pop focused or hip-hop focused like what kind of flavors were they looking for

23:38 Dylan Kidd it would be very much they'd already have an edit done of Yeah. something and they literally they have a stock um song they already like edited around they're literally like we just need a licensable version of this so make your own version of this that fits exactly with the cuts so i'd drag the video into ableton and just remake the song but better and

24:00 Dylan Kidd Yeah, exactly. make it a little bit my own but it's very much like you're paid to do a job sort of thing um

24:07 Dylan Kidd but then there'd be random opportunities that um there's random like sink uh like houses that i just have my songs with and they find placement for that they literally just want the stems for or a slight rearrangement um stuff for like jim shark or like just random like instagram profiles

24:26 Dylan Kidd um so those ones would be a little more fun because it's literally just my music finding

24:30 Dylan Kidd Yes, exactly. a sync opportunity and it's not as much just like you're a machine yeah

24:35 Dylan Kidd Exposure and yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah exactly yeah lots of random stuff though um like i produced um i think my first co-production with the was with the singer sierra sean um which was also facilitated through that same friend mark uh

24:52 Dylan Kidd Cool. Yeah, mars today um uh-huh. and then i got co-production with my old uh college roommate who's the guy who showed me logic and all that um with uh this artist fabo who's really starting to do well right now

25:06 Dylan Kidd Uh-huh. Um, yeah, lots, lots of random ones. Um, and then More recently, also with my college, one of my college friends,

25:17 Dylan Kidd nice I got him like a young boy song, great young, awesome and yeah yeah his full name is young boy never broke again, which is a very funny name and I love telling my mom about it because she was like, is that his full name?

25:30 Dylan Kidd And that particular one, I was just like a gun for hire, they just needed a guitar player in a studio. And then the song ended up getting picked up and then i just got some pub on that um

25:43 Dylan Kidd Nice. yeah though it's all very random uh i really think the bread and butter of it was like putting out my own songs and like focusing on what i could do um

25:54 Dylan Kidd Yeah. for a while i would just put out a video a week of me just making random shit like i would just like go on omegle i don't know like i would go on like omegle and just like remix people on there or like make a song out of like like my toilet bowl or Yeah. something or

26:13 Dylan Kidd Right. just like really Yeah. just stupid stuff and Yeah. Yeah. um you know I never got like paid for any of those but it kind of helped me get my 10,000 hours in and

26:23 Dylan Kidd Yeah. just practice making stuff and just always trying to put stuff out there you know because people don't really know I exist until like I put stuff out there and then they'll hit me up for samples or

26:36 Dylan Kidd Right. opportunities or stuff Yeah. like that yes And I like I like how you like leaned into the randomness of the whole thing and the network. I think that both of those are really important kind of takeaways for people like find your community, grow with your community and just like be up for random adventures. I think that's like really good advice.

26:56 Dylan Kidd really it's and i think whatever you can do to just get more hours into your craft it it

27:01 Dylan Kidd Yeah. doesn't really matter like me and my old housemate we literally had nothing to do for a week so we made a 26 track album Awesome. and the

27:09 Dylan Kidd Yes. artist name is little a b c d e f g all the way up to z and Awesome. we just we just made it the songs are kind of fun there some of them are actually okay but it was just like what whatever kind of sparks your interest for the current moment to get you up and running

27:27 Dylan Kidd Mm i hmm. think is is kind of the bread and butter of it like Yeah. make stuff that's

27:32 Dylan Kidd Yeah. fun we're all just playing with we're grown-ups like working with toys right now you know just make some we're just kids in our bedroom making toys and like playing with them so like just have fun with it i think

27:44 Dylan Kidd Yeah. And that joy helps you get to that 10,000 hours. I also think that a thing that people don't really realize is that that 10,000 hours is not.

27:53 Dylan Kidd necessarily collective you kind of like need like 10 000 hours for production 10 000 hours for guitar 10 000 like whatever you want to do it's not like oh you know just 10 000 hours of music it's like no you're not gonna be good like

28:04 Dylan Kidd Yeah, you'll yeah. be okay but like you need to like specialize and also diversify at the same time which is kind of brutal but the way you get through it is through creative play like making Yeah. it fun for yourself mixing it up giving yourself a new challenge like constantly improving and tweaking and being in it and then you get there yeah

28:22 Dylan Kidd dude 100 like um sorry i just got totally sidetracked with this stupid i need airplane mode this stuff um yeah man um i think a lot of people kind of lose track of that because they'll especially after college and shit hits the fan and you're just like or after high school whenever you decide to like pursue music as a business you get in this weird headspace of

28:46 Dylan Kidd i need to sit down on my computer and create for monetary gain and Yep. there's something to be said about that you definitely

28:52 Dylan Kidd Yeah. you need you need food you need shelter you need all that Yes. stuff but also you need to make sure you still just make stuff because it's fun like because that's always what you'll come back to and that's where you can always like the well is never dry for that stuff

29:07 Dylan Kidd but a lot of times when you're sitting and only trying to create for monetary gain i don't know it kind of suffocates things a little bit

29:14 Dylan Kidd it really can and also i think most people do that too early like Yeah, you I'm have to get good before people want to give you money i don't even know if i'm good enough yet you know for people to really want to give me money so it's like i like earning that

29:28 Dylan Kidd sure that's not true. thanks thanks but like i i keep i try to keep that state of mind of like i want to earn

29:35 Dylan Kidd the freedom almost like i want to earn it where if i am able to focus 80 hours a week on only music i want it to be because like i grinded to get there not because it was like given to me or something like that and i i think that having that mentality ends up helping you to get there because you're constantly improving and never like thinking that you've climbed the mountain fully You're

30:00 Dylan Kidd 100 like, oh, this % is great. and Yeah. any work you do there's no work that you'll do that you won't learn something from so

30:07 Dylan Kidd Totally. even if you make a beat that no one hears you Yep. don't try to monetize in any way it's still like you put in some work and you probably learned a little trick that you might like use three years down the line in some random session you

30:21 Dylan Kidd Totally. know So especially it's important. larger works like you're saying that that a through z record like that was probably the best thing you could do because it was it wasn't just like an individual little tiny thing it was like let's let's build out this entire silly concept but by building it out now like you've made this larger work you've seen a vision through and regardless if it's serious or funny that doesn't really matter it's it's the like act of filling a vision and seeing it to completion

30:50 Dylan Kidd that then after that like i always think that you kind of level up every album uh

30:54 Dylan Kidd Yeah, even yeah. if it's not released even if it's released under a pseudonym even if it's just stored on a hard drive and forgotten about like you've grown and the act of doing is like what gets you this experience points yeah

31:08 Dylan Kidd yeah yeah and you learn what it like feels like to complete something and just have an idea pursue it out and it might be trash but just finishing it i mean a lot of people i've had a problem i couldn't like finish songs for a while i would start and i think every producer does this they'll have like a great 16 bar loop and then just nothing happens and

31:30 Dylan Kidd that's insane it's like what do i have to do to how'd you get through it how'd you get through it What

31:34 Dylan Kidd dude helped? i literally i there's this one reddit thread of like my favorite producers mr carmack um and i have a screenshot of it somewhere but it was like someone asked that exact question like how do you flesh out and finish a song and he literally just gave a random formula it was like okay eight bar intro with like a filter like with limited instrumentation then full beat

31:59 Dylan Kidd then pull back with different melody then go back to intro then and it was like oh that's kind of simple like

32:06 Dylan Kidd Yeah. and even if it doesn't work for every song I think it's just a formula you could just use um what one thing that helped me a lot just like playing with different if you have a like a 16 measure loop just practice soloing different instruments and see what things go together and be like okay this guitar and bass go together really well maybe

32:26 Dylan Kidd Yeah, that could be its own section and then add something else cool. like different like combinations of the instruments i

32:45 Luke F. Walton that's

32:45 Dylan Kidd think

32:45 Luke F. Walton really that really

32:46 Dylan Kidd goes a long way yeah

32:46 Luke F. Walton good advice and i think that that can help somebody that feels frozen they're like that's all the ideas it's like perfect that's all the ideas now just split them up like one of my guitar teachers when i i was going through that where i was a guitarist um you know 16 or 17 i was trying to figure out how to make a record with like arrangement and he showed me he's like look at the chords that you're playing and now start to break them up

33:08 Luke F. Walton like it's all in there like you have the hi-hat part in your in your right hand you have these little chord shapes like break them up into multiple guitars and that was like my light bulb moment of like yeah the the meat is already there you just need to start sprinkling it and spreading it around the arrangement

33:24 Dylan Kidd yeah that's even that's a cool way looking at it too because if you're playing like a like a five note voicing there's

33:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right.

33:32 Dylan Kidd there's a bunch of different ideas in there you have the top note which might be the melody and

33:36 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

33:36 Dylan Kidd the bass note and then like the little like harmonies inside and like That's a cool way of looking at it too, actually.

33:44 Dylan Kidd yeah and then like you could throw it you could be like okay this little voicing that's going to go in the synth and then this is going to go this is going to stay on the guitar but that's the melody and this is the bass and now it's like you just deconstructed an entire guitar part and now it's the full arrangement

33:57 Dylan Kidd I mean, I might need to dive into that. do I haven't it really i thought of that believe as much.

34:01 Dylan Kidd that you could too especially with like you're playing so i was i was listening to um i was listening to your your latest record um neuroplastic and uh i was i was super into the way that you were integrating acoustic guitar especially i thought that was really unique and modern and classic and i i just i loved kind of the granulized kind of stuff that you were doing and

34:23 Dylan Kidd I mean, the ways that rhythm was interacting with each other. So I like. if there's anybody that would benefit from like blowing up a song in that way i feel like you would crush that yeah

34:33 Dylan Kidd thanks man dude that really might cool yeah be the next thing to focus on for next month man

34:37 Dylan Kidd that's awesome it's awesome so when did when did you uh drop that ep or ep it's an ep but it's like an lp2 like i think you called it an ep but it's like classified as under spotify as an lp because it has the requisite number of tracks or whatever yeah

34:51 Dylan Kidd yeah i think i dropped that maybe like like three months ago now Cool. i don't even i don't even know i kind of just dropped it and moved on i didn't

34:59 Dylan Kidd really Yeah. No, there's a... that's kind of a wisdom in itself i think uh yeah yeah just like make stuff and then forget about it move on

35:09 Dylan Kidd -huh to next the next thing and thing yeah yeah then when you're dry just go back to the old ideas and then stitch them together and then when you get so fed up with the song because you've been hearing it hearing it for like months then you're you have a lot of like fire to move like make some new stuff that's kind of a cyclical sort of thing yeah

35:26 Dylan Kidd that's good that's real good so i'll put the i'll put the link in the episode description so everybody can can listen to that record um

35:33 Dylan Kidd Awesome, man. Thank you. i'm really excited to talk about um sample packs splice and kind of what that even is so for the listeners splice um is a subscription-based service where you can download loops and samples um from their platform and then you can put them in your daw and they have some ai tools all sorts of kind of crazy stuff that they've got going on um i use it i really like it

35:56 Dylan Kidd um we'd love to hear kind of your perspective though as somebody that's putting stuff up on splice and recording guitar and allowing other people to now you know start their songs from your playing and i'm just curious like first of all how does it how does it work and then we'll get to the other questions how do you how do you even go about doing something like that yeah

36:14 Dylan Kidd yeah yeah well how it started was the same dude i referenced earlier mark mars today i'm gonna plug him the whole time because he really i really love this guy

36:24 Dylan Kidd I um but love that. um he uh so he makes sample packs through a company he started called one stop shop and uh with these sample packs um they generally want tons of samples they say to shoot for 300 per pack 300

36:38 Dylan Kidd 300 per pack. Nice. is a lot especially if you're doing loops because one shots you can bang out pretty pretty easy but even there you have to be granular within make sure all the hits are great

36:49 Dylan Kidd um but basically they're like okay we we're a little short on this pack do you want to contribute you know 50 samples and we'll cut you in on 15 of the profit i said sure and then i contributed a bunch of guitar loops and those loops ended up doing very well like it was the number one guitar loop for like a month um

37:06 Dylan Kidd awesome that's so cool yeah yeah it was cool man um they yeah have charts which is kind of fun as a producer because you can see like crowdsourced almost like what thing's popping off yeah

37:14 Dylan Kidd yeah it's like my billboard 100 it's totally just like but yes um but yes cool um so the guitar did very well and then they offered me i helped with a couple other drum packs they did as well and then they said do you want to do your own pack and i said absolutely and they're like okay shoot for 300 oh

37:30 Dylan Kidd 300 dude man and okay smart i decided um with the pack that i wanted to do i wanted to double down on the stuff that was selling really well for me and my drum loops um and guitar loops were doing really well so i said okay i'm gonna do 100 guitar guitar loops 100 drum loops then fill in the rest with one shots and like textures and stuff um

37:51 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

37:52 Dylan Kidd and the way a splice works um is it's based on a pool system i believe um it's kind of like spotify

38:01 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

38:01 Dylan Kidd like however many people download that month you get a percentage of the net sales from that month so like

38:09 Dylan Kidd let's say like if splice like had a you know made a thousand dollars that month and i contributed one percent then i'd get you know ten dollars back whatever so that's generally how it works um and that particular pack did really well too i think my guitar is it was like one two and three and then my top six of the ten like guitars did really well i think i think my pack like peaked at number three

38:35 Dylan Kidd then slowly cut down now it's like number 30 or whatever but i also dropped that months ago but splice really wants new material all the time um

38:45 Dylan Kidd Interesting. because Okay. packs have a tendency of peaking and then going off so my pack and the other packs we did they peaked for about two months and they fell off like my pack went from like number three to number nine to number 12 and now it's like now it's dead now it's like number 36 or whatever um and so that's generally how it works um and there's lots of

39:08 Dylan Kidd there's lots of granular things that go into it they have like they want their samples to be mastered a certain way so

39:16 Dylan Kidd Okay. they have to be like true peak negative one they have to like meet a certain quality

39:24 Dylan Kidd And it was really great working with One Stop Shop, which is run by Mark and Chris KRS, who is a prolific sample maker. I'm sure every producer has at least one of his kicks in their sample bank.

39:37 Dylan Kidd Yeah. I'll have to check. where was i going with this oh no i lost my train of thought um

39:44 Dylan Kidd no it's cool you're talking about you're talking about how like everything had to be up to a certain standard and mastered

39:48 Dylan Kidd yeah and all that stuff so it was great working with mars and chris in one-stop shop because they really uh like told me what what sells on there and like how to because you have to mix them a certain way i really for example i love running all my stuff through tons of distortion and dirt

40:06 Dylan Kidd yes and yeah stuff and they said you that's great but you want to make sure a producer has the option to not have that so

40:12 Dylan Kidd Uh-huh. you have to do much cleaner and if they want the dirt they could throw on like a saturation or something

40:17 Dylan Kidd Right. like that so Yeah. i had to like take one step of mixing away from everything

40:22 Dylan Kidd Okay. and Okay. just make them super clean and polished and then when you when you're scroll like scrolling through splice you hit play and it's nice it almost sounds mastered which is crazy because when we're mixing things are pretty dry and like like that

40:35 Dylan Kidd Yeah. but they they want them like they wanted to have it the easiest way possible for someone to drag and drop into their project and it already sounds like perfect so

40:44 Dylan Kidd Yeah. there's a granularity to the mixing that i didn't anticipate and mastering 300 samples was definitely a lot a lot of work uh

40:56 Dylan Kidd I do have three things from Karis in my library on Spotify. yeah dude his dude and he's he's appeared on a lot of records too especially his percussion loops he

41:07 Dylan Kidd Cool. was also Yeah. on some burn a boy records um Nice. and i think my guitar got on the new burn a boy record

41:13 Dylan Kidd Yeah, and yeah. yeah I think I saw either a poster or a story or something you did.

41:17 Dylan Kidd yeah and it's really funny where these samples are ending up too Sure, I'm sure.

41:21 Dylan Kidd i'm on tiktok way too much just like everyone one and Okay. um i'll be scrolling through like producer talk stuff and i hear like my samples all the time just scrolling like random producers using it and

41:32 Dylan Kidd Cool. um my roommate has been listening to this uh this spongebob ai artist who just makes like super actually banging like pop spongebob morgan wallin country tracks and they're using like a bunch of my guitars on Yeah! it and tons of strings it's just Just so random where

41:52 Dylan Kidd Yeah, all these I wish there was a way to see where your samples are I know. ending up

41:56 Dylan Kidd That'd be cool. it and would that's be yeah it's such a modern thing too of like you like you made this music and then you empowered all these other people to make this music and so now you're just like your children are like running around the world you know yes

42:08 Dylan Kidd i constantly i'm on the prowl whenever i'm listening to a song i'm listening really closely like is this my guitar it kind of sounds like it but um it's really it's it's really great and um uh the part that's not talked about as much with splice stuff Because all my friends are producers, but they don't know that Splice pays their... um plays their sample creators like really well actually

42:31 Dylan Kidd Cool, cool. not like That's incredibly good to know. Yeah. well but it's Yeah, like to

42:34 Dylan Kidd but yeah. a point that i i work at a restaurant right now i'm a barista there and i've been like able to downscale my hours drastically to like two days a week and

42:43 Dylan Kidd Awesome. i almost don't need work there anymore but Awesome. i That's just so cool.

42:47 Dylan Kidd like it just I to love like it. yeah and it's like we were saying like i like going there just because it

42:52 Dylan Kidd Yeah, gets totally. dust out the cobwebs a little bit totally Um, the but whole thing is like having a day job is not shameful like i have a day job too like i think i think artists should talk about it more because it's like it makes it more real it's not like we're all just like living off the trust fund and like you know like like no like we got to make money we got to eat but like the goal is to not necessarily not have a day job the goal is to like choose whether or not you want to have a day job or like choose how much you work like be able to flex that so i love

43:20 Dylan Kidd Exactly, and there's that a much different like way of going into work when you don't need to as much

43:26 Dylan Kidd Yes. Yes. Totally. you're there and i'm like dude if i just decided to not be here like in the indefinite future i could and it's much different and i really enjoy just being there and i have great co-workers too like

43:40 Dylan Kidd Yep. i Yep. i really like like even though i don't need to work there i'm gonna still stay there like two days a week especially if you can find something you don't mind doing and

43:50 Dylan Kidd Mm the hmm. people are nice and like my latte art's getting good Yes, and I really

43:54 Dylan Kidd yo. like making like lattes and Cool. getting my tulips and like Oh, all nice. this stuff it's it's really great and I this was the opposite of what I thought when I moved to LA in like 2018 I was like gonna get my bread up I'm gonna quit my job once I have like X dollars in my bank account and now I'm there and I I don't want to leave honestly

44:15 Dylan Kidd Yeah. It's but that's nice. a good that's a good like lesson i think a good thing for artists to keep in mind too is that the the end goal is to be able to like support yourself with music and be able to make those creative decisions and follow your muse and stuff like that it's not necessarily to shut yourself off from society or

44:30 Dylan Kidd 100 like % exactly the other things you love um yeah like life is long too that you can do so many things and I've learned so much just being like at the cafe and just like make

44:43 Dylan Kidd yeah it I've learned so much about coffee and like I'm really good friends with all my co-workers it's like I get to listen to their how they're doing and I don't know. There's just more life there than just like my own four walls, you

44:55 Dylan Kidd I know. like that. and also just keep a pen on you and a pad and like lyrically it's really great too because you'll have a conversation with the random customer and they'll just like i don't know a lot of it'll help dust out the cobwebs yes

45:08 Dylan Kidd totally and you keep that antenna up and when the when it strikes you you're ready i mean i'm the same way i get so many ideas like processing my day when i'm like laying down in bed at night and my wife probably thinks i'm a crazy person because all the time like i'll wife Oh, I like tap, tap, tap away at my phone, like lay down in bed,

45:28 Dylan Kidd like think about my day for five or 10 minutes and think about like what something a coworker said or some weird interaction. I'll just be like, oh, I got something, just

45:35 Dylan Kidd Yes. write down a turn of phrase or like a feel choice or something weird. But so much of it is processing, just the being in the culture.

45:44 Dylan Kidd 100% I think time away from music is like just as important as time with the music, I think.

45:50 Luke F. Walton That's really, really good wisdom. So I got one last question for you. Yeah. So this program,

45:57 Luke F. Walton this podcast is called Love Music More. And then to close it out, we like to do a thing called Love Music Why?

46:04 Luke F. Walton And what this is, is basically your pitch about music like telling the people why do you love this thing why should a kid start music or why should an older person start music why why incorporate this beautiful thing into your life and how is it how has it changed you just on a personal level not like the the individual things like production or writing but just music itself Just

46:30 Dylan Kidd I mean in its simplest form it's just a great outlet honestly I think picking up an instrument I think it's much like going to the gym or picking up a hobby it's just like it's an outlet except with music it's like an emotional outlet too you're ever having a bad day and you might not have someone there like you you can always pick up the guitar and just noodle for like 10 or 15 minutes and you just feel better about it and

46:56 Dylan Kidd also just learning to get better at your instrument I think translates to all other parts of your life like the better you can get a guitar or whatever hobby you have the more you'll carry over to other parts your relationships your your career your you know whatever it is so I think just like

47:14 Dylan Kidd it's a relationship nurture the relationship with music if you're into music and um it'll always pay itself back and it'll always be there for you whether it's your career or not like when you're 80 you'll still have a guitar in the corner of the room and your grandkids are running around you could always just like noodle and I mean music life would suck without music like you need that uh yeah I mean even if I wasn't doing music I would still just play guitar every day because it's just a great outlet

47:43 Dylan Kidd I love that. I totally agree. It's such a special thing to have access to, and it pays itself back.

47:49 Luke F. Walton 100% and then some yeah Yes. Well, thank you, Dylan. I love chatting with you. This is awesome. Where could people connect with you? Where would be a good place to check you out?

47:59 Dylan Kidd I mean Instagram Twitter is all Dylan Kidd music same with TikTok I post really stupid stuff there sometimes but

48:07 Dylan Kidd Awesome. yeah if you want to check out the sample pack it's called sticks and stones it's on splice um and check out one-stop shop samples which are the dudes i'm doing sample pack through they do great work cop all their sample packs they're all incredible um but yeah is

48:25 Luke F. Walton Awesome. Awesome. And be sure to stream Neuroplastic. I'll drop that link in the bio. Once there again, I'm Scoobert Doobert. You can find my stuff at scoobertdoobert.pizza. It's my website. And once again, Dylan, really appreciate you.

48:36 Dylan Kidd i appreciate you scoop thanks for having me on this is cool man Thanks a lot, man.