Shuffling the Creative Deck

1:43 What's good, everybody?This is Scoobert Doobert.I wanted to talk to you about a conceptof following the leader.So depending on where you startwith any sort of creative endeavor,I feel like that influences where you end up.And on that point, I want to cover a few different thingsthat I've learned, just kind of as I've been making my music.And then I've also been listening to interviews

2:06 and stuff like that and share that with youto see if it maybe influences a different directionthat you can go in your future creative endeavors.So a really good example was I was starting this projectand I wanted to do something a little bit more bass centric.So naturally, I was thinking I'll start with bass.And I was reading something on the Beatlesand they were talking about how Paul McCartney

2:33 preferred to make his bass part,basically at the very, very end,if he was able to overdub the bass.That was what ended up becoming his preferred method.At least that's what I heard in this interview.And that kind of hit a light bulb in my head of course.Instead of saying necessarily that this entire songis going to be bass driven,say I'm going to let the bass fill in the end.They're fill in all of the gaps.

3:04 So I'll make the melody and then the bassis going to dance with it.And you can take that concept and apply itto a bunch of different things.So I've been experimenting with this with recordingwhere you can either start by the traditional method,drums and bass, then guitars, then vocals,kind of vocals last, or you can flip it aroundand instead basically instead of doing a acoustic demo,

3:31 you do a vocal demo, but the vocal is your proper vocal.An example of this is Christina Aguilera,you are beautiful.So they ended up using the demo vocalin the final release because it had more magic to it.But I also think that there's a part of itthat because the musicians and stuffand the producer or whatever,we're cutting to that original vocal,it's, everything was built around that as the centerpiece.

4:02 And so there's, the reason why I bring upboth the bass and the vocal is that bass is usually done early.There's a magic in doing it late.Vocal is usually done late.There's a magic in doing it early.But if you apply that same concept,you can shuffle the deck in a million different waysand that creates just new pathways to follow.So if you wanted to really mix it up,maybe do drums last,

4:30 or maybe kind of get out of the frameworkof I'm going to lock this thing to grooveand instead create the groove with other instrumentsand then fill it in with the drums.Or something I did on this recordthat's going to come out in Juneis I did like a drum part or like a loose drum part.So instead of recording to a click track,a little metronome kick, kick, kick,you just do a kick and a snare.

4:58 So it's not gritted as in it's not showing youthe perfect lines where everything should be,but it instead is giving you a push pull of like backbeat.And by fitting your vocal in throughout that backbeat,it gives you a little bit more room to play with that gridso it doesn't sound as metronomic.And then you can add drums.And sometimes that'll influence,like maybe you'll do a little bit less drums

5:25 because the vocal is carrying more of the gridso you don't need as much of a hi-hatto articulate where the kind of subdivisions arewhere the place is in between each of the primary,big accents are.And you let the vocal carry that instead.Or you know, like I would do that plus a drone note.So one of the things that I learned,I think it was like, yeah,it was back in music school.

5:51 Somebody talked about practicing with a drone noterather than a backing track.And we're talking about Indian traditional music.And I found that really liberatingbecause you could just set a pitch center.So it gives you a place that you can kind of setas your bass line and you can dance above and below it.And that is a little bit freeing toobecause you're not as locked into like a specific key.

6:22 You're not saying this is a major sounding song.This is a minor sounding song.Instead, you're just kind of tapping into a nucleus,a, you know, kind of source of gravityof a place that you're gonna orbit around.And so I tried to apply that to some of these songs.So I would have a basic drum beat, a drone note,and then sing my lead vocalthat would be my final vocal.I'm not sure if I'm gonna do this very often

6:51 because it's really freaking hardbecause you have to kind of like,you have to think of where the arrangement's gonna beas a vocalist when you haven't even figured that out yetand try and push the arrangement.It creates a very interesting vibebut it is also very challenging vocally to like do this.And also it's difficult because it makes a lot of the decisions,yeah, in a reverse order.

7:13 So, but there's also a magic in itbecause now you're not being led by what the drum beatis doing or the how intense the guitars are.You're being led entirely by what the vocal is doing.And so if the vocal stays very reserved,the rest of the instrumentation is going to stay very reserved.There's a point where you just naturally like feellike that line, that lyric is a little bit more emotiveand you push into it.

7:37 It has a little bit more grit in the vocalthan naturally the arrangement that gets builtaround that vocal is going to do that, reflect it.Whereas if it's the oppositeand you do something surprising,when you're doing the vocal as a top lineit's the very final step.The arrangement's already fully baked.And sometimes you can get around thatbut it usually means you're going to have to go back

8:00 to the end of the studio or you're going to have todelete some stuff and re-record it and that's a bummer.So flipping those things around.In the same way that I was talkingwith my buddy, Cary Singer, who's a producerand I've done some music with,he was telling me about how one of his favorite producersis thinking less about drumsthan I've been ruminating on this for a whileabout how he creates these vibes,

8:30 these little sections of just wallpaper soundand like interesting textures or a synthy thingand uses that as like a starting point.So instead of starting with a groove or a feelor a certain musical genre,he's instead starting with a motion and a color palette.And obviously I wouldn't want to do that every songthat doesn't sound very fun to me,but it sounds like a fun challenge to do every once in a while

9:04 and it's gonna bring out a very different song.Another thing that I did for the MÖB EP,the LP, the MÖB LP, I did drums,then guitar and then everything elsebecause I feel strongest at the guitaror everything else I do.So basically what I was thinking waslead with my best foot forward.And I like it, I think it sounds coolwhere it's like the guitar is the quarterback.It's just like everything defaults back

9:36 to what the guitar is doingand then I'm top lighting based on the emotionsthat the guitar is bringing out.So I've done it each wayand then like a song like Sunlight off of that same LP,that one was bass-driven.So I was starting with the bassrather than finding a bass line at the very very end,like something like stories, that was a very, very end.Bass part, the Sunlight was right from the jump

9:59 because I wanted to do like a slap loopand have it feel almost like it was sampled.But anyway, basically what I'm trying to say istry to reassess your starting pointand that's going to have incredible downstream effect.And just also like, you know, I don't,there are not that many instrumentsin popular music typically.Obviously you can throw in stuff,like I have bass clarinet a bunch on this next record.

10:22 But really, it's drums, it's bass, it's guitar,it's synth, it's vocals.Then you add in additional instrumentsbut like that's the core and I realize thisbecause every time I pitch this Spotify playlistI was like, what's on your record?It's like there's guitar, it's bass,there's synths, there's drums, it's vocals.But like already now you have five thingsso it's like five factorial instead

10:45 that you can shift around which one is going to be firstwhich one is going to be last.Experiment with all of thosebecause you just don't have that many thingsthat you can experiment with.And in a world where everybody's kind of got the same toolsthere's a lot of the same pallets.You can make these incredible changesjust by rethinking process.If you enjoyed this episode, I would like to welcome you

11:12 to subscribe to the podcastand also throw out a five stars if you couldand got some really great conversations coming upincluding some stuff on Dolby Atmosand all of the competitors to Dolby Atmoswhich I'm really fascinated about.That's coming up either next week or in the week afterand some other just killer musiciansthat are going to be on here talking about what they do

11:36 and recording engineers and all that good stuff.So definitely stick around and if you'd like to hear my musiccheck it out at scoobertdoobert.pizza.See you guys.