Son Lux, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and How Sound Design and Production Connect

0:00 Music Appreciation. What's up guys, it's Scoobert Doobert, I am here to make you love music moreAnd that's what this podcast is all aboutSo I wanted to talk a little bit about my dudes, Son Lux

0:26 They just won the Academy Award for their work on everything everywhere all at onceAnd it's been really fun watching them as a bandBecause they have grown so muchAnd have taught me a lot and influenced my music personallySo I want to talk about what have I taken from themWhat do I think about their music that is revolutionary and groundbreakingAnd changing the scope of musicAnd having this kind of big accolade

0:55 I think it's just going to push it into hyper driveSo let's start from the topWhen I first started listening to them, I think it was like 2014 or something like thatYou know, their music was very dramatic and cinematicAnd so naturally one of the first things I heard was this is kind of like a movie score music a little bitBut there was something deeper to itIt wasn't just sweeping string arrangements

1:17 And yeah, there were cool orchestral elements like clarinetsAnd different stuff going onBut there was like an otherworldly affect to the whole thingAnd it's not just the way that lead singer singsThere was like a sense of what is this instrument that pervaded all the music that they madeYou know, fast forwardThey kind of started this solo projectThey turned into this full-fledged band

1:41 And then I start watching interviews to start watching things about their processAnd as they're growingThey're exploring these new soundsAnd their drummer Ian Chang does this video where he talks about likeApplying electronic elements to the drum kitAnd they're influenced by electronic musicAnd they're trying to replicate it on the acoustic drum kitSo right next to me, I've got my snare drum

2:03 And one of the cool things that he was talking about was using the back side of the snare drumThe parts where the snares are on thereAnd using them as a percussion, you know, elementSo let's see if I can do itI'm using my fingers instead of a drumsticks but you'll get the gistSo what you do is you rake the snaresWhich are the stuff that's on the bottomAnd then you have an impact on the top part of the snare head

2:31 So it creates like a reverse kind of effectThat was one of the first things that I saw from themBut then you flash forwardAnd you know, they continue to grow as musiciansWhich is something that I was talking about on the podAlways keep growingAnd they, you know, develop their sense of soundAnd that brings me to the central thesis of this entire podcast episode

2:51 Son Lux are pioneers in melding the worlds of sound design and productionAt the same timeSo it's something that, you know, sound designers used to be kind of like their own roleYou might have seen some of these videos on TikToks where people are like, you know, puttingThey're like muddy shoes into a sandbox or a kitty litter boxAnd making the footsteps that you hearThe folly that you hear on top of movies

3:19 And you like kind of how that kind of stuff happensSon Lux is doing the same thing where they are applying those principlesTo acoustic instrumentsAnd also creating acoustic instruments out of different elements of the physical spaceSo for example, Ryan Lott helped produceKimbra's latest recordReally great recordAnd when he was talking about one of the first songs that he did

3:43 He created the kick drum by pounding his fist against the windowAnd he used a microphone that picked up a lot of low endAnd so he was able to create this organic low endSo instead of just putting a beater to a kick drumHe used, you know, the fleshy part of his fist against a glass surfaceSame thing where you like, you can take a water dropAnd turn that into a snare with the right kind of reverb and processing

4:07 You can also take these like different, you know, sounds like mouth soundsOr sounds of dropping things on the floor, beating against the wallAnd translate them into either percussion or pitched percussion by putting it into something called a samplerSo a sampler, you know, you might have seen this stuff on Ableton but it's all good if notBecause this podcast is not just for musicians

4:29 You can take a physical input, anything, you know, a meowYou know, if you remember, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meowThey're like a Meow Mix commercialYou can take like one instance of a soundAnd then the computer will apply pitches to it and shift it up and downBut you can take that, and you can take that to its logical extremeOr you can pitch things that weren't meant to be pitched

4:55 Or you can take pitched things and turn them into not as pitched thingsBy removing the harmonic seriesI have some pods about what the harmonic series isBut it's basically any time that you play an outside of like a pure computer-generated sine waveThere's a complex set of upper frequencies that also soundIt's happening right now with my voice where there is a fundamental pitch, booh, whatever

5:15 Because I have a little voiceAnd then all of the stuff above it that is coming through to youAnd that's part of what makes it, you know, has, I don't like my voice rather than somebody else's voiceWe have slightly different resonating chambers with the ways that our, you know, skull is shapedAnd the way that I move my lips and being a Californian and my California draw

5:35 Which, that sounded really weird, California drawYeah, so everybody's got their own thingsBut all of those things are additive to create that sonic fingerprint, that signature of my voiceAnd it's the same thing for any instrumentAnd that's one of the things that you can really captureBy using samplingAnd then also we have really amazing tools now like Melodyne, where you can literally go in

5:59 And be like, I don't want any more of the second order harmonics which isYou know, up above the, you know, first kind of fundamental frequencyThere are all of these orders of harmonicsAnd they get quieter and quieter typically as they go upAnd so you can adjust thatAnd if you adjust those things, now suddenly something that is a saxophone can sound like a violin

6:21 Because you have taken away some of the frequencies that make it sound more saxophone-likeSo you're applying these concepts of synthesisYou know, from a synthesizer to organic instrumentsAnd then the next step that Son Lux does really well is then you take organic non-musical instrument thingsAnd turn them back into musical instruments and vice versaIt's that conversation

6:46 That ends up creating this like otherworldly organic senseAnd I really, I'm passionate about this because I think it's the next chapter of musical instrument manufacturingYou know, because it's like kind of like where do you go after synths?Isn't that the logical conclusion?Like you have Stradivarius who makes the violins and you have Leo Fender who makes the electric guitars

7:09 And then where do you go next? You go to synthesizersAnd then eventually like we've explored most of the ideas of synthesizersThe next logical step is to recapitulate the whole thingPull it all back together, mix and mash itAnd that's what Son Lux is doing so wellInspires my music and I know it's inspiring a lot of other people tooAs you see this stuff on TikTok now

7:28 Where people are using like different strange instrumentsFor example, I've used frying eggs as a filter sweep sound like the kind of soundBecause when you're frying something, it's got all those popping high frequenciesSo you filter out the low frequencies, you shift it up, put in a little reverb room or whatever like thatAnd now suddenly you have this oddly familiar sound

7:50 That isn't quite just a white noise filter sweep, it's insteadFulfilling the same role but sourcing it from a different placeWhich maybe somebody else wouldn't have thought to doOr you take a beaded curtain and you swift it back and forth and throw that into a phaserAnd now it sounds like a shaker but it's not quite a shakerIt's a beaded curtain

8:12 Or like the reverse snare example that I was talking in Chang the drummer from Son LuxWhere you are approaching something that is almost taken for granted in the way that it worksAnd flipping it overLike let's play the snares more instead of just have the snares be this thing that hits the resonant head on the other sideWhat if we flip the head around and we play the snares like a shaker or like a washboard

8:39 Or combine the two where you roll the snares into a hitAnd then it cranes to the sound of a reverse snare so you're using electronic stuff to inform analog stuffWhich then you create electronic music withIs that wrapping around?And I feel like that's where like art in general kind of isAnd I'm really excited about it because like what?What do you get when you start to recombine everything?

9:01 You know it's that idea of sampling yourselfIt's like it's taking hip hop kind of ideology combining it with live music and jazz and stuffMix those two together so now you're not just thinking of it like I'm gonna play this song and I've trained really hard to be good at my instrumentIt's like I'm going to play this song and then approach it from a totally different perspective

9:22 And create something that you could never have created without the tools of todayAnd I think that's what makes art cutting edge is like it's the conversation of the tools and the user of those toolsAnd I think Son Lux is like a really inspirational group of people that are doing thatAnd also it's like fun that the context of everything everywhere all at once as a movie that's like recursive

9:45 On film itself and the internet and all of these different modern themes is using thisYou know modern musicians who are using modern techniquesBut all doing it with kind of like a cheeky sense of humor and child like play and curiosity

10:02 I think that you'll finding those things in your art and appreciating that if you're not an artist but you're just an art loverappreciating that from your artist and celebrating that and buying into their explorationI think can make the whole experience of consuming music and creating music that much richerTo understand the story that it comes from and the creative sensibilities that it's rooted in

10:28 That's what I like about doing podcasts like these because then it's like a little bit of a space where I can go behind the scenesBut go a little bit deeper and be like, hey did you know I used eggs?You know, like he would never know in the context of the stuffBut once you hear it maybe it'll create a little more depth or at least buy it into my artistic story a little bit

10:47 And everything once you're viewing it as a sound designerEverything starts to take on a richer musicalityAnd I'm not alone in this, you can talk like John CageA bunch of people in France, my internet is not working right now so I can't look up all these names so I can't cheatBut there are a bunch of people that I haven't played that say I think are really cool

11:09 And you can just look up like, you know, early experimental noise music or found sound recordingCheck out how people like use bird's song and chop it up even on early tapeI think that's really fascinating stuff where now we can do that even deeperSuper easing on computers, but just because it became easier doesn't make it like less worthwhileBecause I'm not having like a chop tape

11:31 Now there are less impediments to me creating what I hear in my head using things like organic soundsBirds slapping on a window, reverse snares and combining them with the electronic mediumAnd I think just because it's easy like we shouldn't hate on itIt actually opens up new avenues and venues because you're not like having to spend your entire dayJust cutting up little bits of tape and splicing them together

11:57 You're instead spending your entire day creatingSo celebrate the artists as they do these thingsAnd see if you can like, you know, ask people like, what was your creative processOr listen to interviews and or if you're a journalist like like digging into this stuffBecause I think musicians would surprise you

12:14 What we end up doing, where we end up finding our inspiration, how we end up making these productionsAnd check out some more sound like stuffThey've got videos and I highly recommend it because it's an inspiring way to look at the worldI like to carry around a little zoom recorderI have a binar on my microphone that I got for like a hundred bucksI plug that in there and what a binar on my microphone is

12:36 It's a pair of two microphones that I strap around my earsAnd so the microphone drops into my outer ear canalAnd it captures everything that I'm hearing in that momentWith the reverberation around my ear canalAnd so while it will not sound exactly to you like it does to me, you know, because we have different shaped earsIt gives enough of the impression to the extent where one of my buddies

13:04 I have a song called, it's just called IntroIt's on KŌAN, or on my KŌAN LPAnd you can hear somebody walking around in the cough behind youAnd it scared the crap out of my friend because he was listening to my record and all of a suddenIt sounds like somebody's behind him in his home gym or in his garageSo he's like, oh my god, somebody's hereBut that was an element that I recorded binaurally

13:26 Just when I was trying to get a sense of spaceAnd one of the things that like headphone listening in particular can do for you is when I drop a binaural recordingSay that I'm like in a beautiful meadow and there are birds flying overheadTypically music is panned left to rightBut with those binaural microphonesI'm able to create the illusion of stuff way above your head

13:51 So it expands the like illusion of what recorded stereo music isTo a full 360 viewAnd in a moment I can drop your head from a dink dark cave to a beautiful meadow to a tiny roomI can elevate herAnd those moments of shiftI think are really impactful just because we're used to them right

14:17 Like the feeling of going from a long empty hallway into a cluttered tiny library roomIt's just it's visceralAnd tinging those visceral just a human experience momentsAnd applying them to music can draw so much out emotionally from what you're feelingEven if you're not like fully aware of what you're feelingThe feeling like you'll get itYou know, like you don't have to know like

14:42 Oh yes, the reverb shifted from a binaural hall reverb to a binaural room reverbThat has like tighter diffusion like you don't have to know all the specific parametersIt's more aboutAppreciating that we're thinking about this as musicians and then as musicians about like how does that make your audience feelEven if they don't know what they're going through

15:04 And try it try listening you know to some of these works especially on headphonesBecause you're gonna get a different sense of scale and scope and dimensionalitySo if you can like try and perceive if things feel like they're behind you or above youOr hard-panned left or right try to get that sense of dimensionality and directionWhen you're listening to music because it is so

15:26 Once you get it once you really feel it you'll never go backAnd that's part of the reason why I love mixing and headphones listening and headphonesIs it's that sound like mentality of drop you into spaceItch you with that sound designer mentalityOf I'm putting you in a world I'm immersing you in a world

15:47 And using both organic and synthesized and combinations of those to create this otherworldly experience in that worldSo if you did if you did this podcast got a bunch more episodes and a bunch more coming upTypically have a lot of guests come through and things like that tooSo definitely subscribe if you could throw me a five star that would be awesome

16:08 It definitely helps people discover this podcast and check out my music at scoobertdoobert.pizzaThat's my website scoobertdoobert.pizza or you can just search me in app music Spotify whateverAnd listen to some of what I do just to get a perspectiveIt's not exactly Son Lux music but it certainly is very much inspired by itHopefully this was inspirational to you and I hope you have a great rest of your day

16:33 On second thought before I let you goIf you're wearing headphones stick around for this if not maybe come back for it and flip on some headphones you can hear itThis is an example of a binaural recording that I did walking around a music convention called NAMM. And you're going to hear the scale of this room that you're suddenly placed in it's a convention center

16:56 And there are people you know hundreds of feet away playing different musical instruments all at once all around your headSo sit back probably don't enjoy but check out this little clip of madnessBeing at a massive music convention binaurally

17:15 Take that music clip and flip it around maybe side-chain it so there's a kick drum

17:49 And at the same instance that the kick drum goes all of the sound sucks in and disappears for a momentOr maybe you could run the whole thing into a sampler and give it some artificial pitchesSo as you're playing a keyboard the entire orchestra of noise moves aroundThere are all of these endless opportunities combining analog inputs of tons and tons of data

18:11 Like think about all the stuff that's going on there it's that scaleIt's really hard to create the impression of that in a computerBut you take that input that's really rich analog binauralAnd then you can run it into these computational tools and create something truly transcendent and weirdAnd that's the gift of Son Lux and others like Francis DhomontThe French guy that I remember his name

18:36 They they paved the road and we're just walking on itBut let's see how far it can take us