Why "vibe" is my #1 musical goal

0:01 Music Appreciation. What's up guys it's Scoobert Doobert here. I wanted to talk aboutkind of how there's like a million decisions in music but the vast majority ofpeople perceive it as just one vibe everything kind of hits at once and so Iwant to talk about that from the perspective of the creator and thedifficulties and opportunities that brings the reason why I was thinking about

0:41 this I'm actually working on a like a longer more produced version of oneof these podcasts where I'll you know should play some stuff on guitar andpiano so you can actually see some of these concepts because I was trying tofigure out how to do an audio only version of that conversation and it wastoo difficult but the subject matter is the modes the modes are basically

1:06 like taking a single set of notes a scale and then viewing them from a lot ofdifferent perspectives creating the impression that one of the notes is homebass versus the other note is home bass and it creates a very differentfeeling but then from that I was thinking about it and thinking about the conceptof vibe within music and as composers as you know songwriters musicians all

1:33 kind of stuff we can get really really in the weeds about the note choices aboutthe very very specific volume changes the dynamics or like I get super in theweeds on the room or the you know stereo picture how wide something is whereit is behind your head above your head below your head in front of you youknow really small really narrow really wide spend a lot of time thinking about

2:05 that kind of stuff and working on skills and techniques to create thoseillusions but it's all in service of one thing that's perceived all at oncethat's the vibe the impression and that's not to dismiss people that can'thear individual instruments that doesn't even matter even I mean I'm able tohear a lot of different things frequencies and whatever but I'm still

2:30 subjected to the vibe the presentation of the whole thing experience it all atonce and so like how do we handle that as somebody that's so focused on all ofthe colors on the palette how do you then take that and create a painting thatis you know perceived all at once you can spend your entire lifetime on thetiniest little background image but ultimately the impression of the whole

3:04 thing is going to be more important than the particulars and so like whatdo you do with that information because sometimes to me that feels damning itfeels like man I spent all this time on details nobody notices the detailsbut I'm gonna push back and say that they actually do but in a different waythere maybe there's like a threshold you know but in the same way that like

3:32 you look at a Mona Lisa and you see you get a certain feeling an impressionthat's at least what people who see the Mona Lisa say I've never seen itin person but you know what I mean there's as there's an impression that itgives you because it's so technically gifted it is so symmetrical in a uniquemathematical sense and it gives you the emotion of that slight smile in the eyes

3:55 that track you across the room all of those things are out of detail and sodetails add up and I feel the same way with music where if you think really hardabout okay I'm gonna use these kind of palettes I'm gonna do these things to try tobring out this sort of emotion from my listener you know using like thesemodes and I'll talk about what those are later to make things feel brighter or

4:28 darker and then you use recording engineering techniques to also make thingsfeel brighter or darker or like a bigger room or a smaller room and those add upto create an impression but I actually kind of think that there's a hierarchy ofthings that create different impressions and that are more noticeable particularlyto the general listener and all the the number one out of all of that is the

4:53 medium the way that they're actually experiencing your music and it's reallytricky now because so many people listen on phone air pods laptop speakers andbut they also will listen in their car some will listen to it on super hi-fi headphones or speakers or on vinyl so you have to create an experiencethat scales up and down and one of one of the ways that I approach it now it's

5:20 not trying to create the same experience on all of those things trying to havean interesting enough of an arrangement and crispness to the top end the thehigher frequencies that even when you listen to it on a phone and all of thebass frequencies go away that it still is captivating that's the goal but thenwhen you take it and you put it on a sound system it's got a subwoofer you're

5:45 wearing high-fi headphones have got good low-end response that all of asudden it's like a reimagining a reawakening a depth of the song that youfall even deeper in love with it that is totally goals like you know it'salmost like creating a 30 second preview that's like the that's like the mixfor iPhone super important because that that's gonna determine whether or

6:06 not they they dive back in maybe on a different listening device but inorder to do that you have to like focus on a bunch of different things so likethe number one thing that people hear are vocals or things that are in therange of a vocal like a lead guitar you know a synthesizer saxophone orwhatever that's in this general range that's carrying a melody or carrying

6:30 some sort of focus that's the main thing and so if you use techniques to makethat thing feel happy sad frantic chill spacious viby in the like old schoolway or super high-fi in the hyper pop way that is your biggest opportunity toset a scene and set a vibe that anybody is going to recognize but then beyondthat I think that high-end and low-end are ultimately the next most important

7:01 thing because it just creates a completely different picture if I'mcuffed over my thing or if I open back up so controlling high-end low-endthat it instantly takes you to vintage or low-fi without any other techniqueand then the next most important thing is the room the space that you'reactually in obviously that's difficult to hear on an iPhone that's part of

7:24 the reason why musicians love it so much when you listen in headphones myselfincluded please listen to some of my music and headphones because then I'mable to actually transport your brain into different locations and Iactually think all of this is like psychological probably in the same way thata portrait that you know we're talking about Lisa is so evocative because it's

7:44 the human face you know we're we're dialed in to see faces even in like rockformations and stuff like that you know or wallpaper you look and go that kindof looks like a like some two eyes and mouth you're dialed into that in thesame way we're dialed into the human voice and we're dialed into the room thatwe're in the space in which we inhabit and it's it's like so conscious you

8:04 don't necessarily recognize it but think think to yourself that feeling ofwalking through a long hallway where there's almost like a you know a depthof field and then going into an elevator and then the door closes that thefeeling of if you're having a conversation with somebody though that roomchange is pretty drastic and like that's something that we can capture in music I

8:30 talk talk about depth and room and you know Dolby Atmos spatial audio and allthat kind of stuff and some other podcasts and I will do that more because I'mlearning more and more about it but the concept is not in those weeds theconcept is a lot higher than that it's saying you have a human voice that you'redialed into just like a face and they're gonna put it into different rooms if you

8:56 make drastic enough changes and choices or have no room whatsoever which is partof the beauty of digital audio is you can record an isolated vocal and pop itwherever you want it to be that's like really that's informative revive aboveabove almost anything else and then then probably next thing would be you knowarrangement or then that starts to inform genre but it the genre is like it's

9:24 a very interesting thing too because it's all about expectations where if you'redealing in different cultures they might have different genre expectations andI find that really exciting like obviously I'm coming from my prism as aAmerican where like I have a certain set of pop music that I grew up with and Iknow that luckily a lot of the rest of the world did too so that's that's

9:49 lucky in terms of like at least global reach a lot of people have listened toAmerican music but there's a lot that I don't know and it's fun going todifferent cultures and traveling and stuff and asking people like what do youwhat do you do for karaoke like like what do you sing you know that that kind ofstuff that is is just the best but understanding those genre contexts in which

10:11 you inhabit then arranging around that is like it's like plugging into a unspokenhistory where you know like perfect examples in Motown if you add like Motowndrums and bass I'm taken right there and I have a certain nostalgia to the wholething or you know part of the reason why Travis Barker is playing a bunch of

10:38 stuff is like there is a certain nostalgia to the drum playing of Travis Barker inthe way that his drum sound you can add that to all of us in any song andthat'll instant you know early 2000s nostalgia it's the same thing like withclarinet for me you know if it's like New Orleans jazz clarinet oh I'm asucker for it because it just feels like I don't know maybe like Disneyland

11:01 maybe that's why but it feels like it feels like the ultimate early Roaring 20s kind of America I love that sound I need to meet work with theclarinet players anyway when I'm trying to say is like you have a certain setof expectations and cultural trappings around genre in the same way that youknow paintings whatever frame that it's in is really really important I feel

11:27 like that's kind of like the genre choices and putting things into differentframes and ends up making things feel like more expected which is kind of nicebecause then you can break those expectations but so just to recap those thosethree things the vocal the space in which the vocal inhabits and bandinhabits and in the arrangement with the side thing of recording with your

11:51 high end and your low end controlling those things I those are like the mainmain at least you know in my head right now those are the main things that Ithink control vibe and set a scene you know arrangement includes like whatinstruments are present like the clarinet thing or if it's like a traditionalrock band or if it's a hip-hop and there's certain there's certain like vocabularies

12:16 there's certain sonic signatures that are expected that create the impressionof genre and all that stuff can be manipulated you know people talk aboutas being in a post-genre world and that's that's not true at all it's ameta-genre world or it's a subgenre world but it will never be post-genre becausepost-genre implies that there's there's nothing that we're you know drawing

12:39 from for expectations a lot of the stuff that people would say is post-genrelike no you can totally find some some through lines of like where that'scoming from and what that's emulating and what that is inspired by but thenalso like what it's undercutting like genres can also be in like relief witheach other in the same way that like you have I don't like like punk music like

13:00 there's like a there's a sense of I don't know there are opposites within thegenre wheel and that's like a kind of a really fun thing to play with as acomposer producer whatever but then like so you know you ultimately work thegoal is to set a vibe but that's so easy it's way more easily said than doneand it is so easy to get cringey chasing a vibe in a very specific way instead you

13:26 have to kind of like think about like okay what what are my tools what are mypaints like I'm trying to I'm trying to paint you know whatever a landscape butthen you have to decide like is it gonna be a landscape that is realistic orsurrealistic is it gonna be impressionistic like all of these these things Ithink are good ways to talk about music because it's actually a little bit more

13:50 tangible or music is just this thing that floats around in time insteadyou have a painting a fixed object that uses our dominant you know sense withwith sight and I feel like it's easier to to comprehend sort of so yeah that Ithink that's like what I'm trying to say is getting out and into the weeds atthe same time is the place to be as a musician you know not not dying in

14:15 there not losing sight of what the true goal is which is to impart a itintended vibe to the person that's number one and then looking at okay what areyour tools to do it you know gotta start with the voice the melody the what'scarrying the thing that's at least my perspective and everything else flowsfrom that the space that the voice inhabits what the voice is doing of course

14:44 language but that's something we kind of take for granted in music is that youknow you can be saying one thing but if it's sung in a completely different wayuh you know it undercuts it undercuts it there's a great irony and so I Idon't know I sometimes the way that you're saying it rather than what you'resaying at least the music is is the thing so if you if you're singing about

15:12 like loving being out in the open in this big vast space but it's like asuper sad dark dry arrangement there's I'm the the vibe is going to override thelanguage and not everyone's gonna even speak your language so some people aregonna hear it be like yeah this is clearly a very sad song about being alonein a dark you know tiny place but the lyrics are saying the exact opposite

15:42 thing so lyrics matter less than the vibe that you set through the sonicsignatures the people that you choose to put into your room the room in what youinhabit and where you place the head that's kind of like a weird way to look atit but you know where where do you want your listeners head do you want them to beon stage with you do you want her to be offstage in the other room or changing

16:09 between chorus and verse those are the things that I think people sometimesdon't think about enough and they instead think about oh what scale do I want touse that's important but where are you placing your listener who's on stageand what does it feel like from section to section are you changing rooms those arethings that I don't think it talked about enough that's what I'm talking about

16:34 them now hopefully they inspire you and hopefully you hear it a lot of myfavorite recordings will do stuff like this and I'm trying to do it a lot in mymusic so check out in headphones see if you can have some deep listeningexperiences and some you know planar travel with your your head via headphonesinto different worlds just like reading a book music can do that too anyway if

16:58 you have any questions please hit me up scoobertdoobert.pizza is where youcan find my links and going to be making a lot more of these and would lovelove your feedback or questions or anything like that I've covered quite afew listener questions and previous podcasts and those have been really reallyfun if not I'll just you know keep talking about whatever I want to talk about

17:21 anyway I'll talk about modes soon and then also have some special guests onhopefully very soon I've just been super super busy so fun ahead and a lot ofnew music coming out soon so scoobertdoobert.pizza to check out all the latestmusic and hit me up with questions talk to you guys later