We Are Such Music Nerds — Intentionally Blank Ep. 262

Peter Orullian joins Brandon Sanderson to talk about all things music and necromancy. Their new book, Songs of the Dead, is just around the corner. The two old friends chat about everything this week on Intentionally Blank!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Yo, Peter. Brandon. Welcome back. Yeah, thank you for having me. For those who don't recognize the voice, this is Peter O'Rulian. He's been on before. We recorded an episode at Nexus once. Uh friend going a long way back at this point.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Yeah, way back to early LTV days.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Yeah. Yeah. So Peter is an author and a heavy metal singer and a former employee of Xbox. Yeah, that's right. 15 years. 15 years at Xbox. Dang. And we wrote a book together. We did. And I think it's out like right now, right? Is this going live when it's out? This will be the week before. Soon before. Go have it. Go pre-order it so that you have it by next week. We're going to do two episodes. So next week. Next week. We will say it's out. Songs of the Dead. Songs of the Dead. Yeah. That's right. So yeah, the few, well, it was like 10 years ago now, O'Rulian called me. He's like, hey, would you ever want to work on something together? And I'm like, you know, there's this book I've never been able to figure out how to write about a heavy metal singer, necromancer. And, you know, the idea really clicked with you. And so I turned in a world guide and an outline. And then you said, Brandon, this outline needs some work. I'd had to be a comedy. You wanted it to you're a musician. You put your soul into the no um pun intended. And so it turned from a bit of a goofy comedy called Death by Pizza into like my world building was much cooler than the comedy version would have demanded. And you really put a lot of heart into the story. And so that became Songs of the Dead. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yeah, I remember when you sent me the initial world guide and the initial You did this really cool thing. You said you gave them a rating and you said, I would give the world guide a nine out of ten. Yeah. I would give the outline maybe a three and a half.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yep. It was it was pretty weak.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

But it was that was really good because then as we built out a little bit more on the world guide and started riffing on the story, there was a lot of room. But I do remember, I may have said this to you when we had our Nexus conversation. There was a choice I made in early draft to have someone die.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

And you remember you said, I see why you did this, but it does change the tone. Yeah. And I was like, I really think this has got to happen. And we had had, you know, some of the different factions, they were wearing the garb of their ancestry, somewhere Egyptian. And so it was a little over the top, you know, and leaning into the humor. And the word that has stuck with me since that Nexus conversation is you said it became much more sincere. Yep. I love that word for it. I think that's what happened. And I, you're right. I did sort of pour my soul into this book. You did.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

There are parts where we were talking about it, going through that line. You're like, this happened to me. This I won't say what they are because we don't want to give spoilers or even about your life. You're like, this happened to me once. I relate with this character. This is how I want to do it in this because this is my experience. I'm like, wow, that is really powerful. Like, you know, just the life of a person who is an aspiring musician and, you know, successful in some ways, but never able to make a living at it, is just it's one of those things that comes from an authentic place in the book.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

So I mean, I have legions of friends in that same boat. Yeah. The joke I make about this sometimes is I watched an early episode of one of those reality music competitions. Yeah. And there was a young woman, she must have been 14 or 15, and she broke down crying when she got admitted into the competition. And she said, I've just paid so many dues. And the first thought I have is I know musicians with calluses older than this young girl. So, you know, it's it's an unforgiving business. I have a lot of friends who have similar experiences, but the character, he's rejected by the band that is helping him have his dream, and it's really harsh. Yeah. And that's one of those moments I said, this exactly happened to me. So those things are on the square 100% in the book.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Can people listen to your music?

SPEAKER_00 4:01

They can. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a YouTube channel where I do a lot of covers.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

But I formed a group called Symphony North. It's a symphonic rock group, a lot like Trans Siberian Orchestra. And I do a lot of neoclassical stuff and a lot of holiday stuff. So if you find my YouTube channel, but it's also on Spotify and Amazon, all those places.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Symphony North is on all the places.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah, if it's a streaming platform or an MP3 purchase platform, we're there.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Yeah. We'll make sure it's in the link as well. We want to make sure you know everyone can hear it. Yeah. But if you're really going to support us, buy the book. Buy the book. Yeah, buy the book. And it is a good book. You really did a good job with this story. Thank you. What is the pitch on the book?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Well, I don't know how Brandon would do it. Early on, I was saying Harry Dresden meets heavy metal.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

But the reality is Brandon made a really cool distinction early on. He said it's we don't have a guy who's like solving crimes. Yep. He's more like a defender. Yeah. Do I get that right?

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah, yeah. Like this is a person who is pulled into a world. And it's not necessarily a procedural. It's more of a I've been sucked into this world. Do I become part of it or not? Yeah. Sort of story. So the idea is a man's fully unaware of there's in this stuff. And then one day he gets killed and he finds out he's a necromancer because in this world, necromancers have power over their own lives. They can restore themselves to life a certain number of times. And he comes back from the dead, and suddenly everyone's like, there's a rogue necromancer. This guy shouldn't have been able to do this. He's now part of the world. And he just has to figure out, you know, and he learns that there's an entire world out there that he was already kind of part of that he didn't know. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

One of the really fun things about the world, and this was all Brandon's design, is this idea of the strata.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

And it's eras of London history that have sort of accreted into layers that, you know, a necromancer can descend to. So it became such a playground for storytelling because there are historical figures.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

And you know, I remember when I started to do basically you can go down like a stairwell and you can go to Victorian London, or you can go all the way down to like Elizabethan London. And they've gathered in certain layers of general groupings. So it's not like a different layer for every year, but and you can go all the way back to the Neolithic, and you can pull spirits from those to be your servants. That is what a necromancer does.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Yeah. So I was doing tons and tons of research. I knew a little bit about London history, but I remember when I was doing it and I needed a sort of a seedy, slimy, crime-infested area. And I found a place in London called the Seven Dials, which was, you know, Gin Lane and all of the unseemly things that you'd expect, and set a wonderful scene there. And that exploration just kept happening. You know, it was very easy to find locales for some of the story motions. So for me, it was the blend of so many like great opportunities because I got to unleash a lot of the music in me, but I'm a huge history buff. And that actually seeped into the character too.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Right. Well, because London's like one of the birthplaces of metal. Yeah, it is the single birthplace. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah, you when you talk about like the triumvirate, it's uh Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple. Yeah. Wow. I mean, there were they had precursors, but that's about really the holy trinity of heavy metal beginning.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

So yeah, the book, we don't want to do a hard zone. We're actually here to kind of talk more about music in books, but the book is like Brandon's world building and Peter's lived experience. That's what I would pitch this book as. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

And there's a moment, I think it's your favorite in the book, and it's my favorite in the book, where about two-thirds of the way through it was actually an interesting story choice where there's a moment of in the interior arc where Jack basically auditions for the band that kicked him out. Yep. And it might be the most emotional moment. Really, really well written. And that one Joe, our publisher on this at Saga, he texted me after he read it and said, You made me cry.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

And that was lived experience. And this works all in, but he's been kicked out of his own band. Yeah. And they hold auditions to refer his replacement. He just decides to show up.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

He shows up to his own band's own band's audition.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

So dang. Music and stories. Like, let's talk about. Do you have any favorites like books that have incorporated music in interesting ways or even movies and things? Like, what are some of your favorite ways this is done?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Well, in books, I'm you know, I'll go back to probably Spellsinger.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Okay. I was gonna ask if you'd read Spellsinger. Yeah. I really liked Spellsinger back in the day. Philip Jose Farmer, was that Spellsinger?

SPEAKER_00 8:45

No, no. Well, it might be, but it's I'm just blanking his name. It's always a LTUE. He lives in Cedar City.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

He always uses Alan Dean Foster? No. I'm talking about Alan Dean Foster. Okay. You're talking about Lee Modicet. Modicett. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

So his wife's an opera singer.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't read that version of that lease. I read the Alan Dean Foster. What are the Alan Dean Foster ones called? I'm just thinking it's called Spell Singer, The Hour of the Gate, et cetera, et cetera. So different book series. Different book series. I knew it was one of those guys that had three names. Yeah. But Philip Jose Farmer and Alan Dean Foster are very different people. And L Sprague De Camp is another one that I always get mixed up with those two because of the three names.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Three names, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah, I haven't seen Lee in a long time, but he and I used to always do lunch at LTE. And he was just one of those guys who had stories for days. His lived experience is crazy, like military and everything else. Economist. Economist, yeah. You know, I remember talking to him about it because there was a lot of authenticity on the music side. And then he explained to me his wife's a trained opera singer. Yeah. And so it made sense how he did that. What about Tolkien? So I have this sort of fondness for Tom Bombadil and some of that stuff, but I don't read it for that. Like it doesn't jump off the page to me as uh an authentic or moving part of the story. That's a bias, and probably the people disagree with that.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

So here's uh the regular listeners are gonna know what I'm gonna say. Try the Andy Circus audiobooks someday. Because he sings Tom Bombadil, and it's the first time Tom Bombadil clicked for me. Okay. And uh I will do that. I've really enjoyed the Tom Bombadil parts. Andy Circus is just a fantastic narrator. Okay. And you can imagine, I say those books, he's already a fantastic narrator, and then Gollum comes on screen, and it's Gollum, because it's Andy Circus, the actor who was Gollum. Yeah, and it's so cool. You would think it would steal the show, but he's so good with the other voices that it actually doesn't. Yeah, it's a highlight, but it doesn't steal the show.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Well, it's funny you mentioned that. I was just telling Isaac and some folks in the hall, we got to the end of the audiobook stuff with songs, and the producer reached out and said, you know, we got to this part where Jack and his friend sing the refrain of the song that Jack's been trying to complete to deal with some emotional stuff. They said, Would you be interested in singing that? And I said, I would. You told me this. Yeah. So so yeah, so Luke and I did it. Luke's a fantastic narrator, not as coached as a singer. So I got it, we put it into Melodyne, we did some pitch adjustment, did some harmony, and then sent it back. And I think it's gonna be a really cool Easter egg type thing for people when they get to that moment because it's the only sung part of the whole book, the audiobook.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

But I got to actually sing on my own audiobook, which was kind of fun. That's awesome. So you pitch corrected to so you would sound like him, his well. What I did was is I sent him, I sent him the lead track and I said, this is the register, the key, the all of the stuff. And I didn't quantize it or anything. I let it be so that he could hopefully just match it. But he sent back to me a file that was in three different keys. And I think it's because it was uncomfortable for him in some places, the you know, where the register was. But that's okay. I told the producer, I don't care what he does, I can fix it. So a buddy of mine helped me. We put it into Pro Tools, okay, did all the magic and actually created some harmony. Okay. So I think it came out really well. I'm biased, but I think at that moment, because his friend, the relationship between Chewy and Jack becomes like the defining relationship. And Chewy's the comic relief in the book, but he's also what grounds Jack. And they sing this together, and it really helps Jack like rise to the moment. And I think it's gonna be a nice moment for people to hear finally some of the song that we've been talking about the whole book. So anyway, that's a departure, but it was relevant to this idea of singing. You know, maybe that maybe that I'll enjoy this version with Tom Bombadil when I hear the song. So you're the the only like pro musician I know, right? Oh, you know some more. Do I? Don't you? I feel like you have some fans of Bajmir that are.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

There's some I know, but you're my my friend. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right, right. Like you're I guess Emily's dad is the other one, but he's not done anything in a long while. Would you call yourself pro or semi-pro? Would you make that distinction?

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Or well, I'm pro from the standpoint that I do get paid.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

If you earn any money, right, that means I couldn't subsist on it yet. Right. But I get paid. I have uh There's a lot of professional writers that yeah. So you're the pro musician I know. Talk to us about AI and music from the pro' standpoint. Having I've talked to artists, like physical medium artists, painters, things like that. I guess, yeah, what do you call it? Traditional and what's the term for like because you're an artist, writers are an artist, but you know, uh visual artists. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

What's your take? So I think it's egregious what's going on with AI and music. I read an article the other day that says about 40% of all music uploaded to Spotify every day is AI music. Yeah. That's a startling statistic. And you think about the hundreds of thousands of songs that go up on Spotify every day. A good friend of mine who sang on my album is a session singer, and she has producers and songwriters sending her music all the time to lay down an authentic vocal track. And she says she's got people she's worked with who just in the past six months went from not really good songwriters to all of a sudden really pretty good songwriters. And she said the light bulb went off that they're using AI to create the songs. So she has this ethical dilemma like, do I help them create some authenticity with my voice to something that they didn't write? And there's this line in music where we've had what we call virtual instruments for a long time. And a lot of composers use that stuff, but they're writing the music. And a lot of times they do that to create demos and then hire musicians to do the real audio tracking. So every real musician I know finds this deplorable. Now, there's this stripe of musician who says, look, either adopt it or you get left behind. So there are some who are saying, I will use it to ideate and then I'll go from there. But I've heard that same argument with writers too. I won't use it to write the book, just to get my ideas and get my structure. So my take is it's abominable. I discourage it. I think that the struggle of trying to write a good song is as important as whatever the result is. So, and I don't know, I'm sure there are some, but I don't know a single pro musician who like supports AI and music.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

It's so strange that after years being a science fiction writer and being like, when will we have an Android like data that we get to you know hang out with with chat and who can, you know, help us with all sorts of things. How quickly we went from that to, oh, they're just gonna make the art now. Yeah. That's the thing they're gonna do. They're not gonna, you know, maybe they will. I I really hope that they will help us with things like cancer and things like that. Like I think the advances in there look like they're very, very promising. But the low-hanging fruit was we can now just upload a million billion generic songs to Spotify. And that's really disillusioning for me.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

If you kind of squint, yeah, you almost don't know the difference between a lot of them. I've listened to some where if I'm not paying close attention, I don't know the difference. And I listen pretty acutely. I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

I I've listened to some and I can't. Yeah, but that's not surprising to me because on the short form with writing, people can't either. We've talked about this on the podcast before, Dan and I, but there was an author who did a test and had some professional writers, and the AI take the same prompt and write a story and then pulled the audience and they couldn't tell. Yeah. And so it falls apart in the long term and it probably has artifacts that you can tell as a musician.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

But yeah, one of the big tells for me is the lyrics, they're usually so cliche. Yeah. Right. So there's no real invention in a lot of the lyrics. There's a whole category that's blowing up that I've seen a lot of memes for guys who like want to get their wife something really touching for Valentine's, and they get AI to write a song with a bunch of specifics from her life and their and their relationship. And these people just break down weeping, and it's a beautiful moment. And maybe that's a good application for AI. You know, it's a song for one person, you're not trying to like go and monetize it. But you may remember I wrote a book uh a few years ago for the band Dream Theater. I novelized one of their concept albums. The album is called The Astonishing. It's a dystopian future in which music is gone, and the only music that's used is from these things called the noise machines, and it's actually used as a suppressive for the humans. And John Petrucci, the band leader and guitarist, he had this vision for this story because he saw some YouTube stuff. This is 10 years ago now, right, that made him worried about this. And his contention is kind of what I said before that the act and struggle of the process of making the music is as important as the end result. And that's even for people like all my kids. I don't know if they do this in Utah. They all had to do instruments all through junior high. It was just part of the curriculum. I wish they did that.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

But they don't do that in Utah? Not required. You can if you want. You did drums.

unknown 18:15

I didn't do drums in school. I did drums.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

You're a drummer?

unknown 18:19

I did drums on drum lessons.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

He did drum lessons. That's true. He didn't do it in school because they didn't have it for him in school. So not as good at doing that sort of stuff here. But yes, Ollie's a drummer. He can do, let's see, you did AC D C. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

My only word of wisdom to you is if you decide to pursue it and you're going to be a drummer, just always have integrity. Because one of the things you'll notice if you haven't seen it yet, Brandon, is and the dedication, the thing I put on there was to that drummer who stole money from me. Because I when I moved to Seattle, my drummers turned out to not be the nicest or most scrupulous. I'm sure that's not a thing that is drummers in general. No, but it is kind of a a running joke with me and my all my musician friends is that, and there's some great memes on YouTube with this that you know, drummers usually the one that's late, usually the one that's the least reliable. And of course, it's a it's a generalization, but I had to do something funny for the dedication. So that's what I put in there.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

When I was in high school, I was a trumpeter. And the drum line in band was always the cool ones. Oh man, those those good drum lines are they they were always the oh, they're they're a cut above the rest of us. That was the violinists for me in the orchestra. Yeah, as a celloist, we always were like, those violinists, they always get the cool parts.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

They're the head of it all. There's some drummers that blow my mind that Dream Theater had a drummer, previous drummer, who is I don't know how his brain works because he can do he can do rhythms where he's doing like 17 against 19. And I don't even know how the brain count and he can do that like uh ambidextrously with both his arms and his feet, like just doing different rhythms. I don't have that gene. I can't do that.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

So Emily loves music, but Emily, it's like she grew up in a different generation from us because she grew up listening to her parents' music. Which is what so she was listening to Gordon Lightfoot, she was listening to all of that stuff. There's a guy that she really likes. I'm trying to remember what his name is, but all of that era, right? Her dad's a singer-songwriter and a kind of folk sing, he's got an album on Spotify. He was pro for a while, but not full time. It started to go full time and then he backed off because it just was so hard. Yeah. It's just one of those things that it's exhausting as part-time, and then full-time is just like, do you want to have a family? Well, it's gonna be really hard.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

It's a young man's game if you're gonna try and like build it grassroots. Yeah, my son's in a band, he's actually helping me discover new music. There's a subgenre, sort of indie and punk adjacent called Scrams. Okay. I've never heard of this. And they actually have some songs that have hit a million streams. They've been reached out to by record labels, and they get on these calls, and dad's like listening at the door because he's jealous, and they're saying, you know, that's just not our vibe. And they're turning down record label deals. And I'm like, part of it for them is like they don't want to be part of the man. Yeah. Like the thing for them is to be this authentic, you know, it works for them, but you know, he's out touring. He's gonna tour twice this summer. That's awesome. Yeah, and and you know, it's this I go watch him play, and he just his whole he's a singer, his whole body is in it, you know, and and young man's game. And so they're gonna, you know, they're the definition of get a van, they rent a U-Haul, and they go. I said, Okay, so just tell me where you're staying. Well, we don't know yet. I said, buddy, your mom's gonna freak if you don't tell us where you're at least sleeping. He said, We have friends in the city, we'll find a place. And so my wife said, Peter, he can't do this. It's irresponsible. And I said, You know what? This might be the time of his life. I'm not telling him.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

That you can that you can do that.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's no job. He's in he's in college, like, but it's kind of mostly online. He's doing a community college. I said, he needs these stories for later.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

So I was saying like Emily's a different generation. So she didn't grow up with the music I grew up with. She grew up with the generation or two before. And so it's always fun when I can be like, you haven't seen Phil Collins play in the air, like live. She's like, no, I haven't. I'm like, so I've showed her that. I've showed her while my guitar gently weeps, The Prince performance. I've shown her live aid. Like she didn't watch music videos. Whereas me, the moment MTV was up and going, I had MTV. And that's my generation. I'm the MTV generation. So I know the videos almost better than I know the songs. And I know like seeking out the live performances that are famous and whatnot. So it's been fun to share that. Do you have like a favorite like video or live performance like those that you should like? What am I going to show someone if they they haven't seen any of this?

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Well, you know what? It took me by surprise, but I was in Cleveland a few years ago and I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Uh-huh. And I have my, you know, my grumbles about because there's so much music in there that has nothing to do with rock and roll. Yeah. But if we set that aside, I went into the theater where they show video from induction ceremonies. Yeah. And the induction ceremony of Prince, where he plays guitar, it's one of the most, it's freshest, most melodic, inspiring performances I've ever seen. And I'd never seen it before. Okay. And I like Prince, but I'm not like a fanboy of Prince. Right. You know, they did the highlights of all of the years of the rock and roll induction ceremonies. And that was the one I've gone back and watched that multiple times.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Have you seen the one that he performed? It was at the like celebration for George Harrison, like his induction ceremony. I think it might have been his induction. Maybe it's the same one. Is it the one where is Tom Petty there? Yes. Okay, yeah, it's the same one. It's so it's not his induction, it's for someone else. Someone else's yeah, that's right. Uh that's why they're playing why my guitar gently weaves. It's because it's it's George Harrison, right? If I got I've got the right Beatle. He wrote that that was his song. And his son is there on guitar. And yeah, that's like an all-timer. That performance is like I liked Prince before, but if you haven't seen that performance, it's that's very real.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

You really understand what a gifted musician he was. Yeah. Did I ever tell you my Prince story? I got to meet him. No. I was doing music marketing at Xbox, and so I got to go out and do artist promotions. Uh-huh. So we flew to LA, and he was currently at the time, he was living in the mansion that was Vanna White's former mansion. So we go in, he has his chef prepare us a meal, and we meet him. And there were these like moments where he would just pause and like it felt interminable. It'd be like two minutes of just silence. But that's really who he was. You were always off like off kilter because you didn't know how to interact with him. So my experiences with him is he was every bit as eccentric as I thought he was, right? When we went into his infinity pool in the back, he had the symbol because he wasn't Prince anymore, he was the symbol. But so I had in my head a little bit of like, okay, he's this eccentric guy. He did Purple Rain, and I know that he's he's got talent. Amazing performer, but then I watched him just play guitar and it's all improvisation, right? It's around a theme and a and a chord progression, but and that's when uh my respect for him just skyrocketed.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

Yeah, they tell that story. I won't be able to tell it for them, but you should look it up. Like they didn't know if he was gonna even arrive. They're like, Prince might come, he might not. He just showed up, said, I've got this solo, does his thing, and then at the end of that permits, he throws the guitar and walks off, and they just didn't see him again. He just left. So rock and roll. Yeah. Yeah. Kevin Smith has a fun story about Prince. If you want to listen to his podcast, he's got to go check that out. He's got one. So, Peter, you're gonna be back with us next week. It'll be this week for us. We're just gonna record another one. But Songs of the Dead, it's in one week. Go pre-order your copy. That's right. How's that, Ben?