4. Playing With Dynamics

This week Danny and Mike dig into one of the most powerful and often overlooked tools in music: dynamics. Not just in how you play, but in your songs, your band, how a record is made and how a live show breathes. They pick up the guitar and work through some examples together before Danny plays Mike a number of iconic tracks that show dynamics done right. The kind of conversation that will genuinely change how you listen to music. Worth your time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:20

So, Danny, what are we talking about today? Dynamics. What are dynamics? Dynamics. Wow. Do you have any idea what dynamics are? Loudness.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Does that cover it? Loudness. That's one dynamic, yeah. Amplitude. Amplitude, right? What about the opposite? Ooh, silence.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

I'm not good at that. You're clearly good at extremes, though. Loudness and silence. What was your household like growing up? Very much that.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

Really? Right. Yeah, that was uh something my partner had to get used to, was how loud our family was. Really? Oh wow. Which is why I'm I normally am a bit too loud at times and I need to rein it in.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Is this the kind of family like the dinner table everyone's shouting over each other and interrupting each other and that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I would hate to be at that dinner table.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

It took a while to get used to, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

I'm definitely a one-on-one conversationalist. Yeah. If I'm at a busy dinner table, I tend to just stay quiet. Fair enough. It's different when you've got a mic. Yeah. You can lean closer like that. Listen to me now. Yeah. I even have the ability to turn your mic off.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

Oh, that's that's something my parents probably wish they had.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

So dynamics, uh I thought that'd be a fun thing to talk about. There's lots of uh musicians and songwriters and people like that listening, I assume. Um and dynamics is this kind of uh uh a part of being a good musician, I think, and a good composer that isn't talked about very often. And I think there are lots of different versions of dynamics. So I don't know if I've got some kind of overall um description of it to start with. I mean, obviously dynamics are about highs and lows and and that sort of thing. Um it's about telling a story, it's about it's about conveying emotion, um, it's all sorts of stuff. So uh let's let's dive in, see where we end up. Sounds good. There was a gig that I played a long time ago, uh early 2000s sometime, and Graham Brazier was playing as well. Uh, do you know Graham Brazier? No. So he's he was the singer, he's l no longer with us, but he was a singer um from a very loved, well-known New Zealand band called Hello Sailor. And he was playing, I think, uh, a solo performance or something, and we were there with our band. Um, weirdly, I think he was opening up for us, which felt wrong because he's like an icon in our country, but it was just practical. He was playing a solo thing, we were doing the band thing. Anyway, we start playing. Uh our gig goes, alright. He comes up to me afterwards and he goes, Um, great show, I really enjoyed it. Just one piece of advice. And I said, What's that? And he goes, Don't start at 10. I was like, What do you mean? And he goes, You came out with your biggest song, and then it was all down from there.

SPEAKER_03 3:01

And I was like, That's actually genius. You need to build up to something, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah, but he was but you know, do you start at two and then and then spend the whole time building up? I mean, if you want to get people excited and on their feet and make a big impact, do you start at two, or do you maybe six or seven exactly?

SPEAKER_03 3:17

And then you have a two, and then a head, you got some headroom, you know.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

So he really got me thinking about how you get into a show and then how you kind of uh control or think about the plot or and the dynamic arc of the show, which I thought was really interesting. And I thought definitely. Yeah, and I started to think about that, you know, a lot more in songwriting and and and other respects. On the guitar though, even when you're just playing on your own, playing solo, it's really easy just to grab my guitar. It's really easy just to And it's just flat.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

Very flat, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Yeah, and it's just not going anywhere. Doesn't mean it's wrong. There's there's sort of no such thing as wrong because everything's gonna uh play a part somewhere, but there are plenty of ways that you can open that up, and that's where you start to learn about dynamics at a micro level versus a macro level. Dynamics as you as an instrumentalist, dynamics in terms of the composition of the song, dynamics in terms of how you um arrange everybody's parts in the band, dynamics in terms of how you write your set list. Like it's actually just everywhere, including how they make movies and documentaries and all sorts of other things. So, for example, what would you do if you were gonna be on a repeated loop of G, like I just was, how would you make it sound more interesting?

unknown 5:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:04

I guess leave a coup leave a bit of space in between some of the Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Well you well you did a couple of things that I really like. You r uh started the chord on basically the root note. Instead of going like you went like right? So hit the root note and use the rest of the chord as a response. I didn't notice I did that. People can listen to the previous episode about intentions, but yeah, hitting the root note, um, I I like to think of that as playing like a drummer because your root note is acting like the kick drum, and then when you punch the chord on top, it becomes the snare drum. So you can create you can create uh if you take the cord out of it, so you go like now it feels like a kick and snare.

SPEAKER_03 5:50

Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

And then when you put some of the ghosting in, that becomes the hi-hat. Yeah. Now that has more of a dynamic feel to it. Definitely. So that's one one thing you can do, and and what I'm doing is putting the accents on beat two and beat four, because conventionally in rock music, that's where the snare drum goes. So you you did that very organically. Is that just how you normally play?

SPEAKER_03 6:27

I think so. Yeah. I don't really think about it that much. So you got that from the Zeitgeist, I guess? Probably, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Right. Uh one of the important things to learn about dynamics is it's easier to put stuff in than it is to take stuff out. So if you start with something big, you it's just hard to create space. Um, especially if you are writing music, for instance, if you're creating a demo, you start to become really attached to all the ideas you stuck in. Um, another trick with with managing a band, by the way, in rehearsals, is putting the parts in one by one and and isolating parts. Because if every if you've got five people just going for it, it's really hard to kind of work out why it sounds like a mess. But if you go, hey drummer and bass player, why don't you just just play the groove, everyone else stay quiet so we can hear what's going on? And usually it means that they actually hear each other properly and they can start to work out where the discrepancies are. Oh, you're playing on the three, but I'm on the three and a half. Let's actually decide to tighten that up, and then all of a sudden the groove becomes more controlled and refined. When you work with a producer in the studio, the producer's often doing this process where they're they're listening to all the parts the band's put together and they're saying, Okay, you know, guitarist number two, cool chords, but play like a quarter of the amount because that needs to be way simpler. It's all about the arrangement and all that, right? So if we're starting a song on on G and we need to vamp on G for a few bars, we can just play like basically nothing. So three, four. Okay, take more outfit.

SPEAKER_03 8:37

Yeah, definitely stands out more.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

So if I go that really now lands with you, that little melody, right? Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Do you want to know some of the the do you want an example of some of the best uh stuff I've ever played? There it goes. Nothing. Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Uh I'm gonna play some examples of of um songs that I think are really dynamic in a little while. And sometimes what you'll discover is that the next section explodes because in the previous section everyone almost played nothing. And all it took was one chord for the next section to suddenly come to life.

SPEAKER_03 9:19

It's that contrast, right? It's the the lower lows make the medium high sound higher.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Uh do you know the artist Ryan Adams? And no, I didn't say Brian Adams.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

Do you know Ryan Adams? Uh I do only because you've told me about him previously, but I didn't know him before that.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Right. Well, he did a uh a performance at the Civic Theatre in Auckland. This is quite a long time ago. It must have been, I don't know, 2014 maybe. Um he was playing solo and he had three positions set up on the stage. One was a piano and a mic, one was, I think, a conventional guitar and mic s setup. And then the one in the middle was like the strange one. And he came out, he opened the show and he came out and he picked up his guitar, which didn't have a pickup in it. So he had he was relying on the mic, and he started to sing, but he did the strangest thing. He was standing about two metres back from the mic, and it was super quiet and really, really thin. Because the further away you get from a mic, the the thinner the tone gets. And it's so quiet, you know, and I was up in the um in the ceiling, and I could barely hear him. And I was thinking, this is so weird, why is he doing this? Like it felt like a mistake, or has he lost his mind? And then I looked around and I realized that the entire audience had totally stopped talking, and they were all leaning forward in their life. They were just uh intoxicated, they were they were mesmerized by this performance, and I and I was just so impressed because from that moment onwards he never lost the audience. He just won them over in that moment and he and he and he gained this kind of intimate relationship in the room, which I thought was incredible. And he did so by starting off at like negative four. Pretty risky move.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. I think it would take a lot of confidence too to come in and do something like that.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

That's right. Yeah, yeah, huge amount. Same way with simplicity. For instance, the process of bringing songs from a recording to the stage or from the studio for the stage. So I've experienced this on two different levels. So I've I've been the person who played the guitar on the record and then gone out and played those songs live. And I've also been a hired guitarist who's just had to learn famous songs to play live. And interpreting songs for the stage is not as simple as you'd think it is. There's a couple of reasons. For a guitar player, one of those reasons is that often on the song there's actually like three or four guitars, and yet you're often the only guitar player in the sh in the show. And so you're having to kind of interpret the parts.

SPEAKER_03 11:59

Yeah. You know, how do you rec how do you replicate the feeling with a third of the instruments?

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Exactly. And I had this funny back and forth with one band leader, we were doing Sex on Fire, not long after it came out, and he wanted the song to be absolutely authentic. And I said, Okay, so I learnt the song authentically, and the Sex on Fire has that um I don't remember what key it's in, but it's that kind of low thing, right? But then in the chorus, I can't remember it now, but in the chorus it goes up to the single note melody. And so I played it note for note, and we finished the song in rehearsal, and he goes, No, no, no, no, that wasn't right. And I said, What do you mean? Um and he goes, Well, you went up to the thin thing, like all the balls fell out. And I'm like, Yeah, that's how it goes. And he goes, What do you mean? And I said, Well, in the real song, it's like layered up with synths and other guitars and pads and various things. Um, and he was like, No, it has to sound fat and huge in the chorus. And I was like, Okay, so I came up with a version where I could play the same melody on a lower octave and I could play the chords underneath at the same time, kind of hybrided this thing. Um, so he did that, and he goes, No, no, no, that's not how it goes. And I'm like, What do you what's what's wrong now? And he goes, it goes up high in the recording. And he just couldn't get his head around the fact that we were gonna have to compromise somewhere. Something was gonna have to change because what they did in the studio wasn't gonna come to the stage properly. One of the other reasons though is that a lot of songs come together in the studio through very, very clever mixing and and sort of you know, you can really equ things so that they don't get in each other's way and send parts over to different parts of the pan and so on. For example, I'm pretty sure that lick and play that funky music, you know, when you know, when they go that line there, I'm pretty sure if you listen to the real bass line, it's nothing like that. He does something and it's cool, but it's it's not syncing with the actual line. I don't know if because he didn't learn it right or if he was high or if he was a genius. I have no idea why.

SPEAKER_03 14:09

Combination of all three.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Yes. But I see so see role reversal. I was in a rehearsal once, and the bass player learned it as per the record, and I said, What did you just play? That's not how it goes. And he goes, Yes, it is, and he played it to me. And I'm like, shit, you're right, you know, that is how it goes. So often you have to actually adapt things for the stage because on stage you're not usually mixed in stereo and you don't have the luxury of controlling everything to that degree because that you're in a big loud room and everything bounces around, it's hard to control. So bands, I think good bands, often simplify on stage, uh, and that means there's sort of less room for error and there's a bit more control in the sound. See what I mean? So so I don't know exactly if that's dynamics, but it's related.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

I think it does I mean to me it sounds like it is. You know, I've I've definitely heard examples of bands in the past where they talk about, you know, I've I come up with this incredible part in the studio, and then the next thought is, oh shit, how do I play that live? You know, how do you replicate that? Yeah, because you've got all these different techniques um that we kind of spoke about in the last episode uh that the producer can do, which sounds great in the recording, but obviously people want to hear that being played back when you go and see a band live. So how do they actually pair that back to the bass elements? Yeah. And I think that's where it really you know sticks in for me. And we've had this discussion in the past where um, you know, take your lick or your riff, whatever you're playing, and what is the absolute minimum notes you have to play to still get that same feeling and that same intention across.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 15:37

And that's you know, that's something that uh I definitely struggle with. I think a lot of probably amateur guitarists um we're all guilty of knowing our you know muscle memory for whatever lick, then you just hammer it in there, whatever. Yeah, yeah. You don't really think about it too much.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

That's a good point because when you're especially and I've fallen to this trap millions of times, when you're a guitarist, you know, you're going for your solo, especially if there feels like there's pressure involved, like you're trying to prove yourself or something. To go into let's say you kick in and you go like that, you feel the need to go, you just feel the need to oh my god, silence, cheese! You know. Um, but one of the one of the most uh one of the boldest things you can do is let a note ring and go.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

It's one of the things I love so much about you know BB King and and Buddy Guy, those sort those sorts of players that they'll just sit and like Buddy Guy will hang on a you know a quote unquote wrong note. He'll hang on something outside of the scale and and make you sit in that uh discomfort for a little bit. Exactly. Yeah. That's incredible. The people that have the confidence to do that.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

It's like a currency thing. Like, you know, the more money they print, the less value the money has. It's a similar thing. It's a good point. The more notes you play, the sort of less impact they have. If you can come up with a strong idea, if you can convey your emotion uh or whatever you're trying to do, um you shouldn't need to say more words to make yourself more right. I mean that's one way of looking at it. Then there's Van Halen. Yeah, then there's D Vi and Engbe and But I actually do still think that stuff applies to Van Halen. Um I've never been a huge fan, but I admire the hell out of him. Um how can you not? Yeah. Um you know, amazing groove, amazing technique and all the rest of it. Um less is more, and playing dynamically doesn't mean you always have to play minimally. It can mean that you're a total shredder.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Well, I mean the the obviously the flip side of that range of playing minimally is playing balls out and you know, throwing a a a million notes a second.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

But I still think you can be that type of really busy player and still have the ethos of dynamics. I mean, I'm a big fan of Dave Matthews band and their drummer Carter Beaufort is definitely not a minimalistic player. He plays a lot of stuff all the time. I mean, he sounds like a drummer and a percussion section. He seemingly breaks every rule there is in terms of like the Steve Jordan approach of like playing uh you know very little and following the pocket. But I don't think there's a contradiction there because what he's still playing serves the groove, and he's not playing too much that in in a way that buries the groove. He's just doing like intricate hi-hat work and lots of splashes and the stuff that would often be passed off to to other players. So it gets it gets grey, you know. Like there are there are busy players who still play minimally within the context of what they're doing.

SPEAKER_03 18:32

Yeah, I guess I mean the biggest thing I'm kind of taking away is how contextual it really is. You know, if you think of pitch, well, 440 Hz, you can measure that, it's a it's a specific thing, or you think a tempo, you know, BPM, it's a it's a specific thing. Yeah. Whereas dynamics, it's it's a little bit subjective and arbitrary, it's like a little bit quieter, a little bit louder, a little bit busier, a little bit, you know, a little bit softer here. Um it it it all has to be in contrast to whatever you've been playing before or after. Yeah. There's not there's n I mean, I guess you could say you could actually specify that sort of volume um in a decibel range or something, but it doesn't seem like music's really played that way, especially in a band setting or in a live setting. It it's very much the feel of the band at the time.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Yeah. I mean you could you could talk about um a lot of like heavy metal bands, but you could also talk about a lot of jazz. I love jazz. And there you you know, in jazz there's often a lot going on. Um and one of the sort of genius things that's playing out there is everyone knows where they are, even even if they're not making it obvious to the listener where they are. Um the double bass player who's walking and going boom boom boom doom doom that, it's not they're not just playing random notes, it's very, very um structured, it's so clever what they're doing. But within all those notes, there are some notes that are more important than other notes. And they've got to land those notes just at the right time to complement the chord, either because it's the root note or it's another note from the chord. But they're doing so to reinforce the chord structure behind what's there. Even though when you're listening to it as a passive listener, you're not necessarily realizing there's a chord pattern there. So it it's not about whether the music's busy, it's about the approach you take to the music. And does it serve the song? Exactly. Yeah, does it serve the song? Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's why I think people will sometimes devolve into arguments about these things because they are they're arguing about the outcome rather than the approach. And you can have the right approach as per what we're talking about, and have an outcome that you still don't like.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

I don't think I've liked anything I've ever played. Is that just because of dynamics? That might be something a bit deeper. We'll need to work on that.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Another version of dynamics is uh uh I think I mentioned it before, but dynamics across the whole band. I'm gonna play you an example soon of a Tom Petty song. In fact, I'm gonna play you examples of two Tom Petty songs. But one thing that I think is really clever about uh that Tom Petty used to do sometimes was he would play in a very dynamic less way. Like he would just be strumming his acoustic at the same rate, at the same level of intensity through the whole song, and the band around him would rise and fall to tell the to tell the story of the emotion. It's not because he was unable to to play with dynamics, Tom Petty was incredible. It was just a writing style. He just liked to have this constant on the acoustic, kind of like your foundation, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Yeah. He kind of put himself in the middle as the is that reliable like the foundation. So th th there's no kind of one way that's right, but it's just thinking in terms of where are we in the story and how we how are we doing at interpreting that emotion. And uh my final point is to think about it like a movie. A movie that only has car chases is gonna be pretty boring pretty quickly because there's no character development and you don't know what the point is and you don't care about any of it.

SPEAKER_03 21:48

Jason Statha movie like crank or something.

unknown 21:51

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

Whereas Jason Bourne was a genius because it set up this big problem and this tension and And you desperately wanted to know what was going on. So did he. So did he, exactly. That's right. But there were lots of quiet moments in those movies, lots of quiet moments in the Matrix, and lots of quiet moments in the termin in Terminator 2 and so on. Whereas I um I remember um being on a flight, a long flight somewhere, and I think I'd watched all the good movies. And then I saw that I think it was Bruce Willis who was in G.I. Joe 2. I don't think I saw G.I. Joe 1. But I thought I think it was Bruce Willis, and I was like, I like Bruce Willis, so I'll put that on. I fell asleep within like 15 minutes. I still would have no idea what happened. It was just bang bang, bang bang, bang bang!

SPEAKER_03 22:36

Yeah, no, I mean I think I think that's a good point, and it's not just in music or movies, it's it's in most art forms, you know. It's it it's either it's always that balance of having a bit of negative with the positive and whatever the the contrasting aspect is.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Yeah. Alright, well, shall we go to the ads and then we'll uh play some examples that I pulled out of dynamic songs. Sounds good. Do you want some decking music? Sure. What kind of style would you like? Uh something mellow. Okay. Uh should we go like cheesy sob? Sure, there we go. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

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SPEAKER_01 23:52

Beautiful. I don't know if that was sad or so cheesy I want to throw up combination. Okay, so the first song that I have lined up to talk about is a song called Come Pick Me Up by Ryan Adams. And I love this song because it starts pretty big. Not huge, but it's pretty big. But when it goes down to the verse in a second, it just drops to almost nothing. And then when the pre-chorus comes in, um there's a little bit more, but it's building so effectively that when it gets back to the chorus, back to pretty much this level, it feels really big. But check out how how how low down he gets here.

unknown 24:41

When they call me.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

And then one little lick here. And doesn't it pop? It does. And then he picks it up slightly for the pre. Another look. Harmony comes in.

SPEAKER_03 25:23

Oh yeah, the it makes the harmony stand out too. Yeah, it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Doesn't that feel really big now? Definitely. Yeah. But if you think about it, it's still not it's still not massive.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

No.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Everyone's actually playing back a bit, you know.

SPEAKER_03 25:37

Um I noticed I was even I was leaning in a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Right, yeah. Yeah. Well, here's another one by one of my favorite bands of all of all time.

SPEAKER_03 25:47

I figured there'd be a police song. There has to be.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

One of the most dynamic rock bands in history.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

They are pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

He's he's playing one play every four barts. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three. And he's putting it on two, which is also surprising.

SPEAKER_03 26:08

And the uh the snare and that that side hit really, really jumps out.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Exactly. Now he's gone up to the what we call the reggae skank. Don't know why it's called that. Leave it in. Walking on the but again, the master of space. Yeah. You know? All these guys, the whole band is master of space.

unknown 26:34

Walking on, walking on the space.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

It's quite full, but you can hear everything. Like there's space carved out for every instrument, you know.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Exactly. And I've jumped forward here to the next the next chorus where they really pick it up.

unknown 26:53

Soft messy.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Now there's two guitars. There's still not a lot going on. One of the things I've heard other people say is, to your point, uh if you imagine that the music is trying to get through a tunnel, the more music, the smaller each piece has to be to get through that tunnel. Uh obviously, if there's less, each thing can take up more room. So each thing gets bigger. I think I think you'll hear mixed engineers say that. One of the most dynamic songs uh I've ever heard, I think, is Tom Petty's Refugee. That's really big. But again, listen to how how low it gets in the verse, how much it drops down. One little lip pop down. Yeah, that's right. You can pick up on the shaker. That beautiful MB3, I think it is. One big strum, here we go. How much does that pop now?

SPEAKER_03 27:54

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

And then they go back into the roof. One of the greatest records out there, I think. The production, the musicianship. Everything's incredible. Um, so here's another Tom Petty song. I was talking about this before, Learning to Fly. I didn't mention the song before, but this is an example of where his acoustic guitarists are staying straight, staying flat. And I was talking about where the band rises and falls around um the acoustic guitar. In this one, they don't even really do that either. They they sort of they've dropped down very slightly here, but not massively. But there's something that it's a feeling it creates because it has a sort of journeyman feel to it.

SPEAKER_03 28:48

Like you're done a bit of movement to it for sure.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Yeah, but it's also like it's not like the story starts and then ends. It's like you're kind of meeting up with them in the middle of their story and then you're leaving before the story ends. And a song never gives you a result. It makes sense. Yeah. So it looks a bit here. You hear that high guitar coming?

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Hear that?

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Coming down. Is the hardest thing with a good old day?

SPEAKER_01 29:24

But it doesn't really, it doesn't really lose much when it goes to the verse again. So it's a very I I think it's still dynamic if it's dynamically flat, if it's your intention. It tells a story. Now, this is a an artist who I love. Her name is Leanne La Harvis. She's an English singer. She's a great guitar player, incredible singer, as you're about to hear. More in the kind of neo-soul kind of world, um, RB sort of thing. She's a real player with a great band. I love this style of music because that's it starts also empty.

SPEAKER_03 29:58

The reverb on that clap is great.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Yeah. But listen to it, the vocal performance is what I want to talk about with this one.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Please stop asking. Let's speak in the morning. Please don't do this. I'm too far away.

SPEAKER_03 30:27

Pretty stripped back.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

Don't know what to tell you.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Putting stuff in, taking it out. You know, here's the being in a yet. One thing you'll find in a lot of RB music is that kind of that where the it drops out and comes back in. I love that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 30:49

It just makes everything feel more full when it comes back in.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Exactly. That's clever dynamics there. Now, as she sets up this melody, she starts in the lower octave. This is the mellower version of it.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

Oh it is sweet summer. I'm born again.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Now listen to how they pick it up.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

Sweet summer. I'm born again.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Listen to that voice.

SPEAKER_03 31:24

Oh, that's gorgeous. I'm gonna listen to more of her music.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Amazing, right? She sounds like a true bam. She's one of those singers that has that true quality. I've cut forward to a later part of the song really. Listen to the the when she revisits this uh towards the end of the song. That extra force that they took you can say is yet another dungeon. How much territory she covered melodically from the beginning of the song to the end of the song? And how emotional is it? Incredible.

SPEAKER_03 32:37

That pretty much built the whole way through the song, too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Yeah, I wish I had It was always moving. I wish we had time to play the whole thing, you know. It's an inc and that's the opening track to an incredible album. I will be checking that one out. No, we we have to one of the most famous examples, I think, of Dragon. I think everyone knows this one. Comes right in, you know, at this point, probably one of the heaviest things that's ever been recorded. Because I think they changed their record see how it dropped down. And that dropout of those two notes. Those two notes.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

Unreal.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

Yeah. Yeah. Still so effective. Again, that tunnel idea. Everything now has its own sonic space. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:18

It's crazy how distinctive those two notes are, you know, it's zero context. If somebody just hits those two notes on a chord like on a guitar or piano, you're immediately thinking of this on it.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

It's funny, isn't it? It's funny when little ideas catch on like that.

SPEAKER_03 33:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

And they change gears slightly. Same two notes, but now they're drawn out and played more.

SPEAKER_03 33:40

Danny and I are dancing and headbanging around.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

I can still remember the first time I heard this song. And then follow. I can still remember the first time I heard this song and I stopped and and turned and like, what the hell? Same with this next song. This next song reshaped my brain in one sitting when I first heard it. I'm cutting into the middle of it. Oh yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I got the wrong song.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

This one's pretty good too.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

I like that what I just did was that the next one I'm gonna play. But this bit with the the guitar there suddenly kicks in. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

SPEAKER_03 34:24

So good. Yeah. So good. What the hell about makes me want to sing along, but then we'll lose listeners.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

I've got to tell you a story I just heard recently about that song. Uh have you didn't have you heard about the making of that song? No. The story that I heard was that the band hated it, but they thought it was super cheesy. And the record company or whoever was involved said, like that's the single, you have to play that song. And they were dead against it. No, we're not we don't want to write hits, we're not that type of band, you know. Um we want to do our own thing. And but they basically forced them to do it. This is this is the one that's gonna sell the record. Like you can do all your arty stuff on the other songs, but this is the one that's gonna sell the record, which is a great argument, by the way. Lots of bands and artists have followed that formula. You have the radio hits and you do the interesting stuff on the other seven tracks. So they said, just record it, like you know, that's what you have to do. So apparently they played it um with a very bad attitude, and the guitarists uh did all of that as a way of like rebelling, of going, screw it, I'm gonna play this as like gnarly and weird as I can, and I'm just gonna make it awful. So then everyone was like, Amazing! Yeah, they they finished that take, and apparently everyone in the control room is like, that was incredible, that's a hit, kind of thing, and that's the story.

SPEAKER_03 35:48

Oh, awesome. I mean, that is an incredible song. Actually, one of the I was thinking 15 step would have been another good example from them.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Yep. Everything they've done really pretty much a great band. But this one, this is the one I was referring to a second ago when I first heard it, it rewired my brain. Yeah. Now I've cut the front off. It's the longer song. It's one of the most amazing songs I think I've ever heard. But now they go into the 7-8 bit. Alright, skip. Which was quite rare, still rare in pop music, but they're building, they're building this. You're kind of you're feeling something's about to get it. When was the last time a song did this to you? Something's about to go horribly wrong. And they finally break it up again. Amazing. We should probably just listen to the rest of it though.

SPEAKER_03 37:14

Yeah, we'd just put the whole song on. You know what? Just tuck the album on. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

You do have to listen to all of that song though. Anyone, if anyone, if there's is it possible that anyone listening to this hasn't heard that whole song? I suppose the younger people, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 37:26

Do you know what? I hadn't revisited Radiohead in years, and we did that song in a lesson. Right. And it was it kind of made me peel back the music and and the actual nuance a little bit more. Yeah. And it kind of made it sort of remade me a fan, you know? Yeah. Um hearing it with new ears. So yeah, I think if you're not familiar, go listen.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

I I mean, I I've long held the opinion that they are one of the most important rock bands in recent times. Um and I don't mean that because of commercial success, even though they've been hugely successful. I mean they're the real deal. Like they are one of the most artistic outfits out there. You you can't you can argue and debate about all these other bands out there and whatever. But you can't argue anything about them. They're they're all great musicians, but they never played by the rules. They were always innovating. Their music could be studied and dissected and talked about for years, or you could just smoke a joint and feel it.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

Both are valid.

unknown 38:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Yeah. I just think they're like w especially in the rock world, what's another band that hits all of those 10 out of 10 out of 10 on almost every category? I just I I think they're incredible.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

Yeah, they definitely are. I am gonna be thinking about that now, maybe for the next podcast.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Yeah, we'll bring it back in.

SPEAKER_03 38:46

Who's as good as Radiohead?

SPEAKER_01 38:48

Yeah. Alright, so we need the listeners to do a couple of things. We need them to to uh leave a review and and comment on all this stuff. We need the feedback, we need the arguments. We think we're right about everything we say, but you probably don't.

SPEAKER_03 39:03

I think I'm wrong about everything I say. No, but we definitely do want to hear hear back from from the fans, you know. What what is interesting to you? Um tell us, you know, we can learn about new artists or new songs or new areas of music to explore. Exactly. Um I think that'll be fun for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

So you can email us, um, find the website and whatever. Uh but social media, even though we don't usually use it, Facebook and Instagram, I don't use it, but also get to me, I guess. Um and we did decide there are comments on Spotify, I can never remember. I think so. Yeah, I don't use it. That sucks. Um But yeah, like and follow us and all that horrible stuff that you're sick of people like I'm saying. Um so Mike, what is our conclusion today? I've done a lot of talking on this episode. So what is what is your conclusion and or what have you learned?

SPEAKER_03 39:55

I think I've learned um I kinda had a uh broad, you know, breaststroke idea of dynamics. Um but to me I think I always kind of viewed it just straight as loud and soft. And you know, which is is a bit of an amateur view of it. Um but I didn't really think too much about the composition or or other um you know, other instruments coming in or leaving out uh it makes perfect sense, you know, so many songs that you hear um throughout anybody's musical journey. It's those songs that have the big sort of dropouts, and you you know you have a bit of silence in space, it it brings that that the emphasis in whenever that groove comes back in. Yeah. Um and I think it's just a much more nuanced topic than I really gave it credence to. Um I thought it was just how loud or how uh quiet you played. There's a heck of a lot more to it than that.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Absolutely. So what's our next episode gonna be about? Why do people hate Lars Ulrich? Should we do an an episode before that? Is it Ulrich or Ulrich?

SPEAKER_03 40:55

I have no idea. I apologize in advance. I'm gonna get so many pronunciations wrong, and that is part of being uh a more of a book learner um than ever being in the world.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

So Well, if there was a community to piss off, it would be Metellica fans.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

Yeah, let's go for it.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

They are very loyal to their band, and so they should be. Fair enough. Great band. Yep. Um, but yeah, I actually don't know. Now I I feel like I used to know, and now I've now I'm certainly guessing. Lars Ulrich. I'm not sure. I don't know. You're gonna have to get some counsel on that. You'll Google that. Should we play um our outro music in the spirit of Metallica? Oh shit, how do I do that? Here we go.

SPEAKER_03 42:21

This episode was brought to you by Auckland Guitar Lessons. Head to aucklandguitarlessons.co.nz or email info at aucklandguitarlessons.co dot nz to find out more.