Allan Susoeff, Jr. (Extasis) Interview #2 - The Final on Vinyl Podcast

Another great conversation with Allan Susoeff, Jr., regarding his fascinating journey in music and his upcoming release, The Solfeggio Experience.

Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck

Transcript

Speaker 0:14

Hello, this is Keith MuzikMan Hannaleck with the Final on Vinyl Podcast. And today we are with Allan Susoeff, Jr.. And he goes by Exthesis. However, and that's Junior, Allan Sussoff Jr., correct, Allan?

Speaker 1 0:31

Yes, sir. Alan Alan Sosaiff Jr. or Susoff. Actually, either one is a correct pronunciation.

Speaker 0:37

Oh, okay. All right. And um I did cover a few of his tracks to this album prior to the upcoming release, which is November 12th. The Solfegio experience. Did I say that right?

Speaker 1 0:51

I think it's pronounced Solfegio, but that's it. It's very old, so God knows how it's really pronounced. Okay.

Speaker 1:01

All right. So there's a lot of excitement around that new album coming out. I see you posting on Facebook all the time how your uh listenership continues to grow. So let's talk about that. Uh I mean, since the beginning of time here with your your release here, this is your second release, is that correct? This is my second album.

Speaker 1 1:23

Yeah, I've got several singles, but this is the second album.

Speaker 1:26

Um what has changed what has changed between that first release and up to this point for you?

Speaker 1 1:34

Bro, I have no earthly idea. Um but something clicked in July, because in July, at the beginning of July, I had the same, you know, 20 followers per month on Spotify that I'd had since I released the first album in 2019. Um I don't know exactly what happened, to be honest with you. But the last time I checked, it was well over 5,000 monthly listeners, and I've had something like 50,000 streams or more. Uh it's actually got to be way higher than that now because I've got I've got four songs that are that are between 10 and 15,000 streams, just of those four songs alone. Each. I'm not honestly, I'm not sure what happened, but I'm I'm happy.

Speaker 2:23

Well, back in July. What changed back in July for you?

Speaker 1 2:30

Um, well, you know, I I gave myself a gift for my 60th birthday in May and officially retired. Now, I I I I I'm an you know, by degree, I'm an engineer and I've been doing building and engineering for my whole career, really. I've built I've built houses and I've done real estate development and and um and that's a lot of hard work. Uh and I've really enjoyed it. Uh but I've always done my music kind of on the side. And I made a decision, actually on a road trip, I made a decision to go take myself to Cancun for the the Cancun uh Jazz Festival, which if you like Jazz Boy, that's it's that one's great. I highly recommend it. But uh I was gonna go to that for my birthday, and while I was there, I thought, you know what? It's time to go make work your hobby thing and make the music your main thing. And I just made the decision in my birthday to do that, and I guess I did something right, don't know what it was, but I'm suddenly getting a lot of traction.

Speaker 3:40

Well, you made the decision. You put it out in the universe.

Speaker 1 3:43

Yeah, maybe I just put it out in the universe and poof, I got it. So manifestation works.

Speaker 3:49

Interesting. I made the same decision myself last November. Um I'm devoting most of my time to music now and trying to help out people like you get the word out.

Speaker 1 4:01

So it and building was fun. Real estate development's fun. I didn't do it, you know, it wasn't just about a job. I I really enjoyed it, but this is more fun. This is way more fun.

Speaker 4:17

Well, I know we talked before, and um there's a lot of different things going on in your music. And I I noticed um by covering the tracks, um, which will be coming out after the my reviews posted on the release day, I'll be putting out uh reviews of tracks five through eight, so people can focus in on those tracks and use them for meditation if they want to, rather than listening to the whole album or whatever they want to do. But yeah, by doing that um and doing it again, um you there's always more to uncover when you listen to tracks over and over again, and your compositions build gradually in this one layer after another, and you're using all kinds of different things chimes, Tibetan bowls. Uh let's talk about that. Let's talk about all the different instrumentation and and idiosyncrasies of your music and how that comes together.

Speaker 2 5:17

Ooh. That's a long interview.

Speaker 1 5:23

Um, when I well, first off, let's go back to the beginning. When I did root and sacral, I honestly did it, I just kind of wanted to play with the sulfasia. I had read some stuff on sulfasio frequencies and bineural beats. I thought, I wonder how we could work that into the music and if it really does make a difference. So I I did root and sacral mostly for me. I thought, hey, those are really relaxing. So maybe there's something to these bioneural beats in the and the sulfagio frequencies. And I sort of I I run around in a lot of meditation circles. So I have a lot of friends from uh that I've met through uh Dr. Joe Dispenses seminars and uh uh a gal named Janelle Gordon who does uh tantric retreats, uh, and some other folks, I've you know, Greg Brayton and Bruce Lipton. I've been to a lot of these different seminars, so I knew a lot of people who were also meditating. So I passed those just those two out to a couple of friends, uh, to several friends, and got the exact same feedback that I was feeling from the music. So I thought, well, there's something to this, so I released those two, and that was back in 2022. Um and then life sort of happened, I had some family stuff that had to happen. But I was still writing the the next two, which was was uh Naval and Heart.

Speaker 2 6:43

During that time, and they just kind of sat.

Speaker 1 6:45

Um uh so there was an evolution to the album overall to begin with, uh that just started with my curiosity about the sulfasia frequencies and the binaural beats. But then also as I was writing it, uh the music evolved, and I think it evolved because personally, I I I I don't want to sound overly woo, but I think it evolved because of the chakras themselves. Uh if you'll listen to like root and sacral, they're very earth-bound, drumbeat-oriented, very kind of physical songs. As you head more into the stuff, uh anything above the heart chakra, the heart chakra and above, they start to get more ethereal, uh, more it way more piano-based and orchestral-based. Uh, and I was just trying to reflect what I feel like was going on in my own body and what goes on in the chakras in the music. Or would hopefully that answers your question.

Speaker 7:48

That makes sense. Yeah. So, what kind of uh equipment do you use to make all this music? There's some people out there who would love to hear that.

Speaker 1 7:57

The two, well, I I do I play the piano. Um uh so the piano, I mean, and I I'm I'm playing everything, sort of. I I do it on a piano keyboard. I use um two sets of VST sounds. The more synthy uh ethereal stuff is uh uh called Omnisphere, which if if you're into that stuff, I highly recommend it. There's there's thousands and thousands of ready-made synth sounds in there. I mean, probably 20,000 or more. Um I don't know if I could use everything in it in a lifetime, and that's just the stuff as it sits. You can adjust it and tweak it and play with it, which I do, um uh, and just completely you go down the rabbit hole forever just on that one. And then the more orchestral stuff, uh, I really like East West Quantum Leap. Um and honestly, I came to that one because I I tried a couple of different VST packages, and Han Zimmer and Thomas Burgessen, who are two big heroes of mine, are supposedly, I've read this online somewhere, both of them have used or currently use East-West Quantum Leap. I was like, well, if those guys are using it, that's what I should use. Um I really especially the violins, but everything they got, the woodwinds, I don't know how they're doing their sampling, but it sounds the violin sounds like a violin. And down to the bow changes, and like if if if it's Mercado versus Spitzicado versus Legato, it's it's whoever put these together is really a genius. They're fantastic sounds. And to me, it sounds about as close as you're ever going to get to to an orchestra without it without having to actually you know hire an orchestra worth of musicians for session work.

Speaker 9:56

I agree. And believe me, it allows me to do it myself without having hybrids, you know. And it makes it harder for us reviewers to figure out if somebody's really playing something or not anymore. Now you got AI coming along, and it's like, oh boy, it's getting it's getting real here. And those uh the keyboards, um, keyboards are like a computer with keys, and they must have a hard drive to be having all these sounds tucked away in it, right?

Speaker 1 10:22

Yeah, I'm sure they do somewhere. I I I have no idea about the inner workings of the machine. I just do my best to play on them.

Speaker 10:31

As long as they work, right?

Speaker 1 10:32

As long as they work, right. And when they go down, it's really a pain.

Speaker 10:36

Oh, geez, yeah. I can't imagine.

Speaker 2 10:38

All this technology, but if it goes away, boy, it it it wrecks the whole day.

Speaker 10:45

Yeah, those are things that people never think about when they're listening to music. Listening to music for pure enjoyment. For the most part, I would think. Right. I mean, but that's why I do these interviews, you know, to look inside it. Look inside the music, look inside the musician, the process, you know, and thinking about all these different things that have to transpire and happen and happen right before it comes together just for one track, right? Just for one track, right?

Speaker 1 11:16

Uh you know what though, when you do it for a while, it's and I am my worst critic, and I've heard that from every other artist, whether and I mean not even artists like music, artists like people who paint and sculpt and whatever, we're always our worst critics. It's oh yeah. So to me, like the songs are never ready, but I've gotten to where I'll hear something, I'll go, ooh, and I'll know in my gut, yep, that's the right sound. You just nailed it, Alan. You know, keep that one. Hit save really quick on the computer.

Speaker 11:52

Yeah, you gotta stay with that gut feeling. You start going the other way, then things get messed up, right?

Speaker 1 11:59

Yeah, because you can go down the rabbit hole and just tweak it and tweak it and tweak it until it doesn't, you know, it just sounds like mush.

Speaker 12:07

So now you have an entire album that's gonna reach the masses. Um understand there's always a lot of work involved, and you know, behind the scenes, once you release an album, uh, are there plans for the future? Are you gonna start recording another album already? Or have you already? There you go. I have an interview.

Speaker 1 12:29

Can I mention a name on an interview? And give somebody a plan. Okay. I've got a very good friend that I came through the the Job Spencer uh seminars with by the name of James Stewart, uh, Australian guy that lives up in Chicago. That he and I several years ago, he teaches Wim Hof. And uh wait a minute, what's that? Wimhoff. That's the guys who do the meditation and get in the ice baths.

Speaker 2 12:55

Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 12:57

Um have you you've never heard of that? It's it's a meditation network thing, and then you and then you you finish it by getting in a very cold bath of water, whether like when he did his seminar, we did it in these little like tubs like you would uh feed cattle with. Um but I mean every morning that guy jumps in, I guess it's Lake Superior right there at the uh uh he get gets in the water winter or summer every morning as part of his discipline. Anyway, him and I got to talking about me doing the music for his meditations so that we can make the music go you know up and down with the timber of his voice, make it a little more dramatic when you're doing the the breath work, make it softer and more uh ethereal when people are in the deeper parts of meditation. And uh actually him and I had a meeting last week about it, and I've got the videos from I guess two years ago when we I went up there and filmed some B-roll for him during one of his seminars. So I've got his voice already as a scratch track to be able to write the next album, and it's gonna be around Wimpoff Meditations.

Speaker 2 14:13

Okay. Interesting.

Speaker 1 14:15

So that yeah, that'll be up and coming. I mean, it's just now in the listening to the the b-roll and getting the ideas and getting it down, you know, uh into into some some basic tracks, but uh yeah, that's the next project.

Speaker 14:30

So Alan, are you reaching out to institutions that use healing for music to use your music? Have you thought about that?

Speaker 1 14:38

Um I'll tell you I what I'd love. I'd love to have some of my music on a soundtrack for a movie, and I have no I've heard it's something called syncing, but I don't really have any idea what that is. Okay. Um so I'd love to do something like that. Um listen, if you have a connection to to how I do that or I could learn how to do it, or meet the right people could show me how to do it, I'd love to do that. To get it out to more institute like like in a movie or um in an app or something like that where, you know. To me, my music's more geared to that. It's not like pop or rock or country that I'm I mean, how often have you ever seen anybody doing ambient music at a uh uh in a Coliseum? I I don't I don't know that we have tours like that, you know.

Speaker 15:29

Well see that happening anytime. It's a tool. Your music is a tool. And um a lot of music out there is really. I mean this is the way this is the way I look at your kind of music or any kind of music that I covered in New Age genre and subgenres, is that there's two different things. There's one you hit click play and it's playing and it's relaxation, you let it play through. Number two is for focus, concentration, and going into a meditative state. There's one of those two things you can do. And with your music, it is even more specific because you're focusing in on energy points in the body, the chakras. So a person could say, I want to work on the sh the heart chakra today and put your track on and focus on that, right? So yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 16:18

Well, that's exactly why I produced that album the way I did. Each track stands alone if you want to work on a particular chakra, or if you want to reset your whole body, spend 45 minutes in meditation and do the whole album.

Speaker 16:31

45 minutes in meditation. I cannot imagine. That is a discipline.

Speaker 1 16:37

45 minutes is easy. I I I have personally meditated more than four hours many, many times.

Speaker 16:43

Good Lord. Really?

Speaker 1 16:45

Yeah. Go to go to a joke to spend before she'll teach you how to do that.

Speaker 16:51

Yeah, four hours meditation, that's sleep.

Speaker 1 16:55

Yeah, well, you typically you can't feel your legs when you wake up out of a four-hour meditation. Yeah.

Speaker 17:02

I bet, yeah. Wow, that's that's phenomenal. How long have you been meditating?

Speaker 1 17:08

Um I I started I started with with Dr. Joe back in, I guess, 2014, but I really started, I got interested in, have you ever heard of the book Course in Miracles? Um I started in 2012, uh my the kid's mom and I had gotten a divorce, and that was really kind of when I started this spiritual track thing. Um I started reading Course in Miracles, and they had a workbook where it was the little five-minute meditation. There'd be like the message for the day, and then the the book kind of explained, okay, here's how you sit with this for five minutes and think about it, or or do this, or focus on this, or whatever. And that was really where I got into it. And frankly, I found it so relaxing. I just loved it and kept doing it.

Speaker 18:00

You found your path. That's great.

Speaker 1 18:02

Yeah, and that is that kind of led into breath work and and various other like I've tried Rimhoff, I've tried several different modalities.

Speaker 2 18:11

All right. Uh just because evolved.

Speaker 1 18:14

Just like the music.

Speaker 18:16

What's that? Say that again?

Speaker 1 18:17

I I said it sort of just evolved, kind of just like the music did.

Speaker 18:22

Right. It's an evolution. Evolution of of who you are and the direction you're going. And here we are with all this great music, an entire album. Now thank you. For for for listeners out there, Alan. The title of your album is The Solfagio Experience. Solfegio Experience. Now Solfegio sounds French, but where did that come from? Solfegio. You have any idea?

Speaker 1 18:49

I'm not entirely sure, and I've done many searches on it myself. Um here's the nearest thing that I think is probably what happened. Um supposedly there was a a monk, I think his name was Guido Di Aurezio, um, back in like the 11th century, that was doing I guess writing these treaties on on music and theory and stuff like that. Um and the sulfasial frequencies are associated with the the Gregorian chants that they were doing in the, I guess, in the monasteries way back then. And the story goes that this stuff kind of just got lost in the shuffle. Uh as we get into and I could totally be wrong on all this, by the way. Um, this is just like I said, the research I was able to do. About the time that what we now call classical music came out, we started using orchestras. Well, there was an issue with you know getting everybody tuned to the same note to be so that all the all the musicians could play together. And during that time, I think, and I could be wrong on this, is when we got what we we now call kind of standard tuning, which like for A is 440 hertz, where A for uh um and a sulfagio frequency is uh uh was it 438 or something like that.

Speaker 2 20:22

It's all it's only a couple off.

Speaker 1 20:24

Um somebody, and I can't remember who it was, I guess in the 70s sort of rediscovered this old history. Uh and uh through whatever research they did, they they they found that uh the sulfagio frequencies are closer to uh, if I understand it right, what you would hear in nature. So uh if a if a piano or a violin plays an A in the standard frequency in the the 440, yes, it sounds good and all the instruments can play together. But if you're playing that um if you're playing it in the sulfasio frequency, which is uh whatever it is, four four thirty lit or something like that, um it sounds like a more natural sound, like like if a bird was singing the same note in A, it would be singing it at that frequency, not at what we call the standard tune. Did that make any sense whatsoever? I think I've kind of babbled that, sorry.

Speaker 21:24

No, that did. That did. Very good explanation. I've lost track of time, and uh it's been a great conversation, Alan. You're always a lot of fun to talk to, very informative. Yeah, but it looks like the interview. Well, I appreciate your time. Uh, you look forward to continuing working with you in the future, and uh look forward to your album release coming up very soon.

Speaker 1 21:48

Yeah, uh, believe it's uh the 12th, which is for Spotify, is like I guess in the middle of the night on the 11th. They do it a little earlier than everybody else, but uh I think for the for the world overall, it's the the 12th of November at midnight.

Speaker 22:02

All right. Well, thank you so much again for your time, and uh hope you and your loved ones have a great holiday season, and we'll be talking to you again soon.

Speaker 1 22:11

It's always a pleasure, bro. Always a pleasure.

Speaker 22:14

You too. Take care. Bye bye.

Speaker 1 22:16

You too.

Speaker 22:17

Bye bye.