Song Writing with Jon Gomm

[00:00:14] Hello and welcome to Fandomentals, the podcast that explores pop culture, one conversation at a time. I am your host, Harley. Every episode, I interview different people from around the world to discuss a variety of topics within the world of pop culture. Thanks for

[00:00:30] joining me on this journey and I hope you enjoy the episode. Hello and welcome to the 100th episode of the Fandomentals podcast. Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you. I are too kind, but you've come really. Thank you. Okay, I'm a full-on.

[00:00:56] Seriously though, thank you so much for joining me for this milestone episode and to celebrate such an occasion, I am joined by one of my favorite artists ever to talk about his approach to songwriting.

[00:01:09] On this episode, I am joined by Jon Gomm. When I had the idea to put together a season all about songwriting, Jon was one of the first people that I thought of. He really is a dream guest. He's somebody that I had no expectation

[00:01:24] of being able to reach out to or get on the show, but here we are and that is the magic of independent podcasting. Jon did not disappoint in this conversation. He has such an incredible way of looking at music and how to compose songs.

[00:01:41] For somebody whose music is so precise and so intricate in the way that it's composed, his outlook on how to write songs is so beautiful and straightforward and truly inspiring. I really think you guys are going to absolutely love this conversation.

[00:01:59] There's a whole bunch of amazing things that we discussed in this podcast, including why music theory isn't as complicated as you might think. The use of metaphors when composing lyrics

[00:02:09] and a first on the podcast, a live demonstration of how to compose music even if you don't really know where to begin. There is that and so much more to look forward to in this episode, so I'm just going to get straight to it.

[00:02:23] This is songwriting with Jon Gomm. Hello Jon and welcome to the Foundamentals podcast. How are you doing? I'm doing very well, Jon. How are you, my friend? I'm just amazing. As we discussed earlier, we're both doing really, really well, Holly.

[00:02:50] We've had interesting days to say the least, but we're here not to talk about that in the Grites of the World. We're here to talk about songwriting and I'm thrilled that you're here first of all for a number of reasons. One, I'm just a really big fan, generally.

[00:03:04] Two, when I came to the idea of doing this season and putting it together, reaching out to different people, you were on my list of people that I thought I'd love to get his perspective on this topic, because

[00:03:14] I think you have such a unique and fascinating approach to this. Okay. So, kick us off. My first question, and if you can think this far back, is what was the first song that you ever wrote? I was six. It was called,

[00:03:26] have you ever been in love before? It was very influenced by the work of Nick Kerschel, 80 singer songwriter extraordinaire. I could sing it for you, but I'm not going to do that. I believe it was embarrassing. But it had a little instrumental hook bit,

[00:03:45] which I don't think I figured out in my mind what that would be. It's probably like a keyboard thing. Yeah, but it wasn't really thinking of that, but it's probably what it sounded like in my head. I've got you. I've sort of had like a little

[00:03:57] accountability that was not sung, it lived it only in my head. So even when I was singing the song to myself, it had this little other bit. Which is not to rocket science and my daughter's seven and she's actually right songs all the time.

[00:04:13] And yeah, it's a really fun experimental thing to do. And I think when you if you'd start writing songs really young, when I say writing songs, I didn't really write a song hardly. I just had like an idea, but it had like a hook-lid and stuff. But

[00:04:35] it wasn't a complete thing, but you're just messing around with realizing that you can just make up musical ideas for yourself when you're a kid the same way that kids will just

[00:04:43] draw a picture or whatever. I think it's a fun thing to do because I think it's a really useful thing to do because you don't know any rules. Yes, so you can be really creative. So for example,

[00:04:58] my daughter when she's coming up with a song, she'll just add a bit of another song that she likes. She'll still make it part of the song very much like Ed Sheeran does.

[00:05:14] Oh, sorry, but what you should say is no bitching. I hope that's not the real one. It's fine, it's fine. No. I mean, listen, he's never coming on the show, John. It's fine. No, I don't really mean Ed Sheeran. It's a cheap shot. I've got the idea.

[00:05:29] I always have been sued for his time, but every time I know that I've noticed that he's been sued and I think I have listened to the thing and I like that. Nothing like that thing.

[00:05:37] So I don't even mean it. It was just the first made that David. I just wanted to make somebody into a punchline and he was the first person that Karen's my head. I apologize to Mr Sheeran

[00:05:46] and he's army of lawyers. Yeah. Allegedly. No, I do generally not really that. It's very talented. I'm sure it's very nice. Yeah. But yeah, no, it's an interesting point to start with. I think you're

[00:06:00] right about that. No rules saying, I mean, I've got friends with little kids and you're right. They just do that. They just start singing one bit of one song and then they'll come up with something else. Yeah. And like you said, there's just complete creative freedom after trying

[00:06:14] to laugh about. Yeah, it's really good. And also just the idea that music can just live in your head and it can be I think you're making your head. I don't think you can draw pictures in your head.

[00:06:23] Like visual art to compare it. I think it's harder to do that because images that you make in your head are going to be real. They're going to be representation. They're going to be actual thing. Like if

[00:06:32] when you dream, you don't dream in like cartoons and animations and stuff, I've never heard of that. With you dream, you see realistic images even if they are fantastical. And I think it's some whereas with music, music is already like a not a real thing. It's

[00:06:54] not something that kind of exists. And it's one thing that's really interesting about that is the idea that music all exists in the mind. And then whenever we try to make music,

[00:07:07] it is a representation of that of what we're trying to make. I don't know if that's really true. That's something you could very debatable, but it's an interesting one way that music can

[00:07:19] exist. Funny enough, you're pulling on a thread that's come up a few times actually in previous conversations is something that I personally believe and a lot of my guests seem to agree with

[00:07:28] it is exactly what you're talking about. This idea of what to me makes music so magical. Like it just starts with a thought in your head. Yeah. And like you say, you're then trying to figure out

[00:07:38] a way to bring it to life. Whatever instrument you happen to. I mean, it doesn't always start with a thought. Sometimes it starts with a sound in the physical world which could be right. You

[00:07:46] need a new feeling on your instrument or it could be you banging on a metal dust can or something. Or anything that makes an exciting sound that then becomes a foundation for a musical idea.

[00:08:05] So yeah, it can work either way, but at some point it's imaginary. Sure. That's it and it's that thing I think is amazing about it is it's you're basically to my mind sharing something

[00:08:18] that comes from inside of you. Like you say whether it is a curiosity, whether it is a thought. Yeah. And just the idea of that surely coming from your soul, if you will, and just sharing that

[00:08:28] with an audience or recording it, putting it down, I'm like, that's amazing. I just I'm always fascinated with how we do that as people. And like you say even from an early age, even from

[00:08:38] childhood you're just like, yeah, I just come up with a melody or I'll just start playing an instrument and I'll all like this idea or follow it. Yeah. Something I want to ask you about with that is

[00:08:49] this idea of no rules because I feel like watching you have having watched you actually for a number of years and you're very openly, if you talk about this a lot right in your clinics and your

[00:09:01] shows, your approach for anyone perhaps who's listening, you've maybe not familiar with your work. I feel like is almost the very definition of throwing out the rule book when it comes to songwriting

[00:09:11] and composing. Basically because I know that you like to get technical and like, I think one way I heard you describe it on one tour because you said it was like, because of your extent and

[00:09:21] I let you talk about it, so obviously I want to get your perspective on this is like you have such an extensive knowledge of how music works. You know, in theory that when it comes to writing a song,

[00:09:30] you just like to jumble everything up and then go right blank canvas. Yeah, learn all the rules and forget all the rules is my approach and that's just one approach, you know. Yes. And you

[00:09:40] can never really forget them but the way I always describe it is right. So the thing with okay, so kind of getting technical for people who have musicians music theory, even just saying those two words music theory is such a, I don't know it's just

[00:09:57] okay so music theory doesn't exist. This is the thing. Okay, it's completely not official in the same way that you know like biology is an kind of an approximation of the natural world or the human body or whatever. It doesn't fully describe what's happening

[00:10:22] right and you know, a neurologist can't describe the mind it's a separate experience and music theory isn't something which you make music out of. Music theory is the analysis of music that's already been made. So it's very, very rare in the history of music that something has been

[00:10:49] imagined theoretically. So here is something which is kind of mathematically possible in music and then has been used to make music by far the most common way that music theory arises is that sounds are made by people experimenting purely with the sound of whether they like or not.

[00:11:14] And then after it's become something that's used, you know, once or usually multiple times possibly for generations, then it gets codified into theory. So it becomes analyzed and codified and that's useful because if people are using a particular sound or or device in music

[00:11:41] and other people want to use it then if it's understood kind of in a simple mathematical way which is what theory is. It's like a simple mathematical analogy for music. Then other people can use it really easily just by learning that simple theoretical rule

[00:11:59] it is not a me so like in jazz there's a thing called a tritone substitution. A tritone substitution is a thing that evolved out of the most common chord sequence in all of jazz

[00:12:11] and possibly all of music which is called a perfect cadence. But it doesn't matter what it is but it's really common chord sequence that gets used in loads of jazz tunes but just all of music really.

[00:12:24] But there's a thing that bass players would do in jazz, they were play a particular note going from uh just the bass players would kind of improvise this thing but they'd all tend to do it a lot

[00:12:35] because it sounds cool and it's kind of easy where they kind of go down one note at a time to reach the landing note. Okay. Now what that dirt, what that did, did does is between the

[00:12:48] chord that's being played that really really common chord very very common chord sequence and the thing the bass player is improvising. It creates a different chord because right the bass player

[00:13:01] is technically changing what the chord is by doing a funny little and wise thing. Okay and it turns out that you can translate that into well what he's doing is creating a flat fifth of the perfect

[00:13:17] fifth or the dominant fifth chord in the bass um or another word for a perfect hit there's a tritone so instead of it being now a G7 chord it's some kind of D flat 7 chord which is

[00:13:31] kind of weird and has a flat fifth in it. Okay and we call that a tritone substitution and now loads of people millions of jazz musicians if there are millions of jazz musicians in the world use

[00:13:42] tritone substitutions as this theoretical thing and you can learn about tritone substitutions at music college or whatever but they just evolved. Yeah. Do you see what I mean? So I'll let's

[00:13:52] go to an example of a way that a rule in music evolved from people just messing about and then being analysed after the fact. Interesting so what's cool about theory is that when these things get

[00:14:08] named I can learn the sound of that tritone substitution I can learn the sound of a particular scale or a particular chord and what that does is it teaches my ear what that sound is. And then when I decide

[00:14:24] to throw the rules away and not think about any of those things they'll still come out but they'll come out because they sound good to me at the moment. Yeah in the moment so it's not like my songs

[00:14:35] are complicated really I mean some of them are but most of them aren't and I like really really simple music you know I like pop songs but I like to avoid cliches as well and a good way to

[00:14:51] do that is to kind of be able to compose freely and not use the rules because the rules basically are things that other people have done before that's what music there is so right I took all that away

[00:15:05] but then because I know about it in my ear if I if I do it if I use it I'm conscious of it so I couldn't you know I could use it on purpose or if I do it by accident I'm aware of it so if I

[00:15:19] write a cliché I'm aware that I've done that and I can either keep it or check it away but there's only one rule in music theory that is actually quite the important that everybody should know and

[00:15:30] it's the one rule that is not taught and that is there's only one thing which makes a chord or a note or a scale or whatever correct or not correct or good or not good there's one thing and

[00:15:44] that is whether you like it or not and that's not some kind of glib meme that you could you know put with a you know spot I mean you can if you want but it's just the truth it's so important it's

[00:15:56] so important and the worst thing that you can do is learn a load of theory in a load of scales or a load of sounds that you don't like the sound off because you're teaching yourself

[00:16:05] to make music you don't like and that's a terrible idea so don't do it yeah you heard it here folks professional musician telling you don't bother with it I know it's not a quite well-assisted I know but it's not your set the on either you do not

[00:16:22] it's a shortcut for sure yeah and I like what you're saying there it makes a lot of sense learn what appeals to your music yeah for sure and especially yeah especially I agree with you

[00:16:33] I think I've never heard anyone break down theory that way before so I'm fascinated by that definition I think there's a lot of truth there because yeah I suppose that's cool how genres come up and how different styles of music come up this is eventually somebody just

[00:16:50] I'm going to give this a try you know at least point I had a conversation with Joaquel who is recently on tour with you and now her music is complicated although it's weird because it's

[00:17:02] in most of us stuff is in you know she'll write a whole composition which is just one chord with the whole thing because she's looping she doesn't really have a choice because she can't

[00:17:12] really do chord changes that easily she does but yeah but so her music is incredibly rhythmically complicated and text-free complicated and she sacrifices simplicity and some areas for complexity in other areas and it's a it's really interesting how she does that

[00:17:30] it is fascinating and again it was we were talking about exactly about at this point of you know one at what point do you decide I'm going to just plug a cello into a reverb or a looper

[00:17:41] or a distortion and just this idea of playing around like you say well this this sounds sounds good I'm going to just use this in a way that most people if you were just going to play a cello

[00:17:51] the way your meant to play a cello would never think to try like you say if you stuck to the rules and like yourself with what you do with your guitars yeah that's a technical side of things yeah

[00:18:01] you could just say well John John you would never write the songs that you write if you were like why I've got a stick in this tune in yeah for sure I'll play this style and that's

[00:18:10] you know and that's the the house I'm going to live in. Limitation limiting yourself in some way is such a great thing to do creatively the worst thing that you can ever have

[00:18:21] as a musician is absolutely freedom of choice because what do you choose you know what what you're quite careful yeah it's two exactly option paralysis that's a cool phrase I've not

[00:18:34] so okay yeah I don't know nothing mate I make up everything I know everything I know is to self just self decided upon wisdom I don't read or anything much I only read fiction anyway

[00:18:49] so here oh there it's um yeah I'm it's interesting with Jo for example playing the cello or me playing guitar because there's only certain things we can do so we try and find other things

[00:19:07] so um one of the things I love about Jo Quayles cello playing is the amount of texture she can put into a single note it's kind of like Jeff Beck playing the guitar he right she will

[00:19:21] play a note unchanged the pitch of it like kind of bend it and then out of tune a little bit and she'll change how she's bowing it to get this kind of glass glass strings effect where there's

[00:19:31] homotics added and it changes the kind of frequencies so it'd be more I guess you could say more treble or more bassy but it's more than that and what blows my mind having heard her play

[00:19:45] is that most cello players will never do that will never make those sounds yeah um because I'm kind of an idiot regarding cello I don't really know much about it I'm hearing her doing that

[00:19:58] and saying Jo why do you never hear what when I listen to classical cello music why is nobody using those textures when they play in she says well it's not allowed to be considered wrong

[00:20:08] it'd be like they were you know messing up bark or whatever you're not allowed to do that and I just seems such a tragedy to me because they just incredible total variation she can get

[00:20:19] from the instrument and it's not difficult you know she says to me it's like yeah these techniques that I'm using those particular ones are not difficult um she just loads of stuff that

[00:20:30] really really is difficult but that's not it's just that it's kind of you're not supposed to do it and that's so similar to me with the guitar because one of the things I like to do with the guitar

[00:20:40] is hit it to make drum sounds and honestly if you people say oh that looks so difficult and it's like give you a acoustic guitar to a two year old and then tell me that what I'm doing is the

[00:20:52] difficult bit because they'll just be in the crap out of it but you know what love so it's fun and it'll sound great yeah and yeah it's it's actually trying to just play normal guitar on the

[00:21:04] guitar which is the hard thing to do so yeah it's um it's interesting limitation is sometimes you know frees you up to become really complicated yeah so was that something that you consciously

[00:21:20] went in with when you first decided okay I'm gonna write songs now I'm gonna be a songwriter I'm gonna pursue music was that something you set up I'm just gonna give myself these limitations

[00:21:30] or was it just one came naturally when you picked up the guitar? No it's like a confluence of lots of different directions that I just put my self in there's so many factors and they

[00:21:43] so embedded in my personality those factors so like being a solo performer and artist is you know because I really struggle to work with other people creatively I really struggle I'm awful to work with and I'm not an awful person to interact with most of the time sometimes

[00:22:05] I'm probably I'm but like I just if it's something that really matters to me like making music I cannot engage kind of social niceties of playing polite and thoughtful about the other person

[00:22:26] I just have to make sure that it's right and it's good and it's I just nothing else matters so okay the only way that I could work with somebody else like really creatively would be if we both felt like that and there was absolutely never gonna be any

[00:22:47] possibility that we'd actually fall out even if we did fall out you know we'd have to basically be able to virtually come to blows over music and then everything be okay you know okay at the end of the

[00:22:59] day you know and I don't know if that exists really I don't know if that kind of relationship exists maybe it does I know a lot of people in bands who really don't like each other you know yeah they worked together you know

[00:23:16] it's not always like that you know but sometimes it is you know but it's that's just my my approach if I'm in somebody else's band and I'm just a hired session person which

[00:23:29] I'm not them right very very long time but I did it you know when I was younger then I'm great because I will take orders from just followers but that's because

[00:23:38] it doesn't really matter to me on the same level if you know what I mean yeah yeah of course because it's not your personal creation yeah so everything about what I do as a musician they'll be

[00:23:49] something like that behind it which is why it's ended up that way then you know I just kind of end because I think maybe I'm pretty weird and I've not known how to normalize what I do

[00:24:10] or socialize what I do and in the same way you try to socialize yourself never when it's kind of socialize my music and make it kind of socially acceptable it's kind of just this

[00:24:23] becomes this weird artifact which is what it is but I don't mind that I'm happy to be a weird artifact. No I'm quite happy for you to do that as well because it's incredibly amazing to

[00:24:35] watch and listen to it I'm not just saying that it's yeah I find it fascinating and I do like that level of self awareness honestly because I mean it's am I right I'm right I think I'm

[00:24:46] quite right in saying that it's not easy being a solo artist right especially when you're trying to make music that's a bit different like it could be easier to try and maybe force yourself

[00:24:57] into a band situation or collapse situations especially when you're starting out and think well if I just do this then I'll be fine but you don't strike me as that personality you try and I was like

[00:25:06] I'm just gonna do my own thing and whatever happens happens yeah that is what I was like but I also never thought well I've never thought to myself this has to be my

[00:25:16] career doing this right okay so I don't care so my career was probably always going to be music but I wouldn't have minded if I was doing playing in bands doing yeah

[00:25:31] looking at giving guitar lessons and stuff that I did in the past in order to make and me and I still did my solo thing and I still would write songs and you can always do that you don't need to be a

[00:25:43] professional to do that in fact I'd probably have more time to do it if I wasn't and it's yeah I never expected that I must somehow be able to make a kind of solo a career as an original

[00:26:00] solo artist right I mean original right making my own music and so I never expected that would have to be the case in order for me to be satisfied and be a musician and it's just kind of worked out

[00:26:15] that way so yeah just kind of look and it's a reasonable amount hard work not you know I would argue it's more it's more hard work than luck but yeah I know what you're saying and yeah

[00:26:31] I just respect that because it's something we talk about a lot in this series with the various artists spoken to is this idea of being authentic or writing a song about letting it come from you and servicing

[00:26:44] songs and we talk about it after talking about this with all sorts of people yeah I just literally don't have any other way of being I'm not capable of artifice in that all right and that's like some

[00:26:59] moral no no just I just I don't know if it's an ADHD thing but I have a real issue with things not being true you know really like I can't take it it makes me feel almost sick like it's like

[00:27:15] yeah so it's but it's not it's not ethical it's not an ethical thing or a moral thing it's like a it's just a like a visceral like reaction that I can't really control so yeah I can't I can't

[00:27:33] write music that is that is fake in anyway yeah but I don't have a problem with music that's fake either to absolutely don't mind I don't expect that everybody is writing music which expresses

[00:27:47] their inner psyche or personality and so I don't I'm happy to listen to music that isn't like that you know yeah yeah it's you know there's I feel there's no wrong way to write a song

[00:27:58] right and for purpose like some stuff you just just written just to be entertained well this is this is a thing I always tell people that the first thing they need to start with when they're

[00:28:07] making music before you even start with like any kind of thing like what music is going to be isn't you need motivation to do it and that motivation would be a creative need I like my

[00:28:19] main motivation for doing it is a creative need like I hate not making music like I just need to create something new like I etch and I feel like so much better after I've made something new even if

[00:28:32] it's just a little thing or it's not good I just feel better for it and I don't know if that's because I've invested my identity into it or because it actually is therapeutic in some way probably

[00:28:44] the latter or maybe both I don't know whatever yeah maybe a bit of both there's other motivations so you're really great motivation which will make you write music because this is

[00:28:53] the thing is you've got to do it and it's hard to motivate yourself to do it sometimes because you can have the outs and fears you could be lazy you could kind of have mixed feelings about it

[00:29:05] but another motivation is money if you have to write something and you're going to get paid for writing it for some kind of job and you've got a deadline that's a really really good motivator and

[00:29:16] there's absolutely nothing wrong with that sort of solid motivator your motivator could just be to sell a million copies of something and that in my experience is a pretty mixed motivator

[00:29:26] because some of the worst music seems to be made that way but also some of the best so you can say but it's definitely not a guaranteed group motivator and another motivator

[00:29:38] I want people to dance to this I want people to have a good time and that's a great motivator which I don't really engage that often so they're not kind of wanting to make people dance

[00:29:50] because people don't dance to my music when I'm doing gigs it's they're not people don't get up and dance usually but I do often think about the entertainment value of a song

[00:30:03] like are people going to enjoy this or get something out of it I do often think that and it's not my main motivator but I do want to communicate something to other people that's

[00:30:19] important so I don't want my music to be just it's no point me putting all of myself or all of something or telling some kind of truth or whatever in the song if isn't going to make any sense to anybody else so to me that that really matters

[00:30:41] yeah so once you have those motivations then that's a really good starting point and if you don't have them then it can be really tricky too what one thing which happens sometimes is that

[00:30:57] maybe I sometimes go to guitar camps and teach that and stuff and somebody might play me they say John I really want to play you this thing that I'm writing I've written I really want you help with it

[00:31:08] I think it's really good it's my magnetum opus whatever they really means a lot to them but they finish it I'm not sure where to go next just struggling and they play it to me and I listen

[00:31:20] really carefully and then you know they get to the end of where they've got to and I say okay so my first question is what's it about and they say yeah I don't know

[00:31:34] and I say yeah yeah that's why you can't finish it that's why you can't finish it it's because you don't you're telling a story but you don't know what it is but it's okay because you can

[00:31:47] add that afterwards there's nothing wrong with that if you're writing a piece of music and you kind of it's about nothing it's just noodling but it could be beautiful or amazing or emotionally

[00:32:00] powerful but you don't know what it's about I want to say what it's about it doesn't have to be a literal story this is you know about the time that this happened to me this is about you know

[00:32:12] when my granddad fell off his boat when he was fishing or whatever it's not just a literal thing or a literal story it doesn't even have to be an emotional thing it can just be a concept

[00:32:24] like an idea it can be like a word or a place or an idea of a place or it can be a color it could be anything or it could be the way that a specific way that you want people to feel

[00:32:41] but it's some it's you can add that after the fact and the way that I can prove that that's kind of morally okay to do that is that we all do that when we're listening to other music so

[00:32:54] there's lots of classical music which has huge emotional significance to people it's very powerful but it's just called um concerto number three doesn't even have a meaningful title but it tells a story to to millions of people and they all have super imposed it from themselves

[00:33:12] onto the music and that's so it the composer can totally do that if it if it helps them if they need to yeah that's some really useful thing for sure it is no it's again it's another thing I don't

[00:33:27] know if it's come up yeah but actually well I talked about themes of what songs were about before with different people and um yeah I had a really fascinating conversation with an

[00:33:35] uh Americana artist called Lynn Hanson she was telling me about how her style of music it's very because Americana is like storytelling a lot of this time it's like rooted in country and a lot

[00:33:46] of these you tell stories about things yeah and like her approach is was that it was like oh you know I start to think about a story or a character yeah it's amazing I love it it's

[00:33:55] same in bluegrass a lot of kind of yeah yeah a lot of um just gonna say white american styles yeah seem to be in in that in that vein and it's great to love it yeah it is but that's

[00:34:11] that's the point isn't it is if you if you didn't have that clear vision in your hair it would be die on impossible it's supposed to come up with your stories and these great songs and the thing

[00:34:20] is the more specific you can be the better with your ideas so if so most songs ever written a love songs in one way or another you know the Beatles didn't release a song that was not a love song

[00:34:32] why I say love song there might have been kind of sex songs really and yeah but by which I mean it's not I love you it's like I think your heart it's the is the thing yeah but they're I want

[00:34:43] to hold your hand you know yeah they don't release they're right a love's we're might have to google it's right now we'll have to do that oh you know John I have John I have a google theme so we can

[00:34:51] load that up we can google what we do okay so as far as I can remember from when I used to read books about music more um the first non love song that they ever released is paperback writer

[00:35:08] oh which I don't remember I'll make sure I want to say rubber soul paper that's one of my favorite Beatles songs I should know is it rubber soul it's on see paper writer album oh this is really bad I've also done episode on the Beatles I should

[00:35:32] yeah there's a lot of Beatles knowledge out there I can't remember it all people are screaming okay you idea this is this is why I have a google theme and also a correction corner theme for

[00:35:46] when I get something really wrong okay just stop the podcast dead to apologize if I need to the Beatles paper writer okay it first says a came out uh to the 966 966

[00:36:00] yeah it's given me an LP oh it's on the master house but oh forget this sake wow that's no use not on a greatest hit so I know I know I know um I think it's on revolt I think it's on revolt

[00:36:14] no wait that's what I wanted to say but I thought it can't be that way they can't be that late because that's quite it's lives under the Beatles that's basically a later album

[00:36:24] why is this so hard to find that out? Can that really be true can my fact be correct but they didn't release a song that was not basically a love song until revolver because revolver also has like

[00:36:36] Dr. Robert on it which is about the drug dealer tax man not a love song I think I was Dr. Robert on it I might remember Miss remembering which songs are on which album certainly

[00:36:48] they wrote several albums worth of songs that were all of songs every single one before they wrote one that is not a love song I'm gonna I'm gonna get a definitive answer for you John because this is gonna like I'm not gonna sleep if I can't figure out

[00:37:03] some reason Google is being really bad at telling me what the answer is you think it'd be straightforward but I'll try we'll both have a little find it let's see let's see let's see so which album did you

[00:37:16] see think that so apparently all right so I've got revolver up no it's not on there okay so where is it okay so I've got I've got a Google search return here which is just it's not definitive

[00:37:30] it says that nowhere man which is 1965 October 65 which is our Lenin song is one of the first Beatles songs to be entirely unrelated to romance all love or boy talking to girl girl or whatever

[00:37:46] in some ways even like twist and shout is um yeah shake it up it's about a dance it's about dancing but but it's still you know try it is about hitting on somebody so no I'm a man which is from help

[00:38:01] I think but yeah they're been going for a carton board here's the Beatles form neither but they've been going for a solid kind of four five years at that point as a band and that's the first

[00:38:15] non-loves song it's such a long time so many songs yeah and yes so it's like okay so if somebody tells me they want to write a love song about you know their girlfriend or whatever

[00:38:26] that's I'd say to them well can you think of something about your girlfriend which is really small an insignificant but sticks in your mind and it's really you know it doesn't matter how

[00:38:40] where it is or how nothing he it seems like and one of my favorite things that somebody ever said to me about that I don't know if they ever wrote the song but I said you know is there anything

[00:38:55] that she does that worries you that makes you worse you're about her like it makes you worry and it shall be all right and he said well she just sometimes leaves a shoe laces untied and I said that's

[00:39:06] great there's your song i mean that is such a great theme for a song about being worried about somebody because they leave their laces untied and you worried because it suddenly becomes a metaphor

[00:39:19] for something else like just being worried about somebody's well-being and and how it's just such a great little hook to hang everything else on so if you can come up with a really small idea

[00:39:32] like that that's really specific it's much much easier I think to write the song then it is if you just as soon as you start saying I love you you're really great you're super awesome

[00:39:45] it's really hard to write the song part because it's been done so many times but partly because it's just too broad and vague and and partly because it's when somebody tells you that if somebody says

[00:39:57] to you I'd really love my girlfriend she's awesome and just goes on at you about it it's either ikki or or boring it is that's so true so I'm not saying you can't write songs which is just

[00:40:11] I love you you're awesome they've just got to be absolutely great to be good and that's a that's a high bar you know it's really it's really tough to do it without some kind of angle you know

[00:40:26] it is it is I have been to agree with that yeah and I love what you're saying they're like beings specific I think that's such a good point to keep in mind because yeah I think you're right

[00:40:38] and absolutely there's nothing worse than a generic love song no there isn't you know in it I don't mean to be horrible to anyone who you know if you like that stuff fair enough but

[00:40:48] I love generic love songs too they've just got to be absolutely amazing what's speaking to the people like I love things like no more silly love songs although it does have an angle

[00:41:00] because it's like breaking them going to fourth wall of like writing a song about a song I love no more lonely nights by Paul McCartney which is so cheesy you know but it's oh good but he's a genius you know it's easy for him yeah

[00:41:16] no it absolutely absolutely is by the way I think I found an answer I think it was a be-side all right into this offer album effort and LP called Rain so yeah Rain is just what a beautiful song

[00:41:30] oh my god yeah I don't know what the be-side is but it's yeah according to this because then like it's rain the bees rains a bee side isn't it it's just be-side Rain

[00:41:42] rains the bee side what's the a side I think it the people at writer sort of been one and the other oh oh oh oh oh oh I was right there you go excellent so it's basically it was a single and then

[00:41:52] it yeah it just pops up on various albums afterwards yeah it's like greatest hits but god I so incredible that rain is a bee side that is so nuts right just that's the be-als right

[00:42:04] it's like it's like it's like the two people get songs to choose from yeah yeah it's um it's almost like they kind of cracked the code before anybody else right yeah and but think a songwriters didn't really exist at that point so widely you know but he

[00:42:20] holly was maybe one of the first superstar singer songwriters before that wasn't so much with thing but it's funny because some of my favorite artists or blues artists who would tend to write

[00:42:32] their own stuff a lot yeah you know back in the 30s and sing that and it will be really personal stuff really kind of about being really grimly depressed and often living in real poverty or horrible circumstances really oppressed racially oppressed and you know there are only a

[00:42:53] couple of generations away from slavery yeah and just incredibly dark music and that's a huge influence on me is is you know early electric blues and acoustic blues from the 30s

[00:43:09] yeah way back there it is like a massive influence on me and my approach as a solo artist especially is a you know solo guitarist singer to me that's the starting point for it for that for what I

[00:43:23] do to exist in any way and they'd often play drums on their guitar those guys as well and play with jinges so to be honest I'm not doing anything that wasn't being done under years ago

[00:43:33] it's comfortable circle yeah I love that and yeah blues is a fascinating genre to me as well because I agree with everything you said it I mean you're absolutely right the history is very

[00:43:44] well documented but I think it just shines through I'm pretty sure there's a famous choir I'm going to double check this as well but I'm pretty sure it's Jimmy Hendrix that said like a lot of people

[00:43:56] can play the blues we're not many can feel it oh I don't know it's like oh something like that it's basically he was getting out this idea of like you can learn the scales you can learn the notes

[00:44:05] like we were saying earlier you can learn the rules yeah but the act to play it convincingly and so for it to come across in what you're doing it's not not very many people can do that because

[00:44:16] you have to really feel it it's so important because the audience have got to feel it the audience have got to feel it so you've got to sell it as Frankson Artur would call it selling the song

[00:44:26] yes you don't have to you don't have to kind of be in it you can you can act it but that's I mean it's fake it just means that you can turn it on and you can bright yourself in there

[00:44:41] you can switch it on you can find the emotion in yourself so you are really feeling it like but so when actors act most of the time there are ways that some actors don't experience the emotions that they're portraying they have like tricks and stuff they use

[00:44:57] they're basically you know which sounds strange a friend of mine is an acting teacher and he'll sometimes if you remember I think there's a particular emotions that would sometimes difficult to express and you'd say you know if you want to look like you're kind of shocked or

[00:45:17] appalled by something imagine somebody dropping an ice cube down the back of your neck yeah so you'd obviously bring about the emotion you just experience and it's really it really works you know so but most of the time if you're performing you could engage the emotion quite easily

[00:45:35] it's it's not difficult to do in my opinion and yeah I grew up watching a lot of blues performers and the more into it they are the better it is to watch you know and make

[00:45:49] what I'm still listening to. Oh great and the quote is to be exact is blues is easy to play but hard to feel yeah that's what he was getting at it's exactly that if I've got a it's got a come across

[00:46:03] and one thing again about about blues is that I like music which is complicated and kind of crystalline and everything's kind of everything's perfect with very complicated music I enlarge it has to be in tune and in time with what supposedly simple music

[00:46:30] it doesn't have to be in tune in time so what I mean by that is you can mess with the tuning and the timing a lot more because the framework is simpler so if you listen to Robert Johnson's

[00:46:41] saying and play the framework of what he's playing is simple the chords will be simple and the rhythm will be four or most always and because it's simple in very simple in that way he can mess with the timing of his singing

[00:47:04] and his playing so much put it in all these kind of little in between he bits bend the shuffle so it's more shuffle or less let more swung or less swung swung and you know all of that creates

[00:47:22] life really to the music and that's what gives it the emotional power and as a result of that and also he's brilliant technician it becomes really complicated music it's no longer actually simple at all it's it's a very weird conundrum in music sometimes the more complicated music is

[00:47:43] actually the more simplistic it is that's the thing alright suppose like here's back to what we were saying like there's always rules there's something like laws of physics right like there's something

[00:47:53] governing what people are doing with music like they have like you say you have to follow a rhythm or there's a melody but I guess what makes it complicated is people's unique approach right

[00:48:05] inflections I guess is what I would say it's a lot it's a lot easier it's weird because if you listen to somebody like I would a good example might be prolifer right modern example so the

[00:48:21] music is super complicated and difficult to play but that actually makes it easier to copy if I mean if you wanted to create a cover version of it that was really I don't mean like copy

[00:48:31] it's stylistically I mean if you wanted to create a cover version of one of their songs and have it sound exactly like them I think that is potentially easier than covering say an

[00:48:43] advanced song and having a sound exactly like them right and people will not accept that and big that I'm just trying to be pretentious or whatever by saying that now obviously it's harder to

[00:48:53] learn to play like the guys in polypia because what they're doing is much more technically complicated and it will take a long time to learn to play like that and actually play the notes

[00:49:04] if you ever achieve it but when you do it will sound like them whereas with Kirk O'Bane it's not difficult to learn to play what he's playing the notes he's playing and sing yeah it's not difficult because they're not complicated but to make them sound like him

[00:49:23] will be very very difficult because he's like you've got to hit it's the sound that he's making isn't about the notes that he's playing just it's about the way that he's doing it

[00:49:35] and he hits the strings in a very very weird way and to replicate that will be very hard and he's not actually always necessarily even trying it's just how naturally does it it's like what's easier is it easier to copy somebody doing something really difficult

[00:49:53] with the guitar and copy the sound of that or if I throw my guitar down a flight of stairs like let's say four flights of stairs and a flight pin you know high-rise building

[00:50:04] can you copy that? how are you going to do it? it's going to be really hard to replicate that it's going to be virtually impossible I would say to replicate that so that's the only point that

[00:50:15] making it's not like a pretentious point it's just a literally true point but musically it does become true so yeah that complexity is something that can be there in the nukes and crannies

[00:50:27] if you don't leave room for nukes and crannies then yeah so this is something that I think about quite a lot and because the way that I play guitar I'm often tapping notes

[00:50:39] because I'm doing a lot of the stuff at the same time so I can't add as much character to the notes because I'm just tapping the string against the fret which means that just kind of all

[00:50:50] way sounds the same all right but if whereas if you strum a string or pluck it you can really change the tone of it by the way that you play it my cont so I'm just literally pressing

[00:51:02] it down almost like a piano player pressing down a piano key and there's there's not much that you can do to make a piano sound different that's probably half of those pedals I mean it's a

[00:51:12] machine it's it's technically maybe not a musical instrument the piano it's it's technically a machine in a way that other instruments aren't you don't physically make the note yourself for the piano it does it for you it's mechanized so that's kind of what I've turned my guitar into

[00:51:30] sometimes in some ways that I play so I work so hard at finding ways to add character to those notes somehow by the timing or how loudly I play them or if there's something I can do to move

[00:51:44] the string or move into the note a certain way just to give it to humanize it and add that complexity that texture so otherwise it would just be really flat you know and I don't want that I want

[00:51:58] to be able to want people to be able to listen to it and say it sounds like me and not just anybody else you know so there you go that's fascinating I would not have considered

[00:52:09] that being a factor in the way that you play just given to a lemon like me as I just as you can see I've got guitars behind me like but my approach is nowhere near anything like what you do

[00:52:21] but I can I can it's funny because I've always watched what you do and I'm like I can see they're almost like the puzzle pieces of how you fit together like you mean it's so many times in clinics

[00:52:29] I've been to where you go like well this is the drum this is the snail that you've broken down the percussive side and then like you say then you're like I'm going to tap a note here as my

[00:52:37] melody and like so I'm like oh that's clever so he's doing it like a puzzle yeah but I'm like to do that but then also be consciously aware of yeah but I don't want it to sound like

[00:52:45] I'm just putting a puzzle together I want it to also be a bit of me on there like I want to add a bit of color yeah I'm honestly amazed by that hard man I bet so the things like

[00:52:55] my guitar is weird my guitar is very strange for the way the way we set up I use really weird strings and kind of weird pickup system and all this stuff to make it have a distinctive sound

[00:53:06] that I like but also that is distinctive you know because I want it to it's my voice you know I want it to be distinctive I want it to be a distinctive voice one thing I hate in music

[00:53:17] songwriting and just sound and everything is the paradigm okay the paradigm to me has no place in art it's terrible I have a real issue with the word quality as well but that said

[00:53:29] by which I mean I don't mean it has a particular quality like a particular tamper I mean like something being good or bad quality is a horrible thing to attribute to art or music in my opinion

[00:53:41] which does have its place in music and in some ways I get but certainly the paradigm so the paradigm why understand it to me is having a perfect example of something maybe imaginary or not

[00:53:55] but like in your head you're thinking I want to sound like this like so my favorite guitar players are Eric Clapton and Dave Gilmore and I want to sound like the combination of those guys

[00:54:10] and this in my head it's perfect guitar sound you know and it could be anything it could be any perfect thing and it's really prevalent at the moment because aesthetics are so important in the world

[00:54:23] at the moment because they're so the way that people consume things it's almost like a lifestyle thing or it's a it's a we live in a very very consumerist age where people want things to kind of be

[00:54:40] aesthetically pleasing to them and don't want edges and corners on things they don't want to ever feel that people don't want to be made to feel uncomfortable or bad right and art should sometimes

[00:54:57] make you feel uncomfortable or unbad art you know singers don't need to be auto tuned they can be out of tune it's okay you know this is it's all right yeah so it can be unpleasant but unpleasant

[00:55:11] this isn't it's part of being human you know so yeah I hate the paradigm I think it's the enemy of of creativity and originally I really do it's it's very funny junks I feel like to be being I've

[00:55:25] got more and more into home recording like in the last couple years especially obviously doing the podcast but then doing stuff with musicians and forming a band and it's funny I've sort of

[00:55:34] watched even in the last few years the kind of pendulum swing of like people having all of these tools to as you say create the paradigm of like we can quantize everything we can lock everything

[00:55:43] in you can auto tune you're the other you're the other make it sound perfect it's a million ways yeah yeah but then it gets it's got already now it's like feels like it's gone back the other way

[00:55:51] where people go yeah now it sounds too perfect oh I've got people saying that I'm not really aware so that's good I'm right because I'm hearing that a lot more from like studio engineers kind of

[00:56:00] almost discouraging people now trying to use these tools too much because it's like yeah you don't like you say it kind of takes out the flavor and it takes out the the voice so just I'd defeat

[00:56:11] it's the point in some ways but yeah I guess if people's objective is to make something pretty right yeah I don't know that's so so shallow and the whole point of writing a song

[00:56:25] they're like going back to what we were saying at the start this conversation is it's just something that naturally comes from you so if you're obviously like we said you've got okay rhythmic

[00:56:34] rules melodic rules if you were Lord or things that sound good yeah what you said that's fine and you can use those tools to shape and help you improve but like you say I agree if you go too far

[00:56:47] in the direction of odd by one tip to all be perfect let's try something so I don't want to miss a lady hang on a second oh go on go on then here we go okay don't know how much like I've got my

[00:56:56] headphone table that's all right this is gonna be a podcast first here we go so all right okay don't want to miss a lady so when I'm talking about theory and things can either be um yeah

[00:57:14] you know there's only one rule I said it's whether you like it or not is whether it's that's what you're just whether it's good or bad so we go like doing experiment um yeah

[00:57:23] oh it's a super weird tuning um I love super weird tunings let me go somewhere and I've got vague tones okay oh yeah so because every song that I write is pretty much in a different tuning

[00:57:45] on the guitar yeah so when I pick it up that's where I've just been where I was yesterday or whatever when I was played it's really interesting so the last thing I did on this guitar was play

[00:57:57] to a primary school in Leeds so I played to a load of well 600 um nice primary school the very youngest will be four and then the very oldest will be 11 amazing in the inner city in Leeds uh and this particular school it's in an area where

[00:58:19] I'm a good number of the kids don't have English as they're first language I might even start school when they're little not be able to speak English I mean they learn pretty fast you know yeah so it's a really interesting audience play to absolutely terrifying

[00:58:43] I suppose yeah kids kids have no filter today so oh you know yeah it was pretty scary but they were great it was really really good so I really loved that yeah yeah the school just asked me to come

[00:58:56] out and do it and it's fairly listening to them big me up and trying to convince these kids that I'm really fighting because that's for all you know they wanted to you know matter you know

[00:59:08] anyway right so yeah okay so I'm gonna play some right um one of my favorite little tricks which you could say is a theory thing but it's not really is to have um drone notes so this kind of a rule

[00:59:24] and it is a rule that um because a lot of times when people are writing songs they get stuck in the basic what you might call the basic six chords yes so this in the key of C you've got three

[00:59:37] major chords C F and G and he got three minor chords D minor A minor and E minor and then there's a weird B chord that nobody uses because it sounds odd B I don't know half diminished you could have

[00:59:52] or whatever but anyway you're asking a wrong person exactly but you probably you were probably with me until I went to mention the B thing but you're probably recognized those chords as being

[01:00:02] chords that might be in the same song right yep and people learn those because they learn lots of they might learn a load of songs by their favorite bands on their guitar or whatever and they come

[01:00:10] across a lot of those chords in the same team it's like how do I get out of that and then they might find out there's a load of other chords and there's a load of other things you can do

[01:00:18] to change key there's non-diatomic chord which means they're not in the same key or this and this ways of using them theoretically like you could use a secondary dominant that's the thing that happens a lot in music but actually there is another rule which is completely awesome that

[01:00:36] anybody can understand which is that any chords that have one note the same will go together they will work together you can give it a name so a name and theory world sometimes that's called

[01:00:51] pick chaxis theory so you're kind of axis of one particular like your pivoting off one particular note okay but it's just a rule so an on guitar or piano it's super easy to do that because you can

[01:01:06] just hold one note with one hand on the piano and play your chord with your other hand and just or on guitar you could just leave an open string and then play your chords along with that open string

[01:01:21] so the only thing that you then have to figure out is well which and you could have multiple notes it's not to be one common note you could you could hold like two or three notes or two or three

[01:01:30] open strings and then have a chord along with it and then just keep changing the chord and keep those open strings the same do you see what I mean so they're kind of drones

[01:01:41] yeah but they don't have to when I say a drone they don't have to actually be going oh yeah all time you can just be play you play them however you want yeah so then all you've

[01:01:51] got to do is figure out well which chords go with those notes so I'll show you what I mean so let's say let's say these are going to be my pitch axis note and there's three notes here okay and

[01:02:03] those just what my treble the most trebley three strings on my guitar tune tune right now and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take some chords on the bass strings like say this one

[01:02:15] so that's a little major chord and we'll see if it goes with those drone strings okay what do you reckon do you like it or not? I do I do like it okay so there you go that's that's it

[01:02:30] that is theory that is the rule I was talking about let's try another one let's try another one do you like it so I've taken this those strings are the same okay so I'm going to ask you a

[01:02:44] question aside a different way gone you can kind of give a give a chord either yeah I love it I hate it or it's fine hmm okay feelings it's fine I feel you're great most people are going to agree on most of the

[01:03:03] chords it's the ones where we disagree that it's going to be interesting so I agree that chord isn't life changing but you know it's fine it's not going to sound wrong okay so that's useful

[01:03:13] information I think you like the first one more okay let me find another one now let's try this yeah hate that you hate it okay now not everybody listening to this podcast will agree with you

[01:03:30] it's certainly kind of theoretically probably you're wrong but that doesn't mean that Jeff Buckley wouldn't use it for example yeah okay let's try this one we're getting a fine or a little oral love I reckon it's a fine I'm looking at your face

[01:03:52] a good fact again I just I'm just thinking it not perfectly okay yeah more more more for fine okay why about this one okay so we're going to give that a book look put it on the on the positive end let me see if I can

[01:04:07] find something um I've kind of restricted myself a little bit by having so many different notes on the top three strings and three different notes so let me find um one that I think might be nice

[01:04:24] oh what who okay so I'm gonna say that's good so we got interesting I got basically three that you liked that interesting oh yeah you think lots of it for you see for you you like

[01:04:33] you're feeling like you know it's like you know you like when my school had master realized he was gay you know it's like you look at how they go and I'm I'm disgusted by that morally

[01:04:45] but some things are also deeply deeply attracted to it yeah it's awakening something yeah not quite I don't know it's more just like I hear that I'm like that's yeah there's a lot

[01:04:59] to my ears there's a lot going on there which in terms of a competition you're done okay so don't worry about that you think into hard so I am think there's three chords that you you decide that you you like so we've got this one

[01:05:14] and this one okay so I've just played them in that order because that's the order that we discovered them so now I'm gonna just give them a strum I don't know so I'm gonna translate this into real music and I've totally what chords they are

[01:05:34] now I'll tell you I never do this so when I write songs in other tunings which is all the time I will never then go back and analyze the song and figure out what the chords were because

[01:05:43] I don't care I just have no reason to I just do not care but I'm gonna do that never just out of curiosity because it's like a lot of hours so this chord I get tired I

[01:05:54] transverse my guitar so if somebody's listening at home with with perfect pitch and they're gonna tell me I'm wrong about this then I know that but this is this is kind of like the D major chord this is a C major chord and then this

[01:06:10] this is a chord I can E flat major chord but pretty weird one and E flat kind of lydian chord which might not mean anything to you but but you basically you're writing way outside those six chords those kind of normal six chords you are writing something

[01:06:31] wait it's not all in the same key it's already theoretically you know this is jazz or something or it's like it's something non basic okay but we haven't done that by learning a lot of theory we've done it by okay we took this idea of using open strings

[01:06:51] and then messing about with my fingers defined chords that you liked and suddenly you've got something interesting and there's this countless ways that you can play those chords you could finger pick them you could just from them you could play them on a different instrument and then

[01:07:07] you can come up with a melody that fits over those chords and again the only rule there whether the melody fits over those chords or not is you know do you like it and the key thing is

[01:07:19] that it's the bits which are unique to you which are the things which will be original so suddenly you can find your own voice just using that technique because you don't all you've

[01:07:31] got to do is pick your favorites honestly and not worry about oh I should like that one because it's clever or I should like that one because it's nice you know just go with instinct

[01:07:42] yeah and I do that exercise a lot with people and I can tell as well when people are trying to impress me or impress themselves by pretending they like a chord which they don't really because

[01:07:55] it's kind of ugly and weird but they don't want to admit that they're a basic person who just like pretty pink things that are fluffy and nice and sweet sure you've got to admit that to yourself

[01:08:09] I'm very happy to admit that I'm very excited absolutely I mean I like both I like weird stuff sounds dark and wrong and complicated and I like stuff that's really pretty and

[01:08:19] yeah I'm simple having this moment with working on a few songs of the band I'm in and my mate James is the guitarist he loves all like the sort of periphery you know prog metal stuff

[01:08:31] and then he so he writes riffs and ideas he comes up with stuff like that whereas I'm like yeah I like these chords and this melody and I keep it really simple that's a good combination well

[01:08:41] let's potentially a good combination to have in a band well that's the thing so yeah every now and then we'll sort of not clash with all meets somewhere in the middle and go I'm not quite sure how to

[01:08:49] fit this together yet but I like that we're coming out from different angles and we'll just see what have a similar kind of rule which is very it's very very different than the way that comes about

[01:08:58] which is that if I find something really difficult to play by which I mean it feels really awkward and I can learn to play it I mean it could learn to play anything but if it feels physically wrong

[01:09:10] either kind of the pitch of it or it feels too complicated or it's too difficult to sing and play at the same time right then a alarm bell will go for my head it's like am I finding this difficult because

[01:09:24] I'm you know an idea and I need to practice things which is true I have to really work really hard to be able to play my own stuff you know or actually is this just not working and I can't do it

[01:09:41] my body is resisting doing it because it's a really awkward thing to do because it's going to sound awkward you know you don't want to make that mistake of done it before you know yeah so it's a

[01:09:53] different thing but it can be it can be useful thing and it's like yeah totally I wanted to ask you or on that no actually nice pun there nice pun there you go there you go how do you go about

[01:10:10] adding vocal vocals to your songs because I feel like it's one thing to do all of what we've discussed because we've focused a lot on instrumental which is obviously a large portion of what you do

[01:10:20] but then you you John you just go ahead and sing over the top as well yeah sometimes even more complicated I do right instrumental stuff as well which I find harder um oh really oh yeah yeah I definitely

[01:10:32] well I don't know hard it I just I love songs I love words yes so you know and I love singing as well and I find it easier to to kind of express myself emotionally by singing them by playing

[01:10:52] yeah I'm about in everybody does I think it's obviously every time you try and express yourself emotionally through sound it's kind of a metaphor for actually doing it with your voice really

[01:11:03] you know so yeah so I don't really add vocals it's the other way around I will write the song with words under tune of some kind and then add the guitar okay okay and to me that's

[01:11:22] a much better way of doing it it doesn't always work like that but but at least four times out five it works like that and there's really important reason that works well for me

[01:11:36] which is that I really like to do super technical guitar playing really unnecessarily technical guitar playing really unnecessary because that's another side of my kind of personality is that I have this kind of video

[01:11:50] game or kind of sport approach to my instrument why I just like doing something that I couldn't do last week so something that seemed impossible you know a month or a year ago I can I'm now doing

[01:12:03] on stage in front of people because and to me that's cool you know I love it it's it's itches this scratch is the itch in my brain which wants to constantly be progressing that kind of video game

[01:12:17] itch and yeah that's a very dangerous thing as a musician and a lot of musicians who have that side to them and they want to be really technical and their instrument it's that's part of the fun

[01:12:33] that music can be terrible you know because they can write stuff so focused on the technique that it doesn't really tell stories and have emotional value or impact on people you know

[01:12:48] and that can be true of composers as well it doesn't have to be as a musician as a performing a playing musician it can be just as a composer people can get to into the theory

[01:12:57] and to into the technical side of composing and then they lose the storytelling you know or they lose the emotional impact of him right so yeah in my case the reason that I will

[01:13:14] generally write the words and vocal melodies and stuff first in fact it'll go further than I'll have an idea for the song how on it to sound in my head before I start so maybe it's

[01:13:26] going to have maybe I've got even a bass line because specific bass line that I've sung or written there you know I'm singing to my phone and recorded it or I've written it down in music or whenever

[01:13:37] or maybe I've got a particular groove that I've got in my head which I will literally like beat out on whatever is available and to remember that rhythm or beatbox it really

[01:13:51] into my phone or whatever or maybe it's more general than that like it's just I've got an idea for what kind of genre the song is so like what kind of got you this like where does this song come

[01:14:06] from where will it live sonically is it you know and then once I've got all that information then I'll sit down with the guitar and think of a guitar arrangement to put around it

[01:14:17] and if I and that means that everything I do on the guitar has to be in service to the melody and the lyrics that I've written or even if I write an instrumental I'll have a

[01:14:31] melody that I've sung into my phone or something else and recorded and probably harmony that I've thought of in my head and we'll say oh this should go with this bass note or ever

[01:14:42] and a tempo and an idea of how I wanted to sound and yeah so when I then come to play the guitar and come up with a guitar arrangement it's almost like I'm arranging a cover version it's almost like

[01:14:58] there's another songwriter that's come to me as a guitarist and said please can you come up with a guitar arrangement for this yeah it's almost like there's two very distinct stages to it

[01:15:08] and to me that really helps because it means that I can't just do crazy technical stuff on the guitar for no reason. It's got to work yeah it's got to fit and and then the other side

[01:15:20] of the technical guitar stuff which is key to my approach is that I don't like the sound of really complicated guitar playing necessarily okay or really complicated playing on any instrument what I like is simple hooks melodies bass lines simple drum parts whatever I like them

[01:15:49] I like I like the really obvious bits you know what I mean yeah like yeah so what I do as a guitarist a lot of the time is that rather than writing a really complicated guitar

[01:16:03] I write a really simple guitar part but maybe also a really simple bass line a really simple drum part maybe a really simple little counter melody thing for the vocals to go with the vocal

[01:16:14] so there may be four things that are all really simple and then what makes it really complicated in terms of me playing it as a technical challenge a physical technical challenge on my instrument

[01:16:27] is the fact that I'm doing them all at the same time. So I'm never actually playing complicated music I'm playing lots of really simple music all at the same time. Right so that is kind of my approach

[01:16:39] yeah which is I don't know if it's really of interest to people who aren't really technical musicians but I really recommend it as an approach beyond that as well like if you have that technical

[01:16:50] pitch you want to scratch don't just scratch it all in a row you know scratch it by coming up with really clever ways to do really simple things that makes them really difficult. That's

[01:17:06] yeah I really recommend and that's um yeah I really I really love that I don't I don't like listening to music that sounds difficult I know that sounds weird okay I want the music to sound

[01:17:19] yeah no I can understand that I mean it is you know I'm very much someone who lives in the kind of heavy metal rock world that's like my wheelhouse go to yeah I love that place too

[01:17:32] it's a lot of fun but that that's one that definitely suffers from yeah people that also go way too far to the point where it becomes disinteresting because you're just

[01:17:41] like and this is not throwing shape I'll give you a real-world example you know I went with my dad's to like I think it was the Marshall's 50 years a lot or something and it was like a big collaboration

[01:17:50] of all these artists and you can very mouth seeing comes out and this loving very mouth seeing but don't worry yeah but same here love the guy obviously a legend of the instrument

[01:18:01] amazing but after 10 minutes of just sweet picking even me my dad were kind of looking at our watches going like okay we kind of get it like are you gonna you know are you gonna play one of your songs

[01:18:12] because I appreciate technical virtuosity on yeah particularly the guitar but other instruments as well so much I could watch in my mouth seeing hours I could watch him play the same thing over and

[01:18:26] over hours hmm okay honest it's so it's such a joy for me just to watch his incredible skill okay but it's kind of very much the I love watching like Olympic gymnastics right

[01:18:45] right my daughter does gymnastics I just took it to a class tonight but no I don't really have like a particular like love for gymnastics per se but if it's on tv I will watch it because it's just

[01:18:58] mind-blowing what those people are doing right oh yeah it's just so impossible and sometimes beautiful like it shows you the both the beauty and the limitation of what a human body can do they're so amazing

[01:19:10] they're like it's just of all sports it seems to be the one where really showcases the absolute limits of what a human being physically doing it's completely mind-blowing to watch next to me it's

[01:19:23] I love that so I kind of love watching in my mouth seen as the same way that I kind of love watching those gymnasts do you know what I mean okay it is kind of it's a wow factor but I love

[01:19:34] it so much I can watch in prayers in very amounting is like of all those guitarists who are super technical kind of rock metal guitarists who have ever lived here's the one who he would walk into

[01:19:52] any guitar shop pick up any guitar pretty much off the wall plug it into a cheap um put everything on tan on the arm and sound incredible a melt everybody's faces and you just couldn't believe what you were

[01:20:06] hearing his technique is so good it's so good and his play is so melodramatic all the time and so unbelievably wrapped up in his own self-importance and he can hear that and he's playing

[01:20:21] he collects for Raris that's true oh there knows much worse than he does than that the worst thing that he does and I say this with kind of an awe and a kind of a sort of awe but it is

[01:20:35] devastating is that he buys he's got one of the largest collections in the world vintage founder Strake Hustes that's his instrument of choice and he loves and he has a amazing guitar sound

[01:20:46] and you know he doesn't have loads of distortion on his guitar he really doesn't and you can really hear the tone of his guitar like almost as an acoustic entity even though it's an electric guitar

[01:20:57] and but he buys these vintage but he also another thing that he likes to do to his guitars is he likes to play with what's called a scalloped fretboard so he gets the neck and he scouts it

[01:21:07] so you scoop out the wood between the frets so it's kind of like a loaded divots between the frets and you know it's um it's not like commoner but thing to do but he does it really dramatically

[01:21:19] so he buys these very valuable very beautiful vintage fender strata castes that most musicians would kill to have a chance to own one of those yep and then he scallops the neck his gouges out the wood from the neck like the playing surface of the guitar

[01:21:38] how does it out every bit like like the matching of the drums I like to imagine that he does it in this shop as well I think yeah just whilst he bought it yeah just drunk and lead us with an axe or something

[01:21:52] like some kind of Viking axe exactly like as soon as the transition's gone he just pulls a chisel out and he's just doing it on the desk to the horror of all the people in the store just watching

[01:22:02] before he's even tried to guitar and many plays they got done really like that yeah he's almost kind of an active you know just somehow some kind of awful belligerence just like I don't know

[01:22:19] but now the reason why I brought that sort of as an example and you are 100% right in everything you're saying I say it with love because yes yes there you go you are the guests so you're always

[01:22:28] right but when you know I think he started playing sort of black star or like you know one of his classic songs and as soon as that kicked in he's like oh here we go but to me it's the show and

[01:22:39] I just pick on him just as a name but there's loads of guys that do it and it is that fine line of you like you say someone who's so technical is a good example because he can't do it but he does

[01:22:49] really I thought you would see that as a criticism really probably not no I mean his famous quote is you know letters and more and more is more right he's known for being like you said that guy

[01:22:59] such a terrible like he's fast anymore I want red it's a fantastic thing if you can find it online he did an interview for guitar world magazine and I think it was a thing they were doing at

[01:23:12] the time where they would play a famous guitarist some tracks and I sheep that up to get them in the room so right listen to this track and then tell us what you think about it but you're not

[01:23:26] allowed to know who it is so if you don't recognize it if you recognize it and I say oh yeah I love that song that band or whatever but if you don't recognize it then you know you just got to

[01:23:38] give your honest opinion without knowing who it is I just slated everybody absolutely hammered everybody and the particular track that I'll never forget is that they play to him is because we've ended as lovers which is instrumental Jeff Beck track but it was actually written by Stevie

[01:24:01] but it's not a cover Stevie Wonder wrote this song for Jeff Beck to play his name is Gremontley Tarntune that's how good Jeff Beck is and it's beautiful if you've never heard

[01:24:11] Cos Weave Enders as because we've ended as lovers by Jeff Beck go on listen to it from the 70s but it's um it's absolutely gorgeous and he just and mounts the heat it and he says the guitar player

[01:24:24] is terrible he's really out of tune and there he's kind about tune because he's bending the notes again that's what Jeff Beck does he's kind of warping the notes a lot and doesn't really care

[01:24:34] if it's out of tune and it's about being expressive and um yeah it was just it's so funny and then they tell him it's Jeff Beck and he's like oh that's weird I normally love Jeff Beck but

[01:24:45] that's awful you know he doesn't care he doesn't roll back on it but it's some um man I love that interview just obliterate everybody fantastic well those guys were like the idea of on a halemud

[01:24:57] do you that said horrible things about the guitarist you know his peers really well Eddie many many times on on on this show and for various episodes and yeah I feel like he's another one as a great example of somebody that managed to walk the line between being

[01:25:13] annoyingly technical but having a soul having a groove having what we're talking about that just being what he does right like him coming out with a ruptured it's cool yeah Eddie being

[01:25:26] like some of what he does and something I don't like other things of what he does but that's fine right I don't in general if he's just jamming along with him on the bound yes I hate I don't like yeah

[01:25:36] I don't like his playing I just think it okay he just loads of kind of squealy stuff and tapy stuff but there's no meat for me to get stuck into um sure when he writes tunes he's amazing

[01:25:48] and when he kind of composes a solo rather than improvises it he's brilliant and he's beautiful and he's got beautiful soul and he's technically great and plays you know play piano too

[01:25:59] and you can hear that and so much stuff and I love it so yeah it's just it's weird I don't like the side of his music making that I guess his most famous for which is just his kind of

[01:26:11] you know flash soloing it's got a point it's definitely got a place but that's the thing and that and that's what I'm saying I agree with you because yeah in this sort of world I find that

[01:26:19] that does happen sometimes with some players it's almost a bit look at me and you go that's really impressive like I could never do that but I don't feel anything or it's yeah

[01:26:31] sometimes he could be like that but sometimes he's not sometimes he'll play a solo and it's absolutely stunningly great and beautiful and either moving or exciting or whatever and it's like like a solo and Michael Jackson's beat it is very famous solo

[01:26:43] perfect and it's cool it's so awesome I learned to play on our kid it's so such an awesome solo but it is like a burst of kind of squealy aggressive noise but that's not a bad thing I don't

[01:26:57] mind a burst of squealy aggressive noise for sure but it's kind of the context of it that makes it awesome as well the fact that it's like kind of post-RMB pop track you know and yeah it's it's really great but when what I love about him is like

[01:27:19] ain't talking about love like just got at least a most massive amazing riff and that's the cool bit of the song it's so great it's got a good solo too but like the riff is what's

[01:27:28] what's super super amazing about it and the song itself is incredible and that's what I love more about him yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

[01:27:37] and it's it's that technical it's a fine line to walk for sure being able to blend like you say that technique and I guess to your point as well like those guys like you would have

[01:27:47] I imagine express a lot of that because that's what feels natural them to do and there's challenge in like you know also I want to push myself technically I want to try these techniques

[01:27:57] but then trying to fit them into a song in a way that as you say also then moves you as an audience I watched a video actually on this by a guy I don't know if you've heard

[01:28:05] of him called Traigsavir on YouTube there's a lot of really good stuff on songwriting I think maybe I have yeah it's a he's really great at what he does but he was talking recently

[01:28:14] about the threshold it called he calls it of like how most people kind of you and I can sort of watch guitarists and understand technically what's going on and go okay that guy's

[01:28:25] technically better than this guy because of XYZ yeah yeah but most people they just have a threshold or a ceiling where they're like yeah they might think Eddie Van Halen is as good

[01:28:33] as Kurt Camette for example or Eric Clapton but there's no way of knowing for them because it's like what it sounds good you know it sounds technical it's like I couldn't play that on the guitar

[01:28:43] I don't know and so it's like it's just a really interesting video he talks about that and how that can affect different people's approaches I don't know if that's really true I don't think

[01:28:50] that's true I think I think I think I think I think it's more obvious than that I think technicality is more obvious than that because you're not watching the instrument you're watching somebody's body that's the thing and it's like I couldn't do that with my body

[01:29:06] it's like singers you nobody would say that about singers like I can't tell if somebody's a technical technically better singer than another singer I think he I probably not doing the video

[01:29:14] justice but I think he he was talking about one in terms of I think you are and he's wrong I'm telling my stuff now because I love a good argument but no yeah but I get the point

[01:29:27] but I it's just irrelevant as well I mean as soon as he starts questioning the the ability of your audience to understand what it is you're doing yeah and you I don't know

[01:29:40] I don't know I don't know why you can do that but yeah I would never have ever do that I would just I never think oh no my audience aren't gonna kind of this is I don't have I think this is too hard

[01:29:52] for my own short you know I mean in any in any in any way I would never do that because what am I like sometimes super intelligent like you know oh yes I understand things that you'll never

[01:30:03] understand you know what I mean yeah I do like that what am I favorite quotes about music is from Rick Mail the English okay medium he was talking about you know the reason that the older generation

[01:30:16] you know it's like a kid wailing against his uh his mom and dad and he's like yeah saying the reason you don't understand our music is because you don't like it and normally people would

[01:30:27] say like the way around like the reason you don't like our music is because you don't understand it he says it the other way he says it backwards but it actually is more accurate the way like the reason

[01:30:37] that um people don't like jazz they think it's because they don't understand it right but it's not they just don't like it sure understanding it will not help you like it it might be able to appreciate our heart is or something like that yeah which is what

[01:30:55] you know which is what we were talking about but it won't actually make you like it and this musician you shouldn't force yourself to like things what can make you might they might need to kind of

[01:31:06] develop their palette a little bit as a listener but that's not the same as understanding it technically so I'm just something that you hear said a lot like I don't understand jazz I don't get what it is

[01:31:17] and it's like well go to a gig and then experience it that way and then you're going to you can understand it way more because it's I don't mean understand what the chords are you just gonna understand why it's happening because it's really exciting to witness somebody improvising

[01:31:31] and flying by the seat of their pants and making it up there in the moment it is and you'll start it and you might you know you hear people the first time they've been to a jazz gig going

[01:31:40] is it just improvising it's making you all of this up and it's like yeah yeah the whole thing is just improvising so that's incredible so yeah this will never happen again in this exact way

[01:31:48] you're this is unique in this moment and you're part of it and that's really really cool and that's just one aspect of it that can be really really beautiful and that's a thing where

[01:32:01] if you own the ever eat you know chips and ice cream then that's gonna be the only thing maybe you'll never learn to like you know something that's more flavorally challenging

[01:32:13] or whatever and you won't get to appreciate different kinds of food and that's that can be a real loss because they can be really amazing experiences and that can be the same with music

[01:32:22] if you don't like something well you know listen to more of it different kinds of it and then maybe your ear will start to tune into it and go I actually I like this you know it's like when I

[01:32:32] realize I like all of this you know still tin cheese or whatever you know I'm learning to live it I'm developing it and it becomes an acquired taste yeah but yeah you could never

[01:32:46] like force yourself really to love something but I need to go out it or whatever that's true it's true and it was interesting again I think in that context of where he lands on the video he was

[01:32:57] talking about it from writing of a musician's what he was a guitarist he kind of landed on where you've landed which is like pursue the challenge because you want to and don't worry about

[01:33:07] you know it's the audience gonna get this is it's like just doesn't matter it's like just what's for you they will yeah and exactly it's like if it's if it sounds good if it fits in a good

[01:33:17] song they'll come on that journey with you and they'll show them something new yeah sure which is I think a beautiful way to be and I like what you're saying is you're actually

[01:33:26] right it's yeah but you can also challenge your audience as well you know you have to you don't have to make them you don't have to pander at all like you can I've seen some very strange things happen

[01:33:37] on a musical stage kicks that into which are really you know really challenging and aggressively challenging to the audience and they can be really really amazing experience is so another thing

[01:33:50] but it's a contextually relevant to that is kind of a good analogy for it but still the music thing is it's performing so there are some performers who are really great performers like people talk

[01:34:03] about a great frontman of the band yeah really kind of gives it or seems to be really giving it a lot of just enthusiasm really but there can be different ways of doing that physically

[01:34:14] interacting with the audience in some way it can be loads of ways of doing it having a huge some serious damage stage presence but what is that is it like Alice Cooper by doing

[01:34:25] this whole kind of theatre performance is how it character or is it um BB King just seeming to feel every note but then also being so relaxed in the way that he is on stage you never it would

[01:34:37] never seem nervous at all it seems like you're in his living room when you're playing to him but but then suddenly he's he might take you somewhere really dark also I'm really funny whatever it's just

[01:34:48] you know there's this all these different ways of doing it but one of the most powerful ways of being a performer is to be baratit okay and that's not again not just some weird

[01:35:00] pretentious comment it's just something I've noticed so if you've ever been to see a performer say a solo artist within guitar and they're really really nervous they're really terrified really they can barely speak that's our nervous and then they play and

[01:35:21] maybe that you can the nerves are apparent in their playing or maybe they're not but whatever happens because of those nerves the audience if they're aware of them you know they're so obvious that the audience are aware the audience will become really nervous and

[01:35:38] they might be put really on edge really really they might feel really ill at ease well they might just feel pure sympathy and compassion for the person be willing them to succeed it depends how it affects the different audience members they might sympathize or empathize

[01:35:50] yeah the two different things that might happen or they might just be annoyed because they think it's unprofessional what even that it's a pretty powerful reaction which will then set them up it's opening up their emotions whatever they are to then have another emotional experience they're

[01:36:04] not coming in cold yeah it's building the excitement in the same way that the excitement is built a Taylor Swift concert with the holdy on it's just because they're there to see Taylor Swift and

[01:36:14] they're already love her that's another way of being excitement by not even doing anything because they just already love you because you're so awesome you know it's like but being a bad performer

[01:36:22] is really powerful and I know a performer who the first time I saw them I thought oh my god this is like watching Nick Drake he was very famously very hated playing live you know terrified of

[01:36:36] performing live it's like watching somebody is really nervous it's so exciting okay so emotionally powerful and then the music hits you so hard it's unbelievable and then you know I got to know that person

[01:36:55] that performer they're never they've never been never on stage in their life interesting it's not an act they didn't do on purpose but they do realize that's all happening they just really

[01:37:04] kind of socially awkward and just really not very good and at doing that and they do not care about that at all they don't try to perform in a way but there's something about them and the way they

[01:37:18] appear on stage they look really nervous and and they seem really nervous and they seem really scared but that's just their natural kind of resting state for their face and arcs yeah it's really weird

[01:37:31] it's really weird but as of performance style it works incredibly well sometimes people don't realize that they've been so emotionally affected because they thought the person was nervous but it is that thing of somebody being publicly emotional is incredibly

[01:37:51] like just exposing themselves feels incredibly intimate and will instantly capture an audience and I do that and I don't do it on purpose I just sometimes get nervous or at some times will have songs that I've written which are really personal and about dark stuff and

[01:38:08] and I totally audience about it and it is really difficult to do that it's not an act you know I'm doing so but I also like to make jokes with the audience and try to make the audience laugh

[01:38:23] those things then will develop a connection with the audience that when I actually play a song it's going to be much much easier yes I made to do that you don't have to do

[01:38:33] not necessarily most performers don't talk to the audience much at all and just connect with the music and it really works and there's just different loads of them I used to do it but what

[01:38:42] isn't necessary is necessary to be kind of good at it okay in some kind of measurable way like being really professionally good at it and being like a great exciting frontman because

[01:38:56] most great frontman or front women of bands as they might be called like you see my really kind extraverted amazing performers to a stage are actually they're quite rare amongst the field of absolutely awful extraverted frontman who think and I know yeah but actually

[01:39:17] they make the audience most of the audience cringe themselves inside out and that's why they've never been successful you know so you know interesting there you go now I think that's that's a really valid point to bring up and especially going on the the vulnerabilities you

[01:39:32] side of things especially given your kind of music as well as a solo performer I like I like that you do that John I like that you tell jokes I like that you let people in and go okay you

[01:39:41] had a laugh but I just just for context this is what this song's about and I'll share a really positive memory I had um I saw you in Bristol I think was the first gig back after lockdown okay

[01:39:53] and it was such an amazing show and I mean buddy Liam were there watching you and you started opening up and telling us about the context of a song it was dedicated to a friend of yours who

[01:40:03] passed away and I just remember you started playing it and because you set that up and because you were very clearly experiencing the song and sharing it there were people next to me crying in the audience

[01:40:16] and it was like this real cathartic release I think we all just kind of felt in that moment and I was like that was awesome you're feeling good is overrated man feeling bad is great and I'm not

[01:40:26] saying what but it's like yeah it's safe you know it's not real like I'm not everybody but a lot of people love you know reading a book or watching a film and crying their eyes out at it and it's not

[01:40:37] that they're not they're crying because something sad has happened or whatever in the film but the emotion they're letting out isn't isn't that the emotion they're letting out is something

[01:40:46] exactly I could be it could be something I'm not even thinking about it could be something sad that happened to them years ago that they don't cry about anymore but actually if they thought about it there

[01:40:57] is if they thought about that thing they'd be in full tears but they don't but maybe the song reminds me of that right even if it doesn't bring it literally to mind it just it just it just

[01:41:07] there was emotions come back again and it comes out and it feels great you know and it feels bad but I don't know you know exactly everybody knows what we're talking about it's cathartic as he said

[01:41:19] and yeah to me that's that's a really powerful thing but the thing is I'm not doing that because I want to have that effect on people I'm doing it because honestly my dead friends

[01:41:33] songs you know what I mean it's literally just that because you know I love an element and I'm missing you so yeah I guess because it's real it makes it a lot easier than trying to pretend but

[01:41:44] that's what I mean John that's that some of my favorite moments in gigs have been that where an artist says like this is what the song means to me and then you just see it you just see it reach

[01:41:54] that person as they perform it it doesn't always necessarily sad it could be like this is a song a wrote about you know having a dance and life's good and or you know it's just a song

[01:42:02] wrote when I'm really angry or whatever it is and then you just see the emotion come forward yeah for me I love to do that I love gigs where people care like myself and I have to tune my

[01:42:14] guitar between every song so I need something to talk about but that's another age of real reason where I do that sometimes I think I shouldn't do that because sometimes people aren't aware of that and they come to the gig loving a song of win

[01:42:32] and I tell them what it's about and it conflicts with what they've told themselves it's about and you know a lot of songwriters will say they would never ever talk about what the song is about

[01:42:45] if you know what I mean yeah it's really because they don't want to to mess up the song for somebody else they want people to find their own music meaning in the music because that's

[01:42:55] that's what we do most of the time we don't usually have kind of the luxury or annoyance depending on you see it of the songwriter telling you this is what you're supposed to be talking while you

[01:43:04] listen to it's music but so I do worry about that but I kind of can't do it that way partly because I'd like to talk to the audience on stage because it makes me feel a lot more comfortable

[01:43:15] unless nervous about playing but also and it's one of my favorite bits I just love you know I'd love to be a stand-up comedian I would love it I'm not funny enough but I would love it

[01:43:26] and I am also I have ADHD and like I'm a terrible poker player if I've got a great hand you know if you've got a really good hand in polky don't want everybody else to know that

[01:43:41] so you have to kind of pretend you haven't got a good hand I've got a great hand I'm just like yes it's got this big girl I was like oh yeah and I can't hide it or fake it and if I know a secret

[01:43:56] you know I have somebody tells me a secret is a risk you're not a mean and it's not because I don't care about how they feel and it's their private stuff it's just because

[01:44:06] I'll forget that it was a secret and be especially if it's a good if it's a bad secret I'm not going to tell people you know because it's going to feel awkward to even say but if it's a good

[01:44:19] secret like you know somebody's getting married to this pregnant but they tell them don't tell everybody I'm like oh crumb really wish you hadn't told me before you told everybody else it's really hard

[01:44:30] that's really really hard so it's hard for me to just not tell people what the song is about because you know just can't feel it's funny I mean that's necessarily because it's good luck with the

[01:44:45] edits it's fine I'm not John I'm about to put together an edit with four of the guests in one episode so that you know this is going to be a walk in the park my friend in comparison excellent but

[01:44:56] more importantly I love what you said because I've always felt this way of like yeah when you hear an interview in the song it says this is what I was thinking feeling whenever at the song

[01:45:05] I'm interested in that and I'll go but it won't change how I feel about it yeah good yeah you say that it makes me feel better about it yeah because it's unique

[01:45:14] my songs are pretty flipping obvious you know it's not right right I mean I do right we've metaphor is it a song writing tip because that's what you so what are my favourite song writing tip

[01:45:26] is metaphor okay nice so what I mean by that is not okay um the moon hung in the like oh stars shine bright like a diamond sure I don't know what that song is about maybe it's about

[01:45:42] people shining bright like a diamond but whatever a metaphor there I don't mean like that I mean make the whole song a metaphor right the entire thing so find a metaphor for the entire thing you

[01:45:53] try to say so for example my most famous song passion plow is an example so it's a song about a plant growing um it's not about that though it's obviously really about um personal growth

[01:46:11] and the idea that um it doesn't matter kind of how you felt in the past about yourself or whatever it doesn't mean that you can't be something like growing to something really beautiful

[01:46:28] but you considered to be beautiful or worthwhile yeah but if I wrote a song which was called um you can develop into something better than you are now and then the lyrics were

[01:46:45] don't worry how you feel right now you might be better in the future and feel really good about yourself and achieve things that you never thought possible that would not really people can write songs

[01:46:56] that are direct like that they do and they good but I think I'll be I think it's really really hard because you can try to find poetry in that yeah and it's much easier for me to find an analogy

[01:47:10] for that either on purpose or by accident right so you know I grew this plant by accident in my backyard and it grew really massive and amazing and kind of tropical plants in this horrible urban

[01:47:21] jungle island for a long time in the inner city really dirty like rough part of town and you know seemed to me really inspiring and like kind of a metaphor for the idea that from you know this

[01:47:40] tiny seed accidentally discarded in some dirt surrounded by concrete this huge beautiful plant can can grow in the most unlikely places yeah so I wrote the song literally about the plant growing

[01:47:56] from a seed raking up through the concrete and growing into a big plant and I can write then really literally about a plant growing because to me that's much easier to firstly be original about

[01:48:12] and secondly I can be super direct about it and say this this is a plant growing and super direct in the way that I say it linguistically like about getting the first drop of rain

[01:48:28] and that causing you to sprout you know the words don't exactly that but it's it's very direct what I'm saying and because it's I'm not really talking about that and people listening to the song

[01:48:42] probably going this is a metaphor for something else even if they don't realize they're thinking that suddenly I can write really poetically quite easily about the idea of personal growth because I'm already one step removed from it and it means my song is two things it is slightly

[01:49:00] opaque but also translucent you can find the meaning and that's one thing that I love in songs I don't want the song to be to tell me exactly what it is I want it to be a riddle but I want

[01:49:11] it to be a easily solvable riddle because that's and the excitement you if people do it's the truth is fine and wonderful and important but discovering the truth is a very exciting moment

[01:49:30] and we all have it some people crave it so much that they discover a lot of truths that aren't true because they just crave the dopamine hit that little discovery of like some knowledge or wisdom

[01:49:41] and they end up believing a lot of stuff that's not true because they just want the hit of suddenly discovering this amazing thing like I don't know like the pandemic was was planned

[01:49:54] should I a cabal of I don't know what I don't even know you can make but I know you say and they get pretty dark and it might be a like a religious group or community that gets targeted

[01:50:08] or whatever it's being blamed for it or something and it's getting getting getting pretty crazy but the reason that it's so intoxicating is literally chemicals are released in your brain because you discover the secret truth and that's what can be amazing about songwriting and poetry and

[01:50:25] all art is that it can that moment of discovery that every person who listens to the song might have is a really beautiful moment so you know don't tell people the truth you've got to show

[01:50:44] people the truth but in such a way that they just feel like they've discovered it for themselves but no it's not a trick no you know I mean that's just what poetry is so that's why it's beautiful

[01:50:59] and you know I agree so yeah um that's uh that's my my main songwriting trick metaphor nice I love it there you go I love it John and that feels like a perfect place to wrap up um yeah let's do that's fine

[01:51:11] no thank you so much I was so many things in here that A I can't wait to share and B from a very selfish point of view I'm gonna be stealing half of these and just been like right I'm gonna

[01:51:21] yeah you won't be able to so seriously it sounds really wise but then when you try and do it it's so amorphous and bays I'll never mind then what maybe no I hope so I hope it's useful thank you

[01:51:30] oh it's useful and I guess to take us home John if they don't already know work and they're good people find you and what you do yeah just type my name into the internet so it's John Gorm

[01:51:41] Julia Oscar no vendor golf Oscar Mike Mike in the um that alphoposic called that alphaba uh Vanessa and I take alphaba I believe yeah that'll do yes so yeah perfect J-O-N-G-O double-and just just google it and you'll find my website on my YouTube is a good

[01:51:58] place to look and just buy something yeah you're the second ever guest to just say Google my name and you'll find me I love it it's a great flex well it's good I've got a

[01:52:09] name see as well owned as well and I'll be putting links to all of that in the show notes for people so thank you John thank you so much for doing this you so welcome mate it's been really nice

[01:52:19] chatting with you likewise and I hope you have you know a good rest of the day and that tomorrow is easier than you thought it was gonna be I hope so too yeah man and there we have it

[01:52:34] thank you so much John for coming on to the podcast and sharing your insights into songwriting I'll be honest with you guys I am still in disbelief that that happens but here we are and

[01:52:49] what a delight as I said at top if you are not familiar with John's work for any particular reason change that as soon as you finish this episode I've left links in the show notes we can

[01:52:59] go and find his music I promise you it is worth your time as you can hear from the discussion that we had here's someone that truly cares about music and is very very passionate about what he does

[01:53:12] you can find links to all of that in the show notes his website his YouTube channel all of that good stuff go and check it out you will not regret it I'll also add on top of that that if you get

[01:53:23] the chance to see him live don't miss out on it he really is one of the best live acts that I've ever seen and he frequently tours both the UK and around the world so make sure you have

[01:53:34] a look on his social media pages or as websites you can stay up to date with any tools that are coming near your area and again do not miss out cannot stress that enough thank you so much for

[01:53:46] checking out this episode of the podcast if you are brand new to fundamentals welcome aboard it's lovely to have you there are over 100 episodes now to go back and listen to as a whole host

[01:53:57] of topics and guests in the world of pop culture this particular season is focusing on songwriting and I have a couple more episodes in line for you guys very soon with some amazing guests a couple

[01:54:09] of them are returning guests and a couple of them are brand new so make sure you stick around for that you can follow like subscribe whatever it is you have to do so don't miss out on those episodes

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[01:55:01] want to donate to the podcast or pick up some merchandise featuring the wonderful artwork designed by one Alex Jenkins his details are also in the show notes of this episode all let's

[01:55:13] left to say is thank you so much for listening to this episode whether you are a first time listener whether you are some be who has been here since day one thank you I truly appreciate your support

[01:55:26] and I also want to give an extra special shout out to two people for this episode the first and foremost is of course my wife Abigail thank you so much for supporting me with this because without

[01:55:37] you this wouldn't be possible so thank you for your continued support I love you and I also want to give a shout out on this episode to my best friend Liam if you're listening to this

[01:55:49] I love you man this one's for you thank you once again for listening to this episode make sure you subscribe because as I say there are some fantastic conversations coming up this podcast

[01:56:01] isn't slowing down I've got some very big plans coming up for the next couple of months and seasons some really really cool stuff that you do not want to miss out on so once again make sure

[01:56:12] you like subscribe follow all that good stuff so that you do not miss out in the meantime thank you for listening go and have yourselves a good week go and check out John's music and I'll meet you right back here for another episode of Fundamentals see you then