11. Close to Something - The Housing Crisis

[Aaron] Hello and welcome to the Theorist Composer Collaboration, a podcast interview series highlighting modern composers and their compositions, hosted by music theorists. My name is Aaron D'Zurilla and I'm a graduate music theory student at Florida State University and I'll be your host for today. The music that you were just listening to is an excerpt from the song titled, Close to Something, by the artist-project titled, The Housing Crisis, also known as the singer-songwriter Dylan O'Bryan, who, alongside his music, is the featured guest for this episode. That leads me to welcome Dylan, The Housing Crisis himself, to the program. How are you?

[Dylan] Doing pretty good, Aaron. How about you?

[Aaron] I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I'm excited to have you on. You know, it's kind of interesting that in terms of the lifespan of this show, I've probably had you on my calendar the longest because I talked to you quite a bit ago about actually being on this show, which of course you were receptive, but as we will get to very soon, there's a particular reason why the episode is being released when it is. So I'm happy to finally have you on. But for the audience, how about you go ahead and introduce yourself personally, professionally, academically, however you choose?

[Dylan] Yeah, sure. My name is Dylan O'Bryan. I'm 23 years old. I make music. I produce music, write songs. I'm a live audio engineer for work. So a lot of that takes up my time and just out here just living life and breathing and creating music, listening to music.

[Aaron] That's all good stuff, especially the breathing part. I think you should keep that.

[Dylan] Yeah, I love that part.

[Aaron] Yes. So you're an audio, you said an audio engineer on a daily basis. What does that comprise of?

[Dylan] Yeah, so it can mean all sorts of things. I mean, technically it's stuff that I do for fun and at work. But when I'm working, like for money and whatever, that is mostly live audio engineering work, which can either be mixing bands at local venues in town here in Gainesville or working for various production companies. One in particular that I work for a lot, just like a dude who has a bunch of audio and lighting equipment and gets contracts by, sometimes the city of Gainesville, sometimes private events, sometimes stuff in Jacksonville. And then we'll go and build a PA for outdoor events as well as venues and stuff. And this run like the audio or lighting things throughout the day for events.

[Aaron] That's a lot. But I mean, you're incorporating a part of your creative skills. So I mean, there's a creative element in audio mixing as well. Not to say that that's not creative, but your creative exploits, you're still using the same skills in the day-to-day work. So that's always the goal. Something funny about audio engineering. This is a little bit of a tangent, but I remember another person I've had on the podcast who did part time or just not part time, but he did audio engineering work outside of his academic exploits was Cameron Gwynn. And he did his first masters at Miami University. And he used to work for a club or some bar and he would mix the audio. And he told me one of the most memorable nights that he ever had was the owner of the bar came up to him at like 11:30 PM on a Saturday and said, Cameron, we need to turn up the volume. We need to make sure these people can't hear their thoughts.

[Dylan] Yeah.

[Aaron] So I'm not saying that that's what you're doing, but it just reminded me of that.

[Dylan] So I've had that note sometimes. One thing that I had to mix one time. It's crazy. It'll be, it'll go from like one day I'm mixing like heavy metal, like doom, post hardcore doom music. And then like the next day I'll be at like a private school, like elementary school, like mixing their musical or something, putting the mics on the little kids. It's like the whiplash is crazy. But the loudness. One thing I mixed was something that's pretty famous here in Gainesville called Fest, which is like an international hardcore and heavy like music, punk music festival here. And I mixed at a bigger venue here called The Wooly, like nine bands straight all day, all of them, each one louder and like bigger and louder than crazier than the last one. And yeah, I think it's made me, to the testament of your story there, I think in my experience that has made me appreciate the quiet a lot more, in silence, than before I started working and doing this.

[Aaron] I'm sure. I'm sure your ears get very tired at the end of the day with a lot of things. And so I do know, I do know about Fest because here's a little bit of background is that you, well, you didn't include this initially, but I guess I'll spill the beans. You also went to the University of Florida and you're, you're based out of Gainesville for right now. We didn't really, I did my Bachelor's at University of Florida as well. And we didn't really know each other necessarily. I would say light acquaintances. We had music, the music history sequence together.

[Dylan] Yes.

[Aaron] I remember talking to you the day that your, your project's first album came out, which we'll, we'll talk about that. But I remember when you were promoting that and I know you were in the composition studio there. I remember when I first found out about Fest, I thought out of all places, Gainesville? Really?

[Dylan] I know, right?

[Aaron] So it's a, it's a cool, but odd, odd thing or tradition in Gainesville. But yeah, for sure. I suppose this leads me into the next question. As I said, you were at University of Florida and I know that you were there primarily for composition. You were in the composition studio. And so you have what many people, I guess it's just easy to classify as traditional institutional compositional training. You took composition lessons and so on. How has that influenced your thinking and writing? Obviously it teaches you or they help you mold how to write music literally. And you might get a trick here or there, but how has the institutional training helped mold your artistry?

[Dylan] I would say it just helps frame, it's helped frame how I just think about everything while I'm writing and while I'm composing in the first place. It's just like the frame of thinking. Like there are some concepts that I didn't even know to think of writing music, like in these sort of terms or know what to listen for elements, like even just basic stuff. Like the one professor of composition I worked with a lot and did private lessons for two semesters with was Dr. Scott Lee. One thing that he taught me for sure was like that I still apply now to pop music and whatnot is the idea of like background, middle ground, foreground, for example, of like what even just just thinking about like these various parts in a song or in a piece, like sometimes you will subconsciously feel like I don't really, I don't know why I don't like this. I like all the parts. They're cool or whatever, but something and sometimes that's just as simple as like, well, you got maybe you got two things that are trying to compete for the foreground at the same time, even though you like both of them. And things like that still affect me and all of the different types of music that I was exposed to and had to listen to throughout the sequence of those classes and lessons have been really huge. It was very similar to a kind of paralleled my experience with my instrument when I was there initially being voice. I did like two full semesters, I think, of voice lessons and whatnot and being in the voice studio.

[Aaron] I didn't know that. Oh, what voice part were you?

[Dylan] Baritone, which you would not expect from my speaking voice, but it goes down there. When I'm singing. But yeah, and I feel like that is all about having those lessons I feel like is about. Notice, having someone that like really knows how to listen to another person's voice, and point out the these unconscious habits and behaviors that you have that you don't even realize you're doing. And like can say every time that you're doing it like here, let's just look, you're doing that with your voice, you know, like relax, whatever it is. And I would say the same thing like just over time would happen with my composition private lessons where if there was ever moments of frustration directed internally, it would be like the kind that help you grow from the respect of like Dr. Lee always sort of pointing out the thing my tendencies and bad habits that are like hard to break and like having someone that can dial in on just those aspects of it and work those out. It was very useful.

[Aaron] I never had private composition lessons, of course, getting a Bachelor's in Music Theory, you don't do such things, but I took comp skills and I had comp skills with Dr. Lee took arranging and also electroacoustic music. Great guy, great professor, Dr. Lee. I really like him. Saw him recently. He did a master class at Florida State. So that was fun to see him again. So here's a question. You've been in you were in the academic circle, part of the institution, and we're going to talk about the institution and such later in the in the last part of this podcast, but I'm always interested in the topic of the labels because on a fundamental level, they may not necessarily matter, but I like to discuss this to see how people perceive themselves or the world. And so the label of commercial music, in some ways, it's it exists, that label exists just out of convenience because it's easy to separate something that is being performed at composition festivals with sheet music on a stage with a more traditional style ensemble, maybe with an auxiliary instrument or something like that, versus something that is put on Spotify. And I guess this is I'm not going to preview too much, but I'm going to have a guest on in a little bit in a couple of weeks from or actually the next week from the recording this episode that has traditional like piano, violin, and all that actually recorded on tracks and all that and it's composed like it's a classical piece, but it's also on Spotify. So is that commercial music? Is it not commercial music Fundamentally isn't everything commercial music because you want to make money off of it, unless if you're making it just for the point of it and then at that point, the distinction loses its its difference. So it gets kind of messy. To a point, the label of commercial music is just out of convenience, but it can also have some loaded connotations as to separate it from all, well, it's just for money. Whereas this is art music. Well, isn't all music art? You know, so then sometimes it becomes a value judgment. And I know as part of the composition studio taking composition classes, I'm sure these are the sorts of things you've also thought of. You're also, you've had hands in both pots of a kind. So can you just talk not necessarily the industry and the institution, but the concept of those different labels? How do you feel about that?

[Dylan] Yeah. Oh, man. This is this is such an excellent topic. There's so many thoughts about this. I feel like yeah, I feel like commercial music, that is such an interesting term. And I think that to me, when I think of commercial music, well, I think in a greater, in a greater scheme of things, probably the word that I just use for most of that is just well, OK, there's popular music, right? That's just like music of a popular tradition that's, you know, that people might listen to on the radio or things that sound like what you might hear on a radio and might make money from that way. Versus, you know, art music that's more sometimes academic in nature or the person that makes it might identify themselves as like a composer. I think that commercial music for me, if I were to define it or how I think about that in my head, it probably has a more narrow meaning, more specific meaning in that it probably like I think of it as almost the type of music that you could think of as like decoration, like music that you might actually that's probably like that's paid for to maybe be in the background somewhere. And the composer designs it with that in mind or like music that is made for literally like commercials or things of that nature. Or, you know, there's entire like, for example, sync libraries now where it'll just be like, you know, relatively easy to make sort of lo fi music, like chill sort of lo-fi hip hop music, for example, or other genres that it's almost like ambient music. But it's design. It's not like Brian Eno meticulously creating like an ambient piece. It's like made maybe more quickly to be like uploaded to a sync library where a chain of like 50 Starbucks or whatever can, the corporation will like pay to have all of them able to like stream and sync like libraries of music. That's kind of like one example. I think that.

[Aaron] So yeah, so to break you off right there. Yeah. I mean, if we're not being picky, I don't think you would argue against the label of commercial music for your own if we're not being picky, but we're being picky. Would you consider your music commercial music?

[Dylan] No. And here's my kind of half funny, half serious answer for that is that I feel like a lot of music is probably not commercial music because commercial music implies that there's actually some commerce taking place where you're actually making money from it. So it's like most of us are not making any money from it.

[Aaron] Let's get into. Oh, I love these sort of things. This is why I'm a music theorist. I'm not asking you to divulge, but I'm assuming you've made some money off of your Spotify.

[Dylan] Yes.

[Aaron] Are you therefore commercial?

[Dylan] No.

[Aaron] And let's let's rebut let's do another is if, and this is all in good taste.

[Dylan] No this is good, I'm having so much fun.

[Aaron] So another one is Dylan, it's the hope I hear The Housing Crisis on the radio. Are you now pop music?

[Dylan] Yes. Here's the thing. I fully embrace pop music and I have a lot of strong opinions about the perception of pop music being like within academia, being a little outdated and a little close minded sometimes.

[Aaron] Very. I'll back you up on that. I don't know, I don't know if you've heard some of the other things I've said on the show, but just to give you a lay of where I come from, I would classify myself as someone who, if I specialize in anything, it's pop music. So I totally get that. I did a presentation on Pitbull, I mean.

[Dylan] Okay, nice. Pitbull, I would say is commercial and he's pop music and it's commercial, you know, because pop I think of as an indicator of style or an indicator of what tools or ways of thinking you're using when you're creating the music from the start and it being maybe influenced by, the things that you've listened to, like that have also been in the more, you know, folk common people music traditions if it were hundreds of years ago, whatever. But I think of commercial artists, I think of them as the people that can maybe actually sell tours and things, you know, that can actually make like money going on tours. And I've gotten to know some of those bands now from work and from also just the music and it's the next, you know, it's a next level. I feel like it's probably more fair to say commercial music once there's like, once you have more fans and once your music is at like a higher level. Like one group of people I've gotten to know a bit from playing to shows with them and also like that I know from playing with them on The Housing Crisis, like music side of things, but also I got to work with them in April for a music festival as like the audio engineer side of things is the band Flip Turn. They're like my perfect example of when you have like more fans, when you have more people just listening to your music across the country or the world, then other types of like music business people and whatnot start to like have an interest in helping you or the band like make a tour happen or make all these things happen at higher levels because there's now a lot of money involved, you know, like when people pay $50 on the low end for a ticket and then there's like, you know, a thousand people there, you know, you have that's a lot of money, you know, at the start. And I think that that inherently just in pop music has such a different multitude of like complexities, different things attached to it than just bedroom producers, people that are just in band, like local bands that are making music that want to break into having more fans and whatnot.

[Aaron] Yeah. Oh, we could go on for days and hours about these sort of labels, which I love. But to summarize, essentially, this is this is interesting. It's not a description that I've heard. I don't think I've heard before, at least not very often that the identity specific label of commercial music to yourself is like a threshold that is reached at some point. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I don't think I disagree. I'm not sure if I fully agree, but thank you for that. I think that's a very, that's a very interesting way to look at it. You're also, you're also in that area. And I would say because you're signed to a record label, not, you know, I hope for your good wishes that you blow the hell up with your with your charts and stuff. But I would say you're in my personal definition, you're coming close to the lexicon of of that.

[Dylan] I think here's like how I would also sum it up differently and shorter as well that I didn't maybe touch on is like and this is also sometimes not fair to try to label other people because you don't know, like their intentions or where they're coming from. But sometimes you can tell, like with certain artists, like I don't want to hate on any popular artists too much. But like there's some where you can tell like this just feels more manufactured or something, or less authentic. I also sometimes think of that as commercial from like what is your drive in creating the music?

[Aaron] So you're telling me that Jojo Siwa is not art music.

[Dylan] Well, well, again, also, 

[Aaron] I'm being facetious. I get what you're saying.

[Dylan] Exactly. Yeah. And for me, it's like for me, it's my pop music for sure. This is probably pretty obvious to say, but I feel like it's art because that's what drives me. I feel like my label is I think of myself just as an artist. It's like kind of the only word I really use because it's like, I don't know, it's like whatever tickles my fancy, you know, it's like learning to produce was really fun. It's also like making music is really fun. It's yeah, it's just art, you know?

[Aaron] Yeah. And that jumps forward a little bit to, thank you for moving us along. Sorry for that bit of a detour, but I love those sort of conversations because, you know, again, like I said, I don't think at the end of the day, the labels will matter too much, but it's a way to explore perceptions of life, you know?

[Dylan] Yes.

[Aaron] So I appreciate that. But so you label yourself an artist primarily, which is a question I was going to ask later. And I would say I find it interesting. So if we're going to go between, let's be really basic here and not granular. There's two different kinds of music essentially that I have on this podcast. There's classical and then commercial, which we've already talked about how that is problematic, or at least not very descriptive, but let's just stick with that for right now. You are one of three people right now that I have had on the podcast that are in commercial. And the first one, Lucy from the group Violincia describes themselves as an artist. They chose that label. And Ben Williams chose producer. And both of it was because of the space in the field that they're occupying. And I'm assuming that is similar to yourself.

[Dylan] Yes. And I would also, I mean, I would say I'm a producer for sure, but I don't think of it maybe as much in those terms. I feel like the engineering, the music falls under my artistic process for me. Like The Housing Crisis, at least, is like, I don't think it would be The Housing Crisis thus far. Maybe one day if I can get like a producer that I like idolize or something to produce an album, a Housing Crisis album or something. But like right now, like me having control over engineering and producing the music itself is something that like falls under the artistry of it for me, you know, but it's different for everyone.

[Aaron] Yeah, that makes sense. And also you clearly have a lot of knowledge and flexibility in the world of producing because you do that in other ventures as we've talked about. So speaking of The Housing Crisis, you know, who you are other than Dylan. So let's talk about The Housing Crisis. One, can you talk about that name? I find it very intriguing. Does it have to do with the housing crisis of the late mid and late 2000s? I just, the history of it was a group at one point, I remember, and now it's a solo project. Just can you talk about it?

[Dylan] Sure. Yeah. So The Housing Crisis, basically, I'm like a year graduated from undergrad by now. And my very first year of college, I was an engineering major, just like not audio engineering, like straight up like STEM.

[Aaron] God bless you. God bless you.

[Dylan] I don't know. Yeah, the poor young Dylan. I thought that that's what I wanted. I like math and science stuff. I was doing that. But really, that year was the first time in my life that I started to write songs. And me and my old best friend from middle and high school who like went to school across the country as I was starting to write songs, we'd always like been really creative musically together and did different things like we'd cover Beatles songs and did musical theater and stuff when we were younger. But at this point, I was finally starting to like super care and write my own songs and stuff. And we would collaborate and stuff like long distance. And it was really towards the end of that first year where COVID began. It was like March of 2020. And we were no longer going to really be collaborating anymore. I still love him to death. He's still like one of my old best friends for life. But we both kind of wanted to like direct the music and stuff where we're clashing a little bit creatively. And so the kind of backlash against that was like now for now I'm a little more confident at writing songs we had done we had written a few songs together and performed them once or twice and like recorded them in a studio. But now it's like the backlash was wanting to just have full control over everything, partly because I wanted to but then also because going to a studio was about to not be feasible anymore because it was March 2020. So I was like, well, now's the time to just like learn how to do all of this in my bedroom, watch a lot of YouTube videos on like recording things and whatnot. And yeah, I really like I just in March 2020, I think I was like just keeping like a running list of project names, artist names, band names and my notes app as like as I thought of them. I still do that with like song and title names these days. But that was like the start of it. And on one level, I think I probably thought of the housing crisis, actually really don't remember exactly where it came from. But I know I probably thought that it was similar to the band named The Postal Service, who I really liked. And so I probably thought that was cool. And on another level, it I feel like it must like it, and it does have something to do with the like 2008-2009 like financial crisis and whatnot, because that was like kind of an event in my me and my parents' life that just kind of like created a sort of just like fully altered the path that we were on. Because we had, we were living in upstate New York from when I was born until like 2009.

[Aaron] And what part of upstate New York 

[Dylan] Just outside of Syracuse, a place called Camillus.

[Aaron] I've been, I've been plenty to Rochester, New York.

[Dylan] Right on. Yeah, my my one of my half brothers and his family lives in Rochester.

[Aaron] Anyways, continue, continue.

[Dylan] Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so we, I think my parents could like not afford their house anymore or something like a lot of people. And so they just decided, we decided to have like just sort of a fresh start and just move to Florida where it's sunny and warm and not like cold and miserable anymore and like be by the beach and just like they kind of I felt like had a just a change of character from it and we're like a lot happier from it. But it for sure just like altered the sort of course trajectory of your life. You know, so that's kind of where the name comes from. I think the only other thing that I didn't answer was kind of I'll say this part kind of quickly, like the evolution of the project. It's basically always creatively for the most part. I'll explain the exception. Like it's been like a solo creative project in that part of why I chose a name like that is for one, my name is Dylan O'Bryan, which is spelled differently, but is phonetically the same sounding as a famous actor, Dylan O'Brien.

[Aaron] Oh, yeah, I didn't even think 

[Dylan] Like Maze Runner and stuff. Yeah, to that guy. So I was like, OK, this is going to be annoying if I just go by my name. And so that was one level. But I also was like inspired a lot by artists that have those sort of like words that could be a band, but you can't tell. Like The Microphones was inspiring me, and that's just one person. Car Seat Headrest. Initially, as one person, Tame Impala, you know, those sort of things. But yeah, we've played live like a band before, just from having like music friends that really believed in like the stuff that I was making and just would find it fun to play it out as a band. But then for our first album, that for sure was a lot more collaborative because in order to, that was the first thing where we really had like live drum kit on everything. And so now my current super best friend and collaborator, Trevor Griffin, he at the time was the drummer for the band. And there was definitely a lot of like interplay with I would have these songs, but then we'd be in the studio and I would I would sort of explain my idea for drums and like my vague language and whatnot. And he would make them real and added a lot of his own style to it. So for sure, a lot of that credit rhythmically on that album is him. But yeah, there's my rambling about it. There you go.

[Aaron] Oh, not rambling at all. Thank you for that. And you know, I asked specifically about, you know, part of it's a joking, but part of it's not about the relation to the real life housing crisis. And there is ongoing housing crises all across the country and different locations, primarily urban cities and affordable living, so on that's a very complex issue. But I the name paired with the aesthetics of your music feels nostalgic. And that's a very hard thing to quantify. That's not to say it sound has old sound, because that's different. Having an old sound and being nostalgic are very different. You know, it's the difference between watching back to the future and stranger things, you know, not not not to, it's not that strong of a nostalgia because I don't think you're trying to evoke an exact time. Your music isn't melancholy, but there's like an underlying comfort to it that comes with nostalgia. I don't know if that's just my own perception. That's a very hard thing to quantify. And we're going to we're going to get to that a little bit more when we talk about the specifics of Closer to Something. But that's why I bring that up.

[Dylan] Yeah.

[Aaron] So about your music, about The Housing Crisis and the sound in the publicly available descriptions of the housing crisis, you describe the music as or the project as a Baroque-pop electronic project. So I get electronic and from the music in this episode and encourage you all obviously to go check out The Housing Crisis on the available streaming platforms in the description of this episode. Electronic is not hard to find in the sound, but Baroque-pop. Now as someone who not too long ago just said that he is fascinated by labels and thinks about them often. I've never heard of that one. So can you describe what Baroque-pop is?

[Dylan] Yeah, for sure. Oh, I've been waiting for someone to ask me this question for the world to hear. This is wonderful. It's a label I found a few years ago as I was finding the music that would ultimately super inspire The Housing Crisis and stuff in the early years of it that originated in the mid to late 1960s with some of those like mid to late era Beatles albums as well as Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, which is like a seminal, like incredibly important work for me and for what I'm doing is Pet Sounds. And I grew up listening to the Beatles like I would exclusively listen to the Beatles, but also obsessively every day like from like third through sixth grade.

[Aaron] What's your favorite album?

[Dylan] I can't choose one. That's like my immediate answer for that. I've been listening to Abbey Road a lot the last couple of days, but it's always different.

[Aaron] Fair enough, fair enough.

[Dylan] Baroque-pop is a label where it's like pop music and also very often because of the era that it originated, it also kind of implies rock as well. But where the Baroque kind of comes into that label is it's like pop music that's marked by having a sort of harmonic structure of the songs that makes you think of Bach and some of these like counterpoint and some of these chord progressions or harmonic things that were happening like yeah from Bach and in that era. Like it reminds me a lot. It's like strange overlap of one of the skills I was not expecting actually to kind of be helpful in one way from like my early early music theory classes like theory one and two and stuff is like the Roman numeral analysis where it's like now actually writing it all out has not, I don't do that now, but like the idea of those parts and some of the counterpoint stuff I learned like from Dr. Lee. It's basically just a type of pop music that uses like those types of harmonies either in just whatever the all the instruments are but sometimes also specifically in the vocal harmonies and stuff. I find that super present on Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys what Brian Wilson is doing and what the Beatles were doing but also a lot of the music that I'm super inspired by is Baroque-pop that's like maybe labeled as that because it's artists that are like older adults by now but were you know making things in like the 90s and 2000s and whatnot and maybe 2010s that was also that they were inspired by Brian Wilson and by the Beatles and whatnot like in their stuff they were doing then. So there's some artists that one of the artists that's like super inspirational to me that I look up to a lot that's just like one of the few that's on the plane for me of like Pet Sounds as an album is an artist that goes by the name Panda Bear who's a member of Animal Collective that band but his and I love Animal Collective but like Panda Bear's like solo albums and whatnot like the harmonies that he'll sing just sound so like perfect and beautiful but when you're actually thinking about like what the notes are and stuff using like I think of stuff in like Roman numerals you know it'll just be like technically these parts will just be like one five or like the chords of the song will just be combos of like one and four and five and I love when you can actually pull that off in a way that feels like new or different.

[Aaron] Yeah I was very fascinated by the label Baroque-pop because you know the word Baroque is evoking as you said an older period of music classical music and one example of the Beatles I can think that is exactly that is Blackbird which uses an excerpt from a Bach piece at the beginning with the guitarist.

[Dylan] I didn't know that, that's cool.

[Aaron] It is very. Apparently John and Paul were sitting playing exercises and they just really liked how that sounded on the guitar so there's an exact copy of that but interesting interesting.

[Dylan] Of course, George Martin their producer had like a super classical background.

[Aaron] I didn't know that.

[Dylan] They'd write a song and then yeah like they would write a song and bring it to him and then he would be the one that would kind of help them imagine and then like create orchestral parts and stuff like Eleanor Rigby whatever you know.

[Aaron] And also on the topic of the simplicity of the core also I want to say about your comments about the helpfulness of early theory classes. I rag on the music theory establishment very often but that sort of stuff is very important. Yeah as fundamental stuff.

[Dylan] It is. I hate to say it.

[Aaron] No, you know what I love to say it.

[Dylan] I know you would.

[Aaron] I would. It is incredibly important. You can go off in your life and do what you want with it but it's very important. But you know my favorite song and piece of music not just song but piece of music of all time is Stand By Me by Ben E. King which has a chord progression of 1 6 4 5 over and over with the same ostinato bass line and percussion licks over and over. But if you look at the notated melody the counter melody in the bridge and the duet with the violins and so on there is so much that you can expand and do past simple chords as you were saying you know 1 4 5. There's a million and one different things you can do of course. And so let's let's get into the element of today's episode of course you are the primary element The Housing Crisis but the single Close to Something which this is what I alluded to at the very beginning of the episode is it is released right now. Now not right now as of the time of this recording but the time that anyone is hearing this it was released midnight. So go and check it out. All the links will be in the description of the episode. You're available on Spotify Apple, podcasts. Is there another I don't remember?

[Dylan] Yeah you know the Apple music. Or pretty much whatever.

[Aaron] Yeah well, this might be on Apple podcast.

[Dylan] This will be on Apple podcast but which will have a little bit of Close to Something in it, you know.

[Aaron] Yes it will.

[Dylan] But it will yeah it'll be out everywhere. Yeah any streaming service for sure. Yeah and eventually on physical CD and cassette tape. Yes.

[Aaron] So we timed the recording even though I asked Dylan quite a while ago to be on the show we timed this with the release of the single which I'm happy to be part of the promotion for but before we get into Close to Something in depth it's also part of a larger release schedule this coming Friday we have something very special for The Housing Crisis a big time in your career and I'll let you share that.

[Dylan] Yeah this is coming this Friday is the release of my second sort of studio album called Trivial in the Greater Picture, and Close to Something is a pretty special track because it is the opening track of the album so I waited until just we're kind of doing a more surprise release with this single that came out today whereas with the other three that have come out previously those were more scheduled and announced to everyone ahead of time and you know like oh in one week listen to this or that but this one we're kind of like surprise here you go and it is the opener.

[Aaron] I didn't know that oh that's cool.

[Dylan] Well I'm kind of like deciding it like as we're talking right now a little under a week before, but I think that's what I want to do with it but we're talking like it's Monday right now so that's what I've done past tense.

[Aaron] Past tense of course yes all planned out but yeah that was going to be my next question of you, you're part of a record label and a professional producing a dare I say commercial artist.

[Dylan] Yeah dare is the right word.

[Aaron] Dare is the right word but so yeah that was going to be my next question of why Close to Something being the final promotional push for the album and can you say the album name again?

[Dylan] Yes Trivial in the Greater Picture yeah and Close to Something yeah you know it shows it as the opener to sort of tease that. One thing that I did unintentionally which I noticed is now that all four singles are out they are like comprised, they've been like they come out in different orders and whatnot but it's like the first two and the last two songs of the album so kind of you know the way that you release singles now it's kind of like a little EP of four songs, not actually but like a single I guess with four songs with those on it in a different order and stuff and so part of it was just having this final single with all of them on there have like a nice flow to it with the sort of waterfall way of doing it where you have like one single the first one comes out and then when the second one comes out the second single the newest one is the first song on the single and the one from like a few weeks before whatever is the second one beneath it and then you keep like the third one would be that order but the third one is first or whatever and the fourth yeah so this is like opening up the little four song single. Being the first one it's also the first song on the album and I think it's just to get people excited for the album it's definitely a really special song compared to, pretty much it's pretty unique in a few ways compared to all of the other songs on the album actually which is also why like part of why it would be exciting for us to talk about it a bit from the respect that for one. The collaborator who I mentioned who was our drummer for the longest time before we do electronic drums now Trevor Griffin he um this album is also kind of the first that's like almost entirely solo where I've performed everything except um this song the electric guitar that happens kind of throughout is all Trevor Griffin playing that and just his classic semi-hollow body tone that he's just so good on and so I needed it somewhere and he wrote this part for it actually a while ago, a little over a year ago maybe 14 15 months ago in like March and April of 2023 it was a couple months after my first album had come out and that was when I was really beginning to um put all my eggs in the let's make that I'm gonna start working on the next album. And let's also, I want to make it like electronic basket and back then he helped me of play a few shows with guitar and he wrote that part for it and so when it came to like many many many months later uh time to actually record the final song he just had such a cool version of it and this song also is for sure the most unique. And maybe I can like send these to you so you can hear what I'm talking about I might also try to like make a little Band Camp like probably for free or for a couple bucks release uh just for people that really care probably most people won't or even I might just throw them on SoundCloud but like this song has the most like versions of it that are almost like fully recorded versions that each is like different that I just kept not being happy with, because I always knew I think that this was going to be the opener and so there's like you know some pressure for it to be cool and um or perfect I guess I'm more just like perfectionist. But there's probably like four or five including the one that came out today like fully different versions of this song and so that's pretty unique too. Which is almost like became ironic or it felt like a cosmic joke at some point because the song is called Close to Something and I kept like it's I kept telling my roommates who are always hearing me work on the songs and stuff like it's so almost done really this time it's going to be it and there's still three more versions to record.

[Aaron] So here's a really easy question then what, I say that ironically, what what what about this version made you say okay this is good that this is what I'm going to go with?

[Dylan] I think that the answer is that throughout recording probably the first three or four versions it was actually a great process that like I learned from as an experiment that um will probably come into play in the future actually like, on smaller levels, affected the other songs too on the album um that I was still working on at the time. But like the idea that each time that I would try like to fully make a new version of the song I would learn things from it and would take small elements of the things that I tried that I liked and would keep those the same in the next version and whatnot. For example, like there were a lot of versions where I was trying to figure out the background harmonies and get those right and I was liking it but I just felt like something was missing. At some point on my gear journey I somehow, I don't even know how I thought of this, but I sort of impulsively bought for like maybe like 80 or 90 bucks on eBay this rack unit effects box that's a from the 90s and it's called Digitech Vocalist VR and it's a harmonizer unit. So different from a vocoder, it's like that sort of like processed vocal sound thing where it like it takes your one it really just takes like the information that you're singing like and disregards like the notes that you're actually singing and just on one at least will just like tune it to whatever one note you're sending it but then also like three or four parts of harmony it will also do and you can either tell it what notes of the harmony to be exactly or you can let it do its own like algorithmic, 90s algorithm thing of like letting it spell it all out in some specific chord inversion or whatever itself. And so there's times where I was like I had like a I had like a midi keyboard connected to it I'd be playing along and I accidentally played a few chords at different points that or I like hit notes and it thought I was doing some like really complicated like chord that I wasn't um but then it sounded really cool and I was like whoa wait that's cool. And so I still don't really know what those chords are called or whatever but there's a few of those like when I sing the words like long long long love love love. There's like a few notes there, chords that were unintentional at first but once I discovered that I was like okay well I got to redo it and make those like the actual chords in the song and make the other parts like bake that chord in in the other parts as well so some of that stuff was happening. 

[Aaron] It's great to hear about the the process because not, not that classical writing styles are similar, there's a hundred different ways to approach writing a notated piece, but I don't know maybe it's my own personal lack of experience or knowledge in the space it's always interesting hearing how an artist in your space approaches songwriting. Songwriting is a little bit different than piece writing. 

[Dylan] It's true but yeah it's just that this one was super iterative. There was versions where like uh the some of the early ones were like all these things I hadn't even really thought of but are like but now are super important like literally just the dynamics of how it all feels like the early versions were a lot like louder and then I made a version like the third one or something around there where I like removed so much and made it just like the absolute bare bones of little things and just made it more sparse and and literally the dynamics also quieter and whatnot and learned from that where it's like okay I went too far in that direction with that one like this is still not the I'm still gonna do every single thing again and kind of go crazy for longer but it's gonna inform it and so yeah. 

[Aaron] So about Close to Something in particular, so I made a list of observations, you know the more analytical portion here and so I'm gonna go step by step with them I just want to see or hear your reaction to them. So one of them and I think this is even more particularly powerful knowing that this is the opener to the forthcoming album that you start off with these powerful synths, and when I say powerful I don't mean in like the like Journey Separate Ways synths or something like that but, it's just it's as we talked about earlier it's the it's in the foreground it's bright it's attention grabbing. And I described it in my notes to you as post 80s synths and critiquing that little comment I made I'm not even 100% sure what that means because yeah post 80s synths literally just means a synthesizer that is after the 1980s which can mean a million different things. But it goes back to what I was talking about earlier about the overall aesthetic of your music is that it feels nostalgic and comforting but it doesn't feel old and the synthesizers at the beginning just they feel like a recent flashback not a very long flashback but a recent flashback I can't really describe much further than that this is getting into like some really philosophical abstract music theory so that that's just the way that I perceived the synth. And you talk about your electronic influence and that's an even more beautiful way to open up the entire album. So and you talked about the difficulty of managing foreground, middle ground, and background layering and also the concept of baroque-pop I think that's especially accented again even more so that this is the way that you're introducing your larger work on Close to Something. The intro is cumulative, it builds layers, the first is the synth and then I believe next is the bass and then that leads into the drums and guitar coming in together so it's also a cumulative introduction, something similar to maybe in the classical baroque time period of a gradual introduction of instrumental layers. You're doing that here too, not the most uncommon in some popular music forms but that just reinforces some of the elements that you're going for. So I got some of the post 80s synth which again that kind of is a meaningless label but that's what I'm going with. Another evocation that I got with the drums specifically I use the example in my notes to you of the verve in Bittersweet Symphony with the way that the drums come in it's not I'm not saying the literal rhythm it's just the the the feeling the style it's light punk, like really light punk uh like it's it's kind of a like early Green Day maybe some Oasis if you want to throw that in there. And I think it's interesting you brought up the 90s vocoder because I kind of get like alternate the beginnings of the quote unquote alternative scene um when it be when it was becoming more popular in the 90s so I got that feeling from the drums. And then probably the weirdest observation I made, and you can make fun of me for this, I just thought I just liked it was the guitar. I compared it to a timbre of the Kenny Chesney song When the Sun Goes Down which I put that in there because I think it's funny, but I also did just the timbre of the guitar is not authoritative it's it's laid back it's it's groovy I got it I got a real sense of a early 2000s country laid back vibe. 

[Dylan] With the guitar?

[Aaron] Yeah with the guitar so it's it's less about it being country-like, it's more the the comforting laid back feeling and so it's this combination of things that makes me feel nostalgic not to a specific time, I well I guess late 90s early 2000s if you want to put out it at a time that's also what makes me think of the housing crisis you know when we were young you know we're about the same age roughly so it makes me think of a time that was when we were really young and uh but it's not old sounding either. So I ask you this question post 80s synth a meaningless term early alternative pop rock and Kenny Chesney so do with that what you want. 

[Dylan] This is I like, oh my gosh and I'm not saying this just to be flattering to you, but you have nailed so many you've got so much of that correct really that it's crazy. Actually, like a good amount of it, like to be to be honest because I don't know exactly the song you're talking about or it might be that sort of thing where if I heard it I would like oh that's Kenny Chesney. But I, that's the only part that I don't really know about or can't speak to. 

[Aaron] If you went to a pool party between the years of 2005 and 2015 you probably heard it. 

[Dylan] Okay great so yes, yes good. But yeah wow okay where to begin? Basically, post-80s synth is like, also so I will start there. I think that's pretty on the money because well the easiest, first thing to say about all this is that um when I'm listening to pop music for pleasure these days, and honestly for a number of years now since The Housing Crisis was forming uh the band the music I definitely lean way way more towards listening um and having like musical discoveries within myself and whatnot from like 90s and 2000s uh early and late 2000s like indie music in general or songwriters from those areas and um yeah just all of that that's still what I listen to the most. I make like monthly Spotify playlists um for actually like nine years straight of every month like what I'm listening to that month. And if you were to go through all of them there's definitely, like I definitely listen to modern things for sure a lot of stuff from the 2010s and the stuff that's coming out now but it's like all of my favorite stuff is from the 90s and 2000s. Um so that just like, can't help but like appear in the music that I'm making and it's almost like skipping, like a certain gap of years where music I don't know I feel like in general pop music tends to build off of all eras of pop music but like with more of an emphasis on the things that just have been happening and like expanding those and like way more recent years. But for me, I feel like a lot of comments that I get of people hearing my music describing it in similar ways, but less like precisely like you you did a great job.

[Aaron] Thank you I got some music theory points.

[Dylan] Yes, for sure, you get a gold star for that for sure yes. Um but yeah I get those comments and I think that's because of uh what I listen to from those eras. Oh man you had said so many things in that that I want to address but I I'm like blanking on some of them now. 

[Aaron] So there was post 80 synth where it's uh we said that another is um early popular alternative music. 

[Dylan] Yes, so yeah there's that one from those eras yeah I think that there's also like a certain interplay in this song between like this tension of, well one word that you used I think in your notes was like a sense of um anxiety but contrasted. Part of what's nice about it I think now that I'm able to like look back at the song with a little bit of separation and be able to like, because I it's honestly a blur when you're actually making it like I won't be able to say these things while like I'm blinded by the process of making it, but now with a little bit of time I feel like what I like about it is well the song just in general is kind of a. It's not a coincidence that it's like called Close to Something and that some of the lyrics are like get ready to start revealing um and having those feelings within me like around writing it around the time that I'm graduating college like finishing my fourth year so there's those senses in it that of like that excitement but like you know anxiety can sometimes be excitement but like you can be scared a little bit could be positive or negative. You know there's that but it's also contrasted by uh Trevor's electric guitar part having like an easygoing, like, nature to it or it's like those moments where you're building up to something and then when it happens um you're like oh why do I need to like I was so worried about it but this is just like fun I'm just having a good time. Like that happens a lot performing where I'm like the day of a performance the whole day I'm like anxious leading up to it and you know have that anxious energy and then it's just fun um because I feel like, and it kind of encapsulates that this period of my life in the sense that um you graduate and it's this big thing but then you're just and, for me not like for me knowing pretty early on in college that I didn't want to keep doing academia I'd stay in music in that sense but I really connected with the other elements of it or like what I'm doing now like at least knowing that you know that to say um I'm not planning on the next thing being like graduate school or something it's like all this build up to graduating in this next phase of real life but then and then it's like all these exciting things like end up happening but it's slow. Or it's like you know that period after you graduate you're like oh this is now just the rest of my life now I just work and make art it's not like the next. You know that's what like the verses kind of in the song are kind of conjuring is the first it kind of jumps around uh in time like the first set of lyrics. Well I'm just gonna I'm gonna give things away I don't normally do just for the people if you've made it this far this is your reward as I give a little bit away which is like well first of all the first lyric is kind of borrowed like from um somewhat closely from one lyric in You Never Give Me Your Money by the Beatles on the album Abbey Road um because that song like oh that's just one of my favorite songs ever. And that song kind of reminds me of, it has a nostalgic feeling to it too and it sings back to like a fictional previous time in like their lives, it's not real but like yeah. The first lyrics here is uh when I'm out of college and my money spent when I need a friend and I need a way to make rent that's me just you know like that you're close to something but then it's that period. But then like at the second verse I jump to like that uh different feeling which is like at the end of May at the end of sixth grade in the middle of preparing for middle school is standing in my way that's kind of my way of kind of referencing like all of these points in your life where, earlier on you you know that like you know what the next thing is going to be like pretty concretely. Yeah there's there being these different points um where I, you know, you feel like you're close to to something new or to and you know new chapters and whatnot so that that's an element of it. I will also say um it's very much inspired by that Beatles song like I mentioned but also in 2022 there was an album that I listened to so much that came out then that was a collaborative album between Panda Bear, who I mentioned is someone I really look up to, and also this artist named Sonic Boom, who does a lot of crazy electronic stuff um and came from that world from a project called Spacemen 3 in the 80s and 90s. But anyway, they made an album together called Reset and I highly recommend it to anyone um but one thing that I loved about that album was that there were so many songs on that album that had this feeling um that I wanted to try to make my own version of here, which is like there's songs on that there's one called Go On where they just keep singing like give it to me give it to me and it like keeps like building and building but then it just builds to nothing but in a cool way. And then there's songs on there called like Edge of the Edge where it's like you're up to the edge you know. And um there's a song called Getting to the Point. There's a song called Everything's Been Leading to This and it's the closer and it's like everything's been leading to this here it comes here it comes here it comes but then you know it's only ever that part you know it's never some big explosion. And I just really liked that idea and felt like it um echoed like where I was in my life at the time and so yeah this is like my version of that. And I felt like that was actually a good way to start this project and there's probably some relation also to the name of the album overall like Trivial in The Greater Picture, that's something I just. I'm sorry if this is a question you are going to ask later. But like that name as an album, this happens sometimes where I'm just like driving or I'm falling asleep and I think of like a phrase or something and I'm like oh that's just I should write that down because I might be able to use that in the future and that was the case there I was probably thinking about something where I was like whatever I'm thinking about probably doesn't is not going to matter, is going to matter, is going to end up being trivial. And I love the contrast of feeling those things but, only after like this period of anxiousness you know where you're unsure and then when you look back you can see that it was trivial. So yeah those are just some of the like the themes and whatnot that have led to this song. 

[Aaron] Well thank you for adding all that, and yes I was going to ask what the the name or the title of the album was but you know it makes perfect sense in having this, especially as the opener reinforces that. Now for, I was going to ask you a handful of other things but for brevity we're going to move on to the final segment of this podcast. I want to ask, so Close to Something out now on Spotify, the audience will have heard some of it at the very beginning a little bit of the intro when we were talking about it and there will be some as the outro. But purposely not putting too much of it because you need to go listen to it everyone and so it's going to be in the description please go listen to Close to Something. But I'm going to let you, is there anything else you want to say about your new single out now? 

[Dylan] Oh man ,you know I feel like we covered a lot about it. You know I think that I'm just excited for people to hear it and to, at this point we're just so close to the album coming out that I don't know. You know I'm just I'm excited I feel like we talked a good bit about it. 

[Aaron] All right we are certainly close to something. So, corny jokes aside, in the final part of this podcast I'm going to ask you broadly, this is probably the easiest question you will get out of everything in here, other than who are you but what does music and writing music in your case mean to you as a person? 

[Dylan] I think it's a lot easier to understand now than it did. There were so many things that were confusing to me about how important music was to me or that I like. Music has always been kind of the most important thing to me, even though I may not have understood that in the past but there's, it's like so clear now looking back at like childhood photos of me as like a tiny little kid and stuff and you know. I learned guitar probably in like first grade and there's pictures of me like on my dad's lap or sitting next to him as a tiny kid like playing guitar, him showing me that or like me on his lap like in front of like at a keyboard or piano just banging notes and stuff. And it's funny, one of the things I just did as a kid that like my parents must have recognized like oh he's into this we should give him lessons, because I just learned um I would go see this dude who we met at a guitar center when I was buying my first electric guitar his name's Mark Turley, and my parents would pay him to uh for me just to go over to he had like sort of a garage studio sort of thing and this is upstate New York. Still in like first and second grade, and I would go and just like maybe once a week or something I would just go and bang on his drum kit and like technically was like learning like drums. But I would just play I would have my favorite songs at the time which is funny, like my first ever favorite band at like ages seven eight or like nine was Green Day which is funny because you said it kind of reminded you of Green Day a little bit and someone else said that which is hilarious because I haven't really like ever had a period where I've been like influenced by them except like back then when I was young but um yeah. You know, like those are really important to me but then uh throughout like elementary school, middle school, high school, I you know would play guitar and um middle school in high school my big thing apart from like just all these uh stem classes I was taking and having fun with like the thing outside of like my school that I really liked was uh musical theater and performing and learning songs and taking voice lessons and stuff so it felt like I had that like outlet for such a long time that when I came to college I knew I didn't want to do musical theater anymore and I was like I guess I just keep being an engineer. You know, just keep learning that there's a turning point where when I was starting to write my own music. I realized um like this is what I gotta do like for my life's purpose or whatever, and looking back it's so much clearer now but I really uh feel fortunate that I've been able to set my life up in a way to where most of like what I'm involved with whether it's work like and mixing a live band at a venue um or like making music with my friends or making my solo music. It's just like having my life revolve around music has been so much more fulfilling so it's way easier now to look back and realize like um that it's kind of always been the most important thing even when I didn't you know understand it. 

[Aaron] It's a beautiful thing, it's a beautiful thing. Yeah so, to flip the coin around so I'm going to ask the question what does music theory mean to you in your life or in your development? And I'm going to take an answer away from you. Yes, it is a useful tool. Music theory, and I'm going to go out on limb and say it is an essential tool, that doesn't mean everyone on the planet needs to be sitting in a music theory one classroom. Everyone uses music theory in some very fundamental way, even if they wouldn't label it that is why music theory is so encompassing it's like saying we all use grammar, of course we do we say sentences you know. But so other than music theory being a useful tool what are your perceptions of it the institution the use of it the practice so on I think that.

[Dylan] Yes, you know to state some of the obvious, it's uh it's a useful tool. It's something that, I'll start personally, I think that these days for the music that I make I feel like I try to have I think that I try to keep my idea of music theory like in a balance to where there's some music that feels like it's um that I'll hear that I don't personally connect with as much that feels like so much driven by theory. Um there's artists that like are technically they're so good and I have a lot of respect for but I can't like connect with their music so much. Like one example and I said I wasn't gonna throw shade to anyone but this is like it's not shade necessarily but like Jacob Collier like his music, he's great. 

[Aaron] I knew you were gonna say that I saw it coming I'll give my take on Jacob Collier in a second, keep going. 

[Dylan] Okay sure so like I think that it can sound really pretty, but um and you got to appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into just having all of these super complex chords and and different things and, but I try to balance it with remembering that some of my favorite artists ever, like the Beatles for example had some you know like they might have taken piano lessons as a kid and they have like their producer George Martin to like influence you know to add in like that sort of experienced theorist sort of perspective to orchestrate things out really beautifully, but they will just be like listening to records from the 50s and 40s when they're making stuff back in the 60s and just noticing chords that sound cool. And they're like, I just want to take that chord and use it here and like just figure it out on a piano you know, without like really like knowing how to play piano in quotations. And so I feel like I try to just balance it out with um understanding I think that the theory is useful to understand where you can go wrong more so than like using it to do things correctly. And what I mean is like um I think that my understanding of theory from like my schooling and whatnot is helpful for like if I'm trying to make a harmony part for vocals or something, like background vocals, and there's harmony if if I'm like now why does that not sound right? The answer might be like accessible in my brain to myself as like oh well it's because there's you know these parallel fifths happening and it's not very pleasing in this instance or something. And so it's helpful for me to maybe correct things that otherwise, without knowing much about theory like I might not have corrected, and would just be like slightly jarring on a subconscious level. I feel like it's helpful for when you need to being able to put words to things the same way that grammar like you're saying where it's like if someone uses slightly incorrect grammar you sometimes like you can perceive it and it just it colors it. And like what they're saying in a way whereas like if I don't know it's like intentionality with it versus not I think is something I notice.

[Aaron] I would agree. I'm gonna slightly disagree with some of the framing of, I think even still some elements of music theory are so well ingrained in your mind just as with grammar, language. Grammar that is and musical grammar in this case that it still does unlock many possibilities of intuitive action not just reaction. Because I agree that the conscious ooh that doesn't sound great or I'm trying to accomplish this you can then use that part to intentionally use different parts of music theory but on a fundamental philosophical level your training and experience through elements of music theory allows you to not always have to consciously say I need to achieve this I need to use this to do that you just do it which in some way is from your music theory training but that's more semantics it's essentially yeah. 

[Dylan] And I agree with that. 

[Aaron] I, yeah but okay so Jacob Collier. Oh yeah I always need to be careful because I suppose in some way I'm a mildly public figure with the podcast. But Jacob Collier's music is beautiful and it's great I have a slight issue sometimes with the obsession of process when it comes to it. For example, and I agree with what you were saying, for example there was a colleague of mine I'm gonna omit his name because I don't know if he's comfortable with it. There's a colleague of mine in our popular music class who did and then who he decided not to present on it for other unrelated reasons but he was doing an analysis of a Jacob Collier piece that had like a like seven eight part polyrhythm, and the note, and Jacob Collier puts out notations of his music too so you can see exactly what he's doing and it's really neat it's very fascinating it's brilliant he's a magician when it comes to that. Really I would argue though that the effect that that eight seven layer polyrhythm can be achieved in a hundred other significantly less complicated less theory heavy ways, because it just sounds like it's a cloud of sound essentially. You, it's very hard unless if you're you're a rhythm guru and you listen to it many times over, which many people do in an analysis, you're not going to perceive it as a very multi-layer polyrhythm. It's sound it's a cloud of sound that's what the process is achieved but there is this this is not necessarily a critique of Jacob Collier, himself but there's this zeitgeist of superiority in the process of the music that I do not, I'm not comfortable with. Um I'm not going to make a claim so bold to say that Jacob Collier perpetrates that, uh that's way too harsh not, to put intentionality on someone. He's a brilliant, he's a brilliant guy but I don't like the obsession even in popular music as we're talking about right now with obsession over process. So I can agree with you, with that does that make sense?

[Dylan] It does I actually, like while you're saying that I came up with a good analogy that I think will that summarizes my point with it. Okay and it's um one thing that I learned really early on that helped um with song writing and being like the label of like songwriter which is technically something that you know I could go back to labels that I fall under as an artist. Something that really helped me was this idea that uh it helped me with imposter syndrome on one level and it's this idea that um someone I just like read some quote about it was talking about Kurt Cobain with Nirvana, and him as the songwriter of that where he was never like a crazy he was never like crazy skilled technically like as a guitarist as a playing guitar. And that's something I've never been too, like my history is self-taught and would just for years until I was writing my own songs. I just had an acoustic guitar and electric and like it would just be something that I would pull up the chords to my favorite songs and stuff and would just learn it just for fun. So like that being my background, I felt at first a little imposter syndrome sort of about like you know these people that can just do these crazy like things on guitar or these people that just do, I go absolutely nuts and have practiced scales like insanely every day uh classical or even like the people that do that outside of of outside of that. But back to Kurt Cobain, I read something that was describing him as focusing more on developing like his abilities on guitar only as much as it serves like him as a songwriter. And that's something that I've resonated with, where it's like I feel like I use pretty basic chords as the start but in a like, I feel like I've developed my use of chords and coming up with them on guitar in a way that has helped me grow as a songwriter but less as like technically a crazy guitarist. And that is something that I look at too and again like you know I really don't like being too negative about other people, but like I don't know there's sometimes like there's bands that I hear whether it's local or like things you know um on streaming the bigger artists, where just because you have like musicians that are really technically intricate and whatnot uh performers does not mean you're gonna have like an emotional connection in your heart to a song. Because, but then there will be artists that like there's someone named Daniel Johnston who is like an incredible songwriter from the 80s and 90s and 2000s who is super troubled person and suffered from like a number of different like mental illnesses um and his recordings are like are really poor. He was like not a great musician technically, it would like, he would just record like onto like four track cassettes like him just poorly playing guitar and singing it you know but like um and those old recordings now like have so many streams because they're just so emotional like you can still just connect with it even though he's not doing like crazy things on guitar. And I feel like going back to theory that there's like a parallel between that type of um idea with like being technically a really good craftsman whatever like skilled on your instrument and also like with that with music theory maybe with Jacob Collier or something you know.

[Aaron] I agree, I agree performative music theory I would throw in another maybe more commercial music uh popular popular aspect is I think of like the guitarist Santana. I bet you he could rip an amazing highly technical guitar solo but if you listen to his most popular albums they're really not and that is perfectly fine because it serves the art that he's doing you know. There's nothing wrong with making an insanely a complex a theoretical thing for the sake of it but it's the intentionality as we're talking about yeah.

[Dylan] It's like, it was just you know like one thing I just thought of is like you saying earlier that one of your favorite like not just songs but pieces being Stand by Me. And that being so simple chord wise, theory wise you know but it's still like, I assume if you love it so much, it's one of those songs that just like cuts into your like it goes past your brain right into your like soul into your heart. And that's the type of stuff I'm after you know and sometimes theory is a tool I can use to to help that but yeah I guess like something that I always am wanting to be cautious of is not to go too far into where it becomes the performative theory stuff anyway. 

[Aaron] Yeah no you're completely right, Stand by Me is uh I could talk for hours about um about that song and what it means to me. And my favorite, this is always difficult to do, but like my favorite artists are like John Denver Simon and Garfunkel, so not known for the deepest theoretical sense and some, especially John Denver, very simple song forms. But it's more what it you know emotionally connects and means so that's that is what I value in my personal music. Yeah but so we're coming to the end here, so we've talked about a bit already but so today is Close to Something of course everyone go out and listen to that. But this coming Friday as we've said a couple times is the album Trivial in the Greater Picture. Is there anything else you want to share with the audience about that as a preview or what to expect? 

[Dylan] Yes, I would I would the one thing that I would hint about with this album to people as it's coming out is how hard it was to choose singles from it and how much I deliberated over that. And ultimately still it not being a hundred percent successful um in showing all the ideas that are going to be in it and whatnot and what some of like the best songs are. I think that uh if you liked the singles at all or if you're someone that's listened to them, I would highly recommend listening to some of those the non-single songs because they are still some of the favorite ones for me that I go back and listen to or like that my roommates or some of my fans that have heard me play all these songs live already they'll be so surprised when they've heard that like certain ones are not were not singles or it's like how is that not a single. And that really I'm just excited because there's these songs, for them to all come out at once some of these other ones um I'm just really excited for people hear those because there's like some of them easily could have been singles or whatnot.

[Aaron] Yeah excellent exciting stuff. So Dylan what would be the, of course your contact information is going to be in the description of this episode on any platform that someone is hearing this on, it'll be on the social media posts, and on the contributor page on our host website. But what would be the best way for people to contact you with questions, inquiries, comments, possibly even purchasing some physical media of your album what would be the best way?

[Dylan] Yeah, I would um I would say if you have Instagram um I always am pretty fast at responding to people on there The Housing Crisis Instagram is just at the housing crisis so that's nice. And then, also um I don't know if you if you're someone that doesn't really use Instagram you just shoot me an email um and I'll I'll respond to it it's um my email is the housing crisis music at gmail.com. You can check those out and if you go to the Instagram there's also like the the first link, only link, there in the bio is the link tree that has like everything in it. And that can be useful, that'll probably be useful for ordering things or legit if you just like uh dm me on Instagram or or shoot me an email uh if you want a you know an out uh CD or tape, we can for sure uh do something there. But uh yeah though you know those are those are my uh the the main ways to contact. 

[Aaron] Excellent, and so in closing of the show I'm going to give you the last note here which is if you were to say to the audience anything on the topic of music theory, composition, artistry, the industry, music making, life whatever it would be uh what would you say? 

[Dylan] I would say that the more different, the more varying types of worlds of music that you can immerse yourself in or learn from the better. At least in my own experience, because I felt like getting a degree in theory and composition um at UF I learned so much and it was incredible and all of that is carried with me and shows up in the music that I make in different ways. But if that was the only experience with music that I had here in Gainesville and whatnot these last like five years, it would it it certainly would be so much more limited than what I've been able to discover in the the world. I've been able to discover within like the realms of of local music and the community of people that make music that can't or choose not to do it through an academic setting. I feel like everything that I carry with me is just like a combo of just all of those places and there's so much music being made uh that's just incredible that like you can just emotionally connect to so much by people locally wherever you are if you find it in your local music scene. And I suppose that I wished that they were more connected, the worlds of academia and the worlds of of pop music and what people are doing outside of school. But um I think that our generation is, I don't think it's really a like massive problem because I think that bridge is being gapped you know like those worlds are being connected as we're talking right now like those things are are underway. And the more people are making music right now I figure than any other time in history because all it takes now is a laptop and that's it at the bare minimum you know and so we're gonna see we're seeing so much uh more music being made by more types of people it's a very beautiful time for that so I don't know where all this is leading maybe that's thematically uh consistent with the single today so there we go.

[Aaron] We are certainly close to something. Yeah wonderful, beautiful so everyone, audience, today out right now again I keep plugging I'm gonna do it one last time in the description of it. Well not one last time because I'm gonna record an outro after this, but Close to Something is out right now. The final promotional single for the album that is coming out this Friday June 21st Trivial in the Greater Picture so Dylan O'Bryan, The Housing Crisis. Thank you very much for coming on to this episode of the Theorist Composer Collaboration, this has been a great conversation. I love your work, your music, and I hope everyone else enjoys it just as much as I have, and your other listeners have as well. Thank you very much for coming on to the podcast today. 

[Dylan] Of course Aaron this was like the most, for sure, the most fun interview I've ever had talking about my music and I this was such a joy the whole time. So thank you so much for reaching out to me.

[Aaron] Hello, this is Aaron again I want to thank you for listening to this episode of the Theorist Composer Collaboration. I also want to give another big thank you to The Housing Crisis, Dylan O'Bryan, for joining the podcast and for sharing their new single Close to Something. Dylan's contact info is listed both in the description of this episode as well as the corresponding contributor page on the TCC host website, as well. And I would appreciate it if you could show him some support, especially by streaming the newly released single Close to Something. It is really something cool and special to be part of the press releases and promotion for The Housing Crisis for their upcoming album Trivial in the Greater Picture and of course an almost simultaneous release with the new single Close to Something. It was quite an experience and honor to be given access to music for analysis before its release, which I didn't even know that it would be a surprise release either. I loved my conversation with Dylan, especially with his cross experiences in both commercial and academic music which, as we explored in this episode, is a rough way of describing it. Thank you again to Dylan O'Bryan, The Housing Crisis, for joining this episode and for sharing his newly released single Close to Something out now, and available for streaming on all platforms. The links are in the description. For further updates and notifications on the Theorist Composer Collaboration, make sure to subscribe to our email listing on the home page of our host website and follow our Instagram and Facebook pages, relevant links in the description. You can also listen to future episodes through our host website, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, and Youtube so make sure you subscribe to the platform of you're choosing. Again, all relevant links are in the description. TCC episodes are posted weekly on Mondays, and don't miss our weekly blog post which go live a few days after a new episode is added. I'm also excited to promote our next featured composer is Isabella Tempreville, and her album Infernal Suite. As a heads up, this episode will be a particularly long one as we'll be discussing, exploring, and discovering the lore of the world within Infernal Suite that Isabella created with its own backstory concepts, definitions, and dynamics which were manifested into this album. There will be more information on this in the upcoming blog post and of course in the next full episode. Make sure to follow our social media accounts and relevant streaming platforms because you won't want to miss it, but until then this is Aaron and thank you for joining the TCC.