Sound Design for burnt out tech heads

This is an album I made for wellness practitioners and practicers alike to defrag and decompress in this very busy, fast and quick world, and we hope you enjoy as we take you up, down and across the river. This is Running the River. Firstly it was for me. Firstly it was for to explore things and make things less complex, slow down in BPM and slow down sonically and physically, and for that it did its job. Slow down sonically and physically, you know.

And for that it did its job, you know, as I said before, making these 10-minute songs and listening back to them, falling asleep, listening back to them, it's like okay, it's doing what I want it to do, which is like really calming the nervous system. I'm sure many listeners listening to this who practice a form of mindfulness or meditation, you will often experience falling asleep in the practice because the nervous system is like, oh, really cool, oh cool, thank you, yeah.

Well, first of all, before we get into any kind of transcendental uh, you know, uh, you know, uh mindsets, let's talk about my sleep debt, my nervous, my service, my nervous system recouping, you know.

So, um, yeah first of all, it was a vehicle for that which music always has been a vehicle to meet myself, and that was this one was very a concerted and like concentrated effort to do something in particular which was essentially to be part of a soundtrack for modalities to heal people, to be what somebody listened to when they're getting a massage or remedial work or Reiki or acupuncture or kinesiology, or getting some osteopathy done, chiropractic done, doing Shavasana, doing

your breathing exercise, but also, you know, to put your kids to sleep too, to just chill out. When you're like on a plane and the industrial noise of it's really intense and you just need to put on the best headphones you could possibly get a hold of and get rid of that noise, it's like, hey, if you're like you know, doing the harvest in a bloody big machine, oh yeah, put it on, chill out.

You know anything to bring down, bring down the heartbeat a little bit and just bring down the nervous system. Yeah, it's for people who want to do, I don't know, sweat ceremonies or something to concentrate when you're doing your ice bath, or it may be something that you do when you're on, you know, a plant medicine journey. You know all these things were on my mind when I was playing, like you know.

Essentially, you know, a lot of what I do instrumentally is, you know, it's kind of like journey music and so, yeah, I wanted to be able to be a soundtrack to those things in an unobtrusive way, if, if possible, you know, like to still allow the space for the self to be in and not be like, hey, look at me, over here I'm doing this clever thing on guitar and, oh, I said that awesome prose and well, and we did this cool thing with a time signature and then, surprise, you know, it was like the

opposite of all that. Not that I make music that way, but we do. Hey, we could like drop it for four bars and then we'll bring all the instruments back and then, you know, but it would be like 6-8 instead of 4-4, but we'll play the 6-8 over the 4-4. So it's not really like none of that. So, and thank you, yeah, for just that alone, just like Not doing that.

It's a workplace and the way my attention works. If somebody's nearby and talking a little too loud and they're saying something that's semi kind of audible, my mind will just like I don't want to listen to you. I'm meant to be doing this email, but I'm like ah, yeah, um you know it's music for that. Yeah, it's music to calmly work to. Yeah, and music you know I can't listen to like very busy music and and work. I'm like sick. I'm just like jamming with timberland or pharrell.

I'm like what am I typing? Oh, I can't even understand what I'm typing. I've like this I mean there's no auto correct on that could possibly work out what I'm trying to do. So music for all of that, you know, all of that kind of just space.

I feel fried by the world at times, just absolutely fried by it, and that's like from my privileged position you know um yeah yeah, I think the nature of the job is done a bit of extra work on the nervous system, you know yeah yeah, just being on stage every night, having to flip that switch and with my, my chest cavity open to show everybody my beating heart to a bunch of people who I don't know the the nature of how it seems to be.

In this world of social media it's so much easier to be mean than to be kind and what that's doing to like people's sense of safety in the world and just like you know that that's just lurking in the background at all times, the phone that's on at all times, all those things like the phone being on at all times. I better keep my phone on me. Something might happen that's right. Something might need. That wasn't around 30 years ago. That was that did not exist.

Yeah, he's like you found out later they left a message, yeah, and he was just like shit. So I just found out. Are you okay? Yeah, nine times out of ten they were yeah. But now we have this thing that we carry in our pocket that's connected to the whole world, uh, and, and behind it all, there's for me, there's this looming uh, what what if somebody dies? Essentially, what if somebody gets catastrophically hurt and they need to get a hold of you right now? That's like the why you carry it.

That's embedded in the hardware of our minds and that fries the fuck out of people, yeah, not to mention the propensity, through the mediums, to just like fucking be a dick, to say things you'd never say out in nature to people in front of them, yeah, or in a room of people.

I mean, whether it's what's happening in the Middle East right now, whether it's what's happening in the middle east right now heartbreaking, wrenching, soul tearing, whack, social, like the cognitive dissonance of just watching and not you know, uh, or the climate, you know thing that's constantly unfolding, or ukraine, or the conga, or the you know the mineral sands that we're all part of, that we're using right now to make this the absolute irony and hypocrisy of what it means to be

a human in the world and all that static. I just wanted to make something that felt good to listen to, that was just maybe in the opposite direction from the 30-second TikTok, 30-second attention span and believe me, I scroll. There's great things I see online. I think we're doing amazing things. You know, it depends on where we want to look, what we choose to focus on. Whatever you put your wood, whatever fire you put your wood on, that fire will get bigger.

I do know that, but I need that little bit of like space from it all, and so if I'm going to interact with this device that is extremely has as much potential for good as it does bad. I'm going to make sure there's a playlist somewhere that might just help me for a second. Give me a little bit of scaffolding to just breathe, literally just breathe. See if we can actually breathe into our belly, into our upper lungs, into our thoracics. Hold breathe out, hold breathe in.

See if you can do that five times without going. Oh, I actually have to do something or check something on your phone or something's happening, like. If you can do that five times without going, oh, I actually have to do something, or check something on your phone or something's happening Like, can I just do that five times? Maybe, yeah, let alone anything else. Can I just do that five? And if a bit of music can help with that, that's where I want to live.

People could choose the, the blend of the certain elements, yeah, um, and change the volume of them or the pitch of them or the duration of them, or kind of customize, to you know, make it a more practical way of using music, as, as we're all starting to get aware of, like a lot of apps allow you to do some pretty cool stuff. Yeah, customize, customizable sound and experiences. So how did that end up going? Like, where did where did you get? I mean?

But the idea was basically break you know, this album up into like four tracks max and that you could control those. You know the guitars. The guitars would be one thing, the heartbeat beat guitar would be another thing, the I don't know another element, the harmonic bed or whatever, could be another track. And then the idea was you could slow it down and you could reverse things and you could mute things, because one of my favorite things is slow down backwards guitar.

It's by far one of my favorite things is slowed down backwards guitar. It's like by far one of my favorite things in the world. So if I could have that with the sun reflecting sun reflection on the tree canopy. That's my form of a good time, and so that was the idea. It was like creating this mini kind of garage band thing that you could, you know, and that it would have like a visual wallpaper to it. And we looked into it and they said, yeah, this is a great idea.

It's probably going to cost, you know, over $100,000 to make. I was like, hey, cool, well, I wasn't looking to make any money really off the app, I just wanted the app to be something Just help customize and curate their own kind of practice, wellness practice.

And that was inspired kind of by, you know, and this is not sponsored by Sleepstream, but Sleepstream was an app I was using to help me sleep or meditate with, and there are all these different things, like you know, the different backgrounds. You could have 10-minute, you know, 20-minute sessions from stress to relax, stress to energize. You had ones for attention stuff, anxiety stuff, meditation, sleep.

You know you could put these different backgrounds and, you know, change the pitches and it was customized. I didn't like that and so I thought, oh, I can do that with the music. It just couldn't. It could happen. It was just very work intensive and not something I really wanted to invest in. I think if I was maybe a little bit more lucrative, I could just put money into something that didn't show any kind of return and didn't have to worry about being at all sustainable.

Then maybe I would have.

But, um, so the next idea was cool, let's, let's, you know, let's, make a visual component to it that we can put on youtube that can be kind of played in a playlist, either a playlist of the album or playlisted to other playlists, you know, and also just get it off some of the streaming surfaces that just are completely reaming the music industry, in my opinion, and it's just a huge rot and also, at the same time, if we're not on them, then we just don't have any access to anybody's

ears, uh, so, like, get onto youtube where you might get paid a little bit more, that you actually could make this venture pay for itself, you know, but also just be there. It can get onto screens, uh, and be at centers, wellness centers, and just have a visual component to it.

But it's actually spawned from wanting to be an app first, because I go, you know, when I've gone into places, you know, there's often, often this big screen on the, on the, on the wall and it's usually playing some kind of thing with some ambient music youtube playlist and I was like I want to get into on that, like I want, I want some visuals with it, so interesting. One is just like incense in slow motion. I love looking at slow moving things. Yeah, to go with slow moving music.

Yeah, just to get like sensory, some sensory slowing down. Yeah, I mean that's. I think that's kind of why the incense or the smudging or the smoking or or the, the heartbeat or the rhythm or the clapping or the sticks, they are sensory locators and indicators that we've been doing for a very long time and they do, like, have this, like the somewhere in the primordial, reptilian or other parts for our nervous system that like, oh, yeah, I know what's going on here.

I know what this is yeah, so yeah, the visual component was like something I've been looking right into. Like you know, put the album on and go to like fractal kaleidoscopes. You know like, okay, that's a little bit techno, that one's kind of cool. Oh, after a while, when you watch, it starts really clocking into the music and like going, this is sick.

Yeah, it will seem super cliched and a little bit psychedelic, but actually watching, watching some of those ancient shapes with music, is extremely therapeutic and calming. Yeah, yeah, yeah, mm the why and the who, for never had like cool, I hope this is. Like, I think, with a lot of the things you're like I hope this is successful, or like I hope it can get played somewhere. I mean, or I mean, yeah, I hope this is successful, I hope it gets played somewhere somewhere.

I mean, yeah, I hope this is successful, I hope it gets played somewhere. What I'm saying is I'm not wanting it. I know it's not a money-making venture, it's you know. It's just I just hope for those who want if it makes it into their life in some way. Like the songs that have gotten onto my playlist, that have come in from other playlists have been recommended or whatever, like, um, yeah, I love them and I just hope that it could kind of be out there in the world for them.

Um, and I, I kind of trust that, as slow as the music is and as slow time as I'm, their intention is that, slowly but surely, the music will find where it needs to go. Yeah, kind of going like further into the visual thing, like, uh, yeah, there's. You know, one of my favorite things in life, like one of my utmost favorite things of all time, is watching the sun.

I grew up in river country in Pinjara, western Australia, even though it doesn't sound like it, but I'm drawn to rivers and it's one of the reasons why this album is called Running River. It's one of the reasons why I've taken the album cover is the river I grew up on. When my dad moved back to Australia, where he's from, after my parents got divorced, he was looking for a house for us. I said find a place with a river in the backyard. Jokingly serious, I was nine, 10 years old.

He actually found a place in Pinjarra, western Australia, on the river, because it was the cheapest place actually he could afford, you know. And I grew up on that river. And I grew up on that river and 20 years later found out that my great-great-grandfather was buried in an unmarked grave in that town and that we were like salmon swimming back upstream to that river.

And but my favorite thing, having grown up on that river and living now on Wujudapbila, which is the Margaret River, is the sun hitting the water surface and reflecting onto trees that are overhanging the billows and the water holes in the rivers, and that shimmering kind of thing that happens in the canopy of trees is my favorite thing.

And so I was like I need, I want and I watch it, and it's like I. And so I was like I need, I want and I watch it, and it's like I'm giving having an eye massage, but I'm also like it's going into whatever nervous system stuff and just like it's the absolute opposite from doom scrolling. It's the opposite for me. And so I was like I want this music that, hopefully, is the opposite to a jackhammer, yeah, to be.

I want it to be coupled with this visual that's the opposite to doom scrolling and to ultraviolence and staccato angular visuals.

And so, yeah, we kind of made this kind of I wanted every song to have a video, which never really happens, but so they could be a part of a playlist at a center or a practitioner's residence, where they may have a screen in the waiting room or something, and that you can have the album and this visual taking place at the same time and so explain all kinds of different organic kind of shapes and visuals that can be coupled with the music that you can kind

of stare at and and just especially as I, actually has a little bit of a medium hack as well, like we're so you know, generally speaking, we are. So our lives are intertwined with screens everywhere and for me it's like the visual component is obviously, yeah, yeah, to give you a visual healing and a sensory healing, but it's also like you're going to be looking at this puppy.

Anyways, I bet I want to see, I'll infiltrate it, see if I can infiltrate this thing with a bit of your love of music and your love of looking at things you know, and and see if I can couple them together and so, yeah, that's kind of how that whole visual thing has kind of come about and, um, it's been, it's been super fun to watch. I think there's one whole video that's just like, uh, acrylic and oil paints being mixed together slowly and how they respond to each other.

Suddenly it's like, oh, it feels like it's got a smell and there's something ceremonial happening or there's something I can pause now.

So it's sort of like yeah, it's like lighting a musical stick of incense or the house, and it just kind of creates this like I'm still in my living room, where I'm still in my living room where I was just having that really stressy phone call with my landlord, but now I'm gonna lie a stick of incense musically and for the next 30 minutes yeah it's changed everything yeah, yeah, totally yeah.