With all of your different podcast projects, and with your songwriting, you seem to approach it all as a historian. You're capturing these processes that are leading to this creative end result and cataloging that for people to reference and learn from for years to come – while also drawing out stories. Then, with your own music, you're cataloging your life, and the people who've meant something to you, through your music.
I totally get what you mean. It's funny, I hadn't thought about Song Exploder in those terms. I think about it almost more like I'm doing a remix with the stems of the song, but with the additional “stem” of the interview. I have all these WAV files, tracks from the song, and then I have this one long WAV file of the artist's voice telling the story of how they made it that I get to cut together. When I started the podcast – having never interviewed anyone or done any kind of journalism, historical cataloging, or anything remotely close to this – the only thing that I could relate it to was remixing – and, I guess, film scoring, the idea of combining music and narrative. The part that feels the most exciting for me is when I get to time something that someone says with the element of the music that they're talking about. I love having the voice and the music interact in a way that feels musical, and then I add in other elements – like having the drums come back in, but on the two with just the snare. There are little moments of production that I get to do in editing the music that feel satisfying to my music brain. In the best version of this, people aren't even noticing that it's happening; it just feels seamless.
There is a rhythm to it, with the way that you edit dialogue. It feels like you're guided by some flow.
Yeah, whether it's two people talking, or a person talking in dialogue with the musical elements, there's definitely some kind of clock that goes on in my head for how long [something can go on] before it starts to feel monotonous, or repetitive, or like it needs some other texture – which I guess happens with a song, too. “You're going through the second time around on the verse? Well, what's the new idea that you're introducing – either lyrically or musically or texturally – so that it feels like this is going someplace?”
How did you get into making your own music?
I started playing piano when I was a kid. My mom worked at Sears in the mall, and next to the Sears was a piano shop. There were a couple of days when my dad, older sister, and I would be waiting for my mom to finish the night shift, and I would play around on the pianos that they had (demo units at the front of the store). Then we noticed they had a sign that said piano lessons were offered in the back of the store. My parents asked me if I would want to try that, so I did. We didn't have a piano or a keyboard or anything, so my sister drew a little piano for me on a piece of paper, and I would practice by putting my fingers on it. It was a real Hirway family team effort!
That's really sweet. Could you imagine the notes in your head while playing?
Probably not. [laughter]
So that was your first instrument. What about your entry into creating audio projects?
I kept playing in bands – in the school band, and then in bands with friends. Then, when I got to college, a friend of mine had a 4-track recorder. The first time I started recording my own stuff, I was making these lullaby instrumentals to fall asleep to. I would record a couple of tracks of acoustic guitar, or direct electric guitar. Then I would also have this AM radio that I would [use to] play little staticky bits. I would drift through the channels and then ride the fader on that. In between the music, you'd hear these little staticky excerpts of people talking or something like that. Also, I had a computer that had a free demo version of a program that was called [Propellerhead Software] ReBirth [RB-338], that was like a [Roland TB-]303, [Roland TR-]808 emulator thing. You could make beats on it, but you couldn't save anything. I would make a pattern on there that I liked, music and drums, and then I would record that loop to the 4-track. Sometimes it would be acoustic guitar, AM radio, and then these little drum loop, beep-y things that were coming out of the headphone jack on my computer.
Through analog, you were able to outsmart ReBirth’s little strategy.
I didn't have a way to record digitally, so this was the best of both worlds, in terms of what I had access to.
Does that radio tie into your music project, The One AM Radio?
