Nathan CongletonSome might not realize that you're a very musical person. It seems like there's always music in your head, almost like a radio station that feeds you music all day long. Is this where most of your ideas come from? What % the ideas are good?I think most of the ideas I get all have potential- but the hardest part is finding a way to properly bring them to life. Like for example, I'll have a melody in my head and I'll think its so cool- then I'll try to demo it out and I'll realize it doesn't fit with any of my bands. That's why my itunes Brendan Yates artist has so much weird stuff on it that I couldn't explain. Then again sometimes I think I have a cool idea for a song and then I listen to it 5 days later and I wish I never wasted my time demoing it cause I hate it. Idk - I guess I'll say percentage wise its 50/50. I found that the most bare and simplest ideas are the best ones cause you can build off em!You've written everything from R&B, rock, rap, to hardcore music. And in a weird way, you can kind of hear those influences in everything you write. When you get ideas in your head, what genre do they usually come in? Is there a dominant genre?It usually depends what I've listened to that day. If I just heard a Boyz II Men song I'm usually subconsciously thinking of melodies or progression in R&B world- then if I'm listening to new york hardcore Im thinking of fast and groovy stuff. Sometimes its cool when you can be influenced by a progression or something from one genre and make it work in another genre. The progression of the DY song "The Feeling" was influenced by a Bad brains song :)Nathan CongletonWalk me through the Brendan Yates method. We get an idea in our head, we think it's promising, then what? What's the process look like? Nowadays I'll get ideas all the time but won't record em cause I'll think it all through in my head and imagine it in a song and pound it into my head for hours until I realize its just whatever. But sometimes I'll get real excited imagining a part or even a whole song in my head and the first step is just singing it onto my phone voice memo. Then I bring that to the guitar and try to play it out with my sad guitar playing skills decent enough so I can demo on garageband. Since I play drums, I typically record my garage band demos with actual drums using the built-in microphone on my laptop and turning the recording level way down to like 11%. Then I'll layer guitars and any melody ideas over that. Real drums don't sound as clean as sampled drums in this case but recording it real helps the process be easier for me and I can feel the whole song out with real instruments. I have a sick one all laid out in my head right now- just need to demo.How do you approach writing differently now than you did 5 or 10 years ago? What have you learned?Writing songs 10 years ago I really never thought about song structure. I would just play parts out super long. My first real band One Step Too Many would have the longest songs - they usually had structure - but it would just play parts out a lot. I think I've grown to be a little more ADD with song writing. I get bored of parts that are too long and even songs that are predictable - like intro, verse, chorus,verse,chorus, bridge, double chorus to end.......it's hard for me to write something like that unless the song is like less than 2 minutes. I think the most important things for me now are composition and vibe. How the song makes you feel and how its structured to support that. "Drop" Official Music Video - TurnstileWhat's the first song you remember writing? Do you remember what it was about?Technically the first song I think: I was like 4 or 5 and performed a song on Thanksgiving for my family called "Indians and Pilgrims." It was about Indians and Pilgrims playing together. After that I used to write a lot of raps on looseleaf saying all kinds of strange things. Musically tho I think the first real song I went in on was my band OSTM's first song called 'Control Freak' when I was like 12. I remember Caleb and I wrote it after I bought a china cause we wanted to have a song with China. It was dope. Tell us about the demo you're sharing and what we're listening to.I got 2 for y'all: Both demos were recorded in my basement with the built-in mic....not the best quality but certainly gets the point across.The first one with the working title "TS_LEAVE" is the first skeleton of a Turnstile song which came to be "7" and "Keep it Moving." My guitar playing is very bad. The intro stayed pretty similar but the whole KIM structure is so far from what it started as. The demo has a slower and darker vibe-- definitely a little sluggish. But it's cool to see how it shifted to come to life.The second one I'm not quite sure what it could have been used for. My initial thought was for a DY song but it just was one of those things that just came out and that was that. Just messed around on the verses. The only lyrics I had were for the chorus "I dream of painting myself blue, just to set the mood." Don't steal it or ill call the police, maybe ill use it someday for something.
