Ep.9 Gissala | LevelsFM Music Production Podcast - YouTube
[Music] [Music] what is your name and or your alias okay so my name is gissala fu um and my alias is just gissala just my first name um and then sometimes i make appearances with my twin sister and we go together by the name of giselle and gissala love it um did you have another alias before that
you're not telling us about you you do don't you yeah yes i do so formerly known as armistice with gisele uh so we were making music and doing appearances under armistice but we've decided to rebrand to just giselle and gissala for logistic purposes i guess i could call it yeah i love it yeah and where are you currently located uh vancouver bc canada and you just relocated from another country and we're going to talk a little bit about that sure yeah do you want just the long version short version like what i did before i moved or just i do i do but first okay yeah no but hold on first are you ready for the lightning round sure okay what is the best song of all time oh it depends or one of them one of the
best songs one of the best well okay um one of the best songs that just sends me into like another world is called is it too much that i'm asking for it's actually quite a chill song it's by tep no and it's quite the popular song a lot of people know it it's down tempo and yeah it's just it's like oh my god like i just float into heaven i want to hear the song uh who has the best voice of all time um sarah aarons she's uh the she's an aussie chick i think and um she writes tracks she was the girl that initially came up with the the song called the middle by zed right yeah so she she wrote the middle yeah but she's not singing in it obviously but she wrote the middle and she's saying a bunch of other tracks on like
for pecking doc and a bunch of different a-list artists and what is it about her voice that you think is amazing oh the the rasp-ness in it first of all and just the emotions that come through she i don't know just just sounds good cool so tonal quality and emotion i love it um what is your favorite musical group or band of all time um favorite musical group and band of all time well i haven't discovered these guys too too long ago maybe just a few years like they weren't definitely one of the first people that i discovered but rufus the soul is something else the the trio of them like they the three of them together make magic yeah absolute magic i love it i haven't heard of them but i believe you um
what would be your dream collaboration with rufus de soul oh my god if i could have a piece of idea combined with theirs i'd probably just melt i would just disintegrate we're putting it out into the universe universe do what you need to do um laptop or recording studio recording studio yeah ssl console i love the the knobs and everything touching it and stuff like that yeah great if ableton can come out with one of them that's like identical to like what you get in the box perfect an ableton ssl controller well you could i guess uh get one of those ssl controllers and link it up with ableton live maybe that would be close i guess yeah yeah somebody made i'm sure somebody's already mapped it
just shout out to whoever's gonna map it and send that to gisella i will pay i promise what is your favorite audio effect like reverb delay compression eq whatever oh interesting danger it would probably be auto filter um yeah yeah auto filter why um because it i don't know i i like filtering i just like the more um lower frequency sounds right yeah so i love it when it's when sounds are like burned in the background and it's filled and you can you you're trying to hear it you can't really hear it but it's it's just there and it's oh i like it i like to be worried you know what i mean you know like producers like you gotta make them work for it that's me they're talking about me
that's so cool um so that would be like a low-pass filter filtering out the top end and bringing it back in that's great what's your favorite plug-in like vst other instrument or effect um [Music] favorite bst hmm there you sound like you had an oz accent there for a second favorite vst i reckon it'd be uh sorry shout out to aussies yeah yeah yeah um honestly when you live in queensland with like the people that speak the most australian accents and that's all you're surrounded by it's just them and you go out and you party and you get drunk and then next minute you're like just speaking the language because you won't just get on their vibe you know you're just yelling um i didn't hear i didn't really hear a canadian accent for like two years do you know what i mean do you know what i mean can you hear it now
a canadian oh you mean you when you were there you didn't hear a canadian accent for two years right right right immersed like submerged myself with ev just all aussies you know yeah and um and he just kind of i don't know i just picked it up i guess but anyway so favor favorite plug-in um jeez i don't have one but i i when i see people use um the endless smile plugging that one's pretty cool yeah it's just so easy it's like an eq right with just the flame it's just yeah it no it's like it's one that just like compresses everything makes it like sound loud and just okay yeah use it mostly like on leads and stuff okay i've yet to even buy it but i'm gonna go buy it after this interview yeah yeah it's it's a super popular plug-in but it i don't have one plug-in it's just
the ones that has one knob love it yeah right right don't need to complicate you know i totally agree simplify everything yeah uh which song sounds great which song sounds great um i think the song called wow by post malone is just so clean like so bassy but so clean i love it yeah i i truly i love the songs where there's not too much going on and each part of the frequency is sitting just where it needs to be and there's nothing else like cluttering it you know the simple tracks that are just really catchy that's what i love you are speaking my language i love it simple
uh shout out posty by the way whoever makes us post these tracks what's water or whoever makes us them oh right who does mix post these tracks i don't know probably multiple people put it in the comments section below people um that's it for the lightning round how what do you think of the lightning round uh yeah it's good yeah i think it's a nice introduction you did great thank you um okay so now uh as the listeners may have already inferred you spent a little bit of time in australia so let's first of all let's go back in time and tell us you you currently reside in vancouver tell us where you were born i was born in canada was born in saskatchewan actually shut down um yeah born in saskatchewan but didn't stay for very long i actually um the parents was back to china beijing um so i actually grew up in beijing until about nine years old and then moved back
to saskatchewan and um lived there for about maybe 11 12 years and then moved out to vancouver when i was about 19 20 years old right i didn't know that that's really cool yeah yeah so it's been have kind of half-life in china half-life here bro more more than half here obviously yeah right yeah was that a huge culture shock between beijing and saskatchewan um at the time no because i was only nine and i really couldn't even comprehend anything at the time right yeah it must have been like a shock to a degree but i can't really recall it being too you know traumatic or dramatic or anything yeah because i was so young you know right um and i did remember it being very foreign in in grade school in like great i think i
moved about grade three or four and sitting in a classroom where you know you don't speak the language and we i guess this is probably the most traumatic part because i remember it till this day where we were sitting in a in a circle we're just kidding and um we each had to there's this box of cookies that went around and we each get a cookie and we had to share something that maybe we we did over the weekend or something like that and uh being someone who couldn't speak english i could barely understand um i just i felt left out you know i felt scared i guess not even left out i couldn't even comprehend what left out meant at the time but just felt scared to even speak so i just took a cookie and passed it on and you know i sent it straight to the next person so that that was probably the hardest part um in terms of like culture shock it's just like wow like i
i don't know what's happening you know you just kind of have to go with the flow right that's huge so you didn't speak any english at all are you just alone no not none at all yeah none at all until i started learning in when i was nine in about grade four that's so cool yeah so you spoke cantonese or mandarin mandarin mandarin yeah can you still speak mandarin yep yeah that's so cool do you dream in mandarin or english definitely english um the only time where mandarin is kind of easier and just effortless to think about is when i count one to ten so when i'm counting and i need to count quick i usually count a mandarin in my head yeah because all what all the all one to ten all those numbers are one syllable but in the english language i think we've
got two syllables for some of the the numbers so i think it's just easier yeah it's probably just like that pathway is so well trodden in your brain that you're not gonna yeah that makes sense yeah you couldn't break that pathway have you ever has has beijing or or the mandarin language ever entered into your music in any way have you ever like done a song with like a mandarin title or like used any any traditional instruments sampled any traditional instruments or had any interest in that um no not yet but um i do listen to a lot of music that has like spanish influence in it like a spanish guitar yeah that sort of style of music really draws me in yeah um so often i do think about wow like
you know i should really try to incorporate other other cultures my own included yeah yeah i think that would be really cool especially sorry go ahead i think when the when the right time comes i'll be able to you know add that into my workflow and into my genre yeah i think it fits so well with electronic music because you just have like the you know the the kick drum is basically centered and then you can add all that stuff in and and it's still the same genre but you're using all these outside influences i think yeah exactly it's kind of just it's very it would be very similar to like the spanish um sort of genre style right except it's just more more ethnic kind of like you know cashmere i don't know he's he's pretty huge into like ethnic sort of sounds and stuff like that and which i find really really really cool yeah me too i've
really always really been into that um it's different tell us about uh an early musical memory early musical memory well when i when i first started listening to music and really loving music i was actually listening to um this chinese duo actually they're two girls they're kind of like very similar to nervo um the aussie twins okay but these two are just they're just friends and um i think together they were called twins but they weren't actual twins they just i don't know it's for branding i guess obviously and um and they sang in in mandarin and cantonese and i just i fell in love with their music it was it's pop um and just catchy you know just very very catchy so that's that's probably as early as i can think of when
i first really started loving music like wow like music really speaks to me right did you did you see yourself like did you imitate them did you like air band to their stuff did you sang along all the time whether i was yeah whether it was like trying to hit the notes or just you know one day be as good the singers them like i remember i used to want to sing back in the days when i was listening to them because it was just so i don't know it just felt so good you know right yeah that's great do you remember the first like album that you bought with your own money or maybe not your own money but you you went out and bought it yeah i i have purchased their albums cool yeah yeah so they'd be the like cds with artwork i just thought it was so cool like wow that's awesome um do you play any instruments
um i play i don't play one instrument like i can do a little bit of drums like i could maybe learn a song on the piano pretty quick and um used to play the trombone in grade school no way yeah reaching for that last last position was always just way too hard so um yeah but um but if you consider dj dex an instrument idj i 100 percent do yeah of course yes that's an amazing instrument um how many years have you dj'd for first started learning when i was about 19 yeah so it's been a minute just over just before you moved to vancouver just after no before yeah before yeah it's maybe like a couple a couple years few years before yeah and you oh must have been a bit earlier
than that then maybe when i was 17 yeah okay yeah and you you did you say you messed around on drums a little bit like a tiny tiny bit like i can do your like simple like right you know and then a little bit of a fill drums is a whole is a whole separate side of your brain that clearly i don't possess but do you find that that little bit of drumming helped you out with djing at all like just knowing where the beats were where the downbeat was counting like some people find that hard yeah yeah i yeah i think it all translates like you you will probably have quite the hard time learning how to dj if you you couldn't count a beat um and if you couldn't you know just intuitively know what the b is yeah okay so aside from the
because i'm not a dj but people are always trying to get me to dj because my stuff sounds like dj like so people assume i'm a dj 100 aside from knowing the beats and how to count how do you know the cycle of eight bars or where you are in the phrase or where you are in the song like how do you know or or memorize that or maybe you don't memorize that how do you like when you've got two songs you got song on deck a song on deck b and you're gonna mix song b into song a how do you know you're on the right cycle yeah um you most people know most people like you go to a festival you go to a club you know when it's gonna drop like you're all you know you're consciously counting like so and when you listen to the song usually the producers are putting things in it
to cue you right so you're not actually on the dance floor going one two three four two [Laughter] speak for yourself okay but yeah um so but one thing um that helps is knowing your songs like ideally you want to be showcasing and playing the songs that you actually listen to that you actually enjoy because if you don't it will be a very very very exhausting career hey it would i wouldn't even consider a career it'd be it'd just be like a job it'd be a job that you don't want to do fun yeah i love it you're exactly right so when you when you go out to play a dj set you have a list of songs already that you know you're going to play yeah 100 yeah multiple lists okay multiple lists
so these are just like potential sets and then when you go okay it's uh it's seven o'clock i'm playing in two hours you grab one and you go this is the one i'm committing to today or do you think about it for two days previous what what's that process like yeah um my playlist would be done well in advance and ideally like you just have a bag of tricks that is always ready so on my usb's i've got multiple genres ready to go so for me um when i go when i get booked for a gig i i first need to know like where is this venue like what what kind of crap like what is this show we're doing what's our audience you know is it is it like a rooftop because i played a lot of rooftop kind of restaurant into bar and then dancy sort of stuff in oz um and then i also played club you know banger hour club so um i would need to know
what what time i'm playing like is the sun still up so i need to have music prepared for if it's just going to be loungy because you're not going to rock up and and start doing banger hour music when it's 5 p.m everyone's having dinner but they're just kind of like vibing and grooving out with with a couple cocktails you know so i have all those different genres and i can play any time during any in a 24 hour period i could i have music ready to go for any of those hours that's so cool and that's all in like the preparation um stage which is so important like i try to dump i i did dump a lot of time into prepping that's great that's so cool it's so it's so much like music production i mean it is music production but it's like music performance production um so do you think when you go to write songs now like when you're writing tracks do you use ableton live yeah yeah um when you go to write a track and able
to live do you keep all that stuff that you just said in your head like are you going okay this track's gonna be like 7 p.m rooftop vibes like does that enter into it at all or is that a completely separate thing no not really um well like when i first start making a track i i kind of i can i can have a goal be like okay i want this song to be like you're 125 bpm i want i want to write um like a banger hour sort of track so i i start off going in that direction and if at any point in the track it it sounds great and i don't want to change it but it's derailed and it's no longer going towards the banger hour sort of genre right i just go with the flow then yeah i'll just change it be like okay i'm not going to write a banger hour track for this one it's going to be something else that's great you're open to the universe no i think that's super important yeah because yeah because then if you if you already
have an idea and you love it a lot why would you try to change it like that's a good track is a good track you know what i mean like there's there's time in a day where any tracks could be played so well i think some people i think a lot of people when they go to write music they have a vision in their head they have this visual and they're trying to reach that visual and anything that isn't exactly that to them comes across as missing the mark or whatever whereas and the way i write music and it sounds kind of like the way you write music is i'm like all right i'm going to go to mars and then like two hours later if it's like venus approaching in two hours i'm like sweet vedas like it doesn't matter that i'm not at mars it it matters that i'm having fun like kind of like what you said it matters that the track is great yeah fair enough yeah i guess i'm just not not um i just never experimented to write music like that but i could see how other
people like that's how that's their working process and that's how they do it yeah but for me i've always just find it harder to be able to you know lock in my target and just go for it i just i feel forced often get more frustrated yeah and then i just ditch the project so it for the moment it doesn't benefit me but i'm not saying that i might not try that more often because it might help right i'm totally jealous of people that can do it that way it's just that i don't do it that way yeah and it could be also because like maybe i i lack in you know the skill of um designing my sounds to sound a certain way to gear towards um the goal that i have in mind now do you think that that's also kind of an advantage again because you're you know maybe you lack a little bit of understanding in that area but that means that there's less rules for you
right it's not like you know you might be yeah yeah i mean i don't stress out about it you know at all yeah because i i believe that a good idea trumps a good sound you know yes yeah yes yes sounds are great but unless they have a good idea or a good song behind them yeah yeah imagine if you got the most banging sounds right and and your most bang kick most band drums and and your leads and your pass and everything but everything is one note right actually i would i would kind of like that i like i like i like tracks that are just like you know around the world by daft punk or a millie by lil wayne right that are just like the same thing over it kind of like that well how about a lead just one note oh banging sound but just one note if you can write a melody with just one
note in it that's slaying it i think that's great it's efficient um okay so you mentioned that one of your favorite instruments is the spanish flamenco guitar do you have any other like favorite instruments that you kind of secretly obsess over cowbell the cowbell just speaks to me does it really yeah i get so excited when cowbell's coming to a track you better put flamenco guitar and cowbells in your next track or you're just a poser i guess that fits in the track i'm like whoa i like drum machine cowbells like 808 cowbells like fake ones um so let me know some other early musical influences other people that made you start to get the idea that whoa music artist i want to be a musical artist maybe
yeah um oh as a as a dj or or a producer just any of the as a kid or as a young adult growing up like who were your main influences um okay basically yeah so those twins are definitely a huge influence you know um and all those all those a-list um pop singers that saying mandarin whose music i listen to 100 yeah and um and then as the years progressed um i obviously got into the night lifestyle lifestyle and um a lot of the people that influenced me were my friends like the local djs that played in the clubs that i went to i looked up to him i was like wow this is so cool you know and they're doing it live first of all and they're working the dance floor it i don't know it was just so influential you know yeah for the dj to be playing the music and making the crowd dance and being able to read that room and and make the night awesome it was just it
was so awesome i was just like okay this is it like i love it and i never stopped loving it so that's great definitely the performance aspect the live aspect is a huge part of it and you know when today with a daw you can just perfect the performance and never have to do it live with a dj you've got to perf you've got to have that performance element i love it when djs get into music production or music producers get into djs and those areas start to overlap because then you have the studio over dub ability and layering ability with the live performance aspect which sounds kind of like the area that you're in right that exciting area between worlds yeah i mean i for me i really love to um do a lot more than just change the song on decks right yeah when i often when i
dj my my goal is to just make my set as seamless as possible like i wanted to sound like one giant track that takes you on a journey right yeah that's often my goal when i'm i'm djing that's so cool so is there usually a a pattern for that journey like do you usually start soft and end loud or um not necessarily but i usually start off experimenting and see what the crowd is feeling actually yeah so um it's so it could start off pretty messy um and then i i decide like okay this is this is going to be the vibe this is how i want it to play out you know based on their reaction yeah yeah and yeah and that's right
as well right and their reaction is in the form of movement eye contact uh yells volume what what do you what do you get from the crowd is it just like an intangible thing or can you actually point it out um sort of yeah yeah you could point it out you know like when people are loving a song like you hear some people cheering some people are moving you know they get off the seats and dance a bit or like i have people come up to me before i was like wow your stuff is awesome and i'm playing this kind of stuff where i don't think anyone has played before it's kind of like the real deep house real melodic deep house um and then i was like okay i'll start with this and i won't start off with you know a safer bet would be you know starting off with like kind of top 40 stuff stuff that everyone knows you know right um yeah so it is yeah i i do like to read
the crowd because i mean like if no one's vibing with you then it's it's boring yeah yeah that's super interesting it's the ability to change that like and like you said like you have to obviously like it like the vibe but you also have to match that yeah like i want to get everyone on my vibe right yes oh cool yeah sometimes maybe like it's throwing us on here or there just to grab their attention and then wheeling them in that's cool um do you ever get nervous when you dj all the time i'm allowed to stay around here all the time you set the you set the bar i let the guests decide and you've just decided yeah all the time i i always get nervous um and a bit anxious before the set especially if i'm going to somewhere that i i've never been um yeah definitely but i think it's it's a good thing you know me too yeah yeah because you're excited you know
yeah yeah that's great i i agree although it's still it still makes you nervous yeah yeah it's yeah but usually um the nerves do go away a few tracks in and it's good yeah when you finish a set that you know you just absolutely destroyed it how do you feel when you're like walking off the center are you like yeah no i usually doesn't want to walk don't want to walk off usually you want to keep you got to keep going yeah isn't it better to just end it on a high note though like what if you play another 20 minutes and it's like that's all right still keep going i love it that's so cool um what's the best live show you've ever been to um i honestly haven't been to too many um but
the best live one would probably be in a club yeah when it's because i i like the intimacy that the clubs give off and just that you're you know closer to the dj and and it's you can actually see them and their expressions on their face and stuff like that is there any specific like dj you saw like one track that they played where you're like this is the best thing i've ever seen in my life yeah i went to um mia one time and uh i i went with a friend and it was this artist i think his name is jeremy or i can't really remember his name but i was actually you know kind of like oh this is not my type of music like i don't know but i went anyway and um he was playing sort of more minimal tech sort of melodic minimal tech
and uh and it completely blew me away it his set was just so flawless and and the tracks he were playing it just spoke to me i was like wow this is i need to get into this like where do i find this stuff yeah and i discovered a new artist while i was there so it was really cool that's super cool yeah i'll never forget that night it was cool what would you say like your top three favorite genres are to dj um definitely like your banger hour tech house chicago house um and then my favorite for like early during like any sunset or sunrise set would be like melodic deep house um and then super love the top 40 stuff as well like open format type of deal yeah cool yeah it's all music that i love listening to like i'll listen to all those genres in my car when i'm driving
so um i got a question for you what is music production what is music production it is expressing your emotions and understanding this the craft of um it's i guess it's it's the skill that you learn to help you to express your emotions in the track great so good um do you have any favorite music producers yeah uh
one of my favorite is probably james hype he's a also a really really sick dj like he's one of the djs that that does stuff really really live it's like he's pretty much he's got four decks often and all four are running with acapella drums do you know what i mean like a track that's about to drop into so he he does it with four tracks and he does it so live i mean like a lot of it is rehearsed but not down to the dot jeremy so he's i yeah he's um he's really high on my list i love it when you say you know what i mean um it reminds me that you went to australia because so can you tell us about your australia trip that was pretty recent how long were you there for like a year uh just under two really yeah yeah for a while what was it like living and djing there
uh oh it was epic i don't know why i came back yeah no vancouver's really awesome uh yeah no i went and uh i went because i don't know australia is just one of those places i've always wanted to go you know i love the people my partner used to be australian and we're together for two and a half and i always always wanted to to surf and learn how to surf and be in the warm weather like those are all really big reasons why i moved um it's so cool yeah and and uh i it's crazy how i was able to just dj as a full-time gig um and be able to make an income it's about the furthest i've ever gotten yet in my in my music hobby that um hopefully soon i can call a career and um yeah it was so epic the the vibe is just i was i lived in gold coast in queensland and uh it's a very trendy
little city i feel it's kind of like a mini sydney in my opinion but you can find a like whatever personality you are whatever you fancy whatever you can find a suburb there for that and you can find people that you'll vibe with it's such a cool it's just a really really cool little city right on the coastline on the east coast and uh world-class surf so i i learned how to do that and was just starting to to have a lot of fun on like a short board so i was just starting to get kind of not good but good you know i mean like intermediate yeah and um and it was yes so random how i got the gigs that's so random but i just i think mainly the reason is how i got all those gigs was i just put myself out there right um and i just i was like it i've got
nothing to lose did they think you had a cool accent a cool canadian accent ah i guess some people would have you know like yeah i think the aussies like the canadian accents don't they i don't know i've had some people come up to me and say wow cool accent and stuff and but most people don't want to be weird you know right it's probably the same as it as their accent is to us like exactly yeah yeah you just appreciate it from afar is so is east coast the side the same side that perth's on like the sun opposite okay okay yeah the side with most of the big cities like sydney's pretty close to where you were or what yeah yeah yeah sydney was just probably about like 7 hours 7 12 hours yeah right yeah they were just the next state down um yeah so another thing i wanted to ask you about is you and your sister giselle shout out giselle uh had along with with julian
had under the under the name of armistice had a pretty big single like a couple years ago right yeah yeah so tell us about that how did that happen and what happened uh it was um i think it started off as a school project um when we were in school and um never thought it was gonna get that many streams or anything it's just like let's make some music because we like the same stuff and um i don't want to take all the credit because i they they definitely were the two bigger it was kind of like their project i mean i had my say in it but it was a lot of their ideas and blood and sweat um yeah so the song yeah just made a really baby track and um what's the track called
it's called nothing to compare i'll try and remember to link that in the youtube video okay and um like the vocals from it are just off splice um i think yeah and a lot of there's some other elements that were also just off spice splice and we i've heard other people use the similar um samples in their productions it's always so funny when you hear it and these are like big tracks too right right yeah that's funny um yeah so finished it and then you know just put it on spotify release it on spotify as an independent and um sent it out to you so you get i think you you're able to send it out to like bigger playlists that are created by um spotify and uh one of the playlists just picked it up and i had a really huge following and then it got picked up by another pretty big playlist and then along with
a few smaller ones i think and it stayed in it for a just like a year or two and um yeah so i i feel like it was obviously it was a pretty good song you know um that was catchy otherwise people like it wouldn't have got picked up and it wouldn't have as many plays as it did but um it's just really interesting because like if the song isn't even like that well mixed or you know but it it it's catchy okay yeah so that's that's ever since i'm just like okay catchy songs over properly properly mixed sounds if you can do a really catchy and properly mixed great like that's 100. yeah yeah always true right yeah yeah yeah nothing wrong with making something sound good but that's always the second part if you don't have a great catchy song then yeah you don't really have much right so it must have felt really
cool though to see those numbers rising and to be a part of that and to see that in action and go whoa we didn't even really like try and it's not it's doing so well yeah it was um yeah it was really cool i remember um when we all found out it was just exciting you're like oh my god wow this is cool like people actually love it and they're listening you know you just you don't think of it you don't think that it's gonna happen and people love your songs until you see it happening right um and then yeah it's exciting and it kind of just opens the doors to potential right yeah it makes your your mind go whoa yeah it's a mindset thing definitely it definitely helps with um i get a little bit of confidence booster i guess in a way and and then it also just kind of tells you you're on the right track you know you're you're all right you're making the sounds and people are loving it like there's other people out there that that vibe with you so don't
be so like when often previously when i previous to that song when i first started making music i always um thought to myself oh like this sound doesn't sound cool like i don't love it other people aren't gonna love it like you know just kind of doubting yourself always and i must have had like really cool pieces in my tracks that you know i i just deleted because i didn't think other people would love it and big big mistake never do that yeah cause at the end of the day um i feel like i'm making music for myself you know and if other people love it great yeah i kind of i had this aha moment the other day where i was driving and i i already have a few tracks that are they just need to be finished um and i started playing them in the car and i haven't heard of these tracks in a long time and they got me so goddamn excited i was like this bangs like i need to
finish this but i i remember i dropped it i stopped working on it because i didn't think it was good enough and i was just like so yeah it just kind of confirms that that's that's all of that is so true that all of that that you just said totally resonates with me like as soon as you start making music that you love other people will love it and if you don't like a song don't listen to it for a month and chances are you will love it later like yeah exactly like when you listen to something that you wrote like five minutes ago you're like oh it needs to be like you need to bring out 3k on the hi-hat and then a month later you're like this is dope like you don't even know what a hi-hat is right yeah you started getting so technical because you've just heard it so many times you know and it loses the novelty but when you bring it back you just yeah it's like hearing it for the first time again and it's you're like you're listening to your instincts and your instincts are usually right yeah exactly
um okay so the next question is a guest question from tamara edelman shout out tomorrow edelman um what has been your biggest career high and your biggest career challenge so far biggs career high like when i felt the best about where i was my career and my biggest career challenge um the well the biggest career challenge um would probably be my production yeah just just how how long it takes to be a bit better and how much like concentration and focus you actually need to put into to learning like it's it's not an easy craft there's a lot to it you know um so that's probably my biggest and like like i said before and always thinking my stuff are as great as they should be and you know like i
really try to perfect my stuff so that's probably like one of the biggest challenges is just you know being able to hammer out tracks and and um not care and love it and think it's great and you know just yeah because sometimes when when when i'm like that it actually i get writer's block then yeah all the doubts just start flooding in it's like a trigger yeah yeah but i know i i feel like everyone could relate to that you know everyone at some point would have you know had that yeah and and the other thing is writing music is so time consuming learning is so time consuming and making money off of any of it is like impossible so you you still have to live and stuff you know like a lot of people are like oh man like i just quit my job and i'm just gonna full-time work on music i don't actually quite support that concept you know because it's it's too much i mean if that's how you want
to do it and maybe just try it out for a bit great like i'm not saying don't do it but for me i don't think that's a it's a healthy relationship that you develop with with the craft itself yeah i think it's it's important to have a balance because when i'm at work all i want to do is write music you know so when i have time to write music i'll do it and i'll be in in like a euphoric state you know being able to do a hobby that i actually want to do right so um and then my biggest career high is probably when i was living in australia and um just climbing the ladder really quick and just i don't know having a presence and everyone appreciated it and and i was getting more exposed and more exposure um so that was really really cool and because i was doing it as like i was making an income from it i was able to you know have a really
really really well life work life balance you know like i would do you know three four gigs pretty much all just during the weekends and then i would have you know monday to thursday to friday whatever everything during the day to go surfing you know stay healthy do a workout and and then just not be in a rush to write so that's that's yeah that's something i sometimes definitely took for granted um you don't know how good you have it until it's gone right um yeah as because back now in vancouver i'm i'm working back in film so now i have to split my time yeah right right when you were surfing or during your free time during the daytime in australia were you sort of thinking out setlists then were you like designing them what like when do you design setlists when do you how did that come to you
i no i usually carve out time like a good chunk of few hours to um organize the playlists go out sourcing for tracks and and all that kind of stuff cool yeah and do you practice uh mixing them then or are you just sort of selecting the songs and not hearing how they blend no i usually will always um jump on the decks and see how they fit in yeah yeah do you do you use mixed in key or do you use do you use key mixing at all or no yeah always yeah i think most of the time with you know house music you can kind of get a tech house especially or base house you can kind of get away with not being in key but i i love the more melodic stuff you know like i love my leaps and and stuff to be like really melodic um and i like i said i my goal when i dj is
always to make it as seamless as possible so i will always mix and key if i can yeah but sometimes i know if i'm out of tracks in this key um i will just switch to another key that hopefully works better and i if i'm doing a different key that's technically not um in the perfect in the wheel of fifth i will always actually listen queue it up in my headphones and and make sure that it works and find the bits where it doesn't work don't loop that just loop the bit that works and get it in there and then once it transitions over completely to the track it's then it's easy so one of the main differences between production and and performance is in production if you do something that's just clearly in the wrong key or clashing with whatever you're doing you can just sort of laugh about it stop the take and go back and do it again what do you do when you make a mistake
and you've put something and it's going out of the front of house speakers and you know it's a mistake how do you get out of that any mistake or just specifically when there's at a key let's go without a key like how would you like if you thought you were gonna put something in key and then it wasn't and it's going out there now it's in the club right now sounds terrible what do you do get the hell out of there straight away yeah um start looping oh oh like often i'll find see if there's a loop that works yeah like the chunk that isn't at a key i'll just i'll try to loop that bit and pray to god that it works um but often i will try to get that track out of or the part that's not in key as out of the chat out of the mix as fast as possible there's nothing that i cringe more when i'm at like a festival or a club or even when i just listen to a mix
when it's when two songs are just so out of key and i always pick it up and it ruins it for me i mean it doesn't ruin it but it you just i just notice it and i'm like this is not enjoyable you know it's like quickly change it yeah okay so d would you ever like if the mistake was happening would you ever pull it out and then put it back in on the one and then pull it out and then put it back in on the one so it seemed like you meant to do that and then get out of there no absolutely not there's never no ah absolutely not yeah no way it just because the one is not in key it just doesn't sound good although some of the crowd won't even notice 100 but i notice it and i'm listening too you know it's not just for them it's for me too right do you think you have perfect pitch or a relative pitch or something no no way you just no no you just have to taste yeah just um yeah just when i i don't have perfect pitch but
sometimes they it's just so out of key just it just doesn't feel good like you listen to like i don't like that sound it doesn't match yeah i love it um [Music] what's your favorite part of producing is it starting or finishing starting definitely starting yeah it's hard to finish hey yeah it is it really is yeah because i mean because once you have a track that's near finished you you are kind of limited to what you can put into it you know what i mean like it narrows down the available things that you can add the available sounds and yeah it's kind of like i don't know yeah it's logical do i mean like it's
automatically you're just it's it's tougher and people are going to judge you for it too right so sometimes people don't like that that's right like if i just don't finish then nobody will judge me um but sometimes i'm like just release it i'm finished maybe it just sounds maybe it is finished you know and then just sit on it for ages like trying to stuff more things into it and sometimes i go okay maybe this is all i'm going to work with and maybe some things need to change maybe i don't need more maybe it's already too much like that's why that's great so reduction pull stuff out yeah that's like textbook stuff that you learned in school anyway still though you always forget you always forget yeah yeah totally yeah that's a really good one uh reduce uh what piece of advice changed your life do you remember anything probably something i told you i would imagine yeah definitely
no i'm just kidding but what piece of advice changed your life um the one piece of advice that i've heard over and over and over again and i've mentioned it multiple times in this podcast is the when you're in a production the melody this the production the it's it's the catchiness over sound i don't i feel like that's just so important honestly like so important like you can have all these tr i listen to so many different tracks and most of them are just average but when i hear a track that i love it's always because not because it's a dope sound it's because something has caught my ear like it's like speaking the most beautiful language to me so i think that's probably the most important important advice anyone has ever given
me and i'm sure you've taught us that many many times in school yeah i i say that all the time like if like if you think of the best sounding song in the world that isn't a great song versus the best song of all time but it just sounds like it was recorded with a potato pick one it's like easy potato catchy potato every time right like who cares yeah and if you ask someone to pick the one song that just had the best sounds in it and they probably couldn't like most people probably couldn't even tell you like what like how pick the cleanest sound or song that you've ever heard yeah i don't know i don't know i wouldn't have remembered it but they'll tell you what their like favorite top 40 track is jerry right i i even think that it's just a reminder that like sounds like there's no such thing as a bad sound in production it's just an
appropriate sound for that song like you think of like all the old songs from the 50s and 60s where they just didn't have the production they you know there just wasn't low end yet right like nobody was putting a mic on a kick drum yet right but they just sound amazing it's because well part of it is because the vocal and the melody are just the highlight you can hardly hear anything else it's all you hear is the vocal and the melody exactly yeah what's your what's your favorite of these three things lyrics melody or rhythm which one which one's my favorite if you had to choose one mel it's probably going to be melody or rhythm right yeah i would say rhythm actually interesting yeah because on top of like having a really catchy track it's having a catchy rhythm is is something else i think i think it's harder to achieve a really catchy rhythm than a catchy like
melody or catchy vocal yeah i think you're right yeah and i think it's really important so when i hear it and i notice it i i extra appreciate it yeah yeah i agree um do you want to move on to our fast track assignment sure let's do it sure okay so this is where you tell us one thing that you do well whether it's based around djing or music production or music songwriting whatever you want and then just give us a little uh a little you know little step process a little method where we can try that thing at home yeah yeah definitely i could probably pick one from dj and one from production go for it yeah um so for djing um like like i said before for me i try to make mix seamlessly
and um the one thing that i feel like most intermediate um djs out there are struggling with is looking at the damn waveform on the decks so if there's one exercise that you could do when you're mixing to get better just stop looking period just load up your track get rid of that waveform screen and start listening that was one of the things that i was experimenting to do and it and i was practicing that and it at first i was i was like wow this is hard and then i kept on doing it kept on doing it and it's i think it really elevated my skills in djing yeah um so that's probably one of the most important things and i think there's a huge advantage um when you do that because when i dj i
have my wav files um completely zoomed out so it's just like a bar like a thick mush of just solid brick and um and i can see where my fills are and what my feels kind of look like so if you do that it helps you to mix better for the fills too because the fills often i'll hear people like blowing the fills and just it sounds because like filter like everything in the song i feel especially in dance music um so if you do that trick you'll be able to better judge where the fills are and you can really really sync up with the fills and really let the fill shine when when that's what they're meant to do is take you away and then bring you back so um so that's one of the the major things that i would advise i think for someone who's trying
to get better one notch better than what like maybe you're you know you can mix pretty well like you're playing already um but you know like once you start getting booked for banger hour club gigs sometimes it's so damn loud and and you have to be able to really know what you're hearing and sometimes you can't see the damn screen if you're doing like a sunset set like sometimes just happens you know so it's important to to be listening and that was one of the first things that people taught me when i learned how to dj but when you have those waveforms and like those things to line you up the grids you always forget you always forget oh i should just listen because you want to be looking like serato is right there like on your mac you want to be looking at it but it's important to just stop looking at it period that's awesome yeah that was the one thing that i i noticed that got me
way better in mixing when i was doing it lots um just at my gigs yeah so what about production once production um the one thing that i would advise is use a damn eq on every track but don't over eq i love eqs eqs are like everything if that one that plug-in i should have picked should have been an eq yeah eqs are freaking everything yeah sometimes i feel like an eq can make or break um your track yeah do you use mostly subtractive eq or additive or both you don't care uh mostly subtractive and it's very simple eq it's just getting rid of the that you don't need on everything because it all it all adds up it all makes a huge difference and it's you learn that in school as well but it's again one of those things that you always forget
okay yeah i think that's good life advice just remove all the that you don't yeah yeah stop clearing the more i the more i teach music production the more i realize this is all just life advice music production is is life advice yes exactly um that's so great what do you think are the commonalities between um djing and production like what are your maybe what are your favorite commonalities where where do they meet that really excites you like eq's one right yeah yeah um actually the part where they meet that's most exciting for me is when you're making so expression i think like just being able to get an idea out of your head and then have it be reciprocated then and for you to perceive is so cool so when you're mixing i think it's the same like
to be mixing a track into another track it's it's it's different it's not just that's why dj that's why it's it's a performance that's why there's a spot in the industry for it you know it's a different type of craft and yeah where they meet is the expression like you're you're you are expressing when you're djing do what i mean like just maybe in two different ways but it feels good to just be able to express you know it feels good to be able to get up there and i think controlling might be the wrong word for it but you know just being able to take control of the expression of the room the expression of how you want to project yourself as a dj do you know what i mean it just it's an outlet maybe directing instead of controlling yeah yeah yeah all right i love it we're going deep here on levels fm everybody we're getting uh we're getting sentimental um that's great great answer
um let's move on to inspiration we're just uh wrapping down here in the last uh few minutes you've done an amazing job i love this episode so far i love you you're amazing i'll stop at you um what are you currently obsessed with could be music or anything else um currently obsessed with currently obsessed with like trying to get shows back into the city and just like forgetting cohen and bring the entertainment back you know like it's such a big part of like people's joy and their entertainment time you know and uh yeah i think that's that's what i'm most excited about and um and just being able to play you know yeah that's great because it's it's fun it's so much fun it's fun to go out where there's loud music
no one would ever disagree [Laughter] except the neighbors uh what do you still want to learn um everything all everything that my heroes can do that i can't do then i've yet to you know perfect the craft yeah so that's the thing so like so so like rufus to sew like their level of production you know it's seamless and when james hype uh the dj uh gets on with four decks like that's so sick you know i so that that's really inspired me i was just thinking like i really want to be able to have more of a like a live sort of um style in there yeah and you use serato no i use um rekordbox use cdjs yes have you ever messed around with tractor because traktor's got like four decks
and it's got all these controllers and it's really i know it's not the most popular dj software but it's really conducive to creative djing with four decks yeah i prob um probably not i wouldn't spend too much time and dabble into tractor but i have used it before and i it's it's a quality piece of software i think they're really cool but just because um the industry standard or cdjs you know you can prac you can be so good with tractor and then it's just a hassle when you rock up to like a club or a festival or something like that so it's better to to be able to get down the craft with the technology and the the gear that is less of a hassle like so to speak um and it's not a process what are your thoughts on do you think record box is gonna continue to be the reigning champion or do you think that uh dennan has a chance because it looks like denim's making a move yeah i was
gonna say um i feel like i mean i feel like the tables could turn in the next few years yeah the turntables could turn all the tables be turning oh yeah dens like i i haven't actually owned a piece of denim equipment but i've seen um denim equipment at the festivals and i i quite like their pioneer though the way they've designed the decks it's like first of all it one specific example is the new cdj 3000s have more hot cues now but they are in between the platter and the screen which is really kind of tricky especially for me people who's got you know smaller hands like when you're playing those it's kind of easy to maybe by accident hit the platter or you know where's den and they've got theirs at the bottom
so it's it's i don't know i feel like it's a bit more user friendly or you know so i think design wise i i just remember like thinking like wow that's cool like that makes sense but the new cd day 3000's don't when they came out with it i just i thought i was hoping that maybe they could be copying with the design of the hotkeys but that didn't happen which is all right it just kind of reminds me of like pro tools and ableton live or something where it's like there's this master that's been around for a while and then the new kid on the block just like hey check this out i'm going to try some new stuff and everybody's like dude and the master's like i got this i'll just keep doing the same thing i've been doing for the last 10 years and the new kid on the block is like doing the homework and doing the whole work and getting better and then all of a sudden there's this big flip so i i do like i do love pro tools it's so cool but so do i ableton 11 just came out with the comp
as well like that was one of the biggest features that pro materials had and that it wasn't didn't and and now they've got it you know so they definitely are like creeping up um yeah in the industry yeah so i feel like denim could be denim pioneer could be similar it's just good competition right it shows you why monopolies aren't the greatest because nothing changes in a monopoly but when you have competition everybody's like oh we got to do that we got a upper game on that right yeah because there's already so much to the craft you know of music production right any way that it can help a producer to reduce the amount of time that they're spending not thinking of ideas is great i agree yeah yeah yeah um [Music] how about some advice for upcoming producers and djs like if somebody's watching this or listening
to this shout out levels fm listeners um and they love your vibe and they want to get into djing or music production like what what would be your advice to them it's such a like a you've probably heard it before but everybody else do it for yourself and if you're not doing it for yourself get out now honestly seriously find a different hobby you know it's not for you if you're not doing it for yourself so trust your instincts stylistically do you honestly be yourself yeah i think so i mean like in the past like ever since i started making music and djing there has been times where i just i i was trying to copy other people and you know like follow other people's footsteps and it just doesn't work you don't get anything and then at the moment where i'm like uh
you know what it this is me they love it great they don't them no not i love it yeah and and like you'd be surprised um the amount of people that actually love seeing new like people love seeing stuff they've never seen before whether it's in your productions or the way you dj or what kind of music you play you know because and it's important to showcase if if you do have a different idea like one that no one's thought of it before it's important to put it out there people are gonna love it people are gonna hate it it's inevitable like you're gonna get both no matter what right that's exactly right yeah so you may as well do do do what you love let us know and let us know in the youtube comments if you agree or disagree yeah let's go let's start a hot hot debate um what should we learn to master what's one piece of
of software or gear or something that we should all learn to master um well if you're an aspiring dj definitely get the club standard equipment get aim high you know if you want to be playing festivals one day you better be ready to be rocking on some festival gear you know because if you rock up and you don't know how you're not confident it's it's going to be a show for you you know it's going to have a terrible experience yeah so you need to know know your know your tools and know your craft what do you think of the controllers that are almost like the decks they're pretty good yeah especially the um the well it's not any that much cheaper than just getting two cdjs in the mixer anyways but they came out with a um the xdj xdj said or extend or ested or something like a four channel it's
like a replica of like cdj nexus twos pretty much yeah it's cool i think i i will be upgrading to that at some point well that one's two channels standalone but if you use it with the software it's four channel i i'm hoping they come out with a standalone four channel version of that one because i think that would be like ultimate no it's four channels yeah so so yeah is it yeah so there's a rx and then there's an rx2 which is the two channel i've got at the moment and then there's one that's um either i think it's x zed or s zed are at x c j s that said yeah so it's so it's literally they've compacted a set of um nexus twos right into a controller right yeah but i i feel like if you're someone who's like mobile djing or whatever the two channels great like that's what i used for all my gigs and it you know it wasn't too too heavy
to haul around because the other one's a tank right yeah right that's awesome okay so uh where can we find out more about you and uh the projects like are you currently working on any projects um yep yep just trying to finish some of the stuff that i've been sitting on for too long and it's definitely pretty much ready to go yeah so hopefully new music coming out straight away um i'll be in saskatoon saskatchewan in my hometown opening for nervo so hopefully get a couple tracks ready for that that'd be sick and everybody can find me on instagram just gisella just my first name and then i've got a link there that i'll take them to soundcloud spotify and all that good stuff so 2s is 1l right yeah so that's g-i-s-s
love it um anything else that you'd like to add for our listeners um keep listening to levels fm got some quality coming up honestly this is cool like before we were on air i was already talking about it and that you know like it's cool to be because yeah what was i saying with all the other big time podcasts they just like are talking about that you couldn't almost couldn't relate because they're so big and out there and you're like oh man like i couldn't get to that level but whereas like when you interview more local smaller artists um they're a lot more relatable you know and you're like okay like i'm pretty much like could get that's like my next step you know yes it's kind of like a stepping stone sort of experience well i think you're a lot bigger than you give yourself credit for first of all but i i i love the idea of introducing people
to music production as opposed to like you know making them awesome at music production i just want to give that to people as an option like to people that have maybe even never thought about it they just like music and yeah they just see that it's maybe not as difficult as they thought to get into it because i don't think it is like you said earlier there's a lot to it there definitely is but i don't think it's rocket science i think i think if you just take everything one step at a time it's stuff that people can do it's yes oh yeah definitely yeah definitely and you'd be surprised of what you come up with even in your first session like i remember when i was first started doing it um and god i didn't even know why i was doing and then you know i was just putting midi notes in and like a drum kit and then and then i played it i was like holy that was so sick it's sometimes better when you do that than when you actually plan it out like
that's the worst part is when you plant something out it's not as good as when you just like slam your keys on the midi yeah yeah exactly yeah it was cool okay buddy thank you so much it's great to see you again yeah likewise yeah we'll have to catch up in real life that was awesome that's great yeah for sure okay peace uh everybody that's gissala everybody [Music]
