Fog

Fog is done now.  However, Andrew Broder is a musician, and musicians don’t stop. He is doing other things. But this interview happened three years ago when I was obsessed with his Hummer EP. I still consider that album one of my favorites, there’s such a raw element to it. He banged on pots and pans on a song about a baby, using words that a baby would use. Another song incorporated an old typewriter as a percussive instrument, these are the ideas that innovative musicians do. In fact, I’m gonna go pull up that album right now and listen to it… I miss it. Meanwhile, read this interview. You’ll learn something.

IndieView: What do you think it is that makes something catchy?  What is it in music that makes something “good” as opposed to “bad?”  Hypothetically, could someone follow some method and come out with a great song just by following certain steps?

Andrew Broder: An easily memorized pattern of notes or rhythm, or a line resonates with you somehow…Something that seems familiar upon the first time hearing it… I don’t know… there are things that I find catchy that other may not, the right kind of black metal blastbeat for example, but also something like a Flaming Lips line will be stuck in my head for days… it varies…

What is it in music that makes something “good” as opposed to “bad?”

I don’t really believe in those terms, everybody’s outlook is so wildly different, or a lot of people’s anyway, that for me to judge good or bad is a waste of time… Of course, for myself, I have internalized standards of what appeals to me and what doesn’t, but even in what I would call bad music, there is probably some good to be found and vice versa… There are of course, obvious exceptions to this, such as The Eagles or Trip-hop music, but you understand what I mean.

Hypothetically, could someone follow some method and come out with a great song just by following certain steps?

Sure, it happens all the time. I think everyone has a method. Even the earlier fog stuff which sounds totally haphazard and ramshackle had a method. Motown records had a formula and that music is some of the best ever created. Anthony Braxton has a method. Timbaland has a method…Mostly, everyone on earth has some sort of method for everything that they do, I would imagine.

IndieView: Hummer is one of my favorite CDs to listen to, everything about it flows beautifully. What I want to know is, how do you think of these things both melodically (ex. changing from major to minor during Melted Crayons) and instrumentally (ex. use of typewriters(?) during the end of Cockeyed Cookie Pusher).  Is all this something planned, like, “I think I’m going to do this for the next song,” or more of a spontaneous thing that comes to you during writing? Whatever the case, could you give one instance?  Take me through an example of how you wrote something.

Andrew: Generally, it has been pretty spontaneous with stuff like that. For example, the typewriter in Cockeyed Cookie Pusher… I happened to have a typewriter sitting next to me, and needed some percussion, and it was as simple a choice as that, really. And I suppose after the fact, little things like that have a nice little metaphorical twist to them, i.e. the song is sort of a love letter, and so the typewriter idea sort of works thematically. Things have a way of working themselves out like that….

As far as choices having to do with chord changes, melody, harmony, etc, its a mixture of much self-editing and moving things around and adding notes here and there until it suits me right. I normally begin by trying to rip off something, and then changing enough about it to make it my own. But yeah, generally speaking what I do will always have both worlds, that of planned out composition and that of improvisation and collage.

IndieView: It’s funny because I’ve done the exact thing with kind of ripping off a melody, then totally reforming it to my own thing.  It seems all we need is some groundwork to get the ball rolling.

Anywho…

I have this belief that some melodies are made and some are meant to be discovered, in other words, they have always been there, floating around waiting for someone to find it and have it heard, so it gives you that feeling as if you’ve heard it before, like deja vu except with your ears.  That is what I strive for when making music.  The Police had a knack for doing it (So Lonely, Every Little Thing), the chorus of Come Together by The Beatles, or the chorus to Bodies by The Smashing Pumpkins (”..Love is suicidddee..”) are some examples where I hear it.

Am I crazy or is this something that other musicians hear?  If so, do you try to achieve this “always been” sound with your music?

Andrew: Definitely, this exists.  I think its a matter of musicians using melodic ideas and scales that have been around for centuries and recycling them, reinventing them, changing their context… but I felt this when I heard Albert Ayler for the first time, that total newness but simultaneously, total familiarity. Yeah, if a song or a sound totally hits you and gives you goosebumps, it is probably triggering some tiny memory or image that has been buried deep in your skull for a long time, and then releases it… it’s very exhilarating when that happens…