Latest / 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast / The Classically Trained Synthesist (with Jameson Nathan Jones)

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The Classically Trained Synthesist (with Jameson Nathan Jones) · 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast

• 0:30
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But nobody goes to Trent Reznor and is like, hey, can you write this big epic hybrid orchestral cue for a?
• 0:35
  Jameson Nathan Jones: They want Trent Reznor to sound like Trent Reznor.
• 0:38
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I was like maybe that's my way in is to figure out what unique things I have to say.
• 0:44
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Get as good as I can at making music in my own unique voice.
• 0:50
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Using all of that background that I had to kind of differentiate myself maybe from some other people and just go all in on that and just focus on being a recording artist and then kind of, like you said, if I build it they will come and that kind of worked.
• 1:16
  Dave Kropf: What is happening, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the 52 Cues podcast, your weekly insight into all things production and library music.
• 1:25
  Dave Kropf: Whether you're simply curious about the sync industry, learning to write better cues, or maybe you're ready to pitch to publishers, I promise you you're in the right place.
• 1:35
  Dave Kropf: My name is Dave Kropf and it is so good to be with you today.
• 1:38
  Dave Kropf: And if you find this video helpful, then why don't you give it a thumbs up here on YouTube or a five star review in your podcast app?
• 1:44
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• 1:49
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• 2:14
  Dave Kropf: So maybe you're feeling stuck or maybe you're finally ready to take your sync career to the next level.
• 2:20
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• 2:22
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• 2:24
  Dave Kropf: It's free to join and membership start at just around four bucks a month.
• 2:30
  Dave Kropf: Today I am so excited to welcome Jameson Nathan Jones to the podcast.
• 2:35
  Dave Kropf: He's a very accomplished composer with a fantastic YouTube channel you should go subscribe and he's found a bridge between classical piano and modern synthesis.
• 2:46
  Dave Kropf: He's also not afraid to say the quiet parts out loud and he will call it like it is.
• 2:52
  Dave Kropf: So today we dive into his journey through music industry, through the music industry, focusing on how he balances his own artistic integrity with the commercial side of being a working composer, and we discuss his approach to merging these diverse musical styles while finding personal satisfaction in the work.
• 3:12
  Dave Kropf: So join me for conversation on creativity, motivation and innovation with Jameson Nathan Jones.
• 3:19
  Dave Kropf: You know it's always a good thing when you stumble across a new, dare I say, content creator, even though we'll talk about how this art isn't content, quickly becoming one of my favorite YouTubers.
• 3:33
  Dave Kropf: Speaking kind of the truth, some of the hard truths we might find a little uncomfortable, but with a background in classical piano turned into modern synthesis, into music, creating a career as a composer, I am so happy to welcome Jameson Nathan Jones, nathan, to the podcast.
• 3:58
  Dave Kropf: Welcome so much, my friend, to the 52 Cues podcast.
• 4:02
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Thanks so much for having me, dave.
• 4:03
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's an honor and a privilege to be here.
• 4:06
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I saw actually an interview you did with my friend John Meyer a while back, so it's John's a great guy and I really enjoyed your chat with him as well, yeah thank you so much.
• 4:18
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, I had an opportunity to meet him at the production music conference last year and his, like yours, you know you not only get the bell, you get the all notifications, so you just need to know that one of the the highest honor Right.
• 4:33
  Dave Kropf: It's a modern YouTube high honor.
• 4:36
  Dave Kropf: Right.
• 4:36
  Dave Kropf: It's the equivalent of being the first CD in the CD wallet in your visor.
• 4:42
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Right and then YouTube might show you the video that I put out.
• 4:46
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Right, I know?
• 4:48
  Dave Kropf: Chasing.
• 4:49
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Maybe Chasing that algorithm carry, that's right.
• 4:52
  Dave Kropf: I totally boy, do I get that?
• 4:53
  Dave Kropf: But it is so good to be with you, and one of the reasons I wanted to talk with you and have you on the show is you have a very unique perspective.
• 5:02
  Dave Kropf: Right, you didn't necessarily just come along and I want to be a film composer.
• 5:07
  Dave Kropf: It's like you pressed really far into the classical music side of things, and so before we get started and we talk about, you know your composing process and your view on the commercial applications of art, tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got to find yourself on YouTube making videos.
• 5:33
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Well, I'm still trying to figure out how that last part happened, honestly.
• 5:36
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But yeah, I classically trained background.
• 5:39
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I started piano at the age of eight and kind of took to it obviously and just continued.
• 5:46
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Always wanted to be a guitarist actually, and my mom was like music theory is best understood through the keyboard because both my parents were also musicians and it turned out she was right.
• 5:58
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, as a percussionist and mallet player.
• 6:00
  Dave Kropf: Guitar still baffles my mind.
• 6:02
  Dave Kropf: It's all very linear.
• 6:05
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, it's a totally different way of thinking, but it turned out.
• 6:08
  Jameson Nathan Jones: You know I'm getting ahead of myself, but as I got into composing later on, it really did help me to be able to understand things from a linear keyboard perspective.
• 6:17
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I did really well through high school and everything, and then it came to the point where it's like, well, I should just major in this because it's what I'm best at.
• 6:26
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I went on to get a couple of degrees in piano performance and it took me getting a master's degree in it to realize I really didn't want to be a concert pianist, which is something that you should probably figure out before you go that far.
• 6:44
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, no, my master's is in jazz and studio drumming and I don't like schlepping my gear on the gigs.
• 6:52
  Dave Kropf: Right, that's what I should be doing, right?
• 6:54
  Jameson Nathan Jones: No, I wonder, and I wonder if this was the case for you as well.
• 6:57
  Jameson Nathan Jones: You don't even realize the possibilities of things that you can do in music until you get to a certain point and are exposed to those things.
• 7:08
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, I think that's right.
• 7:09
  Dave Kropf: I kind of always knew I wanted to be a drummer and so I had just a complete one track mine into that.
• 7:15
  Dave Kropf: So, no, I totally get that.
• 7:17
  Dave Kropf: It wasn't until you surround yourself with people who are amazing and much better at it than you are and they're doing these amazing things and you're like, oh, there's more than just drumming out there.
• 7:29
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, and they're doing things that I never even considered was a possibility.
• 7:34
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's one of those cases, I guess, where you don't really know what you want yet because you haven't been exposed to it.
• 7:40
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So you want what other people that you see around you want or want for you, and so that was, and I was good at it, and so it was like, well, this makes sense, I'll just teach and play the occasional recital, even though I really didn't want to do those things full-time.
• 8:00
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So the kind of turning point was during, towards the end of my undergraduate degree, I had the opportunity to study with Luigi Zaninelli, who is an incredible composition composer in his own right and composition teacher, who studied with Sean Carlo Minotti and Barbara at the Curtis Institute, and so, like the ability to be exposed to someone from that pedigree as myself, a kid from I'm from Southern Mississippi and that's where I went to school.
• 8:32
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It just so happened that he was there as composer in residence at the University of Southern Mississippi, so that was a rare opportunity that I was afforded and the fact that he was willing to take me on as a student was really fortunate and that kind of set me on the path of okay.
• 8:51
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I think composition is what I really want to be doing, cause I always kind of had more respect for the composers than the performers, if that makes sense.
• 9:01
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Like what the composers were doing seemed like magic, like how is this even possible, you know?
• 9:06
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And it's like their work seems to last for centuries.
• 9:10
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, the players.
• 9:11
  Dave Kropf: That's effeminal right, but the work itself is what really lasts.
• 9:17
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Exactly exactly.
• 9:18
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I was definitely intrigued by the idea of composition and of course I think, as every young composer at some point who was exposed to film music and game music which I was I wanted to figure out what that was all about and like, how do they do that and what are all of these production techniques?
• 9:42
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I didn't even know what production was.
• 9:44
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I was still writing with pencil and staff paper and then just plugging it into sabelius or whatever to be performed.
• 9:50
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It was the art music world, so the idea of recorded music as its own medium was not even really on my radar.
• 10:00
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Of course I listened to rock bands and my dad was a big progressive rock band, so he and still is and he loves, yes.
• 10:08
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And so I came up listening to all of those things and I guess that kind of exposed me to the music technology stuff which was new at the time, and synthesizers and all that kind of thing.
• 10:19
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And so when I saw film composers, modern film composers and stuff kind of marrying that world with the more traditional orchestral scoring type stuff that I was already kind of doing and more interested and familiar with, that seemed really intriguing to me.
• 10:40
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So that set me on this path of like trying to figure out how all of that works.
• 10:45
  Jameson Nathan Jones: How do you make music with a computer?
• 10:46
  Jameson Nathan Jones: What are synthesizers, what are all these weird sounds that I'm hearing?
• 10:52
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And yeah, it kind of took on its own life from there and I discovered that I actually really like recorded music as it's on medium, because it's so different than the performance side of things where you're always interpreting someone else's vision.
• 11:09
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And I was actually just talking earlier this week with someone he's a student actually in music college, kind of going through the similar thing and dealing with the elitism, when people don't fully understand what you wanna be doing because they haven't experienced it that exist in the classical world, in the world of academia.
• 11:31
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And he was kind of saying, well, how do you like, with a modular synth performance or something, how do you notate that, or whatever for someone else to perform?
• 11:46
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And, as I thought about that, it's less about the performance and it's more like a painting in that case, where it's something captured in time, and so that capturing of that one performance, that one time, is the art of it, rather than because, if you think about it, like the only way they had to preserve music back in the time when Beethoven and all of those guys were writing was to teach it to other people to perform, because there was no way to capture it.
• 12:18
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So it's a totally new world and the classical world has not really adopted or adapted that mindset in my experience.
• 12:30
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, and in much the same way in the jazz world.
• 12:32
  Dave Kropf: And elitism, I think in my experience, in my experience still prevalent in the modern university, at least the American university.
• 12:45
  Dave Kropf: So there are pockets of universities.
• 12:47
  Dave Kropf: I think that get it.
• 12:49
  Dave Kropf: But as somebody coming from a media application of music and I teach at full sale, which is all about preparing students for careers in the entertainment industry I mean just unapologetically.
• 13:03
  Dave Kropf: So, whereas you take some of our local colleges here in town or back in North Carolina where I went to school I'm Memphis the actual how are students gonna make money, how are they gonna have careers in?
• 13:17
  Dave Kropf: This Was almost an afterthought.
• 13:20
  Dave Kropf: And so I remember in my undergrad at Appalachian State this may not be how it is, but how it was was like the film composers was almost seemed like you're selling out and it's like ugh and so if you wanted to be an electronic musician, it wasn't like it wasn't EDM or anything like that.
• 13:42
  Dave Kropf: It wasn't like Trip Hop and LoFi, it was like Edgar Varese and Bleat Blort, experimental kind of stuff.
• 13:48
  Dave Kropf: It was yeah, avant-garde, yeah, yes, firmly art with a capital A.
• 13:53
  Dave Kropf: Was that your experience as well?
• 13:58
  Dave Kropf: And do you think that universities kind of see the writing on the wall as far as, hey, students need to be able to make a living to pay their student loans and all of that.
• 14:09
  Dave Kropf: Do you see that changing?
• 14:12
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Well, to answer the second part, I personally don't see it changing because the people who are teaching are so kind of old school at least, and that's just you know.
• 14:24
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I'm just kind of sharing the experience of the people that I know that are doing it and you know, and especially you have to consider where I am.
• 14:33
  Jameson Nathan Jones: You know, in South Mississippi it's.
• 14:37
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I think we're always at least 50 years behind technologically and you know every way.
• 14:43
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So it's like you know they're just starting to come around to record it.
• 14:48
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Music has a medium at all.
• 14:51
  Dave Kropf: We have an ad-aid player in our electronic music lab Right.
• 14:54
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Like have you heard of this four track tape machine?
• 14:57
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That's really wild.
• 14:58
  Jameson Nathan Jones: You just got digital performer.
• 15:00
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah.
• 15:01
  Dave Kropf: Right, yeah, exactly.
• 15:03
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I haven't personally seen it changing, but I also the old guard is still there enough that has that mentality of that.
• 15:12
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's all got to be the way that it always has been, you know, and what was the first part of your question?
• 15:17
  Dave Kropf: I've already forgotten Just as far as like well, what would it take to change that?
• 15:22
  Dave Kropf: Is it just so like ingrained in myopic that it's just like kind of the blind leading the blind and you're just going to keep on going?
• 15:31
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Well, I think it's great that there are schools, like you mentioned, with Full Sail, that are, you know, leaning into the fact that, hey, it would probably be good if people could actually make a career and make a living out of this, and what are the realistic avenues through which to do that?
• 15:47
  Jameson Nathan Jones: All of my education, like I said, was classical, you know it was classically focused, and that's that was never as a performance major in the classical world.
• 15:56
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That was never even mentioned or thought about.
• 16:00
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Like how am I going to make money with this?
• 16:02
  Jameson Nathan Jones: The only options really presented to me were what I saw everyone else doing, which was you graduate as a pianist, you accompany for all the string players or whatever, which is, by the way, an incredible amount of work for almost no pay and zero glory.
• 16:19
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Oh, none You're just a piano.
• 16:22
  Dave Kropf: Monkey in the back.
• 16:23
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, you're just the guy who has to sight read the orchestral reduction for their concerto, which is really like you know, you're basically reading, you know five or six parts, while you know the floutist has their one line that they play and it sounds super impressive because they play it really fast, but it's like we're we're sweating, you know, right, yeah, so yeah, I lived that life all through my graduate degree out.
• 16:45
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That's what my graduate assistantship was in.
• 16:47
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I knew I didn't want to do that the rest of my life.
• 16:50
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And you know, the only other option was to teach and to teach people to do the exact, to follow the exact same path that I was on.
• 16:58
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That I didn't really want to be on, so obviously that didn't seem like a thing that I wanted to continue to pursue.
• 17:04
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So, yeah, it was never.
• 17:06
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And and the people who were learning those things were in the music industry, which is probably more, more akin to what you're you're doing and teaching, and, and the funny thing is, those people were just ultimately looked down upon by the classical world like it's lesser than you know let's, let's say that out loud you know and like I am ashamed of 1992, dave, you know who, who you had the guitar players and the drum set player, not jet.
• 17:38
  Dave Kropf: Like the rock guys come in and there was no place for them.
• 17:41
  Dave Kropf: If it wasn't classical, if it wasn't marching band, maybe jazz band, but like somebody that came in and wanted you know they could, they could play every rush, lick, you know, on guitar, there was no place for them.
• 17:54
  Dave Kropf: So they just went into the industries.
• 17:56
  Dave Kropf: Meanwhile the the program's just churning out performance majors and band directors and we're all either like not getting jobs or whatever.
• 18:06
  Dave Kropf: Meanwhile the industry guys are going getting jobs at music stores.
• 18:09
  Dave Kropf: They're running record labels, right, they're, they're signing and you're right.
• 18:13
  Dave Kropf: If we're being honest and this is what I really really appreciate, you, man, appreciate about you is it was looked, they were looked down upon.
• 18:22
  Dave Kropf: So I just want to apologize.
• 18:24
  Dave Kropf: They don't listen to this podcast, I'm just putting it out into the universe.
• 18:28
  Dave Kropf: I apologize for being a schmuck about that.
• 18:31
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, and I was the same, you know, I kind of adopted that same.
• 18:34
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Well, they must not be real musicians or what.
• 18:36
  Jameson Nathan Jones: They must not be that good, right, yeah, yeah.
• 18:39
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So it's a weird thing.
• 18:41
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But then also, you know, it's sort of the self fulfilling prophecy that I think a lot of artists have in the classical world in particular, where it's like, oh well, not as many people can or want to do this, so it must make what I'm doing superior to you know, yeah, and it, it, it is hard and that's another thing to give to give the classical world and the jazz world some credit and some understanding of why they develop that mentality.
• 19:12
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It is incredibly difficult.
• 19:14
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's like I've likened it before to being a professional athlete level of discipline that you have to have to perform at that level without the pay that comes along with being a professional athlete, obviously.
• 19:28
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I think when you're that high, when you have to be that hyper focus is something it's very easy to get tunnel vision and just be like, well, everybody else is just not worth my time.
• 19:38
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That's right, you know so, but it's just.
• 19:41
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's just a totally different, different world.
• 19:43
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, I had a it's not a world I wanted to, to live in forever.
• 19:46
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, I had a.
• 19:47
  Dave Kropf: I knew I wasn't cut out to be a performance major when I saw a percussionist friend of mine spend four hours working on tambourine thumb roll technique like in a practice room for four hours just for four straight hours so that he could play this one part in an orchestra and ultimately, I think his goal was to go get gigs at orchestra in orchestras highly competitive you mentioned professional athletes that it's as competitive and you have as much of a chance getting a being the principal Tempanius, for you know the New York Phil or even you know the Greensboro Phil.
• 20:25
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Greensboro.
• 20:26
  Dave Kropf: North Carolina.
• 20:26
  Dave Kropf: You know, as an athlete does, of being a professional athlete, which boggled my mind, which is why I wanted to be a film composer.
• 20:35
  Dave Kropf: Even though it was kind of like downplayed, it was seen as kind of less than, let alone like game music.
• 20:41
  Dave Kropf: You want to make music for video games.
• 20:43
  Dave Kropf: How dare you Video games off of children?
• 20:46
  Dave Kropf: I mean, fast forward 30 years, yeah, and those are that's how you're able to make a living.
• 20:54
  Dave Kropf: So I, like I said, I really appreciate how you just you speak truth to that and like in your video about music degrees being a waste of time.
• 21:04
  Dave Kropf: I love the fact that you said that going to school isn't necessarily a waste of time.
• 21:11
  Dave Kropf: You, there are advantages, but music degrees aren't required.
• 21:18
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Is it?
• 21:18
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, the piece of paper.
• 21:19
  Jameson Nathan Jones: The piece of paper is worthless, right, the piece.
• 21:23
  Jameson Nathan Jones: No one cares about the piece of paper.
• 21:25
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yep, I gained experience through that that I now view as like my superpowers.
• 21:32
  Jameson Nathan Jones: If you know, that's a very conceited way to put it.
• 21:35
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I don't literally think I have superpowers, but but I view that as things that set me apart from everybody else who's doing similar things.
• 21:44
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, it's like, well, I've, I, you know, say what you want.
• 21:48
  Jameson Nathan Jones: A Lot of the music in the classical world has lasted a long time, and there's a reason for it.
• 21:55
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's because it's really well crafted, yeah, most of the time.
• 21:57
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And so getting exposed all that and getting to know all of that music really intimately, I can't do anything but help, right, and Then go on to influence my own style In some way, even if it's subconsciously so.
• 22:14
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I've, I've come to like, if you had asked me right out of school, I was so burned out I would have been like, yeah, I wish I'd never done that and just had started learning a DAW sooner, and like doing my own thing.
• 22:26
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But now, with a little more age and maturity and more gray hairs, it's, it's started starting to become excuse me, clear to me that it was kind of a necessary thing to get me where I am Today.
• 22:44
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But.
• 22:44
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But when people ask me for advice I get nervous about giving advice in any way Because I don't live their life experience.
• 22:53
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But yeah.
• 22:54
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Um, it's, it's how expensive it is is what makes me really question, like should like this.
• 23:00
  Jameson Nathan Jones: This is not for everybody.
• 23:02
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, as somebody with, you know, crippling student debt myself, both my wife and I.
• 23:06
  Dave Kropf: I totally understand that.
• 23:07
  Dave Kropf: Would I trade it?
• 23:09
  Dave Kropf: I don't think so.
• 23:11
  Dave Kropf: I mean, there I have not just lifelong friendships, but um the skills that I learned along the way you can learn them, you know, through youtube videos you can learn some of those skills, like with private teacher.
• 23:21
  Dave Kropf: But that experience was, you know, like in the movie inside out.
• 23:27
  Dave Kropf: Right there there are some core Memories, there are some core personality, professionalism, some core beliefs that were really etched, etched into the Mount Rushmore of my id.
• 23:42
  Dave Kropf: That occurred during my time in school.
• 23:45
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That I'm not sure I would be quite the same, I wouldn't be the same shape If I, if I didn't go have that experience no doubt, yeah it, it will change you in some way, no doubt, and that that applies to to every experience that we have kind of culminates Into what we end up eventually becoming.
• 24:07
  Dave Kropf: so, yeah, and I think, as long as you don't, as long as you're not going to school to get the paper, I think that's if you're going to school to absorb as much as you can in a super constant, like super concentrated, and we're talking about, like you know, those little vitamin c tablets you can take to fight off a cold.
• 24:24
  Dave Kropf: That's it's what it is super concentrated environment.
• 24:27
  Dave Kropf: You set aside, you know, three to four years of your life to pour, because what I, what I realize is, you know, in the moment, you don't realize how kind of Special this time is and how free you are from, like, mortgages and family and everything.
• 24:43
  Dave Kropf: It really is a very, very fertile time to pour into bettering yourself and your craft.
• 24:50
  Dave Kropf: That's really hard to come by.
• 24:52
  Dave Kropf: I know I I watched out of school the first time.
• 24:55
  Dave Kropf: You know, eight years later went back to school and had a completely different appreciation for the college experience and I'm looking at Folks like not paying attention or sleeping in class.
• 25:07
  Dave Kropf: You know wondering why the tests are so hard and like the professor is literally telling you the answers All you have to do is just be awake and, and you can, you can get it.
• 25:17
  Dave Kropf: But but anyway, I want to.
• 25:20
  Dave Kropf: I want to change gears a little bit.
• 25:21
  Dave Kropf: Um, because I could talk about like elitism and all that stuff all day, but, um, I want to talk about another one of your videos, the uh, how content kills Creativity.
• 25:34
  Dave Kropf: Because you know 52 cues, we focus, um, like laser focused, on production and library music, and I know you have some experience in that.
• 25:43
  Dave Kropf: But library music, more so than like film music and game music, sits so squarely at the intersection of commerce and art.
• 25:53
  Dave Kropf: The music we're playing is in the background.
• 25:55
  Dave Kropf: You know, it's For lack of a better term if we're just keeping it 100 here.
• 25:59
  Dave Kropf: It's pretty disposable.
• 26:01
  Dave Kropf: It has to sound great.
• 26:03
  Dave Kropf: But, it doesn't have to be necessarily art, with it with a capital a, and I wanted to get your take on that and, how you know, I call it the artisan mentality, right, I don't consider myself an artist, I'm an artisan, um, but I wanted to get your take because you have a really Really good perspective on that, knowing that you've done some library and production music.
• 26:26
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, yeah, I did.
• 26:27
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Um, you know, as I started getting into it more and got better at production and everything, I was like, well, this makes sense for me to do this and, of course, my first thought was, well, I'll just make whatever I want and then people will Take it and use it how I feel like it should be used right, not really the way it works turns out Um, yeah, you're.
• 26:47
  Jameson Nathan Jones: You actually took exactly what I was going to say.
• 26:49
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's a you're, you're an artisan in that case.
• 26:51
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So like, let's say, you're a carpenter and somebody is like Well, I need you to make me a chair and it needs to serve this purpose, right, and I need to be able to sit in it for long periods and it be comfortable and me not really notice the chair, right, and you're like I got it, I know exactly what you need, and you go and you make the most ordinate chair that has, like, uh, rhinestones on the bottom, because you feel like that's what you need to do and that's like where the person is supposed to sit, but you don't think about them actually having to sit in the chair, right, that's the only way you can express yourself.
• 27:23
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, that line I just felt like for me, those rhinestones in the seat of the chair.
• 27:27
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Was my artistic voice coming through Right?
• 27:31
  Dave Kropf: so I need you to comfortable.
• 27:32
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That and that's on you.
• 27:33
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Really, I mean exactly.
• 27:35
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I mean, why wouldn't you want to sit on rhinestones?
• 27:38
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And then the person gets the chair and they're like what the hell is this?
• 27:44
  Jameson Nathan Jones: This is not even remotely what I asked for.
• 27:47
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's not going to serve the purpose that I wanted it to serve.
• 27:52
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I can't use this chair.
• 27:52
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I'm sorry, and that was kind of my realization, because I do.
• 27:59
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I do strongly and this is one reason I've kind of gone the direction with my career that I have and I don't do a lot of production music anymore, because it just wasn't for me really, and that's an okay thing to say.
• 28:10
  Jameson Nathan Jones: If it's not for you, you shouldn't do it, because that's exactly what you'll be asked to do is make the chair to do, is make music that serves a specific purpose, that's laser, focused on what the brief requires, right, and a lot of times it's not exactly what you want to be doing.
• 28:30
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I I went a different direction when it's like well, I started to have a little bit of success With my own music, well, backing up a little further when I wanted to get into film scoring.
• 28:46
  Jameson Nathan Jones: This does relate, I promise, when I wanted to get into film scoring.
• 28:51
  Jameson Nathan Jones: We'll see if I actually tie back.
• 28:53
  Jameson Nathan Jones: When I wanted to get into film scoring early on, I was like well, it seems to me there are two ways to do it.
• 28:58
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I can move to la, which I was about to do, and I don't know anybody out there.
• 29:03
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I'm just going to start trying to write like hon Zimmer and hope that somebody hires me.
• 29:07
  Dave Kropf: That's right.
• 29:08
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, if I build a little come.
• 29:11
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And I think that's kind of the approach that a lot of people take.
• 29:13
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It didn't take me long to realize that everybody else is doing that.
• 29:17
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I probably won't have a great deal of success being hon Zimmer better than hon Zimmer.
• 29:23
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Um, so Then I said I started to notice composers like our artists, like Olafur Arnold's, who is kind of in the same kind of similar genre that I tend to make music in as well now.
• 29:38
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Um, and what I noticed was he was getting film scoring work, but they didn't come to Olafur Arnold's and ask him to make a hon Zimmer cue.
• 29:46
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That came to him because he sounded like him, right, and that was interesting.
• 29:50
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And then, you know, trent resner also seemed to be doing something kind of similar and having a reasonable amount of success.
• 29:57
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But nobody goes to Trent resner and is like, hey, can you write this big epic hybrid Orchestral cue for a?
• 30:04
  Jameson Nathan Jones: They want Trent resner to sound like Trent resner.
• 30:07
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I was like maybe that's my way in is to figure out what unique things I have to say, get as good as I can at Making music in my own unique voice, using all of that background that I had to kind of differentiate myself maybe from some other people and just go all in on that and just focus on being a recording artist and then kind of like you said, if I build it they will come and that kind of worked.
• 30:35
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Uh, I was able to get some film scoring work and stuff like that.
• 30:38
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I'm not saying I've done anything, that anyone whatever I've heard of, but I've done some indie, some indie films and things like that.
• 30:45
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Knowing no one, having no connections, I still live in Mississippi.
• 30:49
  Jameson Nathan Jones: There is no film music World here.
• 30:53
  Jameson Nathan Jones: There's not much of anything here.
• 30:56
  Dave Kropf: There are a lot of cows, a lot of cows football on the weekends.
• 31:00
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That's pretty much it.
• 31:00
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Um, I think there are those kind of two ways to go about it.
• 31:05
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But if you're going to go and so that's why, when I got into the production music world, see, I'm tying it back in- Well um, I, I kind of I realized that that was very similar To just trying to get a job as a film composer, when you've done nothing to that point and having to then conform to whatever the director wants you to do.
• 31:28
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Right, and while I do think it's important to have a wide skill set, I just wasn't super interested in writing every kind of genre.
• 31:37
  Jameson Nathan Jones: You know what I mean.
• 31:38
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, and that's the kind of thing you to really be good at production music, you have to be, um, pretty skilled at writing a wide range of things.
• 31:47
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Uh, at least in my experience, right, and even even the production music that I have done I did after I was a little bit established as an artist, so they usually weren't coming to me with, like, the Han Zimmer stuff, but they would come to me because they knew I like synthesizers with, like, can you write the synth pop thing or whatever.
• 32:04
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And I was like, well, I don't really do that, but I could try it.
• 32:06
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And then I kind of had to learn how to write in that way, which was good, um, even though it wasn't what I ultimately wanted to do forever, you know.
• 32:16
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So, um, there's, there's tremendous value, even if you don't ultimately want to do that and at least trying it for a while.
• 32:23
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I think Um well yeah, you're totally, you're totally right.
• 32:26
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's not the same as just like imposing your vision On whatever project.
• 32:33
  Dave Kropf: Yeah and it's, it's a it's a relatively low risk environment to get better, Like, let's say, like you know what I kind of like writing hip hop beats, but I don't want to necessarily write like commercially released hip hop or whatever, but I want to do a Ludwig Gernsson kind of like mashup kind of thing.
• 32:52
  Dave Kropf: Right, Yep, it's relatively low risk you know, that's true.
• 32:57
  Dave Kropf: Because it's not you as an artist putting your stuff out there.
• 33:00
  Dave Kropf: And then I hope somebody validates me.
• 33:03
  Dave Kropf: It's nothing like that and you speak a lot to kind of or kind of.
• 33:10
  Dave Kropf: What you're getting at is like the burnout, the creative emptiness.
• 33:16
  Dave Kropf: You know where you're not feeling fulfilled.
• 33:18
  Dave Kropf: And I have found success in finding the thing that you really like, doing that kind of just flows out of your muse or whatever.
• 33:29
  Dave Kropf: And then looking at the segment of the production music industry that most closely aligns right, it's not gonna be a 100% fit, Just like you know that your presidential candidate of choice isn't going to be 100%.
• 33:47
  Dave Kropf: You're like straight down your values, you find the one that matches the most and you vote for them.
• 33:53
  Dave Kropf: In theory that's a whole other project, but for production music I have found that, like my spirit, animals are, like Thomas Newman, right, Love me some Bear McCreary right, I love me.
• 34:11
  Dave Kropf: Danny Elfman, you know like with a little hint of like Bob Ross, right yeah.
• 34:17
  Dave Kropf: And so if I can find production music that fills that and then start pitching it, getting some placements, getting into some libraries till eventually, hopefully, if this all works well, then the library will start taking your work as you, because you've it's like you know if you're a sushi chef.
• 34:38
  Dave Kropf: here comes yet another analogy you know you're gonna learn to make California rolls over and over and over, but eventually people will come to your restaurant because they want the sushi that you make.
• 34:47
  Dave Kropf: I don't know, or maybe I just need lunch.
• 34:50
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Maybe I just hugged you.
• 34:51
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It is about that timing, yeah, but I think, oh, that's right.
• 34:55
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, it's a real challenge and keeping an artist in mentality and struggling with being fulfilled, and do you think that's what it was?
• 35:04
  Dave Kropf: That kind of just drew you away from it, like fundamentally it just wasn't rewarding enough, are you?
• 35:09
  Jameson Nathan Jones: just gonna be lost around creatively.
• 35:11
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I think it was the volume of it and the fact that I didn't feel like I had enough time to do my own thing, which I still very much wanted to remain my focus, you know, because I was already, you know, somewhat established as a recording artist at that point.
• 35:31
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So, yeah, it was taking a little bit too much of my time, I guess, to the amount of time that you would really need to devote to it, which is another thing maybe people don't consider is, like you know, when they call or send you an email, you know, at 10 o'clock on a Friday night, there goes your weekend sometimes.
• 35:52
  Jameson Nathan Jones: You know if the client needs the brief in 24 or 48 hours, you gotta get it there.
• 35:59
  Jameson Nathan Jones: You know that's right, and that was not really what I wanted to be taking up so much of my time, you know, and you know in your art isn't content a video.
• 36:14
  Dave Kropf: You know you talk about giving yourself time for experimentation, you know, for play, and just the sheer volume of cues you need to produce.
• 36:22
  Dave Kropf: That's not really possible.
• 36:23
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That's kind of what I felt like I was missing.
• 36:25
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And I'm a big proponent of, like, making your own sounds and stuff and a lot of the comments that I get on those cause I love synthesis, right, and sound design.
• 36:33
  Jameson Nathan Jones: At this point, now that I figured out what those, that those things exist, right, and I get a lot of the pushback that I get on those kinds of videos is like, well, I don't have time to use anything but presets and I'm like I get it, you know, and I'm kind of that's not exactly what I'm talking about, right, and even though I do think you benefit if you do set aside some time from experimentation and then you have tools you can draw on in making your own sounds and you can get there faster, you know, yeah, but yeah, it was really a time issue and the fact that it was taking out parts of my schedule that I wasn't comfortable with in relation to the rewards, which is it's oftentimes at least with some of the companies that I've worked with kind of a zero sum possibility of, like, you know, some of them do pay, you know, if you write a cue, but a lot of them only pay if it's the one that's chosen, which means that they've sent it to 10 composers.
• 37:35
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So you got a one in 10 chance of being paid and you've just worked all weekend on it.
• 37:40
  Dave Kropf: And if you make air and then it might be nine to 12 months later before you've seen royalties.
• 37:44
  Dave Kropf: Exactly, yeah, exactly.
• 37:46
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So those are all the things that I didn't know going in and kind of took me by surprise, I guess, and at the same time I was also thinking I should start, you know, developing something that is mine, that I have ownership over, and that was about the time I was getting started with the YouTube channel as well, and then I realized how much time that was gonna take and I had to choose one or the other.
• 38:10
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, and I think it's fantastic that you recognize that.
• 38:12
  Dave Kropf: You know what this isn't for me.
• 38:14
  Dave Kropf: You know I've talked on this channel production music isn't for everybody, just like, you know, painting houses isn't for everybody.
• 38:20
  Jameson Nathan Jones: or being a world-class guitarist, you know, isn't for everybody, and that's completely okay I also yeah, it doesn't mean it's bad and it doesn't mean that it's not a necessity.
• 38:30
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Like it needs, that music needs to exist.
• 38:33
  Dave Kropf: It serves a purpose, Yep so somebody's gonna make air on Temptation Island, right?
• 38:37
  Dave Kropf: Somebody's gonna get that placement.
• 38:39
  Dave Kropf: Why not you, if you have that desire?
• 38:41
  Dave Kropf: What I have found has helped is making sure that I have some other creative outlets, whether it's teaching, whether it's creating YouTube videos, whether it's just, you know, learning to write novels, you know, or writing motorcycles or whatever right.
• 38:58
  Dave Kropf: Having some other outlet so that all of your eggs isn't in this basket, because if all you do is wake up and then just make waffles all day, you're gonna get so sick of making waffles.
• 39:09
  Dave Kropf: It's like man, I just need to make an omelet, but you know they keep ordering waffles, so that can be a real challenge.
• 39:17
  Jameson Nathan Jones: You're making me really hungry, by the way.
• 39:18
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, it's about lunchtime here.
• 39:22
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Only food analogies from here on out.
• 39:23
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Only food analogies.
• 39:25
  Dave Kropf: So don't put all of your eggs in one basket.
• 39:28
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And omelets.
• 39:29
  Dave Kropf: that's all I got on it, and omelets and with bacon artisan bacon from people who really want to make bacon.
• 39:36
  Dave Kropf: Let's change gears just a little bit here, because you touched on the things that really come out of you, and that is synthesis and sound design.
• 39:48
  Dave Kropf: I'd love to hear about your composing process, your video on how, like Mario, taught me to finish music.
• 39:55
  Dave Kropf: That's really.
• 39:56
  Dave Kropf: I did an episode about everything I learned from gaming you know, and how it applies to being a production music composer.
• 40:03
  Dave Kropf: Talk a little bit about your process and how your classical training, your theory brain, your piano chops how does that all kind of dovetail together?
• 40:16
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Well, it's something that's kind of ever-evolving I think it's been.
• 40:20
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I hate to use the word struggle because it's a struggle.
• 40:24
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I've really enjoyed trying to figure out how to like blend those two worlds together, because when I started getting involved I really I found that I really loved the textures and the sounds that I heard in ambient music, but I didn't always necessarily love the fact that harmonically and melodically there wasn't a lot going on, and that's not a judgment on that style of music.
• 40:48
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's still very beautiful even if you just have a drone that continues for you know, 10 minutes or whatever.
• 40:54
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And the interesting thing was the texture variation to me.
• 40:58
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But it's like, hmm, how can I combine kind of that world with the more linear, I guess more traditional style that I used to write in and still like to write in, like for solo piano, which I still do a lot of writing for Kind of makes sense right.
• 41:15
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So now I'm still like, even if it's all synthesizers, I still like to incorporate some sort of, some sort of through line or some sort of linear writing that's really well thought out, so that I'm thinking in terms like, for instance, a chord progression to me is not necessarily just like a chord progression as we would think of it in a pop song.
• 41:43
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's more like a chance to do part writing, but with synthesizers.
• 41:49
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I'm doing like I'm an organist as well.
• 41:54
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That's actually my full-time gig is I'm a church organist and so I've got a lot of experience playing chorales and with this kind of understanding like, okay, moving in contrary motion and each voice is really its own melody, right, and that kind of thing isn't really considered a lot in synthesizer music that I hear anyway I'm sure it exists out there so kind of combining those elements with the interesting sound design which I also can get lost just making patches for hours and it's just like where did the time go?
• 42:28
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I love trying to combine those worlds with varying degrees of success.
• 42:35
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Sometimes it doesn't work out, I think, and sometimes it does, and I just love the experiment of trying to bring those two worlds kind of together and it's an ongoing experiment for me.
• 42:50
  Dave Kropf: Do you find that the hardware manipulation Cause I know you've talked about going DAW-less and all of that Is that like a necessity, or is that just something that just kind of unlocks another level?
• 43:04
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's not a necessity at all.
• 43:06
  Jameson Nathan Jones: In fact I've gotten more careful lately to be sure that I try to convey that you don't have to have all the gear, especially these days right, you can do it all in the box if you want.
• 43:18
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But for me, I think, also as a performer and growing up as a performer having the hands-on ability to change things, to just reach out and grab a knob I have a synth right in front of me here.
• 43:32
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That's why I keep looking at it.
• 43:35
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, I just realized you couldn't see that the tactile interaction with something is something that I connect with very much from a performance background and also the fact that it makes me do different things.
• 43:49
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Like I've discovered that I'll turn a knob, like on a synth with an analog mixer, I'll turn that knob past where it distorts, whereas if I'm clicking with a mouse, for some reason I never go to extremes, and so then I never kind of find all the sweet spots I've discovered for myself.
• 44:07
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I think you just interact with it in a different way and it definitely changes the way you work.
• 44:15
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But it is also true that the end listener doesn't care, right, like they don't care what you made it on If it moves them emotionally, that's all they care about.
• 44:27
  Jameson Nathan Jones: But I do think it affects the way that you create and also with hardware you're kind of forced to commit to things in a way that you're not necessarily.
• 44:39
  Jameson Nathan Jones: If you just have everything in midi all the time that the dog can change.
• 44:43
  Dave Kropf: The choices matter right, because it's about to be locked in and it is a heavy lift to try to get back to where you were, either mentally or even physically, if you got knobs and everything.
• 44:57
  Dave Kropf: I've been learning guitar lately, so I've got my little dinky four pedal pedal board because there is something about having a guitar pedal and tweaking a knob and that instant reaction and there's something to the tangibility that I think unlocks a creative connection, a neural pathway.
• 45:19
  Dave Kropf: That it's not that it doesn't exist in the digital space.
• 45:24
  Dave Kropf: I just think it's tougher to happen.
• 45:28
  Dave Kropf: It's not as natural.
• 45:30
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, there are limitations that you're forced into that kind of channel your creativity with hardware, I've found, whereas you can implement those limitations in the DAW if you even know what they are.
• 45:45
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And to me that took having experience with the hardware to realize what the limitations were and now I can use the DAW in a different way.
• 45:53
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Does that make sense?
• 45:55
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Oh yeah, totally so.
• 45:56
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's not just like when I first opened the DAW, you know, I was right out of a master's degree and piano had no idea what I was doing.
• 46:03
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's like what is a limiter, what's a compressor?
• 46:05
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I don't know, it was way overwhelming and everything just kind of sounded bland.
• 46:14
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And the DAW is so clean, everything kind of sounded.
• 46:19
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I think I've called it hospital-esque.
• 46:22
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, antiseptic right.
• 46:24
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, exactly Like two.
• 46:26
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And I don't mean clean in terms of a good mix, because the mixes were terrible, but I mean clean in terms of there was no character to anything.
• 46:34
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I was just clinical precision, exactly exactly.
• 46:38
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So, yeah, it was a process, because I didn't.
• 46:41
  Jameson Nathan Jones: The only teaching I had, and that was watching YouTube videos and figuring it out.
• 46:46
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So getting hardware, even just a few pieces of hardware, helped me kind of understand.
• 46:52
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Oh okay, well, a filter does this and I can limit the frequency range of something and then things fit together when I'm stacking and layering.
• 46:59
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Well, I could just do that with an EQ and the DAW, but now I realize how drastic some of those EQ changes for sound design need to be.
• 47:09
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, yeah, because when you see it on a knob it might just be a 30% knob tweak, but what you're really doing is like a 15 decibel sweep or filter that looks like bonkers to actually do it.
• 47:23
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, I would have never done that, Like I kept hearing everybody in their mixing videos talk about well, let's solve the subtle changes.
• 47:29
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I never did anything that made a difference really.
• 47:33
  Dave Kropf: And then you felt like gaslighted because you didn't hear it.
• 47:35
  Dave Kropf: I think I hear it, I don't hear it, I'm terrible.
• 47:37
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's like man.
• 47:38
  Jameson Nathan Jones: How did I get through music school with ears this bad?
• 47:42
  Dave Kropf: Well, I mean, going back to our first topic, that it's not really taught.
• 47:46
  Dave Kropf: I mean, we had one electronic music class and it was basically how to run digital performer and this is MIDI.
• 47:53
  Dave Kropf: And yeah, the schools don't really prepare you for any of that.
• 47:58
  Dave Kropf: Again, all those industry cats, they got all of that business, but the ad majors, no, we didn't see that.
• 48:06
  Dave Kropf: But I think the the other thing is when you get a piece of hardware, I think you really commit to it.
• 48:11
  Dave Kropf: Like I have spent more time Like working with my little pedal board here.
• 48:16
  Dave Kropf: I'm like, okay, this is a compressor and it only has three knobs, but how do I really get sound?
• 48:22
  Dave Kropf: Whereas if I have a plug-in, I'm just like, okay, preset, preset, no, no, no, here's I have literally Five or six other compressors I can choose from.
• 48:32
  Dave Kropf: You know, I in logic, I have like seven compressors in one plug-in and it's easy to get super overwhelmed, it's easy to get lost and it's easy to just keep, keep scrolling.
• 48:42
  Dave Kropf: But if you have a piece of hardware, I think you're gonna commit to learning it a little bit better.
• 48:47
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Totally, that is a hundred percent true.
• 48:49
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, it's one of the beauties of modular as well Modular sense and, like the matriarch, which the semi modular scent then has no presets at all.
• 48:57
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That's the one that I keep looking at.
• 48:58
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, it's a.
• 49:01
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's a matter of exploring it, because you have a limited number of resources and also you spent more money on it, so you tend to put in a little more time To really learn the thing.
• 49:14
  Jameson Nathan Jones: And and I've actually stopped buying synthesizers at this point because I found that I was kind of just skating across the surface.
• 49:23
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I almost, I was almost becoming a collector and it's like I don't want to do that.
• 49:27
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I want to use all of them for what they're good at doing and I can't go deep enough into any one of them to really discover that if I keep buying them.
• 49:35
  Jameson Nathan Jones: So I'm on a, I want to buying pause.
• 49:39
  Jameson Nathan Jones: At least at least for the next half hour, you know at least until the Black Friday sales come in.
• 49:44
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, right, yeah.
• 49:46
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, I'm kind of that way as well, like I am on a like an orchestral plug-in pause, mmm, like don't come at me, spitfire, don't, don't, don't come at me 8d.
• 49:55
  Dave Kropf: Oh, I'm just, I'm not gonna do it.
• 49:57
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, it's overwhelming.
• 49:58
  Dave Kropf: But yeah, but the but the mixing plug-its and the presets, like your video, I felt, I felt totally called out on your quit buying presets video Because my my path to learning Omnisphere, for example, mm-hmm, because you open it up and you're like hey, wow, close, because it's so overwhelming.
• 50:17
  Dave Kropf: But getting presets, specifically from Matt Boudler of the unfinished he makes these amazing presets and Because it's Omnisphere, I could look and look at all of his programming, yeah, and so it was through seeing his programming that I that I really started to understand.
• 50:37
  Dave Kropf: Now His next preset patch, I'm gonna buy it on day one, but I do feel a little Released from that kind of box.
• 50:48
  Dave Kropf: If it's not in the preset I can't.
• 50:49
  Dave Kropf: I just kind of keep scrolling presets because that is, that is creative molasses, right, that is, that is sandpaper in the gears of your creative, yeah, of your creative engine, and it just stops the whole process is no, no, patch after patch after patch.
• 51:06
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, for sure, and I think I even Mentioned in that video like it's not really anti preset, it's just like don't only use presets all all the time, you know, because I saw that.
• 51:18
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I say that as someone who has sold scent presets, so it's not like.
• 51:21
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I'm, you know, gonna be like hey, don't buy any presets Except for mine.
• 51:27
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Exactly why, why you should only buy my presets.
• 51:31
  Dave Kropf: That's my next YouTube video.
• 51:33
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Actually, yeah, okay, but yeah, I think I pointed out in that video that, like you can reverse engineer patches, it's a great way to learn yeah, great way to learn synthesis or, you know, sound design or anything else, totally valid.
• 51:46
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, well, well, nathan, again, thank you so much for joining.
• 51:49
  Dave Kropf: If folks want to hear from you, where, where can they find you?
• 51:54
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's Jameson Nathan Jones pretty much everywhere.
• 51:57
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Instagram.
• 51:58
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Youtube is probably where our most active these days been really focused on the YouTube channel in the last couple years, coming up on now Just starting to get into to offering some some coaching and courses and that kind of thing on composition, since I kind of come from a unique background, yeah, with all of that.
• 52:20
  Dave Kropf: So yeah, I get all that stuff rolling.
• 52:22
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, I think you occupy rarefied air like church organist who is also into modular synth, since it says that's gonna be a really small Facebook.
• 52:30
  Jameson Nathan Jones: I mean, I imagine it's a.
• 52:32
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It's a story as old as time itself.
• 52:34
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Right, the guy learns the church organ, the pipe organ, and then gets into modular sense.
• 52:38
  Dave Kropf: It's just you know very standard stuff.
• 52:41
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, where's the?
• 52:42
  Dave Kropf: Where's the Disney musical on that story?
• 52:44
  Dave Kropf: I want to know exactly.
• 52:45
  Dave Kropf: Yeah, and speaking of composition, you also have an e-book that folks can, can, do, get.
• 52:50
  Dave Kropf: That is that bitly slash free composition guide.
• 52:53
  Dave Kropf: We're gonna have the link to that in our show notes.
• 52:57
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, that that is absolutely free.
• 52:59
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Yeah, it's kind of just some techniques that have helped me.
• 53:03
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That kind of come from my classical background and studying with Mr Zaninelli.
• 53:07
  Jameson Nathan Jones: That I've applied kind of to the stuff that I make now and it's really kind of helped focus my creativity in a world where I was way overwhelmed with all of the options you know in sound design and everything that I was presented with.
• 53:23
  Dave Kropf: It was great writing that because and making videos about that, those topics, because it kind of reminds me as well of like, oh yeah, I need to get back to this myself you know, it's fantastic, your perspective is so valuable and and your unique perspective, I mean there are many of us, you know, music school refugees, who are trying to like carve out a living in in music, for media or as artists, and much of which weren't necessarily we weren't prepared through music school itself.
• 53:54
  Dave Kropf: So I think you have, yeah, a hugely valuable perspective.
• 53:57
  Dave Kropf: So, thank you, thank you so much for joining me.
• 54:00
  Jameson Nathan Jones: Thank you, dave.
• 54:00
  Jameson Nathan Jones: It was a pleasure to be on, really enjoyed it.
• 54:04
  Dave Kropf: Once again, a huge word of thanks to Nathan for joining me on the podcast today and, as always, we'll have his links in the description below, so please be sure to check those out.
• 54:12
  Dave Kropf: And also a huge word of thanks to the member subscribers of 52 cues, who pay their Actual, real-life money to keep all of this going.
• 54:20
  Dave Kropf: We are 100% community supported.
• 54:23
  Dave Kropf: So if you like what I do here, don't thank me, thank them.
• 54:26
  Dave Kropf: But if you want to learn more about how you can support 52 cues and also get all of those subscriber perks, then head over to 52 cues, comm and join us.
• 54:35
  Dave Kropf: Remember it's free to join and membership start at just four bucks a month.
• 54:41
  Dave Kropf: You definitely want to tune in next week, where I am going to be asking what happens After the library wants your cue from, from timelines to expectations, to etiquette, to deliverables.
• 54:56
  Dave Kropf: What are the chain of events that get kicked off when the library says yes?
• 55:01
  Dave Kropf: So you definitely want to tune in.
• 55:03
  Dave Kropf: And why don't you smash that subscribe so that you never miss an episode?
• 55:08
  Dave Kropf: But that's gonna do it for me this week.
• 55:10
  Dave Kropf: I hope you've had a fantastic week so far and I know that the rest of your week is going to be amazing.
• 55:17
  Dave Kropf: And how do I know that, friends?
• 55:18
  Dave Kropf: Because I trust and believe that the universe has amazing plans Just for you.
• 55:24
  Dave Kropf: Until next time, peace.