The Love You've Claimed Was Just a Whisper
Drop Down
I really hated flying. I did it only when necessary and if driving wasn't a option. For Joel Zimmerman I bored a plane no questions asked and full of excitement. Where did that lead me you ask. Well I had a delayed flight out of both LAX and New York where I should have had a 45 minute layover. Instead I had a 4 hour delay and then despite that an earlier than newly calculated arrival into Toronto where we taxied an additional half hour before being able to escape the air craft. All of than meant my original arrival time of 5:30p.m. that would have allowed me to get to have dinner with Joel turned into me getting into Toronto at 11:45 p.m. and that's not counting the time it took to get to my hotel.
I had texted Joel during each of these delays and retarded airport miscalculations. He promised me Greek food for lunch as a break from our business discussion, since he found me amusing. In the mean time I indulged in so 24hr room service of my hotel, which was quite nice. It was equip with a flat screen, 2 queen beds, all the hook ups for an iPod/Phone to watch movies or charge them. My favorite thing despite being on the 13th floor was the shower. It had a rain fall shower head and could have fit at least 4 people. I considered this and the room service Canada's way of apologizing for my shitty flight.
Despite all of that I was still ecstatic to be in Canada with a meeting in less than 12 hours with one of the biggest names in EDM. Somewhere in the midst of exhaustion and 5 layer red velvet cake that served as my desert, I fell asleep.
"You guys have been amazing! For this last song I wanna do something a little special. I fucking love this girl, she's an amazing producer and an even more incredible singer so right here right now I'm calling her out. Can I get Aaliyah Gates up here!" Sonny Moore was calling me out in front of everyone. I felt someone, probably Jordan, push me forward towards the DJ hub which I climbed. I was in shock, my biggest dream and fear were coming true, I'd almost missed that he said he loved me - almost.
"Aaliyah Gates, will you this last song with me?" he said into the mic looking at me with those gorgeous brown eyes. He was done with my private refusals and as the crowed cheered he new I couldn't say no. Not this time. I said grabbing the mic.
"How could I ever say no." I smiled into the mic. It was Aly the performer time, not all the quirky goofy girl who made an idiot out of herself frequently in front of him.
"Good, I need you to sing." he said to only me before taking the mic back.
"You guys ready?" they cheered in response. "Good cause - " I took the mic back
"Because my names Aly and sometimes I sing." I smiled repeating his words from a performance with 12th planet. Then the music started.
"You got me so wild. How can I every deny. You got me so high, so high I cannot feel the fire.
And you keep telling me, telling me that you'll be sweet. And you'll never want to leave my side. So long as I don't break these.."
I opened my eyes to find myself in bed still. I wasn't on a stage with Skrillex telling me he loved me. That was a dream. Being in Canada - not a dream. I was meeting Joel in a few hours! I could let the untimely wake up go this time. I reached over and turned off my alarm before ordering some room service, an iced mocha and coffee cake, and heading to the bathroom to shower. My meeting with Joel wasn't for 3 more hours, I'd set my alarm to allow for appropriate grooming and wardrobe changes to be made along with any last minute compulsions to jump around in fits of happy lunacy. I was in the middle of one when my breakfast showed up. And in my euphoria I had opened the door in just my bra and underwear with my long wet her a giant shaken out mess. It wasn't until the poor kids stood staring wide eyed that I realized my error.
I apologized of course, although I'm pretty sure he should have been apologizing for eye raping me. I DJed half naked more often then not and knew that the site had to have been pretty fucking fantastic. After that incident I opted for a pair of black jeggings. This way if I had to open the door I at least two-thirds of the way dressed. By the time I did decide on a white and black 3/4 sleeve casual blazer and deep ocean blue camie topped off by silver flats I had finished my break fast and latte and had my hair straightened and teased to perfection. The only thing I did have left was applying the finishing touches of my make up which was a cream shadow with brown smudged into the crease between the cream the highlight shade and a nice black cat-eye line that disappeared into the brown. the black and light browns made my eyes pop being a green-blue in color rather than the solid blue of my siblings.
By the time all of this was done, I had just enough time to grab a taxi before heading to Joel's. My hotel was fairly close to Joel's building; I'd have walked if it wasn't for the fact that I had brought the printout version of Jade's artist package, my 2 hard drives projects I was still working on, and of course my laptop. According to his instructions I'd have to lug all of this into the ground floor, take an elevator to the 3rd floor lobby where after getting the all clear from the receptionist, I could access the elevators that would take me the rest of the way to his floor so I was okay with paying a 7 dollar cab fair to avoid being a sweaty tired mess when I finally got to meet him. Somehow when I got into the elevator my stomach decided to stay in the lobby while my heart jumped into my throat. I'm entirely sure how I managed to knock on his door.
"Hey!" Joel smiled opening the door. "Come in. Welcome finally! Sorry about the flight, I'm beginning to wonder if the airport likes to just screw with people who know me."
"It's fine." I smiled following him down the hall. "I consider it lucky there were no screaming babies."
"Ugh I hate that. Oh nice to finally meet you by the way. I'm honestly a terrible host."
"All good, I'm still trying to believe this is all real."
"You obvious were expecting something like this eventually right?" he smiled. I shrugged.
" I suppose, yea."
"Well you played your cards right and seem to know what your doing or have some really awesome team of people telling you what your doing, so just go with it."
I nodded taking the car next to Joel in his living room and placed my backpack on the floor in front of me. Joel gave it a questionable look as it made a small thunk.
"I wasn't sure if I needed to bring anything so I did just in case."
"What do you have in there?"
"The print out version of the visual content, my laptop and 2 of my external hard drives."
"God you're like a baby Skrillex."
"Thank you?"
He laughed in response. "So anyway. I was thinking we could order in some lunch and then start going over all this stuff. Why are there two hard drives?"
"One has all my released stuff and collective inspirations that went with it. Basically my backup drive. The other has my new stuff that I was starting to work on."
"Alright. Uh you like Greek right?"
"Yes."
"Sweet! I have a menu on my laptop so you can look at that and then we'll order." he smiled handing me his computer. I went with the Yiaourtlou (beef kabobs in tomato sauce) and dolmathakia (grape leaves stuffed with rice, pine nuts and different herbs. After the order was placed it was business time.
"I kinda read or well skimmed the write up that was attached to the overall development, and it mentioned a little bit about the cat being a character you play on stage versus just going up there and performing."
"That's the hypothetical creation from my roommate for a class project. I don't actually become someone else on stage. I do a little of the Daft Punk thing where people don't really know what I look like without the mask, or the for lack of a better term, raver girl clothes. But its kinda cool that way."
"Oh alright cool. Well then aside from that, the cat mask of yours is looking to be kinda the main logo and then your initials are like a secondary thing, which is good. Like my mouse head. Who does your art work?"
"A good friend of mine' s girlfriend is a graphic designer, so I just tell her what I want maybe a rough sketch or color preference and she just whips them up."
"Nice. Uh food here hang on." Joel disappeared down the hallway towards the door. I could here him thanking the delivery guys and then his returning footsteps.
"So I have to ask, why a cat mask?" he asked as we started in on our food.
"I thought I'd be fun to wear a mask so people didn't know what I looked like and when I went with Jordan and Myles they thought I should be a cat. The one I ended up liking ended up looking like my cat Terror. So every since then I added the LED Lights to all of the ones I own and dress like a sexy cat. I have a fur hood with ears too. And I have 3 other different styles I can wear from time to time."
"I feel like owning a cat has become a staple for producers. Or maybe I just hang out with weird people.'
"Probably a mix of both. I've come to find that unweird people aren't much fun."
"I like that."
"I brought the mask if you want to actually see it too."
"Yea let me see your hand work." he laughed.
I unzipped the upper compartment that housed my mask, so that it wouldn't get smashed by all the electronics strategically placed throughout the larger compartments. The mask itself was fairly cheap in price. It was grey velvet reinforced by a felt interfacing and a metal mold to fit over shape of your eyes and nose. for contrast there was black accents around the eyes, nose and ears and some feathery fluff on the out portion of the face to emulate soft kitten fluff and a few fiber-optic whiskers on the cheeks. above the eyes were the rhinestone cat eye accent curve used to be were now small LED lights that could be changed and set to different colors depending on my outfit.
"It's kind of like Meowingtons." he said examining the mask. "But grey and not black and white. Let's see, erm you've got a logo, you've obviously know how to perform I've seen a little of it, your already making more shit. Oh that's what I want to ask about. How did you develop your sound, like whats the process you go through cause it's pretty fucking awesome."
"I um..." I knew the answer to this. It's why I'm so obsessively meticulous about crafting each detail; the cover art, the track order, every sound and sub-sound. They are all a moment of a story I've created. That was a perfect explanation. Too bad it was a thought. "Um I make music to tell a story. Its an obsessively well planned out capturing of a moment in time. Some of them are imagined, others are my own. I make the story, write the titles for each song, next I think of the emotion, document the sounds that coincide with it, if there are lyrics I write them next, last is the composition of it all." Not to bad for a mini tangent. He seemed intrigued.
"Well it seems to work well. Really well."
"Its all subtext."
"Subtext? Like shit you cant hear?"
"No its there. You hear it. Its what draws you in. The beats and melody sound enjoyable sure, they are what keeps you listening, but that constant sub-sound you're hearing but unaware of that is what pulls you in, makes you feel exactly what I want you to, how you're supposed to react." I paused. "When you listened to my EP did you listen in order?"
"I did actually." He did pondering for a moment to make sure. I smiled.
"Then if you didn't solely focus on the content of its production, but merely listened you' should have had the feel of the story in order."
"How does that work with live shows are you playing in order?"
"No. That's the interesting part. The songs are merely moments, captured in scales. I can move them around shift the order, it changes the story. The key though is knowing exactly how to end it. If I end on a sad song people are going to feel weird, if its not climatic enough then they feel like their missing something more. Its all masterfully composed to get the maximum emotional adrenaline rush." He pondered this for a moment, everything clicking together in his mind.
"This whole happenstance is starting to make since now."
"Happenstance?"
" Nothing, just thinking out loud."
"Have you done this the whole time?"
"No. I started trying to make music for the sake of it and it was good, but it was your garden variety dubstep. Nothing special. The stories came when I met Jordan, Myles, and Braden. I guess you could say they are kind of my muse. My next concept is especially inspired by Jordan, it's just big and going to take time to get right. But I've got mini projects too that can be finished while I'm working on that."
"Shit in that case I guess the only little bits left for me in this whole thing are having a label association, remix collaborations - which considering how this little adventure came about doesn't seem like a great deal of hard work, and uh getting you mass distributed and on a larger tour."
"Yea. I uh could have probably gotten a few more shows and stuff that were bigger, but I didn't want to fuck myself over with school in case this never really went anywhere."
"If this whole thing goes through, which pretty much looks like its all systems go, whats gonna happen with that?"
"I've got about a year left to get my degrees, but two of those classes are intern based. The other 6 I'd have to physically be there. You know I get that at some point I'd probably have to look at doing tours and shows for extended amounts of time, so at least in fall I could claim double internships under the label and tour for another 4 months after summer and then take a year off and go back in the following spring to graduate and do local shows on weekends or close proximity shows, and then small little clusters over my breaks during the like 5 months of school I'd have left."
"Where do you go to school?"
"USC."
"No wonder you're so fucking smart. Uh fuck it I'll make sure to fax over all the legal paper work and other bullshit to you so you can have your lawyer or manager, or whoever look it over before you sign. It's basically just saying my obligations to you as an artist on my label and then your obligations to basically do what you've been doing."
"Sounds great." I smiled.
"Cool. I guess that concludes the official business. But its early so if you want to stick around we can go mess around with some recordings in the studio."
"Uh hell yeah!"
If I ever had enough money to make an actual home studio it'd be like Joel's. I'd have to have a different color scheme, but other than that I'd have to get the same designer to do it.
"Alright so you have to stand right here first. That's the sweet spot." He smiled positioning me on the X that marked the space directly in between the massive speakers. "You ready for this."
"Do it!" I smiled
"Let see, hmm. Oh this one's good." I waited patiently for him to select a track to play. A clock like heartbeat started and slowly slowed down its rhythm. My clock like heartbeat, he was playing my song. I hadn't heard any of my tracks in an acoustically enhanced room before, so if anything was out of time or unclean I was about to hear it. As the beat slowly stopped the small underlying tones still rang it the silence, a nice subtly. The pitch increased slightly as more small tones built up until the drop shattered the perceived silence.
"That's one of the best non-professionally mastered tracks I've heard in here."
"Thanks." I smiled meekly.
"Let's play around with some stuff and see if we can come up with a remix or something just for the fuck of it."
"Sounds good to me. I have some unfinished little stuff that we could use."
"Cool, we can make like a alternate perspective thing."
"Haha okay." I had a few eight note loops that i'd liked but never came up with anything for saved on my laptop. This was a good of chance as any to maybe makes something come of them or just make new fun stuff.
We'd gone through a good portion of my clips until Joel decided on about three of them to use. I watched more than assisted as he created a scales of his own and then syncopated all the clips together overlapping a few and extending them. There was only about a 45 second section for a drop that I aided on, but hey I was still in the studio with Deadmau5 and couldn't complain. After a few hours and dinner we had successfully created about 2 minutes of a potential track. Another hour and similar drop section later the track was completed and I'd have to say it sounded pretty cool. Then my a.d.d. kicked in.
"What was the clip you got of my show?" I asked as he turned down the volume of the new little song we had created.
"Its the last song and a half roughly." I smiled. Standing Still was one of the tracks that took the most planning and developing so it wasn't surprising that it was the one that would attract attention.
"That's pretty much the ideal live demo I could have asked for."
"I'm actually surprised someone else hadn't seen that and pounced before now. Well I guess if he didn't have so many shows lined up and actually had time to do shit for Owsla, you'd be on Skrillex's label and not mine."
"What?"
"Yea he happened to be in LA that weekend and saw you perform. Which turned into a present for me. You look really surprised."
"I'm good. I'm uh -"
"You like Skrillex."
"Well yeah his music is really fucking awesome." Joel smiled an evil smile. Oh great.
"Noooo. You actually like Skrillex. You know he's like your height right."
"Yeah I know I saw him when he was in From First to Last when I was like 15-16ish." Joel raised an eyebrow. I hadn't deny his theory."I do not have a crush on Skrillex."
"I don't care." he laughed stretching in his chair."What time is your flight tomorrow?"
"7:30 a.m."
"Aha gah that's early. Shit what time is it?"
"Probably time for me to go and pretend to sleep so that I make my flight."
"Probably. Oh but there is one more thing before you go." Joel said as he got up to show you out.
"What's up?"
"When do you get out of school?"
"Like a week. I think maybe 2." he gave me a puzzled look
"Myles just tells me these things because I never remember." he accepted this.
"As long as its within that time it doesn't matter. On June 1st though I'm doing a 6 day stint on a tour until the originally planned headliner can take over and if all this works out I'd like you to be on the bill for the duration of the tour. No guarantee yet, you have paper work to fill out, and I need to talk to all the fucking management."
"Ow!" I pinched myself. In less than a week I went from a small little part-time DJ to a contract negotiation and potential tour. "Sorry, I had to make sure I wasn't just passed out after drinking too much.
"It usually helps when you ask someone else to pinch you, that way you know." he laughed
"Well if this is my subconscious then it is incredibly detailed. But it'd be missing its tale-tell signature."
"Which is?" he asked raising an eyebrow. I blushed. Joel was more than likely friends with all the famous people who entered my dreams and professed their love for me. He was definitely friends with Sonny who was the current reappearing rock star of the past few weeks.
" Uh well there's usually a visit from one of my teenage rock star crushes telling me in one form or another that they love me." I laughed. I could give him that embarrassing tid-bit, after all he was already working on getting me signed and on tour. Joel just smiled. Luckily we'd reached the front door so I could hopefully escape giving any names.
"Anyone I know?" he laughed opening the door for me.
"A lot of them more than likely. Most our guitarists or vocalists from bands I like. A DJ." I mumbled that last part. I got the feeling Joel was going to enjoy teasing me about this more than I would have hoped, but it wasn't worse than the abuse I dished out and took from the guys at home.
"Well Miss Gates, until next time." he said hugging me before I left.
"Until then" I grinned returning the hug.
I had texted Joel during each of these delays and retarded airport miscalculations. He promised me Greek food for lunch as a break from our business discussion, since he found me amusing. In the mean time I indulged in so 24hr room service of my hotel, which was quite nice. It was equip with a flat screen, 2 queen beds, all the hook ups for an iPod/Phone to watch movies or charge them. My favorite thing despite being on the 13th floor was the shower. It had a rain fall shower head and could have fit at least 4 people. I considered this and the room service Canada's way of apologizing for my shitty flight.
Despite all of that I was still ecstatic to be in Canada with a meeting in less than 12 hours with one of the biggest names in EDM. Somewhere in the midst of exhaustion and 5 layer red velvet cake that served as my desert, I fell asleep.
"You guys have been amazing! For this last song I wanna do something a little special. I fucking love this girl, she's an amazing producer and an even more incredible singer so right here right now I'm calling her out. Can I get Aaliyah Gates up here!" Sonny Moore was calling me out in front of everyone. I felt someone, probably Jordan, push me forward towards the DJ hub which I climbed. I was in shock, my biggest dream and fear were coming true, I'd almost missed that he said he loved me - almost.
"Aaliyah Gates, will you this last song with me?" he said into the mic looking at me with those gorgeous brown eyes. He was done with my private refusals and as the crowed cheered he new I couldn't say no. Not this time. I said grabbing the mic.
"How could I ever say no." I smiled into the mic. It was Aly the performer time, not all the quirky goofy girl who made an idiot out of herself frequently in front of him.
"Good, I need you to sing." he said to only me before taking the mic back.
"You guys ready?" they cheered in response. "Good cause - " I took the mic back
"Because my names Aly and sometimes I sing." I smiled repeating his words from a performance with 12th planet. Then the music started.
"You got me so wild. How can I every deny. You got me so high, so high I cannot feel the fire.
And you keep telling me, telling me that you'll be sweet. And you'll never want to leave my side. So long as I don't break these.."
I opened my eyes to find myself in bed still. I wasn't on a stage with Skrillex telling me he loved me. That was a dream. Being in Canada - not a dream. I was meeting Joel in a few hours! I could let the untimely wake up go this time. I reached over and turned off my alarm before ordering some room service, an iced mocha and coffee cake, and heading to the bathroom to shower. My meeting with Joel wasn't for 3 more hours, I'd set my alarm to allow for appropriate grooming and wardrobe changes to be made along with any last minute compulsions to jump around in fits of happy lunacy. I was in the middle of one when my breakfast showed up. And in my euphoria I had opened the door in just my bra and underwear with my long wet her a giant shaken out mess. It wasn't until the poor kids stood staring wide eyed that I realized my error.
I apologized of course, although I'm pretty sure he should have been apologizing for eye raping me. I DJed half naked more often then not and knew that the site had to have been pretty fucking fantastic. After that incident I opted for a pair of black jeggings. This way if I had to open the door I at least two-thirds of the way dressed. By the time I did decide on a white and black 3/4 sleeve casual blazer and deep ocean blue camie topped off by silver flats I had finished my break fast and latte and had my hair straightened and teased to perfection. The only thing I did have left was applying the finishing touches of my make up which was a cream shadow with brown smudged into the crease between the cream the highlight shade and a nice black cat-eye line that disappeared into the brown. the black and light browns made my eyes pop being a green-blue in color rather than the solid blue of my siblings.
By the time all of this was done, I had just enough time to grab a taxi before heading to Joel's. My hotel was fairly close to Joel's building; I'd have walked if it wasn't for the fact that I had brought the printout version of Jade's artist package, my 2 hard drives projects I was still working on, and of course my laptop. According to his instructions I'd have to lug all of this into the ground floor, take an elevator to the 3rd floor lobby where after getting the all clear from the receptionist, I could access the elevators that would take me the rest of the way to his floor so I was okay with paying a 7 dollar cab fair to avoid being a sweaty tired mess when I finally got to meet him. Somehow when I got into the elevator my stomach decided to stay in the lobby while my heart jumped into my throat. I'm entirely sure how I managed to knock on his door.
"Hey!" Joel smiled opening the door. "Come in. Welcome finally! Sorry about the flight, I'm beginning to wonder if the airport likes to just screw with people who know me."
"It's fine." I smiled following him down the hall. "I consider it lucky there were no screaming babies."
"Ugh I hate that. Oh nice to finally meet you by the way. I'm honestly a terrible host."
"All good, I'm still trying to believe this is all real."
"You obvious were expecting something like this eventually right?" he smiled. I shrugged.
" I suppose, yea."
"Well you played your cards right and seem to know what your doing or have some really awesome team of people telling you what your doing, so just go with it."
I nodded taking the car next to Joel in his living room and placed my backpack on the floor in front of me. Joel gave it a questionable look as it made a small thunk.
"I wasn't sure if I needed to bring anything so I did just in case."
"What do you have in there?"
"The print out version of the visual content, my laptop and 2 of my external hard drives."
"God you're like a baby Skrillex."
"Thank you?"
He laughed in response. "So anyway. I was thinking we could order in some lunch and then start going over all this stuff. Why are there two hard drives?"
"One has all my released stuff and collective inspirations that went with it. Basically my backup drive. The other has my new stuff that I was starting to work on."
"Alright. Uh you like Greek right?"
"Yes."
"Sweet! I have a menu on my laptop so you can look at that and then we'll order." he smiled handing me his computer. I went with the Yiaourtlou (beef kabobs in tomato sauce) and dolmathakia (grape leaves stuffed with rice, pine nuts and different herbs. After the order was placed it was business time.
"I kinda read or well skimmed the write up that was attached to the overall development, and it mentioned a little bit about the cat being a character you play on stage versus just going up there and performing."
"That's the hypothetical creation from my roommate for a class project. I don't actually become someone else on stage. I do a little of the Daft Punk thing where people don't really know what I look like without the mask, or the for lack of a better term, raver girl clothes. But its kinda cool that way."
"Oh alright cool. Well then aside from that, the cat mask of yours is looking to be kinda the main logo and then your initials are like a secondary thing, which is good. Like my mouse head. Who does your art work?"
"A good friend of mine' s girlfriend is a graphic designer, so I just tell her what I want maybe a rough sketch or color preference and she just whips them up."
"Nice. Uh food here hang on." Joel disappeared down the hallway towards the door. I could here him thanking the delivery guys and then his returning footsteps.
"So I have to ask, why a cat mask?" he asked as we started in on our food.
"I thought I'd be fun to wear a mask so people didn't know what I looked like and when I went with Jordan and Myles they thought I should be a cat. The one I ended up liking ended up looking like my cat Terror. So every since then I added the LED Lights to all of the ones I own and dress like a sexy cat. I have a fur hood with ears too. And I have 3 other different styles I can wear from time to time."
"I feel like owning a cat has become a staple for producers. Or maybe I just hang out with weird people.'
"Probably a mix of both. I've come to find that unweird people aren't much fun."
"I like that."
"I brought the mask if you want to actually see it too."
"Yea let me see your hand work." he laughed.
I unzipped the upper compartment that housed my mask, so that it wouldn't get smashed by all the electronics strategically placed throughout the larger compartments. The mask itself was fairly cheap in price. It was grey velvet reinforced by a felt interfacing and a metal mold to fit over shape of your eyes and nose. for contrast there was black accents around the eyes, nose and ears and some feathery fluff on the out portion of the face to emulate soft kitten fluff and a few fiber-optic whiskers on the cheeks. above the eyes were the rhinestone cat eye accent curve used to be were now small LED lights that could be changed and set to different colors depending on my outfit.
"It's kind of like Meowingtons." he said examining the mask. "But grey and not black and white. Let's see, erm you've got a logo, you've obviously know how to perform I've seen a little of it, your already making more shit. Oh that's what I want to ask about. How did you develop your sound, like whats the process you go through cause it's pretty fucking awesome."
"I um..." I knew the answer to this. It's why I'm so obsessively meticulous about crafting each detail; the cover art, the track order, every sound and sub-sound. They are all a moment of a story I've created. That was a perfect explanation. Too bad it was a thought. "Um I make music to tell a story. Its an obsessively well planned out capturing of a moment in time. Some of them are imagined, others are my own. I make the story, write the titles for each song, next I think of the emotion, document the sounds that coincide with it, if there are lyrics I write them next, last is the composition of it all." Not to bad for a mini tangent. He seemed intrigued.
"Well it seems to work well. Really well."
"Its all subtext."
"Subtext? Like shit you cant hear?"
"No its there. You hear it. Its what draws you in. The beats and melody sound enjoyable sure, they are what keeps you listening, but that constant sub-sound you're hearing but unaware of that is what pulls you in, makes you feel exactly what I want you to, how you're supposed to react." I paused. "When you listened to my EP did you listen in order?"
"I did actually." He did pondering for a moment to make sure. I smiled.
"Then if you didn't solely focus on the content of its production, but merely listened you' should have had the feel of the story in order."
"How does that work with live shows are you playing in order?"
"No. That's the interesting part. The songs are merely moments, captured in scales. I can move them around shift the order, it changes the story. The key though is knowing exactly how to end it. If I end on a sad song people are going to feel weird, if its not climatic enough then they feel like their missing something more. Its all masterfully composed to get the maximum emotional adrenaline rush." He pondered this for a moment, everything clicking together in his mind.
"This whole happenstance is starting to make since now."
"Happenstance?"
" Nothing, just thinking out loud."
"Have you done this the whole time?"
"No. I started trying to make music for the sake of it and it was good, but it was your garden variety dubstep. Nothing special. The stories came when I met Jordan, Myles, and Braden. I guess you could say they are kind of my muse. My next concept is especially inspired by Jordan, it's just big and going to take time to get right. But I've got mini projects too that can be finished while I'm working on that."
"Shit in that case I guess the only little bits left for me in this whole thing are having a label association, remix collaborations - which considering how this little adventure came about doesn't seem like a great deal of hard work, and uh getting you mass distributed and on a larger tour."
"Yea. I uh could have probably gotten a few more shows and stuff that were bigger, but I didn't want to fuck myself over with school in case this never really went anywhere."
"If this whole thing goes through, which pretty much looks like its all systems go, whats gonna happen with that?"
"I've got about a year left to get my degrees, but two of those classes are intern based. The other 6 I'd have to physically be there. You know I get that at some point I'd probably have to look at doing tours and shows for extended amounts of time, so at least in fall I could claim double internships under the label and tour for another 4 months after summer and then take a year off and go back in the following spring to graduate and do local shows on weekends or close proximity shows, and then small little clusters over my breaks during the like 5 months of school I'd have left."
"Where do you go to school?"
"USC."
"No wonder you're so fucking smart. Uh fuck it I'll make sure to fax over all the legal paper work and other bullshit to you so you can have your lawyer or manager, or whoever look it over before you sign. It's basically just saying my obligations to you as an artist on my label and then your obligations to basically do what you've been doing."
"Sounds great." I smiled.
"Cool. I guess that concludes the official business. But its early so if you want to stick around we can go mess around with some recordings in the studio."
"Uh hell yeah!"
If I ever had enough money to make an actual home studio it'd be like Joel's. I'd have to have a different color scheme, but other than that I'd have to get the same designer to do it.
"Alright so you have to stand right here first. That's the sweet spot." He smiled positioning me on the X that marked the space directly in between the massive speakers. "You ready for this."
"Do it!" I smiled
"Let see, hmm. Oh this one's good." I waited patiently for him to select a track to play. A clock like heartbeat started and slowly slowed down its rhythm. My clock like heartbeat, he was playing my song. I hadn't heard any of my tracks in an acoustically enhanced room before, so if anything was out of time or unclean I was about to hear it. As the beat slowly stopped the small underlying tones still rang it the silence, a nice subtly. The pitch increased slightly as more small tones built up until the drop shattered the perceived silence.
"That's one of the best non-professionally mastered tracks I've heard in here."
"Thanks." I smiled meekly.
"Let's play around with some stuff and see if we can come up with a remix or something just for the fuck of it."
"Sounds good to me. I have some unfinished little stuff that we could use."
"Cool, we can make like a alternate perspective thing."
"Haha okay." I had a few eight note loops that i'd liked but never came up with anything for saved on my laptop. This was a good of chance as any to maybe makes something come of them or just make new fun stuff.
We'd gone through a good portion of my clips until Joel decided on about three of them to use. I watched more than assisted as he created a scales of his own and then syncopated all the clips together overlapping a few and extending them. There was only about a 45 second section for a drop that I aided on, but hey I was still in the studio with Deadmau5 and couldn't complain. After a few hours and dinner we had successfully created about 2 minutes of a potential track. Another hour and similar drop section later the track was completed and I'd have to say it sounded pretty cool. Then my a.d.d. kicked in.
"What was the clip you got of my show?" I asked as he turned down the volume of the new little song we had created.
"Its the last song and a half roughly." I smiled. Standing Still was one of the tracks that took the most planning and developing so it wasn't surprising that it was the one that would attract attention.
"That's pretty much the ideal live demo I could have asked for."
"I'm actually surprised someone else hadn't seen that and pounced before now. Well I guess if he didn't have so many shows lined up and actually had time to do shit for Owsla, you'd be on Skrillex's label and not mine."
"What?"
"Yea he happened to be in LA that weekend and saw you perform. Which turned into a present for me. You look really surprised."
"I'm good. I'm uh -"
"You like Skrillex."
"Well yeah his music is really fucking awesome." Joel smiled an evil smile. Oh great.
"Noooo. You actually like Skrillex. You know he's like your height right."
"Yeah I know I saw him when he was in From First to Last when I was like 15-16ish." Joel raised an eyebrow. I hadn't deny his theory."I do not have a crush on Skrillex."
"I don't care." he laughed stretching in his chair."What time is your flight tomorrow?"
"7:30 a.m."
"Aha gah that's early. Shit what time is it?"
"Probably time for me to go and pretend to sleep so that I make my flight."
"Probably. Oh but there is one more thing before you go." Joel said as he got up to show you out.
"What's up?"
"When do you get out of school?"
"Like a week. I think maybe 2." he gave me a puzzled look
"Myles just tells me these things because I never remember." he accepted this.
"As long as its within that time it doesn't matter. On June 1st though I'm doing a 6 day stint on a tour until the originally planned headliner can take over and if all this works out I'd like you to be on the bill for the duration of the tour. No guarantee yet, you have paper work to fill out, and I need to talk to all the fucking management."
"Ow!" I pinched myself. In less than a week I went from a small little part-time DJ to a contract negotiation and potential tour. "Sorry, I had to make sure I wasn't just passed out after drinking too much.
"It usually helps when you ask someone else to pinch you, that way you know." he laughed
"Well if this is my subconscious then it is incredibly detailed. But it'd be missing its tale-tell signature."
"Which is?" he asked raising an eyebrow. I blushed. Joel was more than likely friends with all the famous people who entered my dreams and professed their love for me. He was definitely friends with Sonny who was the current reappearing rock star of the past few weeks.
" Uh well there's usually a visit from one of my teenage rock star crushes telling me in one form or another that they love me." I laughed. I could give him that embarrassing tid-bit, after all he was already working on getting me signed and on tour. Joel just smiled. Luckily we'd reached the front door so I could hopefully escape giving any names.
"Anyone I know?" he laughed opening the door for me.
"A lot of them more than likely. Most our guitarists or vocalists from bands I like. A DJ." I mumbled that last part. I got the feeling Joel was going to enjoy teasing me about this more than I would have hoped, but it wasn't worse than the abuse I dished out and took from the guys at home.
"Well Miss Gates, until next time." he said hugging me before I left.
"Until then" I grinned returning the hug.