Name: Cade Hoppe
Nationality: American
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, producer
Current release: Cade Hoppe's Just Look at the Moon is out now.
Recommendations: Some of my favorite resources are Mix with the Masters and the podcast Tape Notes. Really interesting if you want to get into the weeds of how your favorite music gets made.

If you enjoyed this Cade Hoppe interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

It depends on the song, but my favorite songs can take me to a place and set a scene for me. That’s also a good gauge for me when it comes to my own music—I ask myself if my own songs take me to a place like my favorite songs do.

I am definitely an eyes closed music listener, that’s just the best way for me to dial in.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

There are obviously many technical ways those two forms of listening are different, but for me it’s a matter of closeness.

When I listen in headphones, the music already starts in my head and I can feel it coursing through my body in that way, while listening on a stereo system it more so moves my body from the outside and I hear it more in that context. It’s like because I can feel the vibrations on the outside first, my body knows the music isn’t coming from me, but when it starts directly in my ears it may as well be a part of me.

Both forms of listening are important, but music is such a personal experience for me that I do find myself valuing the headphone experience a little more, especially at the end of the day when I’m checking a mix of one of my songs.

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?

One of my favorite movies is Contact and in that movie they communicate with aliens through sound and math. It’s like the highest level of badassery.



It’s fascinating to me how much in common music and math have—I mean, music is essentially all math and intervals. At the end of the day, those are the two most universal languages.

We can see how music can already still communicate emotions to people that don’t understand the language of the lyrics and we use music to train or calm animals. So yes, I believe that sound can be a form of interspecies communication.

Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what are examples for this – and do you feel there is a systematic or logic behind these?

I find myself having a strong emotional response to the sound of cars driving by, especially at night on a busy road. I don’t know why, but that’s one that comes to mind. Maybe it’s confirmation of my deep-seated fear that everyone around me is getting to their destination faster than I am.

But sometimes the toughest places to reach are only accessible on foot, so maybe I’m better off walking anyway. It could be that or maybe I just like the sound of passing cars.

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

I know some people are scared of thunder, but I love the sound of thunder. Especially when I’m inside and it’s accompanied by heavy rain, it’s just such a cozy sound to me.

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?
 
I think churches have the most beautiful sounds. It’s all bells and organs and choirs—even the echoes of footsteps or the creaks of the pews have something so musical about them.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please. What makes their approach distinct and how have they influenced your perspective on and way of working with sound?

The more time I spend creating, I find myself seeking out art that puzzles me a little bit. It’s like once I learned how to make Easy Mac, it was no longer a gourmet dish. So albums that I really have trouble understanding how they got to sound like they do are my absolute favorite.

One of those albums that I always come back to is Viva La Vida by Coldplay;



I also love picking apart pretty much any Jack Antonoff-produced album.



What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

I just moved into a new apartment and made one of the bedrooms a studio space, and I’ve loved making music in there.

I also have loved making music for the past few years with Harper James at Degraw Sound—that’s another place where I always feel inspired.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

In a lot of ways, yes, I would say they do feel material to me.

When I’m in the studio working on music it definitely does feel like I’m working with sounds that I have to shape and smooth into place.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

Sound is super important in our society and sound is so much more than just music.

I think about the sounds of New York and think of distant sirens and underground train rumblings, the flaps of pigeon wings and chatter in the park. I think about how you can grow up with the sound of 90s sitcom laugh tracks echoing through the house or the sizzling of dinner on the stove.

The sounds of our environment can affect the music we want to listen to and create—if we’re around loud noises we may want quiet music, or vice versa.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

I try to be hyper aware of loud volumes and mitigate that as much as possible.

I wear ear plugs at concerts and on busy nights when I’m waiting tables—anything to protect my hearing as much as possible.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

The fact that sound is so readily available makes silence that much more valuable. I’ve never appreciated silence more than I do now that I am constantly working on music, listening to music, and waiting tables in very loud environments.

I think that can be applied to songs or albums as a whole, too; a well-placed bar or two of silence in a song can make the next section that much more powerful, as can a quieter song on an album make the next song hit more.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

I think sound is probably the thing that is most constant in our subconscious, while looks tend to be a more conscious sense. Because of this, sound usually affects the way we see things, for example, soundtracks in movies or the sound of someone’s voice—these aren’t necessarily things we consciously pay attention to, but they certainly do contextualize a scene in a movie we watch or the way someone looks.

As I get deeper into the world of music, I can’t help but pay more conscious attention to the way things sound and that’s definitely affected how I see things even more.