Part 2

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, what are they?

Matt: Yeah. I think sometimes when we're writing music, it's not always about my life. A lot of times it's stories that I envision of other people or sometimes even friends or family that I'll typically write about from, like maybe a situation they're in or something like that. Or maybe it's a stranger, someone I don't even know, and I’m just imagining a story.

I do think that sometimes I will write about things going on in my life. Those typically feel the most powerful to me. They're all powerful. I think people's stories are powerful, and I don't necessarily change the way I live or act a certain way because of the music we write or the things we write about.

I think that I'm always just I think I'm, like, pretty good at just being myself, and I would like to just write stories about really anything. Mostly stuff that has to do with relationships.

Late producer Sophie said you have the possibility to generate any texture and any sound. So why would any musician wanna limit themselves? What's your take on that quote?

Cameron: First off, rest in peace, Sophie. Mad respect. Sophie definitely changed the game for a lot of electronic producers and pop producers.

That's a great point that they make. I don't think we've ever limited ourselves since in sound, and we're always looking for new sounds. Matt just wrote us a demo with, like, just this a really weird sound. You don't have, like, instruments to create that sound, but he found a sound and put it in the in the perfect spot.

Just experimenting with different sounds like that, especially in pop music is super important, and you shouldn't limit yourself to, like, a basic synth sound and synth pads and one type of guitar or whatever.  Sophie nailed it on the head of that.

Nicky: I think I think there's a balance of not limiting yourself. But at the same time, I think right now with this new this new music that we're making, at least for myself, we're experimenting with containing it to an extent because when you go online now and you want a keyboard sound, you have a million to choose from.

I think there is something to be said of when you can pick an instrument or a few instruments that you know inspire you, that can sometimes create a clear idea instead of using this software instrument that can make endless sounds. I can use this vintage synth from this time period, and it will inspire me in a certain way. Or if you gave a painter only 3 colours to use, sometimes they can make something really unique rather than you have a whole palette in front of them, and they almost don't know where to go with it. You can go either way, I think.

If some people are good at disciplining themselves when they have endless tools, then that's amazing. I think there is something to be said when you have a specific set of tools. Those can almost inspire you more in a weird way.

Matt: It is important to us to create a familiarity that people who go to listen to us look for. It's comforting to have an artist where you kinda know what you're gonna get, but at the same time, they're surprising you with either their songwriting, the structure, the lyrics, or tonally. I think things it's nice for things to have a cohesion.

But, of course, it's always worth exploring to find that new sound or that new thing. Then maybe the new thing you find, you make the cohesion, and you try to create familiarity with all your songs maybe using that new sound.

Do you feel that your music or your work as an artist needs to have a societal purpose or a responsibility to anyone but yourself?

Nicky: I think maybe not societal, but more on an individual level there should be purpose, because it kinda goes back to what would be the point of putting out music if nobody else is gonna hear it. It's kind of the purpose of why we do it, is you put it out and you want somebody to somebody to connect with it. You know, if it wasn't like that, then we would just keep it on our computer for ourselves.

So societal, I'm not sure, but individual because somebody listening to it in their room and maybe getting a feeling from it or in the car, whatever it is. If it helps them, then that's sort of the whole point.

But as of right now, I don't see us doing something societal unless enough people band together and make their own meaning of it. But I don't think we're really out here talking about politics or anything like that

Cameron: I think Nicky’s pretty much nailed it. The idea of a song being so emotionally connecting to a listener that can inspire them to do anything. I think that's our goal: just to really connect with people and use us to feel good about what they're doing or just feel good that they are in the right spot in their life.

Like this is music I like to listen to and relate to and we want to make you feel unstoppable.

I would love to know a little bit about the feedback you've received from listeners about what these thoughts and of your songs are about or the impact it had on them. Have you gained any new insights from that?

Matt: There was someone we met while we were on tour who referenced our song ‘Forget The Summer’, and someone and how they interpreted it and I think it potentially helped them process or feel a loss of someone in their life that was close to them, and that meant a lot to me and the band too. It felt that we really did our job with that song.  

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human made sounds? How far would you describe them as musical?

Nicky: I think it'd be funny if Stefan answered this question because on our on our record, he would, like, sample things he was hearing around him and sneak them into the mix behind our back.

Cameron: One thing that came to mind that you guys might agree on is I always heard a really fat kick or, like, something in my ear. It does something where I hear, like, rhythm or percussion when you hear a huge wave break. Like subsonic, almost otherworldly sound, especially when you're kind of off the beach. You're like, ‘what was that?’ It's like this huge bass almost. I don't even know how to explain it.

Nicky: That's a cool one. Even if you're duck diving under a wave and hearing a crack, like, above you you get that water sort of sound too. That's a very unique sound.

Matt: That'd be cool to somehow capture. I don't know how the hell you would ever capture that, but that sound is really wild. Like, especially body surfing when you get a really thick, heavy slab of water getting chucked over your head, and it's landing in, like, 3 inches of water just immediately blowing up on the sand and it just, like, creates this cavern in this cave. When you're inside of that barrel of that wave and it's exploding, like, even just the moment of silence as it's throwing through the air is so magical.

Cameron and Nicky you guys know exactly what I'm talking about. Any surfers probably know exactly what I'm talking about because we all surf. I'd say that's probably one of the wildest sounds out there and feelings. It would be really cool to capture that somehow.

We can surround ourselves with sound every second of the day. How do you see that yourself, and what importance does silence hold?

Matt: I think the importance of silence, it's so important because silence and space makes whatever comes next even more meaningful. So if you go from nothing to having something, it’s a shock effect of more importance, you know, even when someone is talking or communicating.

If they can speak in ways of using little amounts of words, but every word matters, and they're not afraid to be silent. It's the same thing with music. It just creates the moment even more to strategically use silence.

Cameron: Silence is like a blank canvas almost and white has every colour in it. So it's like silence almost has all their sounds constantly. Even in silence, I would feel like is really hard to get, like, true silence.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? In other words, what do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't with more mundane tasks?

Matt: It's a good question because I think it depends what aspect you're looking at music as. If you're looking at it from a logical engineer/producer standpoint, it's a lot like making a really good dinner or a good meal of some kind. Like, you want all the balance in there. You want all the ingredients to be really fresh. You want everything to stand alone but also be together.

So from a creative standpoint, I think there's so much that can relate to mundane tasks or just creating anything. It's all about balance and making something shine the way it's supposed to shine.

The difference in music is that it might hold your hand in some cases a little bit more in telling you a story or telling you a feeling, unless you're like some coffee connoisseur or, like, wine taster, and you can taste things and you can just see a bunch of colours, like the movie Ratatouille or something.

If it makes you feel something, it makes you feel something. So there's a lot of different ways to feel stuff, and music is just one of those outlets.

What is a music related question that you would like to add to this interview for other artists to respond to, and what's your own answer to it?

Matt: Can you think bigger? Or are you thinking big enough?

And the reason I say that is because I think that people are really limited by their imaginations. I think that is your only limit in life sometimes. That's a question I ask myself because when we first started this band it was nothing but just having friend fun with friends.

But as our journey continues to develop and people continue to join the team of Your Favorite Color and believe in us more, the sky keeps opening up and opening up and opening up, and it and I'm realizing that there's really no limits. So it's like, are you limiting yourself at all? And if so, how are you limiting yourself somehow? Because, really, there is no limit to what you can do. So it's like, are you are you thinking as big as you possibly can and as grand as you possibly can? Because there's no reason not to, really. There's no reason not to.