00:00:00:14 [Music]
00:00:01:20 I am George Pettit and this is Strange Notes.
00:00:04:22 ♪ [Music]
00:00:35:28 On the subject of marketing in music lately,
00:00:40:04 there has been obviously been a lot of bands
00:00:41:13 getting big off of like iPod commercials.
00:00:44:08 You guys kind of have a similar kind of story
00:00:46:26 about Rollercoaster.
00:00:48:15 Tell me about like the writing of that song
00:00:50:01 and how that came to be?
00:00:51:09 We write songs of all kinds all the time and
00:00:53:18 sort of put them in our little library of songs
00:00:55:24 -Yeah -and because you know,
00:00:58:24 you can always put out certain songs,
00:01:00:16 that's why you have B sides.
00:01:01:25 And Rollercoaster is a B side.
00:01:03:25 We were going to put it in All Illusion but we thought
00:01:06:11 it didn't really fit with the other songs
00:01:07:25 and were just kind of a lot of more poppy.
00:01:09:20 We had the opportunity to present it to music house
00:01:12:26 that deals with licensing and through them and our publisher,
00:01:17:05 Runaway Music, were able to license this spot
00:01:20:24 to the commercial.
00:01:22:10 I was away with the Small Sins.
00:01:24:06 I was stringed down in the states when Lindy called me
00:01:26:08 one day and said, have you seen what's happened?
00:01:28:00 I said, what?
00:01:29:15 She said, just go to YouTube.
00:01:31:02 Do you see how many people have seen it in the last 24 hours?
00:01:34:03 It was, I don't know, in the hundreds, thousands
00:01:37:02 and something like that and all kinds of posts of
00:01:39:18 who is this band and so on and so forth.
00:01:42:10 It was great because nobody knew who really we are and
00:01:45:06 this is sort of exposure and it's awesome.
00:01:47:17 -Yeah, yeah. -It's great.
00:01:49:07 Yeah, we didn't think anything other going for the song in a
00:01:51:14 commercial or whatever and then all of a sudden, the stuff
00:01:54:23 happened and we decided not to tell anybody who it was.
00:01:58:03 Yeah
00:01:59:13 And we got to work and because it was really just an idea that
00:02:02:13 we have that was sort of not recorded properly.
00:02:06:10 So, then we re-recorded it and then a couple of months later,
00:02:10:03 we released it and announced that it was us. Yeah...
00:02:13:02 it wasn't fully written; it was written just for the commercial.
00:02:16:23 It's like what you called sometimes on the records on the
00:02:19:20 B side, it's called the demo version.
00:02:21:06 Yeah, yeah.
00:02:22:16 That sort of thing because, it was all done here when we really
00:02:26:03 kicked up a notch to release it afterwards.
00:02:28:29 How long is this like,
00:02:30:11 the studio have been coming together?
00:02:32:13 It has gone through various stages from basically being,
00:02:34:16 having the cartons and carpet on the walls to, you know, what it
00:02:38:28 is now and hopefully, it would be getting better with time.
00:02:42:15 I saw an interview with [inaudible] a while ago on this
00:02:45:28 DVD and she talks about how she only listen,
00:02:49:08 I only listen to the masters
00:02:50:20 and I thought about the idea of like
00:02:52:18 just referring to someone as a master of an instrument
00:02:56:10 and making an instrument your slave, kind of thing
00:02:58:16 and like who are like piano players
00:03:00:11 that you think influenced you as far as like
00:03:02:20 masters of their instruments?
00:03:04:16 I am mostly inspired by my peers and people in my life
00:03:11:28 and to my biggest inspiration and it still is and
00:03:14:15 probably always will be my piano teacher, Professor William Aide.
00:03:20:11 He is an incredible figure in my life and it's just magical to
00:03:25:09 see somebody who has such power and control over any
00:03:27:23 kind of instruments and it doesn't matter what genre it is,
00:03:30:23 a huge fan of [inaudible].
00:03:32:20 -Yeah, yeah. -He is master of all kinds so that
00:03:35:12 I can do anything obviously.
00:03:36:28 But I'm most inspired by people I can see perform in real life.
00:03:41:02 This chord, it isn't actual notes or sound that they make
00:03:44:08 but what surrounds them that causes
00:03:46:08 them as to respond or react their experience.
00:03:48:26 Yeah, he has done his homework.
00:03:50:06 Yeah, what is...
00:03:51:19 can you show us that like what you mean? Yeah.
00:03:54:08 Do you want to come in?
00:03:55:17 Yeah, we'd come take a look at it.
00:03:59:08 This could be played there or it could be...
00:04:03:05 it's the same notes but it really is the emotion you put in
00:04:06:25 and the feelings you put in to your performance just like
00:04:08:17 when you're in stage, in front of 3000 people rocking out
00:04:11:26 and you've done this obviously many times.
00:04:13:13 You know, how you feed from the crowd and
00:04:15:08 it's very similar experience with the classical music;
00:04:17:27 there's people want to talk about it open.
00:04:19:29 It's all about, you know, that how you feel that day and what
00:04:22:18 you really want to portray with your music whether it's
00:04:24:23 you know something really sad or really happy, you know,
00:04:28:00 like it could be something really just sort of, you know,
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00:04:38:10 But it's can't be too romantic with three guys in the room.
00:04:42:24 Maybe if there was a lady, that can be a a bit more charming.
00:04:45:09 So that's what I mean.
00:04:46:18 Could you play something for us so that we can
00:04:48:09 just get it on camera? Sure, I am excited to play this because I am working on this
00:04:51:21 solo piano record and it's going to be,
00:04:53:28 kind of doing exactly that.
00:04:55:13 I am going to try to bring all the stigma,
00:04:58:10 kind of classical music is boring and dirty.
00:05:01:04 [Music]
00:05:29:04 From the ashes of the old,
00:05:30:15 I am George Pettit and this is Strange Notes.