I’m Song Exploder Host Hrishikesh Hirway, and This Is How I Work
Hrishikesh Hirway pulls songs aside to learn how they work. On his podcast Track Exploder, Hirway has interviewed artists adore Solange, Iggy Pop, Norah Jones, Björk, and Arcade Fire about their writing, recording, and mixing processes. Hirway makes his hold music as half of of the band Moors with Atlanta’s Lakieth Stanfield, and as a composer for TV and movie. He additionally co-hosts The West Fly Weekly podcast with West Fly actor Joshua Malina. We talked to him about how this multi-threaded inventive lifestyles weaves together. We additionally got a play-by-play of how Hirway makes every episode of Track Exploder.
Region: Los Angeles
Fresh Gig: Track Exploder (podcast), The West Fly Weekly (podcast), Moors (music)
One note that best describes the model you’re employed: Fussily
Fresh mobile instrument: iPhone X
Fresh computer: iMac Pro
Initially, impart us a runt bit about your background and the model to possess to the attach aside you doubtless can very successfully be right this moment time.
I’m a musician who moved to Los Angeles to build information and rating movies. After several years of doing that, I started the Track Exploder podcast, drawing on the experiences, instruments, and connections I had amassed in that time. I cherished making a podcast loads that two years later, I started The West Fly Weekly podcast with my pal Joshua Malina, an actor who used to be in The West Fly, indubitably one of my current television shows.
Take us thru a recent workday.
I wakened, regarded at my emails, spoke back to about a and sent some off. Most of them are around attempting to ebook future guests for Track Exploder; either I’m getting pitched artists by publicists, or I’m pitching Track Exploder to publicists. I ate breakfast while being attentive to about a music that used to be sent to me to bewitch into consideration for the podcast.
I texted Josh about our recording time desk for West Fly Weekly. I took a destroy and went to the gym, then came home and made lunch.
I went into the studio and recorded a pair of sponsorship advert spots for Track Exploder. I talked to Christian Koons, the assistant editor on the veil, relating to the remark of the present cut for the next episode. In the early night, I had a piano lesson.
In between all of these items, I’m peeking at Twitter and Instagram. I got an illustration for Track Exploder from Carlos Lerma, after which formatted his illustration for a template I’d made for graphics for the Instagram page.
After that, I roughly wrapped things up in the studio, and took my canine for a dawdle. I had dinner with my spouse, and in between watching an episode of The West Fly for work and a pair episodes of The Americans for fun, I sent and spoke back to about a more emails. Round 1:30 a.m., I plugged in my telephone for the night and went to sleep.
What apps, objects, or instruments can’t you dwell without?
The entire recording and bettering for Track Exploder is accomplished with Pro Instruments. I additionally exhaust Pro Instruments, as successfully as Ableton Are living, to build music. I possess a Tile on my keys, which I lose approximately as soon as a day, so it turns out to be helpful. I protect tune of all the pieces in my lifestyles and work with shared Google Sheets. I possess spreadsheets for future Track Exploder episodes, to end lists for songs in development, a checklist of all the pieces I’ve watched this year, my household price range, and a checklist of the very best meals I’ve had this year at eating places.
What’s your workspace setup adore?
Half of my storage has been converted into an jam of job, which I exhaust as a studio to build my music and podcasts. At the same time as you dawdle in, you’ll leer a bunch of instruments: an marvelous piano, an electric guitar and an acoustic one, a bass, a cello, a mandolin, and a xylophone.
There’s a desk—before all the pieces an Ikea desk, however I changed the laminate tabletop with an precise wood one, stained to envision the floors in the room. On the desk, there’s an iMac Pro with a second show screen, an audio interface with a microphone and headphones, and a Thunderbolt hub connected to it. There’s additionally a Zoom recorder and a mic that’s continuously plugged into either it or the audio interface.
In the abet of the desk, against the reverse wall, is a couch the attach aside guests take a seat as soon as they solution to document interviews. There’s a form of Ikea storage in the room, relative to its dimension, so that you might perchance protect about a of the muddle hidden away.
What’s the workflow of increasing an episode of Track Exploder?
I document interviews both in-person and remotely, reckoning on the artist’s availability. If it’s a long way off, we discuss over the phone or over the computer, and in screech that they document their facet of the interview on a safe mic and send me the audio file afterwards. Then Christian or our intern Olivia will transcribe the interview and attach it aside as a shared Google Doc. Now that I’m no longer basically the most good person engaged on Track Exploder, shared scientific doctors are enormous, especially the “counseled edits” characteristic, so I will annotate sections with notes and reminders. (Right here’s what it regarded adore when I was bettering all the pieces myself, prior to I started using Google Docs.)
Then we produce a new Google doc with pleasing the parts of the interview that can appear in the episode, and I attempt to connect aside them together in an disclose that makes sense, adding notes about which parts of the music should be played the attach aside. It’s adore inserting together a jigsaw puzzle without luminous what the final characterize is supposed to seem adore.
Then we take a look at that paper edit. Christian takes the script and does a draft of the episode in Pro Instruments. I’ll battle thru and build revisions and notes on our Google doc: slicing sections, transferring lines earlier or later, starting music in other places, in step with what I hear. We end this as soon as or twice, someplace between five and eight rounds of revisions.
Then, when it feels adore we’re horny cease, I battle thru the Pro Instruments session and build final cuts and prevent a final mix—basically the most finicky stuff that’s too tricky to discuss to yet any other person (on paper or in any other case), because what I’m listening to is so subjective: changing the length of a end by a portion of a second, changing the shape of a proceed out on music, etc.
Meanwhile, we’re knowing getting the music rights cleared by the designate and the publisher, and illustrator Carlos Lerma creates an usual portrait of the artist for the episode.
Are there any frightful variations between composing for movie and making your hold music?
I don’t know if it’s frightful, however I’m a long way, intention more productive when I’m composing for movie/TV. I will end no matter it takes to get the music for someone else’s accomplishing accomplished in time. But I don’t possess that more or less self-discipline the least bit over my hold music.
What’s your best shortcut or lifestyles hack?
I’m no longer obvious here’s most famous enough to rely as a lifestyles hack, however I find it if reality be told priceless to build custom keyboard auto-appropriate/text alternative shortcuts on my telephone for longer phrases that I must enter in on a each day foundation, adore my email take care of. In the Keyboards atmosphere on my iPhone, attach in a three-letter term as a stand-in, adore “eml.” After I form that, it will get changed by my precise email take care of. It’s especially precious for my home take care of: three letters rather then typing out the total facet toll road take care of, metropolis, remark, zip code.
Take us thru an enticing, abnormal, or finicky process you doubtless can possess gotten in jam at work.
Every thing about making Track Exploder is finicky, if reality be told. It’s heavily edited, in disclose to get my questions from the interview, and build the answers as streamlined and issue as imaginable. However the finicky share comes from attempting to masks that as a lot as imaginable, so it sounds to the listener adore the musicians are naturally that logical and eloquent. That intention spending hours attempting to find the very best cadence between words that weren’t spoken wherever approach every other.
Who are the these that wait on you to get things accomplished, and the intention in which end you rely on them?
For Track Exploder, Christian Koons is the assistant editor. He transcribes interviews and helps me with all the pieces on the post-production facet, from bettering the episodes to posting them on-line.
On The West Fly Weekly, now we possess got a group of workers of two: Margaret Miller acts as a filter for us, bettering our conversations. She then passes these edits on to us, and our mixer and audio editor, Zach McNees.
How end you protect tune of what you wish to end?
Google Docs, Google/iPhone calendar, plus reminders on my iPhone.
How end you recharge or bewitch a destroy?
I creep in my yard.
What’s your current facet accomplishing?
My entire lifestyles is facet initiatives, cobbled together to build some more or less living.
What are you at the second studying, or what end you counsel?
I pleasing finished Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, who is my current writer.
Who else would you plan cease to leer reply these questions?
David Wain.
What’s the very best recommendation you’ve ever got?
Regard my music profession: “It’s no longer a crawl.”
What’s the very best hack you’ve gotten from a Track Exploder customer?
You’ve got a instrument to document audio with you ALL the time—the Speak Memos app on the iPhone.
What’s a impart you’re composed attempting to resolve?
The model to require less sleep.
Solutions were lightly edited, and links were added.
The How I Work collection asks heroes, experts, and flat-out productive folks to share their shortcuts, workspaces, routines, and more. Have someone you wish to leer featured, or questions you assume we should composed question? Email Cleave.
