We’ve been able to build a saxophone style and improvisation language for Marian Hill together that’s become integral to our live vibe. He’s been one of my closest friends since middle school and it’s a joy to tour with him and make music together. J: Steve Davit is an essential part of the Marian Hill live show and has been with us since the very beginning (he’s sampled on One Time!). You brought out a saxophone player that added an incredible element to your performance and music. I remember seeing you on tour when you played the Fonda Theater. J: I have a general rule that if I’m not bouncing around in my chair dancing while I’m making something then it’s not a Marian Hill song. And I place myself within the theme of the song. S: I try to picture myself singing it onstage. How do you keep that energy when you’re recording in the studio? Your music comes off as very feel-good and upbeat. Strong, confident lyrics would often come to mind when writing songs such as Got It and One Time. But for our earlier music, (namely Sway and Act One eras) it was also first inspired by a voice, the character of Marian Hill. S: As J mentioned, it comes from the music and life experiences. Once we figure out what it is, the song starts taking shape and we deepen it by pulling on our lives and experiences, the people we know, the art we’ve seen. If it’s good, there’s always something precise about that feeling. I love to sit with whatever the beginning of the beat is and figure out what it makes me feel. J: For me a lot of it comes first from the music. What is the inspiration behind your lyrics? So many of the unique sounds on our records come from using a vocal sample - from the chords in Got It to the low rumbling beginning of Subtle Thing.
What key is down by marian hill portable#
A huge part of my process is the curation of what sounds end up in a beat - I build favorites lists from sound banks I have, I have a portable mic that’s with me pretty much everywhere to grab a sound I come across, and of course my favorite way to create unique sounds is to build them myself, in particular from Sam’s vocal. From that point I’ve been working on an intuitive level in a lot of ways, feeling if sounds fit within the world we built with Whisky. We dropped Whisky on Soundcloud as a litmus test, and when we were charting on HypeMachine I realized we’d come upon a really unique sound - and that I need to seriously up my production game to match it. I love that beat to this day, but Sam’s vocal on top of it REALLY elevated the production.
J: Thank you - that is definitely what I aim for and it means a lot to hear that! I was producing all different kinds of things (and not many of them all that good) when I stumbled into making Whisky. What inspires your style of production? Do you have any interesting tricks to create these sounds? I always hear different noises and sounds unlike anything else. Your production is so unique and original.
S: I think J summed it up pretty well! :) Then I fill out the production - making sure the choices that finish the sound of the song bring us closer to the main idea it’s become. We write melody and lyrics together, singing ideas to each other and editing them back and forth until it’s just right. I’ll have made a drum pattern I like, I’ll play it for Sam, and if she has ideas for it then we make it a song. But when we say production, it’s often the most skeletal of beats. J: I’ll let Sam speak to this as well, but in almost every case we start with production. How is your creation process like? Do you write lyrics first and then produce, or the other way around? When I listen to music it’s easily 70% hip hop so I love finding ways of bringing that into Marian Hill. J: I’ve listened to his music for a long time and hearing his flow over my production was an insane moment. S: We first met him backstage at Fallon (which we played on with like 24 hrs notice in one of the craziest weeks to date) Did you know that was going to happen? How did you react to it? How do you plan on making this album just as successful as the last?Īll we can do is stay focused and work together to make the best songs we can, like we always have! That's how Down happened and it's all we know.īig Sean even did a remix of “Down” which caught a lot of mainstream attention. You achieved international success on your last record, specifically after Apple used “Down” in the Airpods commercial.
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