Terry Lee Nichols Interview #2 - The Final on Vinyl Podcast

I had a great conversation with Terry Lee Nichols regarding his incredible new release, A Sky That Knows Our Names.

Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck

Transcript

Speaker 0:14

Hello everyone. This is Keith MuzikMan Hannaleck with the Final and Vinyl Podcast, and today I have Terry Lee Nichols on board. I spoke to him about a year ago, and he just released A Sky That Knows Our Names yesterday. Welcome back, Terry. Thank you. Glad to be back. I noticed right away on the album that um looking at the graphic um was a different size. It looks like a book, you know, and a lot of music that you hear is like opening a book, uh particularly with instrumental music. And and what you've done here is simply amazing. With the Budapest Art Orchestra, uh this has taken you to another level. Um I didn't expect this when I started listening. It was a absolutely engaging album. Um so many different things going on in each track, and uh I love the concept and everything that you did in it. And maybe you could talk a little bit about how you connected with this Budapest Art Orchestra, you know, who are they, some of the guest artists, and what was the inspiration behind recording this? Okay. Well, with regards to the the performers and and close, but most notably the or art orchestra, um, I decided, you know, I often got um, you know, I get on playlists and the like, and uh occasionally I'll get a review like this would be so much better if it was you know real strings or whatever. So I thought, you know, for this album, I'm just gonna go for it. So, you know, it was it was a bit of an expense, not terrible, but it was you know expensive. So what I did is I engaged um Giuliani Music Prep. I reached out to all of those guys to all the different music prep and um uh asked them to just help prepare the score. And uh they also often worked with the Budapest Art Orchestra. So they they put together you know a nice package deal uh for both their services and the and the orchestra, and it uh it came off beautifully. The guy that uh helped coordinate his name is Nick Favela, and uh he was uh he was like an angel from heaven. I mean he just was so meticulous and so thorough and handheld through the process, and it was very very positive experience.

Speaker 1 2:35

Nice. So how'd you come up with the title and the concept of the whole thing?

Speaker 2:43

Well, I'm a big I'm a fan of history, I'm a fan of anthropology, I'm a f somewhat of a fan of archaeology, and a bit of astrophysics. I did an album a couple of years ago called The Pale Blue Dot. So this was kind of a hybrid of all of those. And I just had the concept. I wanted, you know, I wanted to tell something that I could where I could tell a story from beginning to end. I've always alluded to stories with my uh previous albums. This one I wanted to tell it just like almost like it was a here's a chapter, here's the music, almost like the movie, move movie scores it went through. So I started with uh birth of our solar system, um, and uh that was what was to be the first track, it actually ended up being the second track because I put a sort of a teaser up front called the Celestial Traveler. But anyway, the the story really begins with the birth of our sun, the spinoff of all the planets, uh, and then it delves and go goes into what Earth is like. It talked about the initial phase, the Hadian phase, where um you know, literally it was like hell on Earth. It was nothing but you know constantly being bombarded by asteroids and and volcanoes and the like. And then eventually that cooled off, and uh eventually that uh brought to the next concept. I mean, I'm skipping you know several uh millions of years in between, but the next uh the next track I thought was needed to be Snowball Earth, which is something that's been theorized uh quite a bit, that uh Earth was actually covered from pole to pole uh with snow. And um eventually that's you know that that melted, and then we went into the other other uh things that brought us to where we are today, uh most notably the dawn of light, the Cambrian period, um, the Devonian period, where um there were fish and trees, but no animals on land, and then from there on into to human, you know, uh humans have a track called Babel, which was the initial speech that we had from Stone We Built the Sky, where I talked about, you know, uh as we built civilizations, um you know, they we started erecting building up pyramids and other buildings, and that was a you know a real uh uh delen arc to getting us to where we are today. And then I took it all the way through the dawn of of faith, us trying to reach out and understand you know how we got here. And I think that's sort of the early phase of that. And then the final the the final track, the title track, a sky that knows our names, was just a uh reflection of you know how lucky we are to be here. How we we don't know of life anywhere else, or could could perhaps be, but uh it's uh theorized but not proven. So just the spectacular miracle of us being here, being able to think and talk about this and write music and communicate with each other. So it was sort of a celebration of that, that um, you know, despite all the trials and tribulations of life, you know, we're pr pretty darn pretty darn lucky.

Speaker 1 5:53

That's for sure.

Speaker 5:55

I I watched a uh documentary on the universe um a while back was simply amazing. Oh and how they come up with all that, you know, I know it's all hypothetical, but just the thought of all the different things of how things were created, the Big Bang and how Earth was created. Pretty amazing. Yeah, it it is. The other thing, the concept I tried to explore with this too, and we brought it to mind when you said the Big Bang, is the um the sort of the mix of science, you know, science religion has its own view of how how all of this happened, and science has its own view. And I tried to create it where it was sort of a hybrid between the two, um, giving deference to both, each each in their own way. The interesting thing that that really brought that to mind is that the um the the um physicist who theorized about the Big Bang was actually a Belgian priest, oddly enough. He had studied at MIT, but he he's the one that came up with the theory, and then of course that was widely adopted, and even the church adopted it um at at one point. So um interesting mix of religion and science that I tried to throw in here. Yeah, rel religion always seems to push back on science and vice versa. It does. Although in the theory of the Big Bang, it it was just the opposite. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I'm gal I'm always I constantly replay, I didn't put it as a quote, but I I I thought about it. I was Galileo, you know, with um science, uh the church tells us or the Bible tells us um how to go to heaven. Science tells us how the heavens go. I like that. I was yeah, I I love that quote. So I I'm wondering how all this came together for you. Um you did all the the keyboard parts and sent the files over to the Budapest R Crystal and they added their parts. How did that work? Was it something else? Yeah, you do a you do a comp track. So I I spill it out using whatever I have, um, you know, synthesizers, samplers, etc., and um get it you know, tempo-wise and and uh you know exactly where I want it. And then um some parts you know intentionally um were not recorded by the orchestra, and then of course others um that added the full richness of the orchestra were recorded. So they first I prepare the use Pro Tools and I I prepare the tracks, and then I have a full track to give them an idea of what it sounds like with all of my tools, and then I have a music minus track which has all of my bed tracks, but none of the orchestra's tracks. So then they record on top of that, and the result is you know an output that uh I didn't bring in and mix. So thinking about um just the total awesomeness of this music, I mean how are you gonna top this one, Terry? Where do you go from here? I mean, it just you know, it's amazing, you know. Well, the the uh the uh I I have I have some thoughts about the next one. You know, I've used to produce an album about every two years, and I'm I'm uh getting more aggressive, so I'm trying to get one one a year. And I'm trying to think, you know, I've got a couple of concepts, but uh even you know the Odyssey, which just came out, you know, the film that just came out, um, you know, telling a tale like that and being able to you know script the storyline with my music, which is you know becomes more akin to uh a film score because it's a you know scripted story, but um but something along those lines. And then I'm also really taken with the music of uh composers like uh what is it, an Audi uh an Audi Lugovico, uh very soft, and it's often used to cinematic music, just softer cinematic music. So I'm uh once I get this out and get it promoted, then I'll I'll start focusing on what that's gonna be. And it I've spent about three months coming up with the idea and then uh refining it. And I'm I used a lot of chat GPT to refine my ideas. You know, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? What about this title? And it did, you know, it was a it was a great system. So ah, that's good to hear some positive. You know, you hear so much negative about AI, and I'd use it as a tool that's helped me with a lot of different things. And you know, I look at it like anything else. Yes, it is a tool. I'm operating the tool, I'm in control. It's not taking over. It's like, you know, use it for positive things. Exactly. You know, it's it's a creative tool. So why not use it? Uh absolutely. I I love using it. So it's a it just speeds everything up. It does. It's a force multiplier, right? Yeah, exactly. The only thing about it that worries me right now is these massive data centers that they're building, and they're saying um how it's gonna affect the environment, and it's gonna take out tons of water to cool it, and and all these different things that are gonna affect the environment. It's like, okay, now if all that's true, uh we're going backwards more than we ever have if we're gonna you know push everything to the edge with the environment, which is you know so important to our survival. So there's there's two sides to that story, like anything else. I'm just kind of concerned about that. I'm wondering how are they gonna be able to run these huge data centers without putting that kind of pressure on the environment around us and how is it gonna affect our lives, you know? Yeah, I I'm not sure that anyone's really trying to I they probably are, I'm just not aware of it. They're trying to tackle that problem. I think more they're more concerned with finding places that will allow them to be built, you know, period.

unknown 11:57

Right.

Speaker 11:58

They're very noisy, they're very yeah, they're very noisy and expensive and all that, and you know, a lot of communities do not want that. So what I think they need to do is put them out in the middle of nowhere where there's no civilization around, right? Yeah. Yeah. As long as there's water as able to cool it, but so well, maybe they'll come up with something that's artificial that'll cool it somehow without using water. Who knows? That would that would be good. So going forward, you're you're in that cycle. Uh every artist is, you know, you create, record, promote, then you know, as soon as you get to that point, you're already thinking about your next project, what direction to go, and starting to record the next album, right? Yep. That's that's kind of how it goes. Do you feel that if you ever stop doing that, like like, okay, I'm gonna take a year off, I'm gonna go travel, then come back and start again. Do you feel that if you stop that flow, that it would be too difficult to get back in the groove? Or can you just do it at the snap of the finger and jump in? I don't, well, I I'm not sure how many people know this. If you read my bio, you can kind of see it. But I went through a period of almost 30 years where I didn't compose. I mean, I went through my you know doctoral studies as and music composition, and then um, in fact, I was in your neck of the woods at Brandeis, um, and then I sidestepped and I said, I'm not really interested in being a music professor. I want to do you know explore some other things, and that's how I got into the IT field and you know built a career there. Um so for 30 years I didn't do anything, and then when I decided to turn it back on, it just started blowing. So I'm not sure that stop I'm not gonna stop like that anymore. I'm I'm determined to write until I'm at least ninety-nine or a hundred, so that's great. Well, that's what keeps you young, keeping the mind alive and creative and and active rather than just sitting there looking at a screen, not thinking about anything, not creating, right?

Speaker 1 14:23

I can hear you.

Speaker 14:25

Oh, that's weird. Okay, you can hear me now. Yeah, that was very very, very strange. Okay. Oh well I guess we can wrap it up. Um once again, thank you for your music and your time. And uh we'll get all this out to so people can give it a listen and hopefully we'll do this again. Okay. And in the meantime, if they choose, it's gonna be on all the major platforms, but you can go to my website, which is Terry LeeNichols.com, and it's there with a book and everything, and it's very easy to see the whole thing together. So Right. That is a really nice setup, what what you have there, and uh I'll I'll include that link so people can do that. Yeah, that's that's a great way to see the story and hear the music. So Yes it is. Thank you, Terry.

Speaker 1 15:15

You take care. All right, take care. Thanks a lot, Keith. Bye bye. All right, bye.