Festivals and Vocal Tone with Eddie Kiesanowski (AU-NZ Music Podcast)

Welcome to the AU-NZ Music Podcast, where Reuben (⁠⁠GYMjot⁠⁠) dives into the Australian and New Zealand music scene with industry guests, sharing insights on music news, standout tracks, and artist development.

Episode 1 features Eddie, the creative force behind Melbourne-based indie-rock outfit ⁠Pretty Stooked⁠, who you can follow⁠ here⁠.

• ⁠📰⁠ News: ⁠Festival funding in NSW⁠- what's changing and why it matters for artists and audiences.
• 🎶 Song Spotlight:⁠ Floating by Jackson Taylor⁠-what makes this track stand out?
• 🗣️ Artist Development: Vocal tone - shaping and refining your voice.

This podcast is presented by ⁠GYMjot: Get Your Musical Journey On Track⁠, an artist development service based in Melbourne. If you are ready to unlock your inner artist, then get in touch today for a

FREE 30-minute Consultation

Below is an auto-generated transcript of the podcast, which you can hear on YouTube or a podcast service.

all right team here we are episode one of the Australia New Zealand [Music] music we're talking music industry in austr and New Zealand Believe It or Not we've got some uh artists coming on some music and professionals all sorts you wait and see but our first guest today is a friend of mine Eddie keisanowski how you doing buddy good man how you doing fabulous now I'm just going to give the peeps a little bit of uh background info on your journey so far so uh idy is the creative behind indie

rock group gr pretty stoked with two o's uh he has explored music for all of his life really growing up with his brother who did much the same uh he's from Christ Church and his first major project was a Christ Church outfit hard rock band called scalar they made some waves in New Zealand before moving over to Melbourne and they would eventually decide to go their creative separate ways which gave the opportunity for pretty stoked to come on to the scene and they released their debut EP in

2023 and they're currently in the process of making some more tracks for you guys you can check them out at your local Spotify and whatnot did I miss anything there you pretty much got it wrapped it up nicely great great and uh we just like to ask I guess for a little bit of a fun fact to get us going break the ice a bit ity so um please indulge me oh damn fun fact um do you know T and paror I know that guy it's just one guy it's not even a b one guy it's one guy so he does every

every single element yeah yeah no I won't hit you with that um fun fact uh does it have to be music related nope n all right give me something juicy all right so back in the 1930s all right in prohibition you may know this or you may not but there was a bunch of people like thousands and thousands of people all like paralyzed themselves from drinking Jamaican ginger extract otherwise known as Jake because it was high in alcohol content I think it contained like ethanol or something and it just like all right messed them

up G Jak leg I've never heard of that but I have heard of how the Moonshine business uh in the black market really boomed back in those prohibition days well there you go that was that was that the vibe was that the vibe in Australia and New Zealand as well was that a global thing yeah I read uh water for elephants and there was a part in that book that spoke about that and so I Googled it right right because I know it was the case in America so much of our history is just based on the American

perspective yeah I mean I imagine it would be the same there'd be a lot of well no was there Prohibition in Australia okay I have no idea barking up the wrong field of expertise yeah they probably had no need to drink it maybe I mean there's always a need I mean people probably find a need to drink it now yeah I'm all about that self-imposed prohibition my friend as you know as you know oh yeah cool all right let's crack on to the uh the News segment for the week so basically every

week I'm going to hit you guys with a a fresh piece of news and we're going to dissect it a bit have a bit of a chat and hopefully it just informs you guys keeps you up to date with what is happening in the industry so this one was written uh a few weeks back we're recording here on the 3rd of October 2024 but this one was written on September 19th by by lar brandle he is the head of content at the music Network which is this blog platform essentially it's entitled this is a game

changer for our entire industry AFA responds to the New South Wales festival's reforms the New South Wales government is committing to 2 years of emergency funding assistance with an initial 3 million allocated the Australian festivals Association that's the AFA have surged this huge win for New South Wales festivals the managing director or MD Mitch Wilson says there are 500k grants and major reforms to the music festival act that would improve the regulatory framework for music festivals reforms such as decisions on

costs and conditions will now be able to be appealed in internally with agencies Festival will have a right to appeal a cross-governmental panel to a cross-governmental panel on costs of a festival's economic viability is under threat now John Graham minister of music and nighttime economy very interesting minister to have said festivals are facing challenges across the globe and around Australia with the increased price of doing business the cost of living crisis late ticket buying bad weather and changing audience

behaviors so in Ence this article is talking about how the new South government New South Wales government have decided to support music festivals finally after some some tensions on that front over the past few years um so I asked you Eddie how important do you think music festivals are to our industry as a musician a fan and a business I I understand they kind of different perspectives to to judge the importance but attack it how you will hit me yeah I mean I think they're incredibly important

to fans and to musicians themselves I think like if a an artist can get a good Festival slot then they can kind of Base the their tour around that Festival slot um you know they might get a whole lot of new people who would have never heard of them before see them for being at the festival go oh this artist is awesome I wonder if they're playing again and then go and buy tickets to their show um yeah so that's a massive one right there like as an artist I think it's an exciting opportunity to be able to play to a

bunch of people who are just going to go to the Festival you know or you may not be the main drawer for going to that Festival but you get to um jump on board so for smaller artist s of getting like you're sort of getting like indirect exposure hey yeah totally um also I think from fans perspective like you get to see a whole lot of Acts on one lineup which is not something you get to do all the time you know if you go to see uh say like a major concert there might be one opening act you know if you go to

see a local gig there might be a few you know but you're not going to see more than four or five bands or four or five artists on one lineup usually unless it's set up as a mini festival type thing so getting going to a festival and seeing you know tens dozens of a at once is pretty awesome it's it's almost like buying your live music fix in bulk isn't it totally totally yeah cuz it's it works out quite good bang for your buck really even though you know ticket prices can

uh can be quite intimidating off the bat with some of these festivals but when you look at what you're getting on that just just the lineup in itself never mind the sort of uh the other community aspects or the fact that massive costs to run a festival massive costs um just the lineup itself it's it's it's good bang for your buck yeah well I mean if you're going to go to a I don't know a huge artist a lot of big festivals are going to have like a draw card artist right if you go to see

that artist alone like it's probably going to knock you back 150 bucks just to go see them at least atast it could it could be the same cost as the festival yeah you know yeah for sure like I I got I got to see all inone lineup at zette in Buddha Budapest I got um Kings of leyon Justin Bieber Ariana Grande uh Arctic Monkeys no it wasn't Ariana Grande sorry it was dualipa um uh and many more like these are these are top top acts you know in my line anyway and um I'm sure Justin Bieber show would be costing it

it could cost 300 bucks I don't know yeah I don't know I haven't been to a Justin Bieber show but maybe uh I should say zette cost me about $300 Australian really is that all a get is yeah was it because the G goes for n maybe it was a bit more bit more it was like 6 days and uh I went for three days and I think it was €200 that's so do the translation yeah it might be 400 it might be 400 but hey I mean that's still pretty good for a festival of that caliber even if it's

500 even if it's 500 that's still working out pretty well yeah for sure anyway so we're talking about exposure benefits we're talking about from a fan perspective um exposure benefits as well uh bang for your buck sort of thing how about from a business angle you got any thoughts there from the festival themselves yeah yeah or or how important is the festivals for a surviving music industry I mean for a lot of people festivals are their main way of uh experiencing music you know a lot of

people who don't go to gigs throughout the year will go to music festivals um so yeah I wonder it's interesting I wonder if there were less festivals if they weren't happening if people would then search for it elsewhere um but yeah I think some people say it is their like big blowout they're G to go I'm gonna go to this festival or I'm gonna go two or three festivals in a year and that's kind of that's where I'm getting it all um but then also yeah I don't know I'm

thinking I guess from a business angle for me I'm almost thinking the very important thing to remember about the music business is there is no industry without the fans and the artists you know that is the prerequisite to any business activity so if you're satisfying both of those uh Partners both of those uh stakeholders both of those participants the fans and the artists if they're both benefiting from a festival then by default is the business also benefiting from the festival yeah I think there's a lot of

people involved in the festival as well you know all of those bands or artists all of the food you know all of the people working in the festival there's tons of people involved all the crew all the marketing like yeah there's probably put a lot of people out of jobs if they if these festivals shut down that's right yeah some of these people planning uh like your bigger New Year's Eve festivals um that's their full-time job just takes a year all the ducks in a row for that I

had no idea how people would just start a festival what is that hey like it's very bold move I mean it's a slow Pro I've got some friends that have started a festival and it's just I mean I'd love to talk to them more about it but uh slow process I guess start doing smaller shows yeah your smaller artists like I guess it's all about being connected isn't it it's like do you know it's but not just connected to the music industry like you've got to be connected with

hospitality uh venue Arrangements I I I don't know the council geez there going to be a lot of regulations a lot of lot of planning there'd be a lot of legal stuff um I imagine there's a lot of rejection as well you know or having having to work around things if it's not going to go the way you initially planned is it me or does does it feel like there's more festivals in Australia and New Zealand now than when we were growing up now I realized probably in the last few since Co some of those

festivals you know they fell off a bit but before that like it felt like there was quite a few and I just I don't remember this being a thing when I was growing up it wasn't something I was thinking about yeah well just we were too young to be a part of it so also small town small town boy syndrome we didn't have any festivals down Bal CLA ways I mean I don't remember there being festivals in Christ Church but there probably were yeah um but also crushes we had you know we had the earthquake so right true true

that was a bit of a no touch zone for a moment wasn't it yeah so I don't know but I do think they yeah they they have grown and grown and then Co probably shut a lot of them down yeah and now they're trying to come back they're trying to come back but I think the world is changing um you know probably as a result of that yeah yeah yeah for sure um yeah music festivals what's the best one you've been to experientially I mean I honestly haven't even been JP to M to that many music

festivals uh y I mean I've had I've had good times at all of them that I've I had a good time at Bay dreams in 200 past years back couple years back um I really enjoyed Nostalgia festival and small festival and Christ Church a few years back um yeah I me RM an Alps a couple of times you know yeah it does feel like the festival is often based around the people that you're with a it's more about that Community Spirit then it like the music's important that's a draw card but

it is it's that uh it's that Community spirit that we're tapping into very briefly especially if you're staying at the place which adds a whole other dimension yeah I was late to the game with festivals too like I didn't really start going to them until probably my you know mid 20s yeah me too I I didn't do them when I was younger uh just cuz my friends my friend group weren't going so I was like yeah I feel you I I think I probably just uh struggled to justify that big payment I

think that was a huge thing too I just wasn't in a financial position to be like right I'm dropping probably close to $1,000 to go away for a festival for three days or four days yeah I was probably more concerned with just um the drinking culture than the festival Community culture and maybe we miss some opportunities there who knows it's never too late never too late never too late never too late for sure well anyway that you can read that full piece on the music network uh not sure when I'm

releasing this episode but it might be a bit behind but this is still a great development for New South Wales um keep watching that space uh that's going to bring us uh to the closing of our first section here now we've got a song this week from a good friend of mine Jackson Taylor who BAS right up the top of New Zealand small place called Kaya beautiful place lived up there once upon a time uh this is one of his later releases it's called floting check it out I made my around the Sun a couple times so please believe

me when I tell you it's my time I'm up in Adam head and running sick a line cuz one day I'm going be the one wearing the highest Crown at the top not scared of falling I put it down and then I pick it back up in the morning yep I'm never yawning because this isn't boring so I listen into all the voices cuz I hear the windows calling for me I'm in for a penny I'm in for a pound so if you you see me get ready I'm King to get down I got the magic the Cannabis don't know if

you can handle this but let me pack you up and send you to another planet kid I'm ready to kick off head bobing like hip hop I'm [ __ ] with tip Tock get melted like Tip Top I'm crazy like pop rock so pop off y chicken like Chop Chop I'm out of here ain't no for the wicked the wicked and Wicked they live right here right here I'mma keep pushing till they can't no more ain't nobody living in fear in fear if you don't want to get it I'm let you dri by cuz there ain't

nobody in my circle here right 2021 yeah ripping the far north I like it I like it what what what came in for you there Eddie yeah it cool honestly it's a it's a genre of music that I don't really listen to often so it's kind of fresh fresh I was trying to hit you with something that um isn't so isn't so accustomed to your ears yeah um yeah for sure yeah was there was there any sort of standout parts for you in that track was there any sort of um moments highlights that got you

honestly I like the verses um I felt myself hooked into the verses the most probably because it's like it's a genre I don't listen to so that style of um rapping was just like cool I was just like zoning into it I think I connected more with the verses than I did the qu yeah cool I I really I've always really liked Jackson's flow he he just strings sentences together so so flawlessly and with ease and it's it's just um it's it's it makes it sound so easy have you ever tried

rapping that it's so hard it's so hard it's so hard to get it to sound cool you know like there's a style to flow and I cannot find it for the love of me n no not cut out for a big respect yeah and I I I I like how you know Jackson as an artist is someone who he can flow with the Rhymes but he's also got great Melodies and hooks as well like and he sings it all by himself he's got a fabulous singing voice and I don't know there's there's not heaps of artists or rappers that that that can

mesh the two without the help of autotune at least for sure yeah yeah for sure yeah do you reckon he um well you may knowes he doesn't use a well he he might he might do it for some touchups yeah like like as we all do yeah yeah that's the thing don't know this it's not it's not a heavy a no people don't know this yeah little uh trick of the trade guys there is there is some minor touchups happening they're pretty easy to get away with in our day and what no way we all have perfect voices all the

time of course of course well that is a blessing though when you go to a live show and um cuz I can sometimes go to a live show and go on with that hesitancy of like hm maybe maybe they're using like lots of autotune and then you get there and they're like okay no that's real and then yeah sometimes yeah sometimes I can't help but judge YY sometimes it just gets me you know creatives in their own right creatives in their own right um so I will say um song feedback is a service that we at Jim jot offer uh you

can send a song in for free and I'll listen to it uh the one time and give you a sort of one document analysis of it looking at things like structural components compositional melodic lyrical feel based things just whatever comes to me in that moment of listening I'm jotting it down and uh trying to give you something with some objective cues to uh to give you something to maybe develop the song or uh just just to know what other people think you're song as a TR what a trained musician thinks you're

song now the paid version of that is a 12 listen analysis same sort of setup we're just diving deeper because as you probably all know a song grows on you of time it takes it takes it needs some time to marinate you know and it it unveils things to you across those lessens that's why I do the 12 listen analysis um what we also offer at Jim jot a key part of what we offer is the uh development process the Jim jot template get your musical Journey on track this is where it all started essentially this

is just um a course or um yeah a process that I go through with artists which I've done with Eddie himself and several other artists uh where we do a deep dive into self introspection strengths weaknesses goal setting uh and pretty much how to make your vision align with your reality because that's the hard part we we normally will lean one way too much we're too stuck in how we're doing things or we're overly ambitious and we we we can't really find a path there so Jim jot we try to lay out those

spping stones while maintaining our a well-being along the path and so talking about their artist development Eddie maybe you could uh reflect on reflect on some things that have been of value to you from an artist development perspective doesn't have to be anything to do with gym job by the way just anything along your journey at any point that sort of sort of changed the way you looked at your music your creativity the industry something that just developed you as an artist yeah sure I think um for me a

massive thing was discovering uh the tone of my voice um coming from you mentioned earlier I played in a hard rock band and I kind of had grown accustomed to uh belting everything and trying to and that being something that impressed people um that I could do that and so I lied heavily on that and was like right I'm going to do that all the time I'm going to just yeah put all my eggs in that basket pretty much um and then stepping away from that and discovering different types of music and starting sing

different types of music I kind of didn't really adapt on my own it was sort of through recording and working with producers and having that feedback of like oh keep trusting that trusting that a bit softer or try to you know pull that back a little bit or let's let's try open that tone up or you know and not even necessarily in a technical way just like a it just doesn't feel right can we just try that again try it a different way and continuing to work on that until it was like listening back

going Ah that's I really like the tone of my voice here like it's starting to sound better and then learning how to do that all the time or learning where it sits you know where it sits best for me yeah yeah um so that learning that was a big thing for me I think that shaped the way that my writing went um and that my music developed as a whole yeah you've got multiple voices really don't you and as as a younger singer I think you do sort of just get comfortable in that space where where you've been

identifying as you know that that was your identity that hard rock voice and it's quite a strong identity especially in that realm the Hard Rock uh world the middle World it it is like spine shattering for people when you just hit them with that full force um but it's not always what is required isn't it it's not always serving the track yeah I think I noticed that a lot especially working with other artists um um it's easier to hear it in other people than it is yourself um yes so you

know I taught songwriting for a long time um and having oh and performance and like having people sing songs to me or you know it's a lot I could sit there and go man this is really cool but I can see you're trying to do something you're relying on this one thing and you're doing it so much that it's taking away from the whole um yeah like maybe maybe save that for one part yeah yes exactly it creates Dynamics in the song and obviously this was like a gradual progression hey this

this slow exposure to ton yeah was not overnight not overnight at all like and I'm still learning yes you know that's the thing is we'll always be learning you don't just wake up on morning and go right nailed it yeah well is it but I think over the last yeah probably the last three years I've been developing it is it fair to say that our voice is always changing I think so you can see it in artists that have been around you know performing for 50 years you know as you get old your voice starts changing for

sure and even as a just you know a much younger person as a teenager yeah naturally yeah yeah I I always you you mentioned before about um the the direction from producers that sort of helped you find those different tonalities of voice but even like maybe a different word for tonalities is a different feel that you're uh delivering through your voice CU if your voice is an expressive tool and this is something that I really struggled with when I was coming up as a guitarist because it's much the same

like um not talking about tones in ter in terms of turning knobs but tone in ter in terms of how I'm attacking the guitar how how I'm how I'm expressing it comes down to Dynamics more when we're talking about guitar more but I I I can remember recording things and um the producer saying like yeah it just doesn't like doesn't quite feel right and I was like I [ __ ] nailed that like as in like I played that perfectly you know like I played the notes I played all the notes and I

wasn't the message wasn't getting through the message wasn't getting through to me in that moment and this there is a bit of protectiveness in that too when when a producer is being like 100% maybe it's not quite right and you're like well that was right and uh you you got to drop that ego when it comes to um being in the studio for sure sometimes the take with mistakes in it is the one that Yes sounds [ __ ] awesome like you're like yeah that's the one um yeah and you're right with guitar I I

think I did the same thing with guitar strum everything really hard yes yeah yeah just attack it um and then realize like oh man I'm GNA use a softer pick and or no pick or use my fingers and play really lightly and then you know accent certain things and that adds so much more emotion to it yeah yeah feel um so yeah like you can just think about your voice how engaging is someone that is speaking in the monotone constantly and just saying here all the time that's the same thing if you're

constantly bouting out that's still a monotone if you're just bouncing out all the time it's it's it's the diversity in um in delivery and having the different Tools in your toolbox to access yeah I I think I feel like it is almost I'm I'm almost leaning more towards a a tonality of Dynamics in a way yeah yeah I guess I I think I think both I think uh I guess how rounded The Vow sounds are or how nasy are like you can sing you can sing um you know softly or loudly in a really Nas voice you can

also sing in a really round open Voice yes um but I think it's just about finding yeah what sounds best for that specific section yes or specific line or word you know you can really break it down if you want to yeah um yeah maybe not the tonality of um Dynamics per se but maybe just delivery at large there's there's different aspects to the delivery that maybe you're overlooking yeah nice that's a good one I think I think a lot of people would resonate with that and if if they aren't

resonating with that uh I hope it's a wake up cool in a way cuz that that that is a that's a big creative expansion definitely I mean I'd say if if you're unsure about it if you you know want to try it like record yourself doing the same thing and try to sing it completely differently every time and go back like I think a lot of the time you you think you've got an idea of how you are going to sing it or you always sing a certain way which is what I was doing singing and I do 10 takes and I might

like in terms of pitch and phrasing nail it every time but it's still not sounding right you're still going [ __ ] it's just off or something's not right and it wasn't until I started changing the way I was seeing it you know not the pitch not the phrasing but the tone and yeah the the feel I guess I was putting into it where I started to go a I've clicked on to something here yeah and I think that's a great piece of actional advice just get get into your DIY Studio it doesn't even have to be a

professional mic really to get started on this just start experimenting with different ways of singing But record it so that you could hear the differences in tonality because their voice sounds different from the inside we need we need to get it out and then reflect on it yeah for sure and I think just like if we're referencing Jackson once again talking about that um going from singing into rapping bang prime example of using your voice as two different uh two different tools of delivery right there

very Stark difference oh yeah great awesome well thanks for joining us here on episode one of the Australian New Zealand music podcast Eddie do you have uh any any final words anywhere you want to direct people um and whatnot like that yeah well uh first of all thank you for having me uh follow pretty stook um and the news my other band that is at pretty stoed and pretty stoed on Spotify and apple music and all that jazz great um and yeah the news which is the news with a k k n e w yeah very schnazzy very snazzy awesome folks well

go check that out thanks once again Eddie and we'll see you for the next installment of the Australian music new the Australia New Zealand music podcast peace