Resonant Reflections Interview
Q: Can you talk about the history of Resonant Reflections? I was reading you have know each other for decades.
A: (Brian) Yeah, actually that’s at the core of who we are and how we function as a musical duo. Chris and I met in the Spring of 1999, auditioning to be accepted into the music program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell for Sound Recording. We met in the lobby, waiting for our respective auditions and became instant friends. On the spot, started showing each other our musical ideas, things we’d written. At lunch, it was decided to dorm together in the Fall, and we’ve been best friends since. We spent much of the following years pursuing our music, forging different paths as life had taken us in different directions for much of the next decade, while still sharing music and building the friendship from 1400 miles away. Following a series of life’s twists, we finally formed Resonant Reflections and released A Perfect World? in December 2011, the culmination of a decade’s worth of shared ideas. It wasn’t long though that both of us got married, had families, different career moves; life in general, and while still writing in off-moments, were mostly inactive as a band, while our families remained close in that time. The urgency to put out new material and form a new, more permanent outlet for the different experiences and perspectives we’d gain over the years had been building, and spilled over during the Lockdown of 2020, with a growing tyranny in the underbelly of the world we saw and realized and came to find ourselves living through. We felt we had a strong message of hope and healing to offer the world in our troubled times. This has led us to a creative breakthrough that has seen us release our second full length LP, New Life, and our first EP, The Unknown in 2021, and a follow-up EP, The Great Divide in 2022, with The Unknown 2 EP currently underway. And because we can’t tour at present, we’ve begun a special series of cover songs and promo videos to offer in its place. That is being rolled out now. The ideas continue to evolve as do our perspectives and friendship, and after 20 years of false starts, we feel that we’re just now hitting our stride.
(Chris) That pretty much sums it up. Brian showed me his early ideas for “Tomorrow” (on our A Perfect World? LP). It was synergy at the start and was exciting to be bouncing off ideas with an equal for once, musically speaking. As Brian said, the conversations came naturally as well as the direction of where I have tried to take my music and ideas he had. I had been recording myself and bands since I was 14 so being at a school for music production made sense, even though that did not pan out for life reasons. Once we dormed together I showed him how I was creating multi-part recordings on a Yamaha CMXII 4 track cassette machine and he began sketching out ideas right away. To be completely transparent we did not do a lot of combined recordings work, but wrote/refined many songs behind our guitars and the school’s upright pianos.
Q: What inspired you to make The Great Divide? The name resonates with me and points to the way a lot of people feel these days.
A: (Brian) There definitely seems to be a menacing influence and you can see the mass effect it’s had and continues to have, and it’s growing. There’s a lot that’s broken and can’t be fixed until it can be acknowledged and faced. We’re all in on this hero’s journey together; we all have to face the shadows within. It’s a big driver of the musical landscape we create. The Great Divide is this sort of narrative concept that to go through the unknown, there’s a point you have to decide what’s right and make a leap of faith; face the fears, to “cross the great divide.” And of course there’s all sorts of other layers in there to explore too; division in general. But, definitely, that feeling that’s happening in the collective consciousness of humanity has had a profound effect and influence on our art.
(Chris) EP and singles are a bit foreign to Brian and I as we grew up on albums/LPs. An album was like a musician’s novel and told a story from the music and sleeve-notes/cover. We moved to creating EPs for the time being as many people seem to be single happy (only caring about single songs) and it is far easier to work up four-six songs than a full set, especially given our respective lifestyles. New Life, our second album, was the successor and continuation of many themes on APW (A Perfect World?) and The Great Divide is the evolution of The Unknown (the first one). This one is a little more optimistic in a way compared to The Unknown, but still speaks to what we can do to change and make life better. Honestly from the start of the ‘COVID-Apocalypse’ we have both felt it is our obligation to share our life’s work to bring a heightened awareness and this EP is one of the many expressions of that.
Q: Can you talk about some of the themes on the album?
A: (Brian) Isolation, introspection, wisdom, redemption, transcendence, multi-dimensional reality; the hero’s journey and the common threads that tie us all together. We use storytelling in the music. The songs, that come from real life experience, also take on an archetypal narrative we’ve built as well. And tell a story through the eyes of three characters that all interrelate: Dream, Fear and Hope. The idea Joseph Campbell stated as: “all the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.”
(Chris) I would say the same, but also to change the narrative of The Unknown. This one makes it clear that while we all have made mistakes on our paths it is okay and we course correct together. It was meant as an evolution together rather than a condemnation of the masses.
Q: What is your creative process like?
A: (Brian) It’s evolved and adapted so much over the years. Sometimes it’s just playing, and I find an idea, sometimes it’s reading or seeing something that sparks an idea, sometimes whole sets of lyrics just come out of the ether. And I’ll pair those with music I compose to the lyrics, sometimes it’s pairing a musical idea to a set of lyrics that fits the tone and rhythm. Sometimes a musical idea comes to me while playing guitar and I’ll make an audio note. Sometimes it’s hearing a melody in my head and making a midi recording on my phone to come back to. I’ve often had notebooks where I’d write ideas. More often they go in my notes app on my phone now. The ideas are always there, it’s up to me to find any way to catalog or capture them. Whatever is easiest in the moment. And beyond that, most often Chris will come up with some idea and develop them to some point and then share, get feedback and build from there, but we’ve also just sat down with a couple guitars and hammered things out that way too. That is less often these days, but it’s just really just finding a way to answer the call when there’s an idea to be expressed.
(Chris) My process is a little different when working on my material where I will often start with samples or a simple pattern in Logic Pro and then build that same section of a song until I am inspired of what a song can be. Often the music comes before the lyrics and melody but before being fledged out I am careful to lay those parts in first to keep things cohesive. Given our vicinity to each other (almost an hour apart) we often write or add to each other’s parts in solo. I used to wait for a song to come to me, but found my best work comes from a little pressure on myself as well as pushing new boundaries (genres, process, etc).
Q: What was your recording process like? And has it changed over the years? Would you explain some of the tools you use?
A: (Brian) It’s changed in every conceivable way over the years. When we first met, ADAT was the state of the art for recording, and Chris was working on a 1/4” tape 4 track recorder. We’ve both been through many interfaces and DAWs over the years. And that continues today. Chris is kind of a junkie for all that. He’s turned his producer talents into a whole other character and dimension to our sound design. These days, I typically record with a mobile setup in GarageBand on my phone, just for ease and fitting into my lifestyle. But I currently use an iMac when I do use a desktop setup, with a clarett scarlet interface, Rode NT-1A and Shure SM-57 mics for vocals, and usually my Les Paul or Strat direct for guitars. Chris then pulls those files via the cloud (love the modern technology) and opens these in Logic. There he will load into his DAW template and evolve the song if it was my own. Else he will make some tweaks to my parts to fit them with his and then finish it off.
(Chris) My studio is based around a MacBook Pro, 8 channel MOTU Ultralite MK5 interface, Focusrite ISA One preamp, RODE NTV with Mullard tube upgrade, many synths, and Adam monitors. When working up at my camp home (or elsewhere) I will use an Apogee One as the headphone amp sounds great and it has a decent microphone built-in. I start songs directly in Logic Pro using a pre-mapped template, which helps speed things up. Brian currently does not use Logic, but GarageBand and when he finishes his parts I can open that same project in Logic and easily pick up where he left off. It is pretty efficient. When recording songs it is usually give a brief listen and see what is needed and then track that part. We record everything ourselves, except for drums, which I use a combination of Logic’s built in Drummer and XLN Audio’s Addictive Drums 2 and come up with some realistic grooves and tones. Even issues in recordings we often highlight. On one of the chorus parts in “Gotta Come Together” you can hear Leo (Brian’s son) laughing in the background.
Q: How do you usually go about writing lyrics?
A: (Brian) Life. I just get these creative bursts where the words fall out in almost complete pieces. Sometimes it’s a verse or stanza here or there. And those are fun to collage together too. But quite often those whole pieces just come in some kind of download.
(Chris) Brian is 100% the poet on this front. He can find a muse and provide a full manuscript on near fumes. To me, it is like pulling teeth. However, once I get an idea or work from Brian, I do okay. My lyrics are often very direct and sometimes autobiographical and our meters are also different. I usually add quite a bit of rhymes and symmetry of the number of syllables from line to line.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: (Brian) Our lives and music have become so intertwined over the years, they can’t really be separated. I’m a graphic designer by trade, and for me there is no separation between the art direction and the music either; it’s all one expression. We’ve both lived through strange times, and by contrast, times too great to even put into words, and have always shared this introspective and reflective sensibility. It’s what makes our friendship so strong and the music we create together, which again, is so intertwined with the life perspectives we bring to the art, that there’s this sort of outpouring of humanity and philosophical base we’re compelled to share. Because we both know the power in transcending fears, realizing what’s inside; the daily struggle we all share in all that, and having the courage to walk the hero’s path into the unknown, to claim your destiny. We’re trying to build a world within the music to express that. That’s what drives us.
(Chris) Well said Brian, the music is basically the diary of our lives. We try to express what we feel or want to share. I took a few years off when Olivia (my first child) was born and while that was life changing not having music flow from my being felt like a piece of soul was being restricted and held back.
Q: Can you talk about the history of Resonant Reflections? I was reading you have know each other for decades.
A: (Brian) Yeah, actually that’s at the core of who we are and how we function as a musical duo. Chris and I met in the Spring of 1999, auditioning to be accepted into the music program at the University of Massachusetts Lowell for Sound Recording. We met in the lobby, waiting for our respective auditions and became instant friends. On the spot, started showing each other our musical ideas, things we’d written. At lunch, it was decided to dorm together in the Fall, and we’ve been best friends since. We spent much of the following years pursuing our music, forging different paths as life had taken us in different directions for much of the next decade, while still sharing music and building the friendship from 1400 miles away. Following a series of life’s twists, we finally formed Resonant Reflections and released A Perfect World? in December 2011, the culmination of a decade’s worth of shared ideas. It wasn’t long though that both of us got married, had families, different career moves; life in general, and while still writing in off-moments, were mostly inactive as a band, while our families remained close in that time. The urgency to put out new material and form a new, more permanent outlet for the different experiences and perspectives we’d gain over the years had been building, and spilled over during the Lockdown of 2020, with a growing tyranny in the underbelly of the world we saw and realized and came to find ourselves living through. We felt we had a strong message of hope and healing to offer the world in our troubled times. This has led us to a creative breakthrough that has seen us release our second full length LP, New Life, and our first EP, The Unknown in 2021, and a follow-up EP, The Great Divide in 2022, with The Unknown 2 EP currently underway. And because we can’t tour at present, we’ve begun a special series of cover songs and promo videos to offer in its place. That is being rolled out now. The ideas continue to evolve as do our perspectives and friendship, and after 20 years of false starts, we feel that we’re just now hitting our stride.
(Chris) That pretty much sums it up. Brian showed me his early ideas for “Tomorrow” (on our A Perfect World? LP). It was synergy at the start and was exciting to be bouncing off ideas with an equal for once, musically speaking. As Brian said, the conversations came naturally as well as the direction of where I have tried to take my music and ideas he had. I had been recording myself and bands since I was 14 so being at a school for music production made sense, even though that did not pan out for life reasons. Once we dormed together I showed him how I was creating multi-part recordings on a Yamaha CMXII 4 track cassette machine and he began sketching out ideas right away. To be completely transparent we did not do a lot of combined recordings work, but wrote/refined many songs behind our guitars and the school’s upright pianos.
Q: What inspired you to make The Great Divide? The name resonates with me and points to the way a lot of people feel these days.
A: (Brian) There definitely seems to be a menacing influence and you can see the mass effect it’s had and continues to have, and it’s growing. There’s a lot that’s broken and can’t be fixed until it can be acknowledged and faced. We’re all in on this hero’s journey together; we all have to face the shadows within. It’s a big driver of the musical landscape we create. The Great Divide is this sort of narrative concept that to go through the unknown, there’s a point you have to decide what’s right and make a leap of faith; face the fears, to “cross the great divide.” And of course there’s all sorts of other layers in there to explore too; division in general. But, definitely, that feeling that’s happening in the collective consciousness of humanity has had a profound effect and influence on our art.
(Chris) EP and singles are a bit foreign to Brian and I as we grew up on albums/LPs. An album was like a musician’s novel and told a story from the music and sleeve-notes/cover. We moved to creating EPs for the time being as many people seem to be single happy (only caring about single songs) and it is far easier to work up four-six songs than a full set, especially given our respective lifestyles. New Life, our second album, was the successor and continuation of many themes on APW (A Perfect World?) and The Great Divide is the evolution of The Unknown (the first one). This one is a little more optimistic in a way compared to The Unknown, but still speaks to what we can do to change and make life better. Honestly from the start of the ‘COVID-Apocalypse’ we have both felt it is our obligation to share our life’s work to bring a heightened awareness and this EP is one of the many expressions of that.
Q: Can you talk about some of the themes on the album?
A: (Brian) Isolation, introspection, wisdom, redemption, transcendence, multi-dimensional reality; the hero’s journey and the common threads that tie us all together. We use storytelling in the music. The songs, that come from real life experience, also take on an archetypal narrative we’ve built as well. And tell a story through the eyes of three characters that all interrelate: Dream, Fear and Hope. The idea Joseph Campbell stated as: “all the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.”
(Chris) I would say the same, but also to change the narrative of The Unknown. This one makes it clear that while we all have made mistakes on our paths it is okay and we course correct together. It was meant as an evolution together rather than a condemnation of the masses.
Q: What is your creative process like?
A: (Brian) It’s evolved and adapted so much over the years. Sometimes it’s just playing, and I find an idea, sometimes it’s reading or seeing something that sparks an idea, sometimes whole sets of lyrics just come out of the ether. And I’ll pair those with music I compose to the lyrics, sometimes it’s pairing a musical idea to a set of lyrics that fits the tone and rhythm. Sometimes a musical idea comes to me while playing guitar and I’ll make an audio note. Sometimes it’s hearing a melody in my head and making a midi recording on my phone to come back to. I’ve often had notebooks where I’d write ideas. More often they go in my notes app on my phone now. The ideas are always there, it’s up to me to find any way to catalog or capture them. Whatever is easiest in the moment. And beyond that, most often Chris will come up with some idea and develop them to some point and then share, get feedback and build from there, but we’ve also just sat down with a couple guitars and hammered things out that way too. That is less often these days, but it’s just really just finding a way to answer the call when there’s an idea to be expressed.
(Chris) My process is a little different when working on my material where I will often start with samples or a simple pattern in Logic Pro and then build that same section of a song until I am inspired of what a song can be. Often the music comes before the lyrics and melody but before being fledged out I am careful to lay those parts in first to keep things cohesive. Given our vicinity to each other (almost an hour apart) we often write or add to each other’s parts in solo. I used to wait for a song to come to me, but found my best work comes from a little pressure on myself as well as pushing new boundaries (genres, process, etc).
Q: What was your recording process like? And has it changed over the years? Would you explain some of the tools you use?
A: (Brian) It’s changed in every conceivable way over the years. When we first met, ADAT was the state of the art for recording, and Chris was working on a 1/4” tape 4 track recorder. We’ve both been through many interfaces and DAWs over the years. And that continues today. Chris is kind of a junkie for all that. He’s turned his producer talents into a whole other character and dimension to our sound design. These days, I typically record with a mobile setup in GarageBand on my phone, just for ease and fitting into my lifestyle. But I currently use an iMac when I do use a desktop setup, with a clarett scarlet interface, Rode NT-1A and Shure SM-57 mics for vocals, and usually my Les Paul or Strat direct for guitars. Chris then pulls those files via the cloud (love the modern technology) and opens these in Logic. There he will load into his DAW template and evolve the song if it was my own. Else he will make some tweaks to my parts to fit them with his and then finish it off.
(Chris) My studio is based around a MacBook Pro, 8 channel MOTU Ultralite MK5 interface, Focusrite ISA One preamp, RODE NTV with Mullard tube upgrade, many synths, and Adam monitors. When working up at my camp home (or elsewhere) I will use an Apogee One as the headphone amp sounds great and it has a decent microphone built-in. I start songs directly in Logic Pro using a pre-mapped template, which helps speed things up. Brian currently does not use Logic, but GarageBand and when he finishes his parts I can open that same project in Logic and easily pick up where he left off. It is pretty efficient. When recording songs it is usually give a brief listen and see what is needed and then track that part. We record everything ourselves, except for drums, which I use a combination of Logic’s built in Drummer and XLN Audio’s Addictive Drums 2 and come up with some realistic grooves and tones. Even issues in recordings we often highlight. On one of the chorus parts in “Gotta Come Together” you can hear Leo (Brian’s son) laughing in the background.
Q: How do you usually go about writing lyrics?
A: (Brian) Life. I just get these creative bursts where the words fall out in almost complete pieces. Sometimes it’s a verse or stanza here or there. And those are fun to collage together too. But quite often those whole pieces just come in some kind of download.
(Chris) Brian is 100% the poet on this front. He can find a muse and provide a full manuscript on near fumes. To me, it is like pulling teeth. However, once I get an idea or work from Brian, I do okay. My lyrics are often very direct and sometimes autobiographical and our meters are also different. I usually add quite a bit of rhymes and symmetry of the number of syllables from line to line.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: (Brian) Our lives and music have become so intertwined over the years, they can’t really be separated. I’m a graphic designer by trade, and for me there is no separation between the art direction and the music either; it’s all one expression. We’ve both lived through strange times, and by contrast, times too great to even put into words, and have always shared this introspective and reflective sensibility. It’s what makes our friendship so strong and the music we create together, which again, is so intertwined with the life perspectives we bring to the art, that there’s this sort of outpouring of humanity and philosophical base we’re compelled to share. Because we both know the power in transcending fears, realizing what’s inside; the daily struggle we all share in all that, and having the courage to walk the hero’s path into the unknown, to claim your destiny. We’re trying to build a world within the music to express that. That’s what drives us.
(Chris) Well said Brian, the music is basically the diary of our lives. We try to express what we feel or want to share. I took a few years off when Olivia (my first child) was born and while that was life changing not having music flow from my being felt like a piece of soul was being restricted and held back.