Unknown Speaker 0:00 Nothing brings people together quite like music can. It takes disparate sounds and brings them together to make something beautiful. In our final episode of this season, producer Adrian Bueno shows us how artists work to create harmony in their music, and how that allows them to find harmony in their own lives. This is Same Difference. Unknown Speaker 0:46 Did you notice how some of the sounds from the intro song sort of layered on top of one another? Let me play it back. Now I'll play one of the notes by itself. Now watch what happens when I layer some more sounds over it. I just layered another set of instruments over the original sound, and it came out more fuller sounding and much more complete. Like they belonged with one another. There's lots of theory behind why this stuff works. But in short, this was an example of harmony. Unknown Speaker 1:49 Harmony is almost like a stream that is constantly going and as far as changes. And that's when we feel the ups and downs expansion, the contractions shrink, and the tension and other things. Unknown Speaker 2:08 That was Charlotte Tang, both on the keys, and on call. She's a classical music performer, and a former instructor at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. Although I was trained in jazz when I was younger, she could definitely explain the concept of harmony way better than me. Unknown Speaker 2:26 When we talk about harmony, we can't not mention the concept of triathlon. So you always go from home, and then you go away from home, you go back home. And, um, what happens in between is what we talked about just now that stream going through all these things. Unknown Speaker 2:50 Harmony is in all music. It's one of the most important concepts in music, and every kind of musician has a way of forming them. And the following story will focus on exactly that. How an artist created harmony and how their creations helped them find harmony within their lives. For some of us, it's been a while since we've been able to catch a live DJ at the bar at the club, right a wedding. You remember those times. Unknown Speaker 3:25 DJs are some of the most exciting musicians out there. Well, everybody's out there having a time. The next time you catch a DJ set, take a moment and listen. Pay attention to how they traverse seamlessly from track to track, the unique sounds of record scratching, it goes quite under appreciated. They're some of the best when it comes to harmonizing between different sounds. Harmony is a big part of what they do for a living. DJ Tom Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming, Fleming. Unknown Speaker 4:08 My name is Tom Fleming. DJ Tom Fleming, and originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia moved to Toronto about three years ago, Unknown Speaker 4:16 DJ Tom Fleming, also known as the Ginger Prince of the East is a three time finalist at the Red Bull three styles DJ competition in Canada. Unknown Speaker 4:25 Kind of over the years, it's become the premier DJ competition around the world for nightclub DJs, essentially. I was a massive fan of the competition before I even entered so I would be on YouTube looking at all the previous sets thinking like oh, one day I want to do that I want to I want to be in the Red Bull three style but I still was by no means a big name. In my own city, I was still the new kid on the block. But I ended up winning this competition in my city that took me to a national stage. I was in Calgary. It was my first time flying anywhere for DJ'ing, being judged by like me my DJ heroes, and I had 3000 people staring directly at me while I was performing a 15 minute set that I planned. I always kind of lacked confidence with myself as DJ but you know, I worked really, really hard at my craft. So I competed at the Canadian National final level three different times. Unknown Speaker 5:18 He's also one of the best when it comes to creating harmonies on turntables. Unknown Speaker 5:22 But what Tom brings is that next level of turntablism, he's, he works on routines day in, day out. Unknown Speaker 5:28 that's Elliot Divine, for DJ El Divine. He's DJ across the globe for the past 20 years. And he's the founder of a DJ collective based in Toronto called house party. Tom Fleming is a member of house party. Unknown Speaker 5:41 He has word play, tone play, routines that he's often putting up on his Instagram all the time, always flooring me. Unknown Speaker 5:49 Although you probablydon't know what word player tone play is. It's exactly what we're looking for when it comes to breaking down the harmonies of a DJ. Unknown Speaker 5:57 Tone play, I don't use as much but basically what tone play is, is you're going to take different notes from one song, and then chop them up and recreate the same notes in song B that you're about to bring it. So one of one example that I like to use for telling play is if I'm playing Crank that by Soldier Boy, everybody knows Crank That by Soldier Boy, it's very distinct. It has like these steel drum notes, like bang bang. And they're very spread out notes, and they're very, very distinct. So with each software these days, I can, I can create a marker on each separate note of Crank That, we'll use Crank That as an example. I'm not going to sing it but you know, for each for each separate note like Bang, bang, bang, bang, whatever it is, I can create a marker and then I can I can almost play that back like a piano at those markers. So pretend I have note A, note B note C, note D, not actual musical notes. I mean, just you know, note 1, 2, 3, 4 whatever it is, I can maybe play that in different notes by hitting the fourth one first, the third one the second one, the first one and just kind of scramble it all together and play it almost like it's piano. There's similar notes and crank that as there is in Mercy by Kanye ,Big Sean, whoever's in that Two Chains, I don't know that hip hop track. Unknown Speaker 7:38 So I'm able to I wonder seeing where I recreate Mercy with the notes of Crank That and it kind of catches people by surprise. And I actually performed that in my 2014 Red Bull three style set as well it went over phenomenally because people will react when I drop Crank That because they know it also well. And when it drops, people will get that reaction, that crowd reaction, as soon as that song comes in. Unknown Speaker 8:51 This use of tone play is one of the many ways that DJ can create harmonies and harmonize between two different songs. In Tom's case, it brought him one of his most proudest moments as a DJ. Unknown Speaker 9:02 That moment right there, as soon as that happened was probably like the craziest. It was pretty surreal, cuz it went over better than I could have ever expected. When I was on stage doing that, at the point where I dropped that song, it was such a good example of knowing the right way to set up a song to kind of have the craziest reaction. It's like one metaphor, one example is just like, lobbing the pitch rate in the strike zone so that you can just hit it out of the park, and it was just like mayhem. Like nobody expected me to drop that. Unknown Speaker 9:35 Another tool Tom uses is to harmonize get reactions from crowds is the use of wordplay. Unknown Speaker 9:41 Basically, wordplay is a mixed technique where you're mixing song A with song B through the connection of words, whether it's one song leads into the next song, one song finishing the sentence of the other. Everybody knows the song Ride With Me by Nelly and there's that part where I can at any club around the world and you can cut the music and everybody's gonna scream, hey, it must be the money. Like, everybody knows that, like, I can pick up on a part like that where it's like a must be the money. Everybody knows that that's going to come. So one way to mix that track in a word play kind of, maybe you've dropped another song about money. So must be the money and then you go into ODB got your money. Oh, baby, I got your money, like, and then it kind of fits like that. It's like, oh, okay, I see what he did. Unknown Speaker 10:52 Creative techniques like tone play and wordplay. It's allowed Tom to perform well at competitions, like the Red Bull three style Unknown Speaker 10:59 is a really good experience for people to build networks with because other than that, I wouldn't have met anybody in Toronto to be able to move to Toronto from, you know, small east coast town, well, Halifax I consider smallish town or smaller city. So by doing the Red Bull competition, I got to finally meet people from Toronto, DJs from Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, like all around, but it's kind of cool. And then we develop friendships through the competition. So now I had connections in Toronto. So when I was able to visit Toronto, before I moved, I had DJ acquaintances that could kind of, you know, take me into certain clubs introduce me to certain people introduce me to other DJs. Unknown Speaker 11:42 It's also what helped him gain a connection with Elliott Divine of House Party, Unknown Speaker 11:46 Tom is amazing. Yeah, I've DJ'd with Tom like on four turntables at at a really, really large Christmas party before like in excess of about 5- 600 people. And you know, we just enjoy bouncing off each other. Like that's, that's the real heart of why DJing and it's so it's so fun. And there's a there's a real harmony to it isn't this, your two guys or two girls, the guy and a girl can get up there and they can read off each other. There's this unsaid moments where only one guy just has to put up his hand and go, I've got the next track. And the other one accepts that. I mean, one of the best things just about a tight knit group like House Party is that you get to be you get to develop friendships with your fellow DJs, underneath the House Party family, and just by meeting different DJs I get to learn from them be at different events where they're playing different things to be in a social environment where I get to hang out with these DJs as friends, and not just like a competition. Unknown Speaker 12:47 For Elliot and Tom, they wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world. Unknown Speaker 12:52 I mean, why do we do that? Because this is the best job in the world. This hands down. I don't I mean, I remember when I was 18, no, I was 17. Yeah, I wasn't even supposed to be in this club. And, you know, this was years ago. But I remember I had a beer in my hand. I had, I had girls dancing right in front of me. And it was 300 people there. Everyone's climbing up on the furniture having a great time. I'm playing a record that I bought on the weekend for $20 which was a significant amount of money. And I remember just looking at this moment, and just taking a mental snapshot going, my God, if this isn't the best job in the world, I really don't know what is. Unknown Speaker 13:47 As a fan of music since a child, now I get to kind of feel that emotion on a whole other level when I get to play a song for a bunch of people and see them react to it the way that I plan for them to react. Yeah, I just like to do what I do creatively and I hope that I can I can inspire other people to do similar things for themselves and step their own game up as DJs. Unknown Speaker 14:28 Tom Fleming bodied that bitch. That's how the f**k you really DJ. Unknown Speaker 14:40 Tom's journey to where he is today, works a whole lot like harmony does and the song. Unknown Speaker 14:45 Harmony takes the flow of music and dictates how we're feeling. Ut establish all the ground. It tells us where we are and where we're going to. Unknown Speaker 14:54 In other words, the long journeys we take to get to our goals can be likened to harmony. Unknown Speaker 15:00 It might not be as pretty and as attractive as melody. But if we don't have harmonies, we have lost so many dimensions in a piece and we almost wouldn't know where it's going. Unknown Speaker 15:30 I am grooving to that one. I loved it so much. Thank you for blessing our ears with that final episode of this season, produced by Adrian Bueno. And thanks to our executive producer, Emily Morantz associate producer Manuela Vega artwork by Ben Shelley. The music composed by John Powers. I've been your host Gracie Brison. And last but not least, huge shout out to Amanda Cupido, a true turntable. And remember, fitting in is overrated.