Pablo Embon

Interview With Pablo Embon

SBS:  Welcome to our pages!  Whether you’ve been here with us in some way before, or you’re brand-new to the site, it’s probably best to get an introduction from you so that we get everyone on the same page to start.  Tell us a little bit about the history of your music, and what’s happening with it lately!?!

Pablo Embon:  Thank you Jeremy for hosting this interview.  I am a musician, a composer and a music producer.  I have released 24 original music albums since 2004.  My music is predominantly Jazz Fusion but I also cover production for other genres as well including Orchestral, straight Jazz, piano solo and recently I’ve composed several pieces for film, collaborating with the Film Scoring Academy of Europe and the European recording Orchestra in Sofia, Bulgaria.  Several of my compositions have been arranged and orchestrated by myself and recorded with a full symphonic orchestra.  My core instruments are piano and guitar which I mainly use for the basis of my compositions.  I continued development in my music career for almost 20 years including mastering, harmonization, orchestration, vocalization and arrangement techniques for several music styles.  I am also currently an instructor for independent DIY musicians who are seeking to improve their music production skills passing on to them the experience and the knowledge I have acquired for so many years.  In the past few years I have also explored electronic music and sound design techniques and have incorporated this source of music also for film, TV media and my original albums.

SBS:  Let’s talk about the before and after of where you’re currently at.  What’s something about the music that you’re making now that you don’t think you could have done five years ago, and what’s something you think you’ll be able to do with your music five years from now that you can’t do today?  How have you grown as an artist/band, and what steps do you take to continue your artistic evolution?

Pablo:  All the orchestration work I started a few years ago is a key element as a music career development.  Also the enrichment of harmony used in my newest pieces take my music to another level.  I have also recorded several vocal tracks during the last 4 years.  I am very pleased with the improvement I made on them.  Today I am also capable of writing and arranging my music for practically any type of music application, including music for games.  I have also developed my own masterization techniques which helped me get a truly professional sound as the final product.

SBS:  If you were to assess the overall health of the independent music scene right now, what would you say?  What are the positives and the negatives about the current state of independent music, and what do you feel like artists & bands can do to contribute to the community & help it grow beyond the music being made?  If you’re not actively looking to listen to the music of other independent artists/bands, is it really all that fair to expect anyone would listen to yours?  How do you help the scene around you grow?

Pablo:  In my mind there is a much bigger issue than who listens to whose music.  The fact is that the independent music scene is going through a deep crisis and unfortunately I don’t see any path forward coming soon but just further exacerbation of this problem.  Marketing and commercial rules in music have dramatically changed in the last decades and musician’s rights (as artists) have declined along the way.  Since everything now is readily available through digital platforms, the perceived value of music as an art has reached the point it is seen as freely reachable by the public.  It would be similar for a painter to leave his art in a public area even though he also needs to make a living of it to continue painting.   There is currently a general perception that music is free, as long as you have a subscription to Spotify or other platforms.  For people to continue making music it must be a rentable business and currently it is not.  Everything now is cheap and available and that impacts the musician’s ability to exist as such.

SBS:  What do you consider to be the biggest accomplishment or achievement you’ve had with your music to-date?  How do you personally measure your own success – is that something that even can be measured?  Is it awards, accolades, chart position…or is your definition of success based on something entirely different?  Should success, however you define it, be something that artists are continually focused on – or is success something that naturally occurs in the course of doing what you love to do?

Pablo:  My biggest accomplishment was a complete transformation as a musician, from being an instrumentalist to a multi-genre composer.  This opens a wide range of opportunities and being able to contribute to interesting projects, including symphonic orchestra performances while using the Jazz Fusion style to highlight my personal style.  Success in my mind is how we overcome limitations and boundaries in what we love most and bring ourselves forward in the professional mission.

SBS:  When you’re working on something brand-new, and something about it just doesn’t feel like it’s coming together the way that you think it should, how do you know when it’s time to give up on it, or how do you know that it’s time to dig in even harder and find a way to make it work?  Are there distinct red flags you can hear when something’s not working?  What are the signs you look for that tell you to stop forcing the material?  What would actually encourage you to keep going with the process instead?

Pablo:  I rarely give up on something right after I start working based upon my first impression.  My experience showed – for so many years – that everything in music takes a reshape and transforms itself during the development process.  I take my time to see how it evolves; I typically use instrumentation and motif changes along the way until it starts truly inspiring me.  The diagnosis is not what I hear but the feeling and emotion it brings.  If I get goosebumps when I hear it, it means it’s OK.  That’s the indicator I’m always looking for.  Since most of the time I start composing with an instrument, patch or mood which I love and inspires me, it is very rare that I will shut it off.  The red flags are based upon the type of arrangement choices I need to rethink, most of the cases the changes work very nicely and I am back on track.  I have a directory in which I keep open projects, things that I’ve started and are still open ended.  This is a very short list considering almost 20 years of work.  The other thing in my workflow is that I don’t start a composition only when “I’m inspired.”  I compose regularly, driven by anything cool I came across with.  Example:  Enjoying the sound of a re-stringed 12 String guitar, a new instrument I found, and new music technique, all that can bring me to sit on the instrument and become a piece of music I will love.

SBS:  One of the points of general consensus in the art of making music, is that we all get our sound from somewhere…we hear what we like, then more often than not, we take tiny pieces of what we love to find our own voice & approach to go on and make music in our own way.  Essentially, what I’m saying is that it’s absolutely natural to be inspired by other artists/bands, and almost every artist/band ends up having that inspiration show up in their own work in some way, shape, or form.  What the real key is though, is retaining your own organic perspective – you still wanna be original too, right?  So how do you go about doing that?  Are there artists or bands that you know have been an influence on your style & sound?  How were you able to incorporate that influence without becoming too noticeably derivative and still be yourself?  Should we embrace and celebrate our influences more than we do?  It’s almost like we try not to admit influences exist in the pursuit of being original, but it’s like, bruh…if it’s there, we can hear it.  We all borrow something from those that came before us to some extent, don’t we?

Pablo:  If there is a musician that he/she feels is absolutely original in his music I must disappoint him/her to say this is never the case.  There is no such thing as abstract originality.  We, as composers, are bound to use musical elements which are part of what we grew up with and based upon what we’ve been exposed to in our entire life in music.  Sometimes this is not even obvious for the musician itself.  What makes the style we compose personal is how we use all this music background information and elements to bring a new color to life.  In my personal case I realize I have been influenced by so many musicians, starting with my childhood and the Beatles, my youth with Supertramp, my early Jazz awakening days with Pat Metheny, Chick Corea, Al Dimeola, by admiring extraordinary pianists such as Keith Jarret, Brad Mehldau, etc.  Listening to other musicians is what makes us musicians!  And it doesn’t mean we are copying from them.

SBS:  Has there ever been a time where you wrote something inside one of your songs…maybe it’s a lyrical line, or maybe it’s a riff of some kind…something that you did, where you surprised yourself?  I like to think we all have a moment or two where we can stand back and be amazed by something we created, and appreciate the fact that maybe, just maybe, we exceeded our own expectations of what we thought we could accomplish – you know what I mean?  Get as specific as you can so the fans out there know what they should be paying attention to when they hear it – what’s your favorite thing that you’ve written on the inside of one of your songs, and why does this particular piece resonate so much to you?

Pablo:  Yes, it happens to me all the time.  Typically when I hear some music I composed a few years ago I say to myself:  “Wow! What was I thinking??”  How did I come up with something like this if I didn’t know all the things I know today in music techniques and composition?  This, in my mind, is the biggest reward any musician can have from him/herself.  I have composed over 250 songs/musical pieces in 20 years, and it is always so fun to sit down as a new listener and hear a song from several years back and nod when I hear it and say: “Cool!  What was the name of that song?”

SBS:  I’ve been having a lot of great debates lately about whether or not everybody that’s making music has the right to be heard…and you’d probably be surprised by how different people seem to feel about this issue.  I know where I stand on it, and I think you can all probably get an idea of what my position would be from this free interview we’re doing here & the way we run things at sleepingbagstudios…but regardless, I’m putting this question out there to you, because I’m interested in YOUR perspective.  Just because you’ve made a song, does that mean people should listen?  If your answer is yes, do your best to explain why you feel that way & why we should make a sincere effort to listen to the music of others.  If your answer is no, explain why you feel that way, but also explain why people should still be listening to your music if that’s the case – what would make your music the exception, and not follow the rule?  Is there any value to an idea that’s not finished, or a song in its demo stages, or maybe something that’s not recorded in a top-shelf studio or with good equipment – somebody still took the time to make that song to the best of their ability with the means they had to create it – should that be listened to, or not?

Pablo:  There should be a sense of affinity between the music we make and the final listener.  As any form of art, art is to be shared.  What, for a listener, could either be something exciting or for someone else doesn’t cut it for him/her, still it is the right of any individual to freely propose his art.  It doesn’t mean that I listen to any type of music, I don’t, but I can understand that some other listeners may feel attracted to music even if I don’t understand how it can happen.  What I do also believe in is musicianship.  In my mind I’m personally inclined to musical pieces that transport me and make me feel excited about them.  But everything is so personal as any form of art.  I don’t think there should be a “Music Police” to decide for everyone what gets to be shared in the world and what is not.  My rule is whatever doesn’t make it for me, just ignore it, essentially it’s when I don’t feel the music when I hear the “Music,” if you know what I mean…

SBS:  There are ups and downs in the dynamics of almost every album we listen to, with very few exceptions.  Even those exceptions, probably still come down to more of a personal preference about what we enjoy about music and how we personally hear it, rather than anything being completely and totally “perfect” – you know what I mean?  Does an album actually need to have some kind of up/down dynamics in terms of what’s appealing to the masses in order for the best of the best songs in a lineup to be fully appreciated?  Wouldn’t every artist & band avoid the ‘down’ side (less accessible/less popular for example) if they could?  Does the ‘down’ side represent something else perhaps, like the story of an album or journey of an artist?  Is the ‘up’ side of a record as potent or noticeable if it doesn’t have a ‘down’ side to go with it?  Would a completely balanced album somehow be boring if it didn’t have the ups/downs that most have?  Do we HAVE to like every single song on a record for it to be considered complete?  Are the dynamics of an album something anyone can really steer in the direction they want to, or are all artists & bands simply going with the strongest material they have created at the time?

Pablo:  From my perspective, an album is a journey.  I understand and realize the importance of variability in style, mood, approach, instrumentation, and other aspects of music.  There will always be more “popular” songs than others in an album, but a record must be a palette of music to be a record.  Every album needs the ups and downs to be considered an album.  Arguably, music, as any other form of art, is subjective.  Not necessarily the popular songs in an album could or should be the preferred songs by everyone.  I have always been inclined to reach out to the less popular songs in albums I’d listen to and explore them; and arguably, these are ones I typically learned from the most.

SBS:  I wanna send out a shout-out to YOU from me personally – I appreciate everyone that has taken the time to talk tunes with me throughout the years, and I appreciate the time YOU have taken with this interview too.  Because this one’s a little different in the sense that it’s been sent out to multiple people and is a little more generic in that regard, I have no doubt whatsoever that we probably didn’t get to talk to you about something you wanted to talk about – so let’s fix that!  This final space is what we call the SBS Open Floor – a spot where you can say anything else you want to say to the people out there.  It can be anything at all…your main websites…something else you want them to know about you and/or your music…your favorite bands in the scene right now…the secret 11 herbs and spices to the Colonel’s secret recipe – you get the idea, and it’s probably best you choose something that suits you rather than take any of my suggestions, but feel free to take the SBS Open Floor for a ride.  Whatever it is you want the people to know, now is the prime time for you to tell’em!  Thanks again for everything – keep in touch!

Pablo:  I am really grateful for the opportunity to make and share music with the world.  I’ve always believed that it was my first purpose in what I do since I was little.  I am also grateful for all those lovely individuals whom I have been able to connect with through my music and share a little bit of what I feel when I make it.  This is probably the best prize any artist could possibly have.  My music is always evolving alongside my evolution as a person in life, so it is the same kind of journey.  My website https://www.pabloembon.com/ publicly shares this evolution, and we are always reaching out to people to support the nowadays difficult task in the current music business, to be able to continue making music for the joy of others and ourselves.  We know that we are not alone.  Thanks Jeremy for the opportunity to reach out, wishing you and SBS all the best.

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