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Hello and welcome here at Bernd Bridges podcast and this time it's not Adam introducing the podcast,
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it is me and the reason is simple - I interview him!
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Hi, nice to see you.
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He's curious about the questions.
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Yeah, I don't know what they are.
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Exactly! And he's always trying to check my computer, if he can catch some of the information.
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Anyway, so I want to ask the first question.
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Adam, you are a professional songwriter.
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Tell us about your path till Berlin and your own studio.
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Well, my dream in life was to sing in the opera,
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to master the art of operatic singing.
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I was a tenor and I actually made it, sort of.
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I was always sort of good enough to get work,
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but never great, but I even made it to be able to sing about six seconds in Vienna in the national opera for about three months
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and then I think they let go of me wondering what happened.
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Anyway, that's what got me to Europe.
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My teacher in the United States wanted me to move to Europe and study with somebody here because in Europe there's a lot more opportunities for singers.
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But I always wrote pop songs.
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I always wrote three minute songs.
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I guess my father was in the country/western/bluegrass business,
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but my mother was a classical singer, so both of that's in me.
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And I had much faster success as a songwriter than I did as a singer, as a classical singer.
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So as soon as the songwriting started to work, I just said I have to go that way.
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I have to build a more stable life.
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So in fact, songwriting was like my plan B.
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I know for most people it's like, you know, their plan A - songwriting was my fallback.
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It was never my dream to be a songwriter, but somehow I have a talent and it turned into my career.
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You know, I read an interview about Bruce Springsteen years ago and he said:
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I write songs and songs and songs and songs,
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they're just running through my head and I write them down and honestly, most of them are thrown to the trash, but some of them became really brilliant.
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And whenever we sit together and we talk **** like we did before Bernd Bridges and I was always so impressed.
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Whatever I come up with, you do know how to wrap it into words and write a song about it.
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This is a talent, this is so unique, I think.
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I'm glad, I always felt like you're one of my biggest fans.
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I wish I were like Bruce Springsteen.
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But in fact, I've written about 700 songs.
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So if you look at the percentage of songs of mine that have been released and then the songs of mine that have earned money or become hits,
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it's a very small percentage.
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I've thrown away a lot of songs,
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but this talent, I guess of being able to wrap something up into a three minute song,
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has kind of always been there for me.
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But it's also something that I worked very hard at developing.
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You know, I had a theory that your mom was at a Bruce Springsteen concert and she was backstage like a groupie and he had **** with your mom.
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So you are like a mix of Bruce Springsteen and your dad?
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Yeah, that's what happened, I'm sure.
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So you just mentioned some of those songs you were able to publish and you made some money with.
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That leads me to my next question,
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Can you name some of the artists and producers you used to work with?
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Well, um, one of the first guys that I worked with that had an enormous, enormous influence on me
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because he always considered me at, let's say eye to eye, same level as him.
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His name is Candy and Candy worked with Jennifer Rush,
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Celine Dion was nominated for a Grammy with his music.
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Andrea Bocelli, Bonnie Bianco, Meat Loaf.
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Just really the biggest names and he always said Adam, you're my favorite lyricist,
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and just his saying that just motivated me to no end.
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So that's one guy. I also got to work with this dude in England named Malcolm Toft,
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who I think he produced "Hey Jude", he was the engineer/producer for "Hey Jude", The Beatles.
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He did, I think a couple David Bowie records, Queen records,
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just an amazing, amazing producer guy.
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Yeah, and I've just had the opportunity to work with some really great people along the way,
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including my long term partner, Lucky Waschkowitsch.
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How do you say ... it's Waschkowitsch is his name, but it's very hard to pronounce.
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Yeah, but he's a great mind and we've had a long term relationship and worked on some very important things together.
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Yeah, I know, I mean honestly, you also worked on songs that were played on the Eurovision Song Contest,
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watched by hundreds of millions of people, right?
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Or famous German bands?
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Yeah, I got to work with Seeed, that was pretty cool.
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Like Seeed, for those who are not in the German world is one of the biggest bands.
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Yes!
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It's huge, and one of the singers, Peter Fox is like a folk hero, he's a legend.
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He also released his solo records and I got to work with these guys and I really could see why they are how big they are.
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Why they are that big because they are just so on point and so great and so smart and so ... just that was a great experience.
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And we had a a minor hit together.
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Yeah, I know. And I went to a concert from them and I was sitting there and then you told me I wrote this hit with them
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and I was listening to you and was like, oh my gosh, I'm shaking, pretty cool ... this dude who wrote songs for these guys or Eurovision Song Contest.
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He is so top notch and he's doing the Bernd Bridges songs,
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which leads us to the next question, what were you wishing about the music for Bernd Bridges?
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For the comedy of Bernd Bridges, I felt like it was over the top comedy.
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I mean we are when we wanted to be stupid and something that's unbelievable, like situations that you can never believe really happened,
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except for the fact that they really did happen and you'll never know which ones did or didn't.
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But anyway, I wanted to present Bernd in a different light.
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I wanted to frame this stupidity with something deeper and show a little bit of the deeper emotions
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that are going on in the true person or the true people in that situation.
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So yeah, that's what I tried to do.
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I also, I love this concept of Leitmotiv, like in in Wagner operas, very often the characters have their own melody
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or a situation or a feeling might have its own melody and I wanted to accomplish that in Bernd Bridges as well.
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So, Meike, Bernd's wife has her own song and melody and Bernd has his own.
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My wife in the show, Angie, has her own.
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I just think that's a really cool feature.
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I remember when we started the show, we wrote down and the episodes were really short and we had a rough idea of how it should be,
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but if I compare it with today, it's like a total different story
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and I'm wondering because there was a lack of information where we are today.
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Was it hard for you to split your wishing of the music into the songs like you already just mentioned.
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Was it hard? No, for me it all came, it just all came as one thing.
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It's just like a rush.
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Like it came so fast, it was hard to concentrate and get it all down so that it was there.
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I had to take a lot of notes for myself, make outlines, record stuff on my phone
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so that I remember these ideas because it all came so fast.
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So that's interesting because it already leads me to my next question.
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Songs, lyrics and melodies.
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What was first in that case?
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Well, every song is different.
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And also, um it depends on if I write by myself or write with somebody.
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But I would say very often the melodies and the words come kind of together.
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Sort of as one and then I have to piece together and make it all fit.
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But yeah, usually they come kind of together, if that makes sense.
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So is this how the idea comes up with a melody?
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You have some words and while you create those lyrics and vision in your head,
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you already combine it with tones.
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It's sort of like a basic feeling that I have that has to come out.
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I have to catch it at that moment.
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So for example, the theme song of Bernd Bridges, it happened in the shower.
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I was taking a shower and my one year old daughter was crawling around in the bathroom as I was in the shower, and all of a sudden this idea came to me
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and I had to turn off the water and just sing it into the phone, had the first verse there,
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and then and then I went to the studio and got the second verse but this happens quite a lot and this is my preference.
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I mean I can of course sit and labor over lyrics and a melody but I don't like that,
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I like when it just comes.
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I remember when you sent this to me, that whatsapp message, and I was like, I would have loved to **** on the phone!
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And it was so Bernd Bridges ... Bernd Bridges ... version 1.
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And then you started singing, so you already transported the feeling of:
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This was an idea right now, and then I was impressed that you caught it with the very first version, you were jumping out of the shower,
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is basically the song that is now, I would say 99%.
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Yeah, I would say maybe like 80% but uh yeah, it's kind of how it was.
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The riff, the melodies, the basic idea for the lyrics, the refrain.
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As you said, you jumped out of the shower and had this idea and did the first words.
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The question for me is: how long did it take for each song to write and compose them?
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I mean people always hear a song from a CD in our age, we still had CDs
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and some dudes like Cosmin still drafts them all ... buys them all.
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But you hear a song and people don't often understand how long does it take?
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Well, again, every song is different.
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I would say just my favorite ones are the ones that don't take long.
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It just kind of happens.
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Let's say maybe the basic idea comes within half an hour and then I work it out over the span of in total two hours.
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But then while I'm trying to sleep or when I wake up in the morning or when I'm taking a shower or running or doing whatever,
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my thoughts are constantly adjusting the lyrics or adjusting the melody or adjusting the transitions or ...
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finding other parts or finding little melodies in the music that make it all even better.
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You know, that's interesting for me because early in the interview you said Candy said he loves work with you because your lyrics are so amazing.
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But it turns out, it's not just lyrics, you know how to write lyrics and wrap a melody around those lyrics.
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I think I don't, I don't know if that's unique, but it's really great.
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So the question for me is what is the real challenge here?
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Getting lyrics and melody? What is the real challenge?
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Or is it just, as you mentioned, it comes out and then it's there or is there really something you face all the time with each song?
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Well, I would say um with each song, I face this basic feeling that I don't know how to write a song.
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I just always have this feeling, if I go into any session, I'm freaked out because I think I don't know what I'm doing,
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but obviously I've shown many times, I do know what I'm doing.
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It's a strange thing, it's like I always want like, am I going to be able to write a song that's any good?
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And yeah, that's for me the challenges.
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In fact, my own feelings about myself, thinking that I'm no good at anything.
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Yeah, but in fact just having to put it together.
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Yeah and for me, the song is an obsession to find what I was looking for, if that makes any sense.
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That's when I write for myself, when I'm writing for myself, it's an obsession to find what I was looking for in that song.
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If I'm writing for other people or with other people,
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it's an obsession to help them get their heart out.
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You know, if it's a 16 year old girl I'm writing with, it's going to be a very different heart than a 30 year old dude, you know.
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Once the song is written and you have a melody in your mind.
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You know, if we have plenty of one thing, it's instruments.
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And the combination of instruments can be challenging and very promising but also weird.
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For you, each song has its own combination of instruments.
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How did you decide which instrument should be in here and now?
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Bernd Bridges is about a tech genius with Tourette who has a company and travels the world and has a best friend who's a hit song writer living in Berlin.
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So I wanted the music to sound a little bit like it would be coming from my computer as a demo
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but of course much more polished but how I would envision it,
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which means it's going to be very piano based with a little bit of a guitar and a lot of voice choirs and stuff.
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Yeah, but the rest of the instrumentation for my music,
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I usually have to let the producer figure that out because I just trust
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like for example, Lucky, I trust his sensibilities much more than my own in many cases.
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So it's more teamwork.
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I love teamwork.
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Cool!
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I really ... it bores me to be by myself writing at this point.
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I love to work with other people.
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You know, getting a text from English, like news or some old documentary,
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I can't sit down and translate it because I want to transport the sense of it. And that's not pretty hard for me to do.
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One of the keys of Bernd Bridges and the vision is we have multilingual and we start with English and German
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and we had this idea to do the songs in English and German.
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I asked one of my employees who studied Amerikanistik and Anglistik and I said dude, can you translate them?
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And he said, no.
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So, why not? He said, listen, it is so difficult to translate lyrics.
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There is a big challenge. How did you do that? How did you translate them?
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Yeah, well it is a challenge to put a song in a different language because it's not the words, it's the feeling and the pictures that you paint with the words.
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And I was fortunate enough to work with this piano player on Bernd Bridges who happens to be a great german lyricist and songwriter.
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His name is Jens Suedkamp and he just gets me as an artist.
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He got me with his piano playing, he understood what I wanted.
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And then in terms of when it came time to have these songs in German,
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I wanted to work with him and and it was good, he really took the time to understand what I was trying to say
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what the feeling was and then just out of him came special words,
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it was a different poetry than what I had in my english versions but it was still poetry and it still conveyed a similar feeling.
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I think like in "The fire that won't let go" the German lyrics is not that much away from the English ones and it's so pretty cool
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and in Bernd Bridges, there is some parts where I thought okay this is not what he's saying in English,
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but still as you said the poetry is amazing.
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I have exactly the same feeling like listening to the English song.
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Are you often doing multi lingual songs or is it something new for you as well?
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This is something new for me because of this project Bernd Bridges we're working on.
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It's on alugha which is your your platform that you created which is multilingual and it's about you and your company, for the most part.
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It only makes sense that these songs should also be multilingual and in fact I would be so happy that if people use your platform
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the dubbr, which is an online digital audio workstation for dubbing and translating,
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if they take my songs and put it into another 100 or so languages and then sing them, I would be so happy!
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That would be amazing. I mean now that you have this new experience in your life that doing and I know I pushed you at the beginning, I remember,
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and sometimes I thought I'm not sure if you want it and I get it because the songs are in English and he is a native English speaker
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but I think the vision getting it in English and in German and now I know that you probably also knew already,
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wow, that's a challenge to get those songs in German and keeping my high level of quality I need and I want in my songs, which you achieved.
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What do you think about the future? You think you will do more like this?
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Oh, it's a lot of work and you need to find the right people really.
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I was so fortunate to find this dude Jens.
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Of course I would like to as we work more on Bernd Bridges.
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I say I have to because it's so outstanding.
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I mean who does this?
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It doesn't happen so much.
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Yes, it's very, very unique in my opinion.
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Yes. And to do it as you say, at a quality where it's not just a translation.
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Yeah, but it's a real feeling that's conveyed.
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I think this package we deliver, it's like this show,
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and it's you and me about our lives and we combine it and having the music that fits into each episode,
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having the theme songs for each person.
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That's so pretty cool.
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Yeah, it really is cool and we took something that could have been over the top stupid humor,
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and now it's deep.
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Yeah. Now that we're almost done with the music ...
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Well you have to record the German version, going to Berlin soon.
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Yeah I have to. That's part of my last question, as we play ourselves in the show we're no actors.
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But we said this is our show.
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I remember we had these writers that we got rid of at the very beginning because we said no, it is our show.
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We are writing the show.
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Yeah and they don't get us and they never can.
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Exactly. And we do the songs. And now another thing is we do sing the songs.
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Yeah. What do you feel about, what's your feeling about that?
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I'm very happy, I think you have a cool voice and I think ...
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I took practice for music, for singing!
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I think in in my world you're more talented than I am from from the basic talent,
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it's just I worked at this profession much longer, but from basic talent you're more talented.
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So I think that's really cool that you're doing the German and I know we're going to get good recordings.
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From my singing, my own songs, this is a huge breakthrough.
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I mean, I've been in music, I've been in music my whole life.
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I've wanted to sing my whole life.
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I mean my dream was only to sing the operas of Bellini and Puccini and Mozart, Donizetti.
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But I mean I'm a song - a successful songwriter and I haven't released any music that I've sung.
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Well. Okay, there was one minor hit we had, a dance hit, but barely.
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Now it's time, through this project I get to do it and I have to do it and it's exciting for me, I'm totally in this.
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With these amazing words, we're gonna close this podcast, Adam.
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Thanks for your time. I'm sure we write more songs for season two or three as I'm not dying anymore now and you're motivated.
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You better not die.
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Hey guys, hear you at the next podcast.
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Thanks Adam, wish you a great time.
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Thank you. Thank you.