Greg Sheriff

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Greg: Controversy is too strong a word, but there’s a genial disagreement between evolutionary biologists regarding where music sits in a human beings evolutionary story. The main thinking is that music is like, sure we did it first, but it’s kind of an appendix, except a lot less dangerous, maybe. It’s fine, it’s great, it’s humans like enjoying themselves, so whatever, but the idea of it being a necessary part of being a human, being a Homo sapien, it’s largely viewed as extraneous. And this book makes the argument the opposite is true. That in fact, it’s fundamental because what’s also interesting is that those neuro pathways are also connected to our emotional centers.

Ryan: We’ve reached the final song of the season two mixtape. It’s the season finale. And a grand finale it is. This season we’ve been talking about songs that remind us of home and what home is to different people. A physical place, family, community, a feeling.

On today’s episode, we’re going on a quest. There’s adventure, mystery, philosophy, theory, and jokes. My guest today is Greg Sheriff, AKA the Archivist of Voidward. Voidward is a band from right here in my home of Durham and they play riff-filled heavy rock. If you like riffs, shredding, grooving, voidworship, rock and roll, void and roll, rock and void, or rock void roll, their music will be right up your alley.

One note about these show, if you’re wondering why we never play the actual song selection within the podcast, it’s because I operate around copyright law very conservatively. I know there are other music shows that will include clips of songs for an example, but doing so walks the line and I don’t want to risk the show getting taken down. Instead, I direct you, the listener, to the playlist in progress on Spotify or YouTube, always linked in the show notes. This way you can also hear the song in the context of the entire series as the mixtape is created. More often than not, I do play a song at the end of the show from my musical guests because it’s infinitely easier to get permission. Today’s going to be an exception to the rule. In part because it’s the season finale, so why not pull out all the stops? And because Greg secured permission from the artist to use the song for this episode. Why am I even telling you any of this? Does this context even matter to anything?

Voidward has a new release scheduled for January 1st, 2025 Year of the Void. A song from which will play a significant part in our conversation and you’ll get to hear it at the end of the show. It is also tied closely to Greg’s song selection. To get there, we first have to go on a journey. So buckle up, get cozy, and let’s make a mixtape.

Ryan: Greg, thank you so much for joining me on season two of Let’s Make a Mixtape. We are, of course, talking about songs that remind us of home. You picked Tycho Magnetic by Titan to Tachyons. Why did you pick this song?

Greg: ‘Cause it reminds me of home in a variety of ways. That’s the shortest answer, I guess. We’re gonna get to a really long one.

Ryan: Yeah let’s get to the long answer. We’ve got time.

Greg: First, thanks for having me on. This is amazing and I like this subject of home. It’s been on my mind and I was really excited whenever you said that was going to be the prompt, I guess, because I just literally, this past Tuesday, got back from a month long trip, overseas to Australia and New Zealand.

And so just the idea of home has been real front and center for me in a pretty like pretty significant way, so this is a nice opportunity to kind of process some of my trip experience and stuff. I’m excited.

Ryan: Well, welcome home, from one Durhamite to another.

What is your definition of home or definitions. How are you interpreting home?

Greg: Home is where you surround yourself with the people and the things that you love.

Ryan: Ooh, I like that.

Greg: Good. I just made it up, but that’s how I feel. That’s what I’ve been thinking about, you know?

I mean, especially while I was there and just like, it was a solo trip thing. And so having it be that way opens the door a lot to meeting people in a way that I didn’t really anticipate. My experience in traveling is usually with somebody, a significant other, a group of friends, a band, you know, whatever. And you kind of wind up being a unit no matter what. And so it’s not like you don’t meet people, but like you meet people in this context where you’re part of a group or part of a unit of people, you have your own community you’re traveling with.

And so in this case, I was really traveling without an inbuilt community and I’m not shy. I’m reasonably sociable. I’m not super extroverted. I’m definitely one of those folks who loves to perform and then does not want to talk about it when coming off the stage.

Ryan: Yeah I totally hear that. I mean, I feel like there are some times when I definitely feel like I’ve had a default of extroversion, but I mean, especially since the pandemic for me, at least I feel like I’ve been kind of switching more towards the extraversion of getting more energy from being around people.

I find myself kind of jumping between both every now and then.

Greg: I recognize that story. That hits. So just to carry on like that same kind of sense is what I took with me, just like me. I’m gonna throw myself into a largely unfamiliar situation and just kind of- it’s like jazz. I’m just going to improvise.

[Scats and sings] Maybe I’m going to go to Melbourne.

Ryan: So why New Zealand and Australia. Why did you decide to take this trip? And why did you make such a profound decision to make it a solo trip, especially given the length too, you said a month.

Greg: Yeah, yeah. I mean, just shy. In terms of being in the country and not being on a plane, it’s about three weeks.

There was a good deal of plane travel for me. So add in another four or five days just for being on a plane. So, a month with travel is kind of what it comes out to thereabouts. But three good solid weeks of just being there.

The decision to do it was pretty off the cuff, I’ll be honest. It took a lot of planning, the follow-through was not on the cuff by any stretch, but it’s a bit of story, I guess I’ll tell it.

Ryan: That’s why we’re here.

Greg: So, I found out that I have family that lives in Australia.

And one thing I learned is that there’s Australia and there’s Queensland, which is Australian, but it’s their version of Florida man lives is in Queensland, basically. You know, punching alligators, things like that. Excuse me. Crocodiles. They don’t have alligators there.

But yeah whomever’s riding kangaroos and cooking up meth in the Outback and that kind of stuff. That’s who lives there. That’s not all who lives there, but if you’re going to find that, if that’s your community, you could find it there.

But I have a cousin who lives in Brisbane and her father, my uncle is- Let me figure out how to just like fast track this story. So my maternal grandfather was in World War II. He had six children total. But my oldest uncle was conceived and born over- my granddad was stationed in the Philippines and so while he was there, right before he married, he got a local woman pregnant. And so my uncle grew up actually in New Zealand, from whatever young age and that’s also where my cousin was raised in Auckland. She moved away when she went to school after turning 18, and then settled in Australia.

So that’s where kind of the story begins. My growing up, I didn’t know about this uncle, not many people in my family did. And cause my grandfather returned home and got married and then that’s where the story started for me in terms of my family and whatnot.

Of the five aunts that I have, my mom is the second youngest. And so I’m way young compared to my cousins and stuff. I have cousins who are almost old enough to be my parent, you know?

So that is just to say that a lot of this backstory and stuff was very much not known to me. And then my cousin started looking for her family as kind of more of the story was known to her. And so she found my family, most of whom lives in South Carolina and which is where I grew up as a young child.

Which is also going to tie into this home theme, because I have had a fairly itinerant life, as far as that goes. So we’re not, I mean, this is tangential, but it’s not entirely tangential. So she found my family and they all connected and they came over for a couple of family reunions, both of which I wasn’t really able to make it to at the time.

And this was before COVID. Now we’re in post COVID. And I did get a chance to go and visit my family last year. And while I was there, I was talking to one of my cousins and they were like “Oh, we went and visited the family in, in Australia.” And I was like, “well, I want to go do that. Shit.”

So I reached out, I’m not shy. So I reached out and was just like, “what’s up cuz,” and they were very enthusiastic about it. That’s what I mean. It was very off the cuff.

And before I knew it I’m planning this trip because, while I’m there, I might as well see the place. I mean doing it solo was, I’ll be honest, a lot in large part, like just to make it cost effective.

Having it, relatively speaking, being cost effective, that allowed me some freedom and also freedom in terms of just only having to account for myself, meant a lot of flexibility both in time and what I was going to do, that kind of stuff. So it made it so that I could plan to really kind of go and see the hits over there. I by no means saw the entirety of either place. I got a good overview for sure. And it was nice to really be there and meet folks and really get a good, deep sense of shame at being an American abroad.

And the really internalized that this is a country full of babies who are complaining about fucking nonsense.

I should- let me qualify that. Because there is a great deal of stuff to complain about, but there is a very loud contingency of folks who are complaining about bullshit and they’re making it hard for all the rest of us to have some good stuff-

Ryan: It’s all fabricated outrage to that distracts us from actually having any sort of meaningful conversation or progress that aids our fellow citizens or neighbors.

Greg: Yup. So I got a good dose of that.

Ryan: Was there a lot of kind of very strong anti-American sentiment?

Greg: No, the contrary, not at all.

Ryan: So just that the stark, like- they weren’t complaining about the bullshit and just noticing kind of the silence of that-?

Greg: They were just confused and asking very legitimate questions that they expected me as an American to be able to kind of shed some insight and rationalize for them and the reality is that it’s utterly irrational. Like, got bad news for ya. “why do you have so many guns?” “Ooh, boy. Let me- there’s a really, really intense, like 20 percent of the population who is fucking fetishized on that shit. That’s why.”

Ryan: Yeah. ‘Cause I mean, Australia had one massive shooting and they were like, “Nope, done. We’re done with this. And yeah, had a massive buyback program.”

Greg: And they’re doing great with all that tyranny. They’re doing okay. Yeah. They had a massive buyback, and here’s the thing. People have guns in Australia.

Ryan: Yeah, there’s all sorts of wild shit out there.

Greg: Yeah, if you live 30 miles outside of the main city areas, you need to have a gun the way you have a shovel, I mean, there are coyote- or not coyotes, but dingoes, which, imagine a coyote and it’s a dingo.

You’ve got dingoes and you’ve got kangaroos, which are giant assholes.

Ryan: just ready to go into fisticuffs.

Greg: I mean, imagine deer here, but can kick the shit out of you. Herds of them jumping in front of your car and you hit them and they destroy your car.

They eat all your flowers. They eat anything growing in your yard. That was interesting to see just the average person really fucking hates kangaroos out there. Also, they have giant packs of roaming camels, wild camels out in the outback. Also giant assholes.

Ryan: Native or were they brought in?

Greg: They’re not native. They were brought in and left there. And it turns out that- the Outback is a giant desert, but it’s a fairly temperate desert as far as deserts go. And so you take an animal like a camel. I mean, I get it, you know, the thinking had a certain logic to it, right? Here’s an animal that’s adapted to live in the desert and we’ll take it to work in the desert.

But for a camel, the outback is fucking paradise. They came in and they’re just like fucking up the place for all the other animals who know how to ration their own water, for example, which the average camel just doesn’t have that evolutionary adaptation. They’ve grown to- if you find water, you better drink all of it. When are you going to find it again? And that’s the case in the Outback. They have a little bit of water. So everything evolved to be like let’s just take a little bit of water.

It’s like socialism versus capitalism. Camels are the fucking capitalists who got in there and colonized it for everybody. And they’re drinking up all the fucking water. Your average kookaburra or whatever is like, “Hey man, we’re just trying to share the shit.” There, that’s my political rant.

Ryan: Oh, the geopolitics of the Australian Outback.

Greg: Well, dude, that’s a mouthful actually, I went to Uluru, Judo also, which is like dead center of the outback. That’s the, the big red plateaued rock that you always see. I went there, hiked it, and Kata Jidu, and man, those places have a vibe. I’m not gonna lie. Like, it’s serious.

I can’t explain it. I’m not a super new-agey type of person, I don’t have any crystals I’m activating or anything like that. But I will say there’s the only way that I- the only words that I have for it are to call it a spiritual experience to be there. If you’re open.

I certainly saw- The place I was staying, like in the title was “resort” and that is evocative of certain things, certain amenities, for example and, this was more like, I mean, for there it certainly was a resort with many amenities, but it’s really more like a fancier Motel 8, versus a Hilton.

And flying in and getting off of the plane and looking around me, I realized very quickly that there were many people there who were anticipating a Hilton experience in the Outback and it was- I mean, I had done a little bit of homework, enough to have packed reasonably appropriately for the weather there, which is wild and pretty extreme.

And it was just like looking around and just- In my mind pointing at people like, “okay, you’re gonna get dehydrated. You’re gonna get sunburned, you’re gonna get dehydrated, you’re gonna get sunburned.”

You see them as they leave the and it happened like at least two of the folks that I eyeballed in waiting on my bag, I saw

Ryan: looked like lobsters walking back?

Greg: Yeah, I mean, it’s not like you can just go there and set off by yourself. It’s relatively controlled as far as- certainly for any public park experience that we might have here. I guess my point is just even supervised, it’s still a challenge to be there for a good portion. I feel like now I’ve gotten way far afield from wherever I was.

EDIT BREAK SPOT

Ryan: Looking at a lot of the stories and maybe this is tying back to, I think where you might be going, not to presume, but it seems like you met kind of a community along the way throughout these three weeks. It seems like there are a lot of different characters that were coming in to your travels. Did you feel like you found that sense of home, as you defined it earlier, based on these travels?

Greg: I really did. Both- definitely figuratively. Sure. Yeah. Also, in terms of like helping define it for myself and also literally, I have to be honest, like New Zealand was- like the two most spiritual experiences that I had were at Uluru and New Zealand, for sure.

Very different experiences. But, to not get off on another tangent, but for just a little, back for context. I had a Navy parent, so lots of moving around. And so I lived in Hawaii, I lived in California, San Diego. So even by the time that I was in the elementary school, I was already well traveled.

And then my parents separated and then I moved to Alaska. And then eventually moved back before being done with elementary school, moved back. And then I was moved back to South Carolina. I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, right on the coast. That was comfy for me, was kind of growing up in a coastal port kind of place that’s real hot, real humid.

Ryan: Were you there for a while too?

Greg: Yeah. You know, and that’s where, that’s where- any family that I’m going to go visit, that’s where they live. And then I moved to North Carolina as a teenager and I’ve been here ever since.

And so I guess, to carry the theme, North Carolina, Durham is like my literal home and whenever I got to Durham, specifically, it was a place that I felt like I could settle in, if I was going to be in North Carolina. I won’t get into all the circumstances, but I have to be in North Carolina, just. The responsibilities and the people that I love are in North Carolina.

So here I am, first I moved to Chapel Hill, arrived in Chapel Hill thinking that was where I would settle and it was not the place I thought it was, it was not where I had imagined there. I mean, yeah, I’ll leave it at that.

It wasn’t the place I imagined, but while I was there, I kept hearing about this place called Durham and how much it sucked and how much I shouldn’t go there cause it sucks. And it sucks so bad. And this is like every explanation that anybody from Raleigh or Chapel Hill had on why Durham sucked. I was like, “that sounds good to me, actually.
That’s where I wound up. And been here ever since then. It’s been a while.

So fast track to now, I go on this trip and a lot of Australia reminds me of Charleston. Especially Brisbane.

One thing I had to wrap my head around is you go north, it gets hot, you go south, it gets cold. ‘Cause you’re on the other side of the equator. And all the stars are upside down. That’s wild.

Being the Northern parts of Australia are hot and humid and they’re all coastal towns. And so it was strange to go abroad to me, strange isn’t the right word, but it was surprising to say the least that to get there and just be- this feels like where I grew up, and it very much was like that.

And then to also be visiting family there who like, I’ve never met and they’re effectively strangers, but my cousin looks exactly like my sister and my youngest aunt. If you just mash the two of them together, you know what I mean? To meet a stranger and like, there’s the immediate affinity of familial relationships, you know?

And to be able to fall right into them. You know that- I love making friends, but I’m not big on strangers, you know? And so like it, like it take and like, in a context like this, you know, I’m not shy necessarily, but like, I’m not, I don’t just like go around making friends. You know what I mean? You know, some people just like amass acquaintances and I’m not, if you’re in my inner circle, that’s like, we’ve had some time together. You know what I mean? And so to just like drop right into a scenario like that, that would have felt very strange and unsettling. But in this case, it was opposite. It really was very nice, very lovely, to be honest.

Ryan: That’s incredible. And it’s such a cool story too. I mean, what an absolute journey.

And I love the threads of home. This is a perfect perfect example-

Greg: I was excited as soon as I was like home, I was like, Oh, my brain lit up. Yeah.

Ryan: Cause we were initially talking about doing, a different season with you. I was thinking about doing one on travel, but I think I’ve since decided against it. I’m kind of glad that I did because this worked out really well. Like every time I see you at a show, I feel like you’re going somewhere new, it seems like that constantly on the move thing that you have from childhood is stuck with you.

Greg: It has. I like having a central spot to come back to. You know, a place that feels like where I wanna be. But in order to keep feeling like I wanna be there, I have to get away from it too, you know? Sure. I’ll be going to the beach here and in a little while, which is like, that’s home for me growing up on. I’m going to do some surfing the 1st time in a long time. That’s gonna feel great.

[Transition Music]

Greg: Oh, there was a lead up. I was headed somewhere. I got into Australia. I’m meeting my family. It’s unusual for me in unusual context, but it feels good and cool and really set the tone for me to really be open to this whole experience and talking to people and just in terms of the, the environment there where people are living along the coast and stuff.

It felt a lot like where I grew up as a young child. It’s humid, hot and people in Sydney and Melbourne were complaining about the heat and how hot it is when you go. And that’s quaint, you know, to talk about how hot that is because where where I’m from, it’s like 99 by the time that the end of July comes, it’s 99 degrees every day. And then the humidity puts it up to like 110. Basically people don’t go outside to do anything between the hours of 1 PM and five.

So I get over to Australia and it’s like, wow, this- it made me feel nostalgic. There are these little palm trees, these short palm trees that look a lot like palmettos, from where I’m from. And it was a really like interesting experience.

Ryan: That must have been so surreal. I mean, you’re traveling to the complete other side of the world to a place that you’ve never been to, you’re reminded of that childhood nostalgia of where you grew up. That’s got to be super surreal.

Greg: It was, it really was. And I mean, it wasn’t just me, you know, I sent pictures back to my family, my cousins and stuff. And they’re like, “wait, where are you? That looks like that looks like that looks-” anyway. That was the experience.

It was surreal to go halfway around the world and get off the plane and feel like I was stepping back into my childhood somehow. Much different people than the people in South Carolina, USA. That part was very different and very welcome, I have to say. I mean, they’re doing alright with all that tyranny, I gotta say.

So I get there and this kind of nostalgic experience is what I was having in Australia. And then I got to New Zealand and there’s an extra layer of this, where I grew up with my grandparents and the chunk of time that I spent in elementary school living in South Carolina, and into middle school was really with my grandparents. They were from a generation that was, even for my grandparents, they were a lot older than- again, because I was the youngest cousin, that meant that my grandparents were much, much older than you would have had as a young child.

And they’re from this generation that, I mean, they were farmers, there was not a color television in their house. I mean, they got one eventually. I think when I got to 4th grade, a color television came in, but there was no cable or any thing like that.

It’s also how I got started as a musician. Very homie for me. All the threads connect, my man. So I grew up with them. They weren’t exclusively farmers. They had jobs, but they subsidize their lives farming like a lot of farmers do. Don’t get me started on that topic, I’ve got some thoughts, but also that’s what’s amazing about New Zealand. Just to tie it all tied all around.

So the two things that were real standouts in my childhood were the upright piano, which is what I spent a lot of time on. I never had lessons. There wasn’t a focused study of music by any stretch. Although they did set me up with violin lessons that I did for a very short time until I got a video game system. It’s a like a lot of folks. To this day this day I still love some video games. I don’t watch tv, but I will play some video games if you gimme half a moment,

I took my Switch with me so I could complete all of Tears of the Kingdom, finally.

Ryan: Nice. I mean, you have a long trip for that, right? On a plane. Yeah.

Greg: Almost there. I’m not doing all the Korok seeds though. Fuck all that noise.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, the piano. So that was just like, uh, you know, the TV to be on and I’d be clocking around on the piano.

I didn’t have anybody telling me what to do, but I didn’t have anybody telling me to shut up either. I just have a pretty wide open, free range childhood. And that suited me, that suited me pretty well, I gotta say. And so, that’s really where a lot of my interest in music started.

And like listening to the radio with my grandparents, they really, they loved bluegrass and gospel music. That’s kind of what I grew up on with the bluegrass, more specifically Old Time. Which are like bluegrass standards, basically, so Old Time and Gospel music is what I was hearing. And then the piano is like where I was exploring. And then I got a guitar whenever I was 14. Which that I did not ask for. I wanted more video games. What I had asked for was video games and somebody went and got me a fucking guitar.

Ryan: What the original Guitar Hero, right?

Greg: Yeah. It was, it was the original, it was the original one. And I mean, it was the shittiest fucking guitar, it was the Synsonics Terminator, which had a built in amplifier.

Ryan: Oh no. That sounds like a disaster.

Greg: Yeah. It was built in. So that’s what I got going on. Learning Nirvana songs and stuff on that one. And look at me now.

Ryan: What were the foundational bands that made you think that, “oh man, I wanna do this.” I mean, you said Nirvana. Are there any others that were like-

Greg: The Beach Boys.

That was like, the first, the first chance that I had to buy my own music was the Beach Boys.

And then, I mean, from there, Nirvana, metal, but also Christmas carols and I loved and still love Old Time music and gospel, even though I’m a dedicated atheist, by far, but part of that is if you don’t believe in an afterlife, then like what’s happening right now is pretty important.

I really appreciate what humans do. And so when a human makes a joyful noise, whether it’s for the Lord or otherwise, like it still means something to me.

Ryan: Yeah. I mean, even broadly painting with a brush of spirituality, there’s something that I’ve always felt about music that has this, be it human spiritual element that kind of transcends, it certainly transcends borders, but there’s something about music that has that grip. It doesn’t matter if it’s singing about the Lord or singing about beauty of nature or the fall of capitalism or-

Greg: The fall of capitalism or potato chips or whatever. That’s the amazing thing about one art in general, but two more specifically, music is-

Ryan: It’s like when you talked about being in the middle of the outback and you said you’re not a religious person, but you had that spiritual moment there. There are countless moments I’ve had with music where it’s the same thing. It’s the rule on pornography. Like I’ll know it when I see it, it’s the same spirituality. Like I’ll know it when I see it.

Greg: I know a spiritual experience when I see one. Put that thing away. Don’t you come bring that spiritual experience in here.

Ryan: I mean, I’m sure we’ll get to a point where we are outlawing those so it’s only a matter of time, but that’s only what, a couple years away? We have time.

Greg: Well, in the meantime, just revel in it right now. I mean, music is as spiritual and as a religious of a practice as I am certainly willing to engage on but more importantly, it’s the one that I feel compelled to engage on.

I mean, to the point I’m actually- next month I’m starting a certification course for being able to teach from Pauline Oliveros’s deep listening composers practice, which is a very – I know it sounds really pretentious – It’s really a way of approaching music and by extension, approaching life from a place of listening and viewing, listening and listening presently as one of the most present ways that we can be and move through the world.

Ryan: I like that.

Greg: So yeah, yeah, I do too. That’s why I’m taking the course.

Ryan: So what, what’s, what’s the goal with taking the course? What are you hoping to do with it after?

Greg: Well, it’s part of a kind of a longer term plan for myself, to get a music degree. The idea is to get one in music education. And this is largely preparation for that. I’d like to wind up with my master’s in music education.

And so getting there requires a lot that I won’t get into, but that’s part of it, doing this course is kind of part of that plan for myself and ultimately what I really am interested in doing is teaching. I enjoy teaching music specifically. I have and do teach guitar as an instrument for sure. But my preference really is teaching music.

So that’s what I’m interested in doing long term is really kind of going a lot deeper than just, I’m a) an experienced musician and b) a reasonably knowledgeable, certainly not by any stretch as knowledgeable as someone who’s really done a focused, dedicated study. But that’s what I’m interested in doing. I’m interested in getting there.

But the reason I want to get there is because I want to teach, but I want to teach teaching to teachers. And the deep listening practice is a place that I want to want to develop curriculum from.

There’s a lot that I don’t like about the way that music is taught and especially as a self-taught musician, it’s a chip that I carried around on my shoulder for a long time. Of just like- and this is all going to tie in by the way-

Ryan: Oh, you’ve not let me down so far.

Greg: I love a concept.

Ryan: Oh, I know you do.

Greg: Have you heard my micro album?

Ryan: I have actually.

Greg: Oh that’s right, I’m not shy. You have.

Ryan: I have. I’m very much enjoying it.

Greg: Out in September. So yeah, that’s kind of the story of the next 10 years of my life. Ideally, that’s what I’m going to be working towards. How did we get here?

Ryan: Growing up in your grandparents house for the piano. And then you got a guitar

Greg: So I grew up, grandparents had a piano and they also had an entire set of encyclopedia Britannica because they were from a generation that had- Like every house had an upright piano or, if you had a home, you had an upright piano in it and you had a set of Encyclopedia Britannicas.

Ryan: ‘Cause it was the law.

Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So many traveling salesmen were just banging out Britannica sales. So like I said, like I didn’t have grow up watching MTV and stuff, that didn’t come from me until I was a teenager.

I had the piano and I had the Encyclopedia Britannica to spend my personal time with. And the one place that I spent a lot of time coming back to in the Encyclopedia Britannica section is the Australia section cause it’s in the A’s. It’s up front, so I got to it pretty early and, by extension, New Zealand.

So as a young child that is a place that just always held some kind of nebulous fascination to me. And especially because it seemed like such an impossible place to go to. And then as a traveler, as a person who enjoys travel, I’ve been to Europe a few times, been over the breadth and width of the United States. As you do that, the world starts feeling smaller. It’s like, over time, the idea that it was impossible to visit that place just kept seeming more possible. And then when I found out that I had relatives there and not not like distant cousins or anything, but first gen cousins.

Ryan: That world got even smaller.

Greg: It really did. And yeah the next thing I knew, I’m planning a trip to Australia. And I might as well see New Zealand while I’m there and New Zealand really was a place that for me like really seemed kind of cool.

Because Australia’s got its own flora and fauna, and then New Zealand’s is even more specialized. So then I’m in Australia and I go to this place that has existed in my mind in this fantastical state, right? And I get there and it’s like walking into my childhood. It was wild. And then I go get to New Zealand and New Zealand turns out to be the place I had fantasized.

Ryan: Wow. I feel like that doesn’t happen that often.

Greg: I’m not gonna lie. It felt profound. Just in the actual usage of that word. It really, it was a profound experience for me, you know, just like, I hope that I’ve arranged the lines of storytelling to arrive at the conclusion that all arrows point to for me or stepping into New Zealand, like there was no alternative then for me to have, have that experience.

Ryan: What was it that gave you that sense of profundity?

Greg: That’s hard to explain. I’ll be honest. I mean, I can, like, I can tell you the landscape’s amazing and the folks there are largely really cool and, et cetera. It was a very personal experience.

And because of that, it’s hard to articulate.

Ryan: I get that.

Greg: I’m not being coy.

Ryan: No, no, no. I, I totally, I get what you’re conveying and I respect it. I appreciate it.

Greg: Yeah. Good. Thanks. Thanks for not shitting on it.

So yeah, I get there and it’s just like amazing. And it’s the only place that I have been where I felt like I had regret that I hadn’t grown up there. That’s how it felt. But I hadn’t like made a life there. Which was a, for me, it was pretty profound because I’ve moved around a lot. I’ve really had to internalize the sense that home is is an internal feeling. It is not a place where you are. It’s not a- home is a condition, you live in a condition of hominess or not. As far as I’m concerned. It has meant that I’ve had to get comfortable with, wherever I am, that’s going to have to be home. And so, I’ve kind of planted my flag here in Durham and Durham felt like a place that I could dig in and make a life. And so that’s what I’ve done. And that’s been great.

And then I got a New Zealand and it was like, damn, this is where if I could have chosen a place to get born, this is it. One crazy, just crazy experience, actually the whole trip was full of like Dickensian coincidence. Again, I’m not a “the universe has charted our course for us and all we have to do is land in it and all that kind of stuff.”

I don’t want to go to a place of describing my experience as like there being some higher consciousness at work in it. But just there were a lot of statistical anomalies to put, to put it bluntly. Like every activity I showed up to do, the weather was always perfect for, and the weather changes a lot there.

The expectation is that like, the weather is going to suck. Or at least suck like when you need it to not suck. So I kept waiting for that moment. Over a month of doing- And I did a fuck ton of shit. I’m not gonna lie. ‘Cause again, I’m solo, so it was just like, I’m not gonna chill in my hotel room. I’m gonna cram the hours. I mean, I slept some, but every single day I saw the sunrise and sunset every day that I absolutely amazing. Again, those are special times of the day. Sunrise and sunset. There’s just something nice about those times of the day and to just have my days bookended in that way. It was really special. It was a really special experience.

Ryan: That’s sounds amazing.

Greg: Yeah. I can’t even believe it’s what I just got done doing. And even more unbelievable is that, instead of having the effect of now I’m home and I’m so disappointed, it’s been the opposite. I would say it’s really deepened and intensified my appreciation for what I have and what I’ve chosen.

Because then there’s this fantastical place on the other side of the world has essentially just been plucked out of my fantasy, but it’s there.

The first big hike I was doing, I was in Routeburn, which is a lot to get into. But there’s a glacier-cut valley that runs between a mountain range, this area of a mountain range and it’s a river bed that it’s in constant flux because the river is not very deep and it really just kind of depends on the rainfall, et cetera.

So, there’s all these- it’s covered in river stones that are constantly shifting. They’re moving all around, right? Every week it’s different. It really is wild. So like if you’re there, you’re having a singular experience. When you think about it, when I thought, and so while I’m there having the singular experience, I’m looking looking off the vista and literally I look down at my foot and there is this heart shaped rock sitting right there.

I was like, well, that’s obviously somebody dropped that. Some tourists bought a thing and they dropped it. So I better pick it up and deal with the garbage. And as I go to pick it up, I realized that, nope, that is a fucking rock. That’s a rock right there, just looking like a goddamn Valentine right there. And here I am in the place where if I could have chosen a home, here it is. I couldn’t help but go to all of the cliche heart and home statements, you know, home is where your heart is, leaving your heart behind, you know what I mean? That kind of, all of that kind of stuff.

So part of the appreciation is to use some of that language. I know as in terms of home, specifically that, or that sense, the feeling of home, right? This sensation of hominess, it exists simultaneously. It’s the place you are. And it’s also the place where it’s also like an emotional and mental experience as well, you know? Mentally. What I didn’t really grow up with was that sense of a physical home, necessarily. Home, certainly a physical home in like an address and that kind of stuff.

It’s hard for me to answer the question of like, “what was your hometown?” I don’t really. But now I’ve identified a place that can occupy some of that in my mind the first time, you know? And that feels very special. And it makes where I am and where I’ve chosen to be, feel more important.

Ryan: That’s amazing. And yeah, that ties that thread perfectly back into the one word of the prompt, the homesick piece too.

Greg: Yeah. Homesick. Yeah. I don’t think I realized I was. And now I’m not. Maybe that’s the feeling too, is like having a place where I’ve left my heart. ‘Cause I didn’t, I mean, obviously I didn’t take it with me. That’d be an asshole move to-

Ryan: Leave it for someone else to put their foot in and have an epiphany.

Greg: Well, that’s the amazing thing about it. How random that is, how random that moment was because. You know that it happened to look exactly, I took a picture of it and you can see it like without question, it looks like a Valentine, a gray Valentine just sitting right there. But if you pick it up and turn it over or turn it to the side, it doesn’t look that way anymore. It just got shifted into that spot for the time that was there. I’m sure other people saw it too. So it’s not like I’m the only one, but it was there, it was a statistical anomaly, and more amazing for that, it wasn’t some guidance from a greater consciousness.

I would imagine, I don’t assume that to be the case. So, to me, that makes it all the more special that it was just a thing that happened, but it had a very profound effect on me, regardless.

So I made it heavy.

Ryan: No, I love it.

Greg: I’m in a metal band motherfucker, so it’s gotta be heavy. Which, let’s get to the music.

Ryan: Yeah let’s tie it back,so why’d you pick the song?

Greg: Because for, okay, for several reasons, one, the person responsible for this music is from fucking New Zealand. So there’s that.

Ryan: And the person you’re talking to is talking about is Sally Gates, correct?

Greg: Yes, that’s right. Yes. So Sally Gates is the composer/person responsible for Titan to Tachyons and, I mean, at this point, as far as contemporary musicians go, she is hands down my favorite. Without question. Pretty remarkable talent.

Ryan: Yeah. I mean we bumped into each other at the Titan to Tachyon’s show with Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

Greg: Well, yeah. What’d you think?

Ryan: I was an incredible night all around. That a great show. Yeah.

Greg: Yeah, I told you.

Ryan: Yeah. You’re right. You’re right. You’re right.

Who am I to argue with The Archivist?

Greg: Few people do, but that’s mostly because I don’t talk to them.

Ryan: Fair play.

Greg: It’s just easier that way.

Ryan: Yeah, no, I get it.

Greg: Why engage in feedback, you know. You’re just going to hear shit you don’t want to hear. So this piece of music- I’ve been chewing on this particular piece of music for the better part of two years now. Really, since I became aware of Titan to Tachyons, Voidward opened for them in Greensboro.

And it was, for me, a pretty amazing experience. I never know anything about the bands that I’m sharing bills with, Voidward is a band that plays the shows that we are asked to play.

Ryan: Which you did so kindly when, you shared the bill with guest of season one, Weslie Negrón‘s band, Moths.

Greg: Oh man. I love Weslie. He was great. I love it. Holy shit, man. They were good. Yeah, that was a fun night. I really enjoyed that show. Fortunately I’ve enjoyed- you know, the shows that I have enjoyed playing are by far in, in the majority.

I can only think of like a few shows that I haven’t really enjoyed myself. Certainly in Voidward. I’ve had some non-Voidward shows that really sucked, but I’ve managed to keep Voidward very fun for myself. Which is probably why I’ve kept it going. ‘Cause it’s been fun, and I love Alec and Noah. I love playing with them. It’s just fun.

So we opened up for Titan to Tachyons and Clout Chaser in Greensboro in like 2020. And one of the ways that I got in really serious about playing guitar, was through jazz.

[Transcript-only note: Clout Chaser naming their album METALLICA and starting with a track called “Enter Sandman” is so brazen and hilarious]

The shredders that I was into were jazz musicians, or probably more specifically fusion musicians. [John] McLaughlin, Bitches Brew is probably my record of all time. Shortly behind would be Jack Johnson, both McLaughlin records, his playing on those is amazing to me.

On Bitches Brew, he’s got a song called “John McLaughlin” and what’s amazing about it he barely plays on it. He plays like these little- he’s playing lead on it, but there’s so much space on it.

And it’s just him like making these little stabs of stating the melody in various ways.

But mainly it’s got this just fucking badass riff going on. They’re just like pounding that into your brain for four minutes and then he’s playing, anyway, that’s very homey music to me.

Ryan: Yeah, no, you’re just tying those threads, man. You’re making you’re weaving it.

Greg: It’s very home for me. The other place for me is Metal. I’m a “first four,” solidly. I don’t mind the radio hits from The Black Album. I can get down with those, but like, I don’t really ever like go to the rest of it, but Justice [For All], Ride the Lightning, Master Of Puppets, obviously great. Metallica and John McLaughlin were how I- to this day, that’s still like my approach to playing guitar and experiencing music, that I make stuff like that. So those are the things that I love, those are the places where I feel homiest. Cattle Decapitation and Sonny Sharrock, who was another big influence on me. He was a guitar player who was in this kind of- he was part of that John Zorn world.

I heard about him- I was into Coltrane at the time. And more specifically, I was into his kind of free period, which was late in his career. Stellar Regions is amazing to me. And so Sharrock was like a really free avant player.

And so that had a big effect on me. ‘Cause I just didn’t really know you could just do that on guitar. Like I heard people doing it on saxophone, you know what I mean?

But then it was like. Oh, shit. I wanna play guitar like him. So that’s the music that I really love. That’s the music that I feel homey in. There’s also bluegrass and there’s also- I mean, I love all music. I love it all, man. I’m polyjamorous when it comes to it.

Ryan: Polyjamorous. Oh, damn. I’m never going to get that out of my head. That’s good, poljamourous.

Greg: I’ll be honest, I did not make that up, but it was a well timed usage.

Ryan: I was great. And credit to whoever, whoever coined that pun, hats off-

Greg: Abigail Sheriff. So Polyjammery. I love music. I love listening to it and I love playing it.

And I don’t, I don’t discriminate of, you know, if it makes a joyful noise then I’m in, and two of the most joyful noises to me are jazz and metal. And I also love modern composition and Avant composition, and I also love stuff like Schoenberg and we’re talking just kind of all of the Post-Romantic into 20th century composition and I love all that stuff. Pauline Oliveros, the person who made the course that I’m getting ready to get certified in, she was a pioneer in electronic recording. A lot of ambient stuff. Also a lot of this sounds like I’m throwing pennies down a staircase in a giant cell cellar, or whatever, lots of natural reverberations and whatnot.

Anyway, I love all that shit. I also love Christmas carols and the Beach Boys and everything. So I opened up for this band and they’re playing all the music I love at the same time.

Ryan: And you say you didn’t know about them before?

Greg: No idea. None whatsoever. No. It was just like “hey, do you wanna play a show?” “Yeah.” “Okay, fine, tell me when to be there.”

So I got up there played our set, get in the crowd “what is going on on here?” And just like, “oh, fucking a, this is awesome.” And Sally is just like a fucking phenomenal guitar player. Just an amazing guitar player.

And one of the things I really appreciate about her style of playing is how seamless she has incorporated the kind of what I like to call- because Frank Zappa used to call them the “stunt guitar playing,” you know, tapping and all of the two handed maneuvering and all of that stuff. The Wang Bar, all of that, she has incorporated into her playing in a very seamless way. One of my pet peeves about that stuff, and one of the reasons why I’ve kind of, as a player, personally, I’ve mostly avoided it on purpose, not because I don’t like it or appreciate it, but because I haven’t really always felt like I have much to offer in the conversation of tapping. I don’t know that I have much content to put in.

And so it’s a little bit of a pet peeve of mine when it’s like, “alright, well, I’m playing. I’m playing. I’m playing. I’m playing. And now let me get ready to tap.” You know what I mean? So for someone like her, who’s playing the way that she does, where it’s just her- to me, it sounds like it’s just part of her train of thought, which, that’s pretty cool to me.

Ryan: It’s one of her default writing, playing styles. It’s not something that she’s thinking about incorporating. Like if you were to think about, “alright, how do I incorporate tapping into this song?” she’s just doing it.

Greg: And I mean, who knows? Like it may be incredibly- not like I know her enough to say one way or the other, but just as a listener, to me, it sounds very natural. It doesn’t sound contrived, which often that kind of stuff does to me. I absolutely recognize the amount of prowess that goes into getting there. And certainly as someone who teaches guitar and plays guitar, and is reasonably serious about it, I understand intimately what is required to play that way. And especially as someone who does not play that way. So anybody that has gotten there, hats off to you, that took some fucking work. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into musicality, always.

So that’s the thing for me is seeing somebody who’s got such an excellent musical sensibility, also utilizing what I know to be like pretty difficult guitar playing. So on a personal level, seeing that opened a door for me because I know a lot of folks who, whenever they see other amazing musicians, they say something like, “it made me feel like ‘what am I doing?’ ‘I wanted to give up,’ ‘I wanted to put my guitar down for a month, et cetera.’”

I mean, certainly you’ve heard, maybe even said these phrases, but I don’t have that response whenever I see somebody who’s better than me. I go to one of two places. I either am like that person is so much better than I am, and that’s amazing. Awesome. Or I see somebody who’s better than I am and I think, “ah, well, fuck that. I want some of that. I’m going to shoot for that.” That was the experience I had here.

So I played that show and I’m listening to that record, Cactides, on repeat and listening to “Tycho Magnetic” on repeat and there’s a solo in there that- it’s like awesome and it seemed, lengthwise and stuff, it seemed the most approachable point for me. So I decided I was going to transcribe that solo for myself, which does not mean write it out in notation. Just, I’m going to learn this, I’m going to do my best to learn to play this solo, which is how I’ve learned to play:

I’m going to learn this riff. I’m going to learn this lick. I’m going to learn, sit down, listen to it. I didn’t learn to read music until COVID. I got inspired by Schoenberg, who largely seems like a giant asshole, based on the biographies, and also, one of his books, The Structural Functions of Harmony, he just sounds like a fucking asshole. He seems like he was probably just an intolerable human being all around. But, he taught himself theory and composition from a mailorder catalog and then goes on to completely upend tonal music.

So all the music up into the 20th century is tonal, meaning that it’s, in various ways fixated on this kind of 1-to-5 relationship, the tonic to the dominant and back, and everything’s just kind of- there’s a lot of focus on that. And then, in the 20th century on, and largely- I mean, it was headed that way, it’s not like Schoenberg just invented this out of nowhere. Although he seems like the kind of motherfucker that would tell you that, that’s what I mean, not knowing him personally.

He’s largely credited with what’s considered a-tonal music, which can sound like squanky, scranky stuff, but it doesn’t have to, it just means that it’s not fixated on the tonic. The tonic is not a fixed place. It’s a-tonal center. And you can feel free to explore tonal centers at your leisure. You don’t have to be mindful of getting back to necessarily, although you’re going to use the tonic dominant relationship to outline how you’re, how you’re moving through tonal center.

So it’s not like it’s just completely abandoned necessarily. It’s just, the relationship is different. It doesn’t have to be the primary focus anymore. So that was my inspiration for- well, I’m like, “instead of having this giant chip on my shoulder, being a self-taught musician who is also a high school dropout and didn’t go to college and all of that stuff, I am going to learn music theory. I’m going to learn to read. I’m going to learn to- I’m going to learn composition. We’re just going to order some books. And go to town.” And that’s what I did.

And as I started realizing that I was learning it, I was like, “well, now I think I know what I want to go to school for.” So I enrolled in college and here I am talking about getting a Master’s in music education. So music is important to me for these reasons. It’s been around me all my life, my parents were musicians, then like growing up in my grandparents house, my youngest aunt was so young that she was like my big sister, and she played violin and piano. And gospel music. I had to go to church every Sunday. Singing gospel, waiting on my aunt to get done practicing so that I could bang around on the piano, a very brief stint with violin lessons and then guitar; it’s been around me all my life. Music is a thing that just been there and come into a place where I’d have realized what it means to me.

And it’s been a way that I could approach thinking about things and contributions to society at large, if that doesn’t sound too pretentious. It’s been a way of thinking about things larger than myself. And being being curious about it led me to learning about the history of it and that is going to introduce you to the various ways that various cultures, by choice and not by choice, contribute to this extended conversation that humans have been having since before language. Think about that for a moment. Music came first.

Ryan: I mean, music is language. Music was the first language, maybe?

Greg: I read a book not so long ago called The Singing Neanderthals that’s by a biological evolutionary specialist who- it’s pretty well researched. And so it spends a lot of time talking about the neuro pathways that underpin our ability to understand and experience music. And more specifically, it spends a good portion of time on patients who have experienced brain trauma and developed either aphasia, where they lose the ability to understand the language, or amusia, where you develop the inability to experience music.

Ryan: Oh, that sounds like hell.

Greg: Yeah, right? It does. And one of the subjects had been a concert pianist who had been in an accident of some kind, I don’t remember, but it had had an experience of brain trauma that damaged that area of the brain and he couldn’t remember any of the pieces of music that he knew, but his motorfunction was still intact. So the muscle memory to play all of the pieces of music that he knew was still there. So he could sit down at the piano like an automaton and move his hands and they would play a piece of music, but to him, it sounded like gibberish. Isn’t that wild?

Ryan: Yeah, that sounds like a good book.

Greg: I mean, it’s dry. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not-

Ryan: It sounds like an interesting book.

Greg: It’s an interesting book, yeah. It’s not like a well crafted narrative.

Ryan: It’s not a page turner, but there’s a lot of good information there.

Greg: There’s a lot of good stuff for the curious in there. And one really interesting thing to me is that the neuro pathways for experience for language are arranged on top of the ones for music which, from an evolutionary standpoint, you can read that as first there was the neuro pathway for music, and then that adapted and became the one that we used speaking.

One of the things that was interesting to me about this book is that it’s like there’s a- controversy is too strong a word, but there’s a genial disagreement between evolutionary biologists regarding where music sits in a human beings evolutionary story. The main thinking is that music is like, sure we did it first, but it’s kind of an appendix, except a lot less dangerous, maybe. It’s fine, it’s great, it’s humans like enjoying themselves, so whatever, but the idea of it being a necessary part of being a human, being a homosapien, it’s largely viewed as extraneous. And this book makes the argument the opposite is true. That in fact, it’s fundamental because what’s also interesting is that those neuro pathways are also connected to our emotional centers of the brain.

One conclusion that gets drawn in this book is that you can think of singing and music as an emotional language. And you can think of text and speech as a cerebral language. Although that’s not exactly right. Cerebral means the whole brain, but you get what I’m saying.

Text and speech is about thinking, music is about feeling. That makes all the sense in the world. And of course, they’re not clearly separated things. There’s a huge amount of the Venn diagram that these things share. And we might call it art. We may call that art, my man, if you choose.

Ryan: No, I like that. That’s, that’s so good. That’s so good.

Greg: It was good, wasn’t it? I’m rambling and I’m glad you’re receptive to it.

Ryan: No, it doesn’t feel like a ramble at all. I mean, we went very- there were some tangents, but they’re going in the same direction. All the threads come together.

Greg: And this experience of music is why I’m doing the deep listening course and why I want to really study music in a in a concentrated, focused way because I really, I guess, you know, I believe in music. I believe in music. And I think that being really mindful about the approach of how we transfer music on to other people and to future generations is important and that it would be important to make sure that there’s the option of approaching it in this way, as being fundamental to humanity, not an extra thing that’s also kind of fun.

So there I am at the Titan to Tachyons on show. I see this band of walking music clinics take the stage in Greensboro and play this music that was like avant-garde jazz metal, right? I’ve just explained to you all the things that I love, are you fucking kidding me?

Ryan: Yeah. It’s like it’s crafted personally for you.

Greg: I know, right? And so I was just listening to that album and I decided I was going to transpose this guitar solo and I’m no stranger to getting in over my head on those kinds of things. I’m very forgiving of myself about not learning something perfectly. My approach to that aspect of learning to play music is very much “get as much as you can out of it, don’t kill yourself.” And that’s like any students that I’ve had that conversation with, that’s the conversation. Learn it as best you can, take the time, take it seriously, but don’t make the end goal knowing it perfectly, right?

Ryan: ‘Cause you’ll kill the fun for it.

Greg: Right, you will. I’ve seen it happen over the course of my life, just knowing musicians. One thing that’s important to me and that kind of informs a lot of my feelings on the state of music teaching, or whatever, is just like every conservatory graduate that I know – it’s not like I know a bunch, but any of the ones that I do know – are just fucking bitter about it. That doesn’t sound healthy to me.

Ryan: Music’s not supposed to be bitter.

Greg: No. It’s fucking fun. It’s fucking fun. And it’s a joy, and that doesn’t mean it’s not challenging or anything like that, but that’s part of the fun, that it’s challenging, you know? But it can also be entirely easy. You can make it as complicated or as simple as you want and each are equally as valid. Where else can you say that about things? Nowhere, that’s where.

So there I was at the Titan to Tachyons show, I’m trying to transcribe this solo. And not only did I get in over my head, but I probably got as close to wanting to put my guitar down as I ever have. Just like, I am not up for this. I’m not up for this. I thought I was okay. I thought I was pretty good. People tell me I’m pretty good. I know how to play the instrument. I know how to play it, I mean, I certainly don’t feel like a genius and I’m not going to rate my own talent because that’s a fool’s errand, I’m going to make myself happy with it and that’s as much thinking as I’m going to put into that element of playing music. I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it as best I can, and I’m going to make it fun for myself and that’s that. And trying to learn this guitar solo was as close as I’ve gotten to like, “do I know how to play music? Do I know how to play music?”

A lot of the art of learning music is to grab on to familiar concepts. Once you learn the Jimmy Page lick, you’ll start recognizing it other places. You start realizing that, “Oh, he actually stole that from Albert King who stole it from somebody else” and then you hear it everywhere and there’s just none of that in the solo. Nothing I could just reach out and grab onto as an anchor point, both because it’s complicated, but also because her style of playing is just very foreign to me.

I don’t have a vibrato on any of my guitars because if I look at it, it’s going to go out of tune. I do not have the touch that is required to use that thing constructively. So that’s one of those things I’m just like, well, fine. Nostalgic, inspirational music for me is Hendrix. And just at some point I just had realized I’m not going to- not that I can’t play like that, but I am not going to play like that, because it would require require me to shift something that I’m feeling capable of and comfortable in.

If you put a vibrato on a bass, how are you going to feel?

Ryan: I don’t even know what to do with it.

Greg: Exactly. That’s how I feel. That’s how I feel about it. Anytime that I pick up a guitar that’s got a vibrato, I’m just like, “what is- why? Why would I do that?” So there’s that. And then also the two-handed playing and stuff, that’s like another area where I very much learn the skills that I need to accomplish the things that I want to accomplish, that’s my mode as a player.

I have a running conversation with the other skill sets, tapping and that kind of stuff. I learned the basics of eruption, but I could not do that. I couldn’t play you eruption. I could play a five second blurb from eruption that would demonstrate a particular technique. You know what I mean? I don’t have any utility for it. And here’s the solo that is all of that. All of the stuff that I don’t do, plus it’s complicated. Plus it’s just challenging.

So I still haven’t- it’s been two years. But what I had to do though was I had to literally transcribe it, not just by ear, but I had to write it out in notation for myself, get a handle on it. It was not an experience I’d really had where what I needed to do was like set this thing down in front of me so that I could study it in an academic way. So that’s what I did. And I’ve never done that before.

That’s the first piece of music that I wrote out on a piece of paper in notation. It is not accurate. The notes roughly are, but anybody that teaches the correct way to notate music would lose their minds.

I had to put this piece of music on a piece of paper for myself so I could look at it and just be like, “what the fuck is going on in here?”

I hope I’m making clear all the ways in which these threads are all running together for me because I was already on the path that I’m talking about before hearing this music and seeing Sally play and being confronted with this experience.

Ryan: It’s kind of the musical equivalent of finding that heart-shaped rock.

Greg: Right on. There you go. Damn, dude, you’re good at this.

Ryan: Tying it all together, buddy.

Greg: I would not have gotten there, but holy shit, that is correct. That is correct.

Ryan: Hey, you just put the pieces there.

Greg: So home, that music felt very homey to me, even though, if you were just to listen to Voidward, you would not make the assumption that I also like avant-composition.

But also, I mean, I have like a mild, genial, competitive streak, you know, I don’t need to win or be better than anybody, but I want to know that I can do the best that I can.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s healthy.

Greg: I hope so. I mean, it feels pretty good. It’s worked for me, I’ll say that. And when I was recording these two songs that are coming out in September, it came time to do the solo and I don’t- every solo that I play is improvised. Every single one. ‘Cause you know, it’s all about jazz for me. Even if I’m playing metal, it’s still about jazz mindset.

That’s the challenge that I set for myself, because metal is often very fixed, compositionally speaking. Make up a riff and then you play the riff. You play it. What’s the point in writing the riff if you don’t play it and if you want to stop playing the riff, then you better write another riff to play right after.

Ryan: And then bring it back, but slower.

Greg: Then you gotta figure out how to get from one riff to the other with another riff, right? That part, describing exactly what I love about metal.

But, when it comes to the solo part, I’m just going to let it fly. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have like a basic idea of where I’m going to come from. And so I’m sitting down and I’ve been chewing on the idea for what I was going to play and was just getting really frustrated. Over and over and over again, just not getting to the sound of the thing that I wanted. I’m not concerned about the details necessarily.

For me to feel comfortable with the solo that I’ve played, it needs to feel like there’s a narrative arc to it, so to speak. But you know, I’m not not concerned about making sure to play this lick or that technique or whatever. But also I’ll hear kind of a general idea of what I’m playing should sound like. And that’s kind of what I chase as the improvisational target, and I was just getting really frustrated because I wasn’t hitting it and I realized that the reason for that was because for the first time I was hearing two handed playing in my mind. In large part, because I’d been spending a lot of time in this solo, having to be confronted with the necessity of using the technique to make it sound like anything that made sense.

So “Dark Miracle” has the very first tapping performance that I have ever done.

Ryan: It’s all tracking with me. ‘Cause as you were talking about the tapping, I was like, I’ve seen you tapping. I know I’ve seen you- And so that makes- that’s that song then that you were playing. “Dark Miracle.”

Greg: That’s right.

Ryan: I love that song. I love and the yeah, the tapping is great.

It blows my mind when you play it. Shit.

Greg: Well, thanks. I felt proud of myself, I will say.

Ryan: Good. I mean, there’s something as a musician, it’s that growth, right? That competitiveness with you yourself. The more you spend time with music or with a technique, you grow a little bit each time. And I’ve noticed this with myself, there are things now that I’ll play that, when I was starting out, I wouldn’t even have dreamed of being able to play. But over time and just working through things, musically, you get there eventually and then you just keep going and- it it’s stretching, it’s stretching.

Greg: Success lives in the margins.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly.

Greg: Yeah. You know, if you shoot for the- which is- I don’t remember what I was actually going to say, but that sounded good. Success lives in the margins.

Mastery is the presence of discipline, not denial. How did that sound?

Ryan: Great.

Greg: That’s going to be the title of my coursework book. “Music Theory: Mastery is the Presence of Discipline, Not Denial. How to Music.” by Greg Sheriff.

Ryan: Love it. Love it. Well, Greg, this has been a phenomenal conversation. Thank you for spending a great portion of your afternoon talking with me.

Greg: Thanks for inviting me to do this. Man, this was awesome.

Ryan: Yeah, no. Is, is there anything, uh, just real quick before we sign off? You have a new mini album coming out.

Greg: Micro album. It’s not a single, it’s a micro album. Yeah, that’ll be coming out in September. Occult Symmetry is the title, also with album art by Sally Gates. See how it’s all- buddy…

Ryan: You’re a weaver. That’s great.

Greg: I asked and she said yes. I was shooting for the moon as far as I’m concerned. And she said, so I’m really looking forward to that. This also be my first vinyl, so that’s also amazing.

Ryan: Well, thank you again. This was an absolute pleasure. Listeners, if you have a chance to see Voidward, you better damn do it.

If you are local to Raleigh and listening to this episode on or around release day, Voidward is playing Kings with MAKE opening for Today Is the Day. I mean, the day of the show is Thursday October 24th, but the band they’re opening for is Today is the Day.

Voidward’s new micro album, Occult Symmetry, is out January 1st of 2025, Year of the Void. You can pre-order a vinyl copy from Pour House Pressing.

As promised, we’re going to end with two songs. The first of which is Greg’s selection “Tycho Magnetic” by Titan To Tachyons followed by “Dark Miracle” one of the tracks off of the upcoming Occult Symmetry.

Thank you so much for listening this season, you can now find the full mixtape on Spotify or YouTube, the links to which you can find at letsmixtape.com. Be sure to subscribe and rate as it feels the algorithm gods to help the show get discovered. Massive thanks to all of my guests for their participation this season. The show will be back for season three, the date of which remains unknown but @letsmixtape on Instagram will be the first place you’ll hear about it, so be sure to follow for updates. This show was recorded and edited by yours truly, show intro and transition music was written and recorded by Scotty Sandwich. Thanks again for listening, and catch ya next season.