Interview: Shayne Cutler

Dive a little deeper into 2022's production of the year, 'Living Downtime' with singer-songwriter Shayne Cutler...

I found myself really resonating with the lyrics straight away, ‘Sometimes I swear I’m going nowhere on this roundabout. I keep the same routine day in and day out’ - was this song potentially written during lockdown?

No, the song wasn't really anything to do with lockdown. 'Living Downtime' was written the month the song submission was due (January) and it came from remembering a time that I was depressed, and just couldn't see the good in anything. I had this 'routine' to get me through each day.

I work within the industrial printing industry that runs 24 hours a day, and if for whatever reason the machinery isn't operating, the systems class it as 'Downtime' (where nothing happens, at all.) - so that's where I got the idea for the song title, and I guess at that time it seemed like my life was one big "Living Downtime" with nothing happening.

Do you often find that your lyrics are more autobiographical than fictional?

Most of my songs come from personal experiences. I find the songs just come out better that way. I have written songs about a fictional characters before and they can be quite fun, as you can go anywhere you want with the writing.

The instrumentation throughout this song sounds really great - especially the keys. You’re predominantly a piano player, right? Is that where ‘living downtime’ came to be and is that where you feel most comfortable as a songwriter (behind the keys/piano)?

Yes, I am mainly a piano player, but I also do like to play bass as well. I was trained in classical piano originally, but quickly found that there's really not much work out there for classical pianists, and playing in bands has always been way more fun anyway... haha.

My usual songwriting process will start on the piano, but often I will write songs in my head first to figure out a melody for the vocals and then figure parts from there. I find that more emotion comes from the songs that are written without an instrument, as it puts the focus fully on what you're singing, not what you're playing.

During the listening party that ‘Living downtime’ was showcased, I remember a few members mentioning that they could hear some similarities to ‘Moby’ in the outro (which I can also hear) - was it a conscious decision to make the cathartic section of your song head in such a 90’s sound?

I have heard of Moby, but it just came out that way to be honest. There was a song though that I could hear in my head for the ending, 'Never Forget' by 'Take That' - which has this big brass & strings section.

Production wise, I was heavily influenced by the 'Nothing but Thieves' song "Impossible" live at Abbey Road. The sound that they get when recording there just sounds absolutely amazing - I was trying to create something like that.

Can you give our members a little insight into how your song was produced? It’s mixed & mastered excellently, was this by you? What software/DAW did you use?

Everything you hear, is all done by me on my computer, I have a process that I go through...

First I write a basic version of the song (piano/vox), then I'll add the other instruments, set the volume levels and the left/right balance until I have a mix that I'm happy with - I like to experiment with this (I remember a song I mixed where I set the drums hard left and the bass hard right and it gave the song this great feel of space for the vocals).

Once I have the volume and song balanced, I start adding fx (like EQ/compression/saturation/reverb/delay etc.), but sometimes I might hear a sound and not add anything at all to it (Sometimes the fx can take away instead of adding so its best just to leave the sound raw) After adding the fx I'll do another mix, as fx tend to change volume and perspective so I like to reshape the song as I go along.

Finally, when I'm happy with my mix I go on to the mastering stage - which can sometimes take longer than anything else. I can easily end up with 30-50 different versions of the master - the funny thing is, the master I end up using most of the time comes from the first 5-10 masters.

The DAW that I use is Cubase. It was the first one I came across years back and I have just stuck with it ever since .I think most DAW's are pretty similar in what they can do and how they work, but I have stuck with cubase out of habit really. All the instruments are VST's - mainly I use Spectrosonics (Trilian for bass and Keyscape for piano), but the bulk of the instruments I use come from "Native Instruments Komplete 13". Most of my mixing & mastering is done with Izotope software. I use Neutron 4 for the mixing and Ozone 10 for the mastering - there not cheap, but I have to say, they are worth the money if your thinking of investing in them.

What do you think you’ve learnt writing/recording/mixing this song? Is there anything you’d like to redo if you got the chance?

Since the song was written, I have upgraded a lot of my equipment - so I would love to have a try at re-record, mix and master the whole thing from scratch. Of course whether or not it comes out better only time will tell.

If there was one thing that I've learnt from writing & mixing this song, it's how to create 'space' within the mix for each track. There was a lot going on in this song

(especially at the end) which made it pretty difficult to give everything it's own place in the mix, but through step-by-step EQ, volume and balance control I was able to achieve this. I would encourage members to watch YouTube tutorials on those basic fundamentals to help create space within their own mixes - it really helped me.

To hear 'Living Downtime' head over to the 'COMUSO Player' now.

Shayne Cutler has recently released 'Free to be loved' to all major streaming platforms.