{"id":10954,"date":"2021-01-12T11:37:43","date_gmt":"2021-01-12T16:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/?p=10954"},"modified":"2023-06-05T09:29:42","modified_gmt":"2023-06-05T13:29:42","slug":"soyuz-soundcheck-tennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/ru\/articles\/interviews\/soyuz-soundcheck-tennis","title":{"rendered":"Soyuz Soundcheck: Tennis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tennis is one of the hardest working, most consistent bands around.\u00a0 Currently five albums and two EPs into their recording career together, Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley have proven to be evolving artists and champions of DIY in all formats. Following their 2020 self-recorded and produced album <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SWIMMER the group <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">has seen the addition of Soyuz microphones to their sonic arsenal.\u00a0 When the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of a year\u2019s worth of tour dates, Tennis brought their new sound to the masses with a visually entrancing live stream aptly titled, <\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In The Void<\/span><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. We recently were able to catch up for an excellent conversation covering their transition into production for other artists, as well as sharing insights into songwriting and self-recording, the building of a personal studio, and the truth of what it means to be a fully independent musician today. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check out snippets from the recent streams and read our full conversation below<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tennis - How To Forgive (Live: In The Void)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/i3fdrEthXkE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tennis - Need Your Love (Solo: In The Void)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0BaJ9XZhGSM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>So first, I just wanted to say congrats on the stream! It sounded amazing and was mixed really well. I was just thinking it must have been challenging to make it not only look great but sound great too &#8212; and then having to make sure you could all monitor each other&#8230;What was your setup like for recording that?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I wish the setup was more glamorous. When we first came up with this idea, I was going to bring our console. We have this really cool 60\u2019s Studer console. We were going to bring that and all of these compressors and everything and then we realized, \u201cOh, with Covid, we can&#8217;t really have anyone over there running this stuff.\u201d\u00a0 Fortunately, we ended up using our monitor console from touring for all the conversion. So we just used a Midas M32 and ran everything through that &#8212; just really sterile &#8212; and then we took it back to our studio and basically had a flash in the pan mix and tried to process that as fast as possible to get the live stream out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Everything all together sounded like it could have just as easily fit on any of your records. What stuck out to me specifically was the bass and drum sound.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh, that&#8217;s great! I mean we were really worried about the drums in that room because it was all concrete.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We actually spent hours right before shooting the live stream moving the LED walls. At first they were set up to be 90 degree angles and there was a lot of reflection inside so we moved them out just something like five degrees to fix it. So that helped a lot with the sound.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"color: #db021b;\">:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was pretty mind-blowing. How just having walls at 90 degrees and changing it to a 91 or 92 degree angle cut so much reflection out of the room. Now I&#8217;m going to pay more attention to that the next time we build out a space.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Tennis-SoundCheck-min-1-1-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2560\" height=\"2079\" class=\"wp-image-11013 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Tennis-SoundCheck-min-1-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Tennis-SoundCheck-min-1-1-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Tennis-SoundCheck-min-1-1-768x624.jpg 768w, https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Tennis-SoundCheck-min-1-1-1536x1247.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Tennis-SoundCheck-min-1-1-2048x1663.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\" \/><\/a> Live: In The Void @tennisinc<b>You know, I was wondering about the recording studio you guys built as well &#8212; Did you build your studio completely from the ground up? Or was It already a space that was made and ready?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kind of both. We live in a Victorian home &#8212; so it&#8217;s from the 1890s &#8212; and in the garage that was in the backyard &#8212; which we used as the control room &#8212; there weren&#8217;t square walls in it to begin with. So we did tear everything down, all the walls and floors, and we put in our own stuff.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We used Rockwool and insulated the floors so it was really quiet. Then the whole back wall was all foam paneling and that was upholstered so the whole back wall was soft. It ended up sounding really nice in there, being not too dead, but really, really good for listening.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #db021b;\">Patrick<\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then we had a snake buried in the backyard that went down into the basement of our house. So that was the main tracking room. We had this kind of two room set up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Oh, that&#8217;s awesome! Yeah, I had seen the pictures of the studio on your Instagram feed and then I heard you guys talking about it as well on your TapeOp interview.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Alaina, I heard you talking about upholstering the walls with velvet and just making it a good headspace overall.\u00a0 Have you found a personal studio to be a refuge during a crazy pandemic time?\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah! In the span of time that our tour was supposed to be happening we&#8217;ve been able to make two records with other artists. That was really nice. We all quarantined together. And in one instance, the band moved into our house and we just all lived together. It was like summer camp and we made a whole album in two weeks. So we got a lot of use out of our studio with this unexpected downtime, so much so that it just motivated us to take the leap and move to L.A. so we can just have more access and just &#8212; <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">more<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I feel like we&#8217;re really hitting our stride in the studio and we want to keep expanding that part of our work as Tennis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We&#8217;ll definitely be building out a new space, which is its own can of worms.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But we learned a lot about what we want from this last experience, so I think we&#8217;ll be able to modify that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisStudio.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11002\" src=\"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisStudio.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisStudio.jpg 1080w, https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisStudio-768x510.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px\" \/><\/a> @tennisinc<b>Would you have any advice to share with somebody who is looking to go the DIY route for their own home studio or a dedicated space for music and recording? Is there anything you both learned through the process that worked well or anything you would do differently?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> :<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound treatment is the most important part.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, by far. That is the number one way to make a drum sound good in the room &#8212; just dialing in all your sound treatment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina :<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You definitely don\u2019t want to take any shortcuts on that\u2026 but I mean, that&#8217;s just science. It&#8217;s not like a secret. There are rules to that. And then I think the next thing, for me, was making sure it&#8217;s an aesthetically pleasing room you want to spend all your time in. It matters a lot to me, but I feel like it also mattered to everyone who ended up recording with us. They really appreciated that. It was a really lovely space to be in for days on end.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some days we&#8217;re doing like 16 hour days or something. And if you don&#8217;t enjoy the space&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sometimes making a record is not fun, it&#8217;s a slog, so having the room be pleasing to be in with a really good energy and looking nice, feels good when you&#8217;re in it. That mattered a lot to us. Then next would just be a really streamlined recording setup that obviously needs to be tailored to whatever kind of music you&#8217;re making.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I&#8217;m trying to get rid of our patchbay. I know it&#8217;s really ambitious to get rid of a patch bay in a studio, but that&#8217;s our dream for our next phase. Like for the drums: we really only use three or four mics on the drums ever, but I want them permanently set up and where no one touches them, going through the perfect drum chain: the preamps and compressors we want to use. Then obviously vocal mics are different for every person, but we at least we want the chain to just be kind of set up so that there&#8217;s not much decision fatigue in the studio.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Yeah, so you can focus more on getting the sounds you like right away and actually getting the performances nailed.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, exactly. I feel like the first thing to really kill the vibe in a session is spending hours placing mics and patching things in.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And you just want stuff that you&#8217;re excited about immediately.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Yeah. I agree because ultimately &#8212; and I mean I don&#8217;t want to say it <\/b><b><i>doesn&#8217;t<\/i><\/b><b> matter because obviously I work for a microphone company &#8212; but at the end of the day it kind of doesn&#8217;t. It&#8217;s more about <\/b><b><i>how<\/i><\/b><b> you&#8217;re using the mics. I\u2019m curious about your thoughts on this too from experience in your roles both as artist and producers &#8212; but I feel people probably care more about <\/b><b><i>who<\/i><\/b><b> they&#8217;re working with and <\/b><b><i>how<\/i><\/b><b> they&#8217;re working versus <\/b><b><i>what<\/i><\/b><b> they&#8217;re working with, if that makes sense?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, and we learned that the hard way, I guess, from working in places like Abbey Road and Sunset Sound and all these really expensive studios. We&#8217;d come back and we wouldn&#8217;t even be happy about what happened there. And we still haven&#8217;t released a lot of that stuff. But then we&#8217;d go work with Richard Swift, who had\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A very underwhelming home studio in his garage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This terrible year &#8212; the worst gear I&#8217;ve ever seen in a studio. But he would make stuff that was ten times better than what people were making at Sunset Sound.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It&#8217;s really nice to have good gear, but what matters most is who is using it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I feel like that just speaks to the engineer. I mean, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">it<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8216;s really nice to have good gear, but what matters most is who is using it.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> So that was a nice takeaway for us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>And just looking at your album credits, you&#8217;ve worked with several different producers across your records like Richard Swift, Patrick Carney and Jim Eno. What would you say are some other key takeaways or maybe bits of advice that have stuck with you throughout the years &#8212; whether it was ways of working, specific recording techniques, or just musical thoughts in general that you might have learned from different sessions?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, they all had different approaches that were unique to each of them, but they are also all drummers, first and foremost. I feel like building songs from the drums up and having drum tones inform the rest of the song\u2019s aesthetic &#8212; like the sonic palette &#8212; and then also there\u2019s the drum performance&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The core of pretty much every Tennis song is just making sure the drums are there &#8212; that we&#8217;re all excited about them and that the performance is exactly the way we want it. But yeah, I think for me, Richard Swift taught us that you don&#8217;t need the best gear in the world to get excited about what you&#8217;re recording. And heading back to that streamline thing &#8212; he didn&#8217;t have a patchbay. And that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m kind of envious of his setup, because he just had his drum chain and he loved it. And it went through a bunch of random stuff, but it was mostly like Tascam gear from the 80s. And then he had like a vocal chain that he really liked and that was it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, and I feel like with Jim Eno, he had more like a surgical precision with a drum recording and performances that we learned a lot from. Also Patrick Carney had a similar approach to recording drums that I think is more informed from that pop idea of making a single &#8212; giving yourself maximum flexibility with editing; being able to take a song in a different direction if it starts evolving after you first track drums. But the thing that unified them all is a drum-first approach to recording a song.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><strong>Patrick:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And every album we produce, we still focus on the drums first before anything else.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>I heard you guys speak on that before and it totally resonated with me. If you focus on drums first and you just don&#8217;t have the sound working, it&#8217;s really uninspiring. There&#8217;s nothing that will kill a song\u2019s vibe more than just like a bland, boring drum sound.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Absolutely. Or the wrong tones that can take you out of the song; that are just distracting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I guess the other scary thing about it is, for us, we&#8217;re always printing EQ and compression on drums\u00a0 &#8212; and sometimes effects, too. So it&#8217;s always a hard decision. We&#8217;re like, \u201cOK, this is what we&#8217;re going with. This is what&#8217;s going to shape the song. \u201c<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, that&#8217;s actually something we got from Richard Swift: just committing. Once you get a tone that you&#8217;re really excited about, just commit to it so you can&#8217;t back out later. And I think limiting factors help move a song forward.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. Or there\u2019s what we call, \u201cthe Nashville treatment,\u201d that is maybe the complete opposite, where they record everything in a way to give maximum freedom later in the process &#8212; really open &#8212; where we don&#8217;t do that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #037184;\">Alaina:<\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, once we\u2019re done tracking there&#8217;s not a lot left for mixing to do. It&#8217;s more just like balancing levels; the sounds are already there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Void1-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11003\" src=\"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Void1-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Void1-1.jpg 1080w, https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Void1-1-768x511.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px\" \/><\/a> @tennisinc<b>So now that you&#8217;ve started to take on more of a production role with other artists and have done records for other people, would you say that you&#8217;re discovering a signature <\/b><b><i>Tennis <\/i><\/b><b>sound in your production? Or are there any other elements you might say are your sonic calling cards? Of course, there&#8217;s no blueprint for these things and every record is different, but what would you point out to say, \u201cthis record was produced by Tennis?\u201d Is that something you have honed in on yet?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0It would probably be drums, I would think, but I also am really involved in bass. I feel like bass is probably the next most important element, other than vocals. Drums, bass, and vocals are the core of every song for Alaina and I.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I care so much about [bass] because I feel like when you&#8217;re at a bar or something and you&#8217;re hearing the song, you almost don&#8217;t hear the guitar. You hear drums, bass, and vocals. It&#8217;s kind of the one thing that&#8217;s speaking to everyone, whether you want it to or not<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, it&#8217;s funny. Pat&#8217;s a guitarist, first and foremost, but that&#8217;s usually the last thing we think about and the last thing we do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #db021b;\">Patrick:<\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah I actually feel bad. I don&#8217;t spend any time on my guitar for any album.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s always like \u201cOh cool I&#8217;ve got five minutes to put guitar down\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Oh man! That&#8217;s going to piss so many people off because I feel like your guitar tones on each record always sound so good.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank you! But yeah <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that bass &#8212; I care so much about that because I feel like that&#8217;s what \u2013 like, when you&#8217;re at like a bar or something and you&#8217;re hearing the song, you almost don&#8217;t hear the guitar. You hear drums, bass, vocals. So it&#8217;s, yeah, it&#8217;s kind of the one thing that&#8217;s speaking to everyone, whether you want it to or not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Yeah. I heard that on the recent Esme Paterson you did O<\/b><b><i>ut the Door<\/i><\/b><b>. I just saw that video for that the other day and right away I totally heard a texture and just a really nice thick coating of saturation &#8212; especially on the drums.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Esm\u00e9 Patterson - Out The Door (Official Music Video)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yhprGdSRjOk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I like that song! I played bass on that song, too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Right on! Speaking of your records and just music overall, I will say, Tennis is a band that I&#8217;ve always used as a reference to friends for an example of how you can hear an artist\u2019s evolution through their discography. I feel like with your records, every album has shown not just consistency, but change in the best ways in terms of songwriting, production and overall sounds. It feels like with each album or EP you guys put out you&#8217;re honing in more on the sounds and interests that happen to be inspiring you during that album cycle. Is that something that you would say you consciously work towards or does it just kind of come naturally?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I really appreciate hearing you say that is evident to you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #db021b;\">Patrick:<\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Every time we release an album, we&#8217;re actually terrified.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I imagine it to be like learning a language. It&#8217;s not like you&#8217;re inventing the language. It already exists; you\u2019re just improving your fluency over time<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. And I feel like that&#8217;s what songwriting and recording has been for us. Pat has made leaps and bounds with engineering. And then on my end, my songwriting has improved significantly. I had never been in a band before Tennis \u2013 and I hadn&#8217;t written songs before Tennis \u2013 so I see a huge growth between the first songs we released in 2009 compared to something like <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Runner<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Now, on our most recent record, there&#8217;s so much more depth and complexity. There&#8217;s so much going on lyrically and rhythmically and melodically that would have been way, way out of my range of abilities before. <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I imagine [songwriting] to be like learning a language. It&#8217;s not like you&#8217;re inventing the language. It already exists; you\u2019re just improving your fluency over time<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>When we first started writing, I really had no idea how songwriting worked. It&#8217;s just something that I&#8217;ve had to learn in real time. Touring helps a lot, too. When we write a record that we like and then play it live, we start to notice the weak points in the song. I feel like songs that don&#8217;t translate live aren&#8217;t the best written. The best songs work in any context. So I feel like that&#8217;s been a big takeaway. We write a record, tour it, and then that teaches us a lot about what parts of our songwriting actually hold up over time, and what needs to be refined or improved.<\/p>\n<p><b>Awesome! You can absolutely hear it and hear the changes you guys make in arrangement, lyrics, and overall delivery. it&#8217;s definitely inspiring. And speaking of the new record, <\/b><b><i>Swimmer<\/i><\/b><b>, can we get a little geeky about the recording process on that?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah, for sure!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Since we were talking about guitar tones, Pat, you had mentioned previously that you switched to playing a Strat and recording everything in a mid-side configuration. I was wondering, how did you have that set up and how did you land on going for an MS approach?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Honestly, I think with every album we try and just change as much as possible, and take the way we did it in the past and evolve it. Or we want to hear something different. We were really strategic with what was going to be in the stereo field for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swimmer<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and what was just going to be mono and up front.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And with most things, we like the drums and vocals mono and up front. For this one we thought, \u201cwhat if the guitars were all just crazy?\u201d You know, that super wide, borderline out of phase sound that you get from using mid-side recording\u2026 and we just experimented with it quite a bit. We settled on using a Beyer M160 as the source microphone and then the 251 in figure-eight for the mid-side microphone. We just fell in love with it. Then I used a lot of Eventide as well to just kind of like figure out the stereo field or where it was supposed to sit in the track because the Eventide can get some pretty ridiculous chorus\/phasey stuff.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Other than that, it was just pretty simple. Usually most of the time I&#8217;m just going straight into a Champ and then any of the chorus-sounding stuff is coming from the Eventide. At the end of the day, my favorite guitar effects come from the Eventide.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Were there any other experiments you guys tried?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So we did all the bass through this really cool Department of Commerce, like fifties, military tube compressor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s literally called the Department of Commerce. It&#8217;s so ridiculously good. We cut vocals through it\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, on the whole record all the bass was done with that. But there&#8217;s so much saturation &#8212; it&#8217;s all or nothing. You can&#8217;t really dial it back. So It just sounds like all the bass is a little bit oversaturated. But there&#8217;s some tracks where it really doesn&#8217;t sound that way once it&#8217;s all in the mix together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>That sounds awesome!\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. Beyond that, this was the first Tennis record where Elena used a condenser mic, so yeah, she used the 251 for the whole entire record. But, fun little fact: We got the 017 TUBE afterward, and it&#8217;s actually better for Alaina&#8217;s voice!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. I used it on the cover of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Superstar<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> we just put out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }<\/style>\n<div class=\"embed-container\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TlCseH7coio\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Oh you did? That&#8217;s super cool (no pun intended) because when I was listening to that I was curious if you guys had recorded that with the 017 at that point.<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. We got the mics after we made <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swimmer<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. But yeah, I love that mic. We always do a mic shootout with me before every record. Now that we had the Soyuz mics, we did another shoot out after <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swimmer<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and it&#8217;s my favorite vocal mic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was a clear winner. That&#8217;s a pretty huge statement for us because the 251 is like, I don&#8217;t know, that&#8217;s one of the most legendary microphones.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Yeah, that&#8217;s amazing to hear!<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think it&#8217;s a cool thing for people to hear, too, because we used the exact same vocal chain, same preamps, everything. The <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Superstar<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> cover that we just put out was the same vocal chain as Swimmer, only recorded with 017 TUBE\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>So I don&#8217;t know if you felt this way after hearing the mic, but just in general, how do you stop yourselves from going back and endlessly reworking your songs? How do you know when to accept when something is done and keep pushing through to make sure you keep releasing music?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fortunately, we don&#8217;t have that problem. We&#8217;ve worked with people who do. We will keep endlessly tweaking a song if it just doesn&#8217;t feel right, but we are so good at committing. If we feel satisfied it&#8217;s done. We never look back and we try not to doubt our first impressions: if we liked it the first time, we just trust that it was good. We move on and we don&#8217;t doubt it. It&#8217;s only if we get into a pickle with a song where, suddenly, we can&#8217;t finish it and it&#8217;s not coming together, then we might have to go back and doubt some of our earlier choices; but it&#8217;s really out of character for us to do that. It takes us a long time to finish a song, but it&#8217;s not ever because we aren&#8217;t committing. So we&#8217;re pretty good about that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We do notice the sidestep tendency of making choices that aren&#8217;t necessarily pushing the song forward and we&#8217;re really sensitive to that. We&#8217;re always trying to nip that in the bud.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah. Because then you just feel like you&#8217;re kind of spinning your wheels and you&#8217;re not really getting anywhere. You could do that forever. And I feel like that&#8217;s the point where you just need to be honest with yourself and just say, hey, if I&#8217;m putting all of this doubt and effort into the song and I&#8217;m not getting anywhere, then the song is just not that good. Then it&#8217;s time to be less precious about the song and just write a better song next time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>That is excellent advice.<\/b> <b>So I guess, thinking again about gear, as you are getting ready to make a move to L.A., I saw your Reverb store where you had unloaded a bunch of things. Are there any pieces of gear that you will never trade, or that you know you will hold on to indefinitely?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I think now that we have the Soyuz 017, that&#8217;s going to be our main vocal mic for&#8230; I don&#8217;t know\u2026 until someone makes a better microphone.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah that and the 251. Those are both pretty crucial microphones. What&#8217;s our ribbon mic?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #db021b;\">Patrick:<\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oh yeah! OK, so we have another magic microphone and it&#8217;s an RCA 77. And I&#8217;m sure anyone who&#8217;s used those microphones knows that they are really common but they all sound very, very different: we&#8217;ve gone to other studios and used others and they just didn\u2019t have the same effect as ours.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #037184;\">Alaina:<\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, we&#8217;re a big fan of that. Those are our three staple mics. And then as long as we can keep it functioning, I can&#8217;t imagine us ever getting rid of the Department of Commerce, the Eventide\u2026\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our console is really, really amazing\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, we love our console, although it is finicky. I&#8217;m also weirdly obsessed with having a Nord in the studio because <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think it&#8217;s really important to get the sound you&#8217;re envisioning in your head as quickly as possible,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> rather than having like two thousand vintage keyboards.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>I think it&#8217;s really important to get the sound you&#8217;re envisioning in your head as quickly as possible<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I don&#8217;t know if this is us turning into dads, but we sold all of our vintage keyboards.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina: <\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, that&#8217;s part of what we were getting rid of on the Reverb store. We even had this experience when we made our record with Richard: we brought my Nord and he had a ton of vintage keyboards and synths and we ended up using my Nord every time. And he kept being like, \u201cthe Nord Farfisa is better than a real Farfisa!\u201d I think being like, \u201cthis is so much better and it&#8217;s just so easy to use\u201d \u2013\u00a0 being expedient and efficient to quickly achieve your vision \u2013 is much better than having the real, vintage thing. We used to be really pretentious about using the original vintage 60&#8217;s and 70&#8217;s gear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We used to &#8212; we actually did a tour with only microphones from the 60\u2019s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Oh my god, that sounds like your engineer&#8217;s nightmare.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was his idea too! He was Fleet Foxes\u2019 front of house engineer and they did that too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And he&#8217;s Father John Misty\u2019s FOH &#8212; he still does this with Father John Misty, by the way, mostly 60\u2019s microphones on stage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But yeah, Pat and I just got to a point where it was like a slow awakening. But for me now, weirdly, I would rather have nothing in the studio but the Nord \u2013 that allows me to get almost anything that I want sonically \u2013 then have, like, fifty old rickety, finicky keyboards that are constantly being serviced.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Power to the Nord. I hear it!\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u00a0 know, like so, so dad, but I don&#8217;t care. In fact, we just spent a whole month building these really extravagant cases to hide my multiple Nords. I have three different kinds now, just so it looks better on stage. But I am not going to try and lie and tell people that it&#8217;s not a Nord behind that beautiful wood paneling. It&#8217;s just a Nord.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisPic.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11017 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisPic.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisPic.jpg 793w, https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisPic-768x961.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 793px) 100vw, 793px\" \/><\/a> @tennisinc<b>I saw this question in a TapeOp interview the other day and thought it would be interesting to ask you &#8212; is there something that you both wished you were asked about more often?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, I think for us it&#8217;s more of the DIY side of music, whether it be recording or even just running a record label &#8212; or tour managing. We do everything.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like we played Stubbs right before Covid happened, and it was a great show, It was like our biggest show yet but everyone there was just kind of razzing us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The crew was all laughing because we showed up in a fifteen-passenger van with a small trailer and no crew, no tour manager. And they&#8217;re like, \u201cyou&#8217;re one of only three bands ever to sell out Stubbs and not be in a bus with semis.\u201d\u00a0 And the other bands were Mac DeMarco and Ty Segal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, apparently, we&#8217;re one of three. I feel like it could be more commonplace because of <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the unfortunate fact that to be able to create means you have to survive.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And I feel like the history of music is creating situations for musicians to spend exorbitant amounts of money and go into debt to record labels, and it just doesn&#8217;t need to be that way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>to be able to create means you have to survive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #037184;\">Alaina:<\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Exactly. Like even though we have an amazing set up now, we have recorded songs in a cement parking garage with a four-track and it&#8217;s fine and we released it. I think it&#8217;s more about just being committed to your vision and treating each song or each release as a stepping stone and just a chance to improve your craft with time. I want to lower the barrier of entry to music for people and I feel like technology&#8217;s already doing that, but as fun as it is to nerd out about gear, we also want it to be clear that you don&#8217;t need those things to be good at what you do and to make good music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>I\u2019m really glad you brought that up. I think, speaking on behalf of other DIY musicians, it&#8217;s really great you guys have always been transparent about this and talking about the realities of what it&#8217;s like to actually have to make money creating art and music.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>With <\/b><b><i>Swimmer<\/i><\/b><b> being your third release on your own label, <\/b><b><i>Mutually Detrimental<\/i><\/b><b>, what big challenges have you faced going this route and do you have any bits of advice for other DIY artists looking to self-release?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have one thought &#8212; I&#8217;m curious what Pat&#8217;s is &#8212; but my first thought is that one advantage of us having, well, first worked with labels so we know what to do, but then self-releasing, is that we know how to spend money on ourselves. Our band looks different than other bands and labels tend to have more of a conveyor-belt mentality. They just have a strategy that they execute with each release. But we noticed early on that that was failing us. We&#8217;ve always had more of a niche audience, like, we don&#8217;t sell CDs, we sell vinyl; a lot of artists don&#8217;t even sell vinyl. And there are things that are normally like a slam dunk to spend money on for an artist but for us that would be like throwing money away, just lighting it on fire. So us taking the reins in that sense lets us be a lot more unconventional with the way we spend money on an album cycle; we spend it in a way that better suits us uniquely because every artist is different.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maybe a good example is like billboards. We see bands smaller than us whose label has bought them a billboard.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And that&#8217;s a great strategy for them, but as I said, we&#8217;ve spent more money on our visual campaign and working with this long time collaboration with Luca Ventor, who does all of our artwork. So we spend more money on stuff like that with him and less on the marketing that other bands do, because we have a good reach through Instagram and YouTube, kind of organically. It&#8217;s kind of been working out for us to invest more on that side.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Or another funny thing that we see record labels do is spend huge amounts of money on these follower campaigns. So they boost their social media following, but then it backfires so bad because you just get all these trolls and bots waiting for you. No one wants that. And there&#8217;s, like, no interaction. I don&#8217;t know&#8230;we could talk about this for hours.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I mean, at the end of the day, an advance is just a loan; I feel like our approach allows us to prioritize the unique needs and reach of our band in ways that just don&#8217;t look like anybody else&#8217;s. Our unconventional release plans have been working really well for us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>You guys should do a webinar!<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We thought about it, actually, because I do think that being strategic with a small amount of money allows you to try things out and see what is the best way to use that money to promote something. And <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think there&#8217;s a general feeling that having a strategy and a business sense is kind of dirty or gross for a musician or an artist, but sadly, if you want to last and you want to make a living \u2013 so that you can pour more of yourself into your art \u2013 I think you need to get past that feeling.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #db021b;\"><b>Patrick:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think it&#8217;s dirty and gross to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">not<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have a strategy and business sense because it means you don&#8217;t need money.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #037184;\"><b>Alaina:<\/b><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And you shouldn&#8217;t feel ashamed to focus on it. But yeah, we do want to destigmatize the business side of things. And it is a business: if you want it to be your career, it&#8217;s inevitably a business.\u00a0 I think artists tend to be really hands-off on that side of things. And for us, as far as the DIY ethic goes, having that bleed into our album releases and our business strategies has allowed us to survive, especially during an insanely shit year like this, with Covid and our whole tour being canceled. The fact that we are our business managers, our label managers, has allowed us to tread water and survive another day: because we are in charge of our future and because we&#8217;re so intimately involved in all aspects of our career, we can survive this.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisPic2.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-11027 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisPic2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisPic2.jpg 1425w, https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisPic2-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/soyuzmicrophones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/TennisPic2-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1425px) 100vw, 1425px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Discover More From Tennis Here: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/tennis-music.com\/\">https:\/\/tennis-music.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/tennisinc\/\"><strong>INSTAGRAM (<\/strong>@Tennisinc<strong> )<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/tennisinc\/\"><strong>FACEBOOK<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/artist\/1ybAN3utgdoUL1MUCtH4QM?si=VWtg81nrTdKcMnTa8fTcCQ\">SPOTIFY<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/music.apple.com\/us\/artist\/tennis\/39970395\"><strong>APPLE MUSIC<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>TIDAL<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tennis is one of the hardest working, most consistent bands around.\u00a0 Currently five albums and two EPs into their recording career together, Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley have proven to be evolving artists and champions of DIY in all formats. Following their 2020 self-recorded and produced album SWIMMER the group has seen the addition of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":10965,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Soyuz Microphones | Interviews | In The Void With Tennis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We caught up with Patrick &amp; Alaina of Tennis to see what role Soyuz has played in their recent work and learn more about their lives as independent artists\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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