Musician/Writer Gabriel Ramos of Ssleeping DesiresS and Nero discuss Eno's 40 Infallible Tricks For Successful Songs

1. Mindless dives and absurd jumps (steel guitar, whammy pedal)
2. Sonic hooks (Telstar, the snare on 'she drives me crazy' fyi, Del Shannon instrumentals)
3. Lap-steel or Hawaiian guitar (or anything else slide and unsquare)
4. Sliding up or down to the right note (appoggiatura) (24 hours from Tulsa)
5. Lyrical Rhythm guitar (eg Nile Rodgers, Carlos Alomar)
6. Klaus Dinger beat (motorik)
7. Handclap patterns eg 'Carwash' (invitations to listeners)
8. Male humming (cf Jordanaires)
9. Frozen reverb
10. Sounds of the real world
11. Heterophony
12. One unchanging note harmonies and parts
13. Bass riff (funk) (Melvin Dunlap: Express yourself'
14. Impossible singing (Minnie Riperton)
15. Long high note (I will survive)
16. Big melodic intervals ('Mingulay', 'Somewhere over the rainbow'). Stamina
17. Scale confusion - eg Tiny percussion instruments loud in the mix (fingernails on table)
18. Instrument shadowing singing ('Love will tear us apart again')
19. Unexpected, unusual chord in otherwise normal context
20. Call and response ('Did you ever get one of those days')
21. Male falsetto voice (Chris Martin)
22. Low female voice (Sonia Tavares, Kitty Lester, Nomcebo Zikode JERUSALEMA
23. Sing along scat (EDDIE HOLMAN/ COLDPLAY)
24. Vocal rhythm accented on drums
25. Riffs and multi riffs and heterophonic riffs (SEX MACHINE)
26. Brass stabs (FELA)
27. Parts of songs introduced by name 'and all the coloured girls go.."
28. String entry - soft cloud over straight lines
29. 3/4 - find the three-ish beat and somehow incorporate
30. Appoggiatura
31. Sudden change of space (RAF Judy Nylon Patti Palladin)
32. Trademark songs ('Return to Sender' 'from a jack to a king' )
33. male and female voices an octave apart
34. insistent one note bass ('Everyday people')
35. try playing it on an Omnichord (eg change minor chords to relative majors)
36. Insanely fast tempo
37. Low pass filter (makes things darker)
38. Speaker simulator (or real)
39. Something backwards
40. Use the edges of things

This week on I want you to know—I talk with actor, singer, performer, teacher-Darby Vincent

Darby and I discuss the winding road to becoming a performer and want kind of opportunities it brings, she also reflects on the influence of her family, and the influence she has now on young performers.

Plus, Darby brought a bunch of tunes and artists I was not familiar with, and some classic artists in a new contextI

RERUN: Here's a summer episode from last year. Jeff, Annie, and Nero make a summer mixtape--they explore their process, and talk summer jams.