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About this episode:
What kind of person decides to cover the entire ~400-song catalogue of one band?
Someone like Tobi Seitz, aka Samy Braysel.
His ongoing project is to cover every original song by German punk legends Die Ärzte. He’s currently around 10% of the way through and estimates that finishing the whole thing could take 25 years or more. His reason for starting such a ridiculous project is simple: if an idea is crazy enough, you sometimes have to start immediately before you overthink yourself out of doing it.
But that project is only one part of what Samy does.
He writes and records his own music, plays multiple instruments, produces other artists, teaches guitar and songwriting, repairs and restores guitars, and is building Hitzen Audio, where he helps artists take songs from the initial idea all the way to the finished production.
In this episode, we talk about the philosophy that connects all of those things.
Samy deliberately creates challenges that force him to move quickly instead of overthinking everything. He has written and recorded songs within a few hours, captured one new musical idea every day for a month, resurrected unfinished songs from ten years ago, and learned when to accept that something is done and simply good enough to release.
We also get into his approach to production: making records polished without making them robotic, recording real instruments, keeping human imperfections, using references early in the process, and knowing when the last 10% of "perfection" simply isn’t gonna help the song.
And we talk about “Always Smiling,” the first official Samy Braysel release: a fast, loud song about unexpectedly finding a sense of freedom after AI takes away a job you didn’t particularly enjoy in the first place.
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In this episode:
- The 25-year mission to cover every Die Ärzte song
- What recreating hundreds of songs teaches you about arrangement and production
- Why Samy deliberately sets himself creative challenges
- Moving fast without sacrificing quality
- Why 90% can sometimes be good enough
- Recording real drums and keeping productions human
- Polished vs robotic
- Knowing when a song is actually finished
- Using reference tracks before you start recording
- Producing your own songs vs producing other artists
- Translating someone else’s ideas into a finished production
- Why Samy enjoys restoring and building guitars
- Finding time for music alongside work and everything else
- Being a generalist instead of specializing in only one thing
- Building Hitzen Audio as an end-to-end production service
- The story behind “Always Smiling”
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Check Out Samy / Tobi
Samy Braysel:
https://samybraysel.com
Die Erbse – the Die Ärzte cover project:
https://www.youtube.com/@Die_Erbse
Hitzen Audio:
https://www.hitzen-audio.de/
https://www.instagram.com/hitzen.audio/
https://www.tiktok.com/@hitzenaudio
Confusion of ChiffChaff:
https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/album/4A4IYUKMvLEhES3ZzIFyYw
“Walls” – produced by Tobi:
https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/track/0V4WGClbt12B2TwwM0lMhj
“Tuxedo Torpedo” – Ron Jambo:
https://open.spotify.com/intl-de/track/5WTQ2lAyLR5IPt0QGd3bNQ
“Always Smiling”:
https://samybraysel.com/#presave
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For links to everything we've mentioned in this episode, as well as full show notes go to:
theselfrecordingband.com/322
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