The Music Business Buddy
A podcast that aims to educate and inspire music creators in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. A new episode is released each Wednesday and aims to offer clarity and insight into a range of subjects across the music industry, all through the lens of a music creator for the benefit of other music creators. The series includes soundbites and interviews with guests from all over the world together with commentary and clarity on a range of topics. The podcast is hosted by award winning music industry professional Jonny Amos.
Jonny Amos is a music producer with credits on a range of major and independent labels, a songwriter with chart success in Europe and Asia, a senior lecturer in both music creation and music business at BIMM University UK, director of The SongLab Ltd and the author of The Music Business for Music Creators.
www.jonnyamos.com
The Music Business Buddy
Episode 13: Neurodiversity In The Music Industry: James Delin's Story
What if the key to unlocking unparalleled creativity lies in understanding and embracing neurodiversity? Join me, Jonny Amos, as I uncover the fascinating world of neurodiversity within the music industry. This episode of "The Music Business Buddy" promises to enlighten you on how conditions like ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and Tourette syndrome contribute to the vibrant tapestry of music creation. My insightful conversation with music producer James Delin, who has ADHD, highlights the unique strengths and perspectives that neurodiverse individuals bring to the table.
Ever wondered how an unexpected venture can shape your understanding? Listen to the tale of a surprising foray into creating a pro wrestling theme amongst other creative pursuits. This journey is packed with lessons on the importance of solid contracts and legal advice, as well as balancing independent projects like film scoring with collaborative sound design work. These experiences are a testament to the delicate balance between creativity and business.
Meet James Dellin, whose ADHD diagnosis was a turning point, offering him a profound sense of relief and identity. Hear his candid account of how treatment transformed his daily life and productivity, enabling him to excel in his creative endeavours. We'll also spotlight a remarkable journey through a high-pressure university presentation, illustrating the resilience and ingenuity that comes with being neurodivergent. This episode champions self-discovery, mental health awareness, and the celebration of neurodiverse creativity both in personal and professional settings.
The Music Business Buddy. The Music Business Buddy. Hello everybody, big warm welcome to you. You're listening to the Music Business Buddy, with me, johnny Amos, podcasting out of Birmingham in England. I'm the author of the book the Music Business for Music Creators. I'm a music creator myself, as a songwriter and as a producer, and I'm also a senior lecturer in both music creation and music business. Wherever you are, whatever you do, please consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of the community around it, to this podcast and to a part of the community around it. I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over the world in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music.
Speaker 1:Okay, so in today's episode we're talking about neurodiversity in the music industry. Now I was reading an article the other day on the Musicians' Union website that talked about this and, in fact, simplified it and explained it in a very succinct and meaningful fashion, and it referred to some recent research from the Association for Electronic Music that fell in line with the Musician Census. That talked about how there is a very, very high percentage of neurodiverse people working in the music industry. So if it's a term that's new to you, right? Neurodiversity is a concept that recognizes and respects the natural variation in the human brain and neurocognitive functioning right. So this is a big part of what makes music, and music is what makes the music business right. This is why it's relevant. So you know we're talking about ADHD or autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, tourette syndrome and also other neurological conditions that have yet to been defined or understood. Now, doctors at Harvard University described neurodiversity as and I love this the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in different ways, with the idea being that there is no right way of thinking or learning or behaving, but they're just differences, and they're differences that are not deficits.
Speaker 1:So, with this in mind, I wanted to explore this in today's episode, and I have a fantastic guest by the name of James Dellin. James is somebody I've known for a few years and he's a brilliant music producer and music creator, and he was diagnosed with being ADHD about three or four years ago, something like that, and today is about his story, because I think that this is going to affect a lot of people, and even if you yourself, listening to this, are not someone you consider to be as neurodiverse, there will be other people that you work with in the music industry that don't think the way you do, and there'll be other people that think a certain way, that don't think the way that you do, and sometimes it can create a misunderstanding, and it needn't be, as long as we educate ourselves on understanding the bigger picture of this, especially when we are surrounded by so many different thinkers, so many different people working in the music industry. So let's take a look at James's story, and I hope that this proves to be useful and inspiring to others. Okay, I'm going to shut up now and play the interview. Inspiring to others. Okay, I'm going to shut up now and play the interview.
Speaker 1:James Dellen, welcome to the music business buddy. It's good to have you on the podcast. Thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2:You're very welcome. Thank you for having me, Johnny.
Speaker 1:Hey, it's all good, man, let's roll into the first question then. So the first thing now. You've composed and produced for a range of different projects, artist projects, sync projects. You've composed and produced for a range of, like, different projects, artist projects, sync projects. Let's just tap into your sync work a little bit. You've created, you know, theme music for, like for indie, pro wrestling stuff, like just randomly right, how did you get into that?
Speaker 2:Yes, the pro wrestling story. So I was in a band in Canterbury years ago and the four of us were really into wrestling and I kind of I was late to the party, right, so I never really got into pro wrestling. When I was a kid I always thought what's the point in that? You know, like it's all nonsense and I don't know why. Maybe I regressed because I wasn't living at home anymore. But as soon as I was 21, 22, and somebody introduced me to Wrestlemania, I was like this is great, like I can just escape into this nonsense world of sweaty men dancing around each other and blah, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, my band introduced me to it. We were all into it and the?
Speaker 2:Um, the guitar player in our band, who it was kind of his band, he recruited me in. They'd been friends for years, whatever. Whatever. He was the one that really pushed things forward. We were all quite enterprising. We all wanted to? Um, push the band as far as we could, but matt was the one who just did it. You know, we were all dreamers really, and matt was the one. Matt was the doer. So, um, one day he came to band practice, stumbled down the stairs, more or less falling all the way, bless him. And he says boys, boys, boys, what's going on? I've got some big news and we were like all right, what's up? Then he said well, I reached out to an independent wrestling company and they want to use one of our songs as the theme tune for one of their wrestlers.
Speaker 1:Like walkout music.
Speaker 2:Yeah, walkout music, okay like walkout music, yeah, walkout music, okay. And so we went to the uh, one of the opening nights of this what this wrestler, a guy called char samuels sure enough, they treated us as a, as a little thing to um, to show us what it would look like with him coming out in dress rehearsal.
Speaker 1:So, and we were all just like yeah, this is really cool, like brilliant stuff so they didn't use it.
Speaker 2:That night we went back to the band room and we wanted to think about how we could protect our interests on this, because you know, we, we were enterprising enough to know that our music was valuable.
Speaker 2:We thought about how to contract things properly. We, I wrote the first contract and it was outrageous. Um, I'm not even going to go into what it was because it was just, like you know, like four weeks of use for five million pounds, like that kind of ridiculous idea, you know, um, and so we, we got into proper talks with them about it and we negotiated and in the end, um, we kind of thought just bigger picture stuff, so we licensed it for nothing, but we licensed it for nothing, but we licensed it for a limited time and they renewed the license every year. One of the conditions that I put in that deal was if Charles Samuels has ever moved on to a bigger wrestling company, then we would want notice of what would be happening with our music. Ideally, we'd want 12 months of him using our opening theme tune with a bigger wrestling company. Turns out he did go to a bigger wrestling company. He got himself a shot on the wwe nxt program, which is kind of like x factor for wrestlers, right, and uh, yeah, he didn't use our music.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, we got shafted because, um, the contracting wasn't solid, johnny, it was us, it was me, you know, we didn't. We didn't think about how to really get the sync deal, uh, to a point where we could leverage it and we could use it properly and, most importantly, in a way that everybody won. And so, um, the biggest lesson I took from that was get a lawyer. Even if you can't afford one, get a lawyer and start thinking externally because, um, it's just, it just doesn't. The world takes everybody to pull together in the same direction to go around right and, uh, when you've only got yourself interests at heart, it doesn't do anybody any good no, no, that's fair, I mean it's.
Speaker 1:It's easy in it to look back on something and go I wish I'd done this or I wish I'd done that. But you know at the same time, you know, if you'd have written up an absolutely superb, watertight contract, they probably wouldn't have signed it and use your music anyway exactly, yeah, you know you got.
Speaker 1:You got to get the balance right with these things, okay. So, so that that's. That's an interesting experience there. But tell us, because you've also done a lot of other things, tell us about the difference, then, of kind of working with a film producer you know as a composer, like you did with Rock Salt, and how that compares to the composition and sound design work that you did for Chili Rose Productions, and the difference between those two things from your perspective.
Speaker 2:You know, the difference is down to people more than the job itself, I think. For me, I tend to approach those jobs in the same way. Anyway, with Rock Salt we worked quite independently. Rock Salt wasn't massively involved in the process of composing and writing and producing the tune, the theme tune, and when we presented it to him he loved it and it sounds like a good day at the office. Right, you do your work and your client likes it.
Speaker 2:That film didn't get very far. It got to, I think it got to festivals and really no further than that, but we had a half decent contract for that. You know I'd learned by this point to involve everybody in the contracting process. So that negotiation is two way and you know you give and take. But yeah, so Roxholt was great to work with because he was very hands off. Chili Rose is the opposite, but is also great to work with because the guy in charge of Chili Rose, a guy called Fernando Maffei, phenomenal director, brilliant producer, hilarious, great to work with and really hands-on whilst also being a bit hands-off. So he likes to be there, likes to be in the creative place when you're doing the stuff and he does give direction, and he gives really good direction, but it's few and far between. So you kind of get on with your job, there's somebody watching you or listening to your work and it's just kind of a joy.
Speaker 2:So the difference between the two really doesn't come down to the sort of work that I was doing, because a lot of my sound design starts with composition. I'll do quite a bit of um, notation and uh, like actually making tonal sounds, music, something that might be slightly melodic, and then I'll um and then I'll do something to mess it up, basically, and then I'll use some of those samples that have been um, really distorted lots. I love bit crushing and I love running bit crushers through lots of massive plate reverbs and kind of feeding it all in together and then you get a lot of feedback and then I tend to try and create a palette first and then go from there. So if you're doing tonal melodic theme tunes, that's a good starting point for sound design, for me anyway. So I kind of did both, both of those things in tandem. Interesting short answer. There wasn't much difference, no, that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1:No, so, but on a sort of creative level. Um, you know, not huge differences from your perspective, but it's just, this is a people-based business, isn't it like? Not, not all businesses are like that. Music is most definitely one of them. Um, okay, so you've also run a successful production company for several, several years load street studios. What did you learn about producing artists during that time and working? You've also run a successful production company for several years Lode Street Studios. What did you learn about producing artists during that time and working directly in the room with artists? In comparison to that previous example?
Speaker 2:I learned that there's no one-size-fits-all Templating things is great, templating your sessions is a good and efficient thing to do, but templating sounds, templating recording setups, you know, having a kind of go-to just wasn't really very helpful to me. There was more variety and there's more novelty with working with different artists and that really spoke to me. That was the thing I liked about working with different artists all the time is because we could always start from scratch. I suppose you could always start from scratch with film and TV production, but with song production and you're working with the artist and they're with you in the room.
Speaker 2:It's so much more collaborative, working collaboratively with an artist who knows exactly what they want. They think they know exactly what they want, and then when you suggest something or you try something, if they're open to play, if they're open to experimentation, you can often come up with something that's better than the sum of its parts. So one thing that I learned was the soft skills, the people skills. You know you can't just say to an artist like that's our ship, let's try this. It's not good for business, it's not good for creative, it's not good for the room. You've got to try and wrangle their creativity, and when you can do that well, that's when you get the best results out of your sessions.
Speaker 1:Getting the best out of people and that kind of thing. Ok, so moving on into the future from there, recent times, uh, you've been diagnosed with adhd and this has had a profound impact on your, your outlook and your output. Can you tell us, um, you know what it's like to have adhd and what the diagnosis meant for you, right? So I'll tell you what.
Speaker 2:If it's okay with you, I'm going to reverse the answer, so I'll tell you what it meant to me first, and then I'll tell you what. If it's okay with you, I'm going to reverse the answer, so I'll tell you what it meant to me first, and then I'll tell you what it's like to have it okay I think it's a bit more serious like that sure thank you.
Speaker 2:So, um, the diagnosis itself meant that I could suddenly explain why I was like the way I am, why I am like the way I am, and that is a huge relief to somebody who has done many different things and often I go to bed thinking that, you know, I haven't ever achieved anything in my life so far. So understanding that my brain processes because of you know a particular way that my brain works, understanding that this is a thing, was a huge sense of relief and sense of identity to me. It helped me understand where I fit in the world. I think the I mean physiologically. The treatment was wild. The first day I took my first tablet. About an hour, an hour and a half after I took the tablet, the voices in my head, the bees in the brain we we call it in in the community they just stopped and I was able to do things. And when I say do things, I don't mean set up a uh, a recording session and work out what the signal chain is going to be from front to back. I mean things like my washing up or my laundry.
Speaker 2:For years I would see a pile of laundry, and this is a bit of what it's like to have ADHD. I would see a pile of laundry and I think, yeah, I'm going to get to that after I've done the hundred things that I want to do before I get to the laundry, and then I wouldn't get to the laundry. Then, three weeks later, I still see the same pile of laundry. That's three weeks bigger by now, and I think, yeah, I should do that really, but I'm not going to because I've got a hundred other things that are far more interesting to me. And then, another two weeks later, more laundry. And then suddenly I start to think do you know what, mate? You're pretty rubbish, aren't, because you can't even do a fucking pile of laundry. What is the matter with you? Why can't you just get on with being a real person, type thing. And then, through shame and disgust with myself, I do the laundry.
Speaker 2:Now, on day one of taking that tablet for the first time, I actually did a load of washing. Oh really, and it sounds ridiculous, but it was such a profound experience to me that I actually like I think I wept a bit. I feel quite emotional just thinking about that moment right now. It's not that I can't do laundry, it's not that I don't know how to. But on that day I saw the pile, I picked it up and I did it, and so suddenly I've got this label that I can sort of identify with.
Speaker 2:I've got treatment and management of a condition that enables me to feel like a real person and stops me from chastising myself and being hard on myself, and it just changed everything for me. There's so much to be said in discovering yourself. You know it sounds a bit cliche because I'm in my late 30s now, but at the time I was in my mid 30s and it's that kind of time of life, certainly for a lot of men that I know, where you do go through this sort of self-discovery and you find yourself. But actually finding myself in a psychiatric disorder I never thought was going to be the case, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me wow, such refreshing honesty and transparency.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it. James, um you, by the way. I've known you for years. You always look so clean. I would never have expected you weren't previously into doing your laundry, but anyway, you obviously hid it well. So what about and I'm thinking about all of the other people that kind of do what we do in some way or another in regards to making music? Surely you know there must be other people that are out there now that are kind of going. Well, you know, I, I feel like that, or I've been a bit that way. Like what can I ask what? What was it that made you kind of go? I need a diagnosis here. Or like how did how did that come about?
Speaker 2:yeah, of course I had just had a baby. I mean, I hadn't had a baby, my wife at the time.
Speaker 1:Sorry, that would have been utterly remarkable, by the way.
Speaker 2:But yeah, quite sorry mate um, right, so yeah, what made me want a diagnosis? Well, I remember the day that I was sitting in a house on my own and I'd seen a tikt, tiktok and it said these if you do these five things, you've got ADHD. And I thought to myself I do those five things, I've got ADHD. Adhd is not a thing. What's that about? What are they talking about? And, uh, it really. It borrowed into my brain and I couldn't forget about it.
Speaker 2:So I started looking up this ADHD stuff and, um of the traits personality traits came to light as things that I do, in particular, impulsive behavior, difficulty focusing, difficulty sticking to a task, difficulty listening to people and really taking on board what they're saying, particularly with instructions, and need them written down. And I was, like I said, I was sitting on my own. And I was on my own because I had I was just starting a divorce process with my wife at the time, who had just given birth to my first baby boy, and a part of me was thinking why can't I make anything work? And this whole like catastrophizing, like going to the, to the ends of the extremes of like I can't make anything work. Well, actually, the reality is that I couldn't make my marriage work and I gave it a bloody good go because we were together for 12 years and then it just fell apart uh close, you know, close around the time where my son was born, which was very unfortunate. So, um, feeling like I couldn't make anything work, having these little things from TikTok burying in my brain, reading into why these things matter and then discovering that I wonder if you know this a lot of the creative industries have a lot of people with ADHD, because one of the typical functions of ADHD is connection.
Speaker 2:We can make connections in our brain that a lot of what we call neurotypical people tend not to do. They probably have the capacity to do it, but because they haven't got constant thoughts, constant voices almost in their head, they just don't tend to make the same sorts of connections that people with ADHD do. And so people with ADHD often end up in the creative industries because they find themselves better at creative output. It's a culture and a group, I suppose, of other people who aren't as bothered about deadlines, who aren't as bothered about whether you're clean and tidy, who aren't as bothered about money. Really, it's about the craft, it's about getting the thing done that turns you on that gets you going, that really captures your interest.
Speaker 2:There's a really nice soundbite that helps people understand why ADHD kind of pushes people in certain directions and from my understanding it's that we have what's called an interest-based nervous system. So our nervous system is calmed and stimulated by things that take our interest. So things like doing your tax returns because there is so much monotony of filling out each box each time and finding you know you have to get all your bloody bank statements out. You have to filling out each box each time and finding you know you have to get all your bloody bank statements out. You have to work out your ingoings and your outgoings, all this kind of stuff. It can cause you physical pain if you have ADHD because you're not interested in it. Neurochemically, you can't regulate your brain to stick with something, to focus on something. Because well, not because, but because you can't do that you feel pain, your brain's going. You, you don't want to do this. This is dangerous, so I'm going to cause you pain, so you don't do this thing that's.
Speaker 1:That's difficult. Um, yeah, it's brutal. James, just out of interest, if because I know you and I have spoken um briefly about this uh before, about kind of some of the um I can't remember what term you use now, but almost kind of like the superpowers, if you like that come with this what pluses come from this that make you very useful as a music creator?
Speaker 2:yeah, like you know, yeah, it's very easy to talk about how, how devastatingly awful and how much pain is caused and how difficult it is to live with this bloody condition. But I have to be careful when talking about the positives, because you can get some incredible things done if you have ADHD, and what I don't want to do is invalidate anybody who does those things but also struggles with it. Ok, so I'm going to talk from my experience, and my experience alone. When you do have a topic or a subject or a project that you're really interested in, you can go into a state of what we call hyper focus. Now, hyper focus is exhaustive. I mean you can get anything in the world done. If you get into that state and you can get it done really, really well, you can do super high quality work very, very quickly. I've got an example about this. I've just remembered that you're also a music lecturer, and so I wonder if you might be able to spot this in the future.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:It's my last year of university. I'm studying music production and um. It's the final term and we have final year presentations to make about our recording portfolios. I haven't started mine, but I know my presentation is due sometime in the near future. So it's midnight on a sunday night.
Speaker 2:I ring my mate, mike from the Beat Bakery. He's doing very well at the moment, by the way, and I don't know why, but he seemed to know when everybody's presentations were Right. So I was like Mike, come on, when's my presentation, mate? He goes oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yours is tomorrow. I was like, oh shit, tomorrow, right, what time? 9're? Oh, no, 9, 9, 15 in the morning. Tomorrow morning it's midnight, mike, that's when your presentation is so panicked on a very short deadline and I started to write my presentation from a blank page. I wrote my presentation, I designed the slides, I got about an hour's sleep. I I went into university, I delivered it and I got the highest mark of my university career. Not only did I get the highest mark of my university career. That presentation was used as a model for how to deliver final year presentations for the next three years worth of students.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay. So do you think, then? And this again, only, you can only obviously base this on your own perspective and your own experience, your own insight on this subject. Right, but if you had spent the same amount of time over like a week or so, and spread it out, built in some objectivity, over a week prior now I sound like a university lecturer, right? Do you think you would have done as good a job, or worse? Be honest, worse Interesting.
Speaker 2:But it's academic, johnny, because I'm incapable of doing that. It's a really difficult thing to try and explain. But if I did start a project, not even months before but a good few weeks before, I would probably race to the 80 90 percent mark of finishing that project and then I wouldn't finish it. I would just be burnt out, bored with the project. I just wouldn't do it for me anymore. So I would be more or less physically incapable of finishing that project if I started early Now.
Speaker 2:Is that a sustainable way to go about doing your work? Absolutely not to try and wait for that deadline. But sadly one of the double-edged swords about having ADHD is that you really need those deadlines. You need tight deadlines to get really good work done and it's exhausting and you can burn out from doing it. But you do get some really good work done and I'm certainly not advising that as a lifestyle choice. And since, I have to say, since I've been medicated and now I manage my condition, I do the more sustainable, healthy working love, it's amazing how, how I can now see that I was physically literally incapable of doing it in that way until I was properly managed, until I understood my condition, until I was treated for it wow, that's really really okay.
Speaker 1:So I mean, we're talking about your understanding of your own condition of adhd and perhaps even some of the traits of adhd in general. Perhaps for other people that will be nodding along going yeah, I know what that feels like. What advice can you give to music creators who are neurodiverse and I know that covers a lot of different things. So perhaps it's unfair to actually just to just say to label it that way or to phrase the question or frame it that way, but is there any advice that you can give?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean part of my experience has led me to start my newest venture, which is coaching people with ADHD, and part of that coaching process is to help people learn who they are. The first, and what I think is the most important piece of advice is learn who you are and love yourself for who you are, because nobody else in the world is going to do it as well as you can. You probably hate yourself better than anybody else in the world can do it right now as well. You've no reason to hate yourself, and I know that for anybody listening who is neurodivergent, neurodiverse whether you've, whether you're ASD, even dyslexia, adhd, all of the above, ocd you know you have no reason to hate yourself at all.
Speaker 2:I know it exists in your head. I'm not invalidating that. But the first thing that will help you feel better is to learn yourself, accept yourself and love who you are now. After that, it's a domino effect. Once you know who you are, once you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, then play to your strengths. The idea of trying to work on your weaknesses when you have ADHD is like trying to get Usain Bolt to train for the sculling competition, like we have a lane and I hate that. I hate the idea that we get like put in a box or put in a lane, but the reality is that that lane isn't so bad and when you can cope with it, and when you can accept that you're in this lane, oh man, it's liberating you.
Speaker 1:Um, your relationships get better, your self-esteem gets better, your job prospects get better, your life gets better once you accept and learn to love yourself um, james, thank you so much for your honesty, your insight, your transparency, and I just can't help but wonder that, you know, people listening are going to be, you know, kind of enthused and inspired and reassured by by, by your words that have come from a very, very, very heartfelt journey. Um, and so, on behalf of you know, of the, the, the silent majority, thank you from the bottom of my heart, mate. I really appreciate what you've done here today you're very welcome.
Speaker 2:It's um, there's bloody millions of us in this business. So if I can just, you know, soothe the worries of one person, then I'm very grateful for the platform that you've allowed me today.
Speaker 1:And I'm very grateful to you, James, and to everybody that's listened here today to this episode. It's a very important episode. You know, in a world of so much complex technology, AI, etc. We have to remember that it's people, isn't it, that make this business, just like what James was alluding to earlier, and it's understanding different people and the way that different people think that's crucial, isn't it? That's how we evolve and develop, and that is something that really truly underpins the bigger picture of the music industry. Ok, I hope you've enjoyed that episode. I will see you again next time. Thank you for being here. May the force be with you.
