Belle Humble on the Virtual Sessions presented by The DJ Sessions 7/3/24

In this soulful and inspiring Virtual Session, Darran Bruce reconnects with acclaimed London-based vocalist, songwriter, and producer Belle Humble for a wide-ranging conversation about artistry, authenticity, and creative evolution. Known for her powerful collaborations with artists like Flux Pavilion and Sander van Doorn, Belle discusses her shift toward producing soothing, soulful house infused with organic sounds—from seashell percussion to the healing purr of a cat.

 

She opens up about her deep commitment to sound healing, sharing her studies in Nada Yoga in India and sound therapy in the UK, and how ancient traditions influence her modern productions. Belle explores the potential of immersive, multisensory performances, combining music, visuals, and meditative environments both in physical and virtual spaces.

 

The discussion moves through her career-defining tracks, the emotional core of her songwriting, and her embrace of imperfections as part of the human connection in music. Belle offers insight into balancing creative work with family life, the importance of taking restorative breaks, and the role of risk-taking and optimism in sustaining a music career.

 

From playful stories of performing a “mini rave” at her daughter’s school to thoughtful reflections on burnout, perfectionism, and industry shifts, Belle’s candid approach offers inspiration to artists and fans alike. This episode is a heartfelt reminder that music is not only for the dance floor but also for healing, joy, and shared human experience.

 

Host: Darran Bruce
Guest: Belle Humble
Location: Virtual Studios, Seattle WA & London, UK

Overview:
In this rich and multifaceted episode, Darran Bruce sits down with Belle Humble to discuss her journey from high-profile collaborations to crafting her own soulful, organic house productions, her passion for sound healing, and the balance of creative ambition with personal wellbeing.

Topics Covered:

• Shift to Soulful House: Belle’s move toward deep, organic house music, incorporating unique field recordings like cat purrs, seashell percussion, and tongue drums.
• Sound Healing Practice: Training in Nada Yoga in India and advanced sound therapy in the UK, and the integration of these practices into her performances.
• Immersive Performance Concepts: Interest in merging music, visuals, and meditative environments in both physical venues and VR spaces.
• Career Highlights: Stories behind “Cracks” with Flux Pavilion and “No Words” with Sander van Doorn, and the emotional philosophy behind her songwriting.
• Creative Balance & Family Life: Performing at her daughter’s school, encouraging her musical curiosity, and maintaining space for personal time.
• Perfectionism & Artistic Growth: Learning to embrace imperfection, collaborate openly, and let go of overly rigid creative control.
• Wellness & Burnout Prevention: Strategies for maintaining mental health, including rest days, massages, and mindful scheduling.
• Optimism & Risk-Taking: How an adventurous mindset fuels her career and artistic vision.

Call to Action:
Follow Belle Humble: Instagram @bellehumble
Discover more episodes and exclusive content at thedjsessions.com

[Darran]
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the DJ Sessions Presents the Virtual Sessions. I’m your host Darran and I’m sitting in the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington and coming in all the way from London, UK, we have Belle Humble on the show this afternoon.

[Belle Humble]
How are you doing today, Belle? Hi Darran, I’m doing really well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on today.

Absolutely, pleasure to have you back on the show.

[Darran]
The last time you were on was in 2022, so great to catch up with you, got a lot to talk about. You’ve been doing some awesome stuff, some new things over there, you know, and then kind of, you know, we’re talking a little bit about what you’ve been working on pre-show, you know, you’ve actually switched up a little bit and you’re exploring into house music now, you know, tell us a little bit about that journey and what made you make the switch over to house music?

[Belle Humble]
Yeah, so like I’ve always been a vocalist who, a songwriter, vocalist and I’ve really dabbled in so many different genres over the span of my like the last 10-15 years. I’ve always loved house music and my first love really was, I’d say, like hardcore rave, but it wasn’t, that was kind of like my introduction to that kind of electronic world and then I really got into and fell in love with jungle music, which then kind of became drum and bass, but during that time of going to these jungle events back in the day, I was very young, I was a teenager at this point, I would go to these events and they’d often be like a house and garage room and so I would go between the two and they were both so good for dancing and my passion is dancing as well, like I just love the music and the beats and like the different kind of groups that you get into with those two different styles, so those have always been really big for me and then years later, when I did actually become a vocalist professionally and a songwriter professionally, I found myself featuring on a range of different genres, I mean EDM, drum and bass, some kind of house stuff as well and I’d say I don’t even know what the genres were called, like they were kind of different ranges of different things, so and then I recently actually, I heard a trance song out as well, so that was pretty cool, but I’ve always throughout my career, I have always been the person who is working on someone else’s project, like I’ve been collaborating a lot but it’s always been presented to me or I presented an idea but they’ve got their own kind of style going on, their own genre going on, but I really, so it’s a very long-winded answer, but the way that I’ve arrived now at wanting to create some of my own work actually, I really need to take, I kind of needed to go into a bit of a cocoon, I really needed to retreat into myself and sort of just stop for a while in terms of like doing tons of collaborations with people and kind of just get putting myself out there all the time, I needed to find out who I was and what I wanted to create, so this kind of like, this last, even since I spoke to you last couple of years or so, has really been a very kind of sometimes slow, sometimes a bit more exciting kind of journey of me exploring what it is that I want to create, like me, what does my heart want to create, what does my, what do I feel like doing right now, and I just, I decided recently I just wanted to get into the studio and co-produce, so go in from scratch and have my kind of references and my BPMs that I want to work around and the kind of more housey, kind of deep housey stuff, but with lots of organic sounds thrown in there as well, so recently I worked on a track where we recorded a cat purring, for example, I wanted these layers, these very warm layers within there that were real, you know, and I got some shells and I shook them in my hands and that was part of the percussion and some other little instruments that I just kind of played in myself that we then created a song around, and also I played the tongue drum on that too, and so yeah, it’s kind of like a mix of organic-y kind of, I want to create, I don’t know, this is not a genre, but I want to create something which feels very soothing, like soothing, soulful house.

[Darran]
Definitely, definitely, now speaking of soothing and soulful, you’re actually mixing in, you know, you have kind of a sound healing influence in your music production now, tell our DJ Sessions fans all about that and why you’ve decided to add that in to your overall production and performance.

[Belle Humble]
Okay, yeah, absolutely, I can tell a little anecdote about a song that I did a while back with Lax on Never Say Die Records, which was like a very much like a bass kind of driven dubstep-y or whatever tune, and I remember I went to the session to meet Lax, and I’d never met him before, and I brought my singing bowl with me because I was just starting to really get into sound healing, and the song is called High From It, but the song is about getting high from the sound.

Let’s get high, high with the sound, high, high with the sound, elevate your mind with the sound, mind, mind with the sound, and that was really…

[Darran]
I love that, that was sick!

[Belle Humble]
So you have to check it out, it’s still around, maybe I should start making some reels with it because it’s really cool, and it’s all about, it’s not like, maybe back in the day it would have more of a different meaning, but to me it was really like just this sort of natural high, like the sound is what makes you high in those situations, it’s the movement and the dance, and absolutely you can add other things to that into your body to kind of like enhance those experiences, but the base thing is, like you see children when they’re dancing, they’re just like going for it, and they’re in it, and it’s just this full of joy kind of thing, and anyway, so that was the beginning, and since then, actually in the last 10 years or so, I’ve become really interested in exploring healing, like sound and music as a healing modality, as a therapeutic modality. I looked at like the thousands of years that sound has been used to bring people together in community, to create dance through drums, to create ceremony, to create ritual, and to really pull in aspects of community building experiences, and those rhythmical, like kind of the impact of drums and that rhythm and the voice that has on people when they gather, and so I decided to take myself off to India in 2018 and become a certified Nada yoga instructor, so I went out there and I studied Nada yoga, which is the yoga of sound, so I studied it from the Vedic tradition, so it’s an ancient kind of way of looking at sound as a path to enlightenment, basically. It is one of the paths, there are many, I believe there are so many amazing paths that we can attain that kind of connection to spirituality, and they all hold a place in this world, and I’m very much a multi-faith believer, and I don’t subscribe to anyone’s faith, however this really appealed to me at the time because I was just like, I want to find something which is really just looking at frequency and vibration, and study it, and learn some of the mantras from those traditions, and learn about the philosophy behind what these ancient practices taught you, which were intertwined with yoga as well, so it’s about the body, it’s about vibration, it’s about your thoughts, it’s about what you put into your body, what you eat, what you consume, what you consume like on what you watch, or who you’re around, all of those things, like everything has a frequency, so I became qualified as a Nada yoga instructor, and then I also decided to study with the Sound Healing Academy here in the UK, and in that I was a quite a long program where I learned all about how to facilitate sound journeys for people in various capacities, and yeah, so basically I also qualified in that, I studied that, I did a load of case studies, and learned all about that, and it’s just been a real interest of mine for many, many years, and spirituality has always been a big interest of mine, and something that I immersed myself in, and this was just another way for me to kind of almost take it to a place that felt very, I’d say physical as well, because there’s more science behind it as well, like these frequencies, the effect that a gong may have on your body for example, and how water, sound actually moves faster through water than it does through the air, so when a sound is hitting your body, and we’re so much made of, we’ve got so much water within us, that when these sounds are played in certain ways, and how they actually physically affect your body, and I love that, so I have really gone on this huge journey, and I needed it for myself too, I needed to find some peace and some healing, and find other ways, healthier ways to cope with my anxiety, or my feelings of, yeah, I think anxiety has always been something that I have had to learn, to live with in many ways, and I found that sound practice has really helped me with that.

[Darran]
Have you ever experimented with mixing audio and video maybe at the same time, to bring a complete kind of round trip sensory involvement with your audio productions, and then maybe have visuals to go along with that, I’m not just talking about like having a VJ, you know, doing something in the background live time, I mean that could still be a way of mixing audio and video at the same time, but have you ever made like an immersive, or thought about making an immersive experience where, you know, I know a lot of people, you know, they do the sound healing, maybe they’re closing their eyes, they’re visioning, it’s almost a meditative type thing, you know, but have you ever thought about putting something like that together?

[Belle Humble]
And you know, it’s something that people are doing, and I think it looks absolutely stunning, I’ve seen it, and I would love to get to that point where I could do that, you know, I think it’s definitely when you start to bring in big spaces like that, I mean I could, to be honest, I could just like bring, I’ve got a little lamp that my daughter uses, which like puts the lights all over the room with fishes and stars and stuff, I could just bring that to one of my smaller events and give it a go, and then build up from that, because I think it would be beautiful to do that, and I, what really interests me in all of this is bringing everything together, so like you say, like you’re creating a space, right, so when you bring in the audio, because I know that you’re a visual person, and you’ve got your, you’ve got, you’ve done a lot of stuff in that world, right, so you’ve got experience in that, so to create, create an experience, like I’d love to collaborate with someone doing that, you know, who could bring that element to what I was doing, and, but it’s all about creating an entire kind of experience, so it’s not just like, oh I sing, and this is my performance, it’s like come to, enter this space that you create, and there’s just all these amazing things going on, so you go on an immersive journey through sound and dance and visuals, absolutely, I think it’s a beautiful idea, yeah, it’s a good idea.

[Darran]
Thank you, you know, I mean, we, you know, one of the things I was exploring a few years back when we were putting our virtual nightclub together, you know, I was going into some of these virtual worlds, you know, I have an Oculus, and was going into like VR chat and alt space, it’s not around anymore unfortunately, but, you know, and you have these immersive worlds where people were creating sound experiences, and you’re in this virtual environment, but as you would walk through, you know, one thing would end, and another thing would start up, and it was just really cool on how you could activate that, and, you know, I’m very interested to see what music creation, music distribution experiences are going to happen in that VR environment, where you’re combining this, you can do full meditation or sleep, you know, helping you get to sleep type things, I think one of them is called Trip, it’s very highly rated in the Oculus, and it’s to help you kind of like guided meditation and things like that, but, you know, you see virtuality as this other environment that people are going to, as the devices get better, cheaper, lighter, more battery life, all the things, you know, that are happening, and when it becomes mainstream, you know, I’m super excited to see, performances, you know, happening in virtuality, or, you know, you could actually have a virtuality world pretty easily set up, and go in there and play your environments, and people can come in and put their Oculus on, and you’re dealing with people from all over the world in a virtual environment, you know, you aren’t having to necessarily set up a nightclub, and get a venue, and then it’s only local people that can show it, that you got people tuning in from around the world sitting in, and, you know, there are limitations sometimes to some of these places, where you can have like 40 people in a room, and then it creates another instance of the room, so that 41st person is now in a new room, until that room fills up, but you can still be doing the same thing, in multiple rooms, the world of VR is pretty awesome, you know, you have a definite application of doing something like that, of bringing people together, I mean, if there’s a group or something out there for it, it’s being done in VR, and I think that’s just, people really need to look at that as a, as the next frontier, you know, it was getting online, it was maybe putting your MP3s up, then it was social media, and you know, MySpace, and then Facebook, and then Instagram, Twitter, and that’s all a 2D environment, you know, you could share music that way, you know, and it’s on somebody’s computer, but they’re still in the computer, or they’re on their phone, that’s nice, putting those headsets on, and being able to create an immersive 3D world, is just, that’s a

[Belle Humble]
whole other, yeah, absolutely, I have, I have actually played around with, just in, sort of daydreaming about that idea, I do imagine it, like setting up a very calming, soothing space, where people can come in, and it’s like a sound, a sound sanctuary of sorts, and yeah, people can come in for a sound bath, just like, they’re just sitting down with their thing, and yeah, absolutely, I do think it’s, I think it’s definitely got, it’s, I think people can be wary of technology, as it, as it kind of evolves, but it’s also, it’s brought the world together in so many ways, that, that we didn’t have before, you know, and it’s, it really has, in many ways, broken down borders, and people who connect, connect, you know, globally, and that’s really beautiful, so I do think it’s got a place,

[Darran]
for sure, yeah, definitely, you know, if you could take one of your productions, pick one of them, as your most favorite one, which one would that be, and why, and what’s the thoughts behind why it would be your favorite?

[Belle Humble]
So, ones that I’ve released already? Yeah, okay, well, they would have to just be cracks, because that was the song that I did, that it was just so kind of unexpected, and simple, and I remember vocaling it, there’s a few of us, we were in the room with freestylers, and writing, and so we wrote it, and then I sang it, and I just remember feeling, when I sang it, like, it’s just very in it, like, I’d feel, I felt it, like, as I sang it, I really, really felt what was coming through me, and it was very simple, I did it in about two or three takes, it didn’t take long at all, and I didn’t know what was going to happen to it, it just kind of, I always think that songs are a bit like, creating kind of all these little babies, and you don’t know where they’re going to go, or where they’re going to end up, and you just do it, you just create, and then you see what happens, and that one, it was just, it was remixed, and there are a few different mixes of it, and Flux Pavilion is just such an amazing musician, and composer, right, so he got hold of it, and did that remix, and it’s just so, I loved all of them, but that one was just very special, because it was just so musically, kind of, just had so many elements to it, that I was very intelligently done, you know, and the fact that it touched so many people, and meant so much to so many people, like, I couldn’t have asked for anything more, to be honest, like, my favourite, and I think that’s why, again, I always want, it’s always my heart, my sort of intention to create music, which offers this kind of safety to people, or this kind of, like, I hear you, or I see you, kind of vibe, like, I know that, well, the world is difficult, and we’re all going to suffer at points, but I want to create that music that helps people in those places, and also just to feel happy, and joyful, and whatever, you know, but I love having that kind of element of life, kind of philosophy, if you will, and I feel like that song really allowed me to be put on the map in that way, and that collaboration really, really gave me a lot, it gave me a lot, and it gave other people a lot, too, so that would be my favourite.

Yeah. What year was that released? That was, like, oh, it’s 2011, or 2010, maybe, 2010?

[Darran]
That’s, it’s funny you mention that, because that’s right when I went through my dubstep phase kick of, like, I downloaded, I was, like, listening to this station, I listen to, normally, Selma FM’s Groove Salad, which is, like, a down-tempo ambient station, it’s my go-to, if you come into my studio, you listen to Groove Salad, you’re in my car, you’re listening to Groove Salad, you know, it’s just everywhere, if I’m in my headset, I’m listening to Groove Salad, but they also had a dubstep station, Dubstep Beyond, and I kind of got into that for a while, and I was buying tracks and just tons of stuff, Flux Billion was definitely one of the more notable artists that was there, so I definitely have heard that track, probably, there, but, you know, yeah, I just, I still love dubstep, that grinding, you know, it’s just, it’s very awesome stuff, but I also saw, and I know, I’m looking over your bio here, I’m not sure what year this was, you did a collaboration, when was your collaboration with Sander Van Dorn? No words.

[Belle Humble]
Oh yeah, that was actually, that was really, it was actually done ages ago, as it can often, no, no, I’m sorry, like, as in, it was written a long time ago, but as these things can often happen, you write something, and then it just kind of, like, floats around, and oh, it was going to get released, oh no, it’s not, and then years later, oh, it’s actually going to get released, okay, we’re visiting, revisiting that, and that was released, and it was so beautiful, the way it happened, because I was out in India, studying my nada yoga training in India, studying my nada yoga training in 2018, and Sander Van Dorn, we were arranging to release it, and they were just putting together a little visual for it, and they ended up choosing all this footage from India as the visual to, and it was just, I felt, like, so synchronistic, and I was in India, and it was just, yeah, I really, I’m a massive fan of those kind of, like, open kind of hooks, if you will, like that, the cracks was leave the past behind, just walk away when it’s over, and the heart breaks, and the cracks begin to show, so it’s a life philosophy.

Sander Van Dorn, as well, was very much, it was a bit melancholic, that song, it was, I wish you’d say something to me, you could just love or set me free, I can read a thousand thoughts written on your face, but sometimes there are no words left to speak, so it’s, like, again, very open, I’m all about, and I feel, like, when I’ve studied all these kind of, like, through the ages, through thousands of years, like, there’s these kind of one-line songs, or mantras, or whatever pieces that can encapsulate some kind of archetypal experience, and to me, that’s what I love doing so much, so much, like, that’s my thing.

[Darran]
Awesome, you know, Sander was one of the first DJs, producers I had on my show, back before the DJ sessions was created, we had a broadcast television series called ITV, that was airing on the Fox and NBC affiliates, and Sander was one of our, it was on ITV Nightlife back in the day, he’s been on the show a couple of times, and I recently just reached out to him, talking with his management, to get him back on the show again, and they want to come by and have him, well, I guess I can’t announce it, but let’s just say it’s going to be a Secret Sessions, yeah, it’s another genre of shows that we do called the Secret Sessions, they want Sander to come back on, so it’d be great to reconnect with him, and I’ll definitely bring up this interview, and tell him I talked with you, and all that fun stuff.

[Belle Humble]
Yes, I think his wife had a baby at the same time as me, too, which was also quite, like, nice, it was quite cool, I remember, I think we sent some messages to each other, congratulating each other.

[Darran]
Awesome. What’s the longest time you’ve ever consecutively spent working in a studio on a track? Are you pretty good at getting these babies out, as you mentioned, I wanted to use that term that you said, babies, because I’ve heard that, or children, I’ve heard that term used before, and it’s like, you’re taking these little children, and you’re sending them off to school, and see what they’re going to put around and do in the world, and something pops up when they hit eight years old, or five years old, or three years old, it’s like, well, that actually got released in a remix, and I, you know, wow, and it climbs the charts, and you know, you see that child kind of grow up and blow up.

But what’s the longest time you’ve ever spent consecutively working on a track in the studio?

[Belle Humble]
Yeah, actually, not actually, probably about, maybe last year, I was working on something, and it didn’t, we didn’t go ahead with it, and I just spent so, I just remember just tearing my hair out over it, spending so many, so many hours on it, just redoing it, redoing it, redoing it, and sometimes that happens, you know, you’re like, you’re just trying to like, make something work, and sometimes it just doesn’t seem to work, and that’s like, and it’s, and that’s what happens, that’s part of the process too, because you might need to do that, you might need to get through those, and you might need to feel the frustration, you might need to say, okay, do you know what, put it aside, maybe it’ll come up at some other point, but then the next song that you write is like, it just works.

So it’s like, you kind of have to sometimes just get through these moments, but I’d say I write very quickly generally, like I just, a day is, is, or like an hour, or I don’t know, sometimes I take time and go back, like today I went to the studio, I’ve been working on a song, a house, for my project, for my Bell Humble project, which is again, the one that I think we just spoke about, did I just speak about this here, because we had a little chat before we came here, but it was like, there was a cat purring, and shells, I did all these very organic sounds that I played in, and I played the tongue drum, and I played, like I just wanted to bring this warmth, and this soothing kind of feel to the track, and then put some beats over it, and then produced it, and I just had the little hook, the chorus, and then I went back today to the studio to write a bit more, just a few more vocals over it, it was just nice and relaxed, and so sometimes it can be like that, you know, kind of chilled, sometimes it’s like, put three, do three hooks in one day, different songs, so yeah.

[Darran]
It’s interesting you use that term, that organic sound, and going back to, I remember I was interviewing, can’t remember who it was, and we were talking about how people will go out, and they’ll get, they’ll capture sounds from the environment to use in their tracks, and one of the ones that kind of stuck out to me, and it was funny, because I just had an MRI done, and I was talking with the producer, and they’re like, yeah, this, I went out, and I took an MRI, I went into the room, and I got the sound of the machine going, and do it, and he recorded the sound of the MRI when he went to get an MRI, I’m like, oh wow, that worked, and then there was somebody I was talking to, and they were going out, and they were finding beehives, and they were putting a mic on the, you know, on a boom, and recording the sound of the beehives that they’d make, and different beehives, and using that as organic sounds in their mixes, in their tracks as well. I thought that was just really cool, you know, going out and using, like you said, those seashells, or those organic sounds, you know, to make tracks, and people like, where’d you get that sound from? I’m like, I made that,

[Belle Humble]
absolutely, and it’s truly organic, you know, and it’s from you too, like you’re the creator of it too, like I’ve done that in other songs before, back in, like from sweeping, sweeping leaves on a patio, or, and, and this one was just like, it felt so good, because I was like, the cat that, in the studio where I was working, there was just this beautiful cat, and, and it’s got the best purr, so we just got her up on the mic, we took a little video of it, so when I’m ready to release the track, I start promoting it, when I start building a live promotion, I’ve got some nice footage of, and the cat’s purr is, is used in healing bones, like the frequency of the cat’s purr is actually,

[Darran]
I have never heard that before, I, yeah, I might need to go, I, I’ve had cats in the past, I’m debating, I want to do more traveling and stuff, and it’s just, you know, having the pet at home, I have people that can take care of them, but you know, it’s just like, you know, it’s like the plant, I got plants, I got cats, I got my garden, it’s like, oh, you know, but no, I love cats, I’m a total cat fan, I’m actually a, well, technically a Leo, but Leo Virgo, I’m a tiger.

[Belle Humble]
When’s your birthday? I’m a Leo as well.

[Darran]
Oh yeah, my birthday is August 23rd, so I’m on August.

[Belle Humble]
Okay, I’m on 21st of August. Yeah, so you’ve got a bit of that, you’ve got a bit of Leo in there, I’m like, yeah, 28 degrees Leo, so yeah.

[Darran]
At the time I was born, in the time zone I’m in, I’m considered a Leo, and I have a, you know, Leo, I think it’s a Leo rising, I think I’m a Leo sun, and I’m a Scorpio moon, but I consider myself, if you, most people get to know me, they’re like, actually, you’re a little bit more like a Virgo, but actually, I’m, I’m, I have the characteristics of both, I call it, my Leo nature in me says, I got the best signs in the solar system.

[Belle Humble]
Do you know what, I’m really, it’s interesting you bring up astrology, because I am absolutely obsessed with it, I love it so much, that’s like sound, that I find this kind of solace in sound, and the idea that it’s like a healing thing, it’s something to reflect upon, and it’s got this amazing impact on our bodies, and our minds, and our spirits, and our emotions. To me, to know where the, what the planets are doing, and where they all are, and oh, there’s a conjunction happening, and oh, there’s a sun opposite moon, like, so there’s a full moon tonight, and how do I feel, and, and I even, like, it’s so, it’s my kind of calm, wind down place, is to just learn about what’s happening out there, that week, and see what’s happening, and how it affects my particular birth chart at the time I was born, because I’m, I’m Scorpio rising, and I’m Leo sun, and, and I just, I find it fascinating, it’s sort of like this kind of interesting blueprint of stamping, like, down like this, and, and yes, there is a control, like, in many, it’s a kind of, there’s different ways to, to map it, you know, you’ve got, like, the Vedic Indian way of mapping it, you’ve got the Western astrology of mapping it, but they’re, they’re still all there, but whatever map you put on there, even whatever ideas you put on there, and it’s just so fascinating to me, I find it, it’s such a powerful, and reassuring, reflective tool to look at what’s happening out there, and be like, hmm, is this affecting my, oh, that’s interesting, because I’ve had a really tough time, like, and a lot of people I know are really going through it this week, and then you look out to see what’s happening out there, the weather, like, the, the planetary weather, and you’re like, hmm, interesting.

[Darran]
Yeah, yeah, definitely, we could talk about that for ages and ages. So, you know, we were talking about, you know, your, your organic sounds, capturing sounds, working in the studio, are you a hardware, or software producer, or both?

[Belle Humble]
Yeah, I, I use Logic, that’s my, the DAW that I work with, and I’ve, I’ve just more often than not, in terms of the instrumental side of things, I’ve often collaborated, but the more I do, and the more vocal production I do, and the more sort of work that I do from home, in my, my home studio, the more I’m starting to, like, I just recorded something yesterday, and I spent the day, and I recorded my guitar, and I recorded the, I, I start, I’m just, you know, you kind of just, before you know it, you’re like, hang on, this is sounding actually pretty good. So, as a producer, like, I’ve always been about the vocals, but now I’m really starting to get more into that, sort of, more the track side of things, so that’s really exciting. And yeah, I just use Logic, and I, I would love to expand more into, I’ve always wanted to try working with Ableton as well, so I think there’s a lot of creative possibilities that you can use with that, and yeah.

[Darran]
Yeah, I used to work for Apple back in the day, and, and I was one of 300 people in the world. I’m a video producer, obviously, so Final Cut Pro is my go-to, all that, that whole suite of project, products, but you know, I trained on how to train people how to use Logic, not be a producer, not train them in music theory, just how to, here’s the software, here’s how you would go in and record a track, samples, do all the, you know, walkthrough of how to navigate the software, basically, and then send them out there in the world and say, go create.

But I fell in love with Logic. I fell in love with the sequencer in the back end of Logic, the synths in Logic, I mean, just, I mean, I would use it in some soundtrack. I used to use Soundtrack, which is, I think, a program they don’t make anymore.

It was kind of tied in with Final Cut, so you could send your project from Final Cut over to Soundtrack. I think you can do the roundtrip processing, send it over to Logic, score your film, and then hit save, and then it would send that and put it in the timeline of the project you were working on. So it kind of just saved the process of having to export in.

It’s really awesome, but I don’t use Logic as much as I do anymore, because now I know so many producers, and I have my own team that, you know, I just use one of their tracks if they’re producing something, and they don’t have to worry about clearing all the rights and everything for it. But I’ve loved it. I’ve always, my brothers were musicians.

I used to love to be in the studio with them with the hardware gear back in the 80s. You know, we had synthesizers, rack mounts, eight-track, four-track studios, all that fun stuff. And you know, it was just at eight years old, in the 80s, the equipment was sent over.

There were computers back then to do this stuff, but you had a manual, and that manual was usually translated. If you had like a Yamaha or the other, not Korg, but anyways, the big names at the time, those manuals were translated from Japanese into American, and they didn’t really make sense or read well. So I think I, because I was such a young mind, it wasn’t like I was an adult trying to formulate it.

I was a kid trying to formulate it. It made it easier for me to understand it, because it was basic to me, you know, in that sense. But I always loved being able to have that physical touch of the keyboard.

And later in life, when I went to college in the early aughts, 2000s, I ended up getting an MC-505 by Roland and the SP-808, which is, the MC-505 was a sequencer, and the 808 was a sampler, and you could MIDI them together, and just being able to manipulate the sequencer with my hands touching it in real time, rather than dealing with like Fruity Loops, which was back then. I think I had Fruity Loops 3 on a laptop that I had, which is cool, you know, and I think you can manipulate in real time on Fruity Loops as well at that time. But it was just fun with your fingers, you can tie all the knobs and switch the beat and make live tracks.

And like I said, I only dabbled, I never would. I mean, I made a couple tracks, but…

[Belle Humble]
Yeah, no, I think when you’ve got that feel, you can kind of, it kind of translates, like it’s so… I could get AI to write me a piece now, if I wanted, you know, or I could quantize everything’s perfect to perfection. And I don’t know, I think music has gone so far that way, that actually, people may crave like a bit more humanness soon.

I don’t know if it’s yet or now, but like, I know I do, I don’t want everything to sound perfect. I want things to be a little bit human, you know, like, I totally get it. I’ve got an RC-505 looping, so I play around with that quite a lot.

I need to start posting stuff, because I really enjoy using that, just with my voice, and playing some instruments, like even just putting a gong in there, or putting a crystal ball, and then putting some beats over it, and then doing a DJ set, and then kind of like looping my voice over the tracks. It’s a lot. I need to get, keep practicing with it, but I’ve got like, a bit like, I’ve got my creative, like, ah, this is so exciting.

It’s so exciting to do.

[Darran]
You touched a little bit on something you said there about, you know, not making the beat perfect, because I always love it when guests do this. You didn’t get any of the questions beforehand, so you don’t know what I’m really asking you, which is awesome. But you know, my next question would be is, how, excuse me, how much of a perfectionist are you?

[Belle Humble]
I feel like it’s, um, I’m definitely a perfectionist. When it comes to, like, tuned vocals and stuff like that, like, I want it to sound good. If something sounds off vocally, like one of the BVs or whatever, and I hear it, it will bother me.

Like, it was, you know, I don’t, I want it to be good, but I would rather sing it in myself over and over again. That’s why I quite like working just on my own sometimes, because I’ll do 100 takes to get it perfect, whereas if I’m in a studio with a lot of other people, they’ll be like, that’s fine, that’s fine, we’ll fix this in post, no worries. Like, you know, it’s like, it’s so, everything’s kind of perfected in post production, but I really love the idea of getting things, like, as perfect as I can naturally.

And I think I used to be a lot more precious about, like, I worked a lot as a songwriter a while back. Like, I still have done tons of songwriting, but I used to work much more with artists and go and work on their projects, and I’d write these songs, and then the artist would use them and release them, and I’d be like, they changed some words, and it doesn’t work anymore, because they changed those words, and it’s changed the meaning, and it just doesn’t make sense now. And I remember that, like, and that was, like, when I was a bit more new to the whole thing, a bit, a bit kind of, and then I just, after those, some of those experiences, like, no, no, no, this is not the way to do, you kind of have to let that go, and you’ve got to allow that, it’s not, not to be so controlling over things being so perfect in the way that I see them, because my perfect is going to not be somebody else’s perfect, and that’s okay. And when you’re creating, and especially when you’re collaborating or writing for an artist who’s going to be fronting that, and, and then I just, you know, you talk yourself out, and you remember, as you kind of go through that and mature, it’s like, no, I’m so grateful that they have chosen to sing this song, and to promote it, and to put it on their album, and, like, thank you, thank you, thank you for choosing it, you know, instead of, like, you changed words. I was humbled by that, like, that kind of perfectionism, and it doesn’t get you anywhere to be too much of a perfectionist, because I’ve had stuff sitting out of the public eye for years and years, and this is why I realized recently, do you know what, just get it out, because otherwise, like, what’s the point? It’s not perfect, it’s okay.

[Darran]
It’s, it’s funny you mentioned that, because I remember the first time I was, I have a philosophy, and this is why I’m hosting my own show right now, and I’ve had other hosts, and people do it over the years, but the philosophy of mine is the show must go on, and I was, it was 2005, 2006, and I didn’t have a host this, or host at the time, and I said, I gotta produce some episodes, so I jumped, and I had been in front of the camera before several times, but I wanted to hit it right, because this was for broadcast television.

There wasn’t internet live streaming distribution. Video podcasting, I think, was just brand new. Maybe it hadn’t even come out yet, but I was up on the rooftop of my building.

I lived in a fly zone in downtown Seattle, but you know, airplanes, like right now, I don’t know if you can hear that airplane going by, but probably not, because I’m using a better mic. I got better gear now, but we’re up on my rooftop, downtown Seattle, and it’s in January of the year, and I’m trying to make the shot look like I’m standing with the city behind me. It’s nighttime, but we have lights on me.

You couldn’t even see the city behind me, because of the way cameras work, but I was doing a 30-second intro for my show, and I probably got it right on the second take, but I didn’t feel good about it. I wanted to do another one. I ended up doing 64 more takes, and then I stopped counting, and it was so cold.

The microphone was chilling my hand, so I was like this. We had to wait for the planes to fly by, because they were getting in the audio of the shot, and be coming in. It was bad, and it was windy, so the big board that I had with my script on, it was blowing in the wind back and forth.

But I was a perfectionist. I had to get it right, because I needed to be right for broadcast television, but later on, as I started moving to live production with our shows, this is like 2009, late 2009, 2010, I kind of adopted the philosophy that anything goes, and if it’s a live show, you just pick up and go with it, and it’s like, oh, I said that wrong. Let me correct that, but we’re live right now.

So yes, we make bloopers. We do outtakes, but we’re just going to recover from it right away, and keeping that essence and that momentum going during a live performance is very interesting. I guess what I’m wrapping this up, I’m not as much as a perfectionist as I used to be with things, and I’m going to beat myself up, because it didn’t come out right, because this is a live interview, and I like the organic flow that it can take, and if there is a blooper or something funny that happens, we could put it in the blooper reels one day or something.

[Belle Humble]
Absolutely, yeah. I was just going to say just a quick little thing as well. I used to sing at a lot of weddings, and I used to do performances every weekend while I was building up my songwriting career, and I was just working.

So you do when you’re a bit younger. I was like seven days a week working, and I just realized the joy of making mistakes on stage, and the fun. Again, it’s human.

People like humans. Otherwise, it would just all be perfect AI avatars, and I don’t think that’s what everyone wants. I think we want the humanness, and the quirkiness, and the imperfections, so yeah.

[Darran]
Absolutely.

[Belle Humble]
The imperfections, yeah.

[Darran]
How would you define success as a producer? Would that be a Beatport top 10 hit, a collaboration that you’re working with somebody that you’ve dreamed to work with? What are your thoughts on that?

[Belle Humble]
I think that success is never just one thing. I think it’s an accumulation of things, and as you go through your life, those success, kind of what you measure as the measurements of success will change. Like a while back, it was success for me to get books for a gig, or then it was success to get a publishing deal, and then it was success to write some great songs that did really well in the world, that went globally into good chart positions, and then it was now my success is scheduling my time so that I can take care of my daughter with concentration focus, and I can be there to pick her up from school, and that I can work my schedule around her, and that I can also make music that really makes me feel happy about what I’m producing.

I’ve produced so many tracks, and I’ve had such an amazing time, and I’m grateful for everything that I do, but success in the last few years was being able to write from home on my own and write production music for TV shows. Oh, there’s the airplane.

[Darran]
So you can hear that?

[Belle Humble]
Yeah, to me, I think success is to keep an open mind about what success is. You’re successful if you don’t pin it on any one thing. It’s like, how do you feel?

Check in with yourself. How do I feel in my life right now? Am I successfully managing all the components that make me feel like I’m doing a good job and that I’m not faltering too much?

[Darran]
Totally understandable. Some people could say financial success. Some people could say, like I said, collaboration success.

One of my goals is to ramp up and be at 100 hours of content per month, and that, to me, is a success. Being an independent company that does this, and you look at the world of podcasting and live streaming, 100 hours of content a month is mind-boggling to most people. They’d be like, what?

Most people are producing one hour a week if they’re doing a podcast series, or maybe a few hours if they’re a DJ show, maybe a couple times a week. Collaborating with interviewing artists with you and building that, there’s so many different pins in the cushion that you can define as what defines success. I probably have 300 pins in the cushion.

Yep, that one’s taken care of. Yep, that one’s taken care of. Okay, put a pin in all that fun stuff.

Totally understand that. You mentioned your daughter. Does your family like dance music, and do they specifically like listening to your music?

[Belle Humble]
Yeah, so that’s a lovely question. Recently, my daughter’s dad, he’s a musician as well. He’s a really great musician.

My daughter started going to school in the last couple of years, and they do lots of events there, and fundraisers, and Christmas fairs, and summer fairs. I think one summer, I got wind that I sing. I said, cool, yeah, yeah, we’ll come and do, we did a Christmas jazz set.

That was really fun, just her dad and I. I think we did that a couple of times. Then recently, he wasn’t available to come.

I said, you know what, I’ll just do, if you like, I can just do a bit of a dance set. I’ll just come and sing. I literally did, I made this mini rave for this primary school, which is the young kids school or whatever.

My daughter’s five, and all of her friends, and all these kids were just dancing on stage with me. I could, some people videoed her, and she was in the background, pretending to sing with a microphone, and dancing with me. It was just one of the best shows of my life.

She has been a bit funny when she was younger. She didn’t really like me singing or playing, unless it was directly for her. She wanted my attention all the time on her, unless it was me singing a lullaby at bedtime or whatever.

I was like, I just feel like playing guitar and singing and noodling. She’s like, nah. Recently, and actually, I play her.

Yesterday, I was in my studio, just working on something. I said, come and have a listen to this, what I did today. She put the headphones on.

I was like, what do you think? She’s like, I like it, mummy. I was just so happy, because sometimes she’ll be like, I don’t like this.

You know that one song that goes like this, mummy? I don’t like that one. I love it.

She’s so honest about what she likes. I listen to her. I listen to my mum.

I play my mum loads of stuff. My daughter, she’ll be very honest to feedback on her interpretation of how she feels about it. I love that, when people are really honest.

[Darran]
They say kids just don’t have that filter. They’re brutally honest. Brutally honest.

You just got to love them for that. That’s awesome. Is she allowed to get in the studio and play around with your gear?

Does she ever come in and sit with you in the studio and say, I want to do something? How is that nurturing? How is that going on?

[Belle Humble]
I’ve definitely done that. I would like to do it more with her, but I have to catch when she’s up for it. I’ve got her singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, because I want her to play guitar.

Then she’ll sing with the microphone and do that. Then I’ve just taken up getting better with my DJing recently. I bought a little DJ controller mixing thing, and she was really into it.

I’ve got some pictures of her on the decks and listening with the headphones and looking. To me, I’ve just started off with a little practice DJ controller thing, like an entry level type of Pioneer thing. I just know that that’s going to be hers before too long.

That’s going to be hers when I upgrade mine.

[Darran]
Do you ever get fed up with making music, doing productions? What do you do to deal with that? Or what would be some advice you may give to other producers that are coming out to break through that process?

I know that I’ve had my burnouts over the years, where I didn’t want to pick up a camera, didn’t want to network, or there was just so much going on, or revamping my brand, revamping my look. What do I do if I get fed up with it? Or even why am I doing this?

It’s not happening. Should I do another interview? Is that really going to matter?

I’ve got hundreds of them, thousands of them. What do you do? Do you get fed up with that, or get frustrated with that?

What do you do to cope with that or deal with that?

[Belle Humble]
Oh yeah, definitely. I think that anyone who’s in the creative industry and is entrepreneurial will always face those moments. You’ll just be like, oh, it feels like a lot of work.

I’ve got no energy for this. I used to put so much pressure on myself to be 100% productive, and like you mentioned, you’ve experienced burnout. I definitely experienced burnout because of that, because I put so much pressure on myself.

I would never say no to anything, and I still grapple with that. But recently, funnily enough, you asked me this. Recently, I’ve been practicing my no a little bit when work comes my way, or when pitches come my way, or writing opportunities, or whatever.

And I can’t overload myself because I know that it can lead to that feeling. And also, I allow myself to feel like, do you know what? Today, even though I’ve got this day free, I’ve been working quite hard.

So I’m going to literally do this day. I’m not scheduling anything. My thing today is I’m going to do nothing.

And that might look like going to the coffee shop, or it might look like binge watching something, or it might look like going for a sauna, and not going to exercise, but just going for a sauna, or going for a massage. That’s one of my favorite ones. There’s a really great Thai massage place near me, and they call Thai massage lazy man’s yoga, because they stretch you, and crack you, and do all these things to your body.

And that’s like, okay, this is what I need. I need to do yoga, but I really can’t be bothered, so I’m going to go for a Thai massage.

[Darran]
I’ll have to look into that. My insurance just covers me for massage therapy and acupuncture.

[Belle Humble]
Amazing. I love acupuncture as well. When I’m starting to feel that flat, burn out, annoying feeling like, oh, I really can’t be bothered.

And you start to get this lack of gratitude feeling start to creep in. And that’s also another thing I’ve got to remind myself. Do you know what?

You’re complaining because you’ve just been given some more work to do. Come on, just sort this out, because actually, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes.

Isn’t it great? I get the opportunity to do these sessions, and to work, and I just plow through. But then when I start to feel like that, and I notice it a bit, then that’s when I’m like, I need a day off, I need a morning off.

I make a lot of cups of tea, and I love my coffee, I love my tea. I need to take the breaks when I do. I try to go for a walk every morning, because I know that the sunlight in the morning on your system is really, really good for your body.

And it sets up your whole endocrine system, which is what governs all your hormones. So melatonin, for example, if you get that sunlight in your eyes in the morning, before like 11 or something, or midday, I think it is, then that light is going to help you to produce more melatonin, so you’re going to sleep better later, for example. So there’s little things like that, and everybody’s going to find their own way to do that.

But giving yourself permission just to put it aside, because when you’re doing this as well, you’re consumed, you’re on social media, you’re constantly planning, constantly creating in your head, you’re constantly, I must vision this, I must vision that, I must manifest this, I must manifest that. You’ve got different people coming at you all different times, and all these different directions. And you want to do everything sometimes, like I have these overloads of like, I want to do it all, but my life isn’t going to last that long.

Like, how am I going to make all these things happen? So yeah, it’s being that creative sort of minded person, it can be incredibly overwhelming, and you have to take breaks from it. You always have to take breaks from being a creative person.

[Darran]
And that’s, you know, we were talking a little bit about pre-show, about how 2023, I was kind of on a little bit of a, kind of a, what I would call one of my large, more, one of my bigger hiatuses, I was still doing stuff in the back end, but not much on the forefront of the DJ session. Because 2022 was such a momentous year for us, because we changed our strategy, we changed our approach, you know, where I was sending 40 emails a week in the 2022, to maybe get six to eight interviews a month. I ramped that up to 300 emails a week.

And, you know, once we did that, I think it was in April of last, of 2022, we did that. And I went from, you know, I was booking interviews on my schedule was open from like nine o’clock or 10 o’clock in the morning till four o’clock in the afternoon. So it was just open for anyone to book like on the hour almost.

And I think in May, I had like 57 interviews. June, I had like 47 interviews. I had to increase it and it was three days a week to four days a week.

I wasn’t even eating a lot. That probably would have been where, well, I guess 2023 is when I started losing the weight we were talking about all that fun stuff. But, you know, it went down that for like May, June, July, and even August, I came in and said, this is crazy.

And I revamped it to where there was only interviews available four days a week, 11am Pacific time, 1.30pm Pacific time. And that that year, to go to my first time and the guys working with one of my PR people out of London, out of the UK, was like, Hey, being booked out three and a half months is a good thing in this business. And I was like, you know, I just felt I wanted to do more.

But, you know, it’s just and I was getting articles, you know, write ups, I was doing podcast interviews at the night. And just so much was going on that I think that’s what led into the whole 2023. And I moved to a new place, I wanted to get situated, get the studio up and running, which turned into a little bit of a more extended hiatus, which kind of like that was April when I was ready to launch again.

But then May, June, halfway through the year, and then I was kind of like, it’s summertime, I want to take a break and just make sure this is all dialed in, as we were talking about before the show. But now we’re 2024. We’re back in the mix.

We’re ready to hit it hard. It’s good stuff. But you got to take those breaks sometimes.

Yeah, I always knew I could start back up. Yeah, from where we’re at. You know, it wasn’t like I was letting the brand die.

Yeah, you still got to build that momentum again. Yeah.

[Belle Humble]
And you’ve got to build I think you’ve got to build on your experience as well. Because I have a bit of a theory. Because I did that, like I said before, I was working like seven days a week.

And I was just absolutely, you know, sometimes we do two writing sessions in a day in different locations. It was bonkers. Like it really was.

And what happened was I got, I just kind of like something just kind of cracked in me and excuse my pun for my song, but I just had to take all this time off. And I went off to India, like this is a different trip to India, actually, but I kind of bailed, I kind of pushed myself so hard that I was forced to take off time because I was just so like, and I think that if we can do it more like slow and steady, and make sure that you get those breaks in and that time, because if you just go all in, then you kind of almost have to come back from that and then go all out.

So if you can make it a bit more of a balance, like the middle way, I’ve realized that like the value of the middle way is that you, you kind of balance that out as you go along.

[Darran]
And you mentioned like, you know, you sometimes like the binge watch shows and take that break and do all that stuff. I mean, on my to do board right now, I have a daily, weekly, monthly and one off schedules. Like it’s my priority to do this, like manifest, this is how I’m running the business.

It’s just there. And one of my things says, you know, one is take my vitamins. The second is, if I’m doing a binge watch now, and I got into this bad over the last, like, I probably say about a month and a half ago, I was been, I’d wake up, eat breakfast, binge watch, do, do back in stuff, but binge watch for like six hours a day.

And I’m like, if I’m going to binge watch from now on, I got a gym upstairs in my building. I’m going to go binge watch. I call it the binge workout.

I’m going to get on, I’m going to get on the elliptical. And if I’m going to watch a show for an hour, I’m going to be on that elliptical for an hour, two hours, just as long as I’m walking. Because in Seattle, the weather can be like today, it’s a great, partly cloudy day, it’s blue sky, we’re above where I’m at, but there’s clouds all around.

You know, and it could be a favorable walk day. But, you know, I’m right upstairs, I have internet, it’s warm, I have beautiful view on the 17th floor of my building. And you know, get up there on the elliptical, put it on.

And if emails are coming in, I can answer emails, I could take phone calls, but I’m still binge watching the show. I’m kind of in the office, but it’s a workout office, you know, type of thing. It’s got to stay tuned with that, you know, just get up and get that body moving rather than sitting in a chair all day long.

You know, and eating food, binge watching.

[Belle Humble]
It’s so true. Like, I have those moments, like, yes, it could, it could be unhealthy to do that. Like, I totally hear you.

Because I, I haven’t, I stopped drinking like a year ago, alcohol. And, and I still really like drinking. And I just don’t do it because it just, it just made me feel terrible.

The hangovers, I just didn’t want any kind of like, it just made me feel tired. You know, I didn’t enjoy it anymore. But like this sort of thing, this kind of fun thing that I would do with friends, sometimes socially and stuff that was gone.

And then it’s like, oh, and Netflix is quite fun to watch. You can binge watch. And there’s a reason they call it binge watch, because it’s kind of like doing something that’s like slightly addictive, you know, it’s like kind of like, oh, and it’s the same with me.

It’s like I, like I mentioned before, I’ve got a five year old and my house is chaos. Like I have to when she’s off to when I get off to school, I’ve got to like redo the house every day. Because it just is like, whoa, like a whirlwind every morning.

And, and so again, like putting, listening to a podcast or putting something on and then tidying up. Well, I do that like yourself, you know, like multitasking, like doing something fun with something that’s practical and useful for your life as well, instead of just like, no, totally.

[Darran]
You know, how do you we kind of just you kind of, I guess we kind of just discovered just went through this question. But I didn’t ask the question, you know, I wanted to ask, how do you balance your production career with your other obligations in life? I mean, me, if I don’t have my to do lists, I literally have all my to do lists.

And it goes back almost to 2005. Since I started, I want to make a coffee table book one day, and like title it, what it takes it what it takes to make it in the film, television, internet distribution industry, and it’d be just a coffee table, all I know, different anecdotes from the different years that I look back and, you know, to me to do this item, there might be a key line item here that says, call sponsors. But to me, that might be call 15 different people or send 15 different emails.

You know, to me, it means something to somebody else, it might just be gobbledygook if they could read my hand. Yeah, I gotta stay on topic like that. If I don’t have my to do list, that’s the only way I can balance all of this.

I literally have to write, take a shower, shave, take the garbage out, do the dishes, just so it’s there. Not that I’m not mismanaged, it’s just like, Oh, you know what, if I’m taking a break, I’m not gonna binge watch. I’m gonna go do the dishes, or I’m gonna take the garbage out and check it off.

And they say that when you do that, there’s the four chemicals your body produces, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin. But there’s the one that like, when you do a to do list, and it’s not a digital, put an X on the box, but you physically write it, you’re physically manifesting. And when you cross that off, it gives you a surge.

I don’t know if it’s dopamine, is it dopamine? Yeah, dopamine, that you’re accomplishing something. And you know, it’s like, do do do do do.

And now I mean, I’ve gone to putting notes on my phone. And I used to write them down and cross them off. But now with my device, I always take it back to I remember this job I had in the I was like, I got an iPhone, I can put all my notes in the iPhone.

And the guy, the manager goes, you know what, iPhone has a battery on it, that battery dies, your SOL. And whereas if you have a book, you write it on paper, that’ll never have a battery that dies on it. So carry a notebook with you and a pen or pencil.

And that way you can have that device that’s never gonna die. Of course, nowadays, devices last hours, and you can back up to the cloud. So you know, you can go to your laptop and still get access to your notes, or you charge your phone.

But this is like 2006. And I had a BlackBerry or something like, yeah, it was there. But I don’t think he had adopted technology.

But anyways, got to stay focused, got to stay on balance. And if I have something pop up in the middle of the night, or during the day, or when I’m out and about, I put it on that to do list. And then I’m not sitting there thinking about it.

Because it’s there. And it’s I just remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I don’t know if you’re a fan of Sean Connery.

Harrison Ford is saying to Sean Connery goes, Well, you wrote all this down, didn’t you memorize it? He goes, No, I wrote them down and put them in a book. So I wouldn’t have to memorize it.

[Belle Humble]
Yeah.

[Darran]
But he actually later on in the movie, you find out that yes, he memorized everything that he had written in the book, which is just classic. But, you know, it’s, I guess we did cover that is how you balance your production and career with the other obligations in life. You know, it’s just tough.

[Belle Humble]
What you what you’ve said is like one of the most simple, yet one of the very most effective tools that I’ve ever found. And I don’t apply it every day. And I I’ve just been inspired again to do it because I have my notebooks.

And every single time, or I’ve just got like a piece of paper, whatever. Every single time I do that my days are so much more productive. And that feeling of crossing a got across it off.

And I love using a pen and paper and ink. Especially like just something about the ink as well. Like I’ve got pencils lying around pencils everywhere.

But like, an ink and paper, this is something about it. Like writing that physical kind of thing. To me, I really like that.

And then I do and I cross them off like, like I have done all this. And then I see one of my like you said, like you’ve got these scraps or this notebook, whatever. And you’re like, wow, I did all that.

And I can just rest easy now. So I think it’s really I’ve actually painted one of the walls in my kitchen with blackboard paint. So sometimes I just go in there and write stuff on there.

[Darran]
You know, it’s funny you mentioned that, because I have a friend of mine, she does everything, pen and paper. Yeah, everything into her diary into a thing. And does it all schedule?

And I’m like, you know, they make online tools for that now, which would be awesome. And it would, if you put it into your computer, it’s gonna sync, you know, your calendar, your phone, your watch, and all that fun stuff. No, I like physically doing it.

I’m like, okay, but it is a huge time saver, because you could be doing this and putting it digitally and store it in the cloud. Yeah, fun stuff. But one of the things she got me for my birthday was the similar like the chalkboard wall.

Yeah, the chalkboard wall, but she got me a bunch of butcher’s paper, which I was supposed to put up right on that wall right there. And I was read out my major task. Because people don’t know what they think.

Oh, I’m just a guy. I have a video camera or my laptop camera. I click and I’m interviewing bell.

Yeah, that’s all I do. Like I just do interviews. It’s like, no, if you saw my task board, you know, what goes on and what’s interconnected to everything in the web that I’m weaving and putting together, you’d be like, Whoa, you really do a lot of crap.

And there’s a lot of things going on. I should look into the blackboard stuff. I have a whiteboard right here in front of me.

But that’s like the that’s like the automatic, you have to do these daily, daily, weekly and monthly tasks that are fixed things. But you know, I want to create that big board and then cross things off on a big scale. But I think, you know, now I think about I’d like to get a big, big whiteboard.

Yeah, because that way you can wipe things off. But I like about my phone is it actually keeps the notes. I’ll take the ones I haven’t completed make a new note and leave the ones that I’ve checked off there.

Yeah, we have a whiteboard and you erase something. It’s like, like, that’s why I like the paper sheets. Because I can always go back because I’ll keep notes in here.

Where did I write that note down? But if I erase it on the whiteboard, I feel like it’s gone. And it’s out of existence.

Now.

[Belle Humble]
I quite like that feeling. I think that I’m different to you in that sense, because I like that feeling of like, as if like the there’s a tree that has all the leaves that go throughout the summer, and then the autumn comes and those trees have like imprints of the summer and all that happened there. And then they just become red and orange, and they just fall to the ground.

And then they’re recycled into the earth. And they’re transformed into something else. And I kind of feel like that about my notes and to do lists.

Like, I quite like that they just kind of disappear. Because it’s done. All right, done into the ether.

Like now bring me some space to bring me some new stuff that I need to do. So I’m quite like sort of ritualistic about the actual dissolving of them.

[Darran]
Totally understand. Sometimes it is that nice. That’s done.

[Belle Humble]
Yeah. I’m not very organized by nature. I’ve got quite a scattered kind of way of viewing the world.

And, and I’ve always been a bit overwhelmed by keeping a load of files on my computer. Like, I’m kind of like, I always have to clear up my, you know, like the desktop thing, it gets so crazy. And even myself, like spatially, I’m just, it’s a lot for me to manage.

So I like to the less clutter and virtually, digitally, and in my home, the better for me, because otherwise, I get very, like, almost like a sensory out overwhelm. I don’t know what that is. I got over like, what kind of, I don’t, I can’t say if I identify as any kind of thing, but I’ve got this certain way of managing information that.

[Darran]
And, and we talked about, you know, those are kind of good habits of having those, those to do lists and check off things. Are there any bad habits that you have that are actually beneficial to your career?

[Belle Humble]
Yes, I’d say that I, I am like, the ultimate kind of optimist. And like, to a point where it’s like, unrealistic to many people, people would think I’m kind of like, completely disillusioned. I’m a massive risk taker.

Like, I’ve just kind of gone for stuff. I’m like, I want to do that. And then I just do it.

And it can take a while to build up and it can take a while to make money from it. But I just keep following my I’ve got this like, very sort of open hearted, kind of like, yeah, I can make that happen. Like almost naive, risk taking kind of thing within me.

But I think that’s the entrepreneurial spirit, you have to have that in order to succeed. Because most people wouldn’t want to even live like that, because it’s just too, too unnerving or something. But I don’t find that at all.

Like, I find that my ability to just kind of freefall into, into new creations and experiences and ways of making money and living my life to my fullest potential and being passionate about it at the same time. Like, that drives me and I just, I always have this, this, this headspace that I’m going to succeed.

[Darran]
You’re talking to the guy who put floating billboards on Lake Washington. We have two, two floating bridges on and you know, I’m in the advertising game and I do mobile billboard trucks. And I thought one day driving across one of the bridges, I said, What would it take to take one of my mobile billboard trucks and put that concept on a boat and put it next to the floating bridges where there’s no billboards and have 100,000 cars a day driving by in this drive across the bridge, you’re gonna never in these bridges have been there at the time.

This is like 2011, 2012 and the bridges have been there for at least 50 plus years. I think somewhere around there. And I’m like, nobody ever thought about putting a billboard on the side of a boat and parking it next to the bridge, you know, and like advertising major Budweiser or, you know, Subway sandwiches or whoever.

And I’m like, yeah, I’m like, I’m gonna go for it. Floating billboards, you know, and people are like, you’re crazy, dude. And, you know, I’ve had that same thing over the years where people thought that even shifting from going from being a television producer and getting into the advertising world, they’re like, wait a second, you’re the television guy.

Now you want to sell ads on the side of mobile billboard trucks and floating billboards and do that. And I’m like, yeah, but I was selling advertising for TV.

[Belle Humble]
Yeah.

[Darran]
I’m just moving and selling advertising on a different medium. It’s not a easy analogy. I wasn’t going from selling TV ads to selling lollipops.

[Belle Humble]
Yeah.

[Darran]
Selling is still selling. You just got to know your product, believe in your product. I loved working for Nordstrom’s.

I loved working for Apple back in the day. I found I was more better off as a self-made entrepreneur and being able to control my own life, you know, and that was fun because I get a lot more freedom. You know, I ran into a lot of headaches in the corporate world of trying to move fast and corporate wouldn’t let you move as fast as you wanted to.

You’re stuck climbing that ladder. You only hit a certain level of success and you had to wait for somebody to move out of the way and go through the hiring pool. And maybe you’d be, if you kissed enough butt, you might be the person that gets the job.

You know, whereas here I joke about it. I’m the Elon Musk. I’m the Jeff Bezos.

I’m the leader of the company. Somebody comes to me and I’m the last rung on the totem pole. I’m the level 13.

[Belle Humble]
You are the director. Yeah.

[Darran]
Yeah. I’m the director. So I got to make those decisions.

I can move so fast. There’s a book called Good to Great. And you know, it talks about, you know, a lot of these companies are like a steamship.

You take a steamship that’s going down like this and it’s very hard for it to turn around and go 180. You know, whereas me, I can go like, whoop. I can move as fast as the current flows to adjust and maneuver.

So, you know, it’s really great. And you know, I know we’re running a little long here, but that’s okay. It’s been a great, great interview with you.

You know, we definitely plan on following back up with you. We’d like to stay in touch with all of our artists that come on the show. We’re trying to stay on every six months.

You might see an email come through every three months and you can just say, I don’t have anything new, but every six months we want to keep having you come back on the show. Is there anything else you want to let our DJ Sessions fans know before I let you go?

[Belle Humble]
Well, I just, it’s great to connect with you wherever you are, whoever you are. And it’s been a pleasure, Darran. Thank you so much for having me on the show again.

I always really appreciate and value these opportunities to share my voice and share my experiences. And I just think that the more that we share with one another, the more that we find similarities or kind of, there’s so much more to reflect. We’re all like mirrors with one another, you know, and we can learn so much by having these kinds of conversations where we share and we also listen and like the listening is just such a valuable part.

So thank you, Darran, for sharing so much with me too. It’s always these kinds of conversations you walk away and there’s a lot to reflect and learn from and grow from. So yeah, let’s all just keep doing that listening and sharing.

[Darran]
Absolutely. I think that’s one of the key takeaways from the DJ Sessions is being able to talk with so many artists and people from around the world, share their experiences and whether, you know, it’s a beginner in the industry or somebody who doesn’t know or a seasoned veteran in the industry, you know, getting that tidbit of information that oh, wow, I never thought of that or oh, wow, that was a really interesting, you know, thought on that process or that’s my process or even building connections. You know, if you were on the show and somebody reached out to you say, I saw your interview on the DJ Sessions and I was really impressed with you and I’m following you now, I want more of your music or an artist says, I’d love to collab with you and something happens. That’s always been about what the synergy of the DJ Sessions has been is obviously, or not obviously, but making like a network opportunity for artists no matter where they’re at in their career.

You know, like I said, just starting out or even seasoned. So again, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Again, we’ll follow up with you here soon.

Where can people find out more information about you? Where’s the best place to go?

[Belle Humble]
Yeah, I’m quite active on Instagram. And yeah, so I post stuff from there. And I think that I’ll always keep people kind of in the loop about what’s happening on Instagram, because I have also started a YouTube channel, which I’m developing and that’s something that’s kind of in the pipeline.

But Instagram, I’ll always be posting on there to direct people to wherever, if I have releases or just to like say hi or whatever. So yeah, that’s a good place to find me. Belle Humble.

Belle like Beauty and the Beast and Humble like Humble Pie.

[Darran]
Right there down at the bottom of the screen, Belle at Belle Humble on Instagram. Thank you again, Belle, for coming on the show today.

[Belle Humble]
Thank you so much. Thank you.

[Darran]
You’re welcome. On that note, don’t forget to go to our website, thedjsessions.com. You can find us on Meta, X, Instagram.

You know, we’re out there on every social media platform, pretty much every podcast platform too. You can subscribe to the shows. Visit our website though.

We got over 2,500 episodes, interviews, exclusive mixes coming out all the time, over 600 news stories aggregated into our site. So you can spend time there to your heart’s content and find something new every day at thedjsessions.com. You know, we have contests, merchandise, all that fun stuff, again, at thedjsessions.com.

I’m your host, Darran, coming to you from the virtual studios in Seattle, Washington, and that’s Belle Humble coming in from London for The DJ Sessions. And remember, on The DJ Sessions, the music never stops.