Syence – From College Chemistry Class to Melodic House Innovation on the Virtual Sessions 9/24/25

Summary

Brayden and Zach, the creative duo behind Syence, joined Darran Bruce for an engaging conversation about their journey from college classmates to established artists in the electronic music scene. Meeting in a science class at Cal Poly, they bonded over shared influences ranging from Blink-182 to the rise of electronic pioneers like Zedd. This early connection evolved into a long-term creative partnership, with their official project taking shape around 2017.

 

Their sound is defined as euphoric melodic house, a genre they embrace for its uplifting and immersive qualities. Collaborations such as “Crashing Down” with MashBit highlight their chemistry and ability to create tracks that resonate both in clubs and on streaming platforms. They emphasized their hands-on approach to engineering and mastering, testing tracks across multiple environments to ensure the music connects universally.

 

Syence also discussed the challenges of shifting from their early “bass pop” style to melodic house, acknowledging the difficulties of rebranding while retaining fans. Their focus now lies heavily on cultivating authentic fan relationships rather than solely chasing industry validation. Both artists stressed the importance of balance and well-being, sharing personal experiences with diet, fitness, and even incorporating tools like ChatGPT to stay sharp.

 

Looking ahead, they are excited to embrace the intimacy of 200-300 capacity shows on their self-booked tours, finding fulfillment in closer fan interactions. With their Honor Roll merch line and grassroots approach, Syence continues to foster a loyal community while pursuing longevity in a fast-changing industry.

 

Topics

0:06 – Origins of Syence and how they met in college
1:22 – Early musical influences and discovering electronic music
2:42 – Defining their sound as melodic, euphoric house
3:24 – Collaboration process on “Crashing Down” with MashBit
6:41 – Approach to engineering, mastering, and testing tracks
9:16 – Standout tracks and pivotal releases in their catalog
13:26 – Reflecting on career milestones and evolving fan focus
22:54 – Balancing fitness, health, and life outside the studio
28:05 – Issues with the music industry and reliance on social media
47:56 – Touring independently and building intimate fan experiences

Connect with Syence

Instagram: @syence

[Darran]
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of The DJ Sessions Presents The Virtual Sessions. I’m your host Darran, and right now I’m sitting in the virtual studio in Seattle, Washington, and coming in from, you know what guys, I forgot to ask where you’re located, pre-show, but where are y’all coming in today from, Brayden and Zach? Yeah, I’m in San Diego, California.

Okay. And I’m in LA, California. Okay, not too far from each other.

I was just down there at Magic Mountain for my 51st birthday. I had to do another, I love that, I love that theme park. But yeah.

Brayden and Zach with syence. And what’s happening there, that’s being watched and business on your Instagram, making sure it’s coming through okay. Yeah.

I forgot to turn the audio off on that. No worries, it happens, but we’re going to get down to business with syence today in the studio on the show. So, syence, you are been doing a lot of stuff.

I was just looking over your bio, and you’ve got some tracks, collabs. Phineas, how long have you two been doing this for? Because I know y’all met in school, and I want to hear the story about that.

That origin story is kind of cool, because it’s like, I’m a big sci-fi fan. syence, sci-fi, kind of works out. You know, how did syence get started?

And let our fans know, for those that don’t know.

[Syence]
Yeah, we met in a syence class in 2011, our first quarter of college at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. So, that’s partially where the name comes from. And we bonded over the fact we needed to study for tests together, but also we had very similar tastes in music.

We loved bands like Blink-182 and Angels and Airwaves. And as we explored the music side of our friendship, Zach got me really hooked into a lot of the stuff happening in the electronic music world. I still vividly remember him showing me the first video that made Mattyon’s career happen, amongst other things.

And so, that kind of built this love for electronic music together. I started DJing my fraternity parties. Zach started making music in a variety of tools.

At one point, we were trying to make almost like Blink-182 music in a DAW, which just didn’t work. But eventually, all those things kind of matriculated into us realizing we could do electronic music. I think it was that Zedd set at Coachella in like 2014.

We were like, we want to do that. You’re making good music. I can perform.

Let’s put it together and figure out our sound. And we’ve been on a journey on that ever since. So, I’d say like the official start date is probably more around the 2017 era for this project.

But we’ve been doing it for almost 15 years now together in one way or another. Yeah, nice.

[Darran]
And you can describe, I mean, I know you kind of said the way you were trying to make your music and go down that road. If you could describe your music in three words, three words, what would you call it? One would, I mean, we probably have different words we’d both use, but I would say we probably both agree that melodic is probably a good word because I think we strive for very melody forward music.

We want our listeners to be able to remember and hum what they’re listening to sometimes. I don’t know, maybe you give one, Brayden, and then I’ll give a third one.

[Syence]
I mean, the genre we call is melodic house, which is two words. So that’s probably the easiest way to answer your question. That’s like our genre.

[Darran]
Yeah, house. We do typically do a lot of house related songs. Sometimes we venture away, but that’s kind of our sweet spot right now.

I guess the third for me would be like euphoric, maybe. Like, I think we’re always trying to tap into this kind of like, forget what’s going on around you and lose yourself in the moment kind of energy for our shows and the music that we make. And we’ve evolved over the years, but where we’re at right now, I’d say that’s kind of the sweet spot, euphoric, melodic house, like that kind of world.

And you’ve worked with a number of artists over the years, but your recent single with MASHBIT, Crashing Down, that’s out right now. People can go get that right now, right? Awesome.

What was it like collaborating with MASHBIT, putting that together? How did y’all… Yeah, we met like all collabs pretty much these days just on the internet, like through social media.

And I think, you know, he was putting out a lot of songs that we really enjoyed and we were putting out a lot of music he really enjoyed. So we kind of bonded over that. And I think we just like DM’d and we’re like, hey, like we should work on something.

And he lives right down the street from me in LA, like literally eight minutes away from my house. So it just kind of worked out. And so he came over a couple of times and, you know, Brayden was in San Diego at the time.

So the first session was just me and Darius working, and we just kind of, you know, clicked on a couple of ideas. And, you know, we ended up landing on what ended up becoming a Crashing Down after, you know, all of us, including Brayden, started like working on it and fleshing it out. But that one came together pretty quickly.

I’m pretty sure the first demo me and Darius worked on was like pretty much the whole song, except for like a few things that Brayden came in and added. And then, you know, we obviously went back and forth on the mixing of it. But that was a pretty relatively quick one.

Usually our best ideas happen pretty fast. I think that’s cracks for a lot of artists too, I think.

[Syence]
Yeah, one of the most complete demos I’ve been sent by Zach, where I’m like, I have some ideas that you guys, this is pretty, I could put this out today and probably be happy. So like they crushed it initially, like right out of the gate. It was really good.

[Darran]
Do you do all your in-house mastering as well? Yeah, we do all of our own engineering. So I’ve been working on engineering for a very long time.

Like I kind of started learning how to mix back in 2012, I guess. So I kind of handle that for us, or I try to, you know, it’s, it is nice to work with other people sometimes because, you know, your own ears, if you made the song and you’re engineering, the song can sometimes trick you. So occasionally we’ll like work with other collaborators on stuff, but ultimately we like to be the kind of final say on the sonic, you know, finish point of the track.

I just think it’s like, especially with electronic music, the mix and the master have so much to do with the way the song feels and the it works in a, you know, a show setting. So we really like to be able to have that be part of the art that we’re putting forward. You gotta ask, do you do the car test?

Yeah, we should. I think we both do it. Like I think that’s probably Brayden’s favorite spot to listen to our music in, is in your, in your car.

[Syence]
We do the car test. We do the AirPods test. At least I do.

I think Zach’s similar. I do the play it only from the phone speaker test. I do it, play it from any system, but being a different room test, like there’s a lot of tests that go in.

[Darran]
Yeah. I would say we listen on at least like seven or eight different environments. That’s a very smart move to do.

I think it, you know, that’s a very good tip for producers to, to actually listen to it on other sound systems that even, you know, lo and behold, if they can get it into a club and test it on a club system, you know, or at least on some PAs or what it’s going to sound like amplified. You know, I had somebody recently try to play a song on one of our shows in our mobile studio and it wasn’t mastered. It wasn’t done.

And I was like, I’m sitting there going, what’s going on with my audio thinking everything’s going out of whack. And it was the track they were playing. And I’m like, yeah, don’t ever do that ever again.

If you could take a look at the list of your productions that you’ve done so far, you know, obviously crashing down excluded, which one stands out to you both the most and why. It’s a lot to pick from. I really, so there, we have a song that came out with our album.

It was called daylight and I don’t necessarily think it represents what our sound is perfectly, but I think that like what that song meant for kind of the transition in our career at the time where we were sort of moving away from making like more pop leaning electronic music, like dance pop into more of kind of like this euphoric uptempo house, like electrically electronic genre music. And I think that at the time that song was like really special in sort of defining like that direction we were going in. And it also happened to do really well on the internet, which obviously, you know, makes you feel better as an artist when you have people, you know, giving you that gratification of like, Hey, we really like this and we’re really excited to hear more from you.

So I think that song in particular, and it happened to be a collaboration with our good friend, Brian BK. And he’s a very similar, you know, on the grind, trying to be an artist with us, like in that same kind of lane. So it’s always good to, you know, have that sort of, you know, connection to someone else when you’re working on stuff.

Um, yeah, I would, I would probably go with that. I’m sure Brayden has a different answer.

[Syence]
Yeah, it’s like, there’s like three different answers for me, because it’s different, it’s different things that stand out. But like, I think our Focus remix, which is not an official remix, Jon Summit’s Focus with Cloves is like probably my favorite sonically, because it kind of hits all areas of our sound, like there’s some aggressive bass sort of sound design, but very euphoric and uplifting writing. And it kind of comes together as like one song that feels like a journey and the end.

We also have our song The Distance, which was our first song within Juna Beats, which is like one of our two, I would say, top dream labels. So that song really stands out to me, one because of where it ended up. But two, like it does feel like that’s one of our first if not our first songs that like hit this target demographic and sound we’re trying to and continuing to perfect.

And then my favorite overall song when it comes to like streaming and listening and just being proud and feeling like it hits every angle is also from our album. It’s a collaboration with our friend Dea Magna called Lose My Mind. And that one just it works in every single possible environment like on a long car ride at the club, a sunset set like and that’s where I want our music to live personally.

Like when I think melodic house, it’s good for a sunset set at the beach. It’s good in a club and can still maintain the energy there. And a lot of those in Juna and This Never Happened, Laynate’s label, a lot of those artists are really good at hitting all those areas.

And that’s kind of what we’re aspiring to do with our own twist.

[Darran]
You know, I just asked an artist recently, I said, does dance music sound better at night? And this is actually yes, Jay. And he said, you know, there’s a different time and a place for different genres of music because I have my daytime crate, literally because he plays vinyl, my daytime crate, and I have my nighttime crate, you know, and sometimes I’ll make a show that I would want people to listen to chilling at the beach, you know, in the daytime, and I want the nighttime sultry kind of Latin house kind of stuff that he was going for. So I totally can understand that. You mentioned a lot of stuff there that kind of sounds like there were a lot of big breaks for your career in a sense of things that were kind of momentous accomplishments.

But do you have one that you both can kind of collaborate on and say, this was the biggest break that really took us over the edge and kind of got us in the pool into the mainstream or out there? Anything that comes to mind when that the one pivotal moment that went, this is awesome. This is where we took off.

Huh. I mean, I think we would both say we still feel like we haven’t even hit that point yet. Like I still want a lot more and I’m sure Brayden agrees.

So, but obviously everything’s relative. I mean, we’ve accomplished so much. And I think that, you know, we’ve been doing this a really long time.

So it’s hard to pinpoint any one event that feels like it changed the game for us in any significant way. You know, I think that we had a lot of great growth in like the 2020 to 2022 range. It wasn’t necessarily any one thing, but that was kind of the first time we, you know, really took things seriously from like a touring perspective.

We played a lot of shows. We got to play a bunch of festivals and with a bunch of really big artists that are kind of like tier one artists like Zedd and Son Holo and Alan Walker and Cashmere and like, you know, two friends. Like we we’ve gotten to have a lot of great experiences and I don’t necessarily think it was any one thing.

I, you know, we’ve had songs that have streamed really well and quote unquote, I guess, you know, are our hits, but nothing that really feels like it’s like catapulted us at least yet. And I’m confident that we’re going to have it one day. But I think, you know, a lot of what we do and what we’re passionate about with syence is just, you know, continuing to fulfill ourselves artistically, continuing to get to play cool shows.

So as long as we’re doing that, you know, we’re going to keep going and we’re going to keep working on stuff. But I don’t really see it as like, you know, certain thing has caused a certain thing. It doesn’t really work that way in my head, at least.

I don’t know if Brayden feels any different.

[Syence]
It’s definitely true, like where we’re at now. I think that what’s important to know about syence is like we’ve kind of had two careers in one. When we first started making music, we defined our sound as bass pop.

So we’re not making like super euphoric melodic music. It was like very pop oriented vocal with like gritty bass sound design. And maybe we were kind of like old school Lewis the Child Wheaton in our sound.

I would still say it was a lot different, but like that was the world we started in in 2017. And one of our first collabs put us on the map. It was globally viral on Spotify.

Fast forward a few years, we signed with Wasserman for our agent. And then our management team was Big Night, which is a big entertainment conglomerate out of Boston area. And I would say those signings plus that collab were two very notable, like more people in the industry knew about us.

I don’t think we did a great job like building a fan base in that time period. Like we were doing a really good job going from San Luis Obispo where there’s no music industry to now being a part of it and knowing a lot of our idols and getting in sessions and playing festivals and meeting new labels. Like that was a big turning point.

The problem is we decided to change our genre basically end to end. And when we did that, we lost our agent, lost our team. So we kind of restarted, but we did bring a lot of our fans over.

And in this new era of syence, we’ve doubled down on like fan engagement and fan growth and less on like playing the industry game, so to speak. And it’s a harder path to take where you’re going purely the fan route, but it’s been more enjoyable because we, the fans are what has stayed with us the whole time. They’re the ones that love our music no matter what.

They don’t care about the financial aspect, right? They are like, this music’s good. Your set is good.

Like we love you. Let’s grow together. And so it is a bit of a restart and it’s era number two for us, but I think we’re both way more fulfilled, especially with what the music is now, because it’s a genre we both listen to outside of syence.

Whereas in the past, it was a little more like this is syence, but I’m still listening to melodic house 24 seven. So why not make that? So it’s amazing.

Yeah, I know.

[Darran]
It’s amazing that I love it when guests come on the show and you don’t know what questions I’m going to ask, which is one awesome, but you’re almost asking, you’re answering either my next question or you’re leading me right into my next question. But two, I just did an interview with somebody over in the UK this morning and she does A&R, artist management, artist development, everything. And one of the biggest things that she gets asked a lot of, and I managed, I got a chance to ask her this question as well as to define what a super fan is and why they’re so important.

And I guess, you know, the way she goes, Oh, I get asked this question all the time, you know, and I’m like, well, for our viewers, what is a super fan? And, you know, I went down the fact that, you know, you’re right. It isn’t necessarily about there’s one of those sirens.

It isn’t the fact that, you know, you, you need, you know, you got to look at your different target revenue growth patterns. One second. Siren home.

[Syence]
We’re going to get you some sound.

[Darran]
I live on, I live on an avenue called Broadway, which is like one of the biggest thoroughfares in downtown Seattle. And I live next to a hospital. And then the police station is not too far away, but I’m like right in the heart of the city.

And they use it as a thoroughfare back and forth. And I mean, I’m 16 floors up. So it’s like, Oh, well, that’s why there’s a mute button.

But that being said, is she talked about the super fan. And I did some math recently. You know, if you really look at it and dialing in, like you said, and having catering to your fans, you look at your different revenue streams that you have.

And, and you’re, you’re there’s a word you just used your, your personal. Oh, gosh, what’s the word I’m looking for here. You’re, you’re, you’re feel good at the end of the day.

You feel good. Rather than what was that? Our fulfillment.

Thank you. Thank you. That’s the word I was looking for the fulfillment you get from, from working, you know, maybe going after the super fans and working with them, then trying to just, I’m playing a show in front of another 50,000 people.

Okay. Nobody care. Okay.

You know, 50,000 people, that’d be awesome too. You know, but yeah, the super fan, I did some math recently on just one artist that I know I’ve had them on the show. I won’t name drop them to give them a shameless plug, but you’ll, you’ll know who they are.

If I were to tell you about, Oh yeah, those guys. But if you looked at them having their fans and they’re doing a Twitch stream and you know, they get their bits every time they go live, which is a penny per bit, but those can add up, you know, a hundred bits is a buck. If you’ve got a thousand bits to show, that’s a thousand bucks you’re getting each time you’re streaming from just bit.

I mean, percentages from Twitch and side, but you know, you got those $5 subscribers. Okay. You get, you know, 3000 of those and you’re split, but then you got, you know, a thousand of those super followers that are paying the 25 bucks a month, you know?

And so you’re getting, if you were getting a good percentage with Twitch or a line of getting $25,000 a month off of supers. Okay. That’s what?

300,000 a year. You got your baselines of, you know, your 3000 a month. So there’s another 36 and you get your thousand bucks per every episode you do with bits, you know, and that’s, if you go live three times a week, well, that’s 12,000 bucks, another 144 year.

So you’re kind of doing about 500,000 a year, just live streaming on Twitch with that as your base core of a thousand super fans, you know, maybe 3000 or so fans at five bucks per service. And, and, you know, it’s kind of like, why do you have to tour anymore? What can you do with that kind of revenue coming in?

And I take this stance because people thought I was crazy for doing a live streaming DJ show 10 years before Pandy. Who wants to watch a DJ online? What’s Twitch?

Okay. Now everyone knows what Twitch is. They understand it’s a monetary thing that you can do and use to get yourself out as an artist.

Um, I mean, YouTube was there, but you obviously got to watch out for copyrights and Facebook had the copyrights and licensing and all that fun stuff. We won’t go down that pathway, but it’s just awesome to see people able to turn this into and dive into those super, the super fans, you know, and, and work towards that as a, as a base and come out with something at the end of the day, I would have to be making millions or hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands, a thousand bucks might be something to keep the streaming servers on or the lights on, you know, or buy a new plugin or something, but yeah, definitely working with the, keeping in touch with those, those fans is a key thing. Going back to production though, you know, producing music stands totally synonymous with spending countless hours behind the screen, behind your computer screen, sitting down, making your beats, doing all this stuff.

What do y’all find the time to stay fit? Like physically fit? Physically fit.

I just got in this chair. I was telling you a little pre-show. I was out for the camera for like eight and a half months.

I came back, sat in this chair. I put on 30 pounds since like May, sitting back in this chair again, doing stuff. And I mean, I try to get up.

I got my VR stuff going on, but what, do you have any routines or anything that you do when you’re taking a break or you hit that roadblock or get up from the chairs and say, boom, this is my mantra. Zach, I’ll let you start. And then Brayden, we can come in.

Yeah. Well, I have a dog now that over the last like two years. So I luckily can go take her on a walk, which kind of helps you like reset a little bit.

I struggle with that myself though. You’re totally right. I mean, like when you’re used to being in your cave, like making your music and feeling good by being still or any job on a computer, it’s definitely something that I’ve struggled with.

So, you know, trying to get a gym membership, trying to force yourself to go have some you time outside of the studio. I think just generally going outside, like forcing yourself to stop and like give your ears a break, give your mind a break and just like go without technology outside. I think they call it like grounding yourself.

You know, some people like take their shoes off and touch grass. Right. I, you know, it does seem to help me a lot.

Like I just like to kind of go out, get fresh air. So I just try to do that. I would say every four hours at most, like I try to force myself to kind of do that in terms of, you know, fitness, though.

I would say also just like eating habits are probably the number one thing that have changed my life in terms of like being healthier and not putting on unnecessary weight is just eating as best you can because, you know, you don’t really need to exercise that much to stay healthy if you’re eating well. So I think that that’s something I try to focus on as much as possible. I, I have, well, Braden has stuff, too, but I’m a, I’m a diabetic, so I have to like monitor my food and how I eat.

So that kind of forces my hand a little bit on being a little healthier these days. Not everyone has that luxury. It’s not really a luxury, but you get what I’m saying.

Like you have to have a lot more self-will to eat better. But I would say those two things, like eating healthy and just like trying to get outside and walking even if you can’t go to the gym. Definitely.

Braden, any, any tips or tricks you got out there that helps keep you mentally in the game or it keeps you from getting exhausted and burning out? I know one thing Braden has, which is your indoor treadmill that you have in the studio.

[Syence]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that thing’s sick. That’s what I’m really busy. But yeah, I mean, it’s like making yourself the number one priority and making smart decisions are like the general approach I take, which is easier said than done.

I’ve had Crohn’s disease since I was 18, which is basically like inflammation of your digestive system. So like spicy foods, like processed sugar, alcohol, all that stuff can really take an extra toll on me. And so, you know, I haven’t always followed the rules as well as I should have.

Like when I was in college, I partied super hard and all that stuff. But as I’ve gotten older, like I don’t really drink anymore. I barely go out in that kind of way anymore.

I still love being social, like seeing my friends. But I’ve just I’ve picked healthier activities to ground myself, I guess. I still do all the going outside.

I’m really just passionate about making sure I get to the gym and I see a personal trainer and all that stuff just to stay in tune with my body. I would say like additional tips beyond everything Zach said, though, is I actually have used chat GPT quite a bit on dieting. Not like that.

I don’t need help on like what my diet should be. But I use one of the GPTs that’s like a culinary expert, meaning it’s grounded in culinary data. And I just constantly ask it like, hey, I’m going low inflammation for the meal.

I want to go a little higher protein, lower calorie, lower carb. So I’m just like keeping it easy on my body. And it spits out like 10 ideas every time I ask it.

I pick one that looks interesting. I go back and forth on, hey, instead of mashed potatoes, can we do sweet potatoes or something like that? Right.

And so that’s been a huge help for me because it’s helped me control portion sizes and keep my body like as uninterrupted by food as possible. In addition to the decision to like basically cut back drinking almost 100 percent like weddings or special occasions, I’ll dabble. But, you know, that’s good.

And then, yeah, you just you have to get outside or into the gym or something active. I also just got a puppy recently. So I’m now experiencing the activity from that, which is helping a lot.

So I think you just you just have to make a conscious decision. Like I’m not going to go nuts on dessert. I’m not going to have double the portion size.

I mean, I’m not going to drink myself to death. And if you can make that decision, it actually becomes easy because there’s tools like chat, GPT that actually take a lot of the thinking out of what you need to do. I still recommend consulting a doctor or a trainer if you can on some of the specifics.

But it’s a good place to get a little additional education and help that you definitely.

[Darran]
I just started up. I’ve been talking about it for months and I just started up in my VR because we have a VR nightclub, but that’s not why I got VR for. I got it because it was cool.

Then I built a VR nightclub later on. But I go in and I use this program called Fit VR. No, I’m not getting paid to endorse them, but I use Fit VR.

It’s like this boxing like it does a bunch of different workouts. It’s really kick ass. I’m really enjoying that.

I’m slowly building up to it like they haven’t really worked out. It’s like kind of like an online gym. It’s really awesome.

Staying fit, staying mentally fit, definitely getting that sleep in is definitely it and diet. Absolutely.

[Syence]
Be on a schedule too. I think the more you can create a schedule for yourself, the easier it is to commit and feel comfortable. When you’re kind of sporadically doing stuff, it feels foreign.

I do believe the body both craves new experiences, but it also craves schedule. It can be a little scared sometimes like, oh, I haven’t gone to the gym in a week. Now I’m going to go.

You can get that mental trick getting played on yourself. You just have to create a schedule.

[Darran]
It’s like muscle memory. It kind of exists in your mind as well. I literally had the program in my calendar, workout 30 minutes every morning.

At least it’s there. The alarm goes off and I know that I’m sitting around going, oh, I’m drinking tea on Facebook and drinking tea. Wait, I can go work out for five, 10 minutes.

I mean, just at least get something in because I want to build up slowly. I don’t want to just trying to dive in because I have some health issues as well. Don’t need to go into all that stuff.

It’s more X-Men type stuff. I got pins in my back and stuff and wires and cables.

[Syence]
We all have some.

[Darran]
Anyways, going back to the music scene, the music industry, if you could change one thing that bothers you both about the electronic music scene that you’ve seen being in it so far, what would that be? How would you go about changing that? I’ll preface this with a little thing that you mentioned lane eight earlier.

I found a recent article mentioning this. A lot of people are talking about the use of cell phones during performances in nightclubs. It’s kind of a hot topic, a lot of clubs.

I see some of the bigger clubs out there saying, hey, we’re not having cell phone use in the dance floor. Lane eight, I know puts in their rider from what I’ve seen and it says you have to put stickers over the front of your back of your phone. I was in a club in Berlin last year, walked up the door and they said, yep, a sticker sticker.

And I was like, cool. I thought it was like the cool like, yes, finally people are getting it. But something like that, anything that other, I mean, if that is one of them, but something that bothers you both that maybe could change, could be seen or is on its way to being changed.

[Syence]
Yeah, I’ll go first. This is super easy for me. I, if you go on any of our social media pages, this will not be surprising to you.

Like, and I’ve had many people ask, like, where the heck are you, Brayden, on social media? And I think that is my number one qualm right now with the industry, like the reliance on content, meaning video short form over the music itself is like what’s driving success. And it’s a blessing because like a small artist with no label or agent or anything could like post a random video and go viral and their whole world could change.

And I love that that exists. But, you know, I’m just I when I signed up to make music, I did it because I love music and I love performing. I love making it like that is what I signed up for many, many years ago.

And now it’s become, oh, by the way, you really need to be a content creator as well. And that I’m not a good actor. I can’t get on screen and dance and I’m not going to thirst trap anyone.

I’m engaged over here. So it’s like the content creation side has just been a huge challenge for me. And while I like love that it gives people opportunity, I myself am constantly reflecting on like, how can I find love in the content side of this business that you really have to participate in?

And I mean, the amount of mental effort we put in on a daily basis, trying to think of content and ideas that work for me that I’m comfortable with. I salute our team and Zach for trying to help me through it because I just have not to this day cracked the code of like where I fit into the content creator space for this. I will make music any day, all day.

I will perform anywhere, anytime, basically. But I just can’t I have not been able to figure out the reliance on video content and like where I fit into that equation, unfortunately. So I don’t hate that it exists, but I just haven’t figured it out for myself.

And that’s why I don’t really post anything because I just, I want it to feel authentic to me. And I don’t know what my authentic video is.

[Darran]
Zach, before we chime in there, I can totally relate to that because you’re watching the rise of social media come into play, even just the internet alone come into play, social media come into play, being the entertainment industry. You know, there was a graph I saw, I’ve seen it come up over time many times, but it was like back in the day when you were a DJ producer, 80% of your time was producing the music. 20% was getting it out there, PR, you know, network, all that stuff.

Now it’s like 80% social media content, 20% production, you know, and you know, it’s huge. And you see artists just being booked alone on their social media numbers or artists coming up and saying, oh, you should book me because I got this many followers. And it’s like, yeah, but how does that translate to ticket sale?

You could have a bunch of followers, where did they come from? Where are they located? Are they in India?

Are they in the UK? Are they in South America? Are they from my hometown?

You know, let’s dissect that down. And, you know, a lot of artists don’t like the pay to play format. And I get that.

But, you know, I’ve come up with a creative way that I do my paying my artists on how to play. But that’s my own internal organization. It’s not how, like, if you guys came here, you’re going to send me a writer and say, this is how much it costs to play in Seattle at this club.

I get it and put the stuff in our green room and have a nice day. But, you know, I wonder if more people are going to start saying, okay, based on social media, what it is, here’s a ticket link. And it’s not you sell these tickets, like here’s a batch of 100 tickets, go sell them and make your money.

But let’s see what your actual worth can pull in for a show. You know, let’s see what you can pull. I had a DJ come to me recently and they’re like, oh, yeah, I’m a DJ.

I go, okay, what’s your unique thing as a DJ? And they’re like, well, I play a different set of tracks every time I play a show. That’s kind of me.

And they’re playing the same tracks every show? Like, okay. You know, that was their selling point on why they thought they should get paid.

And I’m like, maybe if you let in with like, when I book a show, I know 50 to 100 people are going to show up. Or, you know, I see this kind of engagement on my socials. And I can definitely get that if you give me a ticket link for a discount or buy one, get one free, I see 50 people sign up for that or something, you know, to relate it to the promote.

But I mean, that’s, that’s getting into that side of the business. Trying to get necessarily there. But yeah, the social media game of it is definitely I talked to people that have been in the game for 30 years.

And they’re like, I don’t do socials.

[Syence]
Yeah, they’re phenomenal, top producers, you’d be like, what the hell, you know, and so, but that’s what’s so cool about like, like this, this never happened. And you know, like that world of electronic music, like, I’m sure they’re posting content, and I’m sure they have fans engaging. Like, I’m not saying they’re totally turning away from it.

But it does feel like they’ve still continued to be successful and focus on the music less on the like, what the algorithm is going to support. Not as much, at least as a lot of the other artists we see exploding today. It’s like, that’s what like inspires me is like, damn, like they are still making it about the music and not about the algorithm and able to get away with it.

Now, granted, they had a big fan base prior to the algorithm taking over. But it’s like it that attracts me a lot more than the than just caving and saying, Alright, we’re gonna make video content and hope we go viral, which I know we have to do. And that’s why I’m constantly thinking about how I can engage in that way.

[Darran]
But for me, yeah, the way artists have evolved in how they get visibility is just a lot like since we started, you know, and I think right now, there’s just so many people making music. And if even if you just look at electronic music, there’s so many producers, there’s so many DJs, there’s so many influencers that decide like, hey, I want to like DJ now. So in order to cut through the noise and get discovered, it just requires this like absurd volume of like content.

And I do think that that’s a strain mentally on like a lot of artists. And it does, I think, affect the quality of the art that’s getting visible. And you know, no shame to anyone who like, creates a platform for themselves like that is a skill in itself.

And that deserves like respect and, you know, acknowledgement. But I do think that like, back in the day, it felt more like the songs and like the raw nature of how strong the art is, and how strong people connect with the music is kind of what would bring people to the masses or bring artists to the masses. And it does feel like there’s a lot of, you know, success happening in the music industry right now driven purely because someone has a 15 second clip that goes viral.

And like the actual whole song, people might not even recognize or they don’t even listen to it, but they just know that one clip or, you know, one song gets hit by the algorithms, and it really propels it forward. And again, like there’s not not really like shame to it, like it is what it is. And you know, we have to as artists roll the punches and you know, you know, play the game until you can make your own rules.

That’s something we’re always kind of telling ourselves, you know, to keep going. So but I guess you know, that would be I think it would be cool if there was a different way. But at the same time, when you think about it, like there’s always gatekeepers, like the industry has always had that thing that everyone’s like, oh, I wish it wasn’t like that.

And then it changes and then something else happens, right? It’s just the reality of the fact that there are so many of us out there trying to, you know, build a fan base. And I would say just to piggyback my my thing that I would change is really specific.

It would be that on Spotify, I wish you could pick your pop your five top songs or like your top music. I don’t like that it algorithmically decides what you’re known for and what you’re popular for. Because we as artists struggle a lot because our sound has evolved so much.

And because we haven’t had the same algorithmic success of our music that we’ve had in the past, some of our top songs just do not represent what we are as artists. And right now, we don’t play the songs live, we don’t make music like that. And I think it affects, you know, like how not only the public and our fans, but also like promoters and the industry see us.

So, you know, we floated around ideas of like, should we pull songs from Spotify? Should we start new projects? And I just wish that wasn’t the case.

Like, I wish you could tell Spotify, hey, as an artist, these are the songs I want people who look me up to be able to recognize as are my art. Yeah, get why they do it. Because they’re a business and they’re trying to, you know, have what succeeds be on the forefront because they think algorithmically, their AI is like, hey, this is what people like.

But it just sucks for an artist because like, we have songs from 2017 that like couldn’t be further away from what we do as like our most streamed song on the platform. And, you know, it’s just unfortunate. And it’s weird because those songs aren’t our most streamed songs.

Like there are plenty of songs that get streamed more. But because of the history of them algorithmically, they get prioritized for some reason by the algorithm. So that would probably be my number one thing that I think could be changed pretty easily.

That would I think it would make a huge difference on how artists are, you know, how their careers develop and how they seem.

[Syence]
Yep. That’s also my number one. I should have said that that bothers me way more.

I can handle the not making content and focusing on music thing. But yeah, that goes back to how we used to make bass pop. And now we make melodic house like they are not the same.

And I feel bad that potentially we could be playing a festival and someone’s like, Oh, who’s signed? Should we check them out? And they hear our bass pop and they’re like, we don’t like that.

And it’s like, it’s not even what we are anymore. I’ve had nightmares.

[Darran]
You know, you mentioned a good point there is either. Yeah. Do you pull them down?

And then, you know, and what is that? Does that pull you out of the algorithms entirely? You know, is that what I see?

Or is there a way to go in and, hey, Spotify says, you know, of course, knocking on the door, if they’re ever going to listen to me, they’re too busy doing other things. But, you know, we go and maybe star and say, hey, this is the top song. And this is the top what we want to really be going for.

So that it would downrank, you know, songs. I know when I used to run internet radio stations, you would be able to put the weight of the song, like from zero to 10 on how many times it would play within an hour within the mix of all the songs you put in there. 10 being more times, one being less times, you know, in the rotation.

And so that was kind of a, that’d be interesting if they did something like that for Spotify to put out there. Good tips. Good tips there.

I’m going to jump in here really quick. I was going to ask you guys, if you could steal one item from Deadmau5’s studio, what would that be? I’m assuming he probably has really, really good speakers and subs.

I’d probably go with that. I’ve seen his studio in like videos and I know he has like, I think he has a Dolby Atmos setup or something. Yeah.

I don’t necessarily need that, but whatever he has for monitoring, I’m assuming is just like a hundred thousand dollar plus speakers. Maybe I’m wrong, but I would imagine they’re really nice. So I’d probably take those.

I wonder if somebody maybe sponsored them and said, try these out. Let us know how they work. Probably.

Yeah. I’m sure he gets a lot of stuff for free.

[Syence]
Brayden, are you in the tech side of things or you got tech over there? No, I like, I like cutting corners on that a lot and doing like, like whatever I know is that’s fine and not like over analyzing it. So I’m going to have a bad answer probably, but I would actually like, given my current studio, I would love to have the room itself.

Like I, my room is not optimally designed to have a studio. I’ve done my best with treatment as you could see, but it’s not the right shape. And if I can also get his treatment, that’s already attached to the walls as part of that, that I would love to have a properly treated room.

Cause I, hence all the car listens and the phone listens. I need that big time. Cause what I hear in here is not at all what it sounds like anywhere else.

So I’ve tried my best, but I’d love to have just a proper room. Like I’m that’s next time I move. I’m really hoping I could find a place that is ready to go for a studio more than this.

[Darran]
And minus the studio and minus the speakers, you know, and, uh, and the Spotify adjustments technology moves pretty fast in this electronic music land. I mean, I remember 25 years ago, I was just playing around with Fruity Loops three and you know, it was cool as a sequencer. I’m like, this is awesome.

And I had it on a laptop and I’m like, look, I’m making music, kind of whatever. But then I ended up getting into some Roland hardware gears, MC 505 SP 808. And, um, but you know, even getting a computer at that time to make music on was still a good chunk, three, $4,000, you know, Mac was out.

You had, you could do some stuff there, you know, um, but you know, technology moves really fast in DJ electronic music land. And if you could think of something that’s not on the market today, but in your vision would be a really amazing thing to be out there for artists. What would that be?

Or something that does?

[Syence]
I would love to have, cause I’m really late. Like I’m a big sample producer. So when I produce, I, I avoid MIDI more than I should.

So when it comes to like figuring out the right chord progression or like in a sample, what the chords are, um, I’m good at extracting melodies, but being able to know like what the best chords would be for a specific vocal and making a remix would help speed up my process a lot. I obviously, and today I have to sit there and kind of, uh, guess and check, so to speak, to get the right baseline and therefore the right chords and all that fun stuff. But one thing I’ve done many, many times is like AI, is there an AI chord extractor or MIDI extractor?

And there is a decent algorithm for melodies, but for chords, it’s really not there yet. Um, and in that world, I know it’s getting better and the new Ableton has some enhancements to this, but also extracting individual sounds, um, to use again, big sample guy here. So the more I can like inspire myself and then take something and tweak it to be my own, rather than starting from a, you know, an initial patch of serum or something just helps speed up my creative process and get my ideas out much faster.

And again, there are tools today. Like we have a tool that can extract a synth that it can, it makes a serum patch and it’s like, it’s 40% of the way there maybe. But, uh, the amount of times I get inspired by a specific sound or like want to know what the chords are to make a small tweak, not have to do it from scratch.

It would just save me hours and hours and keep me in that creative wave, uh, frequency, so to speak. Cause a lot of times you just sit there trying and trying and you don’t get it. And now you’re not inspired anymore.

And now you’ve lost the idea. And I think it prevents you from getting more good music out really, um, without having AI make it for you. Like you’re using it as a tool, not as a, uh, make me a song like pseudo, like that’s another thing, but I would love somebody to just help me speed up my process.

[Darran]
And what about you, Zach? What would you like?

[Syence]
Yeah.

[Darran]
I mean, I echo those a lot. I think, you know, um, being a, for technology to get better at being able to give you the musical notes that our song is by just listening to it or giving you, um, the sounds themselves, like creating, you know, a synth patch from a lead and a song, uh, the tools that exist now are just not there yet. Um, so that would be really cool.

I think from creative perspective, that does sound like the most useful thing that could come out. Um, I, the only other thing I would add is like, and I go back and forth on this cause I love engineering, like mixing and mastering almost as much as I like creating musical ideas. So for me, it’s like, it’s part of the art.

Like I sit there and spend a lot of time trying to make things sonically sound exactly how I want them to sound, but I know that not everyone is like that. Um, and I do think there’s a lot of value in the technology around like, uh, automated mastering and things like that. So that at the very least, like when you’re creating, you can kind of have a finished sound right away that like helps you make better decisions because this technology doesn’t exist.

Like we pretty much mix as we go, like that’s sort of our process. So like, I rarely am working on a song and bounce it. And it like sounds really bad or like really far away from what it should sound like.

I’m pretty much always just making it sound as good as possible, but that eats up a lot of time because rather than focusing on, you know, the melodies and the chords and the rhythms and the variations, the things that are like the more musical aspects, I’m spending a lot of time, like, does this sound good enough? Like, is this kick hitting the way I want it to hit? And I think that that is valuable and it’s fun for me because I like it, but do I think it gets in the way of making better music sometimes?

Like I do think sometimes I let myself focus too much on that and not on just like, is this idea as cool as it can be? Um, so I think that would be nice if I was more confident in the tools that did that for me and it’s getting better every day. I mean, like the quality of music for someone who just starts in Ableton, like week one right now, compared to when we started back, like before YouTube was even like really popping off, it’s just night and day.

And especially with things like Splice, um, the new Ableton update for Splice, I’ve been like messing around with it. I think it’s going to come out next year, but Splice is like built into Ableton now. So you can literally like match the tempo, the key, and go through every Splice sample and listen in your track to your tempo in key and like drag it in.

So like the crazy amount of creativity that’s going to come from that, you know, the level of speed people are going to be able to make tracks that are really high quality is just insane. So that’s really cool. And I think anything, you know, I’m like, a lot of people are against AI in music and like making, I, I just find all of it to just be additional pools for people to have fun and to make art.

So like, for me, it’s just exciting that the barrier to entry is so much lower than it ever has been, which I just find to be really exciting. It makes our lives and we’re trying to build a career a lot harder because there’s so much more competition, but I think it’s worth it for the art in general, for society, like to just have that much more access for people and make it easier. So I approve of it overall.

Yeah, that’s a, you know, definitely looking at it from studio productions, you mentioned the barrier to access, even for DJing and music production now has coming down to, you know, like basically I would almost say zero, zero barrier to entry and the tools, the accessibility to learn out there. I mean, when I was mentioning using those rolling pieces of gear before I bought them and spent like $1,500 and $1,800 on each piece of gear, I was going to guitar center for like three months and I grabbed, they’d know they’d have the manual behind the counter. I grabbed the manual, I’d sit down and play for three hours.

Just playing around with this gear before I wanted to buy it and knowing how to work it, went that manual front to back. It didn’t teach me how to make music, but when you got a sequencer, it comes to some preset stuff and you can kind of adjust around in real time and be like, that sounded really cool. All right.

And note, you know, out of the, if there was like 400 presets, you know, Oh, number one, one 11 is awesome. Or number two 85 was awesome. I can play with that.

And then you go to your friend’s house and you’re like, you’re making music. I’m like, yeah, sure. I am making music, you know?

But no, I mean, it was fun to do just, I was, I just was, wasn’t even barely hobbyist in my approach. I like being an executive producer and doing all the business stuff and contracts. So most people don’t like doing, but speaking of getting out of the studio, you have your U S fall tour coming up and you’re going to be coming to Seattle.

Tell us all about that. And are you started dates or is your first date in October?

[Syence]
I think I saw coming up. We got one day in New York so far and yeah, we, we don’t have an agent anymore. We do have a new small management team who actually one of them is out of Seattle and one’s out of Canada.

They’re awesome. And we’ve brought them in to help us just basically grassroots effort here. Like find any venue in any city in the U S or Canada that can book us.

That is the right size and roughly the right production. We do have a higher level production show we can do at certain venues, but with our size, like we’re only doing 200 to 300 person rooms and most of those can’t like, how’s our visuals and stuff. But you know, ever since we switched them a lot of cows from base pop, we we’ve had to do everything on our own.

Like we lost our entire team. We went from being fed festivals and these, all these various show offers to like figure it out yourself. And we’re very fortunate that we’re hard workers and we’ve good relationships on our own to still play a few festivals here and there.

We’re now doing our own headline tours. We used to do only support shows for bigger artists, but the support market has really, really died post COVID meaning like they used to spend a couple thousand dollars and bring support out to any city for any artists. Now it’s all local for the most part, or buddies of the artists.

And they’re willing to give up some of their money. The industry is really down ticket wise. So it’s, it’s been a new challenge for us.

But what we’ve realized is we’ve built this great audience where we can just go do our own shows. They may not be the biggest ones we’ve ever done, but we get to get our 200 to 300 closest fans in these various cities and put on a show for them. And like, that’s been some of the most fulfilling live performance work we’ve done, even though they’re not our biggest shows ever, because it’s the first year.

This will be our second tour, basically doing this, but it’s our first year. So just doing our own shows ourselves, being with our closest fans and having really intimate, special days or nights, depending on which show we’re talking about. So that’s really what’s coming up this fall.

We’ve got a bunch of cities booked. We’re trying to book, honestly, as many as we can. So more if possible, but again, we’re doing it ourselves.

So we don’t have infinite choice here and we’re taking what we can get. And New York was great. San Diego’s coming up soon.

And we have a bunch in October, November to wrap it up. And then I’m sure we’ll do it again next year.

[Darran]
You know, I’ve talked with artists a lot and, you know, taking that step and self booking, you know, especially if you like, say you’re from Seattle and you don’t have any big names you played for. You’re not, you know, you don’t have all the some of the young pieces missing. You know, I’ve told people, here’s how you can go book a self tour.

I’m not even an artist, but you can do this on your own, but you’re going to have to finance it on your own probably to, or, you know, make all the phone calls yourself too, because, you know, I was just talking with an artist the other day and, you know, they were saying, oh yeah, if I could get a thousand dollars per show, if I went out and I went, okay, in order for somebody to book you and make any money, even if they were getting 20%, you know, they’re making $200 per show, but the time it takes from the book for that 200 bucks, my big 10 hours of their time, so they’re making 20 bucks an hour. And people like to be in more than a hundred, 150 bucks an hour range. So why don’t you maybe look at stepping up your price and saying, I’m 2,500 bucks per show.

You can always come down, but at least somebody only needs to book, you know, 30, 40 shows a year, maybe two shows a month or what would that be? Yeah. Two shows.

Well, no, I guess that’d be 24 shows a year. I guess you get the math on it though. And somebody can make a nice little nut out of that.

If they have 20, 30 other artists that they’re trying to manage and book around and get them in. I do know artists that do specifically that are pretty okay names and they specifically request only playing in smaller venues. They don’t like doing the bigger shows.

They like that intimacy. They like that vibe. You know, I mean, maybe 600 might be their plus, but they want it definitely more than 200.

They’re not going to play to 50 people. You know, they want to rock.

[Syence]
Yeah. The intimate ones are nice because you get a more crowded room. So everyone can kind of feel part of the experience.

We did one show on accident last year, that was in a double the size of any that we should have been in. And it took away from the experience. You know, the production was better and it was more clubby, I guess, but we didn’t fill the room because it’s too big for us.

And it’s like, I’d rather play a 200 person room, fill it with 150 to 200 people. And then it’s like, it just feels like this intimate moment together. And we’re all about connecting with our fans as close as we can and building those relationships.

And like, it works a lot better there than at a huge venue where it feels like you’re up on a pedestal.

[Darran]
Yeah, we’re at that like sweet spot in our career right now where we’re finally able to, you know, like fill up a 200 person room in a city. And like, you know, it’s not 10,000 people, but 200 people is a lot of people. Like it’s a good show.

Like you have a lot of people enjoying themselves. If it’s the right venue and the right vibe, like it feels just as cool for us as, I mean, we’ve had the luxury of playing like, I’m trying to think our biggest show, probably Countdown a few years ago on the main stage. And by the end of the set, there were probably like 15,000 people, I would assume, something like that.

And like, don’t get me wrong, that’s incredible. That feels awesome. But like, it’s just such a different vibe if they’re really far away from you, this giant room.

Whereas like if you’re in a packed, like sweaty box with 200, 300 kids, like jumping around, it’s a lot of fun. And I think that that’s also part of our goal is like, you know, we’re independent. We’ve been in this industry a long time.

We’re just trying to put on the best show we can, that makes the most sense. And that builds our hard ticket value for our career so that we can, you know, continue to play bigger and better shows and get more bookings for festivals. And like you said earlier, you know, really show our value to promoters, like what we’re able to bring them as a business.

Because that really is a lot of what this industry is, is, you know, people are trying to make money. It’s, you know, like with anything, you can’t just expect to be given all this stuff without giving back anything. So yeah, I think that all makes kind of sense, though.

I love the fact, again, you just did it. You answered the question before I was about to ask it. I was gonna say, are bigger crowds better than smaller crowds?

And you just nailed that right on the head. Oh, right there. I mean, I think in like, in my head, we still haven’t experienced truly like the biggest crowds that are in like a headlining stance, you know, like we’ve never played a show and for more than probably, I think 400 is maybe the most we had for like a headlining show.

And that was in and out 400, right? So at any one given time, you maybe have like 150, 200 people like staring at you right over. But in terms of support, we’ve had some experiences where we were playing in front of 2,500 people in, you know, a sold out crowd, right direct support right before a huge artist.

And those feel pretty awesome when you have like that many people really focused on you and like, they care, you know, what you’re doing up there. So I would imagine as our career grows, if we start to get to the point where we can sell like 1000 tickets, 2000 tickets, I can’t imagine we’re not going to enjoy that more than what we’re doing now. But for right now, I think the intimate stuff feels right to us, it feels like the right size, it feels like it’s, it’s a good stepping stone for us to feel comfortable and know that our shows are going to be successful.

I mean, it’s stressful running your own shows and like having to think about everything from like the venue and the sound system and the lighting and the and then running ads for ticket sales. And like, you know, we do a lot. So we want to just make sure when we fly somewhere to play a show for two hours that we’re going to enjoy ourselves, you know, because we’re putting in so much effort.

So I it’s easier to manage the smaller rooms. So right now, I’d say the smaller ones are probably better. Absolutely.

No, it’s a lot. It’s a lot of a lot of work that people don’t see going on in the background, you know, that to make to make the magic happen. You mentioned you were working with a company out of Seattle, though, a manager team, is that correct?

Who you work with out of Seattle.

[Syence]
So Jake is our one of our managers, he booked he actually books for substation as well. He’s like a word or as many hats. His company is entertainment.

And then Erica is on the team, but she’s the one that’s out of Canada. So they’re Jake actually used to live around the corner for me, met him through my fiance, and he’s just always been willing to help. And we we actually needed this kind of management team that isn’t like the biggest management company, but just wants to grind.

And it is different than our last management team, who was this big company, and they have all the connections in the world. But they’re a big company that had to make money, right? These guys are just like, we’re gonna grind, we believe in you.

And like, let’s get to work.

[Darran]
So they’ve also been helping a lot from like, the agency side of the industry to like, they, you know, are he is a talent buyer to a degree. So like, he kind of has his finger on the pulse of that sort of stuff, which is helping us make the right calls on the right venues and the right cities and stuff like that. So, you know, luck me and Brandon are in like a very unique situation, because we’ve been like, going at syence for so long at like, what we hope is a professional level, but we’ve learned so much.

And we’ve grown so much. And I think at this point in our careers, we’re pretty much like experts in like the music industry, like we kind of know everything we need to be doing at any given time. And so it’s nice, because when we first started, we had no idea what we were doing.

And when we had our biggest song ever, in 2017, it was our first track we ever put on Spotify. And it was like a viral song, we had no idea what to do, how to capitalize how to like, you know, play shows from it, how to do content from it. I mean, it was a whole different world.

Now, I feel like we’re at that point where we can really, you know, turn that up to 11 and grow fast with, you know, just putting in the effort we’re putting in. And we’re also the best artists I think we’ve ever been like, we create the coolest music and, you know, are really finding our strides there together, both creatively. So it’s been really exciting, you know, in that way, too.

With all this going on, how do you balance your career with your other obligations you have going on in life? And it sounds, Brayden, you mentioned you have a fiancé, and you have a dog, both have dogs, you both have jobs. I mean, how does that all work with booking the touring and the production and then work?

Do you have a good work-life balance with all this?

[Syence]
Actually, yeah, surprisingly. It’s just all it’s about keeping your time sacred for what needs to be kept sacred. So it’s like, obviously, if I have work, or whatever I have, that’s blocked off for work.

And then, you know, Tuesday nights for me are like, no matter what, unless there’s some crazy emergency, I am in the studio, catching up on emails, doing our finances, making a ton of music, prepping for shows. I also sprinkle in music time, anytime I have free time. I also am a big video gamer, and I love TV and movie entertainment stuff.

So I sprinkle that in. But again, it’s like, I make a conscious decision of what time goes where, what day goes where. Like Wednesday nights, I’m on cooking duty, and I know I’m spending time with my fiancé, no excuses, unless there’s some crazy thing going on.

The dog, we split, you know, time when we take them out, when we take them on a walk, right? Like, it’s just all about communication, especially when there’s a partner involved here. But if it’s not, you have to just look at your week and like, all right, Tuesdays are sacred music time, Wednesdays are sacred, cook a healthy meal, whatever you need to do like that has always worked for me.

Just thinking about it ahead of time and not letting things happen as they come, because then you get lost in the sauce and you get overwhelmed.

[Darran]
Yeah, I would agree. Yeah. I mean, like everyone who does a lot of work, regardless of what it is, is going to be busy, right?

And you only have so many hours in the day. So it really is just about organizing yourself and trying to figure out, you know, how much time do I need to dedicate to this or to this. And I think, fortunately, you know, Braden and I are in situations right now where we both work outside of music.

We both have good lives where we make money. We’re not, you know, struggling, starving artists, which I think helps a lot for us. And we’re very fortunate in that way.

And, you know, we both have a lot of passions outside of our music project, right? Like, I mean, I think Braden and I would both, you know, die for our music project. Like we really want to continue to do this the rest of our lives and to see success.

But we also really want a lot of things in life. I mean, you know, we’re not just musicians and artists. So, you know, making sure to prioritize those things in like the healthiest way you can so that you just, you know, at the end of the day, like we’re going to go to bed and wake up and on the average day, we’re not going to get offered to play Coachella, right?

So we have to figure out ways to make our average days feel like we’re getting those kind of awesome wins outside of music. Because the reality is the music industry is just very small and difficult to get to the crazy levels of success. So you have to figure out ways to be motivated and excited by the little things or else you just burn out and you don’t get, you don’t feel fulfilled.

And I think that we do a really good job at that and like, you know, turning down the temperature when necessary and just realizing, you know, why we’re doing this in the first place, which is really just, you know, have a fun artistic outlet and to hopefully get to play really cool experiences and share that music with as many people as possible. And as long as we’re doing that, like we’re satisfied and we keep going. And so it makes the rest of it all kind of fall into place a lot better.

Yeah, definitely. And I definitely got to, I appreciate you both being here. I wanted to talk about one last thing because you guys put in your notes, want to make sure I get it in there.

Tell us about the recent syence Honor Roll Merced draw. What’s that all about?

[Syence]
Oh yeah. We’ve had a merch store forever, but it’s been just generic, like logo on shirt, logo on hat. It’s a year.

And we’ve always had this concept of like playing with the word syence. Like, you know, our radio show is syence Lab. There’s syence class where we educate you on things happening with syence.

I don’t know, there’s all sorts of things like that. syence experiments. And syence Honor Roll is basically like we wanted to reward our biggest fans in all these various cities that we’re going to and anyone that can’t make it to the tour.

So we’ve always had this concept in the back of our mind of doing a limited merch drop where it’s only for our biggest fans. You literally make the Honor Roll. You can see, I have one here.

It’s the syence Honor Roll 2025. And we want to make it like an annual thing where you can make the Honor Roll each year. If you make it to one of our tours or are so gung-ho that you reach out and say, Hey, can I still please get a shirt?

I can’t go to your tour because I’m in another country or something. And it’s just another way to like build fan-like relationships. Like we’re trying to be closer to our fans.

We want to do more for our fans. We want everyone to feel like they’re part of a ever-growing community here. And so just another fun way for us to do some new, unique merch.

We hired a graphic designer for it. We didn’t just throw logos on there. And now we get to see like who’s most excited about syence across these cities.

And they’ve been slowly but surely claiming the, I think we bought like 36 shirts and we’re down to, you know, only a few of each size at this point. We could certainly order more if we run out quickly, but so far it’s been a fun experience just to create something new for our fans.

[Darran]
Show them the back. Yeah, fans always go crazy off merch, man. I love it.

That’s awesome. I love the way that you’re, yeah, that’s awesome. I love the way you’re playing on that syence experiment, syence Honor Roll.

That’s dope. I think that’s very creative. Awesome that you got to drop that in there.

Well, is there anything else you want to let our DJ Sessions fans know before I let you get going?

[Syence]
We love talking to fans. DM us anytime. Email us anytime.

We’ve been a little busier than usual lately, so sorry if we’ve missed anyone’s messages. But normally we’re super, super good and love hearing from everyone. And yeah, go stream our newest song and our album from last year.

We still are promoting that thing. And our link in our bio should have our tour schedule. So if you guys are in the U.S., hopefully we’re coming near you and you can stop by. If not, we’re always looking for new venues and new cities to get to. It’s just a matter of opportunity there.

[Darran]
Yes.

[Syence]
Thanks for having us.

[Darran]
Absolutely. Zach, Brayden, thank you for coming on the show today. If you didn’t hear it in the beginning of the interview, you’re hearing it now.

Go check out their latest single called Crashing Down with MashBit there. And where’s the best place people can go to do that at? Is that going to be your Instagram?

Yeah, Instagram or just Spotify, you know, directly.

[Syence]
Boom. Yeah, it has all the links there to any streaming platform, website, social media thing you want to find us at. So Instagram is a good place to start.

[Darran]
Awesome. S-Y-E-N-C-E, that is, on Instagram and the socials. Thank you, gentlemen, very much for being here.

We’re going to follow up with you as we always do with our guests on the show and keep up to date with what you have going on. Thanks again for coming on the show today. Yeah, thanks.

No worries. On that note, don’t forget to go to our website, TheDJSessions.com, right there below me. I’ve never done this with three people on the show before, so I didn’t know it was going to pop up.

Right there, TheDJSessions.com, all our socials, over 700 news stories, 2,700 past interviews, live interviews just like this, exclusive mixes, our new music section, VR nightclub, mobile app, and more, all at TheDJSessions.com. I’m your host, Darran. That’s Zach coming in from L.A. and Brayden coming in from San Diego with The syence, dropping The syence on The DJ Sessions. And remember, on The DJ Sessions, the music never stops.