Four Tet’s Three is one of my favorite albums of the year, so I was delighted to come across an interview with Kieran Hebden on the Tape Notes podcast discussing its making. He rarely gives interviews, so before listening, I really knew nothing about him or how he works. It was a delight to hear about the making of a record I’ve spent so much time with. 

Four Tet’s music is extra special to me because my 11-year-old composer and I both love it — I put “Loved” on my February mixtape and Owen put “Lush” on the mixtape we collaborated on this month. It was wild to me to hear Hebden describe how he works in Ableton, drawing the notes on the piano roll instead of playing them on the keyboard. (Something I see Owen do a ton when he’s composing.)

I really loved Hebden’s attitude towards making music after many decades. He says that if he can stay excited about listening to music and enjoy the making of it while also avoiding the trappings of success and the bog of the industry, that it actually makes the work more successful. Just a wonderful listen. 

When he was asked about his most important piece of equipment, he said his hi-fi system because it’s what helps him listen to music in a level of detail that helps him really explore and hear sounds. (Check out the gigantic ongoing Spotify playlist of what he’s listening to.)

This emphasis on listening came up over and over again in the interview, and I wanted to copy down his advice to other musicians: Listen to more music.

“Listening to a lot of music and really exploring it and doing that level of investigation of really understanding where things have come from.”

He then describes swimming upstream: 

If you listen to a current record now that samples an old nineties record, and then you check out the old nineties record, find out that sample’s like an old soul record for the drum break or whatever.

And then you go listen to the old soul record and then you find out who the drummer was who played that drum break. And it’s like, oh, it’s Bernard Purdy or whatever.

And then you look on Wikipedia and check out all the other records he made. And then you’re like, oh, he worked with this producer a lot and you check out what that producer did.

To listen to music in that way and explore it and study it, I think is hugely valuable in terms of learning how to be a good arranger, a good producer, a good musician. The more you take in of understanding the sort of like great music that’s out there and the things that came before, it’s so powerful.

Everything’s there, all the information’s there. And then if you take everything you learn from that and then combine it with your own ideas and your own emotions and stuff, then you sort of set up to sort of push things forward. I think that’s much more useful than spending all your time being like, I’m just gonna be learning what every single thing in Ableton does now for the next few months…

You’ve got to love records so much, he says, that you want to make something that can sit on a shelf alongside the records you love.

It’s a lesson that is true for all creative people: Your output depends on your input.

If you want to be a great musician, you need to listen to more great music. If you want to write great books, you need to read more great books. If you want to make great films…

(Steal like an artist.)