In this episode, audio and SFX producer and commercial music composer, Edward Zaski shares:

His 25 year career of creating music, sound effects and Foley in the commercial world.

How music is his Hero.

How he was inspired by his guitar hero, Queen’s legendary guitarist, Brian May, to build his own guitars.

How you don’t have to know how to make a guitar, but, the more you know about it, the better off the experience will be.

How you don’t really need a lot of stuff. It’s your technique, your hands, and the ideas in your head are what are going to take you the furthest. 

How in the end, 85% of what is going to come through the speaker is going to be you, and that will be unique – and that will be a voice that nobody else has.

He describes “The Suffering”: that feeling that overcomes him once he hangs up [with the client], he’s sitting there holding his head with no idea what to do next.

How the creative process can entail taking eight hours to get to the one little wiggly melody, or chord progression, or something that’s now going to make the rest of the project take only 2 hours. 

How trying to say the whole story in 2 seconds for a brand’s pneumonic is an incredibly difficult thing to do.

What it’s like to create Foley (real life sound effects), and some of the crazy projects he has had to create them for.

The joy of autocorrect, sending texts like: I’m going to throw some quick S E X on this. When he meant SFX. 

How right now on his iPhone, he has over 600 voice memos, and they’re all about creative ideas. 

How some of his favourite tracks, that he has written, are still sitting in his stock library—never been heard commercially.

His journey into music from the Philippines, and how he sourced the traditional Filipino kutiyapi for a documentary passion project—and also used it for a Tim Horton’s pitch.

The advice he would give somebody starting out? “Be in love with what you do!”

How he defines: Cognitive Disinhibition “the brain filters things in a way that’s not typical of most people. It’s really just an inability to focus properly.”