"It's Like Importing a Spark From the Past": Tom Callahan on Finishing an Album

Tom Callahan makes music under several names: Ursus Volans, a noise and ambient project; Bloodware Overdrive, his take on cyberpunk; and barren symmetry, where his textural, atmospheric work lives under a quieter alias. He's also a Song Ritual user, and one of the most precise people we've talked to about where creative time actually goes.

Before the app, his sessions had no goals and no sense of time. Mastering sessions that felt like forty minutes turned out to be hours. Ideas lived on napkins, in notebooks, and across three different desks. Since bringing his process into Song Ritual, he's built default methods for mixing and mastering, consolidated years of scraps into his Inspiration Vault, and pulled the release of his album Subliminal Midgard forward by roughly a month.

What follows is our conversation, lightly edited.

Before Song Ritual, what did your typical session look like?

It was organized in a very basic way, with no real goals or sense of time. It can be difficult to set goals with the actual performance, but that's not uncommon, and that's not what was eating time. I wasn't really looking critically at my own methods, so I wasn't saving time by having default methods and settings, especially in the "work" stages — everything that isn't creating or performing.

Where do you think you were losing the most time?

Mixing and mastering, and initial creation. I was tweaking things beyond what the average ear would notice, and I would start from the bottom and tweak parameter by parameter, only moving one parameter per play-through when mastering. Mixing, I was adjusting the entire mix every time I added a track.

Also, finding inspiration for new songs would almost have to happen accidentally, and on a day where I was near musical equipment. Looking for it could take hours and depended on mood, health, and even the weather.

What made you realize that?

Using Song Ritual. I could see the time I was using where I couldn't feel it. You get into a flow state where time outside of the song's timing gets lost when you're mastering. It becomes about frequency and amplitude, full stop.

The problem is, time does matter if you want to finish things, especially in my case. My cognition and memory give me about two useful hours at a time before I have to take an hour break, and the next time I can maybe go for an hour before I need an hour break if I'm doing seated work. Covid tore up my body like a five year old sociopath with a hammer. If I work beyond those constraints, I start making really strange errors.

I would use this app with or without those limitations, however. It lets you see what makes your music tick and makes the right space for creative processes to obtain focus. It fits in an overlooked niche. There are a lot of checklist apps and apps with creative prompts, but there were none that I've seen that set the stage to let you be creative using your own personal inspirations like Song Ritual.

What did you notice once you started using the app?

I noticed that I was taking hours to master a single song where it felt like less than an hour, sometimes even beyond the point of cognitive degradation. It was taking more time to master than to perform the part. It led me to reverse engineer my dabbling process and build a default process, and it led to changes in how I record and mix that make mastering easier. No sense in building from the ground up when starting with a certain configuration will work 90% of the time and cut your load down significantly.

It also let me put all the napkins, scraps and phone notes in one place so they wouldn't be forgotten, and could be given some context and organization. My first days with the app were spent doing this. It was amazing to see them all in one place and not stuck in books and spread across tables and desks.

I found something interesting about inspiration by using Song Ritual, too: if you're feeling flat, an inspiration written down can bring you back to a memory of that moment, and lets you recall the feeling of that moment as if it were happening in the present. This may be basic to some people, but I hadn't tried this before the app. It's like importing a spark from the past to light the fire now.

What specifically changed in how you approach sessions?

Now I can use Song Ritual to see exactly where I'm at and what needs to come next to move forward. It makes sure I see the forest and the trees. I approach sessions with a purpose now instead of a "let's see what happens" mentality. Creation, mixing, mastering and post production have all been optimized and enhanced.

Your timeline moved up — what caused that shift?

It was the mastering thing, first: being a bit shocked at the fact that I had run out a long timer. Now, of course, it keeps going, which shows how long ago you passed the allotted time. Streamlining that knocked time off and left more time free to create the last three songs, which left more time to search for the right cover art. It became a cascade effect. The changes I made to mixing should bring the time down even more.

What are you doing differently now that you weren't before?

I'm planning, and using the app to get an awareness of where I am in the process. I'm getting out of the habit of walking into the music room and just gravitating toward what I feel like doing.

I check the Inspiration Vault for ideas and add to it when I have ideas, so that the Sparks continue to reflect what inspires me. The overall effect is to make my process more intentional and to make sure time is better spent, making more time for the actual recording.

What would you say to someone who keeps starting but not finishing?

Put a one-track single out next week, on SoundCloud. Just do it — you'll never learn to fly if you don't step off the branch. It doesn't have to be genre defining, it just has to reflect some facet of your life. Make it simple. Use your cell phone microphone if that's your only option. Be silly if that's your bliss.

Now it's out there, you're vulnerable. You just took the hardest step. Maybe you got trolled, maybe ignored, maybe it landed with a handful of people, maybe it's very popular. Let all of that roll off like water off a duck's back. Those things aren't the point. The point is that you stepped off the edge and found you could fly. Build on that. Use Song Ritual to hold your ideas and to guide you into using them well.

What kind of music do you make?

Under the Ursus Volans moniker I make noise and ambient music. My biggest influences for this genre are (of course) Vangelis, Patrick O'Hearn, Lycia, soulwhirlingsomewhere, Justin Bell (composer of The Outer Worlds soundtrack), Yul Brynner's Ghost, Claude Debussy, Thollem McDonas and Lustmord.

Under the Bloodware Overdrive moniker, I make cyberpunk music, a little different than the usual genre definition. The influences should give an idea of the vibe: Prince, Ministry, Coil, UNKLE, Unchipped, Collector of Dust, Roughhausen, Android Lust, Period Bomb, the composers of the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack, and VNV Nation.

Both projects have significant inspiration in visual media, including video games. The illustrated edition of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, for example, or images from orbiting telescopes. The Cynosure project in Cyberpunk 2077. The art installations and architecture where I live. The rhythm of my city and Night City. If you had to unify the principles of both monikers under one word, it would be "soundtrack."

What are you working on right now?

I'm about to release an album as Ursus Volans called Subliminal Midgard. I'm in the process of physically making the CDs right now. While that is happening, I'll be brainstorming for the Bloodware Overdrive album, which I'm calling Antaeus for now. The beats are already made; I'm getting ideas about what to build up from there. The biggest challenge for Antaeus will be vocals. I don't like the timbre of my own voice. Not sure what I'm going to do about that.

Tell me about the project that got pushed forward.

That was Subliminal Midgard. It was heading for ten months to a year in the making before I signed up for Song Ritual. It has cut down to nine months after. The theme of the album is that everything passes on, but that passing on may just be the existential equivalent of walking into the next room. It also expresses my state of mind when engaged in spiritual practice, and when overwhelmed by my illness. Oddly enough, both things pull me into the same place.

What does finishing it mean to you?

Finishing this project means that I can let it stand on its merits. No excuses, this is it. This is the best reflection of what I'm trying to communicate with my current skills and tools. It also means that my health doesn't get to stop my expression yet: it can only slow me down. Still have a fire inside, not a pile of ashes, yet.

Where can people hear your music?

You can hear Subliminal Midgard and more ambient work as barren symmetry on Subvert FM: Subliminal Midgard and Live Midwinter's Improvisations. For the cyberpunk side, the track "Underclocked" is out through Argali Records Netlabel on Bandcamp: Underclocked. Listen with headphones for the full effect.

Anything that surprised you?

Yes. How much the rituals already there made sense, and how few I ended up adding in the end. I was also surprised at how smoothly the app worked for me. It was the first time I've beta tested where not once did I roll my eyes.