Jonathan Gamra of The Consouls (Sydney) talks TEDXMacquarie, gaming, and more!

Sydney-based band, The Consouls are a quirky six-piece who put themselves in the Video Game Jazz category. Combining their passion for both games and jazz music, the band are known for their expertise in playing gaming tunes with jazz arrangements. After playing some headline shows this year, it’s safe to say that the band have quite a loyal following considering their establishment over a year ago. We had the opportunity to speak with double bass player, Jonathan Gamra about the TEDxMacquarie event running this Saturday (September 26), how their passion for games and music started as well as the positive influence gaming has provided him and the band.

So I think it’s really exciting you guys are doing the TEDx event at Macquarie University this weekend. What are you looking forward to the most about it?

The thing that we’re looking forward to the most is that it presents us with an opportunity we’ve never really had before. It was generally gigs at traditional venues or like a convention, which focused more on the playing. It’s gonna be really cool to kind of walk through the process which is terrifying but at the same time it’s really exciting to share a little bit on the origin of the band and more.

Obviously this is different because TED talks is about educating and inspiring other people. How do you feel knowing that you’ll have the opportunity to do this with your band seeing as you’ll be able to speak with others about music?

My initial reaction is just terrifying but at the same time we haven’t exactly been together that long. I think formally we’ve only been together just over a year and we haven’t had many opportunities presented to us in that time. I think it’ll be cool to be able to share how we did that and hopefully it inspires other people to kind of do the same with their passions.

Because you guys are gaming enthusiasts as well I think it’s awesome that you’ve managed to combine this with jazz music as well. How did this all start?

A lot of the band members actually have been playing together since high school. Our keys player, Julian [Sanchez] – he’s like a really big composer and arranger so he actually had his own channel [YouTube] for a number of a years and he’s been playing with the other guys since then. We figured that seeing as we loved gaming and music, we’d start this band because of those passions and I was kind of the last piece of the puzzle. I met Julian at uni like a few years later and we all did a gig together. We all clicked really well straight away and then from there he kind of pitched the idea to me and we just kind of ran with it and things kind of exploded which was great.

That’s really interesting to hear especially how you guys all came together. When you’re writing new material, where does inspiration normally come from?

From the game side of things, obviously there’s always gonna be a ton of stuff we wanna play just ’cause we’re always playing new games and we’ve got years and years of backstory. On the musical side, it tends to kind of flow from whatever we’re listening to. We’ll pick a tune and then it’s either a case of ‘Okay, we’ve got this game tune that we like, how are we gonna play it?’ or ‘Hey, we’ve been digging this person and this group and we really like this style of music.

Do we have anything that will kind of fit in as a starting point?’ And then from there, we trial it. Sometimes it works better than others and then we just kind of hammer it out. We play it out live a bit and see what people think and then we kind of stick it in the studio and put it on YouTube and then it’ll probably get developed a little more after that.

How do you find the time to make things work when it comes to making music? Has it been a challenge for you guys to work with everyone’s different schedules?

Definitely. I mean, pretty much everyone in the band is working in some capacity, most of which are full time and then uni on top of that. I think we’re very fortunate in a sense that everybody can kind of pull their own weight in a different way. We have people that are really good on the audio side and then handle all the gear side. We’ve got people that handle the technical side – the website, the social media, all that sort of stuff. We’re lucky that we’re able to kind of share the workload, however, it is a lot of work but it doesn’t feel like that a lot of the time just because we’re always so excited by the end result and being able to play out in all these different environments.

How do you feel playing live and what reactions have you received so far from your live audience?

Playing live has been very different for us compared to a lot of other groups because depending on the setting, we really have to approach each set like very, very differently which is not something we’ve kind of expected.

For instance, if we play at a Supanova or a SMASH convention where you’ve got people who aren’t necessarily into jazz music, we find ourselves having to gravitate maybe not so many solo sections and just kind of playing the stuff that people know – obviously not all the time – but definitely more so, so we can catch the bystanders and get their attention a little bit more.

When we do our headline shows in more traditional venues, we kind of have a little more freedom there to kind of play out our material and do really busy arrangements with much longer solo sections. I mean, no matter how we approach the set, the reactions have all been really awesome and we’ve been really lucky to interact with people during gigs. It’s always been great – we love playing live.

Do you guys work on different projects to maintain creativity when writing new material for the band?

The big thing for me is on the production side as we always try to keep building a space especially online on YouTube to see who’s really doing stuff that we like and all of the things that come with being in the band with a modest following. We don’t have that kind of background so we kind of have to look to people we like to see who’s doing well and try to emulate that in some way.

Consuming content is really important and also gaming helps us find creativity; some of us play competitively, some of us are in all sorts of different communities online so then we kind of look to see what artists or other people are doing and how they interact. I mean essentially we’re part of a lot of communities and we mainly draw inspiration from people and the games we enjoy playing.

Have you guys stumbled across bands or musicians that have done gaming in collaboration with music?

Oh definitely. Especially over in the States so many bands are doing really great stuff that we kinda do. I mean, we’re in contact with a lot of them as well because the community [gaming/music] is quite small and you see someone do good so word gets around pretty quickly. I guess the big difference between a lot of other bands is that you see a lot of people are geographically spaced out.

They each have to record their own part and then send it and then collaborate it that way which even in itself is a monumental task. There are heaps of bands out there doing this a lot longer than us and Julian’s years of experience kind of helped us a lot. The Super Soul Bros and Tetrimino – they’ve been doing stuff for years and it’s cool that we’re able to start growing something here in Australia as well.

What would you say has been the biggest learning curve for you since starting the band?

Honestly, it’s been everything outside of the musical stuff. So at the moment, we kind of decided to start putting stuff on YouTube and then that becomes a matter of, ‘Okay, we have to learn how to edit videos, we gotta learn how to have a social presence, we have to build a website, we have to start learning how to be good at sending emails and kind of interacting with these different organisations that we wanna play at and then building the production like on the live side.’

We’ve been fortunate enough to kind of do all the stuff that we use in our videos on our own. We are our own sound engineers so like the logistical side of things has kind of been the biggest learning curve – like whatever we want done, we have to do it. Not only that but also budgeting our time and somehow find time to practice as well has kind of been the trickiest thing.

What would you say has been a positive outcome for you when it comes to gaming?

The communities that are created both online and offline. Obviously with conventions and stuff like Supanova, we see a lot of different groups of people – whether it’d be on the cosplay side or to kind of meet up and to talk about and play the games we enjoy. It’s just another way for people to kind of foster their interests and to find like-minded people. It’s almost exactly the opposite of the ‘stay home’ stigma. People with common interests and being able to connect that way is the best thing about gaming.

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The Consouls will be appearing at this year’s TEDxMacquarie and they will be performing and speaking at the event.

DATE: Saturday 26 September
TIME: 8am-6pm
TICKET PRICE: $110+

To purchase tickets and to learn more about the event, go here: https://www.tedxmacquarieuniversity.com/about/2015-event

To learn more about the band, visit their Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/TheConsoulsBand

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