Finneas O’Connell Interview

Special Feature

FutureMusic’s Editor-At-Large, Dan Brotman, sat down with Finneas O’Connell to discuss everything from his songwriting process, his minimal studio and his advice to up-and-coming musicians who are inspired by his unique story.

If you haven’t heard of Finneas O’Connell, I’d like to say, you’ve been living under a rock, but in reality, Finneas likes to fly under the radar and let his little sister, Billie Eilish, stand in the spotlight. In fact, if he didn’t win eight Grammy Awards (yes, eight!), including Album of the Year, Producer of the Year, Non-Classical and the Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for his work on Billie’s proper debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? you may have recognized him more for his acting work. He was part of the cast for the last season of Glee and was on the popular sitcom, Modern Family.  However, thanks to his Grammy wins, playing with Billie on tour, and debuting more and more of his own music, his profile has steadily increased.

On October 15th, Finneas will be releasing his new, full-length album, Optimist, on Interscope.

The 90s

Finneas’ New Single on Interscope

“The 90s”  is the latest single off of Finneas’ new album “Optimist,” to be released on October 15, 2021.

 

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FutureMusic: Thinking back – what got you to where you are at this moment?

Finneas: I grew up in a house that prioritized the listening and enjoyment of music above other things. My father was very interested in music and avid listener of new music. He always was burning mixed CDs of stuff he was interested in, but later would include things that I or Billie was interested in as well. Would also listen to the CDs in the car, and since we grew up in Los Angeles, we spent a lot of time driving in our car.

When I was 11, I was singing in the choir with a few friends and there was a really cute girl that I wanted to impress, and it would totally seal the deal if I could play a song on the piano, and she’d be mine forever if I did that. So I asked my Dad to teach me four chords, maybe it was five chords to this song called “Beautiful Disaster” by John McLaughlin that I really liked. I would get to the choir rehearsal every week early to play the song and I would wait for her to be the second earliest person and I thought that would do it. Which it didn’t. Which was fine. So that was the genesis of me learning to play a song and it brought me a lot of joy.

The coolest thing about music theory is if you learn a few chords, you’ve learned like thousands and thousands of songs, especially if you reorganize the chords. But that was like a real gateway drug of playing music for me. And then I think I remember going to see a Green Day concert in 2009 with a couple of friends and I remember thinking, like standing there watching it…That’s THE thing – I wanna do that. (laughs) It’s funny, there’s so many phases when your a kid of wanting to be a police officer, wanting to be a scientist or anything else you’re interested in, that’s what I want to do forever. I thought this will probably be a phase and then I thought, this is what I actually want  to do forever. And I still seem to feel that way, so… (laughs)

FutureMusic: That’s funny to hear. I’ve seen you perform on the guitar a number of times and you seem very comfortable.

Finneas: I have a real sense of imposter syndrome with the guitar (laughs). I was talking to my friend Jared (Leto), I was working on some music for his band, and I said “do you ever feel like you only really know how to play the songs that you’ve written on guitar?” And he was like “Oh, 100%!” – and that’s not really true like most songs are really simple to play they’re only a couple of chords. But anything that’s complicated, anything with soloing, anything with like a lead guitar part or a riff, I’ve never really spent time learning a bunch of Sabbath or Zepplin songs, I just wrote songs every day. I only feel like I know how to play mine.

FutureMusic: But you are incorporating picking and technique, you’re certainly not just strumming barre chords…

Finneas: Yeah, I try to keep it interesting.

FutureMusic: This music education from your parents, was that part of your home-schooling curriculum?

Finneas: If there was any curriculum in my home-schooling, music would have been deemed extra curricular. But being home schooled definitely gave me more time to explore my passion for making music I think. Like being home schooled is a funny thing, cause it wasn’t a thing I thought about growing up, but my parents were really good teachers. There’s a powerful difference [between] being educated in something and being able to educate in something. And our parents were both. And I’m continually impressed by them. I think if I have a kid a little later in my life, I really need to assess how able I would be to educate them in order to make a decision about home schooling. Not that public school is any better,  they’re usually pretty bad. But I think growing up, [the thing] that Billie and I took for granted probably was that my parents were actually really good teachers. Even though they weren’t teachers in a classroom at school. They were really good at it.

FutureMusic: Being home schooled is really a cool thing when your parents can focus on things that you and Billie had an affinity for or had a serious interest, in your case music, they could carve out some extra time for you to pursue that interest.

Finneas: 100% It’s so stupid and unfair by the time my friends were graduating high school, I was more than half-way through my 10,000 hours, you know. That’s was just a huge leg up on most people. Most people are having to like wake up really early, get themselves to school, be at school all day, come home do their homework. I was just like what my parents called World Schooling, the kind of stuff that other people would call “life skills” – the kind of stuff you’re going to need to navigate yourself through daily life. The number of friends I have that were in High School Pre-Calculus or high-level Algebra and we’d go to a restaurant, they would be pulling out their phone calculators to do the tip. And I’d be like Dude… (laughs) like It’s 20%! If you’re going to learn any math, learn that, you know. But that was like a lot of the curriculum that my parents sort of started with. Before we name all the countries in Southern Africa, let’s make sure you know how to get around LA. (Laughs). I think all that stuff is so funny. It’s cool to learn about all the far flung regional geography, but…wouldn’t it be a prerequisite to know where the 101 meets the 5?

FutureMusic: So when did music production start entering into your world?

Finneas: When I turned 14, my parents sort of bought me this program call [Apple] Logic Pro X. And it’s funny, they didn’t actually buy it for me, I think it was like $800 dollars at the time, and they wrote me a card with like “You can buy this or whatever for your birthday” – they hadn’t even gotten it yet. And then they were like, “it’s kinda expensive.” And then, like a couple of months later, the price went down to $300, I think. And I was like “can I get it now?” And they were like, yeah. (Pauses…) Actually, I think I paid for it at that point anyway. In fact, if I really think about it, I think I got technically nothing for my birthday that year. (Big laugh).

But I saved up enough money that year to pay for it, since I was actually saving to pay $800 for it. So it was now affordable. And then I starting trying to use it and I was so terrible. So, if I can be the voice of inspiration to any kid out there who wants to be a producer, the thing I try and tell them is it seems like when you listen to music that you love that [the artist] must have always known what they were doing and always must have been good at it. And that’s just not true.

Man! There are days when I still don’t feel good doing it. And certainly the first couple of years, I was really bad. Everything I made sounded really bad. But, I was always curious and I never stop trying and that that turned out to be the important thing.

FutureMusic: So what was the turning point Finneas for you when you realized, hey…maybe this isn’t so bad anymore?

Finneas: Well, the two turning points were that I would work with producers who were grown ups and they would tell me they knew what they were doing and we make music for my band when I was in high school, and I’d be like listening to what they did at home, and I’d be like, I think my demo sounds kind of better. You know, I think what I did is more interesting. And as I spent more time on the drums, and got them to hit harder, I thought, maybe there isn’t like a secret ingredient to all of this. I think a lot of people believe there’s like a secret sauce you can get from a certain person, but I started to think, “OK, maybe that’s not true and I’m just fine.”

Definitely the second turning point was just understanding the way that the entertainment world worked. It seems to me that you make something that other people place inherent value on and then, you’re valued. I think that’s sort of a funny and interesting economy. I think I wrote and produced “Ocean Eyes” for my sister and then the next day, people were like “Oh! He can write and produce songs.” (laughs) It’s so funny that it was like that quick.  Like a switch flipped. And it’s funny because it’s not that they were wrong to feel that way or right to feel that way, it was just like you make a thing that people like, and then, they think, “Oh, he’ll make more things I like…” Kind of a fun way to garner a reputation, just to make things that people enjoy, and candidly, man, when I was 18 years-old and we put “Ocean Eyes” out, I was not ready to be anyone’s producer or co-writer. I am now, but at the time, I was like getting thrown into these sessions where I was just faking, I mean like, we were writing songs that I liked, but really I had no idea what I was doing, you know? It was kind of awesome. (Laughs).

FutureMusic: You did have some exposure to the entertainment business and how it worked with your acting career, no?

Finneas: Well, yeah, totally. I was an actor in high-school, but it was much different from the music world, and, you know, as an actor, basically not being creative. I mean, I guess as an actor, you’re creating a character, but you’re executing, you’re saying somebody else’s lines, helping further someone else’s story, acting in someone else’s scene, on someone else’s set…I mean, if I was ever to jump back into the film and TV world, I would want to play a much more executive role in whatever I was making and have more oversight of the project…

Finneas Studio Gear List

» Apple iMac
» Apple Logic Pro X
» Yamaha HS5 Nearfield Monitors
» Yamaha H8S Subwoofer
» Universal Audio Apollo
» Audio Technica AT2020 Mic
» Akai MPK Mini
» Roli Seaboard Rise
» Audio-Technica M50X Headphones
» Audio-Technica AT2020
» Neumann TLM102
» Furman M-8Dx
» Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 (2nd Gen)
» Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol
» Novation UltraNova

FutureMusic: So you could dictate the trajectory, instead of hanging on to the tail and going for the ride?

Finneas: Well, yeah. And I never thought that being on set all day would be the most fun thing. That said, I do think being part of a great movie or great TV show would be amazing, but doing the same scene ten times that day, or waiting for cameras to get set up, like that never stimulated me enough. So, yeah, having more say…

As a producer/songwriter, you are basically the director of the movie you’re making. Like you can hire “an actor” in the form of a really good violinist to come play on a song after it was already composed. That’s what it feels like being an actor is on a show.

FutureMusic: After the positive reaction to “Ocean Eyes,” what was your approach going forward with your songwriting and producing did anything change? I know you continued to work in your bedroom studio…

Finneas: In the beginning, I was just writing things for me to perform and have fun with and then when I got a little older I started helping my friends with their projects, producing for them and writing a little bit with them and then “Ocean Eyes,” I wrote, you know, just like I write everything else, I just kinda was feeling something that just inspired that song, and then it was done. Then, my band started playing it, but it didn’t sound very good with my band playing it, so I gave it to Billie and she killed it. I didn’t have to beg her, but I would have begged her if she hadn’t been interested in doing it, cause I knew how great it would sound with her singing on it.

And then in the ensuing years, I’m still writing mostly for myself, even if other people end up singing it. The most I’ll do is either co-write with people and that’s an easy way to shift your focus cause you’re making sure the song articulates who the other person is, or I’ll write a song with a goal in mind. When we were doing “Come Out And Play,” the Apple campaign, we got sent that little animated spot and I was like “Cute!” And I just watched it over and over, wrote the lyrics and wrote a song that fit that spot. And then Billie sounded amazing singing it, so that was how we rolled through that…

FutureMusic: A lot of your music is very minimal, and it seems that when you write and produce, you create just enough music to set a nice foundation for Billie’s voice…

Finneas: That’s so nice of you…

FutureMusic: Well, for someone as young as you are, there’s a maturity to your approach that really stands out and I think it’s one of the elements that allows listeners to quickly connect with it. Conversely, there is so much music being put out today that is so over-produced – almost like they need to infuse every studio trick in the book into a single song, which ultimately steps all over the vocal. It’s like the production gets in its own way and what’s so refreshing about the music that you and Billie are creating is that it’s just the opposite. The structure, the sounds, the production, and Billie’s voice all have their own space with nothing competing…It’s very intimate.

Finneas: Well, I think production is an interesting thing because it’s a little bit like the clothing a song wears and to me there are people who can pull off wearing a lot of clothing and there are people who look really good in a black T-shirt and black pants…and I’ve always felt the most comfortable in a black T-shirt and black pants. I guess I’m trying to make jeans and T-shirt music that I’m comfy in.

I know some people who are louder than I am when they present themselves and they put all sorts of nonsense into their productions, but they make it sound good and I believe it, but it’s just not what I’m interested in making. I think the main problem in production is that so much of everyone’s production sounds the same and it’s a real detriment to the world of music that we’re alive in right now. So if production is like clothing, most of it is the same (laughs) and I wish it wasn’t. There are some people who are not – like Vince Staples – has production that sounds really different. Also John Cunningham is doing a really good job.

When I was like 19, I just stopped being interested in making any music that sounded like anything else really, I just wanted to make stuff that sounded brand new. I don’t always succeed at that, but that’s what I’m going for, I mean, I don’t compare myself to anything else,  but it just has to sound different.

FutureMusic: Well, that’s difficult in today’s world with everyone using the same equipment, the same DAWs, the same soft synths, the same loops, and so on…

Finneas: True. Most of my sound design is things that I’m recording myself on a portable recorder. I’m walking around and I’ll record interesting sounds and I’ll process them myself in my computer. That’s the way I’ve found I can get the most unique sounds. And a lot of the time that doesn’t come from scratch, it comes from an idea, like when I was making the song “Watch” for Billie, I had an idea. I knew the song was about setting something on fire and I thought wouldn’t it be cool to make a song out of matches being ignited and blown out and that’s when I articulated it, when I actually tried it. I loved it, so then I felt I had a good idea. But, you know, sometimes the sh!t it doesn’t work that way, sometimes it’s like, you have a good idea and you try it out and it sounds pretty bad (laughs).

FutureMusic: Sure, there’s obviously a lot of experimentation.

Finneas: 100%

FutureMusic: So when you bring these found sounds into your computer are you bringing them into Logic, or are you using something else?

Finneas: I use Logic for everything still. I love it.

FutureMusic: So once it’s in Logic are there certain plug-ins that are your go-to’s?

Finneas: I carry my production minimalism into my approach, I use plug-ins that are mostly in Logic. There really isn’t much secret sauce, I just change stuff until they sound really good, even if I use a plug-in that I bought down the road. Some people I know, like pirate, or get plug-ins for free, and I never did that because I didn’t want to have a bunch of plug-ins I didn’t know how to use. If I was going to get a plug-in, I wanted to treat it like an analog synth and research it, learn how to use it, buy it and figure it out. I didn’t just want to end up with a bunch of stuff I had no idea how to use.

FutureMusic: Well, you get to that whole analysis paralysis conundrum where there are so many choices to make you spend half your time auditioning presets instead of making music.

Finneas: Right! You’re totally right.

FutureMusic: And as far as synths go, are you still using what’s offered in Logic, because I noticed you’re using a Nord in your live rig?

Finneas: Yeah, the Nord live is just a piano. I just use it as a piano sound and a lot of the synth design in our live shows are patches that I used on the record that are running through MIDI to a laptop I have off-stage and those are sounds that I’ll either pull out of plug-ins, such as Omnisphere, which is great, and soft-synths in Logic, but they’re all super customized, all stuff that I tweaked a lot before I used them in a production.

FutureMusic: So tell us more about your infamous home studio

Finneas: (Laughs) My home studio is like so small. Up until recently, it was my childhood bedroom where I slept and worked. And my old upright piano, which I love and I think everybody needs an upright piano. And an older iMac, which was too slow, and some recording gear. I recorded the first couple of songs that Billie and I did, “Ocean Eyes,” “Six Feet Under,” maybe even “Bellyache” on a microphone called an (Audio-Technica) AT-2020 that’s like 80 bucks because that’s what I could afford at the time. So that’s what we used for a while and it sounds great to me, and now we use a slightly more expensive mic (Neumann TLM 102), but I don’t usually advertise these things because I don’t necessarily think expensive stuff is better, you know what I mean? I think the most important thing is to make music with whatever you have.

FutureMusic: Well, that’s a nice takeaway…

Finneas: I try not to brag about whatever expensive sh!t I’m using. You can make a song out of anything.

FutureMusic: That said, if you’re listening to one of your tracks and you’re into production, and you hear Billie’s intimate, breathy vocals that have this certain character, how should I say it, confidentiality – you’re instantly like, okay…what’s Finneas using here?! What’s the mic, what’s the compression settings, is he bathing it in Space Designer? What sort of VooDoo is he cooking up in his bedroom??

Finneas: And it sounds like you know the secret, which is that it doesn’t matter what I do, Billie’s voice is amazing. That’s the real truth of it. I’m just lucky. I’m just recording an instrument that is beautiful, which is Billie’s voice. I’m really careful with it and I use a couple of tricks that I’ve developed over the years to make it just sound as realistic as possible. I want it to sound like you’re sitting next to Billie – that’s all I’m trying to do. Just remove the microphone from the room and make it sound like her.

FutureMusic: Well, you’re certainly doing that!  There are times when she’s so soft spoken I can’t believe that you’re actually able to record anything without a ton of noise and then there are times when she’ll just let’s go. I think “Crown” [“You Should See Me In A Crown”] is a great example of that.

Finneas: It’s just a single condenser mic, but there are ways I’m compressing it and automating it, shifting gain to make sure it always sounds the way we’re hearing it in our heads.

FutureMusic: And you’re often doubling it and adding layers…

Finneas: Yeah! I’m obsessed with doubling it.

FutureMusic: (Laughs)

Finneas: I’ve always loved doubled vocals. I loved John Lennon’s doubled vocals, I loved Kurt Cobain’s doubled vocals, I loved all that stuff growing up. And I always knew that was going to be a big part of the sound Billie and were going to develop – double tracked vocals and triple tracked vocals. It just really helped bring a lot of stereo depth to a song. You have the same melody hitting you in two ears instead of just one feels really good to me. I really like that sound.

FutureMusic: And the reverb, you have a nice touch with the reverb…what’s your approach there?

Finneas: I try to make my reverb feel invisible. Billie is not a tremendous fan of reverb, so I use it sparsely. I only use it if it vanishes. We try not to have most songs drown in it, but the real truth – I think ultimately is that I’ll make any exception for any song that I feel needs it. So that there are a lot of really dry songs on her album with no reverb and there are a couple that are really ‘verbed out. And it’s just dependent on how those songs sounded with that reverb. I’ve always liked wet vocals, I just like that sound like someone singing in a church kind of sound. I love that.

FutureMusic: So after the condenser mic…what’s your chain before the A/D conversion into Logic?

Finneas: I don’t have any Pre’s – I really don’t like the way that they sound. They’re just a hit that enters into the noise floor and I like my vocals to be as quiet as possible. So I’m always post processing. Signal chain wise I just use a compressor and an EQ band to cut off all of the low end because pretty much anything below 160 Hz isn’t really present in Billie’s voice and the mic I use picks up a lot of that, so I cut it all out. Yeah, and a pretty high compression ratio because that’s just the way I like vocals to sound. And then whatever reverb I’m using. There’s a lot of glitched out vocals that have become a part of the sound that we’ve established for ourselves and that’s just a bunch of different plug-ins that I’ll use to modulate and destroy vocals, which is really fun.

FutureMusic: So now that you can certainly afford anything you want, what was a piece of kit you picked up recently?

Finneas: The last piece of equipment I bought was an upright. (laughs) I just bought it. I’m really excited about that, I think that will really change my workflow. I didn’t have one in my new house and I’d go back to my parents house just to play one.

FutureMusic: So you set up a new home studio at your new house?

Finneas: Yeah, which is nice it’s a little bit of a bigger room, so it’s really cool. I like to have very little in my studio room. There’s just not a lot going on there. That’s the way I like it. I feel more peaceful if there’s not a lot of stuff in a room.

FutureMusic: Are you going to treat it at all or set it up so it’s better for production?

Finneas: Yeah, I’m toying with it. I’ve put sound-deadening curtains up and some furniture in there that’s sound absorbent. But the real truth is that I don’t really like the sound of dead rooms that much. I like the natural reverb when the room is live. I recorded acoustic guitar in there and it’s so ‘verbed out. I just wouldn’t be able to get that sound if I hadn’t had this echo-y room. I’m trying to make the most out of it.

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FutureMusic:  So, for you and your songwriting, and coming of age in this time, is there any gear that you’d like to see come out that would help you in your productions that hasn’t come out yet or isn’t available.

Finneas: Huh! What a cool question, man?!

It’s kind of a complex answer, but if there was a guitar that articulated MIDI the way that a MIDI keyboard does, I think it would change the game because it would be really cool to be able to play a guitar line and then translate that guitar part to another instrument in a rhythmic way. But there is so much cool stuff that is out now man, there’s a synth called a Roli that’s amazing.

FutureMusic: Yeah, the Seaboard.

Finneas: Yeah, I’ve worked with that team a lot. I just really like them and the product they make – they’re inventing some cool stuff man. I try to be as fashion-forward as I can with gear as possible. I think if you hear about something with new sound, you should try it out. You might find something really cool.

FutureMusic: At what point did Interscope come into play in your career?

Finneas: Well, when we started putting stuff out, a bunch of labels reached out and we started having meetings with people and an imprint on Interscope called Dark Room was one of those groups and we just really liked Dark Room.  It was run by a guy named Justin Lubliner. He was always enthusiastic and he always had good ideas. He was always sweet to us and ultimately he was the person we felt most comfortable with and Billie ended up signing to Dark Room, but Interscope has been amazing man, Billie signed with Interscope in August of 2016 and it’s been amazing. I’ve got nothing bad to say about that…the whole label situation. Everyone there has been great. Our whole team is amazing.

FutureMusic: So now you have your parents on the road with you! Does the home-schooling never stop?

Finneas: (Laughs) Well, when Billie was underage she needed to have our parents with her legally, and I can’t complain, I love my parents.

FutureMusic: Well there seems to be a lot of love in the family. I remember seeing an interview with Billie – and you just walked in and gave her a big hug and kiss right on camera and then quickly split. I thought that was just great. It reminded me of me and my sister. Just so nice to see…

Finneas: Yeah the one in Chicago (laughs). We’re like best friends. My girlfriend and I were just talking about it the other day – I was talking about having a best friend and she was like, “do you have a best friend?” and I’m like yeah, Billie. That’s my best friend. I have other really close friends that I love, but Billie is my best friend and she’s my sister, so it’s a pretty great.

FutureMusic: That’s amazing. And it’s great to see how that connection comes out creatively in the music…

Finneas: Thanks man.

FutureMusic: So is there any takeaway you’d like to give up-and-coming songwriters who are inspired by you and Billie?

Finneas: Yeah…I think that there are things that are really important to not do because they will hobble your or stifle your creativity. First, to compare what you’re making to the music that you love so much. I think that’s really hard because you’re not hearing any faults in the things you love. You just know that you love them. And I think that it’s totally okay to love music and make music that is different from that and makes you feel different. And that’s when it’s not really your job anymore to worry about you – just have to make something that you’re proud of and you feel is unique and you feel expresses you and you feel is honest to who you are as a person and as an artist. And you know, simple is great, a guitar and a voice or a beat and a voice…there’s no wrong answer in production.

And I think I see a lot of kids, and I was one of them, who are flipping out because their song doesn’t sound like the song they love right then. And that’s okay because if you made a song that did sound exactly like that, people really wouldn’t care because that one already exists. The only thing that’s really important is that people are going to take notice if you make music that they haven’t heard before.

FutureMusic: And when it comes down to it, it’s really about the song after all.

Finneas: That’s so, so true.

Finneas’ new album, “Optimist,”  will be available on October 15, 2021.