Mike Tompkins

0:06Hey, it's Matt with MSN.CA. We're about to go inside here and chat with Mike Tompkins. You might know him from YouTube. He's got over a hundred million views. He does all the music with his mouth. He's also in town to talk about the bully awareness campaign he's doing with the family channel. It's a really, really important cause and his song stand up is a big part of it. So let's go inside and chat with Mike Tompkins. So we're here for stand up, just bullying awareness campaigns.

0:55So why don't we start with that and talk about that and how you got involved? I really have a heart for the kids who are getting bullied because I really was affected by that in public school and especially in that kind of like eight to eleven year old range. That was kind of when it was kind of on full force. I grew up in a really small town. If you weren't kind of into hockey here in Canada, then you were kind of like weird. So I was into music and performing. I was in a musical theatre and so that's kind of like the reason behind why I wanted to do it. And then the song stand up is about kind of empowering the kids who are getting bullied and also the bystanders who are watching that. I noticed when I died on my one I was listening to the

1:50that part is a lot louder in your track than his track. So it must have been something you recognize when you're listening to these songs, are you looking for stuff that you can throw in there to make it a little different or are you trying to recreate basically what you do? At the beginning that was kind of the game. It's kind of like how do I make this sound as close to the original now. But like now I'm kind of like starting to do a little more remix stuff where I'm kind of like adding my own elements. Well the Skrillex videos got you playing with Ableton. Yeah this song kind of came out and just like the way it was the you know the Santa Gold song kind of went in with the Skrillex version of Cinema. I was like if you're just really really cool to be able to perform this in a live sort of setting or just like kind of like watch how I would how I kind of make it.

2:37You know rather than doing the how I made this section you kind of like doing the how I made this as was going on. Is that the way the record is going to be done? So here the record has been changed a little bit. Yeah it's kind of it's kind of shifted and partly because of that that video you know it's like I've kind of like trying to figure out just a direction for the music and for also just like the live show because I know that's going to be a big part of what I do. Is it? Because that has only happened once as far as I know. Yeah it's in front of a very large audience. It's definitely something that I've been thinking about since the beginning and I didn't really wanted to go forth with it unless it was just absolutely mind-blowing and so I think you know I think we're getting really close to that.

3:26It's really exciting for me because it's like I've been just kind of figuring this whole thing out. I was like going on like I started just I really just started singing like or getting the confidence to sing on my own stuff like three years ago like literally like to this date. I think we can switch that confidence thing back to the bully. Where did you find the confidence? Where can these kids find confidence in themselves? For me the the confidence just came with trying. About three years ago I was producing and I was like I always want to be kind of like behind the scene and I want to be an artist. I wanted to kind of completely stay away from that and I kind of wrote this song as a joke because one of my friends was like I want to start a boy then. We were just joking. I was like I'm gonna write a song kind of like cheesy pop song basically.

4:12And it was called Dream World and it was the first time I had ever like sung and like layered my own voice and I was playing a bar and I'm like huh this actually doesn't sound too bad and that was kind of like the moment that moment I was like I actually like burned the city I played in my car I was like that's okay I was like I was like this is me and she goes this is you. And I was like yeah I was just kind of like a crazy crazy thing where I was like that kind of like in some moment I was like holy crap like maybe I can actually sing. And so then it kind of developed into like this funny idea of doing like a Miley Cyrus cover. I want to go I mentioned the Ellen thing they're briefly just in your only live performance ever really. But you got you to work with Timbaland which must have been cool especially that's your world. I had been you know in the studio before you know in bigger sessions but never more as an engineer

5:02and not as a producer and so as a whole like another flip you know you kind of have the opportunity to throw things in and throw in ideas as a producer you know he has a team of you know three or four producers kind of at all time. And it was just amazing. It's the fact that really just kind of gave me confidence that like the first time I played Tim one of my songs he was like kind of like blown away. And that was like holy crap for one I'm meeting with Timbaland and two like he actually likes what I what I've been doing. We do something called five questions before I let you go five book questions one word answers. YouTube or albums? YouTube. Lennon or McCartney? Lennon. Coming from the hip hop world. Parker Biggie.

5:48Biggie. When you hear a song it usually hits you first lyrics melody or rhythm. Melody. And in one word like Tomkins. Love. No. You got it. You want to you want to kick a little beatbox before before we get it. Mike Tomkins.