Rich Shivener - Living Digital Media - Music Production Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Alright, welcome aboard Rich, good to see ya.
Good to see you too.
you know, on the digital forum, I've, you know, had watched your content for so long andthen we met, you know, not long ago and that was really cool.
I'm he exists, he's real.
He's not just an algorithm.
That's how I felt about a lot of you guys.
So we met at the finished February retreat in Pasadena, Ableton headquarters.

(00:30):
I had a great time, I really did.
I was stressed out about it, like crazy leading up to it.
But as soon as you guys got there, all the weight came off my shoulders.
It was just so fun, the energy was great.
Like you said, gonna meet you.
after knowing you from our discord and hearing all your jammuaries and your music and justinteracting.

(00:53):
Such a great experience.
It's really funny to get to know somebody through their music and then meet them.
usually in life, I guess, like you meet people and then you hear their music.
You find out they make music and all that.
But the other way around is also really interesting.
Absolutely.
mean, there were a few people I think I met at the Ableton event that we were at or theworkshop finished February.

(01:18):
Yes.
And during that, I think it was Jeremy whose baby tiger beats, right?
Yeah.
On, Sunclaw.
Yeah.
And there's one or two at at Brindle.
Right.
So we did, we're working on a collaborate now.
It's just great.
And just kind of see like you're, yeah, you're a real person.
There's, there's an energy in the room that you get when you walk in and, know,

(01:39):
This is like the thing I said in the review.
And by the way, Brian, you didn't pay me to write this review or anything.
So I'm just going to say it.
But as I said, like you just did such a good job building community and with everybody andwalking in seeing that there were already things like inspirational books we could work

(02:00):
with, which I bought.
I bought the book of obscure shadows because you showed us that the first day.
And I've been obsessed with reading that.
You had copies of your book.
You also had plenty of snacks and waters and all those things.
just immediately were like introducing people from, you know, Ableton and so forth.

(02:22):
think Alberto we met as well.
That was great.
It was just such a like, I mean, I think the first day we just kind of just talked, youknow, and got some ideas of what we were working on.
and that's the stuff that you don't really get.
You can get that community on discord, right?
you could share that content, actually just being there was super powerful andinteresting.

(02:45):
There's a really cool space that Ableton has in Pasadena with the classroom set up andthen the studio upstairs and little like nooks and crannies you can hang out and work on
your stuff outside on the rooftop there.
And they just opened their doors to us which was incredibly generous to just be like, heyguys, it's yours, have fun.

(03:08):
yeah, Alberto was amazing, Aileen was so much help.
Aileen was funny.
there because she knew what I needed before I knew.
I was talking to Dan, I think it was, the time, and she just was like, here.
And she gave me a headphone splitter.
was like, I was just realizing I needed that.
How did you know?
She's like, I got you.

(03:30):
They were so hospitable and I just, I couldn't have imagined it going that well.
In my head,
I saw all the possible things that could go wrong, so I spent the leading months trying tofigure out how to avoid all that stuff.
Mm-hmm.
It's a bit like teaching right you have like a plan and you don't know until everybodygets in the room if it's gonna work you don't know what the relationships will be like or

(03:59):
the interactions with people and I just loved that everyone there Wasn't trying to posturein any way to say like I'm doing incredible work or look at me It's like I'm I really
appreciate what you're working on and let's work together just kind of alongside of eachother whether we have our headphones on
Or in the instance with Aileen, think she was in the demonstration demo room or theshowcase room with all the pushes and moves.

(04:29):
And it was near the end of the evening where a number of people along with her wererecording with materials, kalimbas.
And I think there was a handpan involved sampling the moves.
It's just very magical, right?
No one was sort of resisting that.
idea.
It was okay to kind of fail a little bit, know, and experiment and play.

(04:50):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and that was one of the moments that I only got to see after in video because I wasinvolved in other magical moments that were happening elsewhere.
So it was really nice to see that that was all going on.
But you're right, that kind of openness that was there that's so important incollaboration and music making and art and all of that, that people were just...

(05:17):
kind of like, I'm here, this is who am, this is what I do, and I'm excited to do it withyou guys.
it made for some really cool moments, and I think one of the highlights for me was whenyou and Brindle started collaborating, and she sang vocals for you.
She christened my new SM57 that I brought for the event, so it was cool to know that thinggot off to a good start.

(05:46):
For me as well, to know both of you guys musically and to see you come together was just areally fun kind of like reward of the whole event.
Yeah, I remember meeting her the first day and saying, you know, I was a fanboy of yoursubmissions during their January because, you know, they were atmospheric and, you know,

(06:10):
brief in the way that you would get a really good sense of the idea and then, you know, itwould fade.
It would be a minute or two.
at the beginning of January, I put so much pressure on myself because I knew this wasgoing out like to public, right?
I don't know, you just wanna make sure it's got something there, but a number of folks,including her, would just put it out there in, they were polished, don't get me wrong, but

(06:41):
they were ideas, they were just sketches, and I was just like, you know what, can kind of,I can take this and put these ideas to like one minute and be okay with that, be content,
doesn't have to be a finished song by any means.
So there was a lot of inspiration just sonically.
listening to her work and it was a real pleasure just when we, randomly, know, we'resitting next to each other by each other at the place and I just said, do you wanna sing

(07:06):
on this?
This would be great.
you know, the open idea was very interesting because I think there was a time where youwere sitting next to me, right?
And she's singing, and she's singing in a room that, you know, I would say it's.
A room that you may say is not treated for singing.
There's air conditioning going on, creeks, there's people outside.

(07:30):
But I still love that idea of just doing it right in the moment with a kind of abandon foreveryone to see.
They could look in the window and see someone singing and that's just, it just shows thatkind of open creativity that might inspire others, I think.
And yeah, we're continuing to work on stuff.
So I'm hoping we can put something out in the near future.

(07:53):
that's great to hear.
It's like everyone kind of let their guard down in those moments.
know, we're vulnerable when you're sharing your creativity and your music.
There's just so many levels you can feel insecure on, you know?
So to just have everyone be okay with that and those moments show you like, you can doyour thing.

(08:19):
Hmm
And your thing is appreciated because it is your thing.
It's who you are.
I think like with Jamuary and those kind of rapid fire challenges, even like some of themeetings that we do with the music production club where we give ourselves a very limited
amount of time to work, the pressure that comes with it kind of alleviates the pressurebecause it's one day, it's one hour.

(08:49):
Of course it's going to be the opus grand masterpiece.
But sometimes in that spirit the masterpiece has come out.
This is just a weird irony that really kind of fascinates me.
I think this is a good way to bring in your book because you kind of talk a lot about thiscreating in public and sharing and letting people have access to you as you're working.

(09:20):
which is a very vulnerable state to let people in while you're creating.
And sometimes I feel that way when I'm doing stuff.
I might make like a song like, I should be streaming this or sharing it or something.
But I only can know that when it works out because there's so many other times when itdoesn't and you don't want to make that your display.

(09:43):
But yeah, I thought...
I wanted to really speak to you about your thoughts on this topic of sharing the work inpublic and being vulnerable like it was, like we were in a lot of ways in California.
Yeah, I love that segue.
Thank you, Britt.

(10:04):
So yeah, I book Living Digital Media.
There's sort of two parts to it that came from it.
I got interested in just kind of behind the scenes stories of how creators, starting withscholars, because I myself am a professor full time at York University, and producing a
lot of scholarship.

(10:25):
And I think one thing I started thinking about during my dissertation is just, phase acouple of years ago.
Wow, this is, that was 2018.
Jeez.
So long ago now is revealing what goes on behind the scenes.
Right.
And so I'm making all these claims or these ideas that we need to be doing this as afields.

(10:48):
And there are numerous people before me who were making those kinds of arguments.
And I said, okay, if I'm going to continue pushing this argument forward and likeunderstanding how people make, why don't I practice it as well?
And I think it came at a time really during the pandemic too, when, you know, we're kindof a lot of people, I will say just, I think that's fair to say we're getting kind of

(11:16):
lonely and feeling in isolation, myself included, all of my classes, as I'm sure yourswere removed online.
You know, and so we're just staring at a screen.
We need to build community in some ways.
I had built some of that community by playing on Discord, playing games, had never doneanything creative on Discord.

(11:36):
So I started thinking, why don't I just document my entire process for this book?
And I started just doing it offline at first, recording my screen, sort of as we're doingnow, and trying to come up with, I guess, time lapses of how...
words and ideas would come together.
And then, someone had asked me sort of what I wanted to do, why I named the project this,but I started streaming on Twitch.

(12:04):
I came up with this idea of 100 days of writing.
Let's just get on Twitch for 100 days and record for at least an hour.
Maybe sometimes less if I was out of ideas, but maybe even longer if I was going, becauseI wanted to know.
what that was like because game developers were telling me that there was an enormousvalue in live streaming.

(12:27):
You got immediate feedback, you built community, you raised awareness of a forthcomingproject, or you solved problems.
And I just admit, like it was terrifying to get it to turn on the record button, have myface on there, which is a choice I made, and have my screen up with something raw, know,

(12:47):
unfinished, just...
code or text.
I remember one of the first comments I ever got the first few days I was streaming,someone said, why are you writing the conclusion of this book when you haven't even
finished it?
But for me, it was like a matter of trying to just get words down.
And that's how my process works.

(13:08):
really I write, I don't write from beginning to end, I write kind of my way through themiddle.
And then I'll write a lot of pieces and then just sort of remixing them and cobbling themtogether.
as I go.
But for me it was like, I gotta do something here on the stream.
What can I do?
I can just write a lot of placeholder text in different ways.

(13:31):
I'll get to that part later.
Or can outline or do something.
And where is my thinking going with this?
Yeah, it was just a matter of trying to see what it was like to be so vulnerable because Ihad followed people on Twitch as well who were streaming their game development.
And had enormous communities as a result, right?

(13:53):
Getting on every single day and streaming their work.
I'm like, what is that like?
I mean, how do you, how do you sort of deal with those pressures or do they feel likepressures?
they, are you okay with being vulnerable?
What's at stake when you do that?
And yeah, as a result learned a ton of things about processes and then started thinking.

(14:13):
as academics like to do theoretically about what it means and what are the key kind ofterms that come out of it and the things that I sort of organize the book by our
collaboration, revision, and delivery, how we do those things and they're all kind ofinterconnected in different ways.
And then lastly, I'll just say, because I'm sort of going on about this, but as I starteddoing it too, I was thinking, okay, we could do

(14:42):
I could do a book that grounds all these findings in, I could stream it and show my work,but what if I make the entire book open access?
And everything you can access just by downloading it, the images, the sounds, the book,making it part of a, putting it under a Creative Commons license.

(15:05):
And that was also different too, because I think in academia we like,
There's a real like insistence sometimes to have like, you know, the physical copy, theprint of what we do, but this is going to be all digital.
And so I'm designing it and writing it from the ground up, you know, with some templates,things of that sort, have to mind you creative comments, materials, but all I'm working as

(15:32):
a temporary publisher and the writer before it gets anywhere.
And I just said, like, look, if I'm going to try to get other
people, readers, to think about this stuff, like open access, and being open andvulnerable as a creator.
I gotta make it open access.
It's the only way.
It's it's reciprocal too for all the people who gave their time in participating ininterviews and so forth.

(15:58):
It's like meta, I guess you would say.
It's a form following the function and kind of walk in the walk while you talk the talk.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it's very, very easy to publish.
I think publishing in places that are maybe read by a few or just folks who are in thefields.

(16:23):
Certainly we have amazing, like I say we is like the field that I'm in is rhetoric andwriting studies to publish in another fields that might be behind paywalls, know, other
really great journals.
We have a number of open access sort of publications as well.

(16:43):
But in a number of cases for print ones, I've had to apply to make it open access.
So it's either a fee that I would pay or that my institution would.
And that's all great.
But I'm like, what if I start from the ground up and just say, like propose it to be anopen access book?
And that's why I went with the publisher idea, Computers and Composition Digital Press,because...

(17:07):
they're a digital imprint.
were already open access.
And I said, you know, I don't care really about the pay in this book.
It's about the visibility.
there are other ways of, I have a job.
I full-time jobs.
It's great.
But again, it just felt kind of icky to do all this research about openness and then nottry to make it open access itself, if that makes sense.

(17:35):
That's a great opportunity.
I'm sure that informed your research though as well.
mean, because you have the experience and you're living it.
Living, living digital media.
Yeah.
And don't get me wrong, like, I learned just a fraction of what it's like to live digitalmedia.

(18:01):
But to see and speak with creators again who stream six, seven times a week for even fiveor six hours at a time or more, that's their job.
Their job is really as a streamer.
so they can make income to produce games.
And even when they do, it's not a lot.

(18:23):
I don't have to tell you twice that YouTube is a saturated market.
There's a lot of stuff you have to get out there to get subscribers and views.
And they do that just to produce their work.
I'm like, yeah, if I were to sell the book, I'm sort of profiting off this creative marketthat kind of...

(18:44):
really, really works very hard to maintain visibility and community.
I mean, yeah, even in the 100 days I did it, it was great.
Sometimes I would have one viewer who I didn't know if it was a bot or somebody else, or Iwould have 100.

(19:06):
But then I started meeting regulars who were on Twitch and who were checking in.
you know, every time I would stream and I would, I would check them out and we kind ofhave this relationship, right?
Online.
There was in fact one writer I met, you, think they were in Alberta and they, they cameinto the Toronto area and said, like, I'm going to be in town if you want to, you want to

(19:31):
hang out and catch up.
And it was just this like real moment, almost like our workshop, right?
We had been in this intense period online, commenting on each other's work every day for
30 days or more and then we're like let's celebrate let's meet you know it's it's allworth it.
Hmm.
That's pretty cool to get it in real life too.

(19:55):
But yeah, it's interesting.
It's an interesting way to create because I guess they like, what I'm trying to rememberwhat this phrase or term is, but like where when you're being observed, changes your

(20:17):
behavior.
Like we know that even down to the quantum level, like when they look at particles, itchanges how they behave once they're observed.
But it's true about us when you know there's a camera on or someone's recording, it doesaffect how you create.
And I found myself, it's, I don't know how exactly, but I know it's different when, if I'mstreaming say, which.

(20:47):
I should probably do more of now talking to you, but you feel a little bit different.
Like for one, I know I'm way less prone to be distracted.
So I'm not going to like go on the internet as much as I would when I'm making music bymyself.
I get stuck.
I can always bail out and like watch a video or read a manual or do anything besides facethe problem.

(21:10):
when you're being watched, or at least you might be being watched, you
Definitely stick with it more.
least that's how I felt about it.
I get I want to relate it back if I don't mind to you know our shared Full I mean ourshared teaching commitment of writing you know it it's what like somebody watches you

(21:34):
teaching writing You know observing Yes, you're like whoa, okay?
I'm gonna.
I'm gonna perform and in a kind of way or you know and Even that word is like tricky rightbecause it doesn't feel like a like live performance, but it is
because you are hyper aware of everything you say, know, may be picked up and haveconsequences.

(22:01):
I will say though that, for the most part, you know, I mean, and this is something I talkabout in the book, there's a number of like trolls out there, on different ways that will
say stuff that, you know, will disrupt the conversation or something else.
I think in the communities of
creators I was speaking with, it was more of an issue.

(22:21):
For me, know, was, it was, even though 100 days, I would say is a pretty significant timeto do it, like a concentrated time.
You know, the, the amount of engagement I would have versus, you know, people who arestill on Twitch and doing it, whether they're musicians or creators, you know, far

(22:41):
outweighs what I was doing.
And so they have more visibility.
they're gonna find maybe more people or bots and things that have things to say that maybe nefarious or disruptive, right?
And I've even read some articles about how people engage with them and so forth.

(23:04):
But yeah, it's like knowing that at any time someone could say something and you've gottadecide how you're going to respond or if you make an error, realizing it's okay.
to do that because it's live.
There's nothing you can do.
yeah, it's like, and that was one thing I loved was, you I would sit here and as we'vesort of gotten now, like, you know, when I'm, while I'm looking at this and talking to

(23:34):
you, I've got us on one screen, I've got, you know, another screen with some othermaterial and having that just all there and saying, look, I'm having this problem with
this code.
Or I'm gonna work on a voiceover for an hour, you know, in Ableton or move into Premierelater on, you know, mixing all these things.

(23:55):
And just having someone say like, you know what, make sure you back off from the mic alittle bit.
You've got a real like wolfy sort of sound about you while you're doing this.
Or, you know, I can still hear your, like your ambient sounds in the background, eventhough I try so hard to eliminate those things.
It was this kind of community problem solving that would happen, but I would always frameit like that.

(24:18):
Like I'm having this issue, does anyone have some, even like a little marker on the sidethat's like a note that would say today, this is what I'm working on.
And it sort of changed the message from like, this is just absolute garbage.
Like keep working on it too.
Like, let me help you turn that garbage into something interesting.
Right.

(24:39):
Gotcha, so you're not saying this is a show of my virtuosity as a writer, watching me workin an hour and turn out gold.
You're saying, yeah, I've got this thing I'm working on, here's the issue, here's...
I like that, that's a nice way to frame it.
I think you can you could approach it with music right like in two ways you could say Youknow, I'm gonna get everything ready to have a nice stream.

(25:05):
I mean Let's just compare our two cameras, right?
Your camera looks amazing.
Like I could see you turning it on just jamming You've got it all set up right and you goand there's no stopping.
You're just gonna jam and play That's it.
Like that's that's all there's tons of those on YouTube and and twitch and I love it cuzlike
Sometimes you just see like the power goes out or something or with DJs, you know, theyperform live and then they get kicked off YouTube in the middle of their stream.

(25:34):
That's it.
There's no recording or anything.
It's like, I gotta come back.
I gotta start back up.
Or you could talk about process, which I'm kind of more interested in that.
So like, I think I would rather see like you, would rather see anyone start from theground up with an idea and just show us.
what I think, I think it's safe to assume that this stuff is really hard, know?

(25:58):
Like writing, whether it's textual or songwriting, it's really hard to do.
Like, and it takes a lot of like cranking in the mind to get this out.
But I think we don't, I'm gonna say we, I should just step back a little bit when I saythat.
I certainly don't show enough of that struggle while I'm working on it.

(26:19):
But there are times that I'm like,
Standing up and walking around I'm getting snacks, you know, I'm sitting just staring atthis piece or I'm just reading You know and maybe referencing some tracks things like that
But that that's all just kind of like off the screen, right?
for for for myself, especially now but I keep thinking like should I go back to doing thisbecause it I don't know.

(26:45):
It just holds me accountable as well.
I find in some ways.
Yeah
yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at, how I've felt doing it.
It's like, you know, I'm on now and I'm, you know, I'm trying to do my best, but alsojust, I'm not gonna fool around as much as I might.
I mean, that even happens when I've been practice and, you know, the guys are here andwe're working on something and like, we got to power through a little bit and there's...

(27:15):
you know, waves of energy and stuff and where I might get a little low.
If I'm on my own, I might bail out.
I might do something different, take a break or like I said, get distracted by the entirewealth of human knowledge that's on the computer right at my fingertips.

(27:37):
But when there's other people there, sometimes their energy might be up here so they cankind of pull you up or you just know like
look, we only got this amount of time for the whole week, so we got to get to it.
And there is a bit of, like you said, accountability to that.
And it's healthy because, you know, it's not, there's no gun to my head, so to speak, thatwe have to do it.

(28:03):
But it does make you say, OK, let's get to this.
Let's get down to business.
Mm-hmm.
Let's make make sure it's worth your while if you're tuning in and In addition to that,you know where you're creating and in my case I was creating something whether it's again

(28:24):
bits of audio or Video but mostly just writing the chapters You know, we're alsodialoguing with people maybe like sort of like band practice right iterating together
Mm-hmm.
in this way, it's text on your right or left side of your screen.
Someone's saying something.
What are you working on?
What about this?

(28:45):
And having that community at the same time.
And that's something I'm actually giving a talk this week about this to anotheruniversity, is sort of ways of trying to break out these tasks.
mean, mostly just speaking from my own experience on the book, but.
how I would say like, I'm gonna set my timer on the screen for 50 minutes, similar to howwe've done in the production music club.

(29:11):
think I've come to one meeting so far, so I need to come to another one, but yeah,excellent, yeah.
But I like that you sort of give us a time limit.
And in writing groups I've been in, they do the same thing, the Pomodoro timer of 25minutes.
I always extend it to 50 because I just find after 25 minutes I get up.

(29:34):
too much and I guess it's distracted very easily so you know for the same thing for thestream I set it for 50 minutes with a goal for the day which is to work on like code or or
again a piece of sound you know treat like edit or scrub a piece of sound and it just kindof gets everyone focused a bit but then you can still have that community conversation if

(30:00):
you feel like it at the same time you've got like a clear
agenda that viewers I I mean just again from my limited experience like appreciated andreally respected and I see that a lot in on Twitch too for writers they didn't kind of
sort of say you know 30 to 50 minutes of this and then we'll chat and vice versa it's justit's a nice sort of way of also encouraging your your audiences to write with you, compose

(30:33):
with you.
at the same time.
Yeah, that's kind of the format of the meetings we do at the Music Production Club.
We talk a little and then winds up being about 45 minutes of making music and then comeback and share what we did.
I think I'm going to try to tighten that up a little because sometimes in the beginning,the talking and the chatting and sort of waiting for people to arrive winds up going about

(31:01):
a half hour.
I think I'd like to dial that to like 15 minutes so that
we've got about an hour because it's still a really short time.
But I definitely find myself being like, oh, I just had like a couple, I mean, guess I'llsay that in an hour too, but I'm not really, I mean, it's so rare that I'm able to get

(31:27):
like a vocal part, say, and the music and all these things that I want to get.
And I don't want to leave.
that moment of inspiration and a lot of times I find myself cutting out before it startsdropping off.
You know?
So, I don't know, maybe another 15 minutes and then this, you know, we're not staying upall night, too, by kind of wrangling that in a little, but when you're on that wave, yeah,

(31:59):
it's hard to just bail.
Yeah, and yeah, it's usually like two or three reps, I guess you could think of 50 on off.
It's like the second and third one.
I to really hit that groove, right?
Of whatever I was working on for the day.
So the first one is just, what am I trying to do here?

(32:21):
Okay, you know, and prepare.
But I found actually, and I'd be curious to know like anyone else who's listening to who
who streams if there's a lot of preparation before.
So, you know, with the music production club or with streaming, I was making sure, the onetime I did it again, I just had joined the music production club, think in December,

(32:52):
because I wanted to come to the retreat and I was like, yeah, why not?
Let's just join this too, this is great, and I'm gonna make.
But I'd have kind of a plan.
you know, each day and then with coming to the club like, okay, I'm gonna work on thistoday.
And even when I'm starting my like, writing now and I'm working on those 50 minutesessions, whether it was on Twitch or not, I'm saying, why don't you know, what am I gonna

(33:15):
do?
Like what's my schedule so that I can just come in and start working.
And yes, kind of perform a know, perform for people like a writing task.
It's, I don't know.
So it's kind of just interesting to sort of say like.
There is spontaneity that comes out of it by just knowing that there's no editing.
This is all me, but there's still kind of like a plan behind the scenes, Like our theme orsomething like that.

(33:43):
Well, you can do anything, right?
So when you have infinite options, it's really hard to decide.
And I can lose a lot of time just being like, maybe I'll do this, but trying out searchingsounds, presets, and yeah, it's...
It's much better when I kind of say, I'm going to do this and I have to hit the road onit.

(34:05):
You know, as soon as that time starts, let's go.
Time to move, not, what am going to do tonight?
You know, where's the wind blowing and how do I feel?
It's, I think it's so many of it.
So much of it is just making the decision on every level, just deciding, deciding,deciding.
yeah, that, and I've also learned to tune my guitars beforehand because that has messed meup a bunch.

(34:33):
You know, just a couple minutes that takes, takes a little wind out of your sail and, youknow, make sure everything's kind of working.
Yeah, mean, you know, certainly like I'm thinking about streaming stuff there.
There could be a there's an audience out there for people who want to watch you tune yourguitar.

(34:54):
And there's an audience out there for people who just want to watch you like clean thedirt off or the like dust off your gear, you know, and hook everything up like the
technical end.
But.
One of my favorite tools for that, I've got a paintbrush specifically just for the keysand in between the knobs.
Really, it's a great important tool.
It doesn't get enough credit.

(35:15):
Yeah.
Maybe we'll do like ASMR or whatever, A-S-R-M, you know?
Does that stand for anything?
I don't know.
Do you know?
Well, we could.
or sensory something.
again, apologies to listeners, but yeah, I know it's a response to something ASMR, butyeah, a whole market for that of just, you know, our interest of like, but I think I found

(35:45):
that if I was stuck, there was always those other options to show.
behind the scenes material.
Again, like sometimes when I see, let's say DJs who will stream live on Twitch or anotherplatform, like I would be really interested in just watching them curate their list and
say, this is what I'm thinking about doing or like, you know, taking apart like a CDJ orsomething like that, thinking like, what, what goes on?

(36:11):
I think like you just get to see some kind of human aspects when you, when you do thosethings on my end, you know, I just say that because
There were times where I'm looking at what I was gonna do for the day, I'm like, wow, whatam I gonna do on this stream?
And it would just be line editing.
And to some folks, that's incredibly boring to do and annoying.

(36:35):
Yeah, like you would.
like grammar and just that kind of stuff.
Yeah, okay.
Or like writing up like the abstract for a paper, know, the summary of it.
But also like, you know, there were times where I just spent, I think I did a couplesessions of this where I would just edit interviews that I was putting together or like my

(36:59):
voiceovers and just showing that everyone that I would do like three or four takes of itand then scrub parts of it as I go, right?
You know, again, that's tedious work, think, that we don't think about.
No, we don't think about, but it just often lives off in isolation and something we'redoing when we're polishing up and isn't made content.

(37:30):
I keep thinking the things we may just take for granted, whether it's dusting with a paintbrush, which I may have to do.
That's all that's like interesting maybe interesting content for somebody and just theymight say, know, I do the same thing man.
That is like, I love that idea and it's trivial to us but perhaps fascinating for anotherperson.

(37:56):
Well, I'm probably not going to watch too many videos of people dusting their gear, but Idid watch one somewhere along the way that gave me the idea and it did change things.
that's kept my stuff cleaner, probably working longer and, you know, a little moreappealing to touch.
I mean, for all the things I've watched over my lifetime on the internet, I mean, that'sone that stuck around.

(38:25):
So...
There's something to that.
Yeah, I mean, I just had to make sure I got his name correct, but Liam Killen on YouTube,he's in Montreal.
He has this thing where he does interviews of folks where he blows the, he's like adustblower, air cleaner and like brushes off everything.
And it's just this like ritual he has, but I think people are here for it.

(38:47):
They're like the little, yeah, it's just like this kind of funny thing that.
you know, when his ears will sort of laugh at, laugh with him about, but you know, it'sbecome like a staple, just that two seconds of like, you know, blowing it off and, but
yeah, certainly like, I don't know if I would, I agree with you.

(39:10):
I wouldn't want to watch like too many streams of somebody dusting, you know, but youalways have that as a backup realizing perhaps that we shouldn't, we shouldn't waste
content or
opportunities, right?
Like, it could, it could certainly be a, like a state once a month of, of Brian cleaning.

(39:31):
I'm trying to imagine what that would be like.
This is me avoiding making music and trying to feel productive.
that's the thing too, is like sometimes we need to, we need those things to be productive.
Like, okay, so for example, like this, this is a, this is my basement.

(39:56):
You know, it's got concrete all around it.
It's, it's a nightmare to any recording person, but still, you know, I spend so much time.
and I'm curious if you do this too, unraveling wires, fix, you know, all this stuff.
I'm, mean, this thing we were talking about together online, this microcosm, you know,like I am, it's sitting here and all the wires from the trip are still here, like in a

(40:21):
suitcase.
I just didn't take them out, you know?
But I have to like do those things to be creative.
So I'm like, okay, if I were to go back and do...
this kind of live work, maybe I'll just send, you know, just every once in while showsomebody like how annoying it is to unravel wires, you know, but not not too often.

(40:46):
But I'm kind of looking around and some of the little minor things that I've done to makemy life easier and to make this easier and faster to get to work are important.
Like they actually really do matter.
I've got like some of my own version of cable management going on and the way I like tostore things so I know where to find it.

(41:12):
So I'm not just looking all the time.
I was even just thinking, after we speak, I'm going to record the intro to this podcast.
So I don't know, maybe there's some content there.
Just this is how the show goes.
And for somebody that might be doing one or trying to think about do one or it might just,I don't know.

(41:35):
But it does also make me think a little bit about a bigger theme that's been coming up alot in these conversations is like,
You know, with like AI, of course, coming around and doing everything for us better thanwe can do it.
The humanity in what we do seems to me to be more and more important.

(41:58):
The story behind it, the people, the feelings, emotions, and you know, obstacles weovercome and we endure to make stuff is interesting.
And so much...
in looking back in my life and like the stuff I've enjoyed, the music, the artists and allthat.

(42:18):
It's often the story like you hear somebody say, who is this?
And you want to know like, who are these people?
What band is this?
And what do they stand for?
And what's this artists like approach?
And all of that becomes interesting.
And to bring it back to something we did in the retreat, we were

(42:41):
We did our sampling field trip where we went around the block and we spent like 10 minutesor so just recording sounds.
And we all thought about the one Billie Eilish song where she recorded the streetwalksign.
It was like Australia or something.
I forget where, but yeah.
And even her in general, like her whole ethos working with her brother in their childhoodbedrooms.

(43:08):
Like that's part of the mystique of that.
Mm-hmm.
And that one hi-hat sound that's really the crosswalk is a hi-hat sound that stands outamongst probably billions of hi-hats that we hear every day and never think twice about
and don't care about and don't even wonder about.

(43:28):
So it's all because of the story.
It's because there was something human to it.
So sharing these little things might...
I don't know, they might be more and more interesting as we get deeper and deeper into aworld where, I'm really starting to see so much of what I'm interacting with is AI and I

(43:51):
don't even know it.
I'm realizing it now from my podcast when I get emails about guests being on the podcast.
I used to be able to spot them easily.
It was like, hey, Brian Funk music.
We think we'll be the perfect fit for
your show or your podcast, the music production podcast, they've just felt the so, youknow, fill in the blanks kind of thing.

(44:19):
Insert name here.
But now they're like, we really enjoyed your last episode and it has like a brief summary.
But I was like, and that's usually the trigger for me.
Like I'm going to interact with this because this is somebody that's really talking to meand they listened.
But recently I'm like.
This just seems weird and it seems a lot like the other ones I've been getting like this.

(44:44):
So I've been kind of running them through detectors and like, damn, everybody is justsending AI to everybody else.
I mean, look, like I just watched a couple videos about the whole new thing now is about.

(45:04):
I think it's called Model Context Protocol, if I ever rec, MCP.
And it's about basically creating AI agents to do things like you were just describing,fill out forms, write responses.
There was even a number of videos out there now of having someone pull an AI agent, we'llsay, pull the latest trends in anything, music, artificial intelligence.

(45:33):
writing a script and then transferring that script into a voice and video service thatsounds just like you.
I think it was Crater Magic, that's the name of the creator who showed this whole process.
Showed behind the scenes rather than sort of saying it's me and actually showing how hedid it all the way through it.

(45:57):
Super interesting to see.
But you know, yeah, like just knowing that.
you're feeding a system in a different way when you're working with AI, you're interactingwith it, so you're training it in a certain way.
And I think like, this is something I wanted to bring up to you actually thinking aboutthis.

(46:19):
It was sort of spinning around in my head when I was, when I was, we were talking aboutjumping on the call is these AI systems are trained on things like freesound.org.
and other publicly available information, which as I was composing the book didn't quiteoccur to me.
It had not really taken off as rapidly and as visibly as AI had not at the time.

(46:46):
And my content that's free, and even though it's Creative Commons, can be trained, thesesystems can be trained with my material.
And so what I wanted to ask you actually, I can turn it to the host, if you don't mind, ishow do you feel about putting things out for free now?

(47:08):
Because as many people probably have, as I told you, I got to know you because of yourcontent you put out there.
I signed up for something you put on Gumroad, and I got notifications you released a lotof great sample packs and materials for free to use.
And then if you want to get the advanced one,

(47:29):
here's another level or you have some paid things.
But there's a kind of vulnerability that's different than the vulnerability we've beentalking about earlier of putting your samples and things out there.
I don't know, how do you feel about this sort of stuff?
I guess I want to ask.
Well, I'm what, 230 free Ableton Live packs into it.

(47:57):
236 at today's date.
So I feel pretty good about it.
I like doing that.
like...
putting stuff out there for people that is maybe a little different, weird and quirky andthat people can just get it and that doesn't cost them anything.

(48:19):
mean, there's a lot of people that even if it was like five bucks, that's too much.
You I've already spent all this on all this other stuff to even make anything.
So I definitely like that.
I like that it gets a wider audience because more people are prone to download it.
It kind of gets my message, whatever that is out there a bit too, if even subconsciouslyon some level.

(48:47):
I think it's really only helped me because that's really how I first started getting anyattention from anybody about anything I've ever done musically was by sharing this stuff.
then, you know, if you're
watching the video, there's a good chance like even just the background music is somethingI made with it.

(49:13):
And I think it brings people into my world a little.
I like that it puts out this idea that you can make like your own stuff from sounds thatyou find, which because often a lot of the stuff is like sample based instruments, not
always, but often.

(49:33):
So
I think, I don't know what AI is learning from me, guess.
I haven't really thought about that with the sounds.
But I think it seems like it's been listening and scouring everything, not justfreesound.org, know, like commercial, non-commercial.

(49:55):
I get the feeling like this stuff is, they don't tell you a lot about how they're trainingthis stuff, but.
There have been people that have used certain apps that make songs and been able to almostrecreate music that exists already.
Yeah, yeah.
And we've seen it with our sort of like MIDI generators and it's everywhere.

(50:19):
There's all kinds of ideas we can kind of pull from, I think.
But I sort of bypassed one thing that you were talking about earlier with the soundsamples and so forth.
We have with AI, we can ask for generations that come from.

(50:40):
sort of found sounds or things like that.
But I find I'm more more interested in kind of creating like, almost like open but stillsort of intimate pools of sounds.
for example, like with Pasadena, all the creators, I don't know how many sounds we sort ofcontributed to that sample folder that we made, but it was great to just have

(51:08):
like 30 to 50 sounds and say that's your pool that you can work with.
And then taking the time to mix it in a way that's interesting and unique to you.
Now if you use AI for that, maybe that's interesting.
But I find you just lose sometimes the life from it when you take it out.

(51:32):
One thing that did come up with my book, I'll say, is
I was putting the final touches on it with, I think, Adobe products.
And I know that they were baking in a lot with a transcription and so forth.
So for efficiencies like that, let's just get a quick caption set we can do right into ourfilming, or using like Otter.ai, which I've done before, to produce like transcripts.

(52:01):
That's like such a time saver in some ways.
I think it's kind of this difference between technical and kind of operational things thatyou may have to do versus the creative work, right?
But sometimes that creative work can be in sound treatment.
So I think that's interesting about music is all this pastina samples, I wouldn't want toisolate just the bird.

(52:27):
I want the air in the car is passing it.
And I want to think about how to use that creatively.
But when we think of just voice, sometimes you just want that really sucked in sound, Likea podcast, right?
You don't want to hear my son stomping around upstairs like he does now.
But if you do, it's a little human.

(52:48):
like, wow, there's some ambience to it.
I don't know where I was going with that so much, but I think that the more we canappreciate.
Yeah, the rawness that comes from our own sounds and found sounds, the better.
that's something I want to try to do in another project soon, is just continue to collectthese raw found sounds and make things out of it.

(53:17):
there's an adventure attached to all that.
You went out and got that.
We all went out and got those sounds and even at the same time and almost everybodysampled the crosswalk because we've been thinking about that, right?
So in like our samples that was like the cliche thing to do, right?
But we all got a different sound because

(53:40):
different people were walking by, different cars were driving by, different conversationswere happening.
I held my phone at a different position on the little speaker than I think you had a Zoomwith you, right?
So you had a different mic even.
We all got something different out of that and you know, marginally different, but there'ssomething there.

(54:03):
And I think in the course of like a song or even like your entire body of work.
There's, that's a factor that comes into play.
It's not a fader in the mix that you can turn up and down, but I think you feel it.
And I don't know, like as much as I love like weird sounds and samples, I never really gotexcited about like Splice for instance, or like services like that because, not because,

(54:35):
mean, there's great stuff on there.
It's amazing.
and I'm no shade on it or anything like that, but I just kind of like wanted to do itmyself and work with what I have already.
To me, I get a kick out of it.
You know, I get a kick out of knowing like, I did that.

(54:56):
Or I went on that adventure to record like my feet walking through leaves.
Or that's like my dog that barked in the background and I'm gonna leave it in the take.
the
that.
It brings it to life for me.
And when I listen to it years later, even I'm reminded of what was going on there and whatI was doing.

(55:17):
Same thing with like the packs I make.
Like they're little time capsules for me too that like I remember that when I came up withthat and found that or stumbled across it or when I went to the thrift store to buy like
four VCRs, cause I wanted to make sure I got one that worked and they were like
$3 each.

(55:40):
it was just part of the experience for me even just to enjoy this process a little moreput a little like I don't know like TLC or something into it.
Absolutely, I a little promo time for your packs, we could say.
But I want to say one thing I really enjoy about your packs is we get to see the thinkingthat went into it, even though you have the notes and stuff of how you did it.

(56:11):
But just looking at the material in its way that maybe Brian put it together, I learned alot with MPC when you will give us.
You know packs we can kind of play with or you were doing that for the workshop I'm like,okay.
How did he do this?
that's really interesting and now I can like kind of break it apart and make it my own ina really unique way and I think I share that reason that same idea with Working with a lot

(56:41):
of like sample packs or like a subscription service like whether it's like loop masters orsplices I Don't get the behind-the-scenes part, right?
I think they sound like amazing.
All the times I'll hear like a sample and I've used some of them.
But I'm like, how can I take this and kind of like warp it in a really interesting way?

(57:01):
You know, now that I have it.
And I just like when I see it with inside the DAW and like the way it was produced,there's that extra layer of like learning that I get, you know, and I want to just.
I don't know.
And I think that's, again, with the book too, is just showing the raw stuff that enabledme to put something online and saying, can look at the code behind this at any point.

(57:28):
It's on GitHub and all that sort of stuff.
I feel like it's easier to reverse engineer maybe how it was created.
And so I'm like, yeah, Brian, what are my favorite things I made?
And a friend of mine who was listening to some of the stuff from January was,
your video game, I was like an eight bit, sort of 16 bit hybrid pack that you had, videogames, and you had this like follow action thing on Ableton that was following all the

(57:58):
drum samples and loops, and I just like changed it up completely, like switched all theknobs, randomized it, and I was like, this is super fun, but I was like, how did he do
this?
And just kept looking at how you assigned like macros and.
the arps and all the things that you put into it, like, you could have just given us thesamples and we could have done that, but you showed us both and that was super cool.

(58:23):
yeah, shout out to you.
I'm glad you enjoy that because yeah, like the samples are one thing, but it's more for mewhat happens with them.
So like it's cool to like get those sounds out of the Nintendo or just get like one shotsout of my synth going into a VCR tape or something.

(58:48):
It gets interesting for me when I start putting it inside of live and start playing withthe effects and the macros and seeing what happens and finding interesting ways to work
with it.
mean, that is something you can really get though.
I mean, at least with the stuff Ableton puts out, there's real people behind those packsthey make and...

(59:12):
Yeah.
Dissecting them is such a cool way to learn and get inspiration just to see like, wow,how'd they do that?
How does this work?
And a lot of times I'll do that and I'm like, I would have done that a totally differentway and look at how it turned out here.
And maybe it's more efficient or maybe it's just a different result, but that just givesyou more ideas for the future.

(59:39):
And making those little instrument racks,
They're there forever now, like you've always got them and they're contained and you kindof inform how to play with them when you choose which macros to map and what effects to
put onto them.
And sometimes that is a little difficult because you're like, I don't know, I wish I coulddo that too.

(01:00:02):
But I guess now that they let you have 16 macros, it's not so bad because that's plenty.
know, 16 knobs, like you can do a lot of damage to a sound.
That's still more six more than your your digits will allow like your head so it's youknow, it was great but I think to another thing is about this is There is certainly like

(01:00:25):
value and I watch them all the time, you know online tutorials for how to do certainthings in Ableton and Then there's also just
providing the materials and letting someone sort of figure it out with the tools that areavailable.
And I think there's such a power in just exploring and kind of failing with thosematerials for a while.

(01:00:52):
I mean, yes, under time constraints for Jamuary, I would have an hour or two, know, so Icouldn't get super deep into these live packs and so forth.
But like, I could go back.
sometime and just sit for a week trying to unpack what Brian was doing on this.
know, and I think that's kind of interesting for learning, but it just shows sometimeslike a template or something can be the word that's coming to mind and I, and I hate using

(01:01:23):
this word exploited, but it could be, you know, used like to, to a real, to, to a realoriginal way for yourself.
Right.
And for me, like when I take things like
for my book, used a Creative Commons template, from a developer named AJ on a websitecalled html5up, and downloaded that, and it was a template called Massively, but I

(01:01:51):
insisted in trying to take it apart completely, and building it from the ground up, in away that fit the vision I had.
I just didn't have the skills to build something completely, nor did I have AI at the timeto tell me to build web templates or anything like that.
I wanted to learn from it, but the way I did it was just downloading it and kind oflooking at every bit of it, like the HTML code, the CSS, everything like that.

(01:02:18):
And learned a lot from it.
Now I can teach that sort of stuff in classes and attend to my own website that's builtfrom the ground up with a template, but everything inside that sandbox.
just like a live pack is made by me, and it's super gratifying in that way.
Yeah, well that's, I guess I can learn about a lot of things when you just take them apartand look inside and see what's happening.

(01:02:44):
But then you don't have to do that, you can just use it too and just be off to the races.
Like we were talking about getting started and preparing for like a live stream, having atemplate that you can exploit in the most like positive sense of the word.
that allows you to just get going and work.

(01:03:06):
It provides you a little bit of a workflow.
Like, all here's a direction you can go.
And then you're free to adjust and change and fool around as much as you want.
having a little bit of a starting point, I mean, that's how I usually would teach AbletonLive, especially to like kids when I had my club after school.

(01:03:29):
Yeah, it was great.
got cancelled unfortunately because there's no money to pay me like nothing which I don'teven know.
It's like they got to cut something so let's cut this thing that doesn't cost anything.
Anyway, I'm not bitter.
No I'm not.
No I'm not but it's a little frustrating because it was really valuable to a lot of kidsbut I would kind of put them in lanes.

(01:04:00):
to have a push in live, even live intro, is too infinite.
So it'd be like, all right, here's a drum rack.
Let's just make me a beat.
I'll show you how to do it a little bit.
And I'll make two and then I'll set up maybe like the arpeggiator.
So now you can just kind of hold a couple notes and we'd be in key mode and.

(01:04:23):
know, little things like that.
I might even like set the clips up so that they don't have to worry about stoppingrecording.
They're just empty clips that they can just hit record in and then they'll fill up as theyplay.
So...
That helped a lot and that helps me too, if I've kind of like want to make somethingcertain.

(01:04:46):
Sometimes like if I want to make a certain type of song, I'll open another song I've madein that style and just delete everything out.
You know, like all the clips, but keep all those tracks and all those effects and justwork from there again.
I mean, that's like a template that I haven't made yet.
I'm just saying like, yeah, I want to make a couple more songs in that style.

(01:05:06):
That was fun.
Yeah.
I was gonna ask you, I remember, do you still do this?
There was an email you sent once with, it was an update for the new pack you releasing,and it was about the fact that you just, I think it was with your drum, like, go-to drum
beats.
I think that was the one.

(01:05:27):
You said, I just wanna be able to show up to my studio and say, turn on.
I won't say the person's name, because I don't want it to affect your studio right now,but.
it was like a voice automation system.
You're like, yeah, yeah, like turn everything on, you know, and you go.
There's just value in kind of, again, like pre-setting up, like setting up everything tojust be creative on the spot.

(01:05:53):
Whether it's like streaming, you know, yeah, setting up like a template that it's, youknow, with your open broadcast studio or something else, where you've got everything
there, the sound and everything is ready to go.
I mean,
I find at least that just kind of takes as long as the stream itself, you know, like as wetalking about earlier, just getting that rhythm.

(01:06:14):
So I was wondering, one, if you still do that, like now, and then just wanted, I wanted toconfirm what you were saying too, that do you use like a lot of pre-made sort of live sets
or templates, depending on the style?
That's something I've really thought a lot about since January.

(01:06:34):
and haven't really imported yet.
I've been trying to set up different, like, think of like, what's the best, like, live settemplate I could work with that encompasses really anything I'm thinking about so I can
just jam, you know, and maybe stream this stuff, yeah.
Well, probably the best one that encompasses everything is going to be too much.
Right?

(01:06:54):
Like you're going to have like 32, 64 tracks and they're all, you know, it's too much.
But I, yeah, I do have everything pretty well set up down here, ready to go.
So what you're referring to with turning everything on, I have these little, they're like,you plug them into the outlet.

(01:07:15):
It's just like a little brick, you know, I don't know.
about this size, I'm holding up like an AirPod case.
It just plugs in and it's got a plug in it.
But it's a Siri enabled thing or might also work with like Alexa or any of those.
And through Apple's home app, you can just set it up so that you can ask Siri, don'treact, to turn it on.

(01:07:42):
And you name it something, mine's called the practice space.
I call it that because
I want to...
it was going to be the studio for a while, it might have even been, but it was tooserious.
this is just practicing.
This is where we do our practice of making music.
But it's, I think, like three or four power strips that I used to walk around and justflip on.

(01:08:06):
So, this isn't a major time saver.
We're talking probably like 30 seconds tops.
Still, right?
Yeah.
That's probably not even that much, but it's climbing on the floor, reaching under thedesk and flipping the switch, you know.
but now I can just tell it to do it and everything comes on.

(01:08:27):
And that probably makes a difference between me getting going certain days and not some ofthose lazy days.
And I'm not sure all I have to do is just tell my phone and turn everything on and thenit's gone.
So that makes it easier.
I do have.
things like mic'd up and plugged in to my interface.

(01:08:48):
I've got, a drum kit behind me.
I don't know how well you can see that, but that's all mic'd up, ready to go.
Guitar amp is mic'd up.
These synths are plugged in.
And inside of Live, it's not so much that I have like a set as a template where I open itup and everything's there.
It's more like individual tracks.

(01:09:13):
So I don't know.
If you're familiar with it, think you probably are, but so everyone knows, an Ableton Liveset can be dragged inside an Ableton Live set.
So you can be working on something and then drag another set to the right and all of thatstuff will pop in.
So I've got a bunch of little sets and one of them is like acoustic drums, which arebehind me.

(01:09:37):
So I drag that in and then the seven or eight mics that are on the drum are just there,routed, ready to go.
It's already beginning.
Okay.
Same thing with the electric guitar, same thing with the Prophet.
I've got one of those external instruments all set up and it's in an instrument rack thathas a delay and a reverb and I think a chorus on it, filter.

(01:10:00):
So I can just drop that in and start playing it so there's not a lot of problems with it.
Even like we were talking a little bit, I don't know if you've worked it out yet, but Igot this chroma console pedal.
right here to compliment the, I forget what the one you have is called now, microcosm,right?

(01:10:25):
So they're like brothers or something.
But that setup is an external audio effect that I can just drag in and I can, now thateverything's running through that real nice and easy.
So that stuff helps a lot.
It saves a lot of time.
So it's not so much that I have
different templates, though I do have one for my band.

(01:10:47):
So that's just a set.
just open up and everything's ready to go.
Guitars, bass, vocals, drums, hit record.
Otherwise we don't record.
You know, that's the alternative.
So it's so fast and easy that we don't even have to think of it.
I just have to remember to hit the button.
But that, yeah, like those little things make a difference.

(01:11:10):
So I might decide, I might be making like some weird electronic.
song but then decide I want some drums in it and I can just drag that in like I'm dragginganything into live and then run over there and record.
See, by the end of this episode, I'm hoping I convince you to make a few videos of allthese even 30 second things you do because someone out there wants to know.

(01:11:34):
I want to know.
realizing I'm sitting on some, some content creation right here.
Some gold now.
It is gold for me.
It might not sound like much, but how often do we spend lying on the floor under the tablefollowing wires?

(01:11:55):
We went through that at the Ableton retreat with the Prophet.
I don't remember if you were there for that.
I think you were.
We were trying to figure out how to get into the interface.
After a while, it's kind of like, let's just...
let's just make this as simple as possible because we don't understand the wires that aregoing on here and I think it had recently been kind of moved around so rather than all

(01:12:21):
this troubleshooting let's just get another set of wires and you know because that waslike the first moment I felt like we really making music all right now we're struggling
with connections so this is this is what it's really about but
yeah.
To eliminate that out of your process as much as possible makes a difference.

(01:12:42):
And especially if you want to be like live streaming or collaborating with people, like noone wants to watch you like, hold on, let me just climb under here and follow this wire.
You hold onto it on that end and like pull it.
Is this the right one?
Like all that stuff is, that's not fun.
Unless that's like the focal point, right?

(01:13:03):
Like I'm thinking my friend Brian Neese, he does stuff on like Instagram where he'll justturn on the camera and he's like set up with me recording a band.
And it's like an hour and he'll just check in and chat and do that.
But again, that's like, that's the scope of it.

(01:13:25):
It's not, we're gonna record, let me stop.
You know, it's like.
some way so I don't know that's kind of funny to think about but I'm also like I'mthinking about the Bob Ross streams that are on Twitch now you know and when I listen to
those or just put them on the background you know there's that like constant sound of himbanging against like the bottom of the canvas like cleaning off the the paint and

(01:13:53):
everything like that like I forget how he basically just like bangs it against it to
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a very like interesting percussive sound right like That would beactually fun to sample sometime, but I'm sure somebody earned countless people have done
that but You know, it's like just hearing that it's like it feels human and I'm like Icould just Yeah, just Sort of see like every once in a while like how would hit what what

(01:14:22):
does he do?
Beyond that like to clean and all those things
I don't know why.
I think it's just probably a result of all this behind the scenes stuff.
I've just been fascinated by it as like a both and, right?
As like content in addition to like the thing that you're most, you're known for or you dois whatever it's creative or it's writing.

(01:14:42):
It just, yeah, I think it goes back to what you were saying too, just the humanness of it.
We get those, we get those elements, right?
Well, you're right, probably miking up the drum set or connecting a synth and the thoughtprocess that goes behind it is, you know, if you're going to use any of this gear, like
you're going to have to do that.

(01:15:03):
yeah, that does make sense.
I've watched plenty of videos on miking drums and, you know, wiring synthesizers into thecomputer.
So it is an important part of it to just know how to do that and think, think through theprocess.
Yeah, yeah.
Have you ever live-streamed your band?

(01:15:23):
Yeah, a couple of times, usually very spontaneously.
I think we want to do more of that sort of thing.
You know, we get out to play very rarely once in a while.
We did go out last week though.
That was a lot of fun.
And we were kind of like, we should have had just something going.

(01:15:45):
But again, part of the problem was also just
You know, we didn't know how it was going to go until we were going.
So there's a little bit of that fear in there, but I think we were talking kind of sayingit would be nice if that was part of the process, just like me getting my pedals and

(01:16:06):
guitar cables together as part of my process.
Maybe just grabbing like an extra stand for put an iPhone on.
For the hell of it.
in Pasadena, right?
There was a jazz band that had a camera set up, I think when they were rehearsing, wasliterally across the street from the headquarters.

(01:16:33):
Yeah, was just very small, but they put it on and there's no going back, there's nofixing.
People were like, I think they were probably, it seemed like they were doing it fromYouTube or Instagram, but it was just there.
for all the ambience and everything around around people like walking and cheering and allthat sort of stuff I assume but yeah something about that just turning it on and in its

(01:16:59):
raw way I think is like another avenue I mean I'm personally haven't done for musiccreation but I think would be interesting to try at some point
Well, even if it turns out disastrous, there's something in there that's probably whatpeople are rooting for.
Almost like when they watch like NASCAR, you're like, want to see crashes.

(01:17:22):
I don't know.
I don't want to see people crash, but I think that's part of the allure, you know?
Yeah
But yeah, that's live stuff.
There's a little bit of danger.
This could go wrong, and how do you handle it?
Those are important lessons too.
I've definitely been in situations and seen people play where they break a guitar stringand they lose it.

(01:17:49):
And that's really uncomfortable.
that kills it.
And then you've seen people where something like that happens and it becomes funny.
It's part of the show and you roll with it.
And then it's, I was at the show and that thing happened and it was cool, like how theydealt with it.
I mean, I'm gonna mark this occasion as my confession that I've had, I've played liveshows with bands for a very long time before doing the stuff I'm doing now, and have had

(01:18:22):
instances where the power goes out, but I've never had, I've only played a few gigs DJingor doing sort of a bit of light live performance with.
with Ableton and then external gear, but the power hasn't gone out in those instances.

(01:18:43):
I think if the power went out with me just on the laptop and with external sense and it'sjust me.
I would be absolutely terrified, mortified by the experience.
But if it were online and it happened, it'd be a different story.
I'd be like, sorry.

(01:19:03):
mean, plenty of times.
I guess if the power went out, you'd be disconnected, right?
it wouldn't matter, right?
You can hide.
But have you had that happen to you?
Like when you performed solo, like the power just blows up.
Like I know Rachel Collier's talked about that and other electronic music producers havetalked about that.
That's...

(01:19:24):
Yeah.
had the computer crash or the power go out.
The closest thing that I can think of right now anyway was on the old APC-40, theoriginal, the crossfader was at the bottom and so was the play, stop, and record button.

(01:19:46):
And I was, I used the crossfader to
modulate a delay.
So you know delay has the repitch mode so it sounds like it's going up and down a pitchlike kind of emulate like old tape delays.
So I would use that almost like a scratching sound like no feedback and just thecrossfader would just change the time.

(01:20:11):
So we get that like kind of something like record scratch sound or something.
One night I was playing and I was doing that and I just hit stop.
like my finger just hit the stop button.
Like everything stops.
that's it.
The song is not even at a musical moment.

(01:20:31):
It's just stop off, you know?
And it was like, but what it taught me, the valuable lesson was I started mapping the stopand play button and the record button to something very inconsequential that doesn't
really do anything.
So I decided I would...
map it to like the track header so all it would do is select a track.

(01:20:56):
But then that became actually handy once Push came around because Push will turn on themusical notes mode for whatever track you have selected.
like auto arms it.
So I had the play button I think was like for the drums and the stop button was like asynth and the other is like another sound.

(01:21:17):
So it's just three different sounds I can load up now by hitting play, stop, record.
And this way, if I hit those buttons, everything doesn't just stop playing.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, you hear about backups.
People have two laptops or machines and wild stuff that prevents a...

(01:21:38):
doing arena shows, like you can't really, you know, I was playing like, I don't know howmany people, but it was like, I was on the floor with them.
wasn't even on the stage at that night.
So it was just kind of like, you know, you just got to go with it.
Like, happened?
All right, we're going back.
You know, you just.

(01:22:01):
Yeah, I think it's like, no, I was gonna say, yeah, they have fun with it.
I mean, with your live bands, I'm sure you've, I had plenty of times a situation where,yeah, something would shut off or a fuse would blow, so the drummer's just like, grung,
gung, kaka, gung, just going on, you know, and that's super humanizing, all right, to you,like, okay.

(01:22:27):
And I don't know, I think that's just like a,
I think maybe to kind of combat AI or coexist with it now, we have to be even more awareand sometimes celebrate those human errors and just like, hey, you know what?
This is a human who made this error, not an AI we have to train and correct until it'swrong.

(01:22:54):
I think other than that, with DJing stuff, I've...
watched a number of videos of course and like practiced it but the idea of you know anumber of DJs saying that they don't do syncing and stuff like that they just cue things
up and listen like that just seems like even more important now right we can justautomatically sync things perfectly or we can choose to kind of do it by ear and I'm gonna

(01:23:24):
qualify that by like saying I absolutely love how well warping
happens in Dawes and things like that.
And for a live performance, having fellow actions like in Ableton, but also being OK withsometimes something's just slightly off the grid and all that.

(01:23:44):
maybe it's only like 33 plus or whatever it always shows me or something like that.
OK, this actually still kind of works.
Let's just keep it.
I don't know.
But I have yet to show, I guess, how that might be valuable.
I've just seen a number of other creators say, you know, we can kind of keep this a littleloose.

(01:24:06):
And that's refreshing, I think, Yeah.
those are...
interesting moments when things go a little wrong or unexpected.
You kind of get an insight into the performer's personality a bit and how they handle it,how they deal with it.
And I've definitely seen acts where things go wrong and that's kind of like the endearingmoment.

(01:24:33):
Like, like, this so cool, you know, that's, that's, they're going to remember this.
This was a moment we had together and the way they handled it was really neat.
It's human, like you said.
And some of those things, like not quantizing, not beat mapping perfectly, there'ssomething to be said about that.

(01:24:57):
There's feel in there.
When you get it right, it can be really better than the quantized, better than thecomputer version.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
It's being OK with, like, in the project, which I appreciate the opportunity to talkabout, especially as knowing where there are errors in the code.

(01:25:21):
I can't fix them all.
But they still result in something really interesting to me, know, expressively.
And someone could take it up and totally tear it apart and...
build something more, even more optimized or something like that.
But I was like, I'm going to just work within my capacities and that's it.
Like I could iterate forever on these things and use every tool available to clean it up.

(01:25:44):
And I know if I'm fine to just leave it as is.
And you know, like a lot of digital projects as I sort of talked about it, it kind of,they can always go on.
They can never like infinitely, you know, they're living beings that you just constantlyupdate and put out.
Sometimes it's I've been kind of thinking back about this stuff too is Sometimes it's okayto just stop and put it out as is in the world, you know And let it you know see uptake

(01:26:14):
from different people because you've had your turn with it It's so if my work is creativecommons That's an opportunity for someone else to pick up where I left off or completely
change it And I think yeah, that's what I've appreciated about your work is you just putout so much content that we can kind of
work with, Yeah, no way, dude.

(01:26:35):
It's awesome.
We get really attached to things we're working on and we want them to be perfect.
There is an exercise in calling it done and there's something there that we need to workon to say, I'm going to leave it, because you can over bake the cake.

(01:26:59):
Yeah.
burn the dinner with music.
It's like food in that way.
After a while it has to come off the heat or else it loses something.
Yeah, and it needs a simmer or sit in the fridge for a number of days and you know, yeah,exactly.
Like it's not a done, it's just we're done.

(01:27:22):
Done period, we're done for now with this.
Like there's so much I still haven't touched from January as a result.
you know, it's just because it was done for now.
I'll come back to it later.
of it will be done for good.

(01:27:43):
know, like, from my experience, most of it, like it's just too much stuff to really giveattention to, but that does make the stuff you pick kind of special too.
And part of that whole exercise is just the practice of it.
Just doing it, just making, creating.

(01:28:04):
It's not so much what you create, it's just that you did it.
And some of it's worth going back to and some of it might also be worth it, but you justcan't do everything you want.
You can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want.
So you got to make those important decisions.

(01:28:26):
Brian, can we pause for one second?
Is that okay?
Okay.
How do we edit?
Okay, okay.
I just got to want to take note of the time here.
I know we're kind of starting to get late too.
That's okay.
I was asked to give the order for something I want so we're ordering food.

(01:28:51):
Sorry, they were just like, okay, how about...
Okay, yeah.
my dog is starting to give me the order for food.
Yeah, let's see.
One second.
Can I have the...
Sorry, I don't want to keep you out here.

(01:29:14):
No, no, no, this is totally cool.
I did get a text earlier too from my wife.
Everything is good.
Let's and a Goon Free Giovanni.
Okay, let's do that.

(01:29:34):
Okay, awesome.
That's so loud that noise sorry, I was like ding ding.
But okay.
So it's great about these mics and do that.
Okay.
there we go.
Okay.
Well, I mean, if you even if you
I don't know, we're still recording, right?

(01:29:55):
Okay.
I was gonna say, I just had asked for a brief break, but I think that's also another thingtoo, is the body figures so much into the work we do.
And with live performance and its rawness in streaming, there's a body there oftentimes,even if it's just hands.

(01:30:16):
Or like a V-tube, right, an avatar.
or nothing at all.
There's still like this someone making something in the background.
And I think it's just like that whole, this whole endeavor.
then when we were at the workshop in Pasadena, it just reminded me like how, yeah, howlike the body figures into everything we do with the desk we're at or where we want to sit

(01:30:42):
for the day.
Like I'm like, yeah, I have to show people.
indirectly, like what my habits are and I don't do that often, like in the, you know, inthe studio, it's just me.
so I'm like, I really like sitting upstairs on that couch next to the prophet.
Cause I love looking at the prophet.
And like, I felt very anti-social the first day when I was like, you mind if I go upstairsand just work on like track on this prophet, you know, and it just felt self-indulgent,

(01:31:12):
but I was like, I'm here to work.
I'm here to show my process a little bit.
And you guys were all just like, cool, no problem.
Go for it.
Yeah, I was glad you wanted to.
And also, you know, just by you doing that kind of signals to everyone else too, like wecan spread out a little, you know, like we can have our classroom experience.

(01:31:34):
Hmm.
and we can have that kind of solo thing.
I really like the way it wound up working out.
If we were all just sitting in those seats, which were great, the classroom's awesome, butyou know, after a while, like, you get tired of anything.
So it's a move around.
new sceneries, even here, like I've got this set up as we've been talking, it's prettynice for what I like to do, but sometimes I just don't wanna be here.

(01:32:02):
I wanna go outside or I be upstairs, I want more sunlight or anything.
Absolutely.
I mean, I love something I've been trying to do more just to kind of be present, you know,even passively, but limit myself creatively sometimes, which would not work for a stream,

(01:32:26):
I guess, for me is take just one piece of gear, like the push or, you know, my go-to sortof companion for a lot of things like electron.
is take it and sit just with that but near somebody else because I don't know like I knowthat they're there and I'm not trying to to share the music it's in my headphones but it's

(01:32:51):
just like being co-present you know like I love just I do this a lot during January I'dwork a little bit like on it in the morning or something on the weekends but a lot of
times it's just like
quickly doing something while my wife or son is watching TV and like knowing that that'smy time limit, you know, or knowing that like with my laptop, it's getting past five years

(01:33:16):
old now.
It's still pretty, it works pretty well, but like it has a very limited battery now.
And for January, it was so interesting to like, to me to say, okay, I have an hour beforethis thing dies.
And when that thing dies, it's over.
the timer too.
That's it, you know?
If you start loading in some heavy plugins, that timer moves a little faster.

(01:33:39):
100 % yeah so I just said okay like that's constraint I have let's let's do it but it'salso because I like to just move around a lot you know and I find it very very lonely to
be like you know you know in a basement all the time it's so just saying okay if I'm gonnamake this work I've got I can't take up my entire studio you know it's like I could take a

(01:34:01):
few things so last night I was just sitting on the floor by the kitchen with like
groove box and you know like a one of my field recorders and just saying okay like that'ssomething I can pick up and put right back downstairs when I'm done but at least I'm
around people you know and that's I don't know just passively like invigorating I guess toto be around people yeah

(01:34:28):
I think you feed off energies and all that.
mean, look at Chuck Sutton came down a couple days just to work because he wanted to bearound people that were working and just soak it up.
it put, was, we were talking and he was saying like, you know, this is nice because, youknow, if I'm home, I might get distracted by this or that or.

(01:34:50):
Here, it's almost like when people go to the coffee shop to write, you know, becauseyou're just around other people sitting there doing work.
There's something that you feed off of that on some level.
Yeah, like you don't know what they're working on, but it seems like they're reallyinvested in whatever is on their screen.
They could just be chatting with somebody like odd messages, but they're there, you'rethere together in this shared space.

(01:35:15):
It's really powerful.
I have a little story about Chuck.
I appreciated meeting him and talking with him at the workshop.
There was a moment where at the very end we were all preparing to share our songs andI'm...
trying to put the touches on this thing that we're gonna share.
He's on the right side of the couch, I'm on the left.

(01:35:38):
And Chuck is very expressive when he's listening to his music and he's playing it.
He's like doing a lot of this and stuff and I just love that energy.
Yeah, almost like he's got it in his headphones and he's showing us some of the stuff andlike heads bopping.
You know that this sonic energy is just moving through him.
And there was one point where I was

(01:35:59):
mixing something.
He's doing the same, but our heads are like almost bopping at the same time.
So I thought he was listening to like he could hear my stuff, but it turns out we had theexact same tempo.
It was like 123 or something like that because I asked him later.
I was like, what was the tempo of that song you're working on?
He's always 123.
I was like, wow, dude, that is like that's just magical, you know, like unplanned and allthat sort of stuff like.

(01:36:27):
But you can't it's hard to get.
alone, And I think just, yeah, being in those communities is enormous for my process.
again, just the whole scope of the book was about that open communities and trying tooperate that way more as a creative.

(01:36:50):
Yeah, I don't know if we have scientific evidence of it or not, but I think there's reallysomething going on.
There's like an extra, I don't know, like level, like waves or something happening, thatthe energy, you really do feel it and something happens when you're around other people.

(01:37:13):
I don't know if maybe we just don't have like the right, you know, sensory organ to pickit up or maybe we do, we just aren't so conscious of it, but we can't quantify it.
I don't know what it is, but there's something to it.
There really is.
mean, when you're around people that are excited and inspired and they're doing something,like we feed off of that.

(01:37:38):
It's a great thing to...
put yourself into from time to time.
Because, I mean, here we are about a month out of it.
I'm still excited and it's still carrying over into other things I'm doing in life, evenin my teaching at school.
It's had a real important effect and especially for me this time of year, it's the longstretch between breaks.

(01:38:06):
It's helped me through that.
I was kind of worried that
using my break to go to California would kind of rob me of the replenishment and therejuvenation that those breaks give you.
But it was quite the opposite.
Just being around that energy got me inspired in a lot of different areas of my life.

(01:38:29):
Not even just music.
Yeah, I mean, for me, it got me to reach out more to people about collaborating, right, indifferent ways.
So there's creator from the workshop, writer, that I'm working on something with now.

(01:38:51):
We'll keep it little secret, you know, but for a minute.
like, we decided to meet up and we said, okay, kind of in the spirit of like,
jamming and parameters, know, why don't we just say, name the tempo, name a song key, andcome back two weeks later.

(01:39:11):
And just see what we make, you know.
But we're kind of both still interested in the similar genres, so it works out well, butlike, you know, was just recently, actually yesterday, today's Monday, so Sunday, we
shared.
the first drafts of just eight bar, like 16 to eight bar loops, Eclipse, and we're like,all right, dude, let's go, you know, and work on it together.

(01:39:33):
So now we're gonna come back with arranging, respectively, like, almost arranging eachother's work, and I'm like, that's a way of getting feedback.
But it started with the in-person part, like, I haven't really done too many, like,collaborative first online then.

(01:39:54):
finishing later except for like the NPC which is more of sharing and building communitybut like I'm curious to see how this plays out later on so yeah
That's so cool.
I no idea.
I love it.
Just a cool, creative way to interact.

(01:40:15):
So I guess we should probably wrap this up, right?
That's okay.
Where is the best place to send folks to see your work?
If we can give it a...
Yeah, no problem.
Best place, yes.

(01:40:35):
So it is for music.
It's on SoundCloud.
I've been playing with this a little bit.
yeah, it is, I think it's Rick S.
Music.
Yes, so that's what I've got, So that's everything from Jammy where he came out there.
And some of them I'm gonna come back and make Creative Commons just because I feel likethey're,

(01:40:56):
existed there and I might use them in some way but I want to think about those.
And then the book, yeah, I've got the link I sent to you so it's ccdigitalpress.org slashLDM, that's what that is, and that's kind of the main, like the thing I've worked on for a

(01:41:17):
couple years and I was really proud to sort of put out.
I think that's kind of the split between my my
I would say like day job as a professor, you know, and my, my, mood lighting as a, as acreator and stuff like that.
But then again, like what's interesting, not again, I guess to say, but what's interestingto me is these things like overlap a lot, right?

(01:41:40):
Like I need to make, I want to produce content so that I can teach it.
Right.
And it just, you have this kind of ethos, when you come to the classroom, when you'remaking podcast material or.
sound installations or video, you want to show all this sort of content creation things,not just through examples, but your own work.

(01:42:07):
think that's...
You build some trust with your students when you do that.
And it's also just fun to know how you do it.
I'm real grateful I have that opportunity.
But yeah, those are the two places I mainly operate out of.
I'll definitely put that in the links for this episode.

(01:42:28):
I'm really glad we got to do this.
yeah, thanks for coming on.
And thank you to the listener for tuning in with us.
Hope you have a great day.
We did it

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