November 20, 2023 • 52 mins
Mike Butera has gone on some intriguing journeys, connecting music performance passions, philosophy and sound studies, and tech in creating new musical instruments for regular people to get into music. He shares his path to launching Artiphon after years in academic circles, ways he learned how to market new devices and thrive with Kickstarter, and how the adventure is going so far as they get ready to release the Chorda in late 2023.
Guest: Dr. Mike Butera, Founder & CEO, Artiphon
Dr. Mike Butera is the founder & CEO of Artiphon, a music tech company designing smart instruments that anyone can play. Mike received his Ph.D. in Sound Studies from Virginia Tech and was a professor of Sociology and Philosophy for 6 years. Prior to founding Artiphon, Mike was a consumer electronics product designer, a touring musician, and a public speaker in music & technology.
What are you most passionate about with your current work? : Inspiring people to be musical for just a minute every day!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Gigi Johnson (00:00):
This show is about people who innovate in all walks
of life. And you have innovated,or have touched many walks of
life so far, and connected themtogether, which I find
fascinating. Mike, can you startus out with what you're doing
now, which your main adventureis now.
Mike Butera (00:20):
So I am currently and have been for a while
running Artifon. Artifon is amusic technology company. Our
goal really is to reimaginemusical instruments as friendly,
fun, casual consumer devices,the kind of smart home
(00:41):
revolution that we've seen in alot of other areas we want to
apply to music. And that's notreally the point. The point is,
we think a lot more people canhave fun playing music, then
than have before when musicalinstruments were designed for
pros primarily. And so we wantto design instruments for
everyone else. So what I'm doingis I'm running the company, I'm
(01:06):
leading product design. I, I'mtrying to figure out what's next
in the world of getting morepeople to be creative. And and
so yeah, we are currentlylaunching a new product that
we're really excited aboutcalled Chorda. And we can talk
about that. But yeah, it's ourlatest smart instrument. And
(01:30):
we're currently going intomanufacturing on that.
Gigi Johnson (01:33):
Great, and I want to come back to the
Kickstarters. I want to comeback to the why these. But why
drag you backwardsprogressively? Why did you feel
this company needed to bestarted?
Mike Butera (01:49):
So the year was 2010. I had just gotten my PhD
in sound studies. I was atVirginia Tech. And I moved back
to Nashville. And I was aprofessor of sociology and
philosophy, and really enjoyingthat.
Gigi Johnson (02:11):
Already, we've got a woven together journey here,
right.
Mike Butera (02:15):
Yeah, yeah
Gigi Johnson (02:16):
Sound studies and philosophy and sociology.
Mike Butera (02:19):
Yeah, for me, it was it was this continuum of
thinking through the ways thatpeople want to make the world
sound certain ways, whichchanges. By the second, my
dissertation research was aroundphenomenology, which is kind of
(02:40):
this study of not justperception, but your approach to
the world, how you know how theworld presents itself to you how
you respond to it interactingwith the world, basically. And I
found that with sound, we haveall these different ways of
controlling our acoustic spaces.We have doors and windows, we
(03:04):
have headphones, we can put on arecord, we can walk away. And a
lot of those are mitigationstrategies, you know, adding
sounds or masking sounds, tokind of fix your acoustic space.
And so I started thinking aboutwhat were the creative aspects
(03:28):
of that? How could we get peopleto change the way the world
sounds in a creative way, ratherthan in this more defensive, you
know, personal space kind ofway. And as a lifelong musician,
I thought, well, musicalinstruments are definitely where
I'm going to start with that.But then I just basically
(03:51):
thought, well, instruments, sothese professional devices that
we expect everyone else to playwell,
Gigi Johnson (04:00):
with a training process too, right? With a
training process that issocialized, that is structural,
that is an economic device forfor funding the trainer. and is
and is normalized, or myfavorite things that I've done
is I was in at the Museum of Artin New York. And they have an
(04:24):
entire kind of progression ofmusical instruments exhibit,
which they also have online. Soyou can sort of see that these
all gestated for a bit and thenthey locked.
Mike Butera (04:34):
Yeah, yeah. And that's culture
Gigi Johnson (04:38):
Unlock business. It's also the economics, right?
So that so that when you starthaving the sheet music, it has
to go with an instrument thatsounds a certain way that is
part of an orchestration, thatis part of a normalization, and
you're kind of looking to breakthat.
Mike Butera (04:53):
Yeah, even just the number of notes that you're
expected to play. And yeah, I dowant to think about, you know,
the same kinds of revolutionswe've seen from technology in
other media forms, photography,video writing, you know, all
these forms of human expressionthat are very fundamental. But
(05:17):
now most people don't, they'renot intimidated by taking a
picture. They might not thinkit's the best picture on the
world, and they don't care. Theydon't say, I shouldn't have done
that, or I'm bad at that. Theyjust take another picture. And
that's not the conversation withmusic. It hasn't been for over
100 years. And we can talk aboutthe role that copyright law has
(05:42):
played in that, that recordlabels and the distribution of
music scarcity was was a realproblem 150 years ago. But now,
there is this opportunity tothink about redesigning music as
something that is inherentlyinteractive, and just not as
(06:04):
serious or, you know,intimidating or problematic as,
as people tend to think it is,it can be really casual. So that
really was the foundation forthe company. I mentioned, I was
teaching at the time, I had afriend who had been in consumer
(06:24):
technology. So I was inNashville, and there was this
company there. And he left andhe, we were chatting, and he
said, Hey, we should start aproduct design firm. And at the
time, I, you know, that hadn'tbeen on my radar, I was going to
be a tenured professor, that wasthe whole goal. And but I said
yes, and I didn't take thetenure track job. And we started
(06:47):
a product design firm thatdesigned smart speakers and more
tech and culture kind of thingsfor other companies that did
well, at, you know, Costco, andTarget, places like that.
Gigi Johnson (07:01):
So you were
Mike Butera (07:02):
That taught me a lot.
Gigi Johnson (07:03):
I was gonna say that you were bringing though I
was gonna say your weaponizingyour academic studies. . . that
you know, how people think, andhow people buy and how people
experience products, you'd beenstudying and teaching and
embedding in other people'slives, where you then built your
superpowers to operationalizehow people think and actually
(07:28):
design for,
Mike Butera (07:31):
like your problematization here, because
as a sociologist, you know,we're supposed to be well, at
least traditionally ratherpassive. Now, that's always, you
know.
Gigi Johnson (07:44):
Observent only right? Yeah, right, not
polluting the research stream.
Mike Butera (07:49):
That's been critiqued enough that it doesn't
exist. But, you know, generalgoal is, don't actively do that.
But of course, the, you know,cultural revolutions of the
past, you know, 100 years, haveseen more active forms of social
engagement. And so I really likeyour framing of this, because I
(08:13):
do feel like I'm taking a lot ofthe critical theory that I
learned and taught, and lookingat those structures of power and
influence and cultural capital,for instance, and saying,
there's, there's a different wayto do this. I don't think it's
just democratization from apolitical kind of standpoint,
(08:35):
but I do think it is a form ofempowerment, and even,
hopefully, a psychological shiftthat people can have in their
own identities as creative,expressive people, that you went
back to the, you know, originsof a lot of musical instruments.
Usually, they use the besttechnologies of their day, they
(08:58):
were some of the most advancedtech tools of the time. And
yeah, they get frozen because weneed to formalize things and,
you know, create institutionsaround them and all that, but
when they're being invented,they're normally very cutting
edge. And this just felt likeanother moment in history where
we could really look at digitaltech in a new way. Because for
(09:23):
decades now, digital musicproduction has allowed people to
make any sound they want to, youknow, keyboards in the 80s
digital recording studios in the90s and onward. Laptops, you
know, for the past 20 someyears. But the interface, the UI
(09:45):
tends to be very pro focused.And this was another insight at
the sort of founding moment forartifact was looking at all
these amazing, you know, newtechnologies, but seeing how
they're really just designed Forpros, the high learning curve on
the instrument side, but also onthe recording side. And that
(10:06):
moment was around 2010, the iPadwas released, and GarageBand hit
the iPad. And that was alightbulb for me of saying,
okay, all these sounds areavailable to anyone, this is
going to change the way kidsespecially think about what
they're capable of with music.Because now there's this free
(10:30):
app on their iPad, or five bucksat the time, that that they
could go in and record beats andbe like, I made this beat. And
that's cool. And that might,that might be enough to get them
to feel like they're a creativeperson. I wanted to focus on the
interface, the screen wasn'tenough, you know, having to
(10:50):
stare at a screen and never beable to close your eyes when you
play and not get that musclememory. I wanted to bring that
back into music creation andbring in all the new benefits of
digital recording and everythinglike that.
Gigi Johnson (11:06):
Very cool. And we'll come back to this because
then part of it is there is aretail marketplace and
expectations and school focusand all this stuff for a sale. I
want to hear more about howyou've dealt with that. But you
Mike, you started out commentingalso that as a musician, so you
as a musician, do play create.
Mike Butera (11:29):
I do. I so I started on violin, when I was
eight, I came home and asked ifI could play violin because I
saw the orchestra at school andreally liked it. I for the first
six years of lessons, I neverimprovised. It was just sheet
(11:49):
music. And, and it was oftenmusic that I had never heard. I
only saw the notes on the page.And my teacher would say whether
I was playing it correctly ornot. But I actually didn't have
the original recordings to evenplay along with, which was an
interesting way to learn.
Gigi Johnson (12:10):
Yeah, this was where where did you grow up?
Mike Butera (12:12):
I grew up in Pennsylvania. So just a, you
know, normal kind of grew up in,in a neighborhood worked on the
farm right next to theneighborhood grew up in the
family flower shop. So prettyclassic.
Gigi Johnson (12:28):
Were your parents creative at all? Or did they do
music?
Mike Butera (12:31):
So my dad's a floral designer, so very
creative in that sort of visualmaterial field. And my mom is
She's a painter, and has been ateacher and things so very
inspiring. But not musical inparticuclar.
Gigi Johnson (12:47):
So the theme might be it can be non traditional was
there from the beginning?
Mike Butera (12:51):
Yes.
Gigi Johnson (12:51):
wWat did they think that that Mike was going
to be?
Unknown (12:58):
They, they never prefigured that for me. There
was there was never that likeDoctor lawyer. Kind of
expectation.
Gigi Johnson (13:09):
Get a good degree and get a good professional
field and life will be youroyster.
Mike Butera (13:14):
Yeah, yeah. We liked oysters. We just didn't
have that many. And. And so whenI said that I wanted to go to
college for music and musicperformance in particular and
violin. They were like, great.And they supported me even
though that is not a career thatoffers many, you know, many
(13:38):
opportunities for professionalviolinist.
Gigi Johnson (13:41):
So what did you think it was going to do? I'm
always fascinated it now then,that when people make a college
decision, they're buying a blackbox, and oftentimes don't say,
and then when I'm done withthat, I see I would do x. So if
Mike Butera (13:57):
it wasn't about violin for me, I actually wanted
to I actually tried to go forguitar initially. But there were
too many guitars and they hadroom for a violinist. So with
that, but for me, it was justmusic. It was is there a way I
moved to Nashville? Is there away to do music as a career? And
(14:22):
at the time, I really didn'tknow what that could mean other
than being a band and get signedto do the normal thing you
imagine? Yeah. Yeah. And I enjoyI did some of that. And I've
done the, you know, the bandstuff, the solo stuff, the
studio recording engineer. Ilove that whole world. But it
(14:48):
was also at this moment. Andthis is 20 some years ago now,
when that digital shift washappening pretty profoundly when
I I started in studios, we wererecording to tape and I loved I
mean, fully analog signal paths,amazing sound like, I still love
(15:09):
it is a million dollar studio.And, and at the same time that
studio had a little room thathad a Pro Tools rig with a
computer. And they were allthese people making totally new
sounds. And they're in thislittle room and then they got a
laptop, and they did it back intheir apartments. So I was
(15:30):
seeing that happen at thatmoment. And that totally
influenced me toward this. So.So anyway, I didn't know where
it would go. I quickly, youknow, fell in love with studios
and then found philosophy andsociology, I actually got a
triple major, how they see that.
Gigi Johnson (15:48):
Everything seems like a somewhat normal journey
until you look and go way way.Wait, how did Mike do that?
Because first of all, for mostpeople, they'd have no idea that
you can create multiple blended,the you don't have to be in a
single journey path. And infact, most universities have a
structure your own degreejourney possible that they don't
(16:11):
tell anyone about how can youimagine if half your students
were doing that? So how did youSo you did three separate
degrees? And what drove you tothink this was sane? Well,
Mike Butera (16:25):
if we go back and nerd out just prior for some
reason, when I was in sixthgrade, I came home and said I
wanted to be homeschooled. And Iwas doing well in school, I had
friends like it was working out.But I met someone who was in
homeschooling and they werelike, Yeah, you get to customize
(16:46):
all your work. And you get to,you know, go down these paths.
And it's Yeah, I thought, Well,this sounds really interesting.
And it took a little convince myparents, but we did. And it
ended up that the second half ofmy you know, formative education
years, I was, you know, learningat home and able to build all of
(17:10):
these different course classes,you know, studies in areas that
you wouldn't normally get to.And so I kind of broke out of
that normal, you know, middle ofhigh school mode. So when I went
to college, I was able to get inthe honors program actually
didn't have the the SAT scorefor it. Standardized testing
(17:34):
wasn't one of my strong points.But I went into the office, and
I said, Hey, I really, yeah, Ireally want to do this. Yeah.
And it worked. We got in aconversation. I said, I said
what I was passionate about. Andthey said, well, we'll give you
a semester, we'll see you know,this, we'll see if this works
(17:56):
out. And it worked out. And Andthen luckily, that program gave
me kind of free rein to piecetogether these different fields,
you had to justify why. So likeone of my majors was music
production. And I actuallystudied music, composition,
performance, business, you know,recording, distribution, like
(18:18):
all these different aspects . ..
Gigi Johnson (18:19):
It helps you're at Belmont because all those were
available at Belmont.
Mike Butera (18:21):
Exactly. Yeah. And yeah, it's very unique
Gigi Johnson (18:21):
Did you go right to grad school, or did you have
opportunity. And similar withphilosophy and sociology, the
two there was a lot of overlapand critical theory and things
any sidebars?
but, but I was able to kind ofcarve out those paths. And then
Mike Butera (18:33):
I had about a year that I was saving up for it. I
when I got to grad school atVirginia Tech,
was working at some restaurantsand things in Nashville and
doing music and you know, thatkind of stuff. But it was all in
(18:57):
preparation to go to gradschool.
Gigi Johnson (18:59):
But sometimes it's a good buffer or baking point or
settling out or because you thenwent right from masters to
doctorate, which is a bit of ajourney. Know why Yeah. Why grad
school? Why is it the fact thatyou had this lovely blended
thing that would thrive in gradschool or that you had gotten
(19:21):
distracted?
Mike Butera (19:22):
I hadn't found sound studies yet. I went to
grad school because I thought Iwanted to be a social theory
professor. And that could be ina philosophy or sociology
department. But I knew I wantedto do that. I was especially
studying technology and socialnetworks at the time. So
Gigi Johnson (19:44):
yes, and this was 2008 ish.
Unknown (19:48):
I started grad school in '07. So I finished up
undergrad and in '05 and then inDecember '05 and then yeah, just
over a year. started gradschool, the . . . . So I went to
Virginia Tech . . . Themaster's program in philosophy
there was analytic compared toContinental, just two branches
(20:12):
of philosophy. Very kind ofhardcore logic focused, not the
kind of philosophy where youjust talk about what's on your
mind and and see if you can comeup with new ideas. That was
primarily my style. So I wassuddenly in this rigorous sort
of engineering driven culture atVT, which I learned a ton. I
(20:35):
also found sound studies. In thefirst year, while I was there, I
didn't know it existed, it was anascent field at the time. And I
read a mention of it in a bookon cyber culture studies, that
sound had been under explored inthis field. And I was like, oh,
(20:56):
and it just all the lights cameon. And you know, all these
different passions kind ofmagnetize together. So I, I
joined a Ph. D. program atVirginia Tech, that didn't quite
exist yet. It hadn't beenfinalized with the state. It
was, it was the first trulyinterdisciplinary PhD in the
(21:20):
country. And it was betweenphilosophy, history, sociology,
political theory, things likethat. So I was the first
student, PhD student in thisprogram. And I was part of
getting it, you know, I was inthose meetings with the
(21:41):
regulators or whatever, inacademia, to figure out what it
meant. And therefore, it was ablank slate. And I said, I want
to do sound studies. And they'relike, great, go for it. And so I
was able to create this wholePhD program around this new
field and travel around theworld and go to all these
conferences and be a part of thenew journals that were coming
(22:03):
out. And it was, it was amazing.So anyway, I think the theme
academically was, I, I never, Iwas never interested in sort of
finding the boxes to check offor, you know, put on the shelf
or whatever. I was alwayslooking for ways to kind of
(22:26):
integrate different fieldstogether and find something new.
Gigi Johnson (22:31):
So let's get back to the more current future. And
so you've got a past, a build ityourself for yourself, blending,
exploring, poking some things inthe eye that are, are
traditional. And so then youwent you created was it assault,
where you were then buildingcompany building lots of
(22:54):
different things?
Mike Butera (22:55):
Yeah.
Gigi Johnson (22:55):
What bridged you from we're helping, consulting,
building launching consumerproducts to I want to start a
company, and then what led intothe first instrument? And, and
why Kickstarter, so if we couldmake that journey conversation.
Mike Butera (23:18):
So this was. . . Yeah, back to 2010 that that
sort of pivotal moment. One ofthe things was, it worked, it
was working, the consulting wasdoing well, I was able to come
up with ideas like for thesesmart home speakers that would
all connect with each other workwith industrial designers,
(23:43):
mechanical engineers, electricalengineers, and so on. Go to
China go to the factory overseeproduction and then see it you
know, actually do well in themarket. And so this was all menopause
Gigi Johnson (24:00):
menopause a second because you explained a lot of
your gestation Did you have anytech skills at this stage? Did
you learn things yourself? Ordid so? What was that tech
component and when the somepeople build things and do
things and they've been takingapart their parents toasters,
(24:20):
since they were five, or they'vebeen coding forever, or they've
been doing robot design andbuilding so so I'm not hearing a
building story, this is thispart of the superpowers of your
partner is this stuff that youlearned or trusted other people
with?
Mike Butera (24:37):
So I was always yes, I was always taking things
apart and and, you know, as akid and onward, when I got into
studio tech in college, I wasrepairing gear building tube,
you know, gear and whatever. SoI electrically you know,
(24:58):
familiar but Not an electricalengineer. A lot of training in
design happened from my dad fromfloral design, you know, more
aesthetically, I would say. Butthen I learned a lot of that
hands on during the consultingphase, you know, how consumer
(25:21):
tech was actually built? Coding,I always dabbled, but, you know,
some people, most people are somuch better at that than I am.
So I've always been able totranslate the kind of design
intent and understand thearchitecture of it, but that
was, that was never my thing. Soyes, a lot of trust, a lot of
(25:44):
collaboration with people. And,and I felt like I was, I was
discovering that my role wasthis hub or a translator,
between culture and productdesign, ways of thinking, and in
the weeds, engineering and just,you know, always keeping that
(26:06):
that strand connected. Becauseso many products are either, you
know, impossible to build, orpossible to build and no one
wants them and
Gigi Johnson (26:20):
are so expensive to build that no one wants it at
that price point, right. So thatin many ways, specialty music
instruments, I mean, the onesthat I'm aware of what Chapman
stick and other things where youkind of go so expensive to build
and creating customized and notmet as mass products. That's
been on my wish list
Mike Butera (26:41):
for a while and let's let's tag a corner this
conversation in terms of withinstruments, what, what are the
cultural references orfamiliarity that people need?
You know, Chapman stick is agood example. cool technology,
(27:02):
you can make all kinds of soundwith it. People get virtuosic in
amazing ways with it.
Gigi Johnson (27:08):
So complicated. It play. Yes. Yeah.
Mike Butera (27:11):
I mean, it's just like a theory bomb. Music Theory
of like,
Gigi Johnson (27:16):
I can to pause everybody, because I would never
have known a Chapman stick otherthan I was at a small concert,
and someone was playing it. AndI was so blown away by watching
total virtuosity. So it's kindof like, a unstructured guitar
had a baby with a bass. But it'ssort of two directions. Yeah,
(27:37):
it's like a harp hanging from abait. So it was very much a
cultural mashup. And but, uh,simply, the virtuosity was like
watching a phenomenal heartplay, or were you just watching?
Oh, my gosh, but I went to goprice one. I'm like, Oh, my
gosh, that is such an expensiveinstrument. And it is sort of
(27:58):
art. It's almost the opposite ofwhat you guys have been building.
Mike Butera (28:03):
Right? Well, and so then get back to that. So why,
why build a new type of musicalinstrument? was the question I
was asking myself when I got upthe courage to say, Yeah, I want
to start my own company. Yeah, Iwant to, I want to build a new
thing. I mentioned, the userinterface challenge of all these
(28:25):
apps were out there. But youdon't want to just touch a
screen, you want something inyour hands? Well, that's great.
What should that thing be. Andwe could have designed a very
specific instrument, a singularinstrument, like most instance,
instruments, or singular, you,it's intended to be played one
(28:45):
way you learn how to play itthat way, and then you're good
at it. My goal was to create aplural instrument, an
instrument, we call it a multiinstrument, something that you
could actually pick up and playin all these different ways. And
versatility was one of thegoals. Because why not digital,
(29:08):
lets you do that. We can buildform factors that allow for
multiple positions and gesturesand playing styles. So creating
this universal musicalinstrument has a versatility
benefit. But there's anothereven more important benefit that
I was really going for, which isapproachability. The theory that
(29:30):
I had at the time, and we'restill playing this out, we're
still seeing if this is, youknow going to be true in the
world. The theory is that if youmultiply what a thing can do,
than any one thing that it doesis less intimidating. Because
you pick it up and you say I'mgonna just gonna play some
drums. You know what, I'm goingto have some fun and pick it up
(29:51):
and strum it like a guitar orput it down on the table and now
it's a piano. None of thosethings are the right way to play
it and therefore you're notplaying Seeing it wrong. And so
creating this universalinstrument also has the benefit
of giving more people the sensethat they could just casually
approach it, see what it doesenjoy that, and not compare
(30:15):
themselves to the best musicianin the world who's so much
better at them at this onesingular thing. And that's, that
really was that moment where Ithought, Okay, this is going to
work, we do have a newconversation to, you know, bring
to the world of what instrumentscan be. And yeah, that's when we
started designing what we callthe instrument one, which was
(30:37):
our first product.
Gigi Johnson (30:39):
It makes me think of Dan Shneiderman's
philosophies of creativity,technology support tools, now
I'm gonna go nerdy for a bitwhere it's like a metaphor as a
doorway. So you can have a lowthreshold or a high threshold, a
wide doorway, that you can stuffmany things into it, or a tall
doorway, where you can go toextreme expertise. And I always
(31:02):
come to a new technology and go,is it an easy entry? Is it a
wide doorway? Or does it haveextreme sophistications? Like me
trying to come in to, toPhotoshop? Yeah, I know, I could
possibly start Photoshop fairlyeasily for about five minutes.
And then it's like, Wait, Idon't like kind of grok it I'm
doing blender right now. It'sit's like, immediately high
(31:25):
doorway, wide walls, highceiling. But the doorway is so
harsh as you're looking to makeit. So it's an easy entry. But
sophisticated uses and wideuses, you're kind of making an
infinite doorway.
Mike Butera (31:39):
That's it's a goal. One of one of the ways we do
that we call it scalablecomplexity. In the history of
instruments, they're based onphysics, of resonance,
vibration, resonance. Andtherefore the material, the
size, all those aspects of ithad to be pretty fixed, there
(32:02):
was some variables that youcould add or subtract, but that
was it. And even the early daysof electric and electronic
instrumentation with earlysynthesizers, and things, it
also pretty fixed circuits werekind of baked in, you had the
armed Martino, one of myfavorite instruments, where you,
(32:23):
you could plug in thesedifferent they were like
speakers, but they were actuallynot speakers like we normally
think some of them were gongs,others were paper, others, you
know, were wood. And so thepoint was, when you plug in the
speaker, it's going to soundlike a totally different
instrument. But it's because ofthe physics of it. With digital
(32:46):
tools, now we can actuallycreate these adaptive devices.
And so if we get the ergonomics,right, based on simple human
forms, and averages of handsize, and all kinds of things.
So similar to say, a gamecontroller, or remote, or all
kinds of other objects we use,we can program these devices to
(33:10):
respond differently based onwhat you want to do with them.
We can receive differentgestures in ways that we make
musical, not in the same way. Soif you want to strum something,
versus tap it, versus bow it, orpress it, these are all
different gestures that we canprogram and say, well, now we're
(33:32):
going to put it in a sort ofpiano mode, or a guitar mode, or
a drum machine mode or thingslike that. And that's actually
one of the things that wepatented, was this concept of
the multi instrument as aswitchable responsive device,
rather than, you know, based onone way to play. So that that
(33:55):
was one of the key, you know,founding principles of what
we're doing, it's a bit hard toexplain. And again, maybe, maybe
it'll be the way of the futureor maybe it's a moment in
history, but it seems to beworking.
Gigi Johnson (34:11):
So for for people trying to visualize this who are
listening to this, that thefirst one which was instrument
one, kind of look like a mash upa long, thin strip that had
sensors on the top that youcould, that also had
(34:34):
accelerometers and other motionsensors, so that you could take
that same essentially bar andplay it, hold it up and strum
it, move it in space. So that itwasn't just taking one of the
metaphors or affordance sets butlet you take patterns that you
(34:55):
already knew from something elseand bring it over. Yeah,
Mike Butera (34:58):
absolutely. Yeah. We, with the design of the
instrument one, it took justover four years to go from idea
into a product that we could,you know, announce to the world.
So a lot of iterations, sixdifferent prototype generations
in there a lot of a lot ofdifferent ways to look at it
(35:22):
initially, for instance, it hada doc for an iPhone. Because
Doc's were really cool, whichmade sense at the time, right?
It was great. It was great. Itwas it was really neat, because
it became this self containedinstrument that was before
Bluetooth was really possible oryou know, even just USB
(35:42):
connection more generally. So.So anyway, it it evolved a few
different ways. It ended upbeing a device, we launched it
on Kickstarter, in 2015. Wedidn't know what it would do,
the design of it was we ended upmaking it in plastic, so we
could mass manufacture it. Thesensors were called force
(36:06):
sensing resistors, it was this,this kind of sheet of film
underneath a, an almost rubberysurface that could sense touch
and pressure velocity, you couldslide on it, it was almost like
a computer trackpad. But but arubber surface a little harder
(36:27):
to play than that. And, and ithad these string features on it.
And we did that because in earlytesting, we found that a lot of
the musicians again, this was inNashville, a lot of the
musicians were very stringfocused, and really wanted that
tactile feel of having, youknow, muscle memory. Yeah, yeah.
Gigi Johnson (36:51):
This was not fret started, they wanted friends.
Mike Butera (36:56):
This is not a not a mistake. But as we talked about
Chorda it's interesting, we tookoff the strings for Chorda,
similar form factor kind ofukulele size bar. But Chorda has
pads and a strong mobile area.So insert one accord a both have
those things, but insert one hadthe string features again,
(37:18):
because musicians were askingfor that. Insert one can do
things that stringed instrumentscan't do that other instruments
can't do. Every note can haveits own distortion or for Broto.
You can apply effects to everylittle touch. If you press
harder, you know, you couldbring in delay or whatever you
(37:40):
wanting to like amazing things.But what it didn't have was real
strings. And for those, sayguitarists approaching this with
the muscle memory of stringsback to physics, they wanted to
behave exactly like stringsbehave. And that was
problematic. It was a problemthat I think is quite
(38:02):
interesting, and highlights thisthis paradigm shift between
physical and virtualinstruments, virtuosic
Gigi Johnson (38:10):
to write I live off my business as being of not
having to think about it, andbeing able to create art after
years of practice.
Mike Butera (38:21):
Yeah, well, Aristotle's notion of virtue
has, you know, not quite as muchto do with what we think about,
like, you know, a virtuousperson is like, really good or
something, for Aristotle wasmore like being good at
(38:41):
something. And, and having thevirtue of, of, you know, being
capable having the affordancesmatched to what you're doing.
And so, there's an interestingjust to get kind of deep on that
of the virtue and virtual, thatwe can actually map the same
(39:06):
behaviors, the same affordancesfrom the physical world into the
what we now call the virtualworld, as long as people have
the virtue of being able to useit. And all that means in normal
language now is like thecapability or in some cases,
just the confidence of reachingout and touching it. If you can,
(39:27):
strum your hand through the air.And if a guitar is under your
hand, you'll strum a guitar. Butif you're in an augmented
reality environment, that candetect your hand moving through
the air, and you strum virtualstrings. It's the same result.
And so you have the virtue ofbeing able to strum the
(39:48):
technology is going to determineexactly how that happens, but it
might not matter what the innerworkings are of it as long as
you get to intend for somethingto happen, and it happens in the
end. That is, you know, that'senough. And again, this is how I
tend to think about productdesign, like, can we design?
(40:09):
Tough stuff?
Gigi Johnson (40:11):
People will expect the haptic feedback of the
string, right? So that theythere still is, then they would
like that interaction with that.I'm right now building things in
spatial audio and VR. And soreally thinking about what then
that response is, and how sorry,we could go down. So holes here.
Yeah, let let me let me take youdown to rabbit holes to maybe
(40:35):
wrap up this conversation. Andbecause there's lots of things I
would love to talk about onthis, which is, so one of the
reinforcing elements is theretail sales element of musical
instruments you came in throughKickstarter, you now have come
in with several instruments. Soyou also had the and I have to
(40:56):
look at my notes, the orba,which I've had my hands on in
play, but very much of acircular modality, really
hitting were the folks who arepossibly thinking of it in terms
of beats or pads as a differentmodality and cheaper and
handset. And then you've takenthat through Kickstarter, and
(41:16):
you knew, you're taking thecurrent quarter, you had
something or have somethingcalled orbit cam, that's a video
also, I
Mike Butera (41:25):
was mentioned, the the AR stuff didn't come out of
nowhere, we've spent the pastcouple of years really figuring
out what's possible through thecamera, as a musical interface.
So and the screen itself. Soorbit cam, for instance, is an
app that you can make musicdirectly in live video on your
(41:45):
screen. And there are these padsand you can play whatever sound
you want. And it willautomatically get baked into the
video kind of SoundTracking yourlife. It works with our
hardware, but you can also useit on its own. And so yeah, what
we found is the transference ofour tech, from the physical
(42:06):
products into apps on to aphysical product you already own
your phone is all possible. Andit's really just where are you?
What do you want to do? Youknow, what's what's fun at the
moment? And, and so yeah, we'vebeen experimenting with AR, we
did a big launch with Snapchatlast year with artists, lenses
(42:29):
and ways to make any songinteractive, which is really
fun, using new AR tools andmotion tracking, things like
that. And it's all the samethinking it's it's a lot of the
same kind of UX design that weput into our hardware
instruments that we design inthe virtual space as well. So
(42:50):
that's that's been really fun.So
Gigi Johnson (42:53):
given the retail dominance, that the retail
challenges, yeah, in the currentera of retail stores going away.
So they're feeling of fragilityand needing to move volume. How
in the world do you sell this? AKickstarter has been your friend
multiple times now includingrecently? To me, that's a
natural friction, and a questretail scale. With retailers,
(43:18):
that's their ownership spot,right? How do you then get to
people and get to the learningcomplex and getting to people to
see this as an option other thanby word of mouth, and great
Kickstarter marketing.
Mike Butera (43:34):
So Kickstarter is really this moment, just the
launch moment. It's actually apre launch moment, it's when we
develop an instrument enoughthat it works, that we can
demonstrate that we can makemusic in our case, three times
now, we've brought that toKickstarter and said, Hey, we
haven't manufactured this yet.We want to, we just want to make
(43:56):
sure you actually want it.Here's the concept. Here's how
it plays. What do you think? Andall three times that's gone
quite well. And so wesimultaneously we're having
conversations with retailers,not only in the musical
instrument space, but consumerelectronics and and more
(44:17):
lifestyle retail as well, at themoment design store, for
instance, has been a greatpartner over the years.
Retailers increasingly don'ttake as many risks at launch,
they want to see that somethinghas already worked. And so I see
the two functioning quite welltogether they have for us that
(44:39):
we've been able to go out toKickstarter, find early adopters
who are like, Yeah, that shouldexist in the world. Let's help
you make it. And by doing that,we're showing that there's a
demand for this and retailerswant to be more in the middle of
the adoption curve and or evenpast the chasm, as they say. And
(44:59):
so We're able to prove momentumin the market. With early
adopters, that's, it's beengreat for us the Kickstarter
community is awesome. And, andthe other fact is we sell most
of our products direct throughour website, we do sell through
Amazon as well. But, you know,going direct means we have a
(45:22):
relationship with our customers,we, you know, we can communicate
with them. If you buy on, if youbuy or buy on Amazon right now.
And you don't go to our websiteand specifically sign up for
our, you know, email list, youmight not know that we've just
updated the firmware and addednew features or that there are
(45:43):
all these new songs and ways toplay them, you know, we we'd
like to develop this communityaround our products. And it also
shows on social media, we haveamazing engagement with people,
they, they make little songs,they post them, there's a whole
sort of supportive communityaround just this casual music
(46:04):
making. And that's because wehave that direct relationship.
And we're not going through toomany intermediaries. That said,
we we have great relationshipswith retailers, Guitar Center,
and you know, all kinds ofpeople, but we're really focused
on as direct as we can get withthe customer.
Gigi Johnson (46:23):
Mike, we have covered your highly nonlinear
journey, you're putting ittogether from building your own
homeschooling to building yourown combination of degrees to
building your own musicalinstruments and companies and
products. What have we notmentioned? Is there anything you
as we wrap up, that you'd liketo mention, we haven't touched
on?
Mike Butera (46:43):
I think, overall, for me, the the idea of building
a company was always secondary,it it had to be done, if I was
going to pursue this stuff,because I couldn't just couldn't
just build it all myself, I hadto work with people who had all
(47:06):
these different skill sets, Icouldn't just fund it myself, I
had to find people who wanted tobuild this opportunity into a
business that could actuallymake money someday. And, and I
didn't want to do it myself.This, it's too much fun to work
with other people. So thebusiness the corporation is is a
(47:29):
body of people that is this kindof this kind of place where we
can all pursue that together.There are many other ways this
can be done, there are awesomeopen source projects in the
world, and you know, all kindsof things. And in music, you see
a lot of that as well. The factthat this is a business also
(47:53):
means that there are otherrealities to what it takes to
run it. And that's somethingI've learned so much about that
over the past decade or so.Things I didn't know, I wanted
to learn just just the totalreality of doing this. And
again, I mentioned I grew up inthe family flower shop. So I had
(48:14):
that entrepreneurial, you know,context of just how hard it is
to figure this out. It's it'sexciting. But like you said,
it's it's business is also verynonlinear. Especially with the
economy going all over theplace. There's really no sense
of that classic stability thatyou might have had decades ago
(48:38):
where if you build something,you know, it'll get out there
you advertise in magazines,people will read it and mail
order your stuff like it'snothing is that set, now. It's
changing by the day. So that'sanother exciting aspect of this.
I'm glad we mostly talked aboutdesign and culture and why. But
(48:58):
the vehicle that has enabledthis to happen has been an
actual, an actual business. Andthat's, that's cool, too. It's a
very different side than Ilearned and taught in academia,
about how, you know, capitalismworks on a grand historical
scale. This is this is how it'sworking at a at a product and
(49:19):
team level scale, which is it'sit's been awesome to learn.
Gigi Johnson (49:23):
Excellent. So this episode will go out and be out
in the ether. Who would you liketo reach back out to you?
Mike Butera (49:32):
Oh, well, anyone who wants to collaborate on this
kind of stuff. We are right nowexploring a lot of different
ways to get artists content intoour instruments so that our
instruments become theseinteractive music devices. We
already have all the tech we'vewe've done some of that we want
(49:55):
to do more. We're also veryinterested in multimedia, music,
and we've done some coolexperiments there. We want to
expand that and see ourinstruments as controllers for
making music in multiple senses.So yeah, just more. I'm just
looking for collaborations thatwould be, that would be awesome.
Gigi Johnson (50:18):
And how should people best reach out to you?
Oh,
Mike Butera (50:22):
we you can go to our website we have a, you know,
general contact at Artiphon. AndI'm just Mike@artifact.com if
anyone wants to reach out. Excellent.
Gigi Johnson (50:33):
And we'll put the various links in the show notes.
Mike, thank you so much forjoining us.
Mike Butera (50:38):
Thank you. That was really fun.
This show is about people who innovate in all walks
of life. And you have innovated,or have touched many walks of
life so far, and connected themtogether, which I find
fascinating. Mike, can you startus out with what you're doing
now, which your main adventureis now.
Mike Butera (00:20):
So I am currently and have been for a while
running Artifon. Artifon is amusic technology company. Our
goal really is to reimaginemusical instruments as friendly,
fun, casual consumer devices,the kind of smart home
(00:41):
revolution that we've seen in alot of other areas we want to
apply to music. And that's notreally the point. The point is,
we think a lot more people canhave fun playing music, then
than have before when musicalinstruments were designed for
pros primarily. And so we wantto design instruments for
everyone else. So what I'm doingis I'm running the company, I'm
(01:06):
leading product design. I, I'mtrying to figure out what's next
in the world of getting morepeople to be creative. And and
so yeah, we are currentlylaunching a new product that
we're really excited aboutcalled Chorda. And we can talk
about that. But yeah, it's ourlatest smart instrument. And
(01:30):
we're currently going intomanufacturing on that.
Gigi Johnson (01:33):
Great, and I want to come back to the
Kickstarters. I want to comeback to the why these. But why
drag you backwardsprogressively? Why did you feel
this company needed to bestarted?
Mike Butera (01:49):
So the year was 2010. I had just gotten my PhD
in sound studies. I was atVirginia Tech. And I moved back
to Nashville. And I was aprofessor of sociology and
philosophy, and really enjoyingthat.
Gigi Johnson (02:11):
Already, we've got a woven together journey here,
right.
Mike Butera (02:15):
Yeah, yeah
Gigi Johnson (02:16):
Sound studies and philosophy and sociology.
Mike Butera (02:19):
Yeah, for me, it was it was this continuum of
thinking through the ways thatpeople want to make the world
sound certain ways, whichchanges. By the second, my
dissertation research was aroundphenomenology, which is kind of
(02:40):
this study of not justperception, but your approach to
the world, how you know how theworld presents itself to you how
you respond to it interactingwith the world, basically. And I
found that with sound, we haveall these different ways of
controlling our acoustic spaces.We have doors and windows, we
(03:04):
have headphones, we can put on arecord, we can walk away. And a
lot of those are mitigationstrategies, you know, adding
sounds or masking sounds, tokind of fix your acoustic space.
And so I started thinking aboutwhat were the creative aspects
(03:28):
of that? How could we get peopleto change the way the world
sounds in a creative way, ratherthan in this more defensive, you
know, personal space kind ofway. And as a lifelong musician,
I thought, well, musicalinstruments are definitely where
I'm going to start with that.But then I just basically
(03:51):
thought, well, instruments, sothese professional devices that
we expect everyone else to playwell,
Gigi Johnson (04:00):
with a training process too, right? With a
training process that issocialized, that is structural,
that is an economic device forfor funding the trainer. and is
and is normalized, or myfavorite things that I've done
is I was in at the Museum of Artin New York. And they have an
(04:24):
entire kind of progression ofmusical instruments exhibit,
which they also have online. Soyou can sort of see that these
all gestated for a bit and thenthey locked.
Mike Butera (04:34):
Yeah, yeah. And that's culture
Gigi Johnson (04:38):
Unlock business. It's also the economics, right?
So that so that when you starthaving the sheet music, it has
to go with an instrument thatsounds a certain way that is
part of an orchestration, thatis part of a normalization, and
you're kind of looking to breakthat.
Mike Butera (04:53):
Yeah, even just the number of notes that you're
expected to play. And yeah, I dowant to think about, you know,
the same kinds of revolutionswe've seen from technology in
other media forms, photography,video writing, you know, all
these forms of human expressionthat are very fundamental. But
(05:17):
now most people don't, they'renot intimidated by taking a
picture. They might not thinkit's the best picture on the
world, and they don't care. Theydon't say, I shouldn't have done
that, or I'm bad at that. Theyjust take another picture. And
that's not the conversation withmusic. It hasn't been for over
100 years. And we can talk aboutthe role that copyright law has
(05:42):
played in that, that recordlabels and the distribution of
music scarcity was was a realproblem 150 years ago. But now,
there is this opportunity tothink about redesigning music as
something that is inherentlyinteractive, and just not as
(06:04):
serious or, you know,intimidating or problematic as,
as people tend to think it is,it can be really casual. So that
really was the foundation forthe company. I mentioned, I was
teaching at the time, I had afriend who had been in consumer
(06:24):
technology. So I was inNashville, and there was this
company there. And he left andhe, we were chatting, and he
said, Hey, we should start aproduct design firm. And at the
time, I, you know, that hadn'tbeen on my radar, I was going to
be a tenured professor, that wasthe whole goal. And but I said
yes, and I didn't take thetenure track job. And we started
(06:47):
a product design firm thatdesigned smart speakers and more
tech and culture kind of thingsfor other companies that did
well, at, you know, Costco, andTarget, places like that.
Gigi Johnson (07:01):
So you were
Mike Butera (07:02):
That taught me a lot.
Gigi Johnson (07:03):
I was gonna say that you were bringing though I
was gonna say your weaponizingyour academic studies. . . that
you know, how people think, andhow people buy and how people
experience products, you'd beenstudying and teaching and
embedding in other people'slives, where you then built your
superpowers to operationalizehow people think and actually
(07:28):
design for,
Mike Butera (07:31):
like your problematization here, because
as a sociologist, you know,we're supposed to be well, at
least traditionally ratherpassive. Now, that's always, you
know.
Gigi Johnson (07:44):
Observent only right? Yeah, right, not
polluting the research stream.
Mike Butera (07:49):
That's been critiqued enough that it doesn't
exist. But, you know, generalgoal is, don't actively do that.
But of course, the, you know,cultural revolutions of the
past, you know, 100 years, haveseen more active forms of social
engagement. And so I really likeyour framing of this, because I
(08:13):
do feel like I'm taking a lot ofthe critical theory that I
learned and taught, and lookingat those structures of power and
influence and cultural capital,for instance, and saying,
there's, there's a different wayto do this. I don't think it's
just democratization from apolitical kind of standpoint,
(08:35):
but I do think it is a form ofempowerment, and even,
hopefully, a psychological shiftthat people can have in their
own identities as creative,expressive people, that you went
back to the, you know, originsof a lot of musical instruments.
Usually, they use the besttechnologies of their day, they
(08:58):
were some of the most advancedtech tools of the time. And
yeah, they get frozen because weneed to formalize things and,
you know, create institutionsaround them and all that, but
when they're being invented,they're normally very cutting
edge. And this just felt likeanother moment in history where
we could really look at digitaltech in a new way. Because for
(09:23):
decades now, digital musicproduction has allowed people to
make any sound they want to, youknow, keyboards in the 80s
digital recording studios in the90s and onward. Laptops, you
know, for the past 20 someyears. But the interface, the UI
(09:45):
tends to be very pro focused.And this was another insight at
the sort of founding moment forartifact was looking at all
these amazing, you know, newtechnologies, but seeing how
they're really just designed Forpros, the high learning curve on
the instrument side, but also onthe recording side. And that
(10:06):
moment was around 2010, the iPadwas released, and GarageBand hit
the iPad. And that was alightbulb for me of saying,
okay, all these sounds areavailable to anyone, this is
going to change the way kidsespecially think about what
they're capable of with music.Because now there's this free
(10:30):
app on their iPad, or five bucksat the time, that that they
could go in and record beats andbe like, I made this beat. And
that's cool. And that might,that might be enough to get them
to feel like they're a creativeperson. I wanted to focus on the
interface, the screen wasn'tenough, you know, having to
(10:50):
stare at a screen and never beable to close your eyes when you
play and not get that musclememory. I wanted to bring that
back into music creation andbring in all the new benefits of
digital recording and everythinglike that.
Gigi Johnson (11:06):
Very cool. And we'll come back to this because
then part of it is there is aretail marketplace and
expectations and school focusand all this stuff for a sale. I
want to hear more about howyou've dealt with that. But you
Mike, you started out commentingalso that as a musician, so you
as a musician, do play create.
Mike Butera (11:29):
I do. I so I started on violin, when I was
eight, I came home and asked ifI could play violin because I
saw the orchestra at school andreally liked it. I for the first
six years of lessons, I neverimprovised. It was just sheet
(11:49):
music. And, and it was oftenmusic that I had never heard. I
only saw the notes on the page.And my teacher would say whether
I was playing it correctly ornot. But I actually didn't have
the original recordings to evenplay along with, which was an
interesting way to learn.
Gigi Johnson (12:10):
Yeah, this was where where did you grow up?
Mike Butera (12:12):
I grew up in Pennsylvania. So just a, you
know, normal kind of grew up in,in a neighborhood worked on the
farm right next to theneighborhood grew up in the
family flower shop. So prettyclassic.
Gigi Johnson (12:28):
Were your parents creative at all? Or did they do
music?
Mike Butera (12:31):
So my dad's a floral designer, so very
creative in that sort of visualmaterial field. And my mom is
She's a painter, and has been ateacher and things so very
inspiring. But not musical inparticuclar.
Gigi Johnson (12:47):
So the theme might be it can be non traditional was
there from the beginning?
Mike Butera (12:51):
Yes.
Gigi Johnson (12:51):
wWat did they think that that Mike was going
to be?
Unknown (12:58):
They, they never prefigured that for me. There
was there was never that likeDoctor lawyer. Kind of
expectation.
Gigi Johnson (13:09):
Get a good degree and get a good professional
field and life will be youroyster.
Mike Butera (13:14):
Yeah, yeah. We liked oysters. We just didn't
have that many. And. And so whenI said that I wanted to go to
college for music and musicperformance in particular and
violin. They were like, great.And they supported me even
though that is not a career thatoffers many, you know, many
(13:38):
opportunities for professionalviolinist.
Gigi Johnson (13:41):
So what did you think it was going to do? I'm
always fascinated it now then,that when people make a college
decision, they're buying a blackbox, and oftentimes don't say,
and then when I'm done withthat, I see I would do x. So if
Mike Butera (13:57):
it wasn't about violin for me, I actually wanted
to I actually tried to go forguitar initially. But there were
too many guitars and they hadroom for a violinist. So with
that, but for me, it was justmusic. It was is there a way I
moved to Nashville? Is there away to do music as a career? And
(14:22):
at the time, I really didn'tknow what that could mean other
than being a band and get signedto do the normal thing you
imagine? Yeah. Yeah. And I enjoyI did some of that. And I've
done the, you know, the bandstuff, the solo stuff, the
studio recording engineer. Ilove that whole world. But it
(14:48):
was also at this moment. Andthis is 20 some years ago now,
when that digital shift washappening pretty profoundly when
I I started in studios, we wererecording to tape and I loved I
mean, fully analog signal paths,amazing sound like, I still love
(15:09):
it is a million dollar studio.And, and at the same time that
studio had a little room thathad a Pro Tools rig with a
computer. And they were allthese people making totally new
sounds. And they're in thislittle room and then they got a
laptop, and they did it back intheir apartments. So I was
(15:30):
seeing that happen at thatmoment. And that totally
influenced me toward this. So.So anyway, I didn't know where
it would go. I quickly, youknow, fell in love with studios
and then found philosophy andsociology, I actually got a
triple major, how they see that.
Gigi Johnson (15:48):
Everything seems like a somewhat normal journey
until you look and go way way.Wait, how did Mike do that?
Because first of all, for mostpeople, they'd have no idea that
you can create multiple blended,the you don't have to be in a
single journey path. And infact, most universities have a
structure your own degreejourney possible that they don't
(16:11):
tell anyone about how can youimagine if half your students
were doing that? So how did youSo you did three separate
degrees? And what drove you tothink this was sane? Well,
Mike Butera (16:25):
if we go back and nerd out just prior for some
reason, when I was in sixthgrade, I came home and said I
wanted to be homeschooled. And Iwas doing well in school, I had
friends like it was working out.But I met someone who was in
homeschooling and they werelike, Yeah, you get to customize
(16:46):
all your work. And you get to,you know, go down these paths.
And it's Yeah, I thought, Well,this sounds really interesting.
And it took a little convince myparents, but we did. And it
ended up that the second half ofmy you know, formative education
years, I was, you know, learningat home and able to build all of
(17:10):
these different course classes,you know, studies in areas that
you wouldn't normally get to.And so I kind of broke out of
that normal, you know, middle ofhigh school mode. So when I went
to college, I was able to get inthe honors program actually
didn't have the the SAT scorefor it. Standardized testing
(17:34):
wasn't one of my strong points.But I went into the office, and
I said, Hey, I really, yeah, Ireally want to do this. Yeah.
And it worked. We got in aconversation. I said, I said
what I was passionate about. Andthey said, well, we'll give you
a semester, we'll see you know,this, we'll see if this works
(17:56):
out. And it worked out. And Andthen luckily, that program gave
me kind of free rein to piecetogether these different fields,
you had to justify why. So likeone of my majors was music
production. And I actuallystudied music, composition,
performance, business, you know,recording, distribution, like
(18:18):
all these different aspects . ..
Gigi Johnson (18:19):
It helps you're at Belmont because all those were
available at Belmont.
Mike Butera (18:21):
Exactly. Yeah. And yeah, it's very unique
Gigi Johnson (18:21):
Did you go right to grad school, or did you have
opportunity. And similar withphilosophy and sociology, the
two there was a lot of overlapand critical theory and things
any sidebars?
but, but I was able to kind ofcarve out those paths. And then
Mike Butera (18:33):
I had about a year that I was saving up for it. I
when I got to grad school atVirginia Tech,
was working at some restaurantsand things in Nashville and
doing music and you know, thatkind of stuff. But it was all in
(18:57):
preparation to go to gradschool.
Gigi Johnson (18:59):
But sometimes it's a good buffer or baking point or
settling out or because you thenwent right from masters to
doctorate, which is a bit of ajourney. Know why Yeah. Why grad
school? Why is it the fact thatyou had this lovely blended
thing that would thrive in gradschool or that you had gotten
(19:21):
distracted?
Mike Butera (19:22):
I hadn't found sound studies yet. I went to
grad school because I thought Iwanted to be a social theory
professor. And that could be ina philosophy or sociology
department. But I knew I wantedto do that. I was especially
studying technology and socialnetworks at the time. So
Gigi Johnson (19:44):
yes, and this was 2008 ish.
Unknown (19:48):
I started grad school in '07. So I finished up
undergrad and in '05 and then inDecember '05 and then yeah, just
over a year. started gradschool, the . . . . So I went to
Virginia Tech . . . Themaster's program in philosophy
there was analytic compared toContinental, just two branches
(20:12):
of philosophy. Very kind ofhardcore logic focused, not the
kind of philosophy where youjust talk about what's on your
mind and and see if you can comeup with new ideas. That was
primarily my style. So I wassuddenly in this rigorous sort
of engineering driven culture atVT, which I learned a ton. I
(20:35):
also found sound studies. In thefirst year, while I was there, I
didn't know it existed, it was anascent field at the time. And I
read a mention of it in a bookon cyber culture studies, that
sound had been under explored inthis field. And I was like, oh,
(20:56):
and it just all the lights cameon. And you know, all these
different passions kind ofmagnetize together. So I, I
joined a Ph. D. program atVirginia Tech, that didn't quite
exist yet. It hadn't beenfinalized with the state. It
was, it was the first trulyinterdisciplinary PhD in the
(21:20):
country. And it was betweenphilosophy, history, sociology,
political theory, things likethat. So I was the first
student, PhD student in thisprogram. And I was part of
getting it, you know, I was inthose meetings with the
(21:41):
regulators or whatever, inacademia, to figure out what it
meant. And therefore, it was ablank slate. And I said, I want
to do sound studies. And they'relike, great, go for it. And so I
was able to create this wholePhD program around this new
field and travel around theworld and go to all these
conferences and be a part of thenew journals that were coming
(22:03):
out. And it was, it was amazing.So anyway, I think the theme
academically was, I, I never, Iwas never interested in sort of
finding the boxes to check offor, you know, put on the shelf
or whatever. I was alwayslooking for ways to kind of
(22:26):
integrate different fieldstogether and find something new.
Gigi Johnson (22:31):
So let's get back to the more current future. And
so you've got a past, a build ityourself for yourself, blending,
exploring, poking some things inthe eye that are, are
traditional. And so then youwent you created was it assault,
where you were then buildingcompany building lots of
(22:54):
different things?
Mike Butera (22:55):
Yeah.
Gigi Johnson (22:55):
What bridged you from we're helping, consulting,
building launching consumerproducts to I want to start a
company, and then what led intothe first instrument? And, and
why Kickstarter, so if we couldmake that journey conversation.
Mike Butera (23:18):
So this was. . . Yeah, back to 2010 that that
sort of pivotal moment. One ofthe things was, it worked, it
was working, the consulting wasdoing well, I was able to come
up with ideas like for thesesmart home speakers that would
all connect with each other workwith industrial designers,
(23:43):
mechanical engineers, electricalengineers, and so on. Go to
China go to the factory overseeproduction and then see it you
know, actually do well in themarket. And so this was all menopause
Gigi Johnson (24:00):
menopause a second because you explained a lot of
your gestation Did you have anytech skills at this stage? Did
you learn things yourself? Ordid so? What was that tech
component and when the somepeople build things and do
things and they've been takingapart their parents toasters,
(24:20):
since they were five, or they'vebeen coding forever, or they've
been doing robot design andbuilding so so I'm not hearing a
building story, this is thispart of the superpowers of your
partner is this stuff that youlearned or trusted other people
with?
Mike Butera (24:37):
So I was always yes, I was always taking things
apart and and, you know, as akid and onward, when I got into
studio tech in college, I wasrepairing gear building tube,
you know, gear and whatever. SoI electrically you know,
(24:58):
familiar but Not an electricalengineer. A lot of training in
design happened from my dad fromfloral design, you know, more
aesthetically, I would say. Butthen I learned a lot of that
hands on during the consultingphase, you know, how consumer
(25:21):
tech was actually built? Coding,I always dabbled, but, you know,
some people, most people are somuch better at that than I am.
So I've always been able totranslate the kind of design
intent and understand thearchitecture of it, but that
was, that was never my thing. Soyes, a lot of trust, a lot of
(25:44):
collaboration with people. And,and I felt like I was, I was
discovering that my role wasthis hub or a translator,
between culture and productdesign, ways of thinking, and in
the weeds, engineering and just,you know, always keeping that
(26:06):
that strand connected. Becauseso many products are either, you
know, impossible to build, orpossible to build and no one
wants them and
Gigi Johnson (26:20):
are so expensive to build that no one wants it at
that price point, right. So thatin many ways, specialty music
instruments, I mean, the onesthat I'm aware of what Chapman
stick and other things where youkind of go so expensive to build
and creating customized and notmet as mass products. That's
been on my wish list
Mike Butera (26:41):
for a while and let's let's tag a corner this
conversation in terms of withinstruments, what, what are the
cultural references orfamiliarity that people need?
You know, Chapman stick is agood example. cool technology,
(27:02):
you can make all kinds of soundwith it. People get virtuosic in
amazing ways with it.
Gigi Johnson (27:08):
So complicated. It play. Yes. Yeah.
Mike Butera (27:11):
I mean, it's just like a theory bomb. Music Theory
of like,
Gigi Johnson (27:16):
I can to pause everybody, because I would never
have known a Chapman stick otherthan I was at a small concert,
and someone was playing it. AndI was so blown away by watching
total virtuosity. So it's kindof like, a unstructured guitar
had a baby with a bass. But it'ssort of two directions. Yeah,
(27:37):
it's like a harp hanging from abait. So it was very much a
cultural mashup. And but, uh,simply, the virtuosity was like
watching a phenomenal heartplay, or were you just watching?
Oh, my gosh, but I went to goprice one. I'm like, Oh, my
gosh, that is such an expensiveinstrument. And it is sort of
(27:58):
art. It's almost the opposite ofwhat you guys have been building.
Mike Butera (28:03):
Right? Well, and so then get back to that. So why,
why build a new type of musicalinstrument? was the question I
was asking myself when I got upthe courage to say, Yeah, I want
to start my own company. Yeah, Iwant to, I want to build a new
thing. I mentioned, the userinterface challenge of all these
(28:25):
apps were out there. But youdon't want to just touch a
screen, you want something inyour hands? Well, that's great.
What should that thing be. Andwe could have designed a very
specific instrument, a singularinstrument, like most instance,
instruments, or singular, you,it's intended to be played one
(28:45):
way you learn how to play itthat way, and then you're good
at it. My goal was to create aplural instrument, an
instrument, we call it a multiinstrument, something that you
could actually pick up and playin all these different ways. And
versatility was one of thegoals. Because why not digital,
(29:08):
lets you do that. We can buildform factors that allow for
multiple positions and gesturesand playing styles. So creating
this universal musicalinstrument has a versatility
benefit. But there's anothereven more important benefit that
I was really going for, which isapproachability. The theory that
(29:30):
I had at the time, and we'restill playing this out, we're
still seeing if this is, youknow going to be true in the
world. The theory is that if youmultiply what a thing can do,
than any one thing that it doesis less intimidating. Because
you pick it up and you say I'mgonna just gonna play some
drums. You know what, I'm goingto have some fun and pick it up
(29:51):
and strum it like a guitar orput it down on the table and now
it's a piano. None of thosethings are the right way to play
it and therefore you're notplaying Seeing it wrong. And so
creating this universalinstrument also has the benefit
of giving more people the sensethat they could just casually
approach it, see what it doesenjoy that, and not compare
(30:15):
themselves to the best musicianin the world who's so much
better at them at this onesingular thing. And that's, that
really was that moment where Ithought, Okay, this is going to
work, we do have a newconversation to, you know, bring
to the world of what instrumentscan be. And yeah, that's when we
started designing what we callthe instrument one, which was
(30:37):
our first product.
Gigi Johnson (30:39):
It makes me think of Dan Shneiderman's
philosophies of creativity,technology support tools, now
I'm gonna go nerdy for a bitwhere it's like a metaphor as a
doorway. So you can have a lowthreshold or a high threshold, a
wide doorway, that you can stuffmany things into it, or a tall
doorway, where you can go toextreme expertise. And I always
(31:02):
come to a new technology and go,is it an easy entry? Is it a
wide doorway? Or does it haveextreme sophistications? Like me
trying to come in to, toPhotoshop? Yeah, I know, I could
possibly start Photoshop fairlyeasily for about five minutes.
And then it's like, Wait, Idon't like kind of grok it I'm
doing blender right now. It'sit's like, immediately high
(31:25):
doorway, wide walls, highceiling. But the doorway is so
harsh as you're looking to makeit. So it's an easy entry. But
sophisticated uses and wideuses, you're kind of making an
infinite doorway.
Mike Butera (31:39):
That's it's a goal. One of one of the ways we do
that we call it scalablecomplexity. In the history of
instruments, they're based onphysics, of resonance,
vibration, resonance. Andtherefore the material, the
size, all those aspects of ithad to be pretty fixed, there
(32:02):
was some variables that youcould add or subtract, but that
was it. And even the early daysof electric and electronic
instrumentation with earlysynthesizers, and things, it
also pretty fixed circuits werekind of baked in, you had the
armed Martino, one of myfavorite instruments, where you,
(32:23):
you could plug in thesedifferent they were like
speakers, but they were actuallynot speakers like we normally
think some of them were gongs,others were paper, others, you
know, were wood. And so thepoint was, when you plug in the
speaker, it's going to soundlike a totally different
instrument. But it's because ofthe physics of it. With digital
(32:46):
tools, now we can actuallycreate these adaptive devices.
And so if we get the ergonomics,right, based on simple human
forms, and averages of handsize, and all kinds of things.
So similar to say, a gamecontroller, or remote, or all
kinds of other objects we use,we can program these devices to
(33:10):
respond differently based onwhat you want to do with them.
We can receive differentgestures in ways that we make
musical, not in the same way. Soif you want to strum something,
versus tap it, versus bow it, orpress it, these are all
different gestures that we canprogram and say, well, now we're
(33:32):
going to put it in a sort ofpiano mode, or a guitar mode, or
a drum machine mode or thingslike that. And that's actually
one of the things that wepatented, was this concept of
the multi instrument as aswitchable responsive device,
rather than, you know, based onone way to play. So that that
(33:55):
was one of the key, you know,founding principles of what
we're doing, it's a bit hard toexplain. And again, maybe, maybe
it'll be the way of the futureor maybe it's a moment in
history, but it seems to beworking.
Gigi Johnson (34:11):
So for for people trying to visualize this who are
listening to this, that thefirst one which was instrument
one, kind of look like a mash upa long, thin strip that had
sensors on the top that youcould, that also had
(34:34):
accelerometers and other motionsensors, so that you could take
that same essentially bar andplay it, hold it up and strum
it, move it in space. So that itwasn't just taking one of the
metaphors or affordance sets butlet you take patterns that you
(34:55):
already knew from something elseand bring it over. Yeah,
Mike Butera (34:58):
absolutely. Yeah. We, with the design of the
instrument one, it took justover four years to go from idea
into a product that we could,you know, announce to the world.
So a lot of iterations, sixdifferent prototype generations
in there a lot of a lot ofdifferent ways to look at it
(35:22):
initially, for instance, it hada doc for an iPhone. Because
Doc's were really cool, whichmade sense at the time, right?
It was great. It was great. Itwas it was really neat, because
it became this self containedinstrument that was before
Bluetooth was really possible oryou know, even just USB
(35:42):
connection more generally. So.So anyway, it it evolved a few
different ways. It ended upbeing a device, we launched it
on Kickstarter, in 2015. Wedidn't know what it would do,
the design of it was we ended upmaking it in plastic, so we
could mass manufacture it. Thesensors were called force
(36:06):
sensing resistors, it was this,this kind of sheet of film
underneath a, an almost rubberysurface that could sense touch
and pressure velocity, you couldslide on it, it was almost like
a computer trackpad. But but arubber surface a little harder
(36:27):
to play than that. And, and ithad these string features on it.
And we did that because in earlytesting, we found that a lot of
the musicians again, this was inNashville, a lot of the
musicians were very stringfocused, and really wanted that
tactile feel of having, youknow, muscle memory. Yeah, yeah.
Gigi Johnson (36:51):
This was not fret started, they wanted friends.
Mike Butera (36:56):
This is not a not a mistake. But as we talked about
Chorda it's interesting, we tookoff the strings for Chorda,
similar form factor kind ofukulele size bar. But Chorda has
pads and a strong mobile area.So insert one accord a both have
those things, but insert one hadthe string features again,
(37:18):
because musicians were askingfor that. Insert one can do
things that stringed instrumentscan't do that other instruments
can't do. Every note can haveits own distortion or for Broto.
You can apply effects to everylittle touch. If you press
harder, you know, you couldbring in delay or whatever you
(37:40):
wanting to like amazing things.But what it didn't have was real
strings. And for those, sayguitarists approaching this with
the muscle memory of stringsback to physics, they wanted to
behave exactly like stringsbehave. And that was
problematic. It was a problemthat I think is quite
(38:02):
interesting, and highlights thisthis paradigm shift between
physical and virtualinstruments, virtuosic
Gigi Johnson (38:10):
to write I live off my business as being of not
having to think about it, andbeing able to create art after
years of practice.
Mike Butera (38:21):
Yeah, well, Aristotle's notion of virtue
has, you know, not quite as muchto do with what we think about,
like, you know, a virtuousperson is like, really good or
something, for Aristotle wasmore like being good at
(38:41):
something. And, and having thevirtue of, of, you know, being
capable having the affordancesmatched to what you're doing.
And so, there's an interestingjust to get kind of deep on that
of the virtue and virtual, thatwe can actually map the same
(39:06):
behaviors, the same affordancesfrom the physical world into the
what we now call the virtualworld, as long as people have
the virtue of being able to useit. And all that means in normal
language now is like thecapability or in some cases,
just the confidence of reachingout and touching it. If you can,
(39:27):
strum your hand through the air.And if a guitar is under your
hand, you'll strum a guitar. Butif you're in an augmented
reality environment, that candetect your hand moving through
the air, and you strum virtualstrings. It's the same result.
And so you have the virtue ofbeing able to strum the
(39:48):
technology is going to determineexactly how that happens, but it
might not matter what the innerworkings are of it as long as
you get to intend for somethingto happen, and it happens in the
end. That is, you know, that'senough. And again, this is how I
tend to think about productdesign, like, can we design?
(40:09):
Tough stuff?
Gigi Johnson (40:11):
People will expect the haptic feedback of the
string, right? So that theythere still is, then they would
like that interaction with that.I'm right now building things in
spatial audio and VR. And soreally thinking about what then
that response is, and how sorry,we could go down. So holes here.
Yeah, let let me let me take youdown to rabbit holes to maybe
(40:35):
wrap up this conversation. Andbecause there's lots of things I
would love to talk about onthis, which is, so one of the
reinforcing elements is theretail sales element of musical
instruments you came in throughKickstarter, you now have come
in with several instruments. Soyou also had the and I have to
(40:56):
look at my notes, the orba,which I've had my hands on in
play, but very much of acircular modality, really
hitting were the folks who arepossibly thinking of it in terms
of beats or pads as a differentmodality and cheaper and
handset. And then you've takenthat through Kickstarter, and
(41:16):
you knew, you're taking thecurrent quarter, you had
something or have somethingcalled orbit cam, that's a video
also, I
Mike Butera (41:25):
was mentioned, the the AR stuff didn't come out of
nowhere, we've spent the pastcouple of years really figuring
out what's possible through thecamera, as a musical interface.
So and the screen itself. Soorbit cam, for instance, is an
app that you can make musicdirectly in live video on your
(41:45):
screen. And there are these padsand you can play whatever sound
you want. And it willautomatically get baked into the
video kind of SoundTracking yourlife. It works with our
hardware, but you can also useit on its own. And so yeah, what
we found is the transference ofour tech, from the physical
(42:06):
products into apps on to aphysical product you already own
your phone is all possible. Andit's really just where are you?
What do you want to do? Youknow, what's what's fun at the
moment? And, and so yeah, we'vebeen experimenting with AR, we
did a big launch with Snapchatlast year with artists, lenses
(42:29):
and ways to make any songinteractive, which is really
fun, using new AR tools andmotion tracking, things like
that. And it's all the samethinking it's it's a lot of the
same kind of UX design that weput into our hardware
instruments that we design inthe virtual space as well. So
(42:50):
that's that's been really fun.So
Gigi Johnson (42:53):
given the retail dominance, that the retail
challenges, yeah, in the currentera of retail stores going away.
So they're feeling of fragilityand needing to move volume. How
in the world do you sell this? AKickstarter has been your friend
multiple times now includingrecently? To me, that's a
natural friction, and a questretail scale. With retailers,
(43:18):
that's their ownership spot,right? How do you then get to
people and get to the learningcomplex and getting to people to
see this as an option other thanby word of mouth, and great
Kickstarter marketing.
Mike Butera (43:34):
So Kickstarter is really this moment, just the
launch moment. It's actually apre launch moment, it's when we
develop an instrument enoughthat it works, that we can
demonstrate that we can makemusic in our case, three times
now, we've brought that toKickstarter and said, Hey, we
haven't manufactured this yet.We want to, we just want to make
(43:56):
sure you actually want it.Here's the concept. Here's how
it plays. What do you think? Andall three times that's gone
quite well. And so wesimultaneously we're having
conversations with retailers,not only in the musical
instrument space, but consumerelectronics and and more
(44:17):
lifestyle retail as well, at themoment design store, for
instance, has been a greatpartner over the years.
Retailers increasingly don'ttake as many risks at launch,
they want to see that somethinghas already worked. And so I see
the two functioning quite welltogether they have for us that
(44:39):
we've been able to go out toKickstarter, find early adopters
who are like, Yeah, that shouldexist in the world. Let's help
you make it. And by doing that,we're showing that there's a
demand for this and retailerswant to be more in the middle of
the adoption curve and or evenpast the chasm, as they say. And
(44:59):
so We're able to prove momentumin the market. With early
adopters, that's, it's beengreat for us the Kickstarter
community is awesome. And, andthe other fact is we sell most
of our products direct throughour website, we do sell through
Amazon as well. But, you know,going direct means we have a
(45:22):
relationship with our customers,we, you know, we can communicate
with them. If you buy on, if youbuy or buy on Amazon right now.
And you don't go to our websiteand specifically sign up for
our, you know, email list, youmight not know that we've just
updated the firmware and addednew features or that there are
(45:43):
all these new songs and ways toplay them, you know, we we'd
like to develop this communityaround our products. And it also
shows on social media, we haveamazing engagement with people,
they, they make little songs,they post them, there's a whole
sort of supportive communityaround just this casual music
(46:04):
making. And that's because wehave that direct relationship.
And we're not going through toomany intermediaries. That said,
we we have great relationshipswith retailers, Guitar Center,
and you know, all kinds ofpeople, but we're really focused
on as direct as we can get withthe customer.
Gigi Johnson (46:23):
Mike, we have covered your highly nonlinear
journey, you're putting ittogether from building your own
homeschooling to building yourown combination of degrees to
building your own musicalinstruments and companies and
products. What have we notmentioned? Is there anything you
as we wrap up, that you'd liketo mention, we haven't touched
on?
Mike Butera (46:43):
I think, overall, for me, the the idea of building
a company was always secondary,it it had to be done, if I was
going to pursue this stuff,because I couldn't just couldn't
just build it all myself, I hadto work with people who had all
(47:06):
these different skill sets, Icouldn't just fund it myself, I
had to find people who wanted tobuild this opportunity into a
business that could actuallymake money someday. And, and I
didn't want to do it myself.This, it's too much fun to work
with other people. So thebusiness the corporation is is a
(47:29):
body of people that is this kindof this kind of place where we
can all pursue that together.There are many other ways this
can be done, there are awesomeopen source projects in the
world, and you know, all kindsof things. And in music, you see
a lot of that as well. The factthat this is a business also
(47:53):
means that there are otherrealities to what it takes to
run it. And that's somethingI've learned so much about that
over the past decade or so.Things I didn't know, I wanted
to learn just just the totalreality of doing this. And
again, I mentioned I grew up inthe family flower shop. So I had
(48:14):
that entrepreneurial, you know,context of just how hard it is
to figure this out. It's it'sexciting. But like you said,
it's it's business is also verynonlinear. Especially with the
economy going all over theplace. There's really no sense
of that classic stability thatyou might have had decades ago
(48:38):
where if you build something,you know, it'll get out there
you advertise in magazines,people will read it and mail
order your stuff like it'snothing is that set, now. It's
changing by the day. So that'sanother exciting aspect of this.
I'm glad we mostly talked aboutdesign and culture and why. But
(48:58):
the vehicle that has enabledthis to happen has been an
actual, an actual business. Andthat's, that's cool, too. It's a
very different side than Ilearned and taught in academia,
about how, you know, capitalismworks on a grand historical
scale. This is this is how it'sworking at a at a product and
(49:19):
team level scale, which is it'sit's been awesome to learn.
Gigi Johnson (49:23):
Excellent. So this episode will go out and be out
in the ether. Who would you liketo reach back out to you?
Mike Butera (49:32):
Oh, well, anyone who wants to collaborate on this
kind of stuff. We are right nowexploring a lot of different
ways to get artists content intoour instruments so that our
instruments become theseinteractive music devices. We
already have all the tech we'vewe've done some of that we want
(49:55):
to do more. We're also veryinterested in multimedia, music,
and we've done some coolexperiments there. We want to
expand that and see ourinstruments as controllers for
making music in multiple senses.So yeah, just more. I'm just
looking for collaborations thatwould be, that would be awesome.
Gigi Johnson (50:18):
And how should people best reach out to you?
Oh,
Mike Butera (50:22):
we you can go to our website we have a, you know,
general contact at Artiphon. AndI'm just Mike@artifact.com if
anyone wants to reach out. Excellent.
Gigi Johnson (50:33):
And we'll put the various links in the show notes.
Mike, thank you so much forjoining us.
Mike Butera (50:38):
Thank you. That was really fun.
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