Welcome back to the show.
How are you, Good to see you.
Amazing.
Thank you for having me again.
It's awesome to have you.
I follow everything you do.
You're very active in the last couple of years, especially, I'd say.
And I remember you from way back in the early days playing with the Dreamcast controllers, performing live with that, which was right up my alley as a fan of video games.
um saw you at Loop in LA doing your thing, presenting.
And we met recently.
I don't know if we ever spoke at Loop at LA, but we definitely spoke a few months ago in LA when I was out there doing my workshop at the Ableton headquarters.
was awesome to see you, talk to you a little bit, and I'm happy we're reconnecting here on the show too.
Me too, man.
Thanks for having me.
Yes.
It was awesome to meet you back in LA a couple of months ago.
And hopefully you come again soon.
And my girlfriend is from New York, so we'll be with her at least once a year.
I'll hit you up when I'm there.
Yeah, please do.
I'm on Long Island, so I don't know where that is compared to where you go, but yeah, maybe work something out.
Nice.
That was so fun going to LA, going to the Ableton headquarters.
And you know, the first thing I think I saw when I went into the headquarters was you at one of the computers in the studio transferring files from your workshop that you had done
a couple of weeks before.
Yeah.
Which was amazing.
I think that was the first one.
I did another one since, and it's awesome that Ableton kind of allowing us certified trainers to use their space for this type of weekend workshops.
And I don't know if you plan to do one again, but I'll probably do one at some point again, cause those are awesome events.
Of course it's much easier for me as a local.
I live like 10 minutes away, but it was great to see you also doing that weekend workshop.
And I heard it went really well.
So that's great to hear.
a lot of fun and I got pretty nervous about it leading up to it.
Just so much about the planning and if people were going to enjoy it, if they were going to get a lot out of it.
I went, my approach was a little more hands off where it was time to do your work.
And I gave people.
some prompts and things.
talk about stuff as a group, but mostly it was, okay, now work on your stuff.
And I kind of walked around and helped people in the process.
And I'd seen what Dan Giffin did and he had the day packed with presenters and, and you filled the day easily presenting information.
So I was a little afraid that maybe that different approach, whether it would work or not, but it turned out being really fun.
And
Kind of how my style, I guess, too.
I like the kind of hands-on one-on-one and things came up as they go.
It felt a little bit like I was teaching at school, except people wanted to be there.
Yeah, amazing.
think you should go do your own style.
That's why people come and do that.
Mine was, I feel like, like always, I give so much information.
I maybe I need to find the balance of giving them kind of more like you hands off with all the stuff that I usually teach and stuff.
By the way, there might be some drilling because they're redoing the bathroom here.
So if there's too much, just let me know.
Okay.
Amazing.
Good.
eh Yeah, dude, I hope you do it again, because those are super fun events.
know Ableton also benefits a lot from them.
For them, it's more kind of like getting people into the space.
Since the pandemic, because Ableton offices in Pasadena and they have kind of two sections of the offices.
You know, I'm just saying it for the audience.
ah One is the offices side where they do all the administrative things.
And one is the, they call Ableton spaces.
And ever since the pandemic, they're not using it as much as they used to.
So that's why they opened it up for us, certified trainers and content creators to do those events.
And for them, it's great because it's just bring more attention to their showcase room where they showcase their hardware, the push and the move.
So if anyone is in LA visiting or around LA, you can always call Ableton to schedule kind of just a demo.
If you want to check out their devices, the push, the Ableton.
move and those type of things.
They would love to schedule an appointment showcase.
And of course, if you go into one of those events, I think Dan is doing another one, which I'm talking at.
So it's a great opportunity to come meet other Ableton users.
And of course, just check all the Ableton stuff.
Yeah, it's, um, it's funny cause I was there in 2013 to get certified.
So I went through my, my workshops there and the whole weekend of, uh, being under the microscope a little bit.
So going back to, kind like, Whoa, I remember the feelings come back a little.
the certification?
Who was from Ableton?
Yeah, there was Dennis Fisher, Dennis DeSantis.
Yeah.
So, I mean, the guy that wrote the manual, Dennis DeSantis, Dennis Fisher, another right at the top.
we had...
used to be, maybe he still is, in charge of the certification program or something.
He was very closely working with all the certification program.
Yeah, there was um Thomas Folds, Cole was there.
Yeah, some heavy hitters.
And of course, the other people too that were there.
a...
I don't know how many people were getting certified in your event.
I think there were five of us in total.
So, and people I knew from...
2011, same thing, like five people.
Then it's the scientists, then it's Fisher.
We had Sam is no longer and Houston singularity who used to be the sound designer and they, and Thomas and they grilled us.
Wow.
I was nerve wracking.
Yup.
Thomas was fun.
He played the role of kind of the ornery guy in the crowd, like, why would I ever want to do it that way?
And we're like, hey, what?
He's trying to rattle us, you know?
It might be a good opportunity to mention, because I just spoke with Thomas.
Thomas is now in charge of the educational team in Ableton.
And we're doing an event.
I don't know when this is going to air, but hopefully before on September 27th at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles downtown.
I'm going to host it and it's going to be kind of Ableton lecture, but also interview and other lectures because Moldover, I don't know if anyone knows, he's an amazing.
a music technologist, set up a lot of installations, more specifically jam boxes, kind of these, usually four player uh jam stations where even non-musicians can go and jam with
each other.
So there is now an ongoing installation.
I think it's a permanent, if not a long-term installation at the Grammy Museum downtown.
So September 27th, we're to have a day of lectures that are me going to...
just give a lecture and then also interview and Moldova are gonna give a lecture more focusing on alternate career paths for musicians such as myself, I'll talk more about
music education and Moldova will talk of course about music technology and setting up installations and stuff like that.
And I would highly recommend everyone who's listening to check out Moldova if you haven't heard of him.
Some of us call him the godfather of controllerism.
He builds some crazy controllers, including some from really big artists, for example, his latest project was for a virtual riot.
He built him a custom keyboard with lights on each keys.
He has a video showcasing that.
that's September 27, just as we mentioned, Thomas, cause I just talked to him.
Yeah, that sounds awesome.
And yeah, Moldover, I mean, he really paved the way for a lot of the things we all do, controllers for your computer to operate things.
aspect of controllerism and the distinction between controllerism and DJing, which does a lot of parallels, but it's still very different how we now, uh, and this kind of take from
each other over the years, but it's still two distinct, uh, art forms.
And Moldova is amazing with that.
Yeah, his stuff was really inspiring for me when I was first trying to figure out how to do this live, how to be a one-man band kind of thing.
And you came up in those same searches and research that I was doing at the time.
Thank you.
I was also, as having inspired by everyone and most specifically mold over.
Remember seeing a video of him called what is controllerism really old.
can still find that video with a modded novation SL mark two, like a small keyboard and your other team was kind of, you know, DIY.
And I felt that's how I fell in love with the DIY world with kind of like do it yourself, build your own custom media controllers.
That's what got me into all the video game controllers.
yes, Moldova is a huge part of it and it's an honor to collaborate with them on this one.
Yeah, there's a lot of do-it-yourself.
Even if you're buying pre-made controllers, you're still building it inside of your Ableton Live session.
You're mapping things.
You're deciding how you're going to use them.
that's something I always kind of explain to people when they're talking about live performances.
It's kind of like playing an instrument, except first you have to build it.
And then it's alive and you're changing it as you go.
Absolutely.
That's what I tell my students when designing live shows, it's kind of like building your playground and how you can have it to be just fun on stage and not worrying and a lot of
other uh points.
But the idea is to just have fun with your instruments, whatever that may be.
And you're absolutely right.
We have to kind of customize them.
And that's what I think what's always was so nice about Ableton.
Everyone uses it differently.
Everyone kind of have their own way of using Ableton.
And that's what is so fun for me, to see other people kind of how they use it in their own unique way.
absolutely.
And it's really cool that you're doing something about other career paths in music too.
you know, for me, my background playing in bands was no formal training really.
It was, I thought that's all the only way you can do it is playing in a band.
You had to go out on tour and stuff and make records, but to learn this so much more.
then even people that have like more classical training.
Um, I was just talking to Sarah Bell Reed and she's, you know, comes from that world and now she's in the modular stuff.
Yeah.
seen her online.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, nice.
Yeah.
And I have a nephew who's in that world.
He's learning tuba, classically trained and all, and he's got a scholarship to Denver University.
But he's kind of also, I think he's thinking about that, like, what am I doing?
You know, what else is there?
And you don't always see that in a lot of the formal educations.
You know, some colleges are starting to bring that stuff in and incorporate it more and more, but...
Yeah, there are so many other paths and things that don't even necessarily exist yet that people will discover.
Absolutely.
I feel like there was a very now popular new profession that was somewhat started to gain popularity.
would say 10, 15 years ago, which is the playback tech.
People who are backstage and getting in charge of the system to play back all the, now most live shows will have some sort of a playback backstage of all the stuff that the
musicians can do live.
If it's a band, maybe one of the tracks, need like a full string.
orchestra, there's no string orchestra on stage, so that will be taking care of the playback.
Even shows like American Idol or Cirque du Soleil, they all have this playback.
So the playback technician definitely became a popular job opportunity for a lot of musicians or Ableton users that they travel with the band or the artists all around.
And I think it's super cool.
So
Yes, I think, m especially the music technology, usually it's very dedicated schools.
know one here in California called Cal Arts, California Institute of the Arts in, I forgot, it's a bit outside, like 30 minutes outside of LA.
Amazing school.
And they have this one classroom I taught a few times there, Ableton sent me, and it's very music technology focused.
On the ceiling you have robots that you can connect to all sorts of ways, even.
brain waves to control them and have them play music.
And, but it's very niche and very dedicated and hopefully as more and more the technology becomes available with stuff like for years now we have Arduino and the Raspberry Pi and
now even with Max and Max for Live Rainbow, you can kind of write applications to that.
So hopefully we'll see more and more music technologies kind of take that route.
I can say one thing that it might be just how
the brain works.
But when you see extremely gifted musicians compared to extremely gifted technologists, usually there's a gap there when it comes to the technologists might not be able to
compose music as appealing as the extremely talented musicians.
And from my experience teaching top artists, a lot of time top artists, they don't know technology.
They don't know, they don't care.
It's only about kind of losing themselves in that uh creative world of making music.
So hopefully we can soon as technology becomes even more and more accessible, we'll also bridge that gap of technologists and musicians.
Cause there's still a gap there where you go to the technological installations and Moldova is a good example of having both musicianship and technology.
Where the installation sometimes the amazing technology, like in the technology side of things with motion sensing, with audio visual reactive.
but maybe the music examples are not as good as they can be, compared to musicians who are just not, uh, technically savvy songwriters.
A lot of times I help the songwriters that just need to set up.
They just want to walk and they need some help setting up Ableton or stuff like that.
So we see kind of the, uh, that bridge also.
getting narrower and narrower.
So hopefully again, people will see that music technology is a route, a valuable route now, and not only just making music.
Which brings me to also my latest endeavors, I gotta say, the chat GPT stuff or the chat bots, the AI, are also an amazing way to bridge that gap for non, let's say non coders to
make
like stuff that eh I could never make without those things.
And in recent months, I've been making a lot of MaxVolad devices thanks to all those chat bots like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeq, all those, I use all of them.
It's pretty awesome that you can apply it to that and help realize the things you want to create with them.
Cause those are very hard questions to ask like a Google or to search in YouTube videos, but to have something that can sort all of that and then give you the information you
need.
Those are applications that I think are interesting for AI.
I don't want it to make the music for me, but I do think.
that kind of stuff helping me solve the musical problems, it gets interesting.
It does.
think also you can use it as much as you want.
So if you are looking for inspiration, you can ask it if you're looking for specific core progressions, maybe melodic ideas, even to the point, and I'm just exploring it, of giving
it, taking an Ableton preset, opening the Ableton preset with a text edit or some text editor, giving chat, can you understand this?
You might have to unzip it to XML.
Doesn't matter, but I'm not saying is that those chatbots are now able to maybe even understand presets and give you presets.
So even sounds for your own custom software.
And I even saw some people uploading the mix downs, the exports of their music and asking for some mixing advice.
So, uh, I think, and of course lyrics and all of those, uh, I think we kind of get to a point where, yes, I can just tell it, Hey, right.
Give me a song like Suno AI.
That ad, it can kind of just give us full music.
But I think it's going to be, I guess, up to us to decide how much, what extent we want to use it, to what extent we want to, you know, do ourselves.
One thing that we'll have to do, I think still, if we're taking out this thing, I think that's, you know, we're no longer in the creative process and that's curating.
So meaning even if I tell, let's say, chat-chipity, even if I tell it,
create 50 songs, I'd still have to tell it what's good, what's not, or at least choose the best ones.
So we are reaching, and I said it before in many places, we are reaching an age of curation where these AIs will be able to do more and more things, will still be able to,
will still need to be the curators.
Once those AI will know better than us what we like, that's, think maybe it's going to be somewhere.
a new age of consumption of art.
But that being said, the more the AI will be able to tell us what we like, think the more us humans will start making some weird human art.
It's going to be so far out there, so like weird and bizarre.
It's also going to be very interesting.
So there is a lot to expect here to be excited about, but yeah, the AI.
I see people like some people who are commenting online about AI and, guys, don't worry, AI gave me this and they seen some nonsense that AI wrote.
Like we're going to get to a point where it's indistinguishable or it's going to give us art, a million songs in a second and the best songs we ever heard in our lives.
We're going to get to that point.
But it does also mean that there's going to be some weird, creative and bizarre art that humans make.
So exciting to see.
what's coming rapidly and fast with all this AI stuff, really fast.
just help us and I'll give it again the example of Max for Live, which I'm not an expert in, but Max for Live can also use JavaScript.
And I'm not a coder, I don't know anything about JavaScript, but using ChatGPT and all the other AI em chatbots, I was able to create a lot of devices, like for example, a very
extensive uh
core detector, thanks to a charge.
Now it is a lot of work going back and forth and explain and tell it what doesn't work, what does work.
It's a lot.
takes, it takes a while, but you can still do it and something you couldn't do before.
So that's very exciting.
Yeah, that's in your keyboard monitor, right?
In the keyboard monitor, I collaborated with uh my co-developer.
He used to be based in Portugal.
Now he got a professorship at China.
So he moved to China now.
He's teaching there.
Highly gifted, intelligent guy that can also do programming, Max for Life.
So I kind of hack my way around to it and then he actually makes it, ah know, em shareable to the public.
And one of the core detector, which is a very elaborate core detector, like uh Ableton recently released the expressive chords device, which is amazing.
Expressive chords has a built-in core detector, but a lot of times you play the chords, they just say custom chord.
Ours is almost any chord possible will give you the chord name, including inversions, uh drop voicing, um excluding voices, whatever it is, it will give you.
I think there's more than 40,000 codes or something like that, but it's very extensive.
thanks to at least the concept to all those chatbots, just to throw us, okay, this is the route we should take.
Let's work with that.
So I encourage anyone who has ideas when it comes to software, specifically maybe Ableton stuff, Max for Live, or any other programming language, even plugins, building plugins, to
explore that route of if not...
just conceptualizing, completely building stuff with those AI chatbots.
And we can see it, of course, with books, with lyrics, with stories, with websites, but also with software.
I highly encourage everyone to, audio software, stuff like that, encourage everyone to test that out.
We're probably going to see an explosion of plugins and Max for Life stuff.
We already see, but we'll probably see more and more.
as they're going to get smarter and smarter.
Cause there's still a lot of situations where are very frustrating, where you like, why can't you give me, are you going back and forth for so long and it keeps messing up, keep
messing up until you're like, I'll just figure it out myself.
And then the solution is so simple that AI couldn't tell.
So we're still not fully like give you all the correct answers, but there are, it's still a great.
tool to use.
want to recommend, Childship is fine, Claude is amazing, and Gemini Pro is okay, hit or miss.
They're all hit or miss.
I usually, if anyone's interested, I'm just using one until I get frustrated, I go to another, give him the code, work with it, gets frustrated, go to another.
So I use about four or five different AIs back and forth, and I pay for them also.
that's also, because then you get to a limit how much you can use them very quickly.
So I pay like 20 bucks a month for each.
Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, coming up with 40,000 chords, like that would take you forever.
Yeah.
Right.
we detect the algorithm according to the notes and knowing the octaves?
No, you know, knowing the, Hey, this is a chord with no fifth, like C major, no five with a sharp 12, 13, you know, so there's a, in that way, it's definitely helps you
conceptualize the algorithms.
in this case, the core detections, but so much more other stuff.
There is, uh
It's not released yet, but it's going to be released very soon.
There is a controller, old school controller, the godfather of all the grid controllers that we see today, like the push, the launch pad, the APC.
This is the Monome or Monomy.
And it's built by a husband and wife in the countryside of New York.
I don't remember where, but somewhere in the outside of the city, handmade.
um So they had their own custom applications for this.
using Max, they developed it with Max, Max for Live, Max at the time, it was no Max for Live, uh early 2000s.
And it used to have this application called Flynn, where each column is a sequencer, each column is a different note, and depends where you hit in the column, that's the speed of,
you'll see the LED just coming down, kind of like rain drops, and playing the note when it reaches down.
So I loved that, and I was like, how can I do that on the push?
And...
It took me like months, like three months to do that.
It's finished, it's gonna be released very soon.
But I made a Flynn sequencer for the push with a lot more features.
It works amazing, I love it so much.
But it's all thanks to all those AIs.
Of course, there's a lot more that goes around it.
Like it's not only the JavaScript code, you also need to know some max, which I learned over the years.
But still, just a conceptualization and the main algorithm of sequencing.
thanks to all the AI.
just a huge recommendation to use those AI eh if you have those ideas that you want to make reality.
Right, just to have that kind of guide to helping you figure out if you're going the right way.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Like you said, sometimes I have like a small questions about one thing and it might take me much longer to search online than just to ask the bot.
Sometimes it gives the wrong answer, but it's getting better and better.
So take it with a grain of salt, but still in a lot of, most, I won't say most, but a lot of cases, it's amazing tool uh helper slash just.
conceptualizer.
I started paying for chat GPT for two reasons.
And one of them was houseplants.
I started taking pictures of the houseplants and it would tell me what it was.
didn't even know what they were, how to care for it, what it needed, what I should do to repot it.
And my houseplants are thriving.
Yeah.
me there's an app for it.
I forget what's the app called.
God damn it.
But also an app, you take a picture.
I didn't find that too useful.
It was a couple of years ago.
So I'm sure it could be much different now, but, at the time, yeah, it didn't work.
But then I got the idea to try that.
And then I, in preparation for my workshop in February, I'm trying to think like, all right, what do I want to tell them?
What I need to get my ideas together.
So I uploaded my whole book that I wrote the whole thing.
I just uploaded it.
And then I uploaded a bunch of podcast episodes that I had transcripts for.
And then I would ask it, all right, how do I like to make music?
What are some things I keep coming back to?
Basically, be my secretary, be my other self that would have had to search through everything I've ever written and everything I've ever said.
And it did all that for me and gave me ideas that I was then able to sift through and organize.
But it was so cool because it was my own words.
was quotes from me, things I said.
And sometimes it'd like, well, I said that.
Well, yeah, that was a good idea.
Or like, I can't believe I said that.
I don't believe that anymore.
But it was pretty neat.
And it saved me a lot of time for the whole preparation part of that workshop.
Made me feel a lot more comfortable going in too.
Cause I knew, I told you, I barely did any teaching when it actually came to it.
but I had a lot of plants.
plenty.
I wasn't gonna run out of material, but yeah, that was one of the coolest uses because it was so personalized.
That's great.
love that.
There's something scary, but exciting about those AI is really get to know us on that level.
Especially when you upload so much of your work.
I love that.
Yeah.
I use all also that for copyrighting newsletters, helping me find grammar errors for me.
eh I love that.
That's great.
Yeah, and like for the music making side of things, I think I like the process.
I like making the music.
I don't want it to do it for me.
And I think a lot of people are like that.
I think one of, it might've been Suno, but somebody, some executive said, people don't like making it.
don't like making music anymore.
Yeah.
That's a, can understand maybe some aspects for each person.
might be individual what they less like to do.
Like some people, I just want to focus on production and I want to mix and master.
So maybe AI can help them.
Some people are like, I don't know how to write lyrics or sing.
So now we have all those kind of services.
can do AI vocals, which I think it's great just to allow us to.
get us what used to be collaborators, which is in some way unfortunate that we're not, you know, I don't have to bring a singer here anymore.
can create a virtual singer or mixing master and those things.
But, uh, in other ways, just makes it more accessible for people who can't afford to hire a studio musician or a mixing master engineer.
So positive and negatives, I guess, for, for all of that.
But, uh, there's definitely so much enjoyment to.
in the music creation itself, I guess you could just look at them as tools, you know, to help us.
Yeah, sometimes I like to play around with things and see what comes up, but sometimes I just want to play the acoustic guitar and that's it.
And we still have all those options.
It's always been that way, guess, with technology.
There's new things that you don't have to auto tune your voice.
You don't have to quantize.
You don't have to overdub or punch in.
You can do whatever you want to whatever degree.
I think maybe in the near to far future, we might get to that situation for live performance as well.
As an audience, obviously it will be weird to see robots playing on stage, but what if it's, can't even, we can't even tell what's a robot and what's not, or a humanoid,
whatever you want to call them as a performer on stage.
Would us as the audience really care if now this entire orchestra is being played by
robots, but they look human, sound human, smell human, would we even care?
So I think that also comes with the end result for the listener in music.
And even not with the AI stuff, like even before there were pop uh music that the drums were a plugin.
The trailer for movies that it's not really a real instrument, it's MIDI.
So I think for the end user, it's a good question.
It's like, how much do we really care if we consume this?
It looks the same, it sounds the same, but it's not human compared to us creators where it's still, you know, we still like it.
We just enjoy the creation of it.
We enjoy the just making the music.
And I don't want to go and go on Suno and write, make me a pop song.
I want to make it.
Cause it's just what we love.
So.
It's going to be interesting to see how music is going to develop maybe into a pure hobby.
Maybe in 30, 40 years, it's no longer going to be a viable profession because even if you want to perform live, there's someone who makes it better than you.
Yeah, he happened to be a robot under his skin, but it's still a human skin, whatever developed in a lab, whatever.
I'm just throwing up ideas here, you know, how the consumer and consumer really going to care.
if everything looks human and sounds human, but it's just 10 times better than any human you can find.
Any real human, you know?
But the creation, yeah, the creation will always, I think, gonna be part of it.
But as a hobby, you know?
Some people still make swords, as blacksmiths.
Do you need a sword?
No, but they do it as a hobby.
And you could probably have a factory making swords better.
You know?
go play softball with some friends, even though I could watch professionals do it way better than me.
Yeah, exactly.
No, but I'm saying, would you care if the professionals were robots?
And then, uh, cause, cause then the game can be so much more exciting, right?
Cause it's like beyond human capabilities that they're like, my God, it was crazy.
Like he, I don't know, did a crazy jump into 20 feet up high, catching the ball, but he threw it like, you know, so it's just a good question to see for us consumers of
entertainment.
I don't know, we'll see dude.
Yeah, I don't know.
depend on what people decide, I guess.
Maybe it will be a hybrid first, know, kind of enhanced humans, where we could be able to start running faster, jumping faster, play faster, know, sing higher and lower, and then
slowly transition into fully humanoid.
But then also, who knows?
I'm just blabbering, I'm just spitting out nonsense here.
But who knows, maybe also it's not gonna be humanoid at the end, it's gonna be kind of a hybrid of us.
Enhanced in some way that at the end you can even tell the difference.
What's Not human.
What's human?
Those are all futurism, you know, which we get into we're going to get into very soon.
Maybe in our lifetime
I think so.
mean, it's happening way faster than I ever thought.
I didn't think we'd have all these things happening.
And I kind of hope that it makes people enjoy humanity more.
You know, where we might...
I just want to hear you play the guitar and sing and I don't care if you're good or not.
I want to just get the essence of you in there and it doesn't need to be pitch corrected or any of that stuff or we don't need even like backing tracks for the band.
Let's just hear what it is and enjoy it for that.
Or maybe we won't be able to tolerate that kind of stuff anymore.
It'll just be, God.
That's interesting that you say that because we can kind of see an example of it with old 80s music and singers that now you listen to some old, at least for me, old 80s music.
And I was like, you can much better tell the off-pitch moments that are now nonexistent because of auto-tune, even if they make the pitch correction sound very natural with
modern recordings, it's still perfect.
And when you listen to seventies, eighties music, still amazing singers, but there might be moments, even micro moments where like, Whoa, that was, you know, that was a bit off,
which can add character, of course, but it's still to my ears.
From what I remember, I don't know, 15 years ago, it's so much more noticeable.
Maybe just because my ear got developed, but, uh, that's interesting that you say, cause maybe we will have a.
higher tolerance to quality of music.
But again, I don't know, because also you can, there's so much character in it.
And we do have nostalgic to, or even, you know, affection to dirty old lo-fi music.
It's all very interesting.
We'll see.
I've been really into, not unquantized, but...
like non-metronome based music.
So like mostly everything before a certain year.
So like if you listen to the Rolling Stones, almost any song, play it through and then start it over again.
It's usually way slower in the beginning because they got excited and they built it up and that humanity came through the excitement.
I'm really interested in that.
dimension of expression in music where things speed up a little and slow down to lay back when things calm down that um yeah I'm becoming more sensitive to it because I'm so used
to hearing everything so perfect and then music I make is almost always on the grid so it's um to come off of it and then just have it have this little breathing room it's been
a lot of fun and um
The thing that I think I'm...
in a band.
So I think you also experience it.
is why I think it came through so much for me is because we were doing some recording and we had the click going and it's the first time we've really ever played these songs to a
click.
We've been practicing them and working them out.
And there was just something kind of boring about it.
So we were like, let's just try it.
You know, let's just go.
Who cares?
Forget the click.
We, kind of use the click to
get our bearings and we practiced to it a little and then we're like, all right, now let's just turn it off and record.
And I really liked it a lot better.
And I also found everything else was more forgiving.
So, and especially vocally, cause I'm not a singer really, even though I sing in the band, I'm allowed to be a little less precise now when it was so on, you know, the grid and
perfect, I had to be perfect.
And I'm just not, I just,
Mm.
I couldn't ever get those vocals.
There was one song in particular we did to the click and we wound up redoing it.
It was just so much easier when we redid it because everything kind of just fit together and we're playing with each other instead of three people playing separately to a click
track.
That's just a good point.
think that's definitely an aspect we lost with the modern music softwares.
If anyone's listening, think that's something that a lot of people do in other aspects of the music.
Like you might sometimes automate the volume to turn up a tiny bit on choruses or main sections or drops.
You might automate the stereo width to open up a bit more.
But it's definitely something even me ignore so much.
The tempo, know, the tempo can such a, you know, we're in such a DJ friendly era that we may be not even thinking about.
Yeah.
I mean, naturally when you play with a band and adrenaline kicks in with a more high energy, a section of the song.
And they did a research about that.
can listen to, like you said, you can listen to old music.
And you can tell that the BPM might increase in one, two, three BPMs ah in high intensity sections.
And naturally, and that's such a good thing to take when you're producing music with a software.
And there are, seen some stuff on TikTok when people really play on with the BPM, the tempo automation.
That's something we need to do more.
I love that point.
And it makes sense.
Kind of like, you know, it's so much more.
Add into the feeling.
It's not only, you know, just the, the rhythm, the, you know, it's also the overall tempo is such a big part of, the change in tempo, even if it's kind of micro changes, it's such
a big deal.
I'm going to go and do that again.
So I'm really excited about, um it's an old feature in live where you can change a clip to follow, to lead.
And I mean, I was playing around, just played the classical guitar, really sloppy, you know, not even really knowing if I was going to keep the take, but I turned it into the
leader and told live where the, you know, the ones were.
And then it figured it out once I kind of gave it the
You know, the gist of what I was doing, but then everything else, I could drop a drum loop on it and the loop follows my playing and I can quantize things.
can copy and paste.
So I recorded like a bass part and you know, made a few mistakes.
So just copied it from the other section, which was a completely different BPM and just pasted it.
And because of warping, it just goes right in and it just fits.
try it again, because also since Ableton 11.3 or something, they introduced a new bit detection algorithm, so it's probably even better in detecting your own plane and turning
it into follow-
surprised how well it worked.
Yeah.
Cause I didn't put a lot of care into that playing that one day and it just knew I was like, pretty smart.
uh idea.
I'll do that with the guitar and you don't even have to use the guitar after just as kind of a tempo guide.
I love that.
Yeah.
And then you kind of got your feel and I guess if you've been playing enough where you can hold the beat to some degree, then you can get away with it.
know, those natural things start happening.
I love that.
I will definitely do it.
I'm gonna try it.
I haven't used that feature in so long.
Yeah, it's one I kind of always forget about.
And lately I've been experimenting.
you see it in the session.
The clip has to be in arrangement if I'm not mistaken.
And then you see follower or I don't even talk.
They call it follower.
They still call it follower.
It's lead and follow.
I think it used to be like a master slave terminology um or something like that.
ah
track now is called main, trying to get away from those terminologies.
Yeah, but what it does is just automate the tempo on the master track.
So just, takes it over and.
cool.
It's very interesting to even just put music you know in there and then map it out and watch that line move.
Like some tracks it doesn't go anywhere.
You know, it's just a straight line.
Those are things recorded to the grid.
But when you put older stuff, even stuff that has drum machines in it, it's those machines had some life to them.
friend tried to record the swing from the MPC 2000 XL and he said, it's not straight.
It's, mean, it's not steady.
It's just fluctuating.
So there's something about you.
Absolutely right.
I would do it.
And that's why there's so much value in, even if all your music is electronic, just maybe record one element from the real world.
It can add so much depth and dimension.
And that's great follower.
I'm going to definitely do that.
Well, if you think about when people talk about playing on top of the beat or playing behind the beat, if I'm like kind of laying back and playing behind the beat a little bit,
same playing the drums, when I get back to one, I don't then like shift back to on top of the beat and then I have to slow, it's a constant drag.
I don't know.
I haven't really studied it hard enough to understand.
if that's just a constant slow down, but it doesn't just reset every bar.
And that kind of happens when you program it that way.
Hmm.
Yeah.
No, I love that.
I would use those template or following.
That's great.
There's also used to be a max for our device that now is built in in Ableton, which is forget what it's called, but now in the settings, you can, you can turn on the what's it
called?
Uh, the tempo follower.
And then you can set it up with, I think you can just set it up.
with a microphone or something, because it gives you an input channel.
So you can even have Ableton follow in real time according to one of the microphones set up to drums or something, which I don't use often, but it is a built-in option.
and I don't know if we were playing straight enough for it to understand.
quickly.
Yeah, like maybe there's too much bleed in the microphones or something, but I was kind of wondering if we could use that and have something sequenced live.
um It became one of those things where the other two guys in the band are like watching you fool around for too long and they're like, you want to just play?
All right, I'll figure it out later.
Yeah.
it's a built-in feature, I'll have to do that.
But I bet if you have something a little more consistent, four to the floor kick kind of thing, I think it would work pretty well.
Cause it was working, but it wasn't enough to rely on for whatever we were doing.
Absolutely.
Also reminded me, there's iZotonic Studios released a lot of MaxFallout devices and there is a recent MaxFallout device, I remember, that allows you to play very fluidly with the
global tempo.
just don't, I'll just, I guess I can check what it's called, but iZotonicStudios.com.
eh I remember, I'll check what it's called, but it was a very cool kind of device.
that allows you to do kind of this weird, eh extreme or subtle tempo changes very easily.
So definitely something that I'm going to explore more and more.
The tempo is such a sometimes not touched element that should be played with.
You can get away with a lot too, even if you're just automating it.
You want your build to like, to get some energy.
You can go up a couple BPM and it's the type of thing that you feel more than you notice intellectually.
And, you know, I can't tell if something's moving up or down a couple BPM, you know, but you notice it and the energy.
Exactly.
So I wanted to, of course I said something before we started, but congratulate you on 100 plus, I guess now, uh study groups that you do every Sunday for a couple of years now.
Couple of, yeah.
Two years now.
Uh, I had used to have a music school here in LA called beat lab Academy.
And we had to close it down during the pandemic, which kind of forced me into like a year of just taking off, doing anything.
I did some music, but not really teaching.
And then towards the end of the school,
We used to do this Sunday meetups for students because the school was closed.
We couldn't go to the school.
So we met online with all the students kind of to answer questions, to make sure everything is up to their classes, still kind of doing everything.
And uh that kind of came back to my mind after my first sabbatical of, wow, maybe I should do, maybe I should go back during those Sunday sessions, of course, no longer as BeatLab
Academy.
but more under the, artist name side brain.
and we start doing those and I got a lot of good feedback and people start recommending topics that we should do.
So we start doing this very genre specific topics.
Okay.
This week we'll talk only about break or, I'm being jungle and tech house and all those, uh, alongside some other general music production techniques.
And it's been two years of very consistently every Sunday.
Uh, I also have recordings of those that people can check out on my website, sidebrain.net.
And last week we had a special live stream.
Usually it's like a private group on zoom, but we had a live stream on YouTube and we had a lot of giveaways and prizes and the community joined and it was super awesome.
This week is going to be the 101 and yeah, dude, it's unbelievable for me also.
And I'm very grateful to be able to do this.
because it kind of became my main thing that I do.
I mostly do the Sunday teachings.
I post the recording in all my newsletters and through all my channels.
And then I work on free content for Instagram, YouTube tutorials and stuff like that to just offer free music education online in the hopes that people will of course check out
my other stuff like the uh course, the paid workshops that we have.
On every Sunday, it's $25 a ticket.
So thank you so much, dude.
I'm super grateful for anyone who's involved and took part in this.
And it's a, it's a blessing to be able to do this, especially with my situation and I need to be more flexible for the kids.
So it's great to just have this type of thing.
Now, of course there's many weekends are like, Oh man, I wish I could go out Saturday late and do this.
But at the same time,
Like uh I can't complain.
I'm so flexible with my time during the week.
And I love doing this research all week long about the topic and preparing all the downloads and templates and presets and Ableton projects for the students.
And of course, getting the positive feedback from the community.
So dude, thank you so much.
It's amazing.
And hopefully we'll do a hundred more.
of these.
If anyone's interested, next, I guess you could check the website.
I don't know where this will be posted, but this week we're talking about advanced sound design with Meld, which is an awesome synth.
Well, I think first off the discipline and the consistency you have is really impressive.
What really blows my mind though is there's such a range of topics you cover.
mean, you have genres I've never even heard of that you spend a whole session on and you go through different devices, you go through certain kinds of workflows and techniques.
I'm just wondering how do you get all of this knowledge inside of your head to share in a board like these things some of these like two hours long, right?
mean, these are, yeah, so.
So by the way, if anyone interested, every workshop, you can check out 20 minutes from the workshop, which is a lot of information content.
So thank you, first of all.
And also just to say too, it's not like you're sitting around and go like, hmm, let me see, how do I do this?
I mean, you're firing off information.
No, that's your style.
mean, your style is like boom, boom, boom, here we go.
um it's.
Yeah.
I just, I don't know how you know so much.
That's what I'm saying.
I gotta say that I do notice a lot of times when I'm in class and I'm just making music in my head, I'm like, my God, I need to give value to my students.
I feel like I'm spending my time just making music here.
But then after I get a lot of feedback, dude, I love that you should make more music then.
Cause I'm like you said, I'm just teaching, teaching the tricks.
this, uh, this, should know this, this I do.
So I need to find the balance with myself to give them both.
my, you know, style of teaching where it just give you information and tricks.
And I guarantee you will learn at least one thing, uh, in my sessions.
Uh, but at the same time also provide inspiration by applying it, by making music.
So we're doing it more and more.
And so I got to say that when I was a younger, um, I had to go to the army mandatory three years.
And I hated the army.
I'm a pacifist.
I hate army so bad, so much.
so one of my ways of coping with it was listening to music in headphones, 24 seven.
would just headphones, back in the day, it was the post Napstar eh era.
was soul sick.
Soul sick is, I think, I think you can still get it.
It's kind of like Napstar.
can download music from others, people, computers.
So I was downloading.
crazy amounts of music from all over the world, things that I never heard of, just kind of fanatically and extremely consuming music.
And my interest in, wait, why is this genre this?
Why is this genre, what makes it that?
Started from very early on.
I was like 17, 18.
So ever since I just have this uh huge interest into...
music styles, like genres of style of music and what makes them that and somewhat the culture behind it.
But for me, it's mostly the music, like what makes the production, the tools that they use.
yes, there are some styles that are more modern that I still have to research, but a lot of the styles I've been listening to for years and loving them so much that I kind of know
what I need to do.
Of course, there's still research goes into that into, okay, what are the tools?
How can I simplify it?
And that's one of the most important things for my teachings is how can I take whatever style doesn't matter and make it uh manageable to create for even beginners slash
intermediate users that are just starting out, but let's give them the tools, a template, maybe narrow down the sounds like give them a preset pack or a sample pack.
ah So I think that's the biggest thing for me is if I can get to a point where I can simply explain the style, I know I'm ready for class.
If not, I'm starting to stress out.
There's a few styles that there are might need, there are met a bit more complex.
So I have to make templates.
For example, recently we did Botanica.
Botanica is a new style that is kind of a mixture between ambient and glitch music.
with a lot of a kind of nice, beautiful Ghibli studio style called core progressions.
And in some way it needs a lot, a lot of layers and a lot of glitching.
And so I just take my time to find the tools or the presets or the sample packs that allows me to do that.
But thank you, man.
Yes, there's a lot of research, but a lot of kind of past knowledge of music.
And I used to work in a company that
used to, have to, that's what I had to do.
had to listen to music and then categorize it in like a hundred different categories.
So it kind of also gain experience from that.
It's like a tech startup.
I don't think it exists anymore.
So thank you, David.
I appreciate it.
It's, I guess it's just also my love for music and my love for teaching.
There is something I love explaining stuff and I have to find the cool stuff in order to explain them.
So my time goes from researching and making music.
to just exploring.
There are of course some topics that are more close to hard.
We did LA beats, like flying lotus style.
That I just, was like, I just, it was amazing.
I just, you know, flew so nicely.
And there some other styles that are maybe less close to hard, but I still interested in them and researching them as much as I can to give my students the tools to create them.
But thank you, dude.
I appreciate it, man.
I just, you know, I'm-
nerded hard so it just comes from that I guess.
It's cool.
And you know, one thing about getting into production was it brought me a new appreciation for almost any kind of music.
So like you were saying, like maybe there's genres, you know, really well, cause you love it and it's what you're into.
But anything you start exploring has some interesting aspects to it, at least from the production side.
So it's a great way to just enjoy lots of different music when you put on that kind of lens to see it through.
Absolutely.
And it's also interesting to see that some styles, although sound complicated to listen to, like they sound like, whoa, what the hell is going on?
Actually very simple once you break it down.
For example, ah ambient jungle, like this kind of PlayStation 2 slide music.
That is somewhat, I'm not going to say simple, but somewhat simpler if you have the right tools.
to just get yourself to a point where you're just playing around.
And that's, guess, my main mindset.
How can we get to a point where we have the framework of all the tools we need for that specific style and we're just playing around with that?
Maybe like, for example, in the band scenario, you have your drums, you have your bass, you have your guitar, you know kind of the guitar chords you can use, you know what the
bass can, how can the bass can follow, or if the bass line start, how the guitar can follow.
And of course the drums.
So it's just kind like a framework of you can play around with.
That's where the plain music comes.
So that's what we're trying to do with all these styles.
How can we get to a point where we're just playing around in the framework of that style?
Cause it still needs to be that style or else we're creating something else.
So, uh, yes, it is.
Uh, it's nice to explore all those different styles.
And I would recommend any person who likes music, like you said, it gives you appreciation to all styles of music.
It also opens up your.
appreciate love for music much more just listening because you can appreciate so much any form of music I used to be a hater when I was to be a teenager I used to be like a 17 year
old with like a old Volkswagen car No one can enter my car, you know when I would take friends around if I I'm the only one who choose music and it was specific things that
would not be played in my car I can eh happily say today there's I don't know if there's any style of music that I can't enjoy if the music is good
Anything really, but there used to be, know, today, like I can say, I can see on my kid, he doesn't like country music, or there's a lot of good country music out there.
So maybe it's more maturity, maybe even mixed with that.
But yeah, definitely the more styles of music you find out about the more appreciation you have for music as a whole.
It's so amazing also to see the connection between all the different styles of music and how they're inspired from each other.
There is a lot I just played to my Chinese girlfriend.
This I saw on TikTok a rap of China.
It's kind of like American Idol.
I'm sure there's American shows like that, but for rap slash R &B Chinese artists.
And there R &B performance, there's two specific, Mac Diego and Vince T.
Wow.
R &B, know, American R &B, but it's kind of like mixed English and Mandarin.
It's super cool.
I love it so much.
And my girlfriend mentioned cultural appropriation.
And for me, for me, at least it's my opinion, there's no such thing in music as cultural appropriation.
Yes, it's heavily inspired, but it's beautiful.
That's the beautiful thing about it.
You can even see it with styles like all the clave based styles, like Afro beats or original uh African music then went.
not thanks to but because of the slave trade they went to america americas a got we don't got a i have the story says that it was they used to the slaves to build ships and they
used to didn't have the original african instruments so they took pieces of wood from the ships that they build and start playing the clover rhythm that a lot of the latin and
music afro-cuban music is based on
and now we have things like the the ragga tone and all that and now it went back to africa and the african went back it was always there but got popularized and simplified and now
we have all the west africa pop music there modern affro beats not the felacuti that we can hear so many inspirations back and forth between the latin culture and the west
african culture
And there's so many different examples like that around the world where you see the more you understand the different styles of music, the different cultures, the more you
understand that it's all connected.
And I think that's a extremely beautiful in music.
used to have a website.
This is going to be a bit hippie right now.
Still have the, the domain.
It's called one world, one band.
It's all about peace, world peace and stuff like that.
But I think music, if you search on Google, why music?
One of the answers is bringing people together.
And that is also true with music styles and music genres.
Yes, they're all different and they all represent different music cultures, even dances and history, but they're all connected in some way.
And again, just to go back, it's hard for me to say cultural appropriation.
It might be, maybe with the club, maybe, I don't know.
I don't think so, but when it comes to the music, no such thing in my opinion.
It's all inspiration.
It's all positive.
And it's amazing to see how uh music from across the world affect each other in all sorts of different ways.
Yeah, that's cool.
And I mean, we've seen that, we saw that like with rock and roll, even, you know, how that went back and forth across the ocean, you know, and it's, it's just this constant trade
that happens.
And we're really seeing it a lot more now with some of this like micro tuning stuff that we see.
And now it's built into Ableton Live where you can.
access these scales that are totally new to Western ears for the most part and make interesting stuff with it and put it through our own.
I guess it's like a life experience thing.
You know, we, put it through our own.
experience our own culture and it comes out a little different.
It's just like, even on an individual level, if I'm trying to copy another person's style, I come out with a fun house mirror version of it.
That's very specific to me and all the other things that have found their way into my sphere of influence.
Exactly, exactly.
That's what we are as musicians, we're just accumulation of all our inspirations.
Yeah.
I like that, that way of looking.
It's not really art in a lot of ways.
It's not property.
It's uh kind of really only, I guess, like commercialism that made it property of people.
don't know.
But once it's out, you know, then anyone can hear it.
Even music is kind of funny because you can't close your eyes to music, you can't close your ears to it.
There's certain types of art.
You don't have to watch the movie, but if the music is playing, you can't not hear it.
Exactly.
And yeah, and being inspired by it if you like it, which is a good thing.
I guess when we're younger though, we're trying to get our identity together.
So we become haters and we become loyalists.
And I can remember saying, I don't like music with drum machines.
Now that's why I drew the line.
know, meanwhile, I'm listening to Nine Inch Nails.
Not even knowing I'm listening to like all kinds of music that had drum machines in it.
No idea though.
Just thought like that was something I was against, you know, or
you go.
There you go.
I just, I just heard the other day in Mike, uh, in the car, I put a Midwest emo, playlist on Spotify and some of the style is on purpose.
The vocals are like so off tune crying.
They're almost crying into the microphone and my girlfriend's like, why are we listening to this?
And I was like, so enjoying it.
There's so much to take from any style, even if it's like on purpose, bad, there's some stylistic choices.
I would purposely being bad or screaming or, know, or, or the guitars are no distortion, but the vocals are like growling, like metal.
You know, there's a lot of, uh, I love all of that.
And, I guess you're right.
When we're young, we're trying to maybe find the identity.
We're locking ourselves out of some stuff.
I guess that's the part of the maturity.
Except in all.
Yeah, yeah, it's funny because there's, guess, music where I don't like it on a totality level, but when I go into the details, then you can be like, yeah, that's pretty cool.
I like the way they switch the beat there, or it's neat how they recorded that whining voice that I don't like.
know, there's something.
like stuff that I not usually listen to, like Russian romantic music or whatever.
was, when I really think about it, was like, there's no way I would able, ever be able to come up with these melodies or this harmony.
And there's always appreciation even for music that you're like, I won't listen to this unless it's in like a movie scene or something.
You know?
So yeah, I going back to the future is maybe to wrap everything up.
What's interesting is also, feel like we are, there's always new music, but at the same time, kind of heard a lot of the stuff already.
So back from the, you know, early ages of music to today, so much has been done.
One interesting thing that might happen as soon as we start enhancing ourselves as humans, maybe they will install some contraptions in our ears.
that will also allow us to listen to higher and maybe even lower frequencies than our hearing range.
So that might also give us a new world to explore as sound designer musicians where we can start making music above 20,000 Hertz.
That can be, might be a bit cool with some enhanced ears, you know.
be the new tier on Spotify.
Another $3 a month, you can get up to $40k.
yeah exactly the meat the dog music or the music for dogs so I Know I there are some You're right especially the fireworks and There are some microphones that can record and
then they pitch it down.
There's some interesting sounds but Yeah, not to our ears yet
Yeah, well that was how they got the gravitational waves, right?
I think they pitched that up though.
um Yeah, that's some crazy low waveform, you know.
I think above it, like really fast, I think it's starting to get visual, the of things.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
Cause it's also, it's also a spectrum of vibrations and we just have this very small music vibrate range.
And if you go super high, you know, all the radio waves and then above that ultraviolet, whatever, I'm not an expert, but it's all, it's very interesting.
Maybe the future, it all kind of collide into one.
Hmm.
Well, I've heard hearing described as just really sensitive touch because it's air pressure against those little tiny hairs in your ear and your eardrum.
it gets converted, you know, analog to analog conversion inside your brain and becomes sound that we somehow decode.
Um, which yeah.
That's probably why it's fun to hear loud music and it vibrates you and it's literally touching you.
Those sub frequencies are going through your body.
There is such a different feeling when you turn up the music.
Yeah, for sure.
I had a lot of fun with one of the guys in my band when we recorded guitars recently, because he's got like the Marshall half stack and we turned it up as loud as it could go.
Never been allowed to play guitar that loud in my life.
It was so loud.
I could barely hear the music I was recording to and the headphones, but there's just something about that.
It's a power, know, every movement of your finger on the strings is blasted loud.
Yeah, even musicians playing next to me, if it's through a speaker's violin compared to violin playing next to me, that's a whole...
another five.
Yeah, there really is something magical about that.
Yes.
You should probably mention just some of the stuff you got like on Instagram and YouTube shorts.
Cause you also are so good at taking these complex ideas and putting them into a one minute video, which I think is another type of talent to spend two hours going in depth on
something is one thing, but to be able to just condense it all.
um
you really go through some pretty complex ideas and innovative ideas too.
I really loved what you were doing with the bouncy notes that for that's from the inspired by nature pack that Ableton has.
And those bouncy notes is not accompanying chords is brilliant.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, dude.
I appreciate it.
Yeah.
That's a, one of my main uh ways of getting new people kind of to know me and to get involved.
What I do is those Instagram short videos and Tik Tok and YouTube shorts, just kind of like show tips and ideas for Ableton.
Like you mentioned, the latest one was the auto accompaniment with the bouncy notes, which is a super awesome and somewhat overlooked device.
So yes, sometimes some weeks I try to do it every week are harder than others.
Some weeks is just for my own experimentation.
It's like, wow, that's kind of a cool way of doing this.
Let me share it with my following and thanks man.
I appreciate it.
So if anyone's interested side brain on Instagram, tick tock, I posted all of my social networks, Twitter X, Facebook and YouTube shorts.
Uh, so it's weekly kind of like.
tips and tricks for Ableton and music production.
Mostly just Ableton music production.
I rarely do anything, not Ableton.
That's kind of like my thing.
And on YouTube, more kind of long form videos.
And recently I also started releasing all those mugs for live devices.
there's also a bunch of tools and utilities there.
And of course, if anyone's interested in joining the Sunday sessions, I do also have a newsletter you can join.
And in the newsletter, there's some exclusive Max for Life stuff that are only available in the newsletter, like in this past one we offered a MIDI visualizer.
I don't know, lot of people know this, but back in version 11 of Ableton, there's a MIDI effect, you can find it today, called MIDI Monitor.
And in the MIDI Monitor, it just shows you kind of like a small keyboard, a very basic core detector, and you can even see the flow.
Your MIDI data if you need to troubleshoot stuff or stuff like that It used to be a hidden MIDI visualizer if anyone still have Ableton Live 11 go MIDI monitor Switch to the flow
state and then you need to click somewhere on the bottom It's it's hidden and it turns it into a MIDI visualizer meaning when you hit a note it kind of gives you this Visualized
explosions.
I don't know why they removed it It was a hidden feature, but I don't know why they removed it so you can do it
You can find it now, but ah I made one that is offered to the community, to the Discord members, and to the newsletter.
So even if you're not planning to join the Sunday sessions, the newsletter have a lot of tips, tricks, tutorials, and of course some exclusive mucks for live devices.
ah Through the newsletter, you can find it on my website.
Just sidebrain.net join-the-group if anyone's interested.
or if you download anything from my Gumball you'll be added.
Hmm.
Yeah, I get that newsletter.
It's great.
There's always cool stuff going on and you're doing so much.
yeah.
Um, something stuck out to me from when we were talking in February in LA and, uh, it kind of makes me think a little bit about what you were saying about new careers, new paths in
music.
You were talking about your own music and how you're
kind of content with just putting it inside the music tutorials and the stuff you're doing.
I thought that was just a really interesting way to look at it.
Because sometimes we put so much pressure on product release and all this stuff.
And yeah, I wanted to just pick your brain on that a little bit.
I did had a huge pressure on myself in the past about I have to release music.
I'm a musician.
Am I a musician?
I'm not releasing music.
Like what's going on?
I know I got to say that a lot of times I get, cause on all my tips and tricks on the social media at the end, I give a very short musical example using that, whatever we just
talked about.
And a lot of times I get comments like, Hey, where can I listen to the full track?
Can you release the full track?
And it makes me feel a tiny bit bad because I'm not going to release the, there's no full track.
This is made purely for educational purposes.
And it's very flattering.
That is good enough to a point where people are asking, where can I find a full track?
But also I'm probably not going to release the full track.
Now, a lot of this is because of time constraints and, know, being a dad and having, you know, the,
Main career is music education.
That's where I make my money.
Um, so most of my focus going into music education, uh, when I teach a lot of times, yes, I do create a projects that might not be full flat songs, but something I share with my
students as an example.
And of course, all the stuff that I make on my YouTube.
it's a great feeling and honor.
And I really appreciate everyone that is commenting on.
My videos like, dude, the music that you give us an example is awesome.
But at the same time, I don't feel the need or even the want to release it.
Cause there's so much more today that goes around releasing it.
eh Besides finishing the music, you know, after that, the marketing, the kind of trying to push your music to the audience, post about it, whatever it is.
And I kind of.
I feel like, and this might be my own insecurities, I feel like the value that I give is better with education than just the music.
So yes, like there's some music you can find of me online, but maybe the latest release was 2021 or 20, I don't know, a few years that I haven't released music.
I don't have any plans to release music.
And I see myself more as a music educator than a musician.
So maybe that's where I kind of a bit different than regular musicians that
You know, that's the musicians, they make music.
I not necessarily am a musician, but rather more so as a music, music educator, which I take a full pride on.
I want to see myself as a good music educator that can teach.
I trained top artists in LA, universities, stuff like that.
But yeah, definitely music releasing is not.
It's not even on my list.
It's not even, you know, as something that a goal of mine anymore.
Uh, but that's being said from someone who is extremely, I'm sure a lot of us are extremely self critic.
I'm like, cannot, like if right now we come into a studio and we make music, I will probably don't know what to do unless you tell me you the, let's do this and this.
I'm flying 10 minutes.
You have it.
Oh, let's do something to 150 BPM, R &B.
10 minutes, have uh amazing stuff.
But if right now is you'd let's just make something.
I'm stuck.
I don't know what to do.
I'm kind of like almost like music by demand in some way.
So that's why these sessions of like focused styles, sessions, Sunday sessions, where I know, okay, this week we're making Afro beats.
I know what I need to do.
I know what I need to focus on.
It's much easier for me to create that way.
So it's a struggle that I had for years.
And I can't tell you exactly when I let it go, but when I let it go and fully embrace myself as a music educator, I was able to be much more creative and create much more music
without the obligation of finishing it.
And that's maybe the easiest way out.
It's an easy way out.
I'm sure it's kind of like giving up in some way.
But again, I'm more of an educator than a musician.
So I start putting that pressure on me.
Well, it's a good way to reframe it.
if, I mean, you're right.
Like it's not just finishing the song.
It's the releasing and then it's the trying to get people to listen to it.
And you can't even give it away anymore.
when that can be deflating and you put all this time into it and no one wants to hear it or whatever.
You got to worry about all those other things, but every time you make a tutorial, you're getting some of your music out there, you know?
And the way a lot of people listen to music these days anyway, that might be all they hear of a song as it is before they skip to the next one.
So.
to be able to identify where you're feeling the stress and pressure and then just cut it out.
think it's smart because you're, you're now having fun and you kept saying play, play music.
And plus a lot of what you said about, um, if we were going to make the R and B track, you know what to do.
we're going to do this, a lot of times that's the problem we all face is these infinite options.
can do anything we want, any direction.
have every tool, every sound.
every bit of information we need, tutorials that you, yeah, how do you decide to make anything is a good question.
That's what I, lot of times I tell my students about creativity.
I, my personal belief is creativity shines with limitations and lack of limitations kills creativity.
I always give now the old example that I don't know if a lot of people, the young people know about, but MacGyver, MacGyver is a perfect example of creativity.
So the more limitations you would put upon yourself, the better.
the more creative you would be forced to be.
So uh I think limitations is essential.
And like you said, today it's too much.
Yes, the only way I get things done is when I decide I'm going to use this tool or try to make a song like this or play with the band.
There's only three of us and it's already got its built in limitations to it.
But when it's, let's just see where the wind takes me today.
oh
but that's usually super weird stuff.
And it doesn't usually happen until I start committing down a path and just going and seeing where takes me.
But you've got that built into your topics each week and sharing that.
think, I think it's a cool way again, like almost this alternative way.
it.
Looking back, it was a motivation for me to get started sharing my work and sharing some of the behind the scenes stuff and tools I was using.
It was because when I started looking to things like YouTube to learn, I found myself listening to these artists too.
I'd hear the stuff they're doing.
I'd be it's kind of cool.
Maybe I'll download their EP or something.
And it was a much different way of getting into music than I'd ever had before.
Absolutely.
That's a great point.
I'm sure there's just all kinds of new avenues waiting to be explored.
I think that was inspiring to hear you say at that lunch we had.
Because that's a real pressure that I think a lot of us, especially when you are teaching, because you want to feel like you have the right to be teaching.
So I should have a catalog.
I can tell you that just for my point right now that I'm already quite established as a music educator, I can afford to do that.
There was huge pressure a couple of years ago to always release music as the head of the school.
I always like had to prove to myself and that I can prove to others that I can make good music or else what's, why am I an educator?
Like, what can I teach if I can't make good music?
I don't have the right to be a teacher if I can't make good music.
So luckily today, and it's quite amazing for me, I got to a point where I feel like I proved enough to my students that I can make good music that I don't have to make music.
It's just the, you know, the idea is that if you trust upon me to teach you this topic,
You know that I'm also going to give you examples that sounds great, without me needing to now release an album.
Well, like you said earlier, too.
I would have to, I would feel pressured.
Yeah, well that's the benefit of doing a weekly practice like this too for you especially.
And also if anyone's thinking about this route, the content.
Content also validates me a lot.
Back before two years ago, all my content used to be through the mask of BeatLab Academy, the school, which also became very popular online, but people didn't know Yuda was doing
all the content for BeatLab Academy, everything.
So now that it's my face, my artist name, everything,
It's much more validating for people to know me as uh a music educator, Ableton, know, guy.
Well, there's artistry in that.
I mean, your whole approach is unique.
It's to your style.
It fits you well.
So that's, that's, there's art to that.
You know, it's not just technical stuff teaching.
There's definitely a craft and a, and an artist and creativity in it.
And hey, you know, if you're scratching that itch and
Yeah, maybe you don't feel like sitting around and mixing the song and mastering it and so.
I won't let myself finish them.
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah, well, how do you finish anything besides let it go?
insecurity thing.
It's never too good.
It's never good enough.
Which I'm sure a lot of artists face, but, uh, I was never able to pass that point.
I don't know anybody that really has passed it.
think they just deal with it.
For all the people I talk to on this and for myself too, I have to accept it for what it is.
The mindset of thinking it is almost like a journal entry.
This is where I am today.
This is what I was able to do in this recording and live with it.
healthy, dude.
That's really healthy.
Me, I'm sure a lot of people, I go from, I'm a piece of shit to I'm the best artist in the world.
And it's just an extreme spectrum of just going in between them.
So when I teach, I'm more able to be stable in knowing I'm a good teacher and I can give good examples without the need to go between these two extremes of like, wow, I'm the
worst musician ever to, my God, I'm a genius.
I don't like the jump between them.
And sometimes it's a daily thing, you know, of when I, when I try to finish music.
So I'm not, I don't want to.
Right.
to like the end of the take, I go from one extreme to the other.
Yeah.
to be more just not too high, not too low.
It's good, it's healthy.
You gotta watch out for that stuff.
Yeah, it's awesome stuff, man.
I know a lot of people are benefiting from it.
People in my community know you and follow your work.
In my Discord, one of your videos pops up from somebody every once in a while.
Look at this, did you know this?
And it's usually like, nah, I didn't know that.
That's amazing.
That's thank you so much, dude.
Appreciate it.
That's good to hear.
So we can send people sidebrain.net is sort of the hub.
And what's cool is you have these courses a la carte.
You even do like a buy four, get one free.
And I think you have like a vault as well, right?
Where you can, yeah.
a hundred because they, in the beginning of the sessions, we're not all of them got recorded.
So almost a hundred and we are very weak.
have a different thing, a different topic that we talk about.
And I would argue that each week is a lot more than one week's worth of material.
Yeah.
It's a lot of information and people can check out 20 minutes for free on each and each session.
there's so much free material there.
If anyone's interested in checking them out.
Thank you.
always appreciated about what you do.
Yes.
Amazing,
check out Sidebrain wherever you want to go as he's there, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, the internet, and Ableton is always sharing your stuff too,
Yeah.
And I do a lot of work with Everton directly as well.
Yeah.
Well, that's cool, man.
I thank you for being here.
Thank you man for having me until next time.
Appreciate it.
you to the listeners.
You guys have a great day.
Cool, man.
We did it.
dude.
Thank you so much.
That was great.