Welcome to the show, Jay.
What's up?
Thank you so much for having me, man.
Yeah, it's great to have you and congratulations on releasing your first
plugin, Sub Ninja.
Yeah, thank you so much.
It's been a wild ride.
I have to imagine, yeah, cause you come from like a musician producer background
and I'm guessing that this device came out of some sort of need for you.
Like, where is this thing that I want?
So I guess I have to build it.
yeah, absolutely.
Like funny enough, I had something like that.
that I've been using for years and years already.
Like I had it, I use Reaper, it's a fairly unknown DAW, but it has like a lot of
customizable options and including in that is like a small scripting language that
allows you to make kind of like plugins that run in Reaper.
So I hacked together like another scope that was running in there.
I put a filter in there and changed some stuff around so that I had something like
this.
Yeah, and I literally always have it open on every track on my master,
eight years or something.
So in that way, I was supremely convinced that this is a useful tool because I
literally do use it myself all the time.
And then I really wanted to make it into a plugin, you know, and I thought it was
kind of simple to do and then to build it out and like to test the waters a little
bit on how plugin development would go.
Turns out it is actually quite complex, but that's just how these things go.
But yeah, man, yeah, it's very cool to me that it's now a real thing that everybody
can use.
Do you mind just describing it for anyone that's not familiar with SubNinja?
So it's basically a scope plugin.
So like it's a plugin that shows you the waveform of the audio that's going through
it.
And I recommend just putting it on your master bus so you can see the waveform of
your audio, you know, and like to total beginners that maybe are not as deep into
producing yet.
It's kind of like when you have an audio file and you just see the lines on your
computer.
And this will show you like for example, I always have it set up for one bar It'll
show you the waveform of one bar and then the nice thing that sub ninja does it
Allows you to only see the waveform for the low frequency So there's a low pass
filter in there so you can for example only see the frequencies under 100 Hertz
and it turns out that
This is actually, in my opinion, but I've now also gotten feedback from many, many
people that use it, this is the best way to be looking at your bass information.
Because I know many people are used to, for example, maybe looking on a spectrum
analyzer, like the thing you'll have in your EQ.
And that will bounce up and down a little bit, and it'll give you a little bit of
brief snapshots after each other of what your...
what your spectrum, your whole spectrum is looking like, but that's not enough detail
to look at the bass at all.
And on top of that, like...
The scope, the waveform will actually show you that information over time.
So it will show you everything that's happening over time.
It will show you how low the wave is going because you can see how far the waves are
apart.
And it will show you how loud the wave is in that particular time because it will be
higher or lower.
So you can see your kick drums, you can see your bass, you can see how your
sidechain is interacting.
You can see if there's things overlapping, if there's too much bass in something.
Basically in one frame, in one full picture, you can see right away what is
going on in your bass.
It's like kind of like poking your head underwater, you know, and looking like
what is going on.
And these frequencies can just be really hard to hear, like especially in small
studios, not optimal acoustics, you know, and even in a great studio and great
acoustics, it can still be difficult to get the bass right.
And yeah, that's...
It's not a, sorry, this is a long pitch, but I'm, I'm yeah.
Very for me, it's exceptionally useful in showing you what is going on in your bass.
Hmm.
You know, for me, like as I've been learning and throughout my life, like once
I finally got a computer that showed me the EQ spectrum and the frequencies, I was
really fascinated by it to see like, oh, this is what's happening.
And then my initial thought would be like, well, I guess I probably want them all
even.
I want them all to be like the same volume that would sound balanced.
You'd think that, but that doesn't really sound good when you actually do it that
way.
So by like.
Just watching songs that I like the mixes of on the EQ spectrum just taught me so
much.
But you're right, you're only seeing what's happening in the moment.
It's just right now, right now this is what's happening.
But what is cool about Sub Ninja is that it shows it scroll by and that you can
actually see it but you can also just see that bass stuff.
That is one of the hardest things I find to get right.
Because
It changes so much, especially I'm not in the most professionally treated place
right now.
I think it sounds pretty good where I sit, but if I move at all, everything changes,
and especially in the bass.
There's certain times I like to walk around the room sometimes as I listen just
to get a sense of how the sound changes in the different spots.
There are certain places I can stand where there's either no bass or it's like
thunder.
Without something else to kind of give me a little more information, it can be
really tricky to know like, where do I want this to work?
Where do I want it to sound the best?
Where do I want it to, you know, it's the same thing.
the great thing, Brian, is you're already aware of this problem.
So like the things you are explaining now to me are already super advanced in terms
of like, you are aware that actually the bass that you're hearing in your room is
not really equivalent to what is probably present in your track, you know?
Like you can notice that by walking around, like that is great.
But you know, like I think that already is kind of a realization that took me a while
to like figure out, hey man, like what I hear might not actually be what is going
on, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, well, that's the first thing I think you learn when you make a mix and then you
bring it into another system or your car, you play it somewhere else and you're
like, what, like, this isn't what I made.
It's totally different.
very familiar.
So I think it's a funny thing you said that you thought it'd be relatively simple
to translate this.
And turns out, of course, it's not, right?
There's way more that goes into this stuff.
Do you think that was actually a benefit for you?
Like an advantage in that?
Because if maybe if you would have realized how hard it was, would you have
still went ahead and done it?
No, and the cool thing about this whole process of diving into building my own
plugins and doing all that work is that it's like also got me thinking again about
my music, you know, because I've been producing for a while and you, this might
be familiar to you as well, but you kind of like lose those beginner's eyes, you
know, like when I start on a project, I kind of already know where it's going
maybe.
And I might be, you know, less optimistic about it.
beginner and you don't really know all the ways you're gonna feel, you're just like,
oh this is gonna be freaking great, you know, I'm gonna do it and I'm just gonna
go at it and do this and do that and then yeah as you go along, you know, it turns
out that everything takes like, well I want to say like five times as much time
as you think, like there's been many things that I thought were gonna take like
two days and took at least two weeks.
Yeah.
that's so true about so many things.
Even if you're getting like work done on part of your home or something, the
estimate is always so optimistic.
But it's so true about like creative projects too, where you kind of think
you're gonna be able to get through it pretty quick.
But yeah, when you're first starting out, you don't know what you don't know.
So you don't know that like, oh, I could mess up the
the bass frequencies in my mix or I might like I might have phasing like you have to
you have to make a lot of these mistakes before you realize that they're mistakes
you can even make
Yeah.
And it's interesting that the coin always has two sides.
Like on the one side that can cause you some frustrations along the route, but it
can also be that small thing that gives you that little bit of craziness that you
need to go through.
Because at the end of the day, if you just keep pushing through all those hurdles,
then you're going to end up way further than you ever thought you would.
So that is really cool to see again in a different field for myself.
Right, yeah that's what I'm kind of getting at.
The fact that you didn't know how long and winding the road was.
You get on it like, okay, here we go.
No big deal.
I'm in the middle of one of those things right now because...
I've decided that I want to have an update out for SubNinja very soon that is faster
than the version one, that's much faster in drawing because when I built the first
version, I tested it a lot on my own Macbook, which is fast, you know?
And like, I never had any problems and now I have like thousands and thousands of
users and like there's people running it on slower machines and they might want to
run two at a time.
I don't know why or four at a time, but they might want to, you know?
So now I'm all of a sudden like, oh man.
I wish it was much faster.
So like I already know that there's gonna be like I'm working on a version that's
much faster than V1 But dude, I thought that was gonna be like one or two days and
I'm like two weeks in and I'm like, oh my god Where's the end of this, you know?
Again, it's yeah, maybe you just need that craziness to get there It's a gift and a
curse
Yeah.
It's good sometimes what we don't know is what saves us.
A lot of things I think, I don't know if I would have got involved, if I would have
known how involved I needed to get.
Exactly man, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
So do you find yourself like buying old computers now with like slower systems?
I, yes, well not buying, but like I have a habit of keeping my old laptops, my old
production laptops and kind of leaving them in the state that I had them.
So like I literally am here looking at my old Windows laptop.
It's like Windows 10, I think on there.
So I can do some tests on there to see like, okay, what's going on.
And then yeah, I might even try it on some older machines.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah, well, I mean, I think in music too, there's a lot of people that kind of stick
to what works, right?
Like, hey, my system's working, so I'm going to stay on the old version of the
software.
I'm not going to update.
I'm still on Mac, but I'm still not on the latest version of the OS because I'm kind
of like, I don't know, I got this...
old interface that's working great and I don't know what's going to happen on the
next jump.
So you sort of have to account for that.
I know that pain very well.
And especially I went from Windows to Mac like a few years back and the whole M1
question mark if all the plugins were going to work.
But I do think like at a certain point, you know, I talked to a lot of DJ friends
that have exactly the same problem.
I had one.
One friend of me, I sent him Sub Ninja and I was like, oh, you got a chicken.
I was like, so cool, I really want to try this.
And he's like texting me like, oh, it's not working.
I'm like, what the hell, you know, why is it not working?
Like my mind was really blown.
And then I started asking him, what version are you on?
And he's like on a way old like version of Mac OS that I don't support anymore.
I don't fully know why I don't support it, but I know like the framework I use has
certain limitations.
Still something on my to-do list to look into, but I know this fear, but I do want
to say like,
getting free from that or at least a little bit freer from that, especially in
like a professional setting is nice and important in my mind, because at the end
of the day, you know, your computer might crash and burn today and you might want to
get back to work tomorrow.
So, um, yeah, it, it is a bit of a balance of, of doing that, but also a huge pain to
update everything and try to get it to work.
Yeah, and I guess too, you mentioned the M1 thing, and there was Rosetta I was
using for a while to kind of translate, I guess, the old versions of the plugins and
stuff into the new stuff.
So there's probably a lot of people still kind of sitting on that sort of edge of,
I'm going into the new thing, but I'm still kind of here in the old one.
And for you to come in at this point, is it just...
Let's stick with the new.
Do you go back further to those older pre-M1?
Well, I suppose I support pre-M1 for sure I support I think I want to say up to like
11 or 10 or something macOS.
So I'm definitely back a decent way When slash if I have more time, I would
definitely also consider looking into what it would take to build it for those older
systems because you know often with software development like this is built by
geeks like myself and like we want to make sure everything works, you know, so a lot
of the time it's Changing a few lines and it should still be possible But yeah right
now with the onslaught of the launch and the updates I want to do I just didn't I
got to focus on where like the most people are gonna be served So like it's on my
to-do list if I could I would Yeah
I can relate to that on a much simpler level.
Like I do a lot of instrument packs for Ableton Live and there's like, well, what
version should I make it in?
Like they're about to release 12, Live 12.
So do I make it in 10?
Do I 11?
Do I, you know, cause like once you pick one, you can't go back.
So.
Yeah, there you go.
Well, and do you know where your customer base is?
Well, to some degree, but no, not completely.
And I know that there's a lot of people that are still way back.
I get an email every once in a while like, will this work in eight or nine?
Or I think recently even seven.
I was like, no, like that's, I don't even, I don't think I was making stuff when
seven was out, but it was, it's always kind of that question I have.
Like, do I want to throw in these new little bells and whistles?
I can do with a newer version.
Yeah.
Or do I make it in the older versions so that more people can use it?
And you're like, hmm...
so what's your answer?
Well, if it's...
I'll do kind of sometimes two things, right?
So if it's integral to the thing I'm trying to build, then you have to use the
newer version.
If I can kind of do like half of it in say, an older version, and kind of get
something like that'll work, I'll do that and then maybe I'll take it to the next
level in another version of it.
Yeah.
So you can have the older version for, say, Live 10.
But if you want all the features, you'll need 11.
And you'll use this version instead.
But beyond that, yeah, I'm not going earlier than 10 anymore, just because
there's only so much time in a day.
Yes.
What's your thoughts?
Do you like it?
I've had it for quite some time now.
I really like it.
I use it mostly.
There's a lot of great new features.
A lot of the MIDI editing is really nice.
There's some cool new transformers and generators that can just really get your
ideas going.
So it's great when you're kind of not sure what to do and you just need a little
nudge so you can play with that stuff.
Some cool new devices, nice updates to the look.
I'm still getting used to the new browser system.
I've gotten so comfortable with the old way, and they did make some pretty
significant changes, so now it feels unknown.
And I haven't really dove completely into some of the new features on it, just out
of fear that if they change it, like there's this new tagging thing they have,
and filtering your tags and stuff.
So...
I didn't want to dive too far into that because if they change it, I'll lose all
my work of tagging everything.
There's that thing too, if you're using a beta, how much do you want to lean on it
because things can change in the next release and then you just kind of, uh-oh.
but I'm excited for when it actually releases so that I can just be all in.
Yeah, yeah, cool.
I used to be a big Ableton user, and I couldn't help myself but buy the 12
license when on like the, I don't know, they always do one of these pre-enrollment
programs, so I did do that.
I'm definitely curious to check it out, and yeah, maybe start getting back into
Ableton a little bit because I do miss some features of it.
I really loved it as a program.
Are you using Reaper then?
Because I hear a lot of people, I've never used it, no.
But I, and here's the thing, I've kind of like, I don't know if this is even right,
but the kind of connection I make in my head is Reaper seems to be more for people
that wants like complete control and freedom.
Kind of like the way I think about Mac and Windows people.
Like I use a Mac because I don't want
to worry about the computer so much.
I wanna work and have the computer sort of be in the background, but I have friends
that are more into programming and coding, and they want that stuff front and center.
So I don't know if that's the right way to look at it, but that's always sort of how
I've seen that in my head anyway.
But maybe you can...
There's some truth to it.
I think...
Yeah, I don't really know how to put it.
What I think, let me say this, what is great about Reaper is that you have
endless ways to customize things.
You can, everything can have a shortcut, you can make macros, you can even program
your own scripts.
I have a bunch of custom scripts, I have a bunch of custom visual things, endless
customization.
Really, anything you can think of pretty much, you can do.
It's fast, it's stable, it has all the geek features.
So like when we were talking about the moving from the this version to the that
version, I don't know how long this has been in Reaper, but I can like load
different plugin versions in different projects and in different ways.
So like I'm never too worried that something's not gonna work.
I tested this out before I updated as well.
And then...
You know, like that is really nice because even before the M1 thing, it wasn't always
sure if like VST3 was working in Ableton or something.
I don't even freaking remember.
But back then everything would always work in Reaper.
So that's a great benefit.
Um, so that's amazing.
The biggest, biggest downside to me is that a lot of things are aesthetically not
as pretty.
So like they have left some things just kind of like the default operating system
menus and stuff, which I just think is off-putting and it's not nice for a
creative process.
And I do think it's really important for user experience.
And because it's so customizable, everything is different for everybody.
So if I was working with somebody that had Ableton,
we could both just interchangeably work because your shortcuts are my shortcuts
and like we know how the system works, you know?
That's why it's kind of like Apple.
But Reaper, my whole keyboard is gonna be set up different from anybody else using
Reaper and there's ways to like swap in and out like shortcut sets, but nobody
wants to do that.
So it's like you have endless possibilities, it's a great program.
If you're like down in the weeds and you want to have all the options, go for it.
It's freaking amazing.
But yeah.
Mm-mm.
Yeah, I could see how that's both good and bad.
Sometimes that freedom lets you do crazy, unique stuff.
That's all you.
But it is also kind of nice to be invited into a bit of a workflow.
There's a lot of devices, instruments, and tools I have here that I really like that
it
only sort of does like the one thing it does, but it does it well.
And there's other things that does everything.
And it's like, I don't even know how to get around this thing.
It becomes a bit overwhelming.
I mean, like we could talk for three hours about the differences between these
programs and I have so many opinions about it and like I find, I would find it hard
to recommend any program to anybody for particular reasons.
But I gotta say like Reaper is so awesome and it really deserves much more.
users and people to be excited about it than they have, but I also see the
drawbacks for people, you know?
I get it, I get both sides of it.
Yeah, and at the end of the day, I think it's what you know, right?
Like where you're comfortable.
I certainly know people that have either like stuck to the old software or just use
like antiquated gear, but they're really good at it and they know how to get
results out of it.
So.
the most important.
It's just a tool to like help you make music.
Yeah, I think as producers ourselves, we think that stuff's much more important
than it is.
We might listen to a song by an artist we love and wonder, how do they make that?
What software do they use?
What synths are they using?
Which kind of guitar is that?
But the average person doesn't...
Even before I got into recording, I wasn't thinking about that stuff.
Maybe I thought about guitar playing, but I wasn't even thinking about what kind of
drums are those.
It's just, I guess when you're deep in the weeds like that, those are the things you
think about and that you think matter, but it's the result is what counts.
Yeah.
It's, Oh man, Brian, you're dragging, you're dragging me down.
You're dragging me into the weeds.
I, yes, I totally agree with like, I totally agree with you, but then there's
also this part of me that is like, Oh man, but if you can optimize your workflow in
flow in certain ways, that can be like huge in terms of not getting you out of
the flow.
And that has also benefited me greatly.
So I kind of have this running gag with myself.
I'm also into home automation stuff.
So I have a lot of home automation stuff at home.
There's this open platform called Home Assistant, you might know it's really
cool.
And I often like joke to myself, like I've already spent so much more time
programming my whole smart home than any of these automatic lights or alarm systems
or anything are ever gonna save me.
It's the same with Reaper, I spent so much time like customizing everything, that's
more than it's ever gonna save me.
But that feeling of like.
You know, hitting one button when I want my EQ with automation right in front of
me, or I want my favorite reverb with automation on a dry wet, right on the
track with one button.
And that keeps me in the process in that moment.
That can also be very valuable.
So.
you mentioned that too, the home automation, because I recently did very
minimal.
I can now come down to my studio here and tell Siri to like turn it on, turn it off,
instead of flipping on like all these switches.
Because as silly as it sounds, and it makes me feel like such a lazy person,
sometimes the thought of turning on like six switches
setting up a stupid microphone, say, is enough to make me not do it sometimes.
exactly.
And that is if you can pass that hurdle and make that less like more frictionless
Like as frictionless as possible.
That is a very valuable thing So like I for sorry good
I was just to finish that thought the night I set up that system.
I thought that was gonna be like a short thing and then I was gonna make music and
I just spent the whole night making the automation.
I didn't even touch the software or any instruments.
One of my best friends, I'm in this big creative building with lots of creatives.
And he used to be in a studio right next to me.
He's a photographer, like a fashion photographer.
And now does a lot of 3D stuff.
He made the 3D intro for Sub Ninja as well.
And he used to come over here and like...
walk past my door and knock on the door and like we'd have coffee for hours.
And yeah, I don't know.
I don't know what the English word for that would be, but like we'd sit on the
couch and like talk about like kind of procrastinating our work, but also how
important that can sometimes be where you like, you know, you kind of go through
that motion of putting it off, but actually maybe your subconscious is
already kind of thinking about it and getting things ready and preparing.
I am a huge believer in that.
So don't, don't see it all as wasted time.
Yeah.
Well, that's the funny thing about it, right?
Like you can really avoid the work by doing cable management and making sure
everything's connected and cleaning up and rearranging, but you also get a lot back
from that too.
And it's, I guess it's important to just be honest with yourself.
What are you actually doing?
Is this necessary?
Are you avoiding the task?
But as you said, sometimes.
Just doing that stuff lets the ideas kind of ferment in your mind a little bit and
play around and straighten themselves out.
Exactly.
And I, to me, like the difference is, are you like exactly what you're saying?
Are you honest with yourself?
You know, it's like the difference between the person that is going to the gym every
day, but it's just having coffees there and talking.
Yeah.
Then you're going to the gym and then you're not doing anything there.
But like, yeah, exactly.
Then nothing is happening.
But if you actually go there and like, okay, you know, maybe some days you don't
do anything and you're chatting and you're making friends, but like, if you.
are using those friends the next time to come back to train harder, that's when
it's useful.
And that's the distinction, you know?
So like if somebody was like just telling me how they got the most perfect setup,
but never made a song yet, then you're on the wrong side of that, the balance that
you need to strike.
Both things are really important.
Yeah, yeah, and I guess there's, you know, evidence that some of that's so extra.
I was talking recently on a podcast and they were telling me about somebody that
was working on an album and I guess like their system crashed, you know, and.
In order to finish the album, they went to the Apple store with the USB stick and put
it into Logic and was just like kind of working at those computers for as long as
they, so they caught him basically.
And then he just kind of come back later.
But like there's like the other end of that where just I'm going to get the work
done and do what you got to do.
also need that mindset and that, you know, you also need to finish sometimes for
real.
It's super important.
Yeah.
Yep.
The thing we get the least amount of practice doing is the finishing part.
Yeah, like you mean the finishing of the songs?
Yeah, yeah, that whole end process.
We start them all the time, right?
And after a while you get good at that.
But to get to the end of the race, that's the hardest place to be.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Especially when you don't have like real, uh, real world deadlines, you know, like I
was last week, I was doing a podcast with these Dutch guys, um, also dance
producers, uh, artist coaching, Joey Zucchi and, um, and Jay Hardway.
And we were talking about this thing as well, where, you know, like finishing
tracks, that's like so important if you're, if you're a beginner and.
If you want to learn how to make music fast, give yourself like a deadlines.
You know, it doesn't matter if it's perfect or not, like finish the things up
to where it's a whole thing.
And that, like, like you said, like that might be the thing we get the least
practice in, but if you can take any idea and finish that into a song, like you
could give me any eight bar loop and I could make that into a song to you.
Like if I, I've done a, I've done a lot of remixes and
Yeah, you know, they have deadlines.
It's easier when other people give you deadlines because then you feel the
pressure.
It's much easier.
But like I would just know, you know, like I take a week to make the remix and I knew
at the end of the week it was gonna be done.
It might not be perfect.
Might not be my favorite remix, but it was gonna be done.
You know, and actually...
I think as you go along, I'm totally off on a tangent now, I'm sorry, but I think
if you go along long enough, you'll find out that, you know, what might be like a
six and a half for you because you're so like deep into it and you don't even
freaking know left from right anymore.
Then maybe actually it's actually good in the real world.
It's good enough or like, I don't, I don't really like saying that because that makes
it sounds like, Oh, I'm just half-assing things as long as it's good enough.
That's not how I perceive it.
But sometimes
We're probably all more perfectionistic than we need to be.
So sometimes we just got to be like, Hey man, this is good enough.
Onto the next one.
Yeah, that's a good point because there is, I think we all have that, right?
That perfectionism and if not, we at least have like the critic that will come in and
be like, I don't know, are people going to like this?
Is this good enough?
Is this smart enough?
Did you clean it up enough?
When you're working on like those types of deadlines, how do you get around that?
Because like you said, sometimes you don't know which way is up and down, left and
right.
You're so in the...
you're too close to it almost.
Yeah, man.
I mean, I've, I've said in the past that my songs are finished either when I stop
working on them or when I die, you know, like, cause you can always keep tweaking,
um, but yeah, I, the thing is like, okay, so just to give you like a real answer,
how I really think about it.
It's, and it's not maybe like the most obvious one-liner there is, but you need
to strike that balance between being that guy in a gym that goes there to do
nothing.
And.
the person in the gym that goes there to train.
I need to strike a balance between finishing tracks and making new stuff and
exploring.
And those are different things.
You don't need to have different time schedules for it, but when I have a remix
request assignment, then there is a deadline.
When you do this professionally, you cannot spend limitless time on every track
that you make because this is your job.
And I've gotten now to the point where that's just so ingrained in me because
that's what I learned, but way in the beginning, there was a time when I was
doing bootlegs and remix competitions.
And one of the first things that got the hymn started was a remix competition for
Chesto, and the idea was to make that in 24 hours.
So I would make the track, mix the track, master the track all in 24 hours.
I think.
that they started at like nine o'clock and ended at like two o'clock, but then it was
done.
And it was handed in and it got second place, I think.
And that was one of the first times I thought like, hey man, shit, this is like,
yo, this is something real.
People like this has value in a way, you know?
But that was an arbitrary deadline.
Like I was just busy doing other things as well.
So I thought like this needs to happen in a short timeframe.
This is all I have and it's just gonna happen, you know?
Hmm.
And this is something anybody can do.
Anybody can give themselves a deadline.
I'm gonna finish one track a week, one track a day, one track a month.
It doesn't matter what it is, as long as you make that deadline for yourself and
stick to it.
And it doesn't need to be perfect.
This is the whole inner struggles is real.
I have that too, everybody has that.
But if you have that bigger goal of like...
I'm actually learning how to finish this.
I'm not learning how to make the perfect song because that's never gonna happen.
I am practicing now finishing stuff.
And then that's what you gotta set out to do.
I like that way of thinking, like just the practice finishing.
I recently had somebody in my...
Discord for my music production clubs say something like, I can't make songs, I
can't do it.
I'm like, my response was, I bet you can make really bad songs.
Make terrible songs.
And I think that was one of the first episodes I ever did of this podcast was
just called Make Bad Music.
Just for the sake of getting through the practice.
I guess it's why sports.
teams will have scrimmages, you know, that don't count.
It's just a matter of going through the game, getting the practice in, and if you
lose, you lose, who cares?
But it's so important to just know what it's going to look like when you get
there, when you get to the next stage, and what's going to happen next, to just get
the practice.
So even making songs that aren't good, that you don't like, aren't failures.
They're just...
You know, they have reps at the gym, you know.
Maybe they weren't your personal best bench press, but you still did a bench
press.
You didn't go backwards, you didn't stay the same, you moved forward a little bit.
Yeah, no, that's so well put, like making, like sometimes that's just the assignment
you gotta give yourself, you know, make a shitty track, make a shitty song.
I do that too, you know, I make them inadvertently, but I also give myself the,
maybe, like the assignment or like the permission to make something bad and then,
yeah, you do that often enough, then something good might pop out.
Yeah.
Yeah, you have to have that permission is a good way to put it.
Like allow yourself.
That's where I get stuck is as soon as I start questioning if it's any good, if I'm
doing it right or if people are going to like it or or, you know, is it I always
think about like, is it clever enough?
You know, all these chords are too common.
I always get hung up on that, you know.
And the funny thing is.
So much of what I love is so simple musically.
You know, it's maybe got a thing or two that's interesting, but basically, you
know, first month of music theory covers what they're doing in these songs.
But it's so funny that a lot of, if you just kind of follow through on ideas too,
they almost always reveal something.
Something interesting can happen from it.
Hmm.
I've seen it in myself when I forced myself to do it, but I've especially seen
it watching friends or other people that are working on a song where I might
actually think like, that's a bad idea.
It's dumb.
Just try something new.
And then the next time I hear it, it's great.
It's so much better.
It's so funny how often that happens and whether it's from me doing it and just
following through or watching someone else do it.
that it makes me feel like you just never ever know.
Yeah.
And it's so hard, man.
It's so hard to do that right, you know, to get that balance right.
Like I do, or I used to do definitely a lot, a lot of like writing sessions with
songwriters and, and get to get songs, you know, and, um, and then like often,
especially in the beginning, I would like be halfway, you know, in the first hour
thinking, ah, this is total crap.
Like this is, it's not going to happen.
Yeah.
But I've learned that one of the best things you can do is just like, go with
it, man.
And then just say like, oh, why don't we record this one?
Cause like people, that's how you keep going.
You know, like maybe they needed to get that out of the system to get to the next
song.
You don't know what sparks that next idea.
And like, just like you said, your friend might play you something that you think
like this is total crap.
But then next week, actually you hear the variation on what spawned from that little
bit of crap.
And that could be a great song, you know, like that's just how this weird creativity
thing works.
Yeah, it's so funny that it's like, I guess just the future is unknown, right?
Like anything can happen and that's just the way these songs work.
I hope people aren't getting tired of me mentioning this, but in January, I do the
Jammuary challenge to make something every single day.
And...
The beauty of it is, is just that you just usually don't have time to decide if you
like it or not.
You don't have that luxury.
It's like you're running out of time, it's getting late, you gotta finish it.
Just you gotta see it through.
You gotta get it to some presentable point.
And the bar is really low.
It doesn't have to be a finished song or anything.
But man, it blows my mind when I listen back to some of that stuff and I'm like, I
really thought this was...
junk when I was making it and I was just trying to get it done but like I kind of
like it.
There's something nice about it.
There's something interesting going on here and also just the sense of
satisfaction that it's not impossible.
You can do it.
Exactly.
And great, great challenge.
Everybody that wants to be serious about making music should try stuff like that.
Um, and there you go, you know, and it's going to hurt and some stuff is going to
suck.
And I'm pretty sure there's also research out on like.
that actually the most successful creatives are usually also the people that
produce the most things so they have more to pick from.
Again, this is all definitely a balancing act and it's never as simple, but yeah.
Yeah, I would even, it would be great for me to do something like that again as well
soon.
And...
Yeah, most of my favorite people that talk about songwriting and music production
talk about it just like it's this everyday thing.
You just show up and put in the work.
You don't wait till you're inspired.
Maybe you got to find it.
You got to sort of hunt it down and just see it through.
Yeah, you got to be at the pond, right?
You can't be at home being like, oh.
It'd be great to catch a fish right now.
Yeah.
Right.
Jeff Tweedy from Wilco has a new book, fairly new, where he talks about songs
that affected him throughout his life.
Good or bad, and some of the songs he talks about he doesn't even like.
One song he talks about was Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You, the one that
Whitney Houston did.
And the thing that just stuck with me is like, she wrote that the same day she
wrote Jolene.
So this one day, Dolly Parton sat down and busted out two timeless classic songs that
people still know and love today and have been covered, probably have set up
generations of her family financially.
What if she didn't show up that day?
What if she was tired or just, you know, decided to do something else, you know,
watch TV or something?
Yeah, but Brian, let's be real.
We don't know.
Maybe she stayed home the day before and that's why she wrote those bangers the
next day.
I don't know.
No, it's, uh, yeah.
She definitely did.
Yeah.
And one thing is for sure.
If you don't go fishing, you're not going to catch anything.
Um, yeah, I've, I always find it so hard.
Like I've definitely come to learn that I'm, I'm very much an advice seeker.
So like.
I've read a lot of books and listened to podcasts and I love learning about
creativity.
A lot of the things we're talking about and we're thinking about and you're
talking about and mentioning, they really hit close to home.
But I've also learned much more that in different phases of my creative life, I've
learned much
The opposite advice can be the advice that I need.
So I'm always a little bit hesitant to even say like, oh, you got to show up
every day to go fishing, you know?
Because maybe the person listening to this right now actually needs to hear from us,
hey, man, or, you know, like, yeah, man, you've been fishing like five weeks
straight and it's not biting, that's fine.
You need, like, maybe you need to take a breath.
And I think probably it's going to sound very lame, but probably the most wisdom is
coming from knowing in which phase you are yourself.
Hmm.
That's great advice there, that your advice doesn't always apply that you
receive.
And yeah, sometimes if you're showing up every day, maybe you're getting stuck in a
rut and a pattern that a little space will allow you to try something new.
Um.
I recently came across something, because I'm the same way, I like to learn about
learning and getting advice and all of that.
Thinking like one day I'm going to get the secret answer, right?
That will help me forever.
But it was about practicing.
How people that practice for short periods of time and then take a break and then
practice again for short periods of time, take a break, wind up...
like, what do you call it, retaining and growing with that practice a lot faster
than the people that will sit down for like three hours, nonstop, and work on it.
There's something about that taking short breaks, you know, every couple minutes, to
just kind of let it set in, and then coming back.
And I felt that in my own playing, in my own songwriting, sometimes when I take a
break,
When I come back, I'm a little fresher.
I'm more apt to try something new or more excited even.
Sometimes it's just, you just need a little break to get excited again.
Yeah.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I would again say in this example, the hardest part is knowing when you need that
break and when you need to stick it out.
And I can tell you, I suck at that.
I always go on too long to the point where I'm like completely over it and like, oh,
you know, it start feeling, starts feeling annoying and like a chore and then.
Yeah, you know, there's, I mean, I think it's probably also part of my creative
experience, at least that it goes in waves and ups and downs.
And yeah, you got to, you got to still have that mentality of keep on going with
the whole project.
But yes, sometimes learning involves taking it in bite-sized chunks and taking
breaks.
And there might also be times where it actually means, no, now you just got to
grind.
And to know which is which, I don't know, man.
If you could tell me, like when I was saying it would be wisdom to know which
part you should pick, I was meaning, I don't know.
You know, I absolutely suck at this.
So that's a hard one.
I think that's why back traditionally we had producers and people like that to tell
you.
Almost like you have a trainer at a gym that'd be like, no, you need to push
harder or now it's time to rest.
You kind of need some sort of direction there.
But now we're doing that all ourselves.
So we need to...
You need to kind of like...
let go of yourself so that you can get creative, but you also need to be in touch
with yourself to know there's so many opposing things.
Yeah, it's kind of like meditating, you know, like sitting down and trying not to
think.
Like it's crazy, it's impossible.
Yeah, it's the same with this.
What would be your biggest challenge that you are like, that you face on the regular
or that you are in right now?
Like how do you perceive that in the creative process?
Um, I don't know, cause I feel like every single part of it is hard.
That's where I'm at right now.
Like starting is hard, finishing is hard, sticking with it is hard.
Staying focused is hard.
Um.
I think that I'm trying to just remind myself that it's always like the first
part of everything that's hard for me, whether it's actually getting started or
moving on to the next part.
Say I've got like a loop I'm working on, you know, I might be feeling real good,
but like, all right, now let's come up with some place for this to go.
All these transitional moments, I think, are where I get hung up.
Maybe I'm dividing things into stages too much or...
Oh, I don't know.
mixing and recording and editing?
Yeah, I guess writing, recording, sometimes I'm doing them all at once.
Um, a lot of times I'm doing them all at once actually.
So there's a lot of switching gears, I guess.
And, uh,
That's tricky.
That's where every time you switch, I think, you run the risk of falling off the
track a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
And you've kind of said it already, but this stuff is still hard for you.
And everyone I talk to says it's hard.
So I take a little bit of comfort in that.
Not that I want my suffering to be wished upon anybody, but it is kind of nice to
know that these things are hard and that's part of it.
So I'm at my best when I realize that in the moment.
when I'm like, yeah, this is hard, but that's good.
We want this to be hard, you know?
If it was easy, it wouldn't matter.
If it was easy, anyone could do it.
And if it was easy when you did it, what would be the big deal?
Yeah.
So, and if it was easy, I'm probably not learning anything either.
So every time it gets hard is kind of a good thing, but...
That's when I can remember that in the moment.
I need a sign, you know?
Like something that's, I need to sum it up.
Like if it's difficult, it's good, or if you're struggling, that's good.
are some of those like the obstacles, the way you kind of thought.
And I don't know if you it's kind of like, yeah, yeah.
I think I might have read it.
It's not that I'm not really recommending that book, but I'm more meaning like that
idea is out there.
And there's definitely a lot of truth in there.
You know, like usually where you feel the most resistance, that's probably where the
most growth is as well.
Yeah.
And also a lot of opportunity for like, you know, the satisfaction of overcoming
that.
Uh, yeah, that resistance.
There's this great book by, um, Stephen, the war of art.
It's over there.
So what's his last name again?
Pressfield.
Yes.
Great book.
He talks about the resistance and I've read it a bunch of times and it always
gives me a little bit of that jolt again, like, ah, you know, you got to.
It's the enemy that you gotta fight.
And I think that's what you're kind of naming as well.
That obstacle, that resistance, that's what you're up against.
Right.
And I love that he put it to a name, resistance, capital R, you know, proper
noun.
And it's a force that stops you from doing it.
I love that book.
I've read it so many times.
I listened to it.
He's got a great audio book and it's got, it's got almost like military music, like
in the background sometimes.
Just cause it, yeah.
Cause his voice is, it's like a coach kind of kicking your ass a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, sometimes you need that.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
do this.
Yeah, it's a good one.
Definitely one of my favorites.
I think probably I've given that to a lot of people as a gift.
I was like, you gotta read this.
Just kind of change your life a little bit.
Yeah, any other books?
Well, I just finished, and this is just the most recent one on my mind, a book
called – he wrote Essentialism, but this one is called Effortless.
Greg McEwen, I believe is the name.
I'll put it in the show notes.
And again, some of the things we're talking about, he mentions some –
this idea of effortless, that you want to make the productive things in your life
easier to do and the non-productive things harder to do.
You know, like kind of just, it's easier to do this thing.
But you know, one thing he talks about is be willing to make garbage, be willing to
fail, be willing to all that.
But he was, what was it, saying, oh, this idea like...
You want to do enough where you're making some progress, but you also need like an
end time too, which is something I'm really enjoying thinking about, like kind
of leaving something on the table.
Like I don't want to work too hard today so that I can't do anything tomorrow.
And I want to also sort of leave myself hanging a little bit so I'm excited to
start tomorrow.
I think Ernest Hemingway used to do that.
I think he used to...
stop mid-sentence or something, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Is that working for you?
I do think that helps because it's kind of like, I don't have to think about where
I'm going to pick up the next day.
And that sometimes is a really big hurdle.
I spend a lot of time like wandering around, considering the things I could do
next.
Whether it's, it could be a lot of things, it could be like household chores, or it
could be...
musically what I'm gonna do next, but to just be sort of, all right, this is the
next thing, without that question, without that thought of like, should I do this
now?
I know I just, this is what's next.
And then you're not questioning it, because if I decide, yeah, I'm gonna do
this, oh man, maybe I should have done the other thing.
You know, like that, so then you never really get into the thing you're actually
doing.
Yeah, very interesting.
Yeah, I enjoyed that one a lot, effortless.
It actually took me, I listened to it.
So I don't know how many pages, but it was probably about like an hour and a half
into it.
And I was almost ready to just be like, I don't need this right now.
Sometimes things just don't grab you.
But once I got to that point, I was like, oh wait, that was good.
I'm gonna get something out of this.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Glad you stuck through it.
Hmm.
Now let me ask you, like, taking on this plug-in making job, that must have taken
up a lot of your time, and I bet that was a break from music, right?
That must have taken away some of your time.
Did you find pursuing something else like that, it's got a musical thing to it,
obviously, but there's a lot of much different skills.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
affect your whole flow?
Did it change the way you make music?
Did it give you some of that fresh air and time to breathe a little bit?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think I like somewhere last year, somewhere in 2023 or 2024 right now, I'm
like, I'm to the point where I started losing the years somewhere at the
beginning of last year, I was like, I really need to do something else and just
make a music like I was kind of feeling a little stale, like the music felt a little
stale, what I was doing felt a little stale and it felt like this kind of loop
of, oh, next release, next release, like.
you know, not as inspired anymore.
So I, first I just kind of picked up the audio program thing on the side and just,
just exploring a little bit if there was anything interesting there.
And then I started catching some steam and seeing that some of the things that I
wanted to make were possible and how they were possible.
Um, and I am.
There has been a period in my life where I could really combine it to things, where I
was doing some programming and some making music, because I was always already making
scripts for Reaper and improving my workflow in there and doing a little bit
of both in that way.
But then I was always much more focused on, oh, I got this idea for my workflow
that I want to improve.
you know, let's make that and then use it.
And that kind of went back and forth.
But with the plugin making, there was definitely a big period where it was just
like, okay, I'm actually, if I'm honest, it's like now 80% making plugins and 20%
making music.
Um, and I'm now even worse, like the last couple of months, uh, it's more like a
hundred percent plugins, which is also slightly due because I just five months
ago now already had my second daughter.
which is just, thank you, one of the best things in life, but it puts the schedule
under pressure cooker.
So where I could normally combine everything, I currently just have much
less time and less energy as well because of the sleep and stuff.
And I don't know, do you have kids?
I don't know, okay, well, just don't sleep for a couple of nights and you'll know
what I'm talking about.
it.
I understand it's a big commitment.
It is, yeah, if you want a big commitment, do that.
So like I've been doing a lot of plugin work, but I'm actually...
feeling like, especially when we start talking about creativity again, I'm like
feeling this urge that I want to make music again.
And I'm thinking about what I want that to be.
And, and yeah, I'm really getting more, I feel like I'm getting more and more
excited again to get a little bit back into active, like really active music
making and pushing myself in the ways that I used to do, you know, in the ways that I
know, uh, where you grow.
things as you become more professional in music is that the growth is what makes
things fun.
That's how I see it at least.
When you're a beginner and that's in plugins and sports and whatever you do,
the growth is really fun and the further you get along your...
career, between quotation marks, the harder it becomes to grow.
And that doesn't mean that I'm so good that I can't grow anymore.
It might just mean that I've done it for such a long time that I don't have that
fresh perspective anymore where, you know, anything that I used to read like manuals
of synthesizers and like freaking like watch and read anything I could get my
hands on.
But at a certain point you become a professional and it's like less of that
and it's more of just making the thing, which is also great.
Um, but like actually having some perspective from this whole plugin thing,
I'm getting more and more excited to, to apply some of the things I've learned
there to like making music again.
Yeah.
So it kind of builds a little bit.
So rather than every day you're letting out some of that creative steam, now it's
kind of building up a little bit.
And when you get a chance to do it, you have some desire and direction.
man, but it might, like I already know, like when I'm, I did a session last week,
I thought I was going to be way rustier than I actually was, but I know I'm going
to be a little rusty.
Like I know I'm going to be like, you know, a basketball player getting back on
the field after like a long vacation.
Yeah.
The first couple of days, I don't know, weeks of doing that, everything's going to
kind of like feel floppy.
You're not going to jump as easy as you thought you'd do.
You're not going to be as fast as you thought you were.
You know, like it's going to be very frustrating.
So that's going to be a whole challenge in itself, but I'm pretty excited to like,
get that going again.
Yeah.
Well, it's, I guess that's the way it is when we learn.
Like when you first learn something, you're growing so fast, right?
Like it's...
every new thing you learn doubles your knowledge of what you already had.
And then reading the manuals for synthesizers, and you're taking in all
this knowledge.
But that has to kind of slow down at some point.
And I think that is a point where a lot of people kind of lose interest when they
stop learning.
Because you could read the manual for another synthesizer, but do you really
need to know about oscillators again?
Like, you kind of got that thing under control.
So...
It can feel like you're stagnating, I guess, and that nothing's really changing,
there's not a lot of growth happening.
And that can be frustrating.
No, exactly.
And I don't know if this is for everybody, but at least for me, that feeling of
growth and achieving things, whether it's your personal goals or goals in the out in
the world, that is what makes things fun, you know?
Yeah.
How much like how do you do that?
Like how much time do you spend making music?
Like, do you have a schedule for that?
Like, is it?
every hour you can do is in the studio like how does that work for you?
Yeah, well, here's the funny thing, right?
Like when I'm working, when I've schooled, I'm teaching, I'm probably more
productive, which is funny because I have less time.
But when I go on to break, I'm on a break for this week, and I'll say summer
vacation, it just seems like I have so much time and it's not as precious, right?
So I don't have to hustle to do things and a lot of it gets wasted.
I mean, I thought I was gonna have like four albums done by this point of the
week.
And here I am, I've got like barely anything done.
But it's funny how that helps motivate you, move you when you run out of that.
So it's not so much that I have a schedule, but I know like when...
I get out from work, I got some time to work on stuff.
So it might be producing this podcast, it might be working on some music, it might
be building some sounds or something, whatever it might be.
But I always try to make sure it's something.
I got kind of like, with a podcast, it sort of has its deadline.
I try to get one out every week.
I would like to be a little more disciplined with a lot of the other things
too.
I don't know why the podcast is easy for me to meet that goal.
For whatever reason.
Just the regularity.
I mean, is it maybe like when, back to the gym analogies, like when the gym is really
close to house, then you always leave quite late and then you don't go, whether
when it's like an hour or like, no, nobody's gyms an hour away, but like a 15
minute.
Right?
You know, like then you actually have to plan it in and you have to do it.
So like maybe your podcast involves setting up these meetings, you know, you
can't call your guests the day before.
So you have to schedule it in advance and you know, you, you know, you have to set
certain things in plan.
Um, I know this, I'm saying this because this is what happens to me all the time.
You know, like it's the things that, you know, have the flexibility that you
actually then give the least attention, but they might be the most important
thing.
Yeah, that's a great point because there's other people involved, right?
Like we made this plan to be here at this time.
I can't be like, well, you know, I'm going to just kind of like lay around a little
longer today.
And then the release of it too is like, you know, people sat down and talked with
me.
I have to make it happen.
You know, if it's six months before this thing comes out, you're going to be
like...
like, Brian, what the hell?
You know, what happened?
So yeah, that would be probably a really smart thing to just build into life where
there's, hire somebody to just like yell at me.
Yeah.
Yeah, and if you find that person, give them my details.
They can yell at me too.
Yeah, exactly.
This idea though, it doesn't have to be like making a plugin or something, but
finding some other pursuit that you take up that will eat up some of your time so
that maybe, you know, if, and this probably only works if you are
really in the routine of making music constantly, and you need something that's
sort of give you some space to feel fresh about it again.
I guess some sort of, could be some other art form or like you're doing, like making
a plugin or something.
Could be a really healthy way to stay productive and then feel rejuvenated when
you return.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And I think that is a healthy balance.
Like I've often in my life had two things going on at the same time and like kind of
stepping off one stone to step on to the next one.
And
And it can mean stepping back and forth as well.
And I think that's, for me at least, it's a healthy thing to have multiple things.
Because it can also be nice.
You know, like when the music thing is super annoying and then I think, oh, I'm
going to do something on a plugin.
And that can be really rewarding.
And this got a little bit out of hand.
But I mean, why not?
If it's possible, I think it can be a very healthy thing.
Hmm.
A lot of people, I think, you know, a lot of people, sometimes I talk to people
about music and what I do.
And I know I'm super privileged to have been able to make music my job and my main
thing.
And I see sometimes, especially in beginners, like that envy of like, oh, I
wish I could do music as my full time thing.
But I think...
You know, you sometimes it's easy to forget how nice it can be to bounce back
and forth, you know, and lean on that wall that's your other thing to be free in that
thing that's your music.
And because once it becomes a professional thing, there's a whole other pressures
that you're going to have to deal with.
So there's a lot of value in doing that back and forth between pursuits, maybe.
Yeah, I hear that a lot about, I've talked to people that say like, you know, I don't
pick up my guitar and just strum it anymore.
You know, like, and, you know, I know people that come home from work and just
play their guitar.
No point.
It just goes out into the ether.
It's relaxing.
It's just pure nothing.
And
For me, a lot of times it's a means to an end.
I'm trying to make a song, I'm trying to finish something, I'm trying to produce
something.
And that can be sometimes what you lose when you get into things professionally
and you make it a job or a business.
And I think it's important to remember to keep that as part of it.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
And it's hard.
Again, this is one of those things that, at least for me, that's an ongoing
challenge of finding ways to deal with that, you know?
Hmm.
Well, let me ask you, like, are you going to be doing any touring anytime soon?
Because I know you've done, like, you do the festival circuit, lots of big stages.
I'm sure that's, I mean, I'm obviously thrilling, right?
But does that ever also suffer from the same problem of, here we go again, kind
of?
Well, I definitely know that in the periods in time where I was touring a lot,
there were also moments where you're like, oh man, you know, it's hard to imagine,
but when you are like, oh, I don't want to go, you know, I don't necessarily want to
go away again.
Like being, don't get me wrong, being on stage, best thing there is, it's so
amazing, so cool.
But like the going and the traveling, that can be super taxing.
I do, I want to perform, I love performing.
I love being on stage.
So it'll happen.
It's not my main priority right now, but it'll happen and like I'll be super happy
again to interact with fans and to be DJing.
And yeah, it's just a whole nother level of excitement.
But I just have so many things I want to do, like these plugins and like Sub Ninja
was only actually
the very first thing that I wanted to release, I'm actually working on a much
bigger thing as well.
And I wanna finish that and I wanna make awesome music.
And then I got so many things I wanna do at the same time.
So I'm sure touring will be a part of my life again.
But yeah, we'll see, we'll see.
Yeah, I'm sure, especially new family member now.
So, you don't, every day is a new advancement at that age, right?
Kind of like when we talk about learning music, like learning life every day is a
giant step.
Absolutely, yeah.
Yeah, so I've played in bands and we've organized our own tours, you know, very
DIY punk rock, reaching out to other bands.
Can you guys on a show in Pittsburgh?
And like, yeah, okay, cool.
We'll set you up here on New York, you know, kind of trading stuff.
But we've organized some tours and I mean, it's like you said, like playing is that
energy is hard to find anywhere else.
You know, that exchange when it's
people are into it, you're into it, it's magic and it's greater than the sum of its
parts.
Yeah.
But all the stuff in between is very taxing.
The travel, the bad food, the bad places to sleep, the floors we've slept on, the
cars we've slept in.
I mean, it's an adventure, and it's a lot of fun in that way, but I kinda came away
from that realizing like, ugh, I don't know.
I don't know if this is what I wanna do.
And that's a band, man.
Like I've often thought while I was packing my Roli case with my USB stick and
headphones, oh my God, thank God I don't have to bring my guitars and my, all my
other crap, you know?
Like DJs have it easy in that regard.
Um, but yeah, man.
Yeah, it's real.
It's real.
It's, it's a crazy lifestyle.
It's, it's one of the coolest things you can do.
Um.
But yeah, it's also wild.
It's very wild.
Yeah.
I, I loved it.
I really did.
I loved it.
It was so much fun, but I also kind of realized it's sort of against my nature
too.
I'm like, I've been off for three or four days now and like, I took my dog to the
vet one day.
I'd dropped off something at the post office, you know, I think I went to the
grocery store.
I think that's all I've done, you know?
yeah
That's just my natural state is a kind of a homebody person.
So.
I think a lot of producers actually are, like a lot of big DJs I've met around the
world, they're also just like, yeah man, we just like sitting in our studio and
like, that's what brings you there, you know, funny enough.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is, yeah.
especially when you think of the way music has always been very communal.
Like if you wanted to hear music, some sort of ensemble, like people had to play
it together in the moment.
But only until even pretty recently in recording technology could we just do it
by ourselves.
And
crazy, right?
Yeah, I think in a way that also kind of is what I love so much about producing and
especially in terms of what's possible now, you know, like you can just create
this whole thing inside of a freaking computer, like you really don't need much
else.
So, yeah, that's so amazing.
Yeah, it's such a great time to be a musician.
But yeah, it can be kind of solitary.
Uh-oh, are you afraid of that?
don't know.
We'll see.
I don't know.
It's going to have influences.
It's hard to tell.
Yeah, it's hard to tell what the influences will be.
I mean, I think every generation is...
Or I can imagine every generation has certain fears around how the next
generation is going to like replace what they always did, um, in an easier and
faster way.
And then, yeah, you know, I'm sure there's there, yeah, there's tons of people that
will be saying like, Oh, you know, I used to do this by hand and it was so special
and it was so great.
And now it's done by machine and yeah, it's kind of the same, but not really.
So like.
Yeah, a lot of music that future people will be listening to will just be like,
Oh, give me music that sounds like this and that, and that combined.
And AI will roll that out for hours for you to enjoy.
And I'll be saying like, yeah, but it has no soul and it's yeah.
Yeah.
But like, that's just kind of how things go, you know, like, we'll see.
I don't, uh, I don't know.
What's your take on it?
I don't know either exactly, but yeah, like you said, I mean, even if you take
like, say I'm recording a guitar and I punch it in and I overdub something,
someone else from might say like, ah, but there's nothing like a straight
performance straight through, you know, somebody played that the whole, and I can
see that, but.
If that's what I had to do every time, I'd never finish anything.
It would take a lot longer.
AI, I think, will certainly...
I'm excited for how it cleans up the more mundane things that we do, things that we
don't enjoy doing.
Even some of the mixing tools...
I like mixing, it's an art form and you can be very creative with it.
But some of the technical stuff, I just want to have my song.
So sometimes that becomes a little bit of a drag.
So if they can help me with that stuff, that's nice.
But I do think...
I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened already, that people would be returning a
little more towards like, you know, everything's been so digital and perfect
and maybe like people will start getting into something more natural and human.
And maybe a little bit of like the lo-fi movement has some of that going on where
people have embraced that a little.
But I don't think.
any kind of AI will ever replace that sort of thing where an artist touches you and
changes how you think and you know you wear different clothes now because you're
like kind of like looking up to them and they influence like parts of the way you
look at the world.
And now I don't know if that happens as much as it used to either you know like
when I was younger in high school and that.
you know, the people you listened to was your identity.
Like you were waving a flag of like, this is who I am kind of.
I don't know if that happens quite as much anymore, at least from what I can observe.
But I do think there'll, you know, take like Taylor Swift right now.
Like she's probably the most famous person in the world at the moment.
And so much about her, she's a musician, right?
But it's about her, her life, her experiences, what she's doing.
And we'll never get that from AI.
You know, a lot of people, I think like a lot of our fans look up to her.
for who she is as a person.
Some of the things she's done, like re-recording all her songs so that she
could have the rights.
Like that's like power move right there.
Like can AI do that?
You know, like can AI inspire us that way?
I don't know if that can ever, who knows?
Maybe it can, but you know, I think that's stuff that maybe we need to lean into
more.
You know, like take like your plugin, for instance, like the fact that it's like you
made it, right?
It's like, that's something that's really interesting to me about it when I first
came across it was like, oh, like he needed this, he wanted this, and this is
what he saw as a whole, and he's making this kind of music.
And it had like this story behind it, whereas if it was like, say like an AI
thing that figured it out for you or whatever.
It doesn't have that same impact.
I think it's really cool, actually, the way you've marketed the plugin from you.
There's a lot of stuff that you don't know who the creators are.
Maybe it's a company, but that's all you get.
You don't get the kind of backstory.
I think that's a cool thing about what you have, that you need the human for that.
Yeah, thank you.
I appreciate that.
I think I relate to what you're saying.
When you're a fan of a certain artist, it can be like they can sing Twinkle Little
Star and you're still interested in hearing that in their voice in a way.
If you're a fan of Taylor Swift and she sang the most mundane song, you'd still be
curious how she's going to say it.
So I do get that.
I don't know, it's too hard to speculate about when we'll lose that to computers
though.
It's a big subject, yeah.
I don't know, we'll see.
I mean, I think as with anything, we'll probably still have some time to enjoy
what we're doing right now and it'll be a great tool for a while.
But yeah, after 10 years, I don't know.
Yeah, and it's probably wise to get on board, you know, rather than fight it.
Like it doesn't seem like it's like a tsunami, you know, like any recording
technology, like if you didn't embrace multi-track recording or overdubbing or
like you just left in the dust.
Yeah.
I've been trying to convince like some of my less tech savvy friends, like you need
to get like a subscription to like chat GPT, like, I don't know if you're as
adamant about this as I am, but I'm just telling them like, this is when we were in
high school and we found out Google existed, you know?
And then we were like, what the hell, this is Google.
This is so great.
We need Google.
It does everything for us.
And currently, everything starts, anytime you need something on the internet, it
starts with Google.
And that's going to be the chat GPTs of the future.
And whenever somebody says to me that is kind of my age, oh, why do I need it?
What do you use it for?
It's like Google.
It's like you telling your parents, mom, look, this is what Google does.
That's to me what these tools are gonna do and you guess you definitely need to use
them like and And if you if you're wondering why you need them you yeah Maybe
you need to do more research on why they could be useful to you, you know
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, like trying to explain to your folks, like this is the entire
encyclopedia and more.
This is the Britannica, that whole set of books.
This is the library right here.
It's really interesting.
There's a lot of great application.
I'll tell you what, even like for my job as an English teacher, I have the same mug
as you.
Office.
Yeah.
Nice, nice.
I don't have it right now, but you probably see it in other episodes.
That's funny.
The world's best boss.
Yes.
I once had somebody ask me like they would just kind of thought like why do you have
that mug you know and I've wondered if people don't get it like if they thought
like why do I have that mug it's kind of weird but I'm glad you get it.
Yeah.
And then you say he bought it at Spencer's for himself too.
That's so funny.
I was saying as an English teacher, I've used it and my students have certainly
used it to write their papers.
And so I've used it to create like worksheets, like say we're doing some kind
of grammatical thing or some kind of vocabulary thing or whatever it is.
I can ask it to make the questions for me.
I can ask it to write a story about a dog that meets a dragon and leave a blank
space for all the verbs.
So like they have to film, like whatever, you know?
And to get it to do that frees up so much more of my time to actually focus on like
the stuff I as a human can do with them compared to me sitting there and like
writing questions out and...
type, which is, that's not my specialty.
That's not what I'm here for.
I'm not just giving out handouts to my classes.
So getting help with that sort of stuff is really huge.
I get papers written by ChatGPT, I read them and at first I'm like, wow, I'm
really getting through to these guys.
Johnny's become such a better writer.
I must really be doing a good job.
Then you're like, wait, I'm not that good.
But there's that, of course.
So how do you guys deal with that?
Well, that's where I think it gets interesting, right?
Because if you can plug that into chat, if you can plug my essay into chat GPT and it
gives you like a great answer, then maybe I have a problem with my question.
You know, maybe the stuff that I'm asking is outdated.
Right?
Just like, you know, our teachers when I was younger, like telling us like, you
know, you're never gonna have a calculator with you all the time.
You have to learn this.
And now we've got phones that have calculators all the time with us.
Right?
Like, so that's kind of a, you know, use the tools we have.
Right?
So maybe we're asking questions that are too easily answered in a formulaic way.
So to combat that, it has to, I need more personal stuff.
I need you to think about you and your experience in your life.
Cause that's not in chat GPT.
That's not in the internet.
And that's hard.
That's very tricky, but I think maybe education in general kind of needs that
little kick in the ass because a lot of the testing we have to do, the state tests
and stuff, they're so predictable.
And you wind up teaching them in a certain way.
I'd say to my classes all the time, I would never teach you this is how to
write.
I'm teaching you how to be smarter than this test.
Because if they're going to ask you the same thing the same way every time, let's
be ready.
You know, if you were on a team and you knew the other team was going to run the
exact play every time, wouldn't you prepare for that and outsmart them?
So it's kind of like what I'm teaching in that case is more like how to outsmart the
test.
It's like a strategy, which I don't think is bad, but it's not writing.
It's not reading.
It's not English skills.
So maybe we need to figure out.
more clever ways to do that sort of stuff.
Yeah.
I think, I think for education, it's, uh, it can be such a gift.
I think in the beginning it will be a little bit of a curse because yeah, you
know, like I remember when I was in high school, there was this website that had
summaries of books and like, when I found that I was like, no, I'm never going to
have to read a boring book again.
You know?
Um, but like imagine.
that's great if I'm asking you what color shoes was he wearing?
But if I wanna know something a little deeper about what this says about humanity
and how does this apply to your life as a musician, now you have to think.
struggle with questions like that.
Well, it doesn't know you.
But what if I gave it some information about me and would say like, answer the
question from the perspective of a producer.
Yeah, well, that's part of what you can do.
Yeah, you can start.
And that's.
mean to give your students if they're listening any ideas.
a way, I think that's at least, I'd rather them do that than just get the first thing
it spits out, right?
I'd rather them think about it and look at it and question it and, you know.
But yeah, like maybe some of this stuff isn't as necessary anymore, I don't know.
But a big thing I've been doing more of is like,
And this is especially with, I teach students that are learning English.
So a lot of our families, immigrant families, and their first generation
learning English, and their big advantage is that they speak two languages.
So really want to lean into that with them, but it doesn't matter if you can't
speak in front of people.
So that's what you're going to do.
You're going to present this, you're going to speak, you're going to do things in
real life that a computer can't do for you.
And yeah, I don't know if I use it to write my artist bio.
I don't see a problem with that because that's not what I'm here for.
I'm not here to write a cool bio.
I want you to listen to my music, right?
So if I'm wasting time writing a bio, that's like this.
I don't know, I have a lot of mixed feelings, I guess, but overall it's
like...
It doesn't matter how I feel, it's what's happening.
So we gotta figure out how to work with it.
Yeah, fair enough.
What are you thinking?
Do you think, are you?
I mean, like on the one side, I'm completely on board with the idea of why
do I need to learn math if I have a calculator, you know, that's great.
Why do I need to know like six times six is 36 if I have a calculator?
But I do also think on the other side that learning those math things like the
tables, I don't know what you call it in English, but we...
tables.
Yeah, multiplication tables.
That's also just a good practice to get your brain working in the first place.
And in the second place, also a good practice to get a feel for numbers.
And, um, I was actually funny enough having a thing with my, uh, with my wife
last night, she wanted to calculate something and, you know, like, well, I'm a
little bit of a geek and like, I, I like numbers.
I always loved math and stuff.
And.
And she asked me how to do this math thing.
And I was like, okay, I was trying to explain to her how to do it and how to
figure it out herself.
And she was totally fine.
Like she could totally do it, but I can definitely see a world in which people
lose some of those basic skills.
And then you can only do it with a calculator, you know, like, and like, how
are you going to know that the calculator is right?
You know, like if you hit the wrong button and six times six is not 36, but like
something completely different.
Yeah.
And then you're like, yeah, did you say 63?
Yeah, OK, exactly, 360.
Great, yeah, or 63.
You know, like, hey, something went wrong in this transaction, you know?
It is nice to have some of those skills.
And yeah, I don't, I really, it's a big challenge, I think, for education to find
the balance.
Because I also see a great tool in things like ChatGPT to help people learn things.
Like, you could.
have so much more one-on-one time with a knowledgeable chat bot, then you could
have one-on-one with the teacher, you know.
And then, like you said, you could focus even more on the kids that really need
that extra human attention from you, the teacher.
So it can be like a really great gift if it's used the right way as well, I think.
but I don't think it's necessarily good to completely lose all the more basic
abilities.
Yeah.
Well, I think a lot of the stuff I learned in my math classes, for instance, most of
which I've never had to use again, you know, most of which I've never, but I
learned problem solving.
I learned how to think through these equations and I think that helps in a lot
of other areas in life.
And, you know, I think we've been talking about this a lot with music, how
You kind of learn, like you're learning stuff through making a plugin that's
applying to music making, even though it's not directly.
And I'm sure some of your approaches to music making correlated nicely to making
this plugin.
Those it's thinking it's mental workouts.
Like you said, just figuring out those familiarity with numbers.
That's an important thing that we exercise our brain.
That's why they say you gotta do crossword puzzles as you get older and Sudoku and
all these things just to keep the mind fresh.
Because it's kind of like a muscle that will atrophy.
Absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yes
I said.
But sometimes the rust is good, I don't know.
Like you said earlier, the advice doesn't apply all the time, every time.
The trick is knowing when it applies.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, listen, I know you've got bedtime duties coming up, so I don't want to keep
you from that.
I don't want to get in trouble, get you in trouble.
So we can definitely send people to dsp.thehymn.com to check out SubNinja.
I'm going to have these links in the show notes as well.
I think it's a really cool plugin that does something that I don't really...
know of any other tool that does.
It's very specific for getting like the bass stuff right and it's also just like I
kind of said earlier about like how I used to look at the EQ spectrum on songs I just
think it's interesting to see because I noticed when looking at SubNinja like with
things like side chaining like sometimes you dial in the release just right and
suddenly now it's
pumping in that way that's rhythmic, that fits the music.
And you can kind of see it with the way you've got like the grid lines in there.
It's great reference for like education too.
So I think it's pretty cool.
Anywhere else you want to send people?
No, yeah, go check out Sub Ninja and the him on Spotify and Instagram and wherever
you want to find me.
We've started a Discord for people that are interested in Sub Ninja and just also
chatting about music production stuff that you can all find on the site.
So yeah, reach out to me.
That's awesome, man.
I congratulate you on, you know, jumping into this whole other realm and following
through.
And it seems like it's been a successful release.
I see like some of your testimonials or names I recognize, Tom Frampton.
I see that you passed the snake oil test with White Sea Studio, which is an
accomplishment.
Yeah, that's great, man.
But I understand why.
It's good stuff.
And it's...
Thank you so much.
It's hard to find something new, you know?
Like these days, like there's so many different types of plugins and you've kind
of found something that wasn't really covered.
So that's an accomplishment in and of itself and to follow through with it even
better.
So, you know, I wish you lots of success with it and I'm excited to find out what's
next.
And I encourage everyone listening to check it out.
Thank you so much, Brian.
This was really, really fun.
Great conversation.
Cool.
Thank you.
Cheers.
Alrighty.
Woo!