Writing a Song in 2 Hours with Ben Burnes - Music Production Podcast 433

podcast
Written By Brian Funk

Ben Burnes is a musician, producer, and game developer. He is the author of the new book How to Write a Song in Two Hours, based off his experience writing over 400 songs in weekly two-hour sprints.

Ben is back for his fifth conversation! We spoke about his new book and some of the wisdom he picked up writing songs in two hours. We covered practical techniques and philosophical approaches, and we also got to meet a few of his five cats.

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:02.458)

Right, welcome back. Ben Burns. I think you have the title, The Most Appearances.

Ben Burnes (00:04.983)

Hey

Ben Burnes (00:09.656)

Well, I did get an early start, so that helps. But I mean it's always great to be back here. It's always great to be back and I mean, we kinda have an un unofficial rule that we get together one every one hundred episodes or so and and just kind of chat and catch up and stuff. And it's always good to be on here and and and talk with you and I've been listening to more of your podcasts lately because I've started getting on RSS feeds again. And it's like such a good way to get off of algorithms but still stay connected to people. So I I put a lot of podcasts on there so I can

Brian Funk (00:12.804)

Yes, the first guest.

Brian Funk (00:22.501)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (00:40.098)

You know, catch up with people and, you know, s try to be social.

Brian Funk (00:40.292)

Mm.

Brian Funk (00:44.208)

Well yeah, we do tend to do this about every hundred episodes, but there's another reason for that. And it's no small thing. You've got a new book. You're an author.

Ben Burnes (00:52.366)

Yes, there is. Yeah. Yeah. I do. I have a new I have a new book. I it's very weird to say that, you know, I am an author even though, you know, you are. I mean, even as a musician, right? It's like you release an album, it's like technically, yes, I am a musician now, but I don't feel like s like I don't feel like I am. But yeah, so I I wrote a book called How to Write a Song in Two Hours because that has been kind of something that I've been doing for the last ten years and I

Brian Funk (01:02.896)

I feel the same way.

Ben Burnes (01:20.332)

wanted to distill all of that information down into a tiny tiny book. And I I really love small books. I mention I think I've mentioned Derek Sivers in the past and like his his like his hard books, hardcover books are like super tiny, but they're really, really they're really informative and he gets right to the point and I love that. And I wanted to kinda emulate that with a the idea of just like how to how to power through some of the friction

that being creative tends to have, especially if you do it on a schedule or like doing it with timers or through challenges or anything else, right? Like so it was it was it was a really fun way for me to to kind of figure out all of this stuff and distill it down into into something that's a little bit more consumable. because you know expecting people to watch

four hundred hours of me streaming or whatever, just to kinda get an idea of it. It's it's like that's not ex you know, you can't expect anybody to do that.

Brian Funk (02:25.347)

Yeah, that's something I've always been really impressed about, what you do. the discipline, you know, to every I think it's is it Sundays or do you have a different day 'cause Sundays didn't work for you? Right.

Ben Burnes (02:35.11)

I I tend to do Wednesdays. However, I I should say, I think in twenty fourteen I stopped doing the weekly challenges. so I'm not really officially doing the two hour track challenge anymore. That like project is over, but I'm still doing the weekly songs. I'm still trying to write stuff fairly frequently. and I I mean we just finished the the community two hour album challenge that that happens every quarter.

the theme this time around was frozen and that was a that was a lot of fun. As always there was some really cool submissions and it was it was a good time to to actually do a two hour track challenge again too because it's not something I do all the time now.

Brian Funk (03:16.653)

Yeah, I think that's such a cool way to schedule the creativity and kinda treat it like a job and a ta like the task. Not to sound like we're taking the fun out of it, but it's very easy to sit around and wait for inspiration and not ever do anything because it doesn't quite arrive at the right time when you're available to actually do something.

Ben Burnes (03:24.631)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (03:40.045)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I I think that that's really that's really part of the whole experience, right? Like it's it's not necessarily something that you want to do right now, but it's something that you really should do to keep up your, you know, skill set to sharpen your knives or whatever you want to call it, right? Like

In the book I call it going to the gym. It's not necessarily something that you want to do every week, but it's something that you should do. And usually once you're there and you get warmed up and moving and all that other stuff, you're like, Yeah, I'm glad I came here, even though it kind of sucks to get here. So it's it's it w it's yeah, there's just a lot of stuff like that in the book that I that I go into where it's just like, you know, sometimes creativity isn't really fun to get started, but once you get going and you get like kind of immersed in the ideas and trying to move forward with it, it's it's that's where all the fun is.

Brian Funk (04:11.693)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (04:28.545)

So yeah.

Brian Funk (04:31.053)

Yeah, I think maybe when we're young or when we first started out, we're just excited to see what we can do and try it out. But there does come a point where s I guess maybe 'cause we start having expectations of making something of quality. So it's a little more scary because I don't know if it's gonna turn out any good. I there's so many other things that are very predictable that you can just do and they get done.

Ben Burnes (04:36.494)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (04:45.613)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (04:51.734)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well hey, this cat's fighting. Just a second. What was that?

Brian Funk (05:00.355)

This is a this is a very Ben interruption. yeah. No. Alright, so I speaking of your cats, I've counted now four different cats in the frame. You got five? Okay. So some territorial

Ben Burnes (05:04.888)

I don't know if you heard that in the background, I'm sorry.

Ben Burnes (05:13.666)

We have five. Yep. Yeah, we have five total. I'll I'll introduce them if they get close enough to grab. But whenever I start talking and whenever like they hear people talking, they start going crazy. Like we have a we have an exercise wheel over in the corner over there and Trevor loves to just run on it whenever I'm in meetings at work or whenever I'm, you know, streaming or whatever. So yeah, that's that's just the cats. So that

Brian Funk (05:36.931)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (05:43.436)

That's Tycho. Yeah, hi Tycho. Yeah, everybody's everybody's all amped up amped now.

Brian Funk (05:43.523)

Yeah, that's cool.

Brian Funk (05:49.645)

Yeah, they're excited to be here.

Ben Burnes (05:51.118)

That was that was Tycho and Tito, I believe. Yeah. Sorry, I was talking to my wife. Yeah. No, and like one of the one of the nice things going back to the community challenge is that it actually benefits Angel of Hope, which is where I don't know if he's still in frame for the crop, but Tyco, we got Tyco we got Taiko through Angel of Hope. And a couple other ones. Yeah. Yeah, it's and like

Brian Funk (06:05.827)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I see him.

Brian Funk (06:11.597)

Yeah, that's a really cool thing you guys do.

Ben Burnes (06:16.576)

It's it's a it's a more interesting way to like get people engaged instead of just like, Hey, let's write a song. It's like let's write a song for charity, right? Like it's just the that extra layer that that really makes things like keeps keep people coming back. And I I think that not only for my own, you know, motivation, it's nice to have a lot of other people to work with on an album and and to to make something together. So

Brian Funk (06:44.099)

Yeah, there's you know, you're kind of really doing this for yourself. Like for the most part. I mean, maybe you get lucky, you get some work or you pe you get some fans that want to hear it, but really most of the time you're doing it for yourself and sometimes when you find a way to make it have purpose beyond yourself, I it gets

Ben Burnes (06:49.773)

Yes.

Brian Funk (07:08.467)

It's inspiring, I guess. like for one you're helping out this cause or even if you're writing a song for somebody, it takes you out of it. Your artistic integrity and like vision sometimes is a little heavy to deal with. So some other purpose can be nice.

Ben Burnes (07:09.719)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (07:17.998)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (07:23.478)

Yeah. Yeah, it becomes more collaborative. And I've been I've been trying to do some more collaborative stuff just generally lately. for that specific reason where it's just like it's less all on me, right? Like I'm working with other people, I'm trying to I'm trying to figure out new things and and usually I learn things throughout that process because you know, everybody has a different experience, a different way to approach how to make the same thing.

And it's it's been a lot of fun. there was actually it's not out yet, but I I did a a collaborative album with a streamer buddy of mine, super cool. That's S L S O O P U R K I think O O L or U L. I can't remember. I'll have to look it up and send it to you. but yeah, we we did collaborative streams and what we did is every thirty minutes we would export

like a four bar loop of our song and send it to the other person and they had to use that loop in their song, you know, through like whatever Ableton shenanigans you want to do. So you can like turn it into a core or a pad or a drum beat or whatever. But just the fact that you had to like swap stuff constantly and you had to, you know, the next thirty minutes, twenty minutes of that was spent just trying to like figure out what to do with this thing that was just sent to me. And then, you know, you you

iterate on the song a little more and development more and then all of a sudden you have this other thing that you have to figure out how to like put it in there and stuff. So it was it was it was not exactly it's not like competitive, but it it kind of felt like that where it's just like, I'm gonna send this 'cause this'll really mess up It's kind of like playing like those couch co op video games from back in the day.

Brian Funk (09:04.319)

Ha ha ha.

Brian Funk (09:09.686)

Yeah. That's cool though because you can think about it differently. Like I'm I'm sending this out so I'm I need I'm just gonna make something and maybe you have a little fun with it. And then when you've received it, you're also a little bit off the hook because this is what I got. Like what am I

Ben Burnes (09:14.776)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (09:27.214)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's like the the whole point of the challenge is to make the stakes so low that it doesn't really matter if things go off the rails and you know, you if you train wreck, who cares? Like it's like we were sending random samples to each other over the last three hours. What do you what do you expect is gonna happen? But some of those songs actually turned out really cool. So I I I think that's coming out next month or maybe in September. It kind of depends on everybody's schedule. But that'll be fun. Yeah.

Brian Funk (09:44.258)

Hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (09:54.956)

Yeah. Okay, that sounds fun.

Ben Burnes (09:58.082)

Yeah, we did we did Soup and I did something similar y couple of years ago and that one that album is out. It's called Back at It Again. but in that case we we each started a song idea and then we just gave the entire Ableton project to the other person and then they finished it. So it's like it's it's kind of a that was kind of more of a muted version of what we were doing this time around.

Where this time it was just kind of like, we're swapping all the time. But this is just like here, here's some ideas, make a song with that. And that was that was a lot of fun. Yeah.

Brian Funk (10:31.628)

Hmm. Yeah, that's a cool less zany and crazy version, right?

Ben Burnes (10:37.461)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was it was good time. Let me find that link for you so I don't forget. yeah, so it's like doing doing challenges like that have have been kind of the mainstay for what's just kind of what I wanna do lately and I think that it's been a lot of fun. you had sorry, I'm I'm full of tangents today. you had low motor on a couple weeks ago.

Brian Funk (11:06.348)

Yes.

Ben Burnes (11:07.283)

And around the same time that that you had him on, I released an album similar to his process. which like I've never heard of him before. I have since purchased his albums and I love them, they're great. but I did this project called Artifacts, where I essentially I went on a mini vacation with my wife and I brought all my recording equipment with and I just recorded a bunch of audio when I was up there and then when I got home I

Brian Funk (11:27.822)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (11:36.514)

made an album from that and it's just like those kind of challenges right now just give me life and I think that's because like they don't really they don't really have stakes. They don't they don't you know they don't matter if they crash, right? Like and I think that getting back to the book and the two hour track challenge, it's just the best way to just iterate quickly is to just not worry about the results and just worry about the process and investing two hours to

you know, just screw around and make something. That's the best thing you can do. and I think I d I mean I really recommend doing the e everybody try the challenge. you know, give it a give it a give it a whirl.

Brian Funk (12:20.62)

That way of working is cool because when you sit down in your studio and you have every tool available and every tool that everyone, all the major, all your idols, they all have it too, you can really get yourself thinking like, well, I should be able to do like something just like whoever, so and so. And that right away sucks all the fun out of it for me. And but when you go away like that and you get yourself a palette to work with.

Ben Burnes (12:25.804)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (12:38.732)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (12:50.316)

limitations and you're also documenting the whole vacation too in almost like a photograph would. Abstract photograph I guess, but still it's got that element to it. And yeah, to take the pressure off. I do find like you know, the pressure can be good sometimes, maybe with deadlines and the two hours, but not the kind of pressure of like

Ben Burnes (12:54.828)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (12:59.938)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (13:07.093)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (13:15.767)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (13:19.436)

like you said, worrying about the pr the end product too much. What's this gonna become?

Ben Burnes (13:21.835)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (13:25.429)

Yeah, yeah. And I I've I've found that that's just so helpful to not worry so much about the end result. And like like you mentioned, like sometimes you have commissions or you have deadlines for a client or or something else. And then yeah, you have to be a little bit more aware of what you're doing because you're not just doing it for yourself, right? Like if you are doing a commission or if you're working with somebody, that that is a collaboration in a way, but they're essentially providing the prompts and you are

you know, fulfilling the actual the actual work. which is a mixed bag. I I still do collaborative and I still I still do commission stuff sometimes for video games and it's a lot of fun, but I've definitely pulled back on that a lot because there have been clients that I'd never really worked with, but you could tell that they are like very demanding. And it's just like at that point you might as well just like put your stuff into the AI generative stuff and just, you know, whatever. Just don't

I don't if if you're gonna treat me like a language model, right? Like just go to go to the language model. If you wanna like collaborate and build something together and do something cool, then I am all for that. But I don't I don't want you to just tell me that this chord is wrong, fix it. It's like well why? What what's wrong about it? So I don't wanna I don't wanna rant about that too much, but yeah, it's just there's there's a lot of there's a lot of friction out there.

Brian Funk (14:28.981)

Right.

Brian Funk (14:35.639)

Mm.

Brian Funk (14:41.484)

Mm.

Ben Burnes (14:51.157)

when it comes to just making things and it's it's really useful to to have the ability to push through it or at least know how to push through it and doing these challenges is is a good way of learning how to do that.

Brian Funk (15:06.311)

And you you tap onto something too about kinda learning what you wanna do and what you don't wanna do is an important part of the process because yeah, it's like awesome, they want me to do this for a video game. It's gonna be and then you that sounds great and I'm sure there are times when it is and you might wind up loving that kind of work, but sometimes you find out too like, I don't know.

Ben Burnes (15:12.693)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (15:30.124)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (15:31.722)

It can be a lot of different things, but I've found that too. There's some things that I f kind of feel like a jerk to complain about, but it's like I don't wanna do that. It's not helping the vision, whatever that is, but just like it's polluting the this precious thing I have that I found. I'm so lucky to have something that I love to do and it's good to know the types of work that you're not gonna wanna do.

Ben Burnes (15:40.235)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (15:43.807)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (15:49.483)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (15:58.978)

Yeah. I've definitely learned that over the years. I I used to be the type of person that just took any job that came my way. And while that was great to like build a portfolio and to learn a bunch of stuff, I I worked with a lot of people that I would rather not have. And I mean the worst the worst thing that happens is like you make something that you love and you send it to them and they're like, I don't really like this and I'm just like, Well, I don't want to tear it apart and I don't really want to like not put it anywhere else and it's like, what do I do with this then? So

It's it's tough. There there's definitely been some times where I'm just like, Man, this this sucks. I really like this song, but now I have to rip out half of it because he doesn't like that part or, you know, whatever. So

Brian Funk (16:38.487)

Hm. Yeah. Right, and I guess they're kind of it's theirs at that point, you know, so you

Ben Burnes (16:46.123)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like you're you're trying to conform to their vision, not the other way around. So it's like, yeah, I want to make sure you get something that you like, but I also want to like not just make something that I think is bad because then I feel bad selling it to you, right? Like it's it's it's a very strange balance and I don't know. I I I feel like I learned enough to be able to be like, Yeah, we we're cool, we can work together

Brian Funk (17:14.647)

Well, I guess you went in a new direction though by making a book. D how's that kind of writing compare to writing music?

Ben Burnes (17:18.219)

Yeah.

it feels like starting over. I did not know anything about it. I I actually started this book like five years ago and I I think I still have like the note cards around here somewhere. Yeah, I have I have all of these old like like I I wrote all out on note cards and these are kind of like the chapters and various ideas that I wanted to that I wanted to put into it. But then I just had this pile of note cards and I didn't know what to do.

I I am thankful that like my my past career had me as like an e learning writer. So I wrote e learning modules way, you know, twenty years ago. If you ever worked at Sears back then, you probably saw some of my saw some some of my work. but yeah, so I like I knew kinda how to write technically. I knew how to write for education.

But I didn't really have any experience in actually doing it. So it was it was kind of a big project for me there. also on my YouTube channel forever ago I had a series called Creative Exploration, which was essentially kind of a podcast of me just exploring random ideas of creativity and and random facets of it. And I think I think some of those did end up in the book. but for the most part it's like I'd never really actually sat down and wrote anything before.

So it was it was a big challenge there. but I think I mentioned Derek Sivers earlier. His his books were very inspiring. I actually I actually chatted with Derek, I went back and forth a couple of times and he suggested some some books that I read on how to write better, which was very which was very useful. and

Ben Burnes (19:06.539)

Yeah, like I I feel like I got there eventually and y I I I you read it and a couple other people read it and they said that they liked it, so hopefully hopefully other people do too.

Brian Funk (19:18.817)

Yeah, I did like it a lot and I enjoyed the style and stuff. What did he recommend to you out of curiosity as

Ben Burnes (19:20.065)

Yeah. Thank you.

I have it right over there. I think it's called On Writing Well. Let me grab it real quick.

Brian Funk (19:31.669)

Writing well sounds very familiar. There's I think st I think Stephen King has on writing.

Ben Burnes (19:39.339)

Yeah, this is On Writing Well by William Zinser.

Brian Funk (19:44.075)

Hm. Okay. No, I don't know that one.

Ben Burnes (19:44.992)

And it was it was a really good book. I I think I read most of it and then it got into like writing sports stuff, which I'm like, I don't really know need to learn how to write for sports and stuff. But it has like science and technology, writing about yourself, writing like nonfiction as literature. So it has like lots of different styles of writing. And it was really it was really interesting. there was another one that

I read, I rented this from the library. I think it was called Several Short Sentences. Which is more towards how Derek and other people write their book, where like their whole paragraphs are like one sentence that's like eight words long. And I feel like that that can be a little too like dis disconnected sometimes. But I I tried to take that into into mind when I was when I was writing my book because I don't

I I really don't like like giant blocks of paragraphs that you know, they can be exhausting to read. So I try to keep everything really short and tight. I tried to keep every chapter like four hundred words or less, which was easy in some cases and very hard in others. and it was it was just quite the experience. and I I I kinda wanna do it again. I I have like

Lots of the lots of the things from the creative exploration series. I could probably do another book on just like creativity, just like general stuff. but I wanted to do this one first because music is definitely my specialty. I guess if I have any credentials it would be in music and I wanted to kind of kinda lean on that for the first book. so yeah. And we have your book here too. I actually have I I referenced this one quite a bit too.

Brian Funk (21:36.46)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (21:38.421)

And I did a lot of the challenges too. I need to get back to it though. I think I got like a third or a half of the way through and then, you know, life got busy.

Yeah, but it was it was also like the way that you wrote your book. you're building on lots of other things that you talked er talked about earlier. And I wanted to do a similar thing where it's like even if you're just referencing one chapter, you have all of the information that you gained from earlier in the book and you can just kind of reference like, you need to know how to you know you need to know how to bail on a song when it's not going the way you want, right? Like it's just something that you're like, Okay, this isn't working for me, let's just chuck it and start over.

That that kind of knowledge is really important because you don't want to spend tons of time on something that's just gonna fall apart anyway, or that you're not like vibing on. So, yeah, having the book reference that kind of stuff later on is is really useful. And, you know, I love reference books. I love books that are short where you can just like flip open to it and get a bunch of inspiration from it and then just kind of go off and do your own thing. Yeah.

Brian Funk (22:43.744)

Yeah. Yeah, I do too. Well, I like that style of writing, the kind of short, you know, like where the kind of thing where you can sort of be like, All right, one more chapter and then you wind up reading like four, you know. but the sort of short writing, simple writing, it's like what I teach my high school students all the time. I like just as few words as possible.

Ben Burnes (22:57.686)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (23:05.516)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (23:09.197)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (23:09.994)

We've messed them up in school because we say in at least five hundred words. Right about so they're like, All right, you want five hundred words? The topic that I will be writing about in the paper is a topic that is very important to people like me and you and everyone else in the world, all over. And they're like halfway done. But the to be simple and concise is hard to

Ben Burnes (23:19.393)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (23:25.601)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (23:32.574)

It really is. I was I was surprised when I when I started getting into it. Like I said, some of the chapters were really easy to get short because like there wasn't a whole lot of it's like you have an idea and then you explain it and then you're like, well I guess I'm done. But there were some other ones where it's just like I could just go on and on and on about it and it's just like how do I how do I tighten this up to the point where it's like it's worth reading in five minutes, right? Like I don't I don't want people to spend a ton of time on it. I just want them to be able to read it, absorb whatever information I have, and then just move on.

I have I have that problem with a lot of nonfiction books, where it's just like it's four hundred page tome that could really just be a pamphlet. Like somebody just has a cool idea and they wanna they wanna they wanna express it, but then they also have to justify this like the the idea so you buy it, so it has to be like this really big book and then they pad it out with studies and personal stories and all this other stuff. It's just like I just want the idea. I just want the the cool thought that you had and I don't need all this other stuff.

Brian Funk (24:28.316)

I know. I every article on the internet is that. You want a recipe f I was looking for a recipe for iced tea. And I had to read about like summertime and the heat and the it's to get me to look at all their ads and stamp. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (24:31.607)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (24:36.758)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (24:40.557)

Well you know why you know why they do that, right? That's all Well yeah, it's that in search engine op optimization. Like it's it's all like all of these keywords get rolled into the into the searches and all of a sudden like if you're looking for summertime tea, you know, whatever, like that gets bumped a little higher up the list and yeah, it's a it's obnoxious. I agree. Yeah, yeah, it really does. well, if you wanted another cat, this is Tito.

Brian Funk (24:52.982)

Right.

Brian Funk (24:59.37)

Yeah.

Sometimes the medium kills the art. It just but that's Tito, what's up Tito? Welcome to the show. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (25:11.287)

This is the this is the scaredy boy. He's the one that was getting harassed earlier. Hi buddy. Yeah, they're all pr they're all pretty sweet. It's just that sometimes they get wily. Yeah. Well hi.

Brian Funk (25:17.078)

Mm-hmm.

He looks like a nice guy.

Brian Funk (25:27.572)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well you got like a lot of these things that you're talking about in the book about music, you could be talking about anything really. It could be writing a book, it could be painting. It's I think there are some universal concepts.

Ben Burnes (25:39.852)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (25:47.658)

I yeah, I completely agree. And I wanted to keep the the writing as agnostic as possible when it came to creative work because it really could be about anything, but my credentials are with music, so I wanted to I wanted to have it focused on that for the moment. I I actually read Stephen King has a book called On Writing that I I read like

Brian Funk (26:10.785)

Yes.

Ben Burnes (26:13.151)

every year, every other year, just because it's so inspiring just to talk about like the tools in your toolbox and how you wanna bring your whole toolbox with you so you don't like grab one tool and walk across your whole house and then realize you didn't get the right tool and you have to go back and it's like just bring everything with you so you have it all like ready to go and like just those kind of abstract ideas is they they've been they were really important to me, when I was learning music and how to like write music and everything else just because

You know, they're they're all transferable. All that knowledge is transferable. So Yeah, I I think the next book if if I do write another one, the next one will be about just kind of like generalized creativity because I think that there's just a lot to say on that topic too.

Brian Funk (26:59.532)

Hmm. Well, when you first open up a project and it's the blank session and you can do any style of music you could ever imagine. You have every sound basically at your disposal. W how do you decide? I mean you have a chapter actually, or a section, the Yeah. What do you have to say about that?

Ben Burnes (27:10.061)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (27:19.029)

Yeah, yeah, the blank canvas or empty canvas syndrome. Yeah. yeah, and I I really like my description of that. I don't think I've ever heard of it described as this before, but I I kind of related it to quantum states where like it's a an empty canvas is a superposition of all music, right? Like you could do anything in empty canvas

but if you put one note in there, that's kind of like all of a sudden all of those options kind of collapse down into a much fewer selection. Because if you put a note in there, like suddenly you're you're married to a key. Or if you put like a certain instrument in there, you're you're kind of limiting the amount of genres that you generally could do with that instrument. and I think the best advice for

like any kind of artist just trying to overcome the empty canvas or trying to overcome that eight bar loop that you can't break out of is just to start throwing things at it. And eventually something will hook your attention and you'll get you'll like start moving in that direction again. And I think that that's like so powerful. Just to not sit there and listen to it over and over and expect something to manifest itself out of it. Like you just have to start doing things and things will eventually happen. Yeah.

Brian Funk (28:37.267)

Mm. You know, I went through that yesterday. I was recording with my friend and he had a song that I knew that we'd kind of jammed on even with our band. And he did kind of all the basic tracks that we did that I was familiar with, and then it's like, all right, play something now. And I felt really clueless about what to do because I guess

had sort of solidified in my head already what this song was and now we're gonna add to it and try to bring out new parts and but the way I figured it out was to just start playing and making a noise and making bad parts and making stupid decisions until once in a while I hit a note that was like, that was a cool change. That was a cool rhythm. That was and then ultimately

Ben Burnes (29:19.862)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (29:34.779)

after a lot of that fumbling, like something starts to emerge, but yeah, you do kinda need to just throw stuff and see what happens and

Ben Burnes (29:37.6)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (29:44.248)

Yeah. Yeah, I've been this year instead of doing like a the two hour challenge or anything, I've been doing you actually talked to Charlie McCarran, his his Troubadeck. so Charlie has a Discord where he's pulling a new card every yeah, I've got mine too somewhere. Yeah. where'd mine go? well. but yeah. Yeah yeah, Charlie's great. I love Charlie. Yeah.

Brian Funk (29:54.496)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (30:01.387)

I got somewhere. Here they are. We gotta shout out Charlie. There we go. I got my Troubadeck. He did one of my dog. Which is so awesome.

Ben Burnes (30:13.887)

Yeah. Yeah, I my cat is or our cats are in here too. Now I have to find it to show off. But no, he's been doing he's been doing a weekly a weekly card because there's, you know, fifty two cards in a deck and there's fifty two weeks in a year. So, my challenge has been to do chord progressions that I'm not familiar with. So this is there we go. That's that one's my cat's it's not in focus, but there we go.

Brian Funk (30:21.619)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (30:25.333)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (30:38.635)

Mm.

Yeah, I see it though.

Ben Burnes (30:43.789)

and it's been it's been very, very hard for me because I'm so used to writing in like C minor or, you know, A minor or like some of the some of the very common chord progressions. And like some of these are throwing some things at me that I've never played in before. And it's been so difficult to just like find find something that I'm comfortable with and it's it

th it's the same problem, right? Like I don't really know what I'm doing. I don't know how to approach this scale or this chord progression. So I just start I go through my presets or I go through like some chords or I just play random crap on the piano until something starts to feel right and then it's like, okay, well I've I've eliminated all of these other options. So now I can start focusing on this. And that that's usually a good way to to get through it. And the same thing with like a loop, like the song that I did this week. Like I had this

maybe ten second loop and I was like, I have no idea what to do with this. So I just duplicated it out and I started deleting random parts of it and all of a sudden like, okay. I can I can clean this bit up. I can do another melody here. I can do this and I can do that. And all of a sudden it turned like ten seconds into forty five or sixty or something. And it's like, okay. Like you just have to do stuff. And that's that's the hard part. Even though it's so easy to undo or delete things that you did like, you know, wrong.

Like it's still it's still tough to just kind of push yourself to being okay with with failing. I talk about failure in the book too, where failering failure is just another it's like a derogative way of saying learning. I I think that I think that failure is just learning and it's important to, you know, keep failing until you do something that you like.

Brian Funk (32:23.765)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (32:31.741)

I wish we could erase that connotation. especially at school where, you know, it's baked into your brain and it's a hard thing to pull my students out of. It's a hard thing to pull myself out of, even all these years out of it. but like you said earlier, this like the quantum mechanics angle of the superposition it's called where

Ben Burnes (32:33.878)

Yeah.

I bet.

Ben Burnes (32:46.347)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (32:58.059)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (33:00.763)

n the particle is everywhere until it's observed. it's the way I've thought about it is when you're about to make a song or an I you have an idea in your head, it really doesn't have to follow any kind of logic. It's like a dream, you know, where you're flying around with like, you know, pterodactyl wings and next thing you know you're eating an ice cream cone with George Washington or something. Like

Ben Burnes (33:03.701)

Yes, yeah.

Ben Burnes (33:17.015)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (33:24.802)

Ha ha.

Brian Funk (33:29.855)

And that's all possible in there. But when you're thinking of a song or an idea and you're like considering what you could do, they're all these like perfect fantasies of possibility and like, it'd be so cool if this song did this and that. Well, yeah, it'd be great. And then but as soon as you start laying it down, now it's reality and it's slightly imperfect. And it's also now it can't do all these other options that you thought would be so magical.

Ben Burnes (33:39.629)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (33:49.911)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (33:57.579)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (33:57.951)

But before you do anything, all of those options exist at the same time. And it's like you have to just let go of the dream or the fantasy that whatever it's gonna become is it's it's one thing. It's not it doesn't get to do all those things and

Ben Burnes (34:18.849)

Yeah, unless you want to make like a fifty minute long album or something based off of that idea, but you know, that's also a big investment of time, right? Like so many, so many things you can do.

Brian Funk (34:28.424)

Yeah, and it's yeah, it's just every experience, I guess, is like that. You imagine what it's gonna be like when you you're gonna see your friends this weekend and all these things are gonna happen or we're gonna have this conversation, we're gonna talk about all these things and most of the time in these conversations there's so many things left on the table that we didn't get to and things that weren't supposed to happen that did and that's something you just gotta live with in the music. I think your approach of

Ben Burnes (34:47.436)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (34:54.603)

Yeah. I mean I think that also yeah God. Yeah.

Brian Funk (34:57.61)

Quantity though, and frequency is a good way to fight it because it's like, all right, didn't work out this time or it's different than I thought or maybe you know, it could be better or worse, doesn't matter. But I'm gonna do it again next time. It's real soon, so try again.

Ben Burnes (35:12.011)

Yeah, and I I think that that actually lends itself to just writing things down more often and like cataloging things outside of your head because your head is really good at coming up with ideas, but it's not always good at storing them. Like I've been I've been doing to do lists a lot lately. I ha like I make a little zine every day where I have like my to do list for the week or whatever and

Brian Funk (35:34.858)

That's that's great.

Ben Burnes (35:36.394)

I don't make a zine every day, I make it every week. So it's like I have Monday through Monday through Sunday on here and then I have like a rolling to do list through the whole thing. And I'm able to, you know, chat with Brian. I can cut that off. That's like good. But it's also a good way for me to like doodle or to just write down random ideas or lyrics or anything else that I have just to get it out of my head. Just to get it 'cause like that's that's the one place where it'll disappear, right? Like if you have a cool idea or a cool lyrical thing

Just write it down as soon as possible. And then, you know, at the end of the week with these, I I just throw whatever things I still think are interesting into like a a text editor or some kind of tracking app that, you know, that I use for that stuff. But that way I'm not having to rely on remembering something, like I just carry that with me everywhere and then, you know, then I don't have to worry about it anymore. And to do lists or any other any other kind of like physical thing really works well for me.

Because yeah, forgetting stuff or like having a great idea and then forgetting it five minutes later is just like the worst feeling in the world.

Brian Funk (36:43.198)

Yeah, and you always do. You you really always do. You remind me of I wonder if you read it, Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Ben Burnes (36:44.823)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (36:52.791)

That sounds really familiar. I I can't remember. I'm gonna have to look that up now.

Brian Funk (36:57.372)

It's it's like a business book on organization and stuff and what you said about the mind being really good at coming up with ideas but terrible at storing them was one of the key philosophies behind it. So he he has like a system that I follow, where y you kinda store your ideas, you put into projects or n next actions. You're trying to basically boil things down.

Ben Burnes (36:59.831)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (37:27.048)

But when you get something, some idea, you you have to deal with it right away. You're either going to act on it, and that's like if it's a real short, like two minute or less thing, or you need to store it somewhere. And I use an an app on online called Workflowy. 'Cause it it's like bullet lists, bullet point that's all it really does. it has a lot more features now, I think, but I just use it to make bullet point lists and it helps so much.

Ben Burnes (37:35.393)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (37:45.589)

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Ben Burnes (37:56.194)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (37:56.875)

'Cause otherwise there's a lot of stress in thinking like, like okay, there's like all these things I gotta do today and they're kind of just circling around in your head. When you write down and you categorize them, you realize, there's only like three things I have to do today. But they swirl and the stress of not having to remember it is or the relief of stress you get from not having to remember all these things is great.

Ben Burnes (38:10.411)

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And

Ben Burnes (38:16.331)

Mm. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (38:21.825)

Yeah. Yeah, because you can only keep so many things in your head at once and you know things are gonna disappear and then things will fall through the cracks and things you should have done don't get done. And then, you know, you you're either letting somebody else down or you're letting yourself down. the other the other nice thing about having, you know, a a a running thing like this over a week is that I can see if I've been meaning to do something and I keep kicking it to the next day.

Brian Funk (38:48.33)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (38:48.897)

Which is there's there's one thing on here that I need to finish for like a for a song or an album or whatever. And it's just like I think I've kicked it kicked it down the road for five days now. It's like I need to do this. So that's probably what I'm gonna handle tonight. but yeah, just just being able to have that kind of running like ledger of things that you need to be doing, things you have done, what you yeah. I I think that that's just one of the one of the best ways to just clear your mind so you can

Brian Funk (38:59.689)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (39:16.705)

focus more on like coming up with new ideas and and just like making things, right?

Brian Funk (39:24.168)

I think it's cool that you're using this as a way to keep zine culture alive.

Ben Burnes (39:29.469)

I have I recently found the YouTuber Struthless. I don't know if you're familiar with them. they are like kind of positive motivation. yeah, one of the one of their pinned videos is called Hope is Punk. but he recently talked more about zines and and other ways to like journal. And I I like his videos. They they out they they're not always like

Brian Funk (39:35.006)

Hm. No, I don't think so.

Ben Burnes (39:58.006)

In the middle they're not always positive. He has ones on ones on like AI and like actual like other things, but he tries to end with a positive message. He tries to end with like this is how you can like turn this to some like some force of good either in your life or in like the general world. and I I really appreciate his videos on that. But yeah, he's he's been talking about like zines and journaling and other stuff lately, and it's been it's been good for me. But yeah, I like zines. They're fun. I didn't know how to make one before and now I do.

Brian Funk (40:28.809)

We used to have a music scene, original mu music scene when I was younger. And they yeah, kids would make zines and you'd try to get to like put your album in there and you know, it was fun. Yeah, and like they were just doing it on photocopy machines at Kink O's or whatever at their library and and then they'd come to the show and they'd have a you know, maybe they sold them, maybe they gave them out.

Ben Burnes (40:33.8)

nice.

Ben Burnes (40:40.429)

That's cool.

Ben Burnes (40:46.732)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (40:53.857)

Yeah. Well they're so cheap to make, right? Like you just need a photocopier and I actually these are eleven eleven by seventeen sheets. They're like the big sheets. So like you can actually Yeah. Yeah, so you cut you cut a hole in the middle and then you do a diamond shape and then you have the Yeah. But like the if you do like a normal eight and a half by eleven sheet of paper, like you end up with something really small and I I like writing a little bigger than that, so

Brian Funk (41:04.051)

Mm-hmm. And you got a way of folding them?

Brian Funk (41:11.826)

Hmm.

Ben Burnes (41:23.073)

having the having the eleven by seventeens is a good good compromise and I had some of that laying around from a prior project, so I gotta use it for something. Yeah.

Brian Funk (41:32.617)

Yeah, that's cool. But it sort of makes the planning a little more fun, I guess.

Ben Burnes (41:38.253)

Yeah, yeah, it keeps it it keeps it more active. Like you always have it on you, so if you have a thought you can just jot it down. and it's and it like with all to do lists, it's just satisfying to take a big black marker and you know get it out of there. You never have to see it again.

Brian Funk (41:52.743)

Yeah.

I have my calendars that I make for January and so like just make a calendar so I can put an X through it. And I've got a few of them on my wall just hanging up, but the satisfaction of like, yes and then to look at it and be like, damn, like all right, I can do it. I look, I did it all all those times.

Ben Burnes (41:59.35)

yeah.

Ben Burnes (42:03.863)

Exactly.

Ben Burnes (42:09.695)

Ha ha ha.

Ben Burnes (42:14.635)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just like that that tangible reminder that you can like you have done this and you can do it again. Like it's it's something that is possible, even though it feels overwhelming at the time. It's like having having those reminders is really valuable.

Brian Funk (42:33.353)

Speaking of tangible, this might be the second time this word came up, maybe right before we started recording. you're gonna get the book s in a print version? Are you considering doing that?

Ben Burnes (42:35.167)

yeah.

Ben Burnes (42:44.337)

I would I would love to do that, but I don't know the process yet. I've I haven't been a big fan of Amazon lately. I know they do print on demand, but I don't know if I want to go through them. there there are lots of other options though. for the moment it's just on gum road. when this comes out maybe I'll have an option for a print version. it would be really cool. Like I I I like having a tangible, you know, version of things, especially reference material.

Like for fiction I don't really I don't really need a I don't really need a physical book for a lot of my fiction. Just because that's something that I have on my e reader, I can just flip through it whenever I want. But if I'm trying to reference something, like if I want to go to a certain page, then having having a physical version is just so much nicer. And it's like it's something you can hold, you can bring with you, you can sit down like at your computer, you can reference it and all that other stuff. but yeah, print on demand would be great. I worry about

printing in bulk and then me worrying about like shipping stuff out and all that other stuff because I I I I printed C Ds of my first two albums like twenty five years ago and I had still have piles of those in one of my drawers over there and it's like I don't

Brian Funk (43:50.633)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (43:58.034)

Yeah, I've got them from my teenage years.

Ben Burnes (44:00.462)

Yeah. I don't want to add to that pile, so it's probably gonna be some kind of print on demand or work with a publisher to have like a certain run and they can handle all of it. But yeah, right now it's just digital. I have it as a PDF or an EPUB so you'll be able to put it on an e reader. but yeah, I'm I'm okay with that for now. It's like one step at a time.

Brian Funk (44:21.895)

Yeah. Yeah, I th I did it through Amazon. I could understand issues and yeah. I'm terrible, Ben, I get it.

Ben Burnes (44:25.579)

Mm-hmm.

yeah, and I'm not I'm not trying to be like, y Amazon, you're a bad you know you're not a bad person for using it. It's just like No, it's just like it doesn't really align with what I'm trying to do, so I'm just not gonna do it. Like I don't put my stuff on Spotify anymore either. Like it's just like whatever. It's not like they were paying me anyway. So

Brian Funk (44:39.228)

No, I hear ya.

Brian Funk (44:44.797)

Hmm. Yeah. No. You're probably paying into it to get it on. But there is something cool though, of that like you mentioned like feeling like an author. and I feel the same way. It's like it I feel that about saying I'm a musician or a teacher or anything. I feel like I'm like, yeah, I'm just like this I'm still this kid that is like faking it and all that, but ha having it.

Ben Burnes (44:50.667)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (45:04.747)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (45:08.492)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (45:14.715)

What it there's a feeling to that that is nice. Even if you make one. You could do that even with Amazon. You just one copy you sent to yourself. I recently did that with my newest record too. it's I can grab let me show you real quick here.

Ben Burnes (45:16.673)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (45:20.673)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (45:29.223)

yeah?

Ben Burnes (45:32.973)

Sure, sure.

Brian Funk (45:38.011)

Here we go. There it is. There's a company, Elastic Stage, I think it's called. you can you can get vinyls printed one at one offs. So I printed two. One for me and one for my friend who did the painting on the cover.

Ben Burnes (45:39.508)

cool. it's beautiful.

Ben Burnes (45:45.205)

Okay.

Ben Burnes (45:51.136)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean obviously it's yeah, it's probably more expensive that way. Yeah. it's that's so cool. I think

Brian Funk (46:00.371)

But it's available if anyone ever wanted to buy it. But it's nice just to I think I'm gonna put even like some of my older releases up there. just to have them in my house as like moral support. Like, look, you did it. You could do it.

Ben Burnes (46:02.603)

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Ben Burnes (46:16.481)

Yeah. They must have a yeah. Yeah, I do have a I do have a poster of my first album. Like for a million I now we're just showing each other cool stuff, but I have a poster of my first album.

Brian Funk (46:28.453)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (46:32.23)

Yeah, grab it so we can see it.

Take a look at what you've done.

Ben Burnes (46:36.949)

I printed probably twenty twenty something years ago. So get the microphone. There we go. So this is something that, you know, it's a it's a such a cool reminder to just have a a thing that you made. Like I still remember sitting in my room at college, like photoshopping all the branches out and stuff. So it's like a it's like a really clean print.

Brian Funk (46:41.352)

Uhhuh, cool. That's nice.

Ben Burnes (47:03.063)

But yeah, like it's just such a cool reminder to have all these things that you made and that's like, yeah, I have done this, I can do this and it's like yeah. So I'm gonna have to look into that though. elastic stage. Yeah.

Brian Funk (47:18.984)

believe that's what it's called. it winds up costing you like thirty bucks to get one made.

Ben Burnes (47:20.011)

Yeah, vinyl and C D created.

Yeah. I mean vinyl vinyls are expensive just in general, but like doing a one off I'm sure is is more so. They must have a different way of cutting it because usually they get like plates, right? Like you they they make a big plate of it and they press it in there, but they must have a different way of of like the production. Yeah.

Brian Funk (47:43.677)

Yeah, I don't I don't know. And I'll be honest, I didn't get f because of that. I mean I have a record player that I can play it on, but I'm not you know, it wasn't mastered for vinyl or anything, like none of that stuff. So it's it's the keepsake of it more than anything. But to have have that is kind of encouraging to be like, cool, like that never would have existed and and I I can do it when I'm

Ben Burnes (47:49.025)

Yeah, there's that.

Ben Burnes (47:53.612)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (47:57.846)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (48:06.316)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (48:13.616)

working on a track and I'm like, I suck. What am I you know, I'm I've lost it or whatever you want to say to yourself. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (48:16.525)

Yeah. Yeah, you know, I've lost it. Did I ever have it? Like, you know, all of that and like it's a good yeah, it's a great reminder.

Brian Funk (48:27.686)

Yeah, it's it's a cool that we can get single shot vinyls now. for really like pretty cheap. 'Cause

Ben Burnes (48:31.254)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (48:35.403)

Yeah. Yeah, like thirty bucks is still like a reasonable price for something you buy new these days. like they're all like yeah, they're all like thirty five to fifty dollars depending on if it's one disc or two discs or you know special pressings or interesting act like the actual material is that rainbow color or whatever. Like you there's so many different options. But yeah, like it's not yeah, it's not well, you're not gonna open it, so yeah.

Brian Funk (48:43.346)

Yeah, for a vinyl. Like a p

Brian Funk (48:49.522)

Mm.

Brian Funk (48:58.854)

Yeah, this is it's just black and I didn't even print anything on the sleeve, like it was I don't have the art, you know, I don't have any of that, but yeah, what the hell, you know. We did the same thing with my band. We did an EP last year and I th I sent away for four or three for the three of us and it was just like David Doom's Christmas presents

Ben Burnes (49:05.783)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (49:09.772)

Yeah, why not?

Ben Burnes (49:17.687)

Ha ha ha.

Ben Burnes (49:22.443)

Yeah. I mean that's that's I don't we've maybe we've talked about this before, but like making Christmas presents is the reason why I started doing music really in the first place. Like way, way back in the late nineties, early two thousands, like I didn't have any money. I was in college. and I made music as kind of just like whatever, just like for fun. And yeah, that was my Christmas presents to my family every year and my friends where it's just like these are the songs I made this year, have have fun. It's so

Brian Funk (49:49.458)

Hm. That's cool.

Ben Burnes (49:50.796)

Yeah, I mean it's it's been kind of a I maybe it's kind of a cheap tradition, but it's been a tradition for me to just like share everything that I've been doing and you know, they seem to appreciate it, so I can't I can't complain.

Brian Funk (50:04.592)

One of the tracks on this album that I just did is for my dad called Make My Dad Proud. And he he's always said like, Brian, you should do country. I bet you could do it. You could be like a nice country singer. And so that was like sort of a country ish s I mean it's I don't know how much different it is than a lot of my songs, but it's that was the idea, you know, to make him a country song and gave it to him for his birthday.

Ben Burnes (50:09.75)

Ben Burnes (50:25.985)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (50:30.219)

Nice. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (50:34.541)

That's so cool. I'm I'm trying to remember if I actually listened to this. I'm pretty sure I did listen to this. I'm gonna have to queue it up though on Bandcamp. Yeah, I have it on my wish list, so I must have listened to it. But I'm gonna listen to it again. Yeah, I that I remember seeing that art though. It's such a cool painting.

Brian Funk (50:34.61)

He's like, Do it for my birthday. I was like, All right. That was the deadline.

Brian Funk (50:53.158)

Yeah, yeah, my buddy made that and I I asked him when when I was thinking about doing it, like, You got any I know he'd gotten into painting again, so I was like, You got anything that'd be a cool cover for this? And you know, and it it it's like the collaboration thing you mentioned too. It it helped springboard it a little, helped make me make it official 'cause you know, I had the songs, I could just listen to but

Ben Burnes (50:54.765)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (51:11.362)

Yeah.

yeah.

Ben Burnes (51:20.865)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (51:21.554)

to make it into an album. yeah. And and to be like it's really fun to like send the picture, like, check it out and we'll get together, I'll give one and yeah. It's it's a cool way to

Ben Burnes (51:31.167)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (51:36.812)

Yeah, I mean even

with that artifacts album I mentioned earlier where I was like at I was just at like a verbo or Airbnb or one of those and like when I was done with the album I sent it to the host. I was like, you know, when I was you know, when I was there for that weekend, you know, I made, you know, I recorded a bunch of stuff and she she loved it. She like over the moon. She was like, I have a I have a son who does music and that he'll love this and it's like, Okay, that's cool. Yeah. It's like it was just this like really random thing. It's just like, you know what, maybe I'll make somebody's day with this. Maybe they won't care. Who knows?

Brian Funk (52:01.681)

Wow. Look at that.

Ben Burnes (52:09.113)

But it was it was a lot of fun to just like send it off and be like, Here's some music I made that was inspired by the place I stayed at. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (52:10.086)

Mm.

Brian Funk (52:16.731)

Yeah, that's awesome. That's a great idea actually. Cause yeah, some people probably like, all right, man, whatever. you if you want to book again, make sure you clean the sink first before you leave. But you know, you might find somebody that actually understands what went into it and appreciates it for that.

Ben Burnes (52:23.767)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (52:27.885)

Ha ha.

Ben Burnes (52:36.673)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, even if I didn't get a good response, I still think I'm gonna bring all my stuff with next time I go somewhere. Just because it was such a fun way to source new sounds. Like I used to I used to make sample packs every month and like share those with people and sell them on Gumroad and like now I have a sample pack for basically everything in my house, which is great, but it's also like, well

I can't really do anything original like original anymore, like big air quotes there, 'cause like I've already recorded everything that I wanted to record. so I'm kind of getting more back into the idea of like really stripping things down and like going with like

things that I've never made before, just to like recreate them again and like re recording sounds that I've never made or the like re even if I own the sounds or I made the sounds already, just like re recording them again because like now it's this place that's like I'm feeling this way and it's just like you know, you're you're you're capturing the essence of like where you are currently instead of just like pulling a recording that I did five years ago into into a song. Like that's fun, but it's not the it's not the same and it doesn't have the same vibe and

It's been it's been a lot of fun to try to like rediscover and kind of re explore. I I mean I mean I don't really want to get too much into L LMs, but like it's like that whole generative music thing. Like you can just you c ask someth ask for something and you it it shows up and it's like I'd rather have like an experience that I put into a song rather than just a prompt. And that experience comes from the pictures that I take in the area or the sounds that I found in that area, even if they're similar to the ones I've recorded five years ago. Like just

having all of that stuff and having that palette, I think you used the word palette before, but yeah, having that palette of just like inspiration to work off of is is just a really novel and I think kind of important way of making music these days because it's so easy to just like throw something into a prompt and be like done with it. But it's like that takes all the humanity out of the actual act of creation. Like you wanna actually make things. And yeah, I think

Ben Burnes (54:47.437)

Pulling pulling from experiences is something that I've been trying to do more of lately.

Brian Funk (54:53.073)

Yeah, there's w I guess we're learning about the value of the effort that goes into making something. I mean, I don't know, if I hiked to the top of a mountain and took a photograph of it, that's w I'll feel more special about that than if I got the postcard of the photograph, even if it's a better photo professional. Yeah, there's there's something

Ben Burnes (54:58.337)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (55:13.451)

You you f yeah. You flew a drone to the top and took a picture of it with your drone. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (55:22.309)

to that and like you said that you're capturing like this time experience and wherever you are in your life. And chances are you either have already recorded it or you could certainly look it up and download it from somewhere and have it. but I think that's part of it. That that experien the going through of it and the effort it

Ben Burnes (55:35.585)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (55:48.535)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (55:50.256)

I think it matters a lot and the more AI type stuff I encounter, the less I care about that stuff. even just like little things like kinda put me off like there's an event and I look at the flyer and I'm like, Ugh that everyone's doing this flyer. I can't I would I wish he would have just wrote it on a piece of paper and drew like a picture of a dog or something on it and it's

Ben Burnes (55:57.57)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (56:07.115)

Yeah, you're like, really? Yeah.

Ben Burnes (56:15.597)

Ha ha ha.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (56:18.703)

I guess it reminds me too, there's like a missed opportunity of being creative that you just kinda dumped away. A little chance to put a little heart and soul into something that you know, like the zine thing you've shown, like if you remember like the zines were cool because kids were making by hand and they were ripping paper out and th that's how they got pictures and they just cut out and stuck in there.

Ben Burnes (56:21.995)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (56:32.427)

Yeah, yeah.

Ben Burnes (56:39.105)

Yeah. Yeah, they were clutching stuff together with like glue and tape and yeah, like you just you just took what you can find and and you make something w through that. And I mean going back to the two hour track challenge, it's it's a really similar experience, right? Where it's just like you might have a prompt, you might have like an idea that you wanted to like express, but once you get into it, it's just kind of like okay, this is where I'm at. How do I how do I finish this thing in forty five minutes, right? Like

Okay, here we go. And then you just you just go through the process. And that process is the important thing. I I like to say that like when you're doing art, the actual thing at the end is just like it's like a residue. It's a byproduct. Like the the whole thing that you you're trying to get is the experience. And you've got that experience. And at the end of that you have this byproduct of a song that I guess is kind of cool that you can share with your friends. And I think that that's like a mindset that we've kind of lost a little bit.

But I think we're starting to learn more about it again with like this whole like generative stuff because like all of a sudden you can make as much product as you want. But that's not that's not what you want. You want the experience, you want the the the knowledge, you want the yeah. I don't know. It's like I yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (57:53.029)

A byproduct. No, it's a good it's funny 'cause that used to be a like a bad word, like by product of something. But now it's kinda like like with our band recordings, we've got a couple things we've can listen and look back to and it's not the whole experience, but it's it's a by product of what we've been doing and and you like you said, you share it with them and

Ben Burnes (58:05.869)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (58:12.973)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (58:16.491)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (58:23.247)

If that's all it is, it's that's cool.

Ben Burnes (58:25.717)

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And with Charlie McCarron and the Troubaduck, he's he's based in Minneapolis as well. So we've been we've been trying to get a handful of the musicians in the Minneapolis area to just kind of come together and jam. 'Cause I've never I've never done a jam in person. Like I've always like played my own music by myself and just done my own stuff. And I would love to just kind of sit down and, you know, hang out with people and just make something and you know, it it'd be in it it would be ephemeral.

That's yeah, that's the right word. Where it's just like once it's done, it's gone. Like we probably won't record it, but we're just like sitting out and you know, hanging out and doing stuff and you know, it's okay. Like it doesn't have nothing nothing has to be a product. You don't have to sell everything you make. Sometimes you just make something because it's like the process is cool and then when you're done, you're done. And then you know, it doesn't exist anymore. And you know, you can remember it when you when you want to.

Brian Funk (59:04.838)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (59:20.507)

Yeah. we are very busy turning everything into a product. I mean, go to a concert and everyone's watching it through their phone. And everywhere you go, like everyone's taking pictures of everything. They're like, look at the sunset. They take the picture and then they turn away from the sunset. Like it don't care about it anymore. They missed it. They didn't really even see it. And even musically, like everything has a record button on it now.

Ben Burnes (59:27.551)

yeah.

Ben Burnes (59:33.25)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (59:38.87)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (59:47.905)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (59:48.601)

And it's okay, let's do it. Sometimes to just play an acoustic guitar out in the backyard and know that it's gone. But it's so only about what I'm doing right now. That's nice playing with people like that too. You're just jamming and whatever. Something cool happens, it doesn't matter because something cool is happening. We're playing together.

Ben Burnes (59:56.918)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:00:02.295)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:00:08.343)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (01:00:12.619)

Yeah. Yeah, that's a that yeah, that's a really good way of saying it. Like you know, something cool is always happening. Some things are just a little cooler than others. Yeah, and yeah, I'm hoping that we can get together with the Troubadeck stuff and and just jam out 'cause I'd love to have that experience and like I've never played in a band. I'd love to try.

I I might not be good at it, but I'd love to try. It would probably make me a better musician because then I won't have like the undo button. I won't have like the delete key or stop button so I can go back and do another take, right? Like it'll make me less precious with how I approach like playing. And I think that that's, you know, really, really important. So

Brian Funk (01:00:49.88)

It's very important. I am pretty thankful that that's how I kinda came up playing in bands and playing with friends. yeah, 'cause you learn you do learn a lot of about cooperating and making room for other people and not being the star of the show and like 'cause like when we produce, like I did everything. Like I did all this, I did all that. And sometimes you just have a role and sometimes your role is don't play anything now.

Ben Burnes (01:00:51.116)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:00:54.869)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:01:05.269)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:01:18.997)

I did when I was in high school I did play trombone and band. So I'm I am aware of that. Like the trombones are either a supporting instrument or a let's not play anything for twenty bars instrument. So I I I am familiar with that part at least, but yeah. That's that's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:01:23.376)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:01:30.32)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:01:36.795)

But it and it's real time reaction of off other people, which is a lot of fun and as I've gotten older and had the experience of being able to be the supreme overlord of my musical projects where only my ideas happen and that's it, I've been so much less uptight about what other people play. 'Cause I used to

Like, no, this is how it has if we're gonna make this part rocket, you have to play this. Like that was that'd be like how I'd think, you know. but now it's like, so you're gonna do that. So what can I now I'm thinking I'm not thinking yeah, I'm not saying no, I'm I'm doing the like the improv comedy. Okay, yes, and what can I add? Let's go along with that.

Ben Burnes (01:02:06.406)

yeah, yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:02:15.703)

Yeah. Yeah, you're flowing around their ideas. You're yeah. I

Ben Burnes (01:02:24.427)

Yeah. Yeah. Yes and I have another another chapter in my book about that too where it's just like, you know, even if you're working with yourself, you're still improvising. Like you're improvising with your past self and their future self. You wanna be able to set things up for yourself in the future and you wanna be able to like take those ideas that you had in the past and continue developing on them and just let that idea that mindset of yes and is is so important to just keep things flowing because if you start if you start like

Brian Funk (01:02:34.992)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:02:54.593)

you know, saying, No, I don't wanna do that, I don't wanna do that, like with your past ideas, then you're not gonna get anywhere, right? Because you're just kind of you're deleting all the stuff you did so you can make something new, so your future you can delete that stuff and you know, it's not it's not it's not it's not cooperative. Even if you're just cooperating with yourself, it's still something that you have to do. So being being having an open mind like that is so so valuable.

Brian Funk (01:03:12.87)

Mm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:03:19.95)

And sometimes it's harder to do that with yourself. Like 'cause at least if you decide to play something, well Ben likes it, so somebody likes it. If I played something I'd be like, I don't even like it

Ben Burnes (01:03:21.846)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:03:28.191)

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but you you liked it enough to put it on the page ten minutes ago, right? And it's like you come back to it later and like, this sucks, but it's like why does why do why do you not like this now? Like did something change in the context between then and now, or do you just get sick of listening to it 'cause you've listened to it on loop for the last ten minutes and you know, like sometimes it's sometimes you just need to figure out why you don't like something. and it's not necessarily 'cause it's bad, it's just because you don't you know, your context changed.

Brian Funk (01:03:38.598)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:03:55.46)

Yeah. Could just be.

Hmm. Yeah. Overexposure or or now you're thinking about soaring synth lead instead of like cool chord progression.

Ben Burnes (01:04:03.97)

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:04:14.69)

It's a mental battle. But you cover so much of that stuff in here. I'm definitely impressed with how you're able to keep it short, 'cause this is like the infinite, you know, pit of despair you can get into with so many of these things. But you you offer like a lot of great solutions to following the song, what does the song want, being ready for that, and there's yes end. I see that.

Ben Burnes (01:04:17.717)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:04:31.874)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:04:43.969)

Yeah. And I mean I I tried to kind of cover a lot of like just like really broad strokes. I don't really go into like how to write music. I talked about how to write music in two hours, like just the mental state that you need to be in, like just how how you need to prepare yourself and how doing this challenge over and over and over because I did this every week for eight years. how doing this challenge

Brian Funk (01:04:44.838)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:04:54.608)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:05:09.399)

can really be transformative to how you think about being creative and how you approach being creative because you are making something in a low stakes environment. Even though that you have a time pressure, it's still low stakes. Like if something like if everything train wrecks and nothing happens, you're just like, okay, well that was just two hours where nothing really, you know, whatever. It doesn't matter. But like

having that mindset and and being able to train yourself with the idea that, you know, it's okay to fail, it's okay to flounder, it's okay to not know what to do. You just have to do something. And I mentioned in the book, but I've done I think like in total about four hundred and fifty of these two hour track challenges and I've never come away from the two hours with no ideas. Like I've always ended up with something. Even if it's not great,

You know, it's still something. It's something that I put on the page and I'm very proud of that. And doing the community challenge and bringing in a lot of other artists and and you know, they're all doing the same thing and a lot of them have had the same experience. It's like, well, it I didn't really have any ideas, but once I sat down and started getting into it, like I yeah, okay, I know what to do. And then, you know, things started happening. And I think like just that initial push of momentum to to get started.

is is really the important part of this challenge. And it's just like, you know, you just need to sit down. You need to sit down and be prepared to actually make something and have time blocked. And the only way to get better is to just keep doing it. And ultimately, you know, like how to write a song in two hours. It's more just like how to think about, you know, being creative. How to how do you how to like train yourself to be creative when you need to be. And yeah, like I'm I'm really

Really happy that the the book came together the way it did and the the people that read it early have all given me positive feedback. So yeah, I'm I'm pleased.

Brian Funk (01:07:05.135)

Hmm. Yeah, I mean, these are definitely creative challenges and blocks and issues you'll come up with no matter what, even if you're not trying to do it in two hours, but you do have a little bit of that time pressure element in there as well. How do you deal with that? I find that to be sometimes really a useful thing.

Ben Burnes (01:07:16.236)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:07:23.797)

Yeah. Well I mean at yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Brian Funk (01:07:31.044)

We do in the music production club every once in a while we'll do a meeting where we make music from a prompt or some and we the meetings are generally two hours long, so we'll get together, kinda say hello, set it up, and then set aside about forty five minutes to an hour. And then we come back and listen to what we did. And it's r everyone is always like, my god, that went so fast. I can't believe it. I wish I had more time. But it's

Ben Burnes (01:07:37.495)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (01:07:47.948)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:07:56.053)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:08:00.494)

the pressure of it has this ironic effect of relieving you of the pressure too, because you gotta do something. And when I'm working on it, I I'm like, okay, that'll have to do and move on, move on, move on and just make these decisions. And like I my built in excuse is always I only had forty five minutes. I that's so I'm kind of off the hook with it too.

Ben Burnes (01:08:05.899)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:08:13.335)

Yep. That's good enough. Yep.

Ben Burnes (01:08:24.993)

Yep, exactly. Yeah, I it it's exactly the same way. And like it's just it's just the excuse to do something. It doesn't really matter if it's great, it doesn't really matter if it's anything that you want to listen to ever again, right? It's just the exp excuse to sit down and make a thing and having having the ability and the time to do that. That's the like dedicated time that's scheduled. It's like, okay, everybody, I'm gonna be in my studio for the next, you know, two hours or forty five minutes or whatever. It's like

Just being able to to sit down and do that is is so valuable because like at some point, even if you don't have a time limit, you have to finish a song. Like you can work on a song forever unless you unless you know about when a song is done. And that's a very personal taste kind of thing. But like at some point a song's gonna be done and you have to know when that is, because if you if you never finish a song, how will you know? So if you finish a song in two hours, then you start getting a better idea of like, okay, this is

This is when I think a song is complete. Like it's not perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect to be complete. It's just like I don't want to work on this anymore. We're good. and I think that that's that's I mean, that's another really, really important skill to have where it's just like I if even if I have infinite time, I need to know when a song is done. And I need to know it's like, okay, I can finish this song now, I can move on. And like that's another really, really important skill that this this challenge helps impart.

Brian Funk (01:09:54.276)

Yeah, the finishing is just it's a skill you have to practice. You really do have to know when to stop. That's half the battle. That when does cause you used to be a lot easier when I had like a four track. And I was like, Yeah, those four tracks like maybe I could bounce three of those tracks to track four and make another and maybe I could do that one more time, but after that it's just destroyed. So th there was that.

Ben Burnes (01:09:59.063)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:10:02.55)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:10:08.653)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:10:15.405)

Mm-hmm.

Ben Burnes (01:10:20.727)

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:10:23.065)

kind of end to the road no matter what. But when there's no end to that road and you could we could just keep Yeah, you wanna do seventeen guitars? All right. Cool.

Ben Burnes (01:10:31.949)

Well, it's so much diminishing returns, right? Like you can spend two hours to make something ninety percent of the way there, or you could spend eight hours and make something ninety five percent of the way there. It's like is the extra six hours you spent, is that really something that's gonna like raise the song to the point that like you could have spent making four other songs or whatever? Like it's it's you know, how do you wanna spend your time and how do you want to invest your time and

Maybe sometimes it's worth it. Sometimes you really want to get into the weeds and like make that perfect, w which is totally fine. But most of the time I just want to like sit down, I wanna finish a song, like, Okay, that's done, let's make another one and then not really worry so much about, you know, the end result and going back to what we were saying before, I guess. It's just like it's not really the end result. I just wanna make cool things.

Brian Funk (01:11:14.725)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:11:18.253)

And that's a good thing to be aware of too, kinda to bring back to the quantum entanglement we were talking about where once you the the earliest decisions are kinda the biggest ones, that first note, that first rhythm, 'cause it sets the tone. A lot of the major decisions happen pretty early on. And it's worth realizing that every thing you do after that is like a little bit smaller.

Ben Burnes (01:11:31.809)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:11:41.271)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:11:47.469)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:11:48.075)

in general, like they're smaller and smaller things. So yeah, you get that like first eighty percent done pretty quick and the rest of it is much slower.

Ben Burnes (01:11:50.827)

Yeah. Very much so, yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:12:00.942)

Yeah. Even with with the track that I did last last weekend or last week for the community thing, like I think this like the chorus was done about forty minutes in. It's like, okay, well I guess I need to fill out you know, I need to fill out the rest of it and then that took the r the remaining time. It's just like, Okay, well I need an intro, I need an outro, I need a verse, I need like a breakdown, a build up and all this other stuff. It's just like at that point you're just kind of filling in the blanks. You're coloring inside the lines and

Yeah, there's always opportunities p to be creative within there, but like you also need to kind of fit within the framework of a what a song usually sounds like unless you want to get really experimental, which is, you know, fine. But usually you have a you have an idea of what what a song is to you and you just need to kind of do the work at that point. And it's just kind of filling in the blanks. So yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:50.392)

Yeah, you just gotta make the decisions. I think deciding is more important than what you decide, a lot of the times.

Ben Burnes (01:12:52.834)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:12:57.847)

That's a very, very good way of putting it. Yeah, I like that.

Brian Funk (01:13:02.936)

Just pick something, please.

Ben Burnes (01:13:03.905)

Yep, just pick it. And if it if it's bad you can always pick something else. But usually it's okay.

Brian Funk (01:13:09.368)

Yeah. At least it gives you a next step, a next choice, the next decision.

Ben Burnes (01:13:11.757)

Yeah.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. And you can always run into like a dead end somewhere, but usually you don't. It happens though. Sometimes you gotta sometimes you just gotta start over and that's okay too.

Brian Funk (01:13:27.02)

Hmm. Well, you convey a lot of that sentimentality there that you know, you're you're trying to boil it down, but you also have this kind of comforting tone of like, Look, you know, do your best and don't take it too seriously. You get one called Not Every Song Will Be Great. It's it's comforting, I mean, right?

Ben Burnes (01:13:41.783)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:13:47.629)

I know that from personal experience, trust me.

Brian Funk (01:13:53.465)

Well, if they were, you'd get bored, I think. I think if you had like the Twilight Zone episode where you can every s time you write a song, it's a number one hit. You might find yourself it's like the guy that can't die and he just tries to find ways to thrill himself and that's one of those episodes and he just can't.

Ben Burnes (01:13:56.267)

That's true. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:14:07.328)

it's another one, yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:14:13.527)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I I think even in that chapter I talk about how like if you make a good song, or at least this happened to me, if if when I whenever I made like a song that I really loved, I started to set the bar just a little bit higher for next time and then higher and higher and higher and all of a sudden like the bar is so high that I'm just like everything I tried to make sucks and like I can't do anything and those are usually the those are usually the streams that ended up train wrecking and then you know the next one I'm like, well

Last one sucked, so I can do whatever I want this time and I usually do something weird and experimental. I'm like, I love this. I love this a lot and just like not having those expectations when you go into, you know, the studio is can be really transformative. It can like, Well, I don't know what I'm gonna make, but I'm gonna make something and it doesn't really matter if it's good or not. It's just like I'm gonna sit down and do something and Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:14:47.502)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:15:10.721)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Don't have expectations. Low bar. That's that's so important. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:15:11.62)

It's awesome.

Yeah, and it sounds very counterintuitive or like almost like bad advice, but of you you don't have to worry about that 'cause you will. You do care and you do have your expectations, but you you gotta s try to put aside a little bit, 'cause as soon as you start judging, as soon as you start questioning, it that's when the bad things happen.

Ben Burnes (01:15:26.7)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:15:39.212)

Yeah. Yeah, it's not that you're like intentionally being lazy. You're not like doing things bad on purpose. You're just like, I don't know what's gonna happen and that's okay. Like it's kind of just letting go of that expectation that something is going to happen. Because you know something's gonna happen. You just don't have to anticipate it. You just kind of just like get into the flow and then you just do your thing. And I think that that mindset is really hard to cultivate and this book talks about it a lot, I guess.

Didn't really think about it that way before, but yeah, it does. Like it's trying to cultivate a mindset. It doesn't matter what type of music you write. It's more just like being in that right state of mind to actually write music just generally. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:16:23.618)

Yeah. I agree. And it's like a comforting friend through the process.

Ben Burnes (01:16:29.045)

I'd like to yeah, I I'd like to think so.

Brian Funk (01:16:33.57)

No, I think it's great. It's it's definitely manageable. And you got a really cool like reference area at the end where you kinda offer just some ideas and things to try to. So it's not all just up in the air philosophical kind of abstract stuff, but you you give some like very specific directions there at certain points too, which is nice at the end.

Ben Burnes (01:16:54.517)

Yeah. Yeah. During the book I tried to be just ambiguous towards like making, you know, whatever you want, but at the end I have like a series of prompts, I have a series like of of inspirations, things that you can try to like get inspired to do things, or if you wanna just like

have an idea but you don't really know where to start, it's like, well, here's a couple example video game music loops that you could try. Like you could do a boss fight or a space space scene or, you know, anything like that. And I just have a list after list of just like different things that I could that I could think of or that I have done in the past. Where like one of my favorites, I think it's the first one on the the challenge list is make a song that's a palindrome. And I've done that and it's very, very fun and I recommend everybody to try it.

I'll put the I'll put the link to it in the in the notes for you.

Brian Funk (01:17:46.606)

Melody that plays forward and backwards the same way. Yeah, that's cool.

Ben Burnes (01:17:48.661)

Yeah, yeah.

I need to find it. I'll find it later. but yeah, like just like making making a song that's a palindrome is so counterintuitive because you have to think about it from two different directions and you have to kind of make it make sense both ways. and then you know, you can change the chords around on the second half to recontextualize the first half because it's going backwards and all this other stuff. It's it's a lot of fun once once you get into it, but it's definitely it's definitely a tough one. Hi, kitty.

Brian Funk (01:17:54.542)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:18:20.459)

Yeah, that's a cool one. I've never tried that on purpose. Well sometimes melodies wind up having like a mirror shape. You know, they b go up and then down and but the to purposely do that is fun. I'll have to give that one a shot.

Ben Burnes (01:18:30.45)

yeah, yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:18:37.249)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:18:41.389)

Another cat nearby.

Brian Funk (01:18:42.069)

So you were gonna have it on Gum Road for people that I hope will be interested in. I think they should check it out. I'll I'll be letting people know about it myself.

Ben Burnes (01:18:46.997)

Well Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna put it on Gum Road. I'm only gonna have it sell it for like five bucks just because I would rather people, you know, experience it, download it, you know, be able to to to give it a try. I would rather have people do that. So I I try to make it cheap and accessible and I think five dollars is a good price point for that. Hey kitties. Hey

Brian Funk (01:19:08.605)

It's a real bargain, if you ask me. I mean there there are things you say in here that that could really like just change everything for people. And I I I mean, there's things you've said to me in our conversations that have really stuck with me and changed how I look at it. One of the biggest ones was you just talking about budgeting your time like it was money when you're making music.

Ben Burnes (01:19:11.365)

thank you.

Ben Burnes (01:19:18.39)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:19:29.506)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:19:31.991)

Don't spend a hundred dollars of your hundred dollar fifty paycheck on compressing the kick drum. You know? Like if you only have an hour to work on something or two hours, like you don't have the time to get caught up in that kind of nonsense. You need to make the bigger decision. That's really been an important one for me.

Ben Burnes (01:19:36.941)

I love it, yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:19:46.477)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:19:50.466)

Yeah. Yeah, like budgeting and that kind of stuff is it's a good really good way of thinking about it. I I like that. And it's just Yeah. I mean even e we already talked about this. Even if you have infinite time, even if you have infinite money, like you gotta spend it somewhere. And you don't wanna you don't wanna spend it all in one place. So

Brian Funk (01:20:08.311)

Yeah, right. Hey butter.

Ben Burnes (01:20:09.751)

This is butter, by the way. For the for the podcast listeners, he's a black cat. Yeah, they're sweeties. yeah, that's Toots. She's a she's a calico cat. Her her name her full name is Cutie Patootie, but we like Toots.

Brian Funk (01:20:15.307)

Yeah. Beautiful cat. There's another someone else behind you too. I don't think I saw yet. Two it's

Brian Funk (01:20:28.247)

Nice. Well, cool man. I think we're about where we said we wanted to be, right? So

Ben Burnes (01:20:34.741)

Yeah. Yeah, I think we ran out of things to talk about. At least for now. Hey kitties.

Brian Funk (01:20:38.719)

I don't know about that, but we we hit a time, so that's a good limitation anyway. So I guess abstraction music dot com would be a good place to send people for the book and for all the music and everything.

Ben Burnes (01:20:44.493)

Stop fighting. Yeah.

Yes. yeah, abstraction music dot com will have will have the book link at the top of the page probably forever. and but yeah, the Gumroad Gumroad link will definitely have it too. And I can provide that to you once the two stop fighting. once once the book goes live I can provide that to you.

Brian Funk (01:21:11.509)

I'll make it easy for everyone by putting it in the show notes and descriptions of the videos and stuff so that you can just click on it. Yeah, I'm really psyched for you, man. I'm I think it's great that you're sharing this stuff and that you're putting it out there for people and and you just overcame it. You completed something else, another creative work, and that's always a it's always a little bit amazing whenever anybody manages to

Ben Burnes (01:21:14.209)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah, and I hope

Ben Burnes (01:21:33.441)

It was so hard.

Brian Funk (01:21:39.832)

Do something and follow through and finish it like this and and it's great. It's it's an honest, it's you're not coming across like, but I've done four hundred of these, so let me tell you, it's still vulnerable. Yeah, you're not you're s you still have a vulnerability to it and I think that's important for people to know 'cause they might think, Well, this guy is just cranks out hit after hit or you know and

Ben Burnes (01:21:42.338)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:21:50.509)

Let me tell you how it really is. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:22:03.809)

Yeah. I wouldn't say that. But yeah, song after song maybe. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:22:08.717)

But you know what mean, like that can be kind of intimidating too, to be like, he's able to do it every time to varying degrees.

Ben Burnes (01:22:15.477)

Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, going back to the the the the thing I love about the community challenge and something that I would recommend that everybody try is in the future. I think the next one's in October. But it's just like the ability to s just sit down and do a thing. Like so many people start the challenge being like, I don't know if I can do this. I've never done this before. I'm fairly new at music writing just to generally and you know, they still come out with fifty seconds to like a minute and a half of really good music. And it's like, look at that.

You sat down, you focused and you did it. And like now you can do it again whenever you want. Like one of the first things I say in the book is like, you know, the challenge is just to sit down and start a timer. Like you don't need the book for that. This book is about like trying to get you involved and like get that mindset and like trying to figure out like how exactly you do this consistently and without burning yourself out and all of that other stuff. And yeah, like the challenge is the challenge is just setting a timer. Like that's not special. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:23:13.101)

Hm. Showing up. Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:23:14.817)

the the challenge is really the mindset of just being able to sit down and do whatever you want whenever and I think that that's that's really the important part and the real value that you get out of it.

Brian Funk (01:23:26.467)

Very cool, man. Well done. And yeah, I definitely recommend you to all you listeners out there in Podcast Land, check it out. it's a great book and it's you can read it in an afternoon if you want, or you can just dip into a little tip here and there, which is now that I've read it, it's probably how I'll do it. I'll just open it up and like, yeah, that's right, I gotta remember that. You you can intellectually understand this stuff, but it it still comes up every time. It's

Ben Burnes (01:23:35.349)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:23:45.559)

Yeah.

Ben Burnes (01:23:55.482)

yeah.

Brian Funk (01:23:56.011)

One of those weird things about our mind. You can understand all the flaws of it, but you're still just as susceptible as anyone else. So

Ben Burnes (01:24:00.94)

Yeah. You gotta put it into practice. That's the only way to like really cement this stuff. And I mean a l half of the book is me talking to myself, being like, Man, I really struggled with this and I still struggle with this and like this is how I get over it. And it's like, Okay, well now I can read this book and be like, Okay, well I'm struggling with this and now I need to like so I feel like a lot of that is just like talking to myself too. So yeah.

Brian Funk (01:24:17.207)

Hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:24:24.931)

Hm. Well, makes sense. And I think we can relate. Cool. So check out abstractionmusic dot com, everybody. And thank you, Ben, for being back again. And there are lots of other great episodes with Ben I'll put in the show notes too. And yeah, thank you everyone for listening.

Ben Burnes (01:24:27.895)

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.

See see ya around episode five hundred something. It was good to chat.

Brian Funk
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Song and Vocal First with Howard Benson - Music Production Podcast #432