Troubadeck Songwriting Cards with Charlie McCarron - Music Production Podcast #356

Charlie McCarron is a film composer, songwriter, and game designer. He is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for his Troubadeck songwriting cards. Charlie ran the Composer Quest Podcast, where he interviewed songwriters and discussed their creative process.

It was great to catch up with Charlie, who was the 2nd guest on this podcast! Charlie showed us his new Troubadeck, which is a fantastic tool for songwriting and jamming with others. We spoke about Charlie's work in film composing and game design. Throughout the episode, Charlie shared insightful wisdom about the connections between film composing, songwriting, and game design. 

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Show Notes:

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:02.462)

Welcome aboard, Charlie. Great to have you, man. Good to have you back.

Charlie (00:05.899)

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, you reminded me that I was the second interview you had on the show, I think.

Brian Funk (00:11.126)

Yeah, yeah, you were the second person that was ever on the show. That would be, I guess, seven years ago about now. Yeah, oh thanks. Yeah, yeah, it's been a lot of fun, learned so much. And I credit you a lot, actually, because ComposerQuest, your podcast, was very inspiring for me. It made me even more wanna do it, you know? Like, I kinda had this urge, but.

Charlie (00:18.849)

Wow, congrats. That's a long time to keep a podcast going.

Brian Funk (00:39.938)

you know, listening to your show. And I was like, yeah, this is really cool. I wanna, I gotta do this. You know, I could hear how much fun you were having and you did that really cool thing for your final season, I think it was, where you went and toured around and visited people and did podcasts with them.

Charlie (00:53.785)

Yeah, that was like the probably the most fun two-month segment of my life. Yeah. Um, yeah, that was awesome. I got to do, uh, yeah, a trip around the U.S. and then I had never been to like Asia or Australia. So there were a few people who listened to the show and they're like, hey, you can come stay with me. So I made it out there and yeah.

Brian Funk (00:58.963)

Oh really?

Brian Funk (01:13.282)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:22.138)

Yeah, that's nice.

Charlie (01:22.525)

My episodes, I had 12 tour episodes, which I could have broken up into about 36 episodes, but for some reason I had it in my head like, no I'm gonna be, I'm gonna do these epic chunks so I think the final episode's like 4 hours long or something. But when's your, when are you going on tour?

Brian Funk (01:37.474)

Hmm, wow, yeah. Oh man, you know, I was just kinda, as I was getting ready to talk to you, kinda revisiting some of the old stuff, I was like, wow, that would be something, but I don't know, like I kinda don't, that would be fun, yeah. Ben was the first guest on the show and he's been on a couple of times since. That would-

Charlie (01:53.225)

You can come to Minnesota, hang out with me and Ben Burns also.

Charlie (02:00.55)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (02:05.27)

That would be fun for me, right? To like go visit and then come home. But the idea of like kind of doing the long tour, you know, I like getting away, but I really do hate the travel part, the actual act of traveling. I like settling.

Charlie (02:20.547)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (02:23.793)

Yeah, I think it's a different thing now that I'm in my 30s. But I still really enjoy traveling around, but I'm like, wow, that was a bold thing that I just drove around the country by myself. And yeah, I don't know.

Brian Funk (02:31.1)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (02:36.031)

Yeah, it really is.

Brian Funk (02:39.918)

just found people to crash with and hang out and play music together. It's really like, that's like booked material, you know?

Charlie (02:42.469)

Yeah. But it really was like... yeah, for sure. Well, and like the best part afterwards was I had been in kind of like a low point in my creative part of my music for whatever, and just going around and being in a new spot and like trying making music with different people was so motivating for me. And I just like got a spark back.

Brian Funk (03:07.074)

Yeah.

Oh, I bet.

Charlie (03:11.89)

after that.

Brian Funk (03:12.086)

Yeah. You know, um, this summer I went to a songwriting retreat. Um, a former Berkeley student of mine, Matt Jones was doing the Monterey songwriting retreat and he did it the year before he invited me, but I had school I teach so I couldn't go. Um, but he scheduled it over the summer this year and it was great. I mean, first of all, where we were, it was incredibly beautiful, Monterey, California, and, uh, the people that were there were amazing. A few of them.

Charlie (03:17.726)

Oh cool.

Charlie (03:25.664)

Oh.

Brian Funk (03:41.954)

came on the podcast since. But like you said, it was so refreshing to work with different people, to watch people work, the way they get to their results and the way they think about putting chords together and lyrics and the process of writing. It was just, on so many levels, really inspiring. And I felt a little bit like over my head, you know? Like the water was over my head. But...

Charlie (03:43.637)

Nice.

Charlie (04:07.733)

Sure.

Brian Funk (04:10.366)

It also kind of gave me a lot of confidence too that there wasn't another me there. There were people that were way more advanced in a lot of ways, but no one was exactly like me. And that's kind of, I think, what we all have to offer when we... In life, I guess, really, right? But musically especially, we're all a unique little composition of things.

Charlie (04:17.298)

Yeah.

Charlie (04:27.481)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Charlie (04:35.193)

Yeah, I use this in the class I taught on board game design because a lot of those students just got into college and they're feeling imposter syndrome pretty hard. Like, well, I don't know how to make a game. Like, I've never done this before. And the best description of how to get over imposter syndrome is thinking about... I saw a

Charlie (05:05.193)

The small circle inside is what you know or what you think you know. And you think everyone else has this big circle around you of like, everyone's better than me, they know everything. But actually, it's more like you have a same similar size circle that overlaps with you a little bit. And it's sort of like Venn diagrams of what you know that other people don't know. And just like, yeah, I like that image. Because yeah, everyone's got different strengths.

Brian Funk (05:24.982)

Mm.

Brian Funk (05:31.8)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (05:35.894)

Yeah, and that doesn't really go away, I found, the imposter syndrome. You can kind of run into it all the time. That's a great image too, because even people that are just learning, just starting, I'm sure you see this with board game design, is that they bring something kind of cool and innocent or fresh. They might not know that

Charlie (05:41.108)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (06:04.682)

You're not supposed to do this and they do it and it works out really well.

Charlie (06:06.613)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and sometimes it's like they haven't gotten to that point because they don't think of themselves as, oh, I'm a game designer. I just had this idea and they're real excited about it. And then maybe the second game they make, they start to get a lot more pressure like, oh, I should know what I'm doing by now. I mean, I still get that. Yeah. Once...

Brian Funk (06:30.05)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (06:33.226)

Yes, that's very true too. I think that happened to me a lot ever since I started sharing work online. It was like, suddenly like, well, I should probably know what I'm doing if I'm gonna share stuff, right? If I'm gonna have this podcast for instance, but leaning into the fact that I know I don't know and like, there's just always so much more to learn.

Charlie (06:43.742)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (06:49.999)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (07:01.59)

the kind of like student perspective is just taking a lot of that pressure off a lot of those feelings.

Charlie (07:07.745)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (07:11.054)

I love it. What a great adventure. That must've been just so much fun to do. Like you said, maybe in my 20s. Ha ha ha.

Charlie (07:15.336)

Yeah.

Heh heh heh, yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (07:22.698)

Um, we got to tell everybody about the Truba deck. I love this concept so much. Um, it's, you know, it, to me, it solves this problem of when you get together with people and you could be alone too, but I've been in so many situations where you get a few people together and everyone's got an instrument and you start to jam. And maybe either nobody takes the lead or somebody takes the lead or, um, or

What more than likely what happens is the E jam happens on guitar E, open E, you know? So we're just gonna drone on an E chord and someone's gonna play pentatonics and then we're off in our own worlds. We're not even jamming together. We're just, you know, five people playing instruments at the same time. But your deck, the Truba Deck gives you a card with chord progressions and just gives you some direction. I, so useful.

Charlie (07:56.725)

Yeah, just...yep.

Charlie (08:17.694)

Mm-hmm

Yeah, and I got my deck here for visual who people are watching online. But yeah, the idea came to me originally because I wanted to make like a songwriting game that's kind of like a choose your own adventure. And you would go through and this is something I still want to make. So, Turbideck, the Kickstarter.

Brian Funk (08:26.947)

Nice.

Charlie (08:48.897)

just doing right now is kind of like a pilot program to see if just this deck of chords first of all will work and my eventual idea is you know people could do like kind of like a D&D campaign sort of thing you go through and decide what you want to do and then that will influence what lyrics you get on the back of the card so there'd be another deck that is like the lyric part of the songwriting and based on what decision you make you might get like

positive lyrics or like sad lyrics and then you might draw the sad chord card that would be a lot of minor key cards and a little bit of like Mad Libs style too like you'd enter some words and then they would show up in these lyrics and so that'd be kind of like for some for people who are intimidated to try writing lyrics from scratch it'd be like a way to just fill in the blanks kind of

Brian Funk (09:38.222)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (09:49.238)

Right, that's awesome. That's a brilliant idea.

Charlie (09:52.649)

Yeah, thanks. Yeah. I hope like most so my background is in game design too. And so I've been making board games and card games. And what I usually do is pitch it to other publishers who handle all the production and stuff. And so this time around, I was like, well, I can use what I've learned so far to make like a physical deck of cards and ship it out and stuff.

Brian Funk (10:12.28)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (10:21.225)

But my eventual goal is like, you know, I'd love to find a game publisher who wants to go through with like this bigger idea of a full on songwriting experience game. So we'll see, yeah.

Brian Funk (10:35.766)

Right. Yeah. Well, it's so good. I mean, some of the things I do to help myself with songwriting is just collect ideas. I have lists of sometimes chord progressions. I hear a song, I like the chords, I just write the chords down and then don't write the song down. So I just have the chords and forget what they are or.

Charlie (10:56.231)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (10:57.722)

or just titles or lines or topics or scenarios even like, oh, this would be a great song for floating on a inner tube on a lake in the summer. Or, yeah, so those help me a lot when it's time, when I have the time to make a song. Sometimes you're like.

Charlie (11:09.013)

Hmm. I like that

Brian Funk (11:20.502)

You know, your time and your inspiration don't always line up. But if you wait for that to happen, you'll pretty much wait forever. So it's nice to have something that can just kind of push you a little and say, all right, let's, let's pull this thread and see where it goes.

Charlie (11:27.821)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (11:32.095)

Yeah.

Charlie (11:36.169)

Yeah, that's interesting that you've been logging chord progressions, which I think is great. Because yeah, it's funny now that I've done the cards and a few people are already writing songs with them. Now that I hear the chord progression, I'm thinking of those lyrics. I've had my friend's song that he wrote about Valley Fair, this amusement park.

Brian Funk (11:41.592)

Yeah.

Charlie (12:04.141)

And I can't get that melody and lyrics out of my head when I hear the chords now for that one of those songs. But yeah, but I think that's going to be the really fun part for me is seeing people take these cards and write like totally different songs with them. Um, with these chords. Cause yeah, no, go ahead. Yes.

Brian Funk (12:08.735)

Oh yeah, that's funny.

Brian Funk (12:20.768)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (12:24.434)

Well, I'm in the middle of January, right? So it's the end of January right now. And as soon as I saw your cards, I was like, yes, I need this, right? Cause I'm every day, I'm trying to come up with something new and there's, I'm always pressed for time for whatever reason. I feel like I always make it the last thing I do at night. And when your cards came along, I grabbed the one of them that you had on the Kickstarter and just, there it is.

Charlie (12:43.989)

That's awesome.

Charlie (12:48.881)

Yeah, hoof it. The little donkey with the mandolin or something.

Brian Funk (12:56.35)

Yeah. So that, it's kind of like, uh, I like it. I don't even know what key it is. And I think when you email me about this, you said, yeah, I see some suggestions and one of the things I said was maybe let us know what key it's in. But when I used it, it was really nice to not have that because you got some chords in there that are outside the scale. I guess, depending on how you look at the key, they're, they're borrowed from different types of, you know, you've got like, I kind of saw it as G major, but.

there's an A major in there and I think a B major as well. And I did. And not having that kind of directive sort of made me look at it in a couple different ways too. You know, it was like kind of E minor also, but there's like a little hint of like a C something, like some kind of mode of C in there. It was so fun to just have that.

Charlie (13:28.281)

Yeah. Yeah, you picked kind of a weird one. I like it.

Charlie (13:51.369)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (13:56.01)

What I thought was really interesting, and it's something I kind of always realize when I start with a chord progression, is they kind of come to life after you start adorning it and start putting, whether it's lyrics, whether it's other melodies on top or even a bass line or a beat, it really just started to feel so different than it did. And when I first just strummed them on my acoustic guitar and some of those kind of weird outlier chords.

suddenly if you treat them the right way, they just kind of flow right into each other. Yeah, it was just, it was a really rewarding experience.

Charlie (14:32.273)

Yeah, it's kind of like a... Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I loved your jam you came up with. And yeah, it sounds so much more natural than if you were just strumming chord, chord. It's almost like you could sort of picture it like clay blocks that are just like blocks. And then you have to smooth them out with the melodies that lead into the next chord. Yeah.

Brian Funk (14:38.07)

Thanks.

Brian Funk (14:43.117)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (14:56.611)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (15:03.726)

I mean, there's just so many songs that have been written with such a few amount of chords that we have, right? I mean, there's tons of chords, but like really when you think about it, yeah.

Charlie (15:11.339)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (15:15.837)

Yeah, and if you think of top 40 hits, it's like even less usually

Brian Funk (15:21.686)

Yeah, and the fact that it still feels different is just great. And those cards really bring that out. I can use that card again tomorrow, and it'll be a totally different song.

Charlie (15:26.622)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (15:30.208)

Yeah.

Charlie (15:34.857)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. So I mean, I'm gonna be making 52 of them. So I'm sure like anyone who's listening, if you're curious to test them out, I'd love to get feedback to and like, what are your favorites? What are the clunkers before I like hit print on the deck? And yeah.

Brian Funk (15:52.589)

Alright.

Yeah.

How hard is it to choose? I mean, or is it hard to come up with 52? Like what kind of challenges are you facing with this? Is it too many options, not enough?

Charlie (16:10.933)

I feel like it's gonna be the right amount of like I Think I came up with the nine of these I probably had 12 and then whittled it down to what I wanted to do as samples but those probably took you know, like one day maybe three hours total so And that was sort of me just getting used to the idea of it so I think

Once I get in the flow of it, it'll be pretty easy to come up with chord progressions, but I do feel like I'm going to start to overlap myself. So I think what I'm, I've been writing all these on guitar so far, but I think at some point I want to switch to piano just to give myself a different space to think in, because I think I write pretty differently when I'm on piano versus guitar.

Brian Funk (16:54.818)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (16:58.157)

Right.

Brian Funk (17:03.594)

Yeah, I don't really play piano, but I use keyboards. And it's the same way. Even if I'm using Ableton Push, which I use it in the chromatic so it looks like guitar, but you still play differently. Like every, even if you play a different guitar, right? Like you play it differently, you get different kinds of things, but we do have sort of our guitarist tricks and the fact that certain chords are open.

Charlie (17:08.143)

Yeah.

Charlie (17:14.217)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (17:32.534)

you know, use open strings, kind of make you lean towards those keys. You don't play a lot of guitar songs in like E flat or, you know, B flat, like the kind of awkward guitar, but on piano, they're, you know, they make a little more sense.

Charlie (17:37.981)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (17:45.019)

Alright.

Charlie (17:51.413)

Right. Yeah, and I was thinking about like how many, cause I wanna include a chord chart for piano and guitar hopefully. And I'm like, well, I can't include every single, all of the 12 sharps and flats included keys or chords cause that's gonna be too much. So I think right now I have B flat and F sharp, which F sharp feels like a weird.

one to include except for the fact that it feels really nice on guitar for whatever reason. So I don't know.

Brian Funk (18:25.646)

Hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's neat that it, uh, you'll get like different kinds of feels and all that.

Charlie (18:36.907)

Mm-hmm.

One thing that I also is going to be an interesting challenge. I want the, the cards to go from like easiest to hardest based on the number on the cards. So they are like a poker deck. You'll have the number in the corner that, uh, so like a two will be kind of the easiest chords for people to play all the way up to, you know, the face cards will be trickier.

Brian Funk (18:53.229)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (19:05.944)

Mmm.

Charlie (19:07.857)

seventh chords and so on. And I also want them to feel like you could combine nearby numbers and they would work together well as like a verse chorus, verse chorus. So that you could use a couple chords cards at a time and maybe like pairs work well together too. So like

Brian Funk (19:10.606)

That's a great idea.

Brian Funk (19:25.008)

Okay, so...

Brian Funk (19:33.127)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (19:33.961)

the seven of spades and the seven of clubs work well together.

Brian Funk (19:38.062)

Hmm. And you've got different moods based on the, I forget what those are called now. Uh, those, the hearts, the diamonds, the suits. Yes.

Charlie (19:44.753)

Yeah, the suits. Yeah. So right now, um, and this may evolve, but right now I have the heart says the happy. Uh, there'll be a lot of major chords and spades felt like moody. It's kind of like an upside down heart. So, um, diamonds being adventurous. I don't know, searching for diamonds and club says mysterious, but yeah.

Brian Funk (20:09.861)

All right.

Charlie (20:14.043)

Subject to change.

Brian Funk (20:16.106)

right that's

Charlie (20:17.481)

But I like the idea that someone could pick out what mood they're in.

Brian Funk (20:23.114)

Yeah, you kind of leave that up to interpretation a bit too, right? Like all chords, I guess, are. Because how you play them, how you write over them, what you say over them, changes everything.

Charlie (20:27.275)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (20:33.376)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (20:36.901)

yeah i think about this a lot when i'm film scoring that my job isn't like there's a lot that i do that's very minute changes um to chords just a lot like a lot of film scores they want just like very ambient droney things and sometimes it's a matter of knowing if this should be like

major seventh chord or just a dominant seventh chord or minor seventh chord and like changing those just changes the whole mood of the scene in a way that's like easy for me to do but like someone who like the director will be like oh what did you do there it's like a totally different mood it's like oh I changed one note I or like

Brian Funk (21:30.926)

Hehehe

Charlie (21:34.513)

I get this all the time where it's like, I don't really like the piano in this section. There's something about it. And then I put it down in octave and then they like it. Not sure why, but yeah.

Brian Funk (21:45.294)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (21:48.85)

So you have to kind of figure out what they're thinking when, because I'm guessing they're not always speaking in musical terms, right? They're not gonna be like, you know, that seventh shouldn't be flat, make it the major seventh.

Charlie (22:03.393)

Yeah and usually when directors do try to do that it's like more confusing because it's like yeah wait what about the bells in this track i don't think i had any bells in there but yeah it's pretty fun i've been film scoring now for my job for almost seven years probably when i was on the podcast last i was just starting up film scoring um

Brian Funk (22:09.267)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (22:17.379)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (22:30.542)

Hmm.

Charlie (22:32.901)

And now I do that for half of my job. The other half is the board game designing, but film scoring wise, I've usually worked with local people here in Minnesota and I do a lot of like documentaries, um, TV things that will maybe someday be on actual TV, but right now web series is.

Brian Funk (22:58.326)

Yeah. Now that's another type of thing where you're sort of given a little bit of information. You're not going in blank, right? Like kind of where the cards would help you start off a little bit. And some of the people I've spoken to that do scoring have like, they speak of how important like the brief is or how important, just the whatever's happening in the film at that point.

really helps direct them compared to somebody that might just be writing music for them their own or their band or something. And you start with nothing. You have to come up with that. I imagine there's like some kind of a almost like similarity to using the cards when you get a project to work on for film.

Charlie (23:37.375)

Yeah.

Charlie (23:47.441)

Yeah, for sure. And sometimes the directors give me free reign, but usually they have like a temp track with music they're used to, which can be a curse and a blessing depending on if they're used to hearing it over and over in the edit. They're naturally inclined to like it more than whatever I give them. Even if it's better, whatever you're used to can really...

Brian Funk (24:08.523)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (24:13.95)

We get that with demo-itis with our songs where your first recording is like, yeah, I love it. But it's, you know, objectively worse. But, but when you listen to it, yeah. Yeah.

Charlie (24:16.968)

Yeah.

Charlie (24:24.217)

Yeah, but it's got that nostalgia from an hour ago when I recorded that. Yeah. But I do really love the challenge and I especially love doing feature films rather than short films. I've realized because I started out doing obviously a lot more short films because it's what people are making more often. But in a short film you spend so much time trying to f***.

Brian Funk (24:31.114)

Right?

Brian Funk (24:41.802)

Hmm.

Charlie (24:52.501)

find the right sound for the film and then you know you score for like five minutes of scoring maybe and then it's done and they're like well I spent all that time and no whereas a feature films really cool because you do spend that time up front like coming up with up to ten different styles maybe but then you can start like copying and pasting that style and re remixing it

So a lot of times what I do, I have like a big session open in Ableton Live with the entire film and start putting in sounds and then I'll copy the MIDI values over but I'll change like the tempo, I'll change the key to make it feel different and then changing like customizing the intros and outros of how the music starts and ends is like really key for film scoring too. So

Brian Funk (25:51.832)

Hmm. So you working in one session and the whole film is...

Charlie (25:56.633)

Well, no, not exactly. I thought about it for this project. Sometimes I do attempt that because I'm like, well, I'm using a lot of the same sounds so I'll create the entire sound bank, but then it just doesn't work that well once you start getting... because I'll want to tweak the effects here and not like 30 minutes later. And also, right now Ableton is not that awesome at handling...

Brian Funk (26:06.254)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (26:17.151)

Yeah, okay.

Charlie (26:25.269)

tempo changes when you're working with film, because you change, I have to like really be careful when I'm tweaking the tempo, just to like make it sync well with the picture. And then if I do that on one scene in the beginning, and then the scene after it, I have to retweak the tempo just to get it to the right spot.

Brian Funk (26:38.844)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (26:48.461)

Mm-hmm. It doesn't kind of like hook to that part in the film. Yeah.

Charlie (26:50.909)

No, no. Which, that's really my only qualm with using Ableton for scoring. Otherwise I love it.

Brian Funk (26:59.202)

Hmm. That sounds like an important thing to have, though. Right? Because if I could, I guess the way I would try to picture how this would work, that if you go back to an early scene in the movie and change the tempo, the movie's not, it's just going to kind of keep going. It's not warped, right? So it's just, um.

Charlie (27:06.441)

It is. It is.

Charlie (27:21.035)

Right.

Charlie (27:24.353)

All right.

Brian Funk (27:26.006)

those changes are going to get shifted downstream.

Charlie (27:28.937)

Yep. Yeah, so that's why I usually give up on trying to do the whole film in one set. But I will end up having a full session where I put my rendered scores from all the different sections into the see where they fit well. This was the first time... so I'm working on a documentary

Brian Funk (27:34.892)

Yeah.

Charlie (27:58.561)

23 banks in Minnesota within a year and a half when he was 55, I think very fascinating documentary and it's super fun doing the scoring because I get to do like sort of this like intense bank robbery music but plus like sort of lighter and more fun in some cases because it's kind of just a Yeah, interesting guy

Brian Funk (28:14.231)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (28:24.894)

Well, you mentioned it to me earlier before we started recording, and it kind of made me chuckle. Because I think, I guess I felt like you have to be sort of like a lifelong career criminal to decide to rob 24 banks. But it's just a funny thing to imagine, like, maybe down the road in my future. One day I just say, you know what?

Charlie (28:48.368)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (28:49.142)

I'm going to, like, as if I'm picking up a new hobby, you know? I'm going to learn sailing. No, I'm going to learn bank robbing and not like bird watching or something.

Charlie (28:51.743)

Yeah.

Charlie (28:55.457)

Yeah. Yeah, the guy like, yeah. And the guy made it look easy. I mean, just pop in, give him a note. I've got a gun. Give me all the money. I don't think he actually had a gun. But, you know, he met this guy. He did. He was like had a little bit of a shady thing going on. So he did end up in jail at one point. But he met a guy in jail who told him like, yeah, this is how I rob banks.

Brian Funk (29:12.31)

Better safe than sorry.

Charlie (29:26.911)

So he just took some notes and but

Brian Funk (29:29.641)

Maybe you don't take your notes from a guy that's already in jail on how to do it, right?

Charlie (29:33.064)

Yeah.

But I think he said he did the math on like how much he actually made for and the amount of time he was in jail was like, you know, 17 cents an hour or something that he made from which he had to give back out, of course, too. But yeah, he was robbing him. He would get like maybe 2000 from robbing a bank. And it seems like, wow, that does not feel worth it at all. Yeah.

Brian Funk (29:45.495)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (29:50.122)

Yeah. Wow.

Brian Funk (29:58.424)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (30:01.85)

So all that planning, is that what it is? Oh, okay, so that's 17 cents, oh yeah.

Charlie (30:06.457)

Or, oh, well, I mean, like, no, I guess he was talking about, like, for his amount of his life that he lost in jail. Anyways.

Brian Funk (30:13.138)

Oh, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a good deal to sell your time for 17 cents an hour. Yeah, better off, any job. Any honest job. But that sounds like a fun story to write for. I can imagine there's a lot of, like you said, action getaway music, but it has a little quirk of humor in it.

Charlie (30:19.721)

Yeah.

Charlie (30:25.263)

Any job, yep.

So.

Charlie (30:37.278)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (30:40.693)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and this was the first why I brought it up because this is the first time I was pre selecting sounds for that I think would work with the film and I'm sure other people work this way, but for some reason I always start out a project and like well I'm starting from scratch. I don't know what the sounds are gonna be and I just like spend so long figuring out What the palette of sounds should be as I'm as I'm making

as I'm composing and this time was it just felt so much better that I made a palette of sounds that I think would fit the mood beforehand because really like I do enjoy tweaking sounds and stuff but I much prefer just like getting in it and actually writing the music and so having a sound bank was super helpful

Brian Funk (31:19.682)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (31:31.874)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (31:35.658)

Right. Yeah, you know what to expect, I guess. You know that you got other things coming in later that you have to sort of be aware of instead of just writing a part. You know, I do that a lot when I'm, you know, coming in here to work and seeing where the wind takes me today. A lot of times the parts I come up with are taking up way too much space early on. So if I'm writing like a synth part, it doesn't have any rests.

Charlie (31:42.515)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Charlie (31:54.122)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (32:00.959)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (32:05.706)

You know, it plays through, maybe it's an eight bar phrase and it plays throughout the whole thing. So it's not prepared for things, because I don't know what's next. As far as I know, it's only gonna be this one part.

Charlie (32:06.088)

Yeah.

Charlie (32:11.666)

Yeah.

Charlie (32:18.365)

Right. Yeah, and that's, I think that's a good lesson from film scoring too, in that I start out doing the same thing you're talking about, like where I have a really dense arrangement for the chords I'm playing or whatever, and then I'll add, because I love adding more layers, so I'll add like 10 layers and then I give it to the director and they're like, no, this is, there's too much, I don't like it. And so I piece

Brian Funk (32:37.922)

Yeah.

Charlie (32:47.585)

I take out like little pieces of it and like, okay, how's this? No, still too much. And then I take out more. And what's great about that is now, not only am I like making the arrangement a little better and more clear, but I could reuse the things that I took out as like the B section maybe, or rather than just like, Oh, it's a constant full on thing. I'll just like bring it back later.

Brian Funk (33:14.174)

Yeah. Right, right.

Charlie (33:16.933)

And once and sort of like the other thing I learned recently is like the you can get directors and everybody listening on board to like a big full thing of layers. It's really complex. If you started out just simpler because usually I would start out for complex and then it gets a slightly more complex. But if I just start out with like real basic intro.

Charlie (33:47.293)

Oh yeah, you know what I'm saying. Yeah. Like, yeah. Like, actual good songwriters should do and do that anyways, but for some reason it doesn't always translate from what I would do in one of my own songs into scoring.

Brian Funk (33:49.066)

Right. Yeah, you build up to it. You're not just like guns blazing.

Brian Funk (33:58.008)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (34:07.99)

Right, well, you're writing music for a film. It's not, the film isn't there for your music. It's not like a music video, right? Where the music is the thing and the film supplements it. The music is supplemental to the film supporting it. So yeah, it makes sense you'd have to kind of come at it a different way.

Charlie (34:16.619)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (34:19.998)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (34:28.416)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (34:34.705)

Yeah. Yeah, and it's sort of actually, you know, at first maybe you have to work on your ego as a film composer because you'll have this really cool thing and then you have to scrap it. But now I think of it as a very fun challenge.

Maybe in a similar way where if you're doing in the art world, like if you were an illustrator versus a graphic designer or something, where it's like an illustrator would get to maybe have a little more what you think of as creativity and freedom to make something really intricate and cool looking. But like a graphic designer has a very specific function and they're all about like making things elegant and

working well for whatever it is they're doing. So yeah, that's kind of how I feel view film scoring.

Brian Funk (35:30.858)

Right. That's a nice analogy. Yeah, because a lot of times the graphic design is simple. It's there to get a message across. And it's less about the actual image and all of that, but the message just like a film. Yeah.

Charlie (35:42.154)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (35:52.522)

Mm-hmm.

And it still has flavor in a way, but just a different kind of flavor. It's like framing things.

Brian Funk (36:02.486)

Yeah, different purpose, I guess.

Charlie (36:04.595)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (36:06.958)

So what was your palette for this, you know, bank robbery kind of, how are you communicating this?

Charlie (36:11.949)

Oh yeah and I'm trying to think it yeah I'm trying to think of also if I used any Afro DJ Mac sounds I might have I might have I had a whole series of like how I split it up was like drone sounds and I had maybe ten of those that I thought could fit from like kind of dark drones to light drones

Brian Funk (36:21.984)

Oh, no way. Really. That's crazy.

Charlie (36:38.973)

Then I had keyboard sounds, which I'm always looking for more good keyboard sounds. So if you have suggestions too, I'd love to hear them, but you know, like a Rhodes keyboard and then piano and those are like my two kind of go-to for film scores. And then I usually use upright bass plucks a lot.

especially for anything that's a little quirky and a little bit, like, well, it actually works well for the bank robbery scenes too. It's like pit space. And then I use string sections too, more as like, some short stuff, like pit, cicado, obviously also works really well. And, yeah.

short bowings. I kind of have to go with whatever's gonna sound good also for when it's not played live by musicians. So that kind of narrows down. Like I usually don't use brass instruments because um they're they really stand out as sounding bad if they're library. Yeah although like

Brian Funk (37:44.459)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (37:59.562)

like a library kind of sound, yeah.

Charlie (38:06.089)

maybe you've heard about this but i think that's one of the main reasons why french horn became such a huge instrument for film scores um like the hans zimmers score and things because they sound better as sampled instruments than like a trumpet because they're a little more lower in frequency they sound better in the mix

Brian Funk (38:13.422)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (38:26.987)

Oh my.

Charlie (38:32.769)

And so the directors who have to approve of how the scores are going to sound, even if they are going to use an orchestra, they still have to approve the demos. And so I think film score composers will naturally gravitate towards things that will make the director happy. So it's like, you know, held out strings, or it's like, it's hard to make like a very fast string part.

Brian Funk (38:52.35)

Yeah, right.

Charlie (39:02.129)

or something on MIDI, it's just not going to sound great. So yeah. So since I'm not recording with an orchestra, either doing everything in the box, I have to just make the sounds work.

Brian Funk (39:04.383)

Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (39:17.97)

That's pretty wild though that since you got to make the demo sound good, it actually affects the process, that kind of weird, unintended consequences of the way we work now, right? I guess in the past, when you didn't have that option, going back a few decades, you would...

Charlie (39:24.179)

Yeah.

Charlie (39:32.743)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (39:41.346)

probably get to use that stuff because you weren't going to be able to have a MIDI arrangement for the...

Charlie (39:46.509)

Right, yeah. The directors had to have a lot more trust in the composers too.

Brian Funk (39:52.382)

Yeah, wow. So, why do you, is it just because those instruments are so expressive? Like, yeah, fast string parts is so much going on with the bowing and I guess even the vibrato and just the spacing between the notes like is probably really hard to capture. And trumpet is, yeah, trumpet is like really.

There's so many tones that come out of that instrument.

Charlie (40:23.521)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think the hardest things to replicate is like the

the attacks and flowing from one note to the next if it's really fast things. Like a long string sound is great because you can have it kind of come in more easily and it feels like it just blends in there. But especially if it's a high frequency thing like high violin or high trumpet, it just

Brian Funk (40:40.119)

Yeah.

Charlie (40:59.741)

That's probably another reason I don't use that as much is because I sort of need the score to blend with whatever's happening anyways. And especially if there's dialogue. You don't want it to really interrupt. And like John Williams was the master of scoring. He's obviously the master of composing and orchestration. But he's so good at... If you listen to the Star Wars...

Brian Funk (41:13.13)

Yeah, okay.

Charlie (41:28.625)

scores as you're watching the movie too. It's like every scene wherever there's dialogue he orchestrated it so that you know oh the trumpets are gonna cut out when Han Solo's has a line and then they come back in and so it's not like a volume fade like I mean they probably did a little of that but it's so natural just the way he orchestrated it around the dialogue which I don't know if yeah.

Brian Funk (41:43.903)

Oh wow.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (41:55.114)

Right, oh, it's so cool. Yeah, so it's almost like the voice is part of the score in his mind, so just like you would mix a song, you don't usually have a guitar solo blaring when you're singing, you know? It tends to get in the way. I...

Charlie (42:03.385)

Yes, totally.

Charlie (42:10.284)

All right.

Yeah. And that's my number one pitch for when directors are like, well, should I hire a composer or should I just use library music? I'm like, well, if with a composer, you can have them arrange it around your dialogue and everything else going around. Cause the worst is when I hear someone like places, uh, like a hard rock track or something or real loud something. Yeah.

Brian Funk (42:40.734)

Hard Rock 17. Medium pace groove dot wave.

Charlie (42:45.829)

Yes, yeah, something loud and with drums especially. And then it's so loud that they have to dip it down under the dialogue to almost nothing and then it loses all the energy. Whereas if you had a composer write it, like they could write a rock track and then they just like cut out the drums from the mix or suddenly it goes into like something a little more low key and then come back in.

Brian Funk (42:51.192)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (43:10.687)

Yeah.

Right, right, yeah, play around it.

Charlie (43:13.945)

so you don't lose the energy of the track by just fading out, fading down.

Brian Funk (43:18.218)

Yeah, right, we can like stop playing on the cymbals and maybe go to something a little more subdued and yeah, wow, that's a good reason to watch some of those movies again. Some John Williams, right? I just noticed that. I've never thought of it in that way, but it makes a lot of sense. It's important, even when I do my

Charlie (43:22.781)

Yeah.

Charlie (43:26.525)

Yep.

Charlie (43:31.505)

Yeah, for sure.

Brian Funk (43:45.886)

music with the pod. Sometimes when I make my like little clips for the podcast, you know, these little like 60 second things, I usually just kind of find some jams I've been playing around with stuff that's probably not going anywhere, but I kind of like anyway. But it's the stuff that if it has too much going on up there, it doesn't work because it just gets in the way. And the option is to side chain it and have it, you know, drop in volume when they, but it has that kind of like...

Charlie (44:00.35)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (44:08.171)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (44:15.822)

This thing is like trying to get around the voice, you know? And it's almost like worse than having nothing.

Charlie (44:18.469)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Charlie (44:23.265)

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah, and like podcasts and stuff people are used to that. It's like, oh, this is obviously like back the background music It's gonna fade down but like in a film it's Quite different. I think the feeling of it Yeah

Brian Funk (44:33.516)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (44:37.074)

Right. Yeah. Because that's a lot of the tone. A lot of the emotion is coming from that. So if it just kind of goes away. Hmm. Wow. He can be a whole another layer to watch the movies.

Charlie (44:46.436)

Mm-hmm

Charlie (44:50.314)

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (44:56.894)

Yeah, that's cool. That sounds like so much fun, though, designing. I've really enjoyed hearing people talk about that aspect of it, picking out the sounds, what's kind of the flavors of this particular film that we're scoring. One.

Charlie (45:12.369)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you'd excel at that. That'd be cool to see what you'd do with the film score. Just like having your vast library of sounds.

Brian Funk (45:22.814)

Well, I was going to ask you actually, is it sometimes better to kind of stick with more traditional things that are not, because like the way I think of it is part of your job is almost to not be too noticeable, right? Like you can't, I've gone to like...

Charlie (45:44.696)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (45:48.222)

One of the last movies I saw, I forget which one it was, I've been to the movies a lot lately, but I went to the movies to see a Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross scored film, I forget, whatever it was. And I went to the theater and watched it, and when I left I was like, oh crap, I didn't even really pay attention to the music, my whole point of going because it just fell right in. Then watched it again and it was really fun, but.

Charlie (46:05.564)

Yeah.

Charlie (46:11.69)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (46:16.502)

That's kind of your job is to sort of not stick out and not distract, just absorb the people into the film. So do those more experimental sounds almost feel like they might be a problem in this type of world?

Charlie (46:20.037)

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Charlie (46:33.305)

Yeah, sometimes. Once in a while you get the director who really wants to have unique sound for their film. Maybe their film's like a little more on the artsy side. But especially for documentary work, I'm basically sticking to stuff that feels like, you know, it hits the tropes of whatever documentary I'm working on. So a lot of times that's like piano, strings.

drones that's like kind of neutral drones even not I don't make things too synthy unless they're really into like the revival of like synth sounds so that's sort of coming back like a few directors are now like oh yeah we should have some of this like cool synth sounds in there like great let's do it

Brian Funk (47:13.878)

Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (47:25.247)

Right.

Yeah, I've seen that trend. I think probably Stranger Things is the real turning point.

Charlie (47:32.586)

Yeah.

Yeah, it's fun actually. I sort of grew up, well I was born in the 80s and I was growing up with like pretty cheesy sounding synths back in the early 90s and stuff and I didn't really like them at the time and I thought like 80s production was silly and I got sick of like saxophone sounds because it was in everything. So I didn't really think about it too much as a kid but

Brian Funk (47:47.574)

Yeah. Me too, yeah.

Brian Funk (48:02.656)

Yeah.

Charlie (48:05.457)

later on I realized like wow I ever really I have a distaste for that those sounds and they sound cheesy but then like since this revolution of like that style coming back now I'm like oh this is awesome because I can use these cheesy synth sounds and they actually sound cool I don't know if you've had that experience at all

Brian Funk (48:25.01)

Yeah. Oh, definitely. Yeah. That like, I, it was, you know, in the nineties, of course, uh, when I started playing guitar in 94 and. You know, nothing is less cool than like cheesy 80 synth sounds in 94, like after Nirvana came out and all of that. So, um, yeah, any of that stuff was just like laughable, but then it kind of became back.

Charlie (48:43.578)

Yeah.

Charlie (48:52.63)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (48:55.694)

almost like ironically it was like, oh, that sounded so cheesy, but it's, it takes me back to the eighties and it, it's loaded with emotion and kind of a, they have such a, like world to them that they bring you into. And when you want to create that, like, yeah, sometimes like the, the cheesier electric piano I can find, you know, FM synth like.

Charlie (49:11.986)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (49:20.702)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:23.127)

the better. It's just...

Charlie (49:24.477)

Yeah, and not only for pop stuff, but like dark, I guess dark wave or

Brian Funk (49:29.234)

Yeah. Like kind of like anything now. It's, it, it kind of lost that cheesiness. Like, like, or it just, it's good cheesy. I don't know how to put it exactly, but it tickles me in a fun way.

Charlie (49:39.452)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (49:44.341)

Yeah, I guess it does. I'm thinking the Drive soundtrack probably also was a big part of that. Like when that movie came out, I don't know. Drive, was that the movie I'm thinking of? Yeah, it was just, was it Ryan Gosling just driving around doing hits and stuff?

Brian Funk (49:55.618)

the drive.

Brian Funk (50:08.206)

Oh, I don't know. Yeah.

Charlie (50:10.993)

Yeah, anyways, that had like 80 synth soundtrack and now and yep. And then all the directors are like, Oh yeah, we got to have those sounds.

Brian Funk (50:14.464)

Like a synthwave sort of thing. Yeah.

Brian Funk (50:21.294)

Well, they're funny. They're like really futuristic, but from the eighties perspective, and I think we just had such an awesome vision of the future around that time. You know, seventies eighties.

Charlie (50:27.173)

Mm-hmm. Heh.

Charlie (50:34.516)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (50:37.502)

Even if you watch like old shows, and watch my wife and I have been watching a lot of Twilight Zones, you know, from the 60s and what they thought the future was gonna be and like what it actually became, it's so funny. You know, like they're space traveling in like 1981. You know, they're traveling to different planets. But this vision of like, this idea of the future when I was a kid in the 80s.

Charlie (50:42.47)

Ooh.

Charlie (50:49.815)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (50:53.679)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (51:03.918)

was so fun and amazing and space age and it's kind of weird like how we are now. We're still here on earth. None of our cars fly and you know we're not teleporting. We have so many other things that we had no idea were coming like what were we well we had video phones like we're doing this video call right now but the video phone was still on the wall.

Charlie (51:14.757)

Mm-hmm. Heh, heh, nope.

Charlie (51:23.585)

All right.

Charlie (51:31.782)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (51:32.042)

You know, it was next to the regular old dial-up phone, you know, the rotary phone. We didn't know it was going to be in our pocket with all this funny things that we missed, but some of the actual dreams of the future are just still so far away.

Charlie (51:51.905)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I was actually just talking to my friend today about, you know, what jobs are going to be around in the future. And we had thought like, oh yeah, with like the robot revolution, we won't have to do crappy manual labor jobs or whatever. And now instead, people are having office jobs replaced because, um,

Brian Funk (52:17.131)

Yeah.

Charlie (52:19.329)

AI is easier to make than actual robots, probably. So, I mean, they're taking over in both realms, but.

Brian Funk (52:28.362)

No, but you're right. Um, and I think about this with my high school students a lot. When, um, you know, there's like trade schools they can go to and they're when they're upperclassmen. And you know, like you're still going to need electricians. You still need auto mechanics and like robots aren't doing that stuff. And then maybe not yet, at least, I don't know, but you know, the plumbing in my house is so unique.

Charlie (52:43.54)

Yeah.

Charlie (52:50.837)

Yeah. And would you trust that if... Yeah.

Brian Funk (52:55.906)

compared to every other house that you just need a person to assess it. But yeah, like the things like even creative work, writing, and it's like, eh, I don't really need that anymore.

Charlie (53:00.562)

Yeah.

Charlie (53:06.829)

Yep.

Charlie (53:11.293)

I know I am prepared for someday my film scoring work will probably be able to be automated to some extent.

Brian Funk (53:22.19)

Well, you make a good point though about adjusting intelligently to dialogue and things that are happening in the film that yeah, you can get, I guess, computers to produce music that sounds, you know, like nice generic music, but I don't know.

Charlie (53:37.675)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (53:42.613)

Well, to bring it back to the truba deck, one thing I'm working on is trying to automatically generate some backing tracks, because I realized that not everyone can play a chord instrument. So when I give them these cards that have just chord names on it, it's like, well, what do I do with this on violin? Or something. And so I've been starting a project. I think we are very close to the stretch goal.

Brian Funk (53:57.763)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (54:04.927)

Yeah.

Charlie (54:12.265)

happening on Kickstarter where I will create a backing track. Oh yeah, oh yeah, only like 60 bucks away.

Brian Funk (54:15.602)

You ain't kidding, it might happen during this conversation.

Brian Funk (54:23.266)

It's gone up like 25 bucks since we started talking. So cool, man.

Charlie (54:26.661)

Nice. So yeah, so anyways, what I want to do is make accompaniment tracks, basically based on all the chords on the cards, and then people can just listen to those and they'll be on loop and you can just jam along with those. So, my goal is to, you know, just be able to put in the block chords in Ableton.

and then generate with using arpeggiator effects and other little thing effects generate like a whole backing band kind of like

Brian Funk (55:10.03)

Hmm. Yeah. I saw the video you put up that looked like maybe even today you put that up and you had the kind of concept going where you just had the chords blocked out, nothing fancy, simple, but all the music was really intricate. Lots of movement. It sounded like music. It didn't just sound like dung. Dung.

Charlie (55:18.805)

Yeah.

Charlie (55:27.808)

Yeah.

Right, yeah. Yeah, so my method kind of was, okay, so I have maybe four instruments in that track. Plucked bass, piano, road, sound, and then a harp for that one because it's kind of like a dreamy effect. And I would, I have an arpeggiator going a little slower on the bass so it's only doing like two notes per beat or I guess like probably four notes per measure.

then the piano is a little bit more it's like maybe on the quarter notes or eighth notes and then the harp is maybe following that too i can't remember which instrument's doing what but essentially like each one's at a different rate of arpeggios so it it'll feel a little more like they're doing their own thing versus all following the pattern

And I'll have different types of arpeggios going, so not just like up and down. It's like once maybe doing the pinky, pinky every other one or whatever it is. It's yeah, it's getting a little in the weeds maybe, but I love that arpeggiator effect, use it all the time.

Brian Funk (56:42.378)

Yeah, right thumb pinky and all that. Heh heh heh.

Brian Funk (56:49.89)

But yeah, it's cool. You could probably just set up a macro knob that'll control the speed of the arpeggiators. And you can customize it a bit. And I guess you could probably, I don't know if that's what you did or not, but you could probably just, you could probably rack them, all those instruments up into one rack with different chains, right? And just feed one block of chords.

Charlie (56:57.449)

Yeah.

Charlie (57:01.871)

Yeah.

Charlie (57:13.329)

Yeah.

Charlie (57:17.941)

That's my goal, which I haven't had to do before, but this is like the perfect example of it because I'll have 54 different chord progressions that I want to use the same instruments with. So I can have like 10 different styles of each card is my goal. So if I set up all this ahead of time, then I can just automatically create them and then I'll have like 520 recordings out of.

a lot less work. So yeah, that's my goal.

Brian Funk (57:47.787)

Right.

Yeah, that's great. That's smart. Really cool idea. And that'd be so helpful, right? Just, even just for practice, you know? Just, I wanna work on just like playing some guitar and got a nice backing track. I see the chords on my card, you know? Do you have those handy still? Do you mind holding it up? Cause for anyone watching, I think another thing worth mentioning is the art.

Charlie (58:00.263)

Yeah.

Charlie (58:04.276)

Yeah.

Charlie (58:07.859)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (58:11.409)

Yeah, the cards.

Brian Funk (58:18.914)

They're beautiful. And I love the theme you got going. You want to tell us about that a little bit? It's Cooper's March.

Charlie (58:20.141)

Oh, thanks.

Charlie (58:23.865)

Yeah so um I always this is my parents dog right here, Cooper. Yeah so what I'm doing with the cards is I also enjoy doing drawings and so I'm doing these right it's a mix weirdly because in medieval times the graphic designers were these people who would make like you know very intricate little paintings along the sides of their

Brian Funk (58:38.606)

And that's illustration, not really graphic design, right? OK, true, yeah.

Charlie (58:53.353)

their books. It's called marginalia of like whatever was in the margins of their sacred texts or whatever would be these like silly little drawings of rabbits like killing humans and people playing trumpets out their butts. And yeah, I don't I do not know how they thought it was okay that was in the bibles and stuff.

Brian Funk (59:09.87)

Thanks for watching!

Brian Funk (59:13.462)

medieval times.

Brian Funk (59:19.426)

The Dark Ages, man.

Charlie (59:24.373)

I think it was also to sort of like make people remember the pages or just for fun. I don't know. But anyway, so I'm trying to do that with this deck and I'm making a different animal playing an instrument on each card. So that was part of the Kickstarter. All those rewards are taken up, sadly, but I had 20 backers could get their pet, a portrait of their pet.

Brian Funk (59:30.795)

Yeah.

Charlie (59:53.133)

So yep and uh yeah we might see a special guest of Bryant's on there. So yeah but yeah the art super fun to do because medieval artists were just like goofy and

Brian Funk (59:53.454)

Yeah, so cool.

Brian Funk (01:00:01.634)

Ah, yeah, that's...

Charlie (01:00:15.69)

That's...

Brian Funk (01:00:15.758)

They look great. I love the characters and the style too. Like he captured that style really well. Looking at it myself now. Like you have one picture with that lizard bearded dragon, maybe it is. I don't even know. I don't know my lizards too well, but. Yeah.

Charlie (01:00:33.041)

Yes, that is based on my bearded dragon, Pat 2. If I had him handy I'd show him on screen.

Brian Funk (01:00:45.95)

Yeah, there's a picture on the Kickstarter. He looks like a happy guy hanging out with his mouth open.

Charlie (01:00:49.045)

Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. Yep. I was like, well, what would a medieval person do to a bearded dragon? Even though they're very small and unintimidating, they would probably give him like dragon wings and like a big tongue sticking out.

Brian Funk (01:01:03.65)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:01:07.754)

Yeah, you know, it really brings back though, this playful attitude, which sometimes we forget with music that we play music, right? We don't work music, we play it. And to put these characters on there, these pets especially too, and that they're inviting you to play with these chords, have fun with it, experiment with them a bit, and see what you can come up with.

Charlie (01:01:19.397)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:01:36.866)

You know, you could easily, some of the cards have more chords than others. I guess each line is meant to be like a bar or measure or something, which you could always just change if you wanted to. Um, but you don't even have to use all of them. You can just find three chords that you like a lot. And the next two lines is the chorus and, uh, just look at it that way. Um, and what you did in one of the videos, just combining them too.

Charlie (01:01:45.982)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:01:50.27)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:02:00.611)

Mm-hmm

Brian Funk (01:02:06.35)

It's a great idea. I'm gonna combine these two cards and that's our song. And then play, see what happens. Have fun.

Charlie (01:02:12.309)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's my hope. I wanted to, like in contrast to classical music where everything's written out, time signature is really set. I'm like, I want this to be as flexible as possible so people can just read the chords and yeah.

Brian Funk (01:02:30.614)

Mm-hmm.

It's so handy when you're playing with other people. And I play in a three piece like garage rock band and only two of us need to know what chords are. You know, the drummer doesn't, he can just play, just keep playing. Well, we'll figure it out. But even with two people, it's, it's tricky, you know, you like a few trends and it's easy to get stuck and kind of just like, all right, we're playing this thing, let's, I guess we'll go to the four for the next part.

Charlie (01:02:44.613)

Right. Yeah. Yep.

Brian Funk (01:03:00.618)

You know, we'll do like, it becomes 12 bar blues, basically. If you're not careful, to have something that you can just follow along and get a feel for and start building grooves out of. Like, okay, yeah, we're gonna go to this, but I know I got this groove pattern going. I'm excited to try that with the band, just to put them down and be like, all right, man, these are gonna be our chords.

Charlie (01:03:00.992)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:03:04.424)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:03:09.931)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:03:14.783)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:03:23.929)

Oh, that'd be awesome.

Yeah, here we go. Yep.

Brian Funk (01:03:28.87)

Alex is my bass player, he plays these chords. Chris, just play the drums. Don't worry about anything.

Charlie (01:03:30.983)

Nice.

nice yep yeah i know i was like i was sort of wishing i could have something for percussion players too drummers and everybody um but i don't that's the part of the bigger game maybe i was also trying to think because we hit my first stretch goal which was that i'm going to make a game you can play out of the cards too um beyond just using them for

Brian Funk (01:03:48.074)

Maybe that's the bigger game.

Yeah.

Charlie (01:04:03.765)

songwriting tool part of it. And I started thinking last night about how I could maybe make a rhythm game with the cards. So something like maybe the colors matter. So it's like, oh if I get two black cards in a row that's like the kick drum that you stomp your foot and then the red diamond is like you make a click with your mouth or something.

Brian Funk (01:04:31.506)

element. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah.

Charlie (01:04:33.213)

I don't know, but yeah, maybe like a Simon type game. Like if you remember that, where you had to remember the order. It's stressful.

Brian Funk (01:04:37.554)

Yeah. Oh god. Stress for a game.

Charlie (01:04:48.706)

I used to go to Little Caesar's. They had like, I don't know why they had this. Yeah, Little Caesar's, they had like a Simon type game where you could win free crazy bread. And usually I would win a pop for free when I went in there. But sometimes I would get the crazy bread if I lasted long enough on this machine. It's just like, what a weird promotional thing.

Brian Funk (01:04:53.378)

Pizza place?

Brian Funk (01:05:00.31)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:05:08.306)

Yeah. Right.

Yeah, right. Just to have you come in. But yeah, it's fun, right? It gets you trying. I mean, nothing, I'm sure that's the best cheesy bread you can get. The one you won. Your prize cheesy bread.

Charlie (01:05:19.249)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:05:25.661)

Oh yeah, that best day of my childhood probably.

Brian Funk (01:05:31.926)

Those games are funny. I think of the other one, similar Bop It. You probably remember that, right? The weird device, do you? I've always found with those games, the first time I go is always my best. Cause you can't think, you just have to do it. You can't think as soon as you like start thinking like, oh, I'm doing it. Like it's a lot like sometimes when you play an instrument and you start learning a song and you're like, oh, I'm doing it. And then you're not.

Charlie (01:05:37.269)

Oh yeah, I have it. I can see it right now on my shelf.

Charlie (01:05:50.837)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:06:01.713)

Yep.

Brian Funk (01:06:03.239)

But then every time after that, I don't do half as good. It's like I've spent that part of my brain today. I gotta walk away.

Charlie (01:06:09.262)

Yep.

Charlie (01:06:13.457)

Yeah. Yep.

Brian Funk (01:06:18.53)

You know, game design is an interesting world. I wonder, do you find similarities with that in songwriting or film scoring? Because you got like rules, conventions, expectations. You can't just rehash the same thing. It can't be too familiar. It can't be, I wonder if you see like, if they've helped inform you in both ways.

Charlie (01:06:38.517)

Yeah.

Yeah, there's...

Charlie (01:06:45.877)

Definitely. Yeah, I think any creative field you're in will help another creative field because you do start to learn those psychological things more. Like you're saying, that's definitely a part of game design and music where you got to give people what they're familiar with so they can hook into it, but then like a little bit something new to spice it up. And for like game design.

One of my goals I always think about is how can I make people feel clever? I don't know if that translates over to music, but making, yeah, that's like.

Brian Funk (01:07:29.154)

Well, sometimes when people, when you, I was listening to the new record from The Smile, which is like a Radiohead guy, Tom York, and just, I think it just came out today. And I noticed like this part as an 11 count and I felt like, oh yeah, I realized that. So maybe there's a little bit of that, you know, kind of like music nerd comes out like, I see what they're doing.

Charlie (01:07:35.509)

Oh yeah. Oh, they're great. I. Oh, nice.

Charlie (01:07:45.699)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:07:54.585)

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, Radiohead does make me feel clever for listening to it. You know.

Brian Funk (01:08:03.111)

Sometimes it's work. Sometimes it takes a little mental strength, but yeah, maybe there's that. But that's interesting. That's an interesting thought to put into the game. Make you feel clever. How do you do that?

Charlie (01:08:08.147)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:08:14.909)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Good question. Always trying to figure it out. Yeah, I think it's, I don't know, a combo of right. Yeah, how do you make your students feel clever? Yeah, it's like you're saying people need to feel like some level

Brian Funk (01:08:21.854)

How do you make someone feel clever?

Brian Funk (01:08:28.586)

As a teacher, this would be useful for me too.

Charlie (01:08:44.481)

of I know what to expect like I've seen this puzzle before and I know how to solve it because I learned the easier steps along the way. Actually that's a pretty good comparison to music because like we were talking about sometimes you got to start out real simple with like maybe it's just the guitar strums and then

Brian Funk (01:09:13.997)

Hmm. Hey. Give him like a motif that we'll come back later. Hmm.

Charlie (01:09:14.217)

melody comes in. And so it's like, you gotta ease people in. Mm-hmm. And before you know it, and it's also about flow, I think. Just like music's about flow. Games are about, can you get someone in the flow of playing so they actually forget that they're playing a game and they're just like in it. They're not thinking about the rules. They're just enjoying it. So.

And there's definitely like a crowd of board game people who are really into the rules and they're like would be fine playing a 10-hour game and reading the rules like in in-depth. That's not my kind of game or like I like to design a little more shorter more elegant games than that. But it's probably a comparison to like the new music world.

Brian Funk (01:09:55.319)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:10:14.653)

or like classical music world that's like more modern where they're not really writing for a big audience they're writing for people who are really nerdy about this music and they get something out of it that no one else will get which might be really deep to them um and because they are familiar with it enough or they know the yeah

Brian Funk (01:10:18.924)

Right.

Charlie (01:10:43.809)

It's like just a different language.

Brian Funk (01:10:46.294)

Yeah, I get exactly what you mean. My wife is deeply involved in the tabletop gaming community. She had a store for 10 years or so and runs the Long Island Tabletop Gaming Expo, which I feel like you should be there.

Charlie (01:10:55.222)

Hmm.

Charlie (01:11:01.302)

Oh, cool.

Charlie (01:11:05.865)

Whoa, awesome. Yeah, oh, that'd be really fun.

Brian Funk (01:11:11.202)

Yeah, it's really cool. And my way of helping is to be in the one of the theaters where they do panels I do the sound set up mics and all that the audio stuff and One of the panels they had last year was Game design and so they had some people that were developing their own games and they were Explaining what they were doing and people could ask questions

Charlie (01:11:20.595)

Nice.

Brian Funk (01:11:37.462)

Really interesting, you know how they put it together, but I totally get what you're saying because sometimes I'll play with them and I Sometimes the rules I'm just like what like this is just like oh my god Like it's too much like there's too many things I have to keep track of right, but they're very used to it You know, they're they'll put Game night is like, you know an eight-hour event

Charlie (01:11:51.195)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:11:58.814)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:04.19)

and we're going to sit there and play it. And for me, Game Night is like a 45 minute game of playing something quick. So it's a lot of adjusting. And I can appreciate the things that are a little bit easier for entry, but also see where, I guess, like you said, the classical music world, that's where they are. They're doing like.

Charlie (01:12:09.994)

Hehe, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:32.554)

Mozart and Beethoven and nursery rhymes.

Charlie (01:12:38.953)

Sure Yeah, and it I mean like that perspective Makes me never judge a certain type of music. I think because it's like Yeah, there might be More accessible music for someone or not, but it's like you're all just getting Something you enjoy out of it. Whatever form it's in like whether it's like this sugary candy version of music or the like

acquired taste kind of music. Yeah. So thinking about the audience is a really helpful thing in all creative fields, I think.

Brian Funk (01:13:11.47)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:13:21.034)

Right. The last game we played was pretty fun. It was kind of like a combination of Pictionary and Telephone. Two really simple games, right? I think so. Yeah, I think that's what it was. Yeah, well, you get your card, you got to draw something, and then you pass it around and you got what the person before you got. And it basically goes around the circle of players until you get your...

Charlie (01:13:30.217)

Oh yeah, telestrations maybe? Or yeah, I love that game.

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:13:47.53)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:13:48.99)

thing back and you look at what they drew and it's like nothing like what you originally did half the time but really fun yeah.

Charlie (01:13:51.425)

Hehe.

Charlie (01:13:55.665)

Yes, I love it. My friends and I actually played, it started during COVID, like extended version of that game over the course of like two months, I want to say, where we would have a week to work on our drawings. And so we'd send it by email. And yeah, we just had some amazing artists with our group too. So.

Brian Funk (01:14:15.231)

Oh cool.

Charlie (01:14:23.577)

And some not amazing artists, which also makes it hilarious.

Brian Funk (01:14:26.654)

Yeah, sometimes, and again, like it just goes to show like your skill level doesn't necessarily correlate with output and results. And I mean, you can learn from everybody. And like we said earlier, sometimes it's nice to have somebody that doesn't know the musical rules because they'll do the weird thing that sounds amazing. But yeah, sometimes the people that are less artistic just get right to the point. They're not trying to.

Charlie (01:14:35.442)

Right.

Charlie (01:14:44.862)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:14:52.03)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:14:53.706)

draw, just communicating. And that's really what you're trying to do. We had a lot of that. It was pretty funny. Some people were just really good at communicating, and some people were trying to draw too much.

Charlie (01:14:54.953)

Yeah

Charlie (01:15:01.3)

Nice.

Charlie (01:15:06.665)

Yeah, this is reminding me actually of one of my favorite interviews I did on ComposerQuest. I don't know if you've ever run across Syriac who is more like does animations.

Brian Funk (01:15:18.582)

Not sure. I'm pretty sure I listen to most, if not all of those shows.

Charlie (01:15:25.161)

Well maybe I'll jog your memory by describing what his YouTube videos are. He makes these really outlandish animated things that are like, one's called Cows and it's just like a video that's like pictures of cows but then he morphs them in weird ways and very like uh it's like tessellations or something where a cow, little cows come out of a big cow and all this weird stuff that

Brian Funk (01:15:52.234)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:15:54.381)

is awesome and he I didn't realize it at first but he makes all the music for them too and the music is so wild and it fits that style perfectly but I would have guessed based on the music that oh he must like know a lot of music theory because he's doing all these like weird chord changes and um just wild and I when I interviewed him he's like no I don't really know any of that stuff I

Brian Funk (01:16:15.723)

Right.

Charlie (01:16:24.601)

MIDI and he just draws it in a pleasing way to him visually and then just turns out sounding like amazing. So yeah.

Brian Funk (01:16:36.694)

That's crazy. Just make it look nice.

Charlie (01:16:39.205)

Yeah, I'm sure he's like listening back and tweaking here and there, but it's just fun to see someone who's like an outsider maybe to the music world. Just like have a really cool perspective.

Brian Funk (01:16:44.905)

Mm.

Brian Funk (01:16:49.183)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:16:54.474)

Right. And that's an interesting kind of newer, more like 21st century approach to, um, where, you know, in the past would have been someone just putting their hands in certain spots on the piano or something, but to draw it, just say, I'm just going to draw and these ones are going to go up. Those will go, they're making this shape. And a lot of, a lot of music is that actually, you know, like there's like

Charlie (01:17:01.912)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:17:11.133)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:17:16.318)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:17:22.149)

Yeah, geometry and yeah.

Brian Funk (01:17:23.17)

patterns and shapes. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:17:27.778)

Hmm, there's probably a lot of people doing that actually. I mean, I know of a lot of people that don't play instruments and are able to make pretty interesting music with clicking.

Charlie (01:17:31.135)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:17:36.989)

Right. Yeah. Not to keep plugging the Trubedek, but I, um, well, no, I just, when I was testing it with a friend, I was so surprised because she had garage band up on her iPad and I'm, she's like, yeah, I don't really play any instruments, but let me just try it. And suddenly she was like entering all the chords in garage band and like doing arrangements.

Brian Funk (01:17:43.522)

Plug away, it's awesome.

Charlie (01:18:04.993)

stuff that just sounded awesome. I'm like how... she made like I don't know 10 in a row. I'm like you are already a music producer and like you telling me you like never did this before in GarageBand. I'm like what? So yeah that's the hope is like people who are on the fringe of like I have GarageBand downloaded but I don't know where to go where to start.

Brian Funk (01:18:20.951)

Wow.

Well, that can't...

Brian Funk (01:18:32.978)

Yeah, oh man, it must be... That's gonna help a lot of people where they can just take the deck and, okay, these chords go together. It's all right, let's put them together and then... Because that's like, it's obviously it's important, right? It matters, but in a lot of ways though, you kind of just need something. And then take it from there. You need something like to react off of. So if...

Charlie (01:18:34.655)

So.

Charlie (01:18:45.472)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:18:55.141)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:19:02.014)

You just got a few chords there. I'm sure that's plenty for so many people to just go. And for me, it often is with my band for sure. Sometimes we just need a riff. We need a little progression and then we'll, we'll make the song out of it.

Charlie (01:19:06.933)

He he.

Charlie (01:19:16.033)

Mm-hmm. And I think what's interesting now, like thinking about with the chords already in place is like, just thinking back when I was in a band, it's like I would usually come up with like a guitar riff that sounded cool, but then you're kind of like, well, I don't know where to go from there. Like I guess I'll just keep looping it. But like with the instead now the bones are there and now you can like fill in around the bones.

Brian Funk (01:19:44.834)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:19:45.917)

Yeah. It'll be interesting. It's a fun experiment for me to try to come up with 54 unique enough sounding. Like I want them to be generic too, that they just work really nicely. Like I'll probably use some generic pop chord progressions too, but I don't want to just... I want to try to not repeat too many of the same ideas.

Brian Funk (01:19:47.438)

That's a great use.

Brian Funk (01:19:59.766)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:20:15.15)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's an interesting challenge.

Charlie (01:20:16.073)

Like right now I'm usually going, you know, from at the end it ends on a five and then goes to one to loop back. But like I got, I want to start thinking outside the box on those. Like where's... yeah.

Brian Funk (01:20:30.699)

Yeah. Well, I guess that concept too of the simpler stuff at the lower numbers and then more complex. So, yeah, I guess so much music is built on relatively few chord progressions or even just like moves within the scale. So.

Charlie (01:20:47.306)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:20:54.313)

Yeah, do you ever use hook theory or have you seen their site?

Brian Funk (01:20:59.57)

Uh, yeah, I think the YouTube, I, uh, Oh, they're, um, I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Charlie (01:21:03.409)

Yeah. Or is it hook? Yeah, it's like kind of trains your training exercises too. But they also show you like, here's the chords that are used in this, these pop songs. And you just, it's kind of eyeopening to see like, okay, just the sheer number of songs that use this exact chord progression. And it has like them ranked by popularity and

Brian Funk (01:21:10.142)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, right.

Brian Funk (01:21:18.286)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:21:31.86)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:21:32.321)

All the like top 10 popular ones all sound almost the same except for like one chord is swapped out.

Brian Funk (01:21:39.762)

Right. One, five, six, four. That's gotta be like the most popular one, I would think. But yeah, make it one, five, six, three. Like, Ooh, there's something. Um, I guess that's a challenge for you to, if you want them to be different, you don't want to repeat yourself, but if you go too far, you, you have like.

Charlie (01:21:43.045)

Yep, yep.

Charlie (01:21:47.751)

Yep.

Charlie (01:21:53.748)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:22:08.999)

four cards that like sound familiar and then you got like 50 cards that are like really weird from chord regressions right?

Charlie (01:22:15.273)

Yeah, exactly. I've at least, you know, I got the options to do seventh chords and other chords that will just give it a different flavor to the same basic structure. But, and also I'm keep some of the chords I'm using like, it's interesting how, you know, like I think the first one you picked

Brian Funk (01:22:28.759)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:22:44.971)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:22:45.677)

but I want to get into like two chords per measure for a lot of them or like an irregular pattern because I think that is a real key part of making interesting songs is breaking out of the mold of like one chord per measure but

Brian Funk (01:22:55.883)

Yes.

Brian Funk (01:23:00.126)

Yeah. Yeah, sometimes just deciding that we're going to switch the chord on the three and the first, you know, the third bar or whatever, but the other chords are all four bars long. Or the last chord is only two and little moves like that to just speed things along, give some push and pull. I watched a great video. I'd never seen this guy before.

Charlie (01:23:14.79)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:23:23.262)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:23:29.642)

I love his channel already because he's dissecting Beach Boys songs. And he's so funny the way how casual he is. I'll find out his name and put them in the show notes. But he sings amazing. He sounds like Brian Wilson in the Beach Boys, but he's breaking down like some of their songs and some of the modulations they do. And a lot of like the moves they use to get

Charlie (01:23:34.165)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:23:57.646)

through parts is just speeding up the chord progression. So instead of it being a four bar progression, this time it's only two, it's like kind of compressed. And that gives them the time to throw in like this, you know, dominant seven chord or something right here, you know, dominant five or whatever. And just move through into new territory by taking you through that familiar journey just a little bit faster this time, or a little bit slower. And...

Charlie (01:24:12.234)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:24:24.36)

Interesting.

Brian Funk (01:24:27.158)

Yeah, it's really, really good channel. I'm loving it. So I'll put that in the, sorry, I don't know his name right now. I just found it last night. I was like, wow, it's like unlocking the key of like some magical place. Like, you know, especially like the beach boys, the, those melodies and harmonies. And it's so complex and interesting, but it still sounds so

Charlie (01:24:31.043)

school.

Charlie (01:24:36.246)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:24:54.675)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:24:57.77)

like innocent. It doesn't sound like crazy jazz or anything that you're like, what's going on here? It's sneaky, you know? It's sneaky and how clever it is.

Charlie (01:24:59.058)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:25:05.577)

It is very sneaky, yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:25:11.098)

I love that. So yeah, you can, yeah, there's so much you can do with that. And the way you can interpret the cards too. I'm really glad how you decided to do it where it's just enough of a suggestion to get you going, but you can totally ignore it or revise it or however you want.

Charlie (01:25:34.825)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's my hope also with these like backing tracks that I'm gonna record like I Don't want them to inform people too much of like this is what style I should sing in some Trying to figure out like what's a good balance of like I want it to sound inspiring enough like nice sounds So rather than like just straight up like piano MIDI

Brian Funk (01:26:05.251)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:26:05.909)

Um, but I don't want it to feel like, oh, now I have to write in this genre because it's, you know, whatever, got a, uh, like acoustic guitar and drum sound. It's like, oh, it sounds a little country. I better write a country song, but yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:26:23.05)

Right, right, these are country chords now. Yeah, yeah, cause they're not. They can go a lot of ways. Hmm.

Charlie (01:26:31.365)

Mm-hmm. So I'm thinking I might just have... I'm gonna aim for 10 styles and maybe I'll poll people about like what styles should I go for. I might just name them like, okay this is a dreamy track. Like the one you heard on that video is kind of dreamy. And another one might be like, I don't know. Yeah, acoustic guitar. Some just piano. Just flutes or...

something maybe I'll do in medieval instrument ones use your ancient pack or something I was just thinking I should look into that one.

Brian Funk (01:27:08.002)

I was just going to say, please feel free if you think anything I have can help. Um, I'd be honored. I'd love that. You know, if you need weird stuff.

Charlie (01:27:15.593)

be fun.

Charlie (01:27:19.145)

Yeah, I love the ancient pack sounds. There's some that probably wouldn't work because they're probably not pitched to like normal pitches. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:27:24.298)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:27:30.718)

Yeah, there's a lot of bizarre stuff going on in there. When I use those too, I'm kind of like, what's this? Okay, that's the fun of it. I did a jam one of the days in January just using those sounds and it was really fun because I'm not thinking about music at all. Like this thing makes this tone, this gong makes that tone. I don't know what notes they are and I'm just making stuff.

Charlie (01:27:38.264)

Haha.

Charlie (01:27:41.385)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:27:55.089)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:27:59.714)

It's playing, you know?

Charlie (01:28:00.676)

Where did you get all those sounds? Are you recording some or finding them?

Brian Funk (01:28:03.218)

So no, that's, I got the story is on the webpage, my website, Francois Brenner, guy from, I think France. I might be mixing that up.

just reached out and he found another guy whose name I'm forgetting right now, but is on the site, uh, who had this huge collection and he sampled them all. Asked me if I wanted to work with them and put together instruments. So I didn't get to see them and touch them or anything. Um,

Charlie (01:28:30.209)

Cool.

Brian Funk (01:28:37.122)

but I got all the samples and then started building things, tried to make them interesting and playable. Cause a lot of it was just long recordings of him fiddling with instruments and trying to figure out how to play them. And I think the guy with the collection helped him a bit with like, this is what you do with this weird wooden thing that doesn't even look like an instrument. You know, it might be like an animal calling device. So it was a lot of fun to go through that, but.

Charlie (01:28:58.632)

Ha!

Charlie (01:29:03.08)

Mmm.

Brian Funk (01:29:07.638)

Then to try to translate it into something useful inside live was another challenge. Part of the fun of that for me is when I open it up, I really don't know what I'm going to get either. It's interesting to just get these unusual sounds and again, things that are...

Charlie (01:29:23.142)

Right. Heh heh.

Brian Funk (01:29:32.418)

They have tones, but I don't really know that they're not like a note. They're, they have so many overtones and harmonics that you kind of can't really call it this or that, but there's a few of them that you can play together. But it does just sort of take you into another kind of realm. You start playing with them.

Charlie (01:29:36.831)

Alright.

Charlie (01:29:53.853)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:29:57.474)

fun stuff.

Charlie (01:29:59.221)

awesome.

Brian Funk (01:30:01.29)

So I'm sure I would think that there are people that probably want to get involved on the Kickstarter and get a set of these cards. I think they can go on Kickstarter and find you, but they can also go to charliemcarran.com, right? That'll bring them there. Do you have a place to... Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Charlie (01:30:20.509)

Yeah and I'm also well yeah so I am now since we're pretty close to the stretch goal I think I can safely say I'm gonna make a website trubadeck.com so it's like Trubador but replace the N with deck. So that can get you the link to the Kickstarter too. And right now so I was

make 100 thing that kickstarter does where it's like limited to 100 backers which i felt like was a good um first step for making this so i have we were sold out of the actual physical decks on there but um i'll have a survey up on the kickstarter too that you could put your info in case i do make more decks in the future um but right now if you want i have a

You can get a digital version that you can have on your phone or print it out for five bucks on the Kickstarter. So yeah, happy to have anyone try it out. There's also like a PDF of the nine cards I was showing you here that you can just download for free and try out. Yeah, post your videos. We'll see what you can come up with.

Brian Funk (01:31:25.198)

Hmm.

That's cool.

Brian Funk (01:31:45.258)

I think this is a really cool thing that people would love. You should go into mass production of this deck. It's really cool. I have, I'll show you something I have right here because I use it a lot. These musician dice. It's probably blurry.

Charlie (01:31:54.505)

Haha

Charlie (01:32:03.038)

Oh, you were telling me about that. I have not seen those though.

Brian Funk (01:32:06.426)

It's like a crossover of the worlds too, like gaming, because it's like, I don't know, a bunch of these. I gotta get my face out of the camera so it'll focus on it, but it's I guess 12-sided die with...

Charlie (01:32:09.845)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:32:17.397)

Oh, I have one. I actually have one of those, but only that one. Yeah, it's a bunch of them. Cool.

Brian Funk (01:32:23.39)

Yeah, that's like a bunch. There's more in the bag. It's 10, I think, or 12, I don't know. But sometimes when we have our music production club, we'll do like a live meeting. And the thing we've been doing lately, because it's been so fun, is just a little, some sort of challenge. And we spend about 45 minutes making something. And then we get together for the.

When we're done, the timer goes off and we come back together and we share what we did for about the next hour or so, talk about what we did. And I've been using these all the time, just to roll a couple notes. And they might be the chords we use or just a melody line. It's all kind of optional, you know, like, I think a couple of the times we've done it, I just got caught up in something and totally ignored the rules we came up with. But it's really fun.

Charlie (01:33:07.03)

Sure.

Charlie (01:33:15.311)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:33:18.61)

You roll these things and sometimes you get useful notes. Sometimes you get like, you know, F, F sharp, G, G sharp. And you're like, oh man, okay, here it goes. But even still like to get something like that and to figure out a way to do it, it's like a game. It's like a challenge. Almost like what you're seeing with film score. It's like this problem solving, fun thing to do that.

Charlie (01:33:28.049)

Alright, make a song.

Charlie (01:33:43.518)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:33:47.306)

I think in the end just proves to you over and over again that you just need to start with you need some give yourself some idea and then go with it and just sort of trust that your musical taste will come in and that whatever skills you've accumulated over the years will guide you through and you'll learn things as well on the way. So these cards are great. I mean.

Charlie (01:34:10.29)

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, thanks.

Brian Funk (01:34:16.558)

They're, they're much more, they start you in a much more, um, usable place sometimes in the pure randomness of. Yeah.

Charlie (01:34:23.657)

than just random. Well it's funny though you mentioned the like chromatic four notes going up because I think that is literally one of the composition challenges at my college. I don't think my professor used it on my class but in subsequent years he said he would give people a challenge of like E F sharp G and you have to make a composition using those notes which just like distills it down

Brian Funk (01:34:50.778)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:34:53.841)

Almost more like rhythm. Like if you only had those notes, how do you? Yeah, yeah, like only those notes. Four chromatic notes in a row.

Brian Funk (01:34:57.706)

only so okay yeah that's tricky hmm yeah cuz if you are allowed to use other notes you can find clever ways to link them together but either way I mean both things are a challenge

Charlie (01:35:14.059)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:35:17.793)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:35:19.982)

And I think that's a great way to create, you know, to have something, you know, because sometimes the open-endedness and the freedom is a curse where you can do anything, it's too much, you need to be reeled in a little bit.

Charlie (01:35:36.277)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:35:44.074)

I'm so happy this is doing so well. The Kickstarter has 20 days still, so that's fantastic.

Charlie (01:35:46.817)

Thanks. Thanks for.

Charlie (01:35:52.645)

Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty much we funded in like three hours and then the last few days have been just going up from there. So it's pretty fun. Pretty fun.

Brian Funk (01:36:03.65)

Wild, yeah. It's a great idea, and it's smart, it's simple, it's useful, it's everything you want in this kind of thing. I'm very glad you're doing it, and I really hope. I just wish you nothing but success. And the other kind of game idea sounds really interesting, too. I'm.

Looking forward to what that turns into.

Charlie (01:36:33.956)

Yeah, I'll be looking for playtesters so if people out there listening have a group that would be into trying it. Yeah, getting playtesters.

Brian Funk (01:36:39.874)

That was a big topic in the panel. I was doing play testers and yeah, learning like where the glitches are. And yeah, all that stuff. It's a lot of work.

Charlie (01:36:50.181)

Yep. Because that's the other thing, yeah, that's the other thing that carries over from any creative field is getting an outside opinion. Because like when you're making the thing, you're experiencing it totally differently than someone else will who's coming in from scratch. So like if you spend an hour working on like four measures, your brain hears it so differently.

Brian Funk (01:37:00.699)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:37:09.609)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:37:20.893)

Hence why, like, with, again, back to that film scoring concept of, like, starting out simple and getting more complex later. Because, like, that's what happens when I get too caught up on one section of the film score. I'll keep adding layers and layers. But I've already heard the most basic version, so I'm getting bored with it, so I'm adding layers. And that's what happens with game designs, too, sometimes, where you're like, I'm already past this boring...

Brian Funk (01:37:43.228)

Right, yeah.

Charlie (01:37:50.333)

beginning part. I'm just going to add all the complex parts, but that's not how anyone else would experience it.

Brian Funk (01:37:59.658)

I've always thought about that, whether it's board games or video games, like how do you get the difficulty right? And it blows my mind that there are so many old video games that are still playable, or there aren't more games that are just completely impossible. There's a couple out there, like you play like old Nintendo games, like it's just like, this game's flawed, but it's amazing.

Charlie (01:38:13.15)

Mm-hmm.

Charlie (01:38:18.467)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:38:23.316)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:38:27.443)

Yeah

Brian Funk (01:38:29.986)

Um, to me, like finding that it's gotta be so much work. It's gotta be so tricky.

Charlie (01:38:36.197)

not to go down an entirely different rabbit hole, but I did just watch a really good video from one of my favorite YouTubers about game design, Game Maker's Toolkit, and he's talking about Mario games and how they have to plan for such a wide range of skills from people. Because you have the people who played old Mario games who are now really good at doing platformers. They want to challenge...

Brian Funk (01:38:54.306)

Right.

Charlie (01:39:02.441)

But you have like little kids who've never played Mario that have to somehow beat this game. And so then the video goes through this whole idea of how like there's three layer levels of difficulty that are just baked into the game that you don't pick like, oh I'm gonna play hard mode. You can't do that on Mario. You basically have to give people their own ability to choose the path kind of naturally in the game.

Brian Funk (01:39:21.952)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:39:31.382)

Yeah.

Charlie (01:39:31.905)

Like, oh, I'm going to go for this harder level, or harder part of the level. Like, Ooh, I see this like cloud up there that maybe I could get up there and do this thing versus like the base level of just beating the game. Maybe you don't have to do that stuff.

Brian Funk (01:39:47.422)

Right. I need to collect all those whatever's and Yoshi coins or something like that. That's funny. There was a year, one year at school, I was trying to make some point about you know rewards and whatnot. So I brought in the original Nintendo Super Mario Brothers and like had the kids come up and play it. And they were so

Charlie (01:39:52.526)

Yeah. Yep.

Brian Funk (01:40:16.994)

bad at it. Anyone I ever met that lived through the 80s has some understanding. They know where the hidden mushroom is, they know they get the mushroom. These kids would just run right into the first bad guy and die every single time. What's wrong with you guys? They play other games. All those little things.

Charlie (01:40:18.25)

Hehehe

Charlie (01:40:36.845)

Yeah, you just go attack it, punch it. No, you have to jump on his head, obviously. Like, what?

Brian Funk (01:40:44.514)

It was just one of those moments where I realized like, they just don't know. Like they haven't been exposed to it. And everyone else like that I knew had seen it, they get it, they understand the concepts. But yeah, so like they...

Charlie (01:40:57.929)

You know, you make me feel better about being old now, because we do have a special skill set.

Brian Funk (01:41:01.162)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:41:06.274)

We do, but watch him play like any other game. You know, I played my nephew in like NBA 2K and he just slaughtered me. I had like a few like NBA jam strategies carried over, you know, but otherwise he was just like, you know, in your face, in your face, uncle Brian. No mercy too. You know, he didn't give me any chance whatsoever.

Charlie (01:41:09.994)

Yeah, they're.

Charlie (01:41:14.686)

Yeah, I'm sure.

Charlie (01:41:18.935)

Hehehehe

Charlie (01:41:27.441)

Nice.

Charlie (01:41:33.256)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:41:35.278)

That's pretty funny. But cool, we'll wrap it up. Thanks so much for coming back. It's great talking and great catching up.

Charlie (01:41:41.133)

Oh yeah. It's awesome to... yeah for sure. Awesome to be back. Yeah. Really appreciate it.

Brian Funk (01:41:47.966)

and we'll have everything in the show notes for you guys listening. Check out the Truba Deck, it's super cool. I think it's gonna bring a lot of joy to a lot of people. I know I'm gonna have a lot of fun with it. I already have had a lot of fun with the few cards that you have, so thank you for that and thank you guys for listening.

podcastBrian Funkmusic production podcast, charlie mccarron