Developing an Authentic Sound with David Paul Newell - Music Production Podcast #422

David Paul Newell is a musician, producer, and one half of the electronic music duo Midnight Mystery Club. David worked as an audio engineer in Nashville for Brantley Sound Associates. He’s been a ghost writer in European House music. Midnight Mystery Club’s has a new single “I Only Have Eyes for You” coming out April 3rd. 

David and I talked about his experience in music production and developing an authentic, interesting sound. In this episode, you’ll hear Midnight Mystery Club’s new single and learned about its creation.

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Links:

• Midnight Mystery Club Links - https://linktr.ee/midnightmysteryclub

• "I Only Have Eyes For You" (April 3, 2026) Presave - https://hypeddit.com/midnightmysteryclub/ionlyhaveeyesforyou-1

• MMC YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNF2xW2mMSErV1u-VthISzg

• MMC Bandcamp - https://midnightmysteryclub.bandcamp.com

• MMC Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/midnightmysteryclub/

• Toy Synths Ableton Live Pack - https://brianfunk.com/blog/toysynths

• Brian Funk Website - https://brianfunk.com

• Music Production Club - https://brianfunk.com/mpc

• 5-Minute Music Producer - https://brianfunk.com/book

• Intro Music Made with 16-Bit Ableton Live Pack - https://brianfunk.com/blog/16-bit

• Music Production Podcast - https://brianfunk.com/podcast

• Save 25% on Ableton Live Packs at my store with the code: PODCAST - https://brianfunk.com/store

• This episode was edited by Animus Invidious of PerforModule - https://performodule.com/

Thank you for listening. 

Please review the Music Production Podcast on your favorite podcast provider!

Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:01.748)

All right, welcome to the show David. Good to see you.

David Paul Newell (00:05.548)

Great to be here, man. Thanks for having me.

Brian Funk (00:07.95)

Yeah, it's good to have you. We've got a little bit of a history between us, a little email action going back and forth, back in the day. So it's cool to...

David Paul Newell (00:14.348)

I 10 plus years now, 11 years, I think, since I first emailed you to tell you that as many of those presets and instruments that you make, I will buy them. it was strong, man. It was really good. So it's cool to see how you've come so far and turned all of the plugins and presets and all of those tutorials to now doing this and all the other things you're doing. It's pretty awesome, man.

Brian Funk (00:44.75)

Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for supporting it and giving me the encouragement. It's, mean, as you know, like a lot of times when you put stuff out, you release, you don't know what happens with it or where it goes or where it winds up releasing music. don't get to find out like I was listening to that on the drive home after the breakup and it really helped, you know? So it's always nice to hear that. We kind of release stuff and then just.

David Paul Newell (00:50.025)

Yeah, dude. Now it's awesome.

David Paul Newell (00:58.603)

Right?

David Paul Newell (01:07.103)

Right.

Brian Funk (01:13.996)

literally release it, you let it go and that's everybody's.

David Paul Newell (01:17.16)

Yeah. for sure. I mean, every now and then somebody will be really cool and they'll slide into the DMs or, you know, send us an email and tell them, tell me some story about how they first heard our music or whatever. And like makes my month. It's like the coolest thing ever. Cause you're just, cause you kind of, like you're saying you go on so long, you don't hear necessarily the feedback from anybody. And then somebody reaches out and it just reinvigorates.

Brian Funk (01:25.646)

you

David Paul Newell (01:45.521)

everything that you're doing. You're just like, wow, cool. So this is just not for me alone. There's somebody else out there who gets it, which is pretty cool.

Brian Funk (01:53.324)

Yeah. I find that really helps you, meet new people, expand your own career and options because, this is not a zero sum game. You know, it's not like if I'm going to get lunch, I go to Burger King or McDonald's and I have to pick, right? Like people can listen to all kinds of music and I don't get the competitive thing anymore. Maybe I did when I was little.

you younger, you like kind of get jealous of other people or you like feel like they're winning and you're not. But yeah, I've found just like embracing that and encouraging people. And I just find it also too is just proof that it can be done because sometimes you're, doing this stuff and you maybe you're just down on whatever you're making or it's just crickets as a response and it can, you know.

David Paul Newell (02:22.249)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (02:50.158)

It sucks some of the life out of it. to see other people do it and make cool music, it's like, you can do it. It's possible. So I try to absorb that as a personal victory as much as I can. Like you made something. This is great. It's not impossible.

David Paul Newell (03:03.251)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (03:07.08)

Yeah. No, it's funny, especially if you do it so long. I I think we were just talking a little bit before we started about both of us starting back in 2005 with the M-Box and Pro Tools. And you do it so long, it becomes habit forming. And then you're just putting music out because that's what you do. And then it really takes a while before you start to feel like,

Brian Funk (03:22.444)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (03:35.205)

It's connecting with some people and it's creating some sense of community. Like anything good, hopefully good, that you put your heart and soul into does, you know? Like if you run into people who like the same niche restaurant as you, you've instantly made friends, you know, the second you realize that. There is that kind of communal bond over mutual appreciation of something. And I think to me, that's exactly to your point about not wanting to have the competition, not...

that early on competition you have maybe for me when I was younger, you just you feel inadequate. You're struggling with that. And so you you push through that. But as you continue to go on, you realize, no, the the best part of this is just making something and finding friends who appreciate what you're doing. And then chances are they like hopefully if they like what I'm doing, I'm going to like what it is that they're creating. And then because it's kind of all in that world. So the only competition I might have is

maybe with somebody that I don't like what they're doing. But that's rare. mean, thankfully, like a lot of people who are willing to put stuff out today, go through just the difficulty that it is to actually make music today and keep it up. They're really putting their heart into it. So, you know, that usually turns out good stuff.

Brian Funk (04:36.685)

You

Brian Funk (04:54.007)

Yeah. I think there's maybe some value in the, I don't know, maybe competitive motivation kind of aspect, almost like a Lenin McCartney thing where they're like, like I gotta make it and we gotta get to make something cool. Cause Paul made something cool. But you're still kind of in it together. Like they were too, working. I get that. You know, my friends make a song like, I want to make something too now.

David Paul Newell (05:12.869)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (05:21.965)

I gotta get there and get to work. It's inspiring.

David Paul Newell (05:25.753)

Yeah.

Yeah, I've had that. I've got to work over the years, especially when I was younger. Starting off, I worked with a lot of different artists and then just friends of mine that I made music with and we just did it together. And there's always different dynamics, but the guy who couldn't be with us today, that guy right there, the other half of MMC is Levar. And I think with him and I, have a really fun dynamic, which is when we're...

when we're making music and we're working on stuff, it's kind of a competition, but it's kind of not. The competition is really just, what can I do to impress him? And that becomes the threshold because he kind of, I wouldn't say he's hard to please or it's a challenge, but I definitely know that when he is excited about something, then I'm onto something. And it kind of pushes me to further pass maybe where I would have gone on my own or.

Brian Funk (06:07.723)

Yeah, right.

David Paul Newell (06:26.147)

maybe what I would have settled with if I know if I play it for him or if I show it to him and he's not enthusiastically stoked about it then I know I've got work to do still so in my mind whenever I'm working on stuff I'm always thinking I can't wait to show it to him because then that that's the test that's gonna find out whether or not this is something good or not so

Brian Funk (06:48.831)

It's important to have that, to get that kind of feedback. And we're talking about, just so people know the acronym, MMC, Midnight Mystery Club. So that's your group, your partnership. And yeah, to work with someone that you know, you appreciate their taste, you like their taste, you respect it. And then when something happens that they are liking, it is nice to get that. Cause sometimes when you're alone doing it,

David Paul Newell (06:50.764)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (06:58.326)

Right.

Brian Funk (07:17.451)

You get too much in your head. You start thinking too much. And I start often with ideas that I'm really having a lot of fun with. then if I just think enough, I find myself questioning it, you know, feeling insecure about it. And it's nice. I play in a three-piece band, so I got two guys with me regularly that will kind of let me know like, no, no, no, keep doing that. Or let's try something else. And just that little bit of...

David Paul Newell (07:20.887)

yeah.

Brian Funk (07:47.287)

confirmation, it goes a long way.

David Paul Newell (07:48.979)

Yeah. You need it. think for me, as we talked about kind of early on, starting off with like Pro Tools and stuff, I made an album first thing I ever recorded as soon as I got the inbox. So I sat down and I just was like, I'm going to record an album, not knowing anything really about what I'm doing. And it was awful. And it was a great learning lesson, though, because I thought at the time I really knew what I wanted to do or knew how to record or make good music.

And I didn't make it for something that I would like. made it as something I thought other people would like. And it wasn't even done for probably two months and I couldn't listen to it. I just couldn't stand it. And you start to realize that there's this weird thing that happens in your mind when you're solely working on something without anybody else to bounce ideas off of. And you're so close to it. It's like you kind of lose the sense of taste.

a little bit, you're too close to it. It's like trying to paint a painting and only being like two inches from the canvas. You really need somebody else that's like 10 feet away to help you gauge what you're doing. so often I think I would start with a good idea as a song. But then after a couple of days, the initial excitement I had over that had kind of weaned. And so then it was, well, now I've got to generate something new in this song to keep that going.

And then before you know it, I've just whittled the song down until it was unrecognizable in the recording and then made something that I didn't know what it was. So it took a while to learn those lessons. for me, at least, I feel like I absolutely need quality control. need somebody else involved in the process, even if it's just to be a set of ears that I trust because I trust their taste and I trust their judgment. I need that or else I'm my own enemy sometimes.

Brian Funk (09:32.653)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (09:46.123)

Hmm. Yeah, those early days when I first got, I got Pro Tools and an M-Box 2 in 2005 as well. I think I had Pro Tools 6 and it was just updating to 7 at the time. I did have a little bit of experience with four track cassettes and they even had like a 16 track ADAT set up for a little while. That was pretty fun.

David Paul Newell (09:55.39)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (09:59.678)

you

David Paul Newell (10:09.607)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (10:11.916)

But once that came out, once I got my hands on that, I mean, it just blew the doors wide open. was infinite tracks now and all these effects, even before I was getting plugins and knew to get plugins. What came with it was way more than I had gear. I had a reverb, a rack mount reverb and a rack mount compressor that I really barely knew how to use. But then all of sudden, now I can put all of that on every track instead of just, you know, as an aux send or something.

David Paul Newell (10:23.58)

Right.

David Paul Newell (10:41.627)

Right? It's dangerous.

Brian Funk (10:42.988)

and yeah, just you think you need all this stuff. You need all these extra tracks and then you finally get it and you put all this stuff in a song and you're like, it's chaos. It's, it's out of control. There's just so much going on. don't even know what I'm listening to anymore. But it's part of that is it's a great analogy you made. Like it's like painting when you're like right here, right up to the canvas, you know, two inches.

David Paul Newell (10:55.825)

Right.

David Paul Newell (11:00.966)

Right.

Brian Funk (11:11.21)

And every once in a while you have to go back and like stretch your arm out and get the full view of the painting. But that's a hard thing to do because we have to keep switching between those modes, the kind of aerial view and then the right down on the ground with the microscope.

David Paul Newell (11:17.638)

Right.

David Paul Newell (11:29.052)

Yeah, for sure. Sometimes I just can't do it. mean, sometimes it's like you can do little tricks, you know, of course, like take a few days or a few weeks away from something and come back to it, which is helpful. But, you know, even now when I'm when I'm mixing stuff, I still have to have other people involved in the process because, know, you get really in the weeds tweaking something and then you forget how loud your eye hats are. And it's like they don't even sound loud anymore because your brain had just adjusted.

to the level that they're at. you know, even when I mix, I have a wonderful mastering engineer, Mike Neku, who's in Australia. And I send him mixes as I'm working on them, because of course he's going to have to master them, but he can kind of provide some feedback on where things are setting. And then it helps me kind of know when I've finalized the mix or not. and I, without that, I really get myself into some trouble. So, or it just takes me twice as long. So.

Brian Funk (11:59.213)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (12:26.764)

Hmm.

How long did you stick around in Pro Tools? Do you still use it?

David Paul Newell (12:32.857)

You know, it's a good question. I went through the hybrid phase where I would kind of record in Pro Tools, bounce things into Ableton around 2010 through maybe 2012, somewhere around there. But I would say 2010 was probably the year where things shifted for me. So I grew up, like you mentioned, I was playing guitar. That was kind of like my first instrument. And then in...

Every year I got I got a guitar when I was 12 and then the next year I picked up piano And then I think bass after that and then drums. So I just kind of started adding instruments. I think I got a saxophone somewhere around there too Not great at any of them, but just playing enough to get by just to make noise and then but Pretty much the music I understood how to make was in a band where we're like a four piece

alt-rock kind of band and That's I think when you when you learn how to play guitar That's obviously what you learn you learn rock songs generally, right? if you're gonna learn most guitar at least in the United States and I actually it probably made me more of a fan of rock and roll because I don't know if I was listening to a lot of rock and roll before I got a guitar and then But as I would progressing guitar, I really wasn't listening to a lot of this stuff that

that I was learning how to play or that people would say our band sounded like, which was, I don't know, was probably bands like Coldplay and Snow Patrol when we were young and just getting started. And those were like the popular bands and, you know, not to knock the bands, but that wasn't what I was going for. I was listening to like a lot of stuff from Europe, like more electronic stuff like Neon Indian and Hot Chip and

Who else was there? I Daft Punk, course, Air, a lot of that stuff. And I didn't know the first thing about how to make that music. Like, I knew how to record and make music as a four-part band, but I didn't know what in the world a sequencer was. I didn't know anything about programming. I didn't understand that world at all. So I kind of hit my head against the wall for about five years from the time I got that inbox till maybe 2010.

David Paul Newell (14:56.63)

We eventually went into a studio with the band. tried to record an album and I hated it. Couldn't stand the way it sounded. And people listened to it. I mean, they were nice. People were gentle, but what they were comparing it to was it was not anything I wanted to sound like. So it just made me realize that what I'm trying to do and what the actual product is that I'm making are two entirely different things. And, you know, I grew up in California, kind of all over the Central Valley and the foothills and

the Central Coast, but there wasn't really anybody making electronic music of any form that I knew. So I didn't have any friends that could kind of clue me into what was going on. And it wasn't until 2010 when I just finally had it and I was like, I hated all the music I was making with a band. The band was great, great guys, but the music we were making, just wasn't it. And then I found Ableton and it was really at that point that I...

I downloaded Ableton, I think I got like the 30 day free trial. And it was mind blowing how quickly I could make stuff that I had, I think my mom's laptop and I downloaded it onto her laptop so I could get a second free month out of it and then just transformed, just transported all the tracks over there so I could finish it. I recorded like five or six songs in two months. And the quality that I got within that time period,

compared to, think we spent two years trying to record an album with a band that we never released before that. And I felt like I accomplished more in two months with Ableton than the previous two years. So everything at that point changed. And I still was a little slow to move away from Pro Tools. Still like the freedom of recording in Pro Tools, but maybe just for a couple more years before I just ditched it and went Ableton altogether.

Brian Funk (16:48.211)

Yeah, that's cool. Very similar to my story in a lot of ways. I I didn't, I was a guitar player. still play guitar and play in a band, but yeah, that's how I was into it. I didn't know what MIDI was. didn't understand any of that. Pro Tools had some MIDI in it and I'd figured out how to get some synthesizer sounds in there with whatever they had. But it was so foreign to me.

David Paul Newell (16:52.68)

Really?

Brian Funk (17:15.371)

Probably not until a little bit after. I did leave Pro Tools probably like 2007 or eight and started using Digital Performer actually by Motu. And then it was Logic for a little while. then I was rewiring Logic into Ableton or Ableton into Logic, right? And that allows you to basically work in...

David Paul Newell (17:24.295)

Okay.

Mmm.

David Paul Newell (17:36.103)

Alright.

Brian Funk (17:41.438)

side of Ableton Live, but you can have a track in Logic that's receiving the audio. And I was doing that for a while until I started to realize like, why am I still opening Logic? Cause I'm doing everything over here inside of Ableton Live. But it was kind of just like a moment that changed everything for me. I was recording vocals and I had a MIDI keyboard, like some audio thing. I didn't even understand it, but I knew I could.

David Paul Newell (17:45.821)

Right?

Brian Funk (18:09.163)

press keys and hear notes. But I mapped the knob to like a delay and maybe like a reverb on a vocal track. And while I was recording, I was turning the knobs and I was like, my God, this is cool. Like this is not drawing automation afterwards. I'm now like reacting to the effects. Kind of like when you play guitar through pedals, you react, you play differently if you have a delay on or something or distortion and all the other effects up until that point were

David Paul Newell (18:25.382)

Right.

Brian Funk (18:39.599)

Afterthoughts you would record and then you'd apply an effect and maybe you'd automate it But to be able to do it in real time. I was just like this is cool. This is some Now the studio is an instrument. I'm playing the studio like an instrument and that got really exciting and yeah, I mean that was then I wanted to learn all about how's this MIDI work and You know figure that all out

David Paul Newell (19:03.643)

Yeah.

Yeah, for me, think it was with Ableton, was just the immediate grid view and the ability to just immediately jump into creating beats and percussion and all of that stuff very easily, whether it be through MIDI and just like a drum rack or recording and just dropping in samples. The workflow was so quick, so easy, and just made so much sense that I was just like, I can't think of any other way I'd want to do this.

So I was a huge proponent of Ableton there. And then as the software advanced, because I forget what version of that would have been in Ableton back in 2010. of course, it seemed to just advance with every new version of it. You got amazing new tools into it, where it just, from a creation standpoint, just coming up with ideas that became so cool. And I still don't use tons of

features that it can do. But I'm with you. Yeah, the ability to just automate on the fly is pretty cool. But for me, was just being able to compose and lock things in very quickly, even if it was a demo or just a concept, where it just felt so much more time consuming to do that in Pro Tools. And in Ableton, it was just like lightning fast.

It just made a lot of a lot of the things where I felt like it took a long time to get what was in my head recorded so that I could listen to it and see if I like it. Using Pro Tools in Ableton, I could do it in just an hour or two and then find out, do I even like what I'm working on or not? And that was just like, that was great because then it just allowed me to just continue to ride that wave of being excited over an idea and continue to come up with other stuff. Even if I ended up trashing it just

David Paul Newell (21:05.002)

It felt like I could really find out whether or not what I was working on was something that I wanted to hear come to life or not. Where with Pro Tools, it just always was a struggle a little bit to really flesh out ideas. So yeah, so I still probably craft most of our stuff. Maybe it starts on guitar or maybe sometimes it just starts on keyboards, but almost as quickly as I come up with the idea, I'm moving it into Ableton.

to just copy and paste chunks, work on structure and see how things fall. And then I'll come up with a chord progression and drums and I'll actually just play back in Ableton while I write lyrics. Because it's faster and easier for me to focus on lyrics than it is to play my guitar and come up with lyrics because my hands are free. I can just start writing down ideas based off of what I'm hearing and speed it up or slow it down as needed. So it's fantastic, totally different process.

Brian Funk (21:54.889)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (22:04.362)

Yeah, that's cool. I always felt like I was making music in spite of Pro Tools, like against it. But I think in those days, a lot of the DAWs were really just trying to emulate a studio in a computer with the linear timeline, which is like your tape basically. And all the mixing stuff was very like you would see on a console. So you'd have all the routing of creating bus channels and auxes and things.

David Paul Newell (22:10.295)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (22:19.297)

Right.

Brian Funk (22:34.878)

When I started using live, it was like, no, this is more like for creation, songwriting, not just being an engineer in a studio. So that appealed to me a lot because I wasn't ever really looking to become an engineer. I wanted to just make songs. And yeah, like you said, that's a great point too is inside of live, you can kind of just keep it going and looping and come up with your ideas. Like it's a great way to do vocals hands-free so you can have your guitar playing for you.

David Paul Newell (22:41.366)

Right.

David Paul Newell (23:01.526)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (23:04.138)

I find myself doing that a lot actually, just blabbering and then finding lines. Oh, that was cool. It sounded like I said that. You know, write that down and build that way. I felt it was much more like for songwriters than engineers.

David Paul Newell (23:08.01)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (23:14.006)

Yeah. yeah.

David Paul Newell (23:21.664)

Yeah, there's a lot of parts of the process I still struggle with and you're always looking for ways to kind of keep the process feeling fresh. So I think that Ableton does a, it just provides a good platform for me to be able to dive into it and, and still feel like I'm not, I'm not being held in by any ideas, but you're at least for me, I always feel like I'm trying to come up with new ways of the process. Cause you don't ever want, I don't ever want to feel like I get stuck in a rut where I'm like,

relying on a method of writing songs or relying on the same process, because even that can make what I'm coming up with feel stale. So I try to switch it up on myself. And I feel like Ableton is a great tool that's allowed me to do that with, even now with bringing in splice integration, where you can really, I can now just start playing around with samples if I wanted to earlier in the process.

And a lot of times, you know, I do, we do play with samples a lot. have, I don't know how many samples thousands, but I seldom ever end up using them, but I like them for like ideas, whether it just be a really unique rhythm that was played. Maybe it was in a minor key or whatever, but I'll drop that in and that will provide some sort of basis of what then I end up either programming or playing in order to take its place. And, and that part of the process is a little new. I've had.

And some of our more recent work, that's something that's been really fun to play around with is just on the fly, just bringing in little samples that trigger some new fresh idea. And it's like, cool, I've never made a song like this before. So allow that to be the start of the process. And it's kind of fun.

Brian Funk (25:07.274)

That's a cool way to work where you get something to work, you know build upon that's how I started actually You know before I had the computer even when I had like the 8 at setup I Couldn't play to a metronome. I never practiced on those so I just couldn't do that But I had this Casio keyboard, you know, it's like hundred dollar thing with like a hundred presets and beats in it and I made a pack out of it. Actually it's out there somewhere. It's free

David Paul Newell (25:28.807)

Nice.

David Paul Newell (25:33.309)

rep.

Brian Funk (25:37.013)

pack of drum sounds and stuff. But it's, I would just put on like one of the beats that kind of worked with whatever I was doing. And I'd record that into my, you know, eight tracks or whatever. And then I'd play guitar over it. And then I find I had something I can play off of now. And a lot of times those drums wouldn't make it, but occasionally they'd find their way into the song. I'd like, you know, it's kind of cool. It's like really kind of a dorky sounding beat, but

David Paul Newell (25:55.527)

right.

Brian Funk (26:05.77)

fit the song or you just get used to it in the song and it started expanding my way of working. So I think that's a great way to use them. You you can of course use them. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, and your music too, but as sort of placeholders and things like that, just to get you going and moving forward. I believe so much in the momentum.

when you're making music, gotta just keep some sort of momentum going. Because once you slow down, then your mind starts working. And you start thinking too hard.

David Paul Newell (26:32.375)

for sure.

David Paul Newell (26:38.565)

Right.

Yeah, for sure. No, I'm with you, man. That's, it's still something. I mean, thankfully it's been, I don't know, it's been a while since I've felt like I've hit a wall on stuff, but I don't know. I think if it's good, it just encourages me to keep making it. And then of course, if I run into technical difficulties, then hopefully the song doesn't suffer because of it. But sometimes that can slow things down, right? But yeah.

Brian Funk (27:06.546)

Yeah, you gotta sort of accept a little bit of technical difficulty, I guess. The more you complicate things, the more points of failure, I'm sure you know this feeling. You start really learning how all this stuff works. You learn your gear and everything. And then maybe you start working on a track with somebody and it's not working. It's not working. You can't figure it out. And half the time it's just because you forgot to plug something in.

their audio cable's not in. It's like the most simple thing, but because there's so many other places to look. It's an important thing. I find it too, actually a lot doing this podcast where a lot of people I speak to got nice mics and their headphones and it's great because it makes for good audio. But we very often are like, hold on, I'm not getting sound. I don't know why. But sometimes you speak like in just like a Zoom meeting with anybody.

David Paul Newell (27:58.319)

you

Brian Funk (28:03.985)

in the world that has no idea about this stuff. They just open their laptop and they're in. Sure, they don't have maybe that quality, but they're getting to work and there's something to be said about that too, the simplicity.

David Paul Newell (28:17.075)

there was a period there, I think, you know, for a few years where I was trying to make everything on a PC that won't be mentioned, but the amount of latency that I fought with constantly that seemed to just constantly change. So it was this kind of mirage moving latency issue that would become a nemesis and eventually spurred me away from the PC world. But thankfully, but yeah, that was.

Those were some issues, man. Hopefully, but you live, learn. But yeah, think hopefully it's in some recycling bin somewhere today.

Brian Funk (28:51.239)

Yeah, that's true.

Brian Funk (28:57.321)

Yeah. Well, you've got some proof that this is not possible. You've got a new single coming up. You guys put something together. You want to tell us a little bit about that?

David Paul Newell (29:08.385)

We do. Yeah, super pumped about it. got, this is going to be a pretty exciting year. Our calendar's like really full of releases. So this is the first release this year. It's a cover, which we have not had a lot of experience with covers. This is our second cover we've ever done. Never really set out to do a lot of covers, but actually I had this idea, oddly in a dream and woke up and I was like, why not?

But a lot of people remember the version by the Flamingos. It's the songs called I Only Have Eyes For Mew. It was really set famous by the Flamingos as like kind of romantic 1950s doo-wop kind of song. It's great. I mean, I've always loved. It's a great song. It was actually written in the 20s. So the Flamingos was the cover. So the original version was like in the late 20s. And it's kind of what you would expect, like very like jazz.

Brian Funk (29:49.585)

That's a beautiful song. Great production too, was it?

I didn't know that.

David Paul Newell (30:04.012)

kind of big band inspired 1920s kind of stuff. And there's been a few people that have all done their version of it. think the Flamingos version is amazing. But yeah, I wanted to take that and as I always just love the feel of that song, I just wanted to take that and bring it into our world a little bit. And so I just went to it with absolutely no preconceived idea of what it would be.

But it fell together really quick. was one of those songs where you just start working on it and the whole idea was there in a day. And it was just, was from there, it was just, you know, working out the kinks, but, singing all the harmonies, which took a long time. but all the, all the, the, the building blocks of it was all completed pretty much in 24 hours. And yeah, just super excited about it. So it's just going to be released as a single on the 3rd of April and

Then we're going to be following that up. have about five more singles to come out and then an album that we have slated for July 10th. And then we also have something else that we're working on for perhaps in the fall where we've been working with a lot of some of our famous, some of our favorite DJs and producers that have contributed some remixes of our stuff that we plan on putting together a remix release.

Hopefully have that out before the end of the year. So super excited about that too, because got some really cool folks working with on that, which is going to be cool.

Brian Funk (31:38.921)

And there's a good way to work with a community, right? To build connections, doing remixes for each other, helps get the word out on not just your track, but the artist as well. People might wanna check them out after hearing it, if they know them from you.

David Paul Newell (31:42.678)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (31:53.791)

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. I feel like I never tried to ask for remixes. We've worked with a couple of people over the years who've just been friends. A great guy I know, his name's Stan, but he goes by Pioneer Ball. He's in Russia actually. He was the guitarist in a really awesome band that was around a while back, but totally 80s throwback called Tesla Boy from Russia. And so...

Somehow back in the day I got connected with them and I helped them set up a little bit of a tour and they came to California and I got to hang out with them and get to know Stan pretty well even though there's a bit of a language barrier of course. But wonderful guys and super talented amazing musicians and then we just stayed in touch. And when we released our first album Reason or Rhyme back in 2017 he contributed a remix to it just was just like hey man I'd love to do this and I was like

blown away by it. So when we were looking at having the releases we had on schedule for this year, I had reached out to him and he was nice enough to jump on board again. And for whatever reason, I just felt like, well, let me see who else I could contact. And I reached out to probably 20 or 30 folks that I just love what it is that they do. they're just people that I would never expect to want to partner with on anything, but I just was a fan of theirs.

And I was really surprised and thankful how many people were jumped on board and with no like pay pro crow or no desire to really do anything other than want to help support us, which is just awesome that there's that kind of still, maybe perhaps more than ever before that kind of like communal kind of aspect to making music. So.

I'm blown away by the people that we got on board for this and some of them. I mean I've been fans of some of these people for 20 years and to be I actually have them Remixing and working with our stuff is just like a dream. So I'm really excited about all that. It's gonna be hopefully be pretty cool.

Brian Funk (34:09.213)

Yeah, that's great. And all you gotta do is ask, right? Just... Yeah.

David Paul Newell (34:12.241)

Yeah, all you got to do is ask. It's amazing sometimes the doors that open. So yeah, for sure.

Brian Funk (34:17.885)

Yeah, it is true. Well, we can play this track, right? I only have eyes for you. The Midnight Mystery Club edition. It's, I mean, this original, well, I guess it's not the original, the Flamingos. I mean, there's a song that really has some vibe to it. You know, all that reverb and space and shabup shabup, you know, all that, those cool background vocals. And I think it's cool how you guys approached it. It's a, it's a different.

David Paul Newell (34:22.758)

Sure, yeah.

David Paul Newell (34:30.288)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (34:38.918)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (34:47.825)

It's a different song almost, you know, but, it still has some of that kind of mystery and, know, kind of a, like hazy feeling that the original has or the flamingos have. So yeah, I'll put this on and, we'll give it a listen and then, we can talk more about how you guys made this happen. All right, here goes.

David Paul Newell (34:59.536)

Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully.

David Paul Newell (35:10.716)

Alright.

Brian Funk (35:13.545)

My love must be a kind of blind love

can't see anyone but you

Brian Funk (37:10.12)

you

Brian Funk (38:04.648)

Yeah, nice.

David Paul Newell (38:07.512)

Thanks, man. Yeah, I think as I was listening to it, I think there's probably a DX7 keyboard in there that's from one of your patches, by the way. think, yeah, I think I know that there's a few that are layered, like the same kind of keyboard sound, that kind of famous 80s electric piano. Yeah. And I know that there's, yeah, it's a great sound. I find, I don't know.

Brian Funk (38:18.024)

yeah?

Brian Funk (38:26.514)

Yeah, that electric piano. It's a great sound.

David Paul Newell (38:35.114)

I know because there was a lot of different models of that keyboard that there is some differences in that particular sound because I think the original DX7 is just a little simplified and then perhaps some of the ones that came later just had a little larger sound to them. Anyways, so there's several, at least two, I think tracks of the same type of keyboard from different patches in there that are kind of on that chord progression in there. So yeah, so thanks.

Brian Funk (39:04.178)

Yeah, my DX7 doesn't work anymore. I think the battery needs to be replaced. They're batteries. Like how annoying is that? But I think you've got to solder it in. I don't even know. I've never tried to figure it out. I might've Googled it once, but I do have this, it's like the Korg Volca version. And I have it set to that piano and I almost never change it off of that preset.

David Paul Newell (39:16.071)

wow. yeah.

David Paul Newell (39:24.876)

Yeah, yeah.

David Paul Newell (39:31.319)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (39:32.122)

It's just like kind of there just for that point. Cause it is, it's such a great sound. It's everywhere in the eighties. you want to kind of call that feeling to mind a little bit. It's kind of mysterious too, I think fits nicely in this track.

David Paul Newell (39:39.229)

man, all over the place.

David Paul Newell (39:48.044)

Thanks, yeah. mean, there was a... It is mysterious. I love that it just really cuts through. So a lot of times, because we tend to do a lot with synths, of course. And I think there's at least six to seven layers of synths going on in that song. So adding keys on top of it, sometimes you're just really limited in the spectrum of what you can do to have it still cut through and still stand out if you want it to stand out.

Brian Funk (40:09.864)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (40:14.102)

And that key sound to me is, that's one of the great things about it is you can have a lot going on and still hear those just as clear as can be. And they sound like they're much louder in the track than they actually are on the channel, so.

Brian Funk (40:27.964)

They have almost a metallic character to them that definitely kind of bites through a little bit. Just on that attack, you know.

David Paul Newell (40:30.544)

yeah.

David Paul Newell (40:36.199)

Yeah. Yeah, steel bells kind of sound to him a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (40:41.318)

Yeah. Glassy steel type. Yeah. FM synthesis for you, guess. Great for that sort of stuff. All those high frequencies that cut through. so yeah, I've wanted to ask you a little bit about some of the synths going on. lot of really cool sounds. The bass is awesome. Really cool groove you got with the bass and the drums.

David Paul Newell (40:47.453)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (40:52.275)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (41:02.141)

Thanks, man. Yeah, I assist 808 on the drums. And I mean, everything that we do with drums is pretty layered. So we go for a real, I think some of our stuff, hopefully the stuff that's coming out this summer, you'll hear it even more. But we've gravitated over time to a real combination of like a natural live drum with supplemented with like 808s or 909s or whatever we wanted to use. And I don't know how many different samples, but we've got a lot.

But I really love that combination of kind of a synthetic sound with the natural punchiness. so pretty much every hit from snare and kick is always like a layered combination of two, sometimes three, but usually just about two. And so the 808, of course, is providing that punch and the depth. And then there's just like a natural live kick that gets that more punchy, higher tone characteristic on the track. And then of course provides that top end, because you really pay a lot.

I know, I try to pay more attention to how the kick sounds on like an iPhone because a lot of big kicks, you just, don't even hear them. So you're really looking for that mid and upper register tone to come through. And it's super easy for that to get lost if you're just using a sample alone and it doesn't have, or it just doesn't have a dynamic to it that feels real and natural. So.

So yeah, so it's usually a combination of that on the drums. And then I forget what the bass was. I know what the plugin was called, which is called Feel It. I think it's, I forget who makes it, but it had just a really great kind of feel it. think, yeah, I think that's what it was called, Feel It. But yeah, so it's just, so essentially that's just the same bass synth on, I just made it two channels and then split them left and right.

Brian Funk (42:42.545)

Feel it? Like, touch it, feel it? Huh. I never heard of that.

David Paul Newell (42:56.947)

So there's a bit of that echoey delay on one by like probably 15 or 20 milliseconds just to get that nice room. And then of course, summed everything below probably 200 Hertz down the middle and then let everything above be really stereo. So yeah, it's probably some version of a Moog. So, cause that's what it sounded like to me. And then on the synth side of it, I know that there's probably the biggest synth in there is a Diva, the Yuhi Diva.

Brian Funk (43:04.039)

Hmm.

David Paul Newell (43:26.999)

And I forget what patch it was, but that's the main synth you probably hear. Then there's a Prophet that's in there that's also fluctuating just to kind of give it some life. There's a BA-1, I think, in there at some point. And then the Opal. Yeah, yeah, the BA-1, the Baby Audio. And then the Opal. What do they call that? By UAD?

Brian Funk (43:44.647)

Is that the Baby Audio one? Yeah, that's a good one.

David Paul Newell (43:56.184)

the Opal Morphing synth. So that's in there at some points too. So yeah, that's mostly it. And then there's just multiple layers. And I forget, I pulled it up today to look at it. But there's, think, seven layers of just synths, about four of those at a time, perhaps, with a little bit of overlap, depending on the parts. And then the keys come in. That's separate. There's like, I think, two or three layers of keys that are mostly the DX7.

But honestly, it's probably one of the lighter tracks. I mean, as far as just how many things we have going on on that one, it just didn't need it. And the basis of the song that was working immediately was all about the drums and the bass. So everything else just became ways to kind of fill in the spectrum. But yeah, the bass was just a cool patch. Yeah, I don't remember who makes it. I think it might be Oberheim, but it might be an Oberheim patch or something, but yeah.

Brian Funk (44:57.165)

That's cool. you know, the more room you leave, I guess, you know, I can really appreciate all the different layers. You can hear everything. If you kept stacking stuff together, then it's like, okay, I don't even know what I'm hearing. I'm hearing just sound, right? It's this one whole brick of sound. But when you, you've, you've kind of kept it within that familiar range where you can really pick different things out and

David Paul Newell (44:58.158)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (45:16.962)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (45:26.575)

notice them and notice when they come in and out. Cause sometimes you start layering things together. Like we were kind of talking about it earlier actually, just, you just put too much stuff in there. It's nice to let stuff breathe a little bit. I think it's a great strategy with the drums too, because you know, acoustic drums had to be in the world. They had to happen in the actual world. They had to actually produce sound waves and in the air, you know,

David Paul Newell (45:35.979)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (45:54.08)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (45:55.624)

And there's something that adds to it. It adds like an environment or something along those lines. And additionally, like you said, it'll make it cut through on an iPhone. mean, isn't that your favorite way for people to listen to your music? Like, yeah, I made it sound like, oh, let me check it out. I want to hear your music. And they pull it on their iPhone. You're like, no, you're not hearing it. people, yeah, it's so easy. And you know, it's right there.

David Paul Newell (46:10.476)

You

David Paul Newell (46:15.51)

I

I'm guilty of it too though. I do it way too much.

Brian Funk (46:25.411)

As sad as it might feel sometimes, it's an important consideration. You kind of want it to translate it in as many places as possible because as I've learned, like you're lucky to get anyone to listen to anything ever at all. You know, there's hundreds of thousands of tracks a day or whatever getting uploaded and you know, if anyone will take a second when they can listen to or watch or access anything from the entire

David Paul Newell (46:33.314)

yeah.

David Paul Newell (46:40.257)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (46:52.807)

catalog of human creations in a moment. You know, it is a privilege to get your stuff played anyway at all.

David Paul Newell (46:55.041)

Yeah.

And to your point, mean, a lot of I think, I mean, we live in a time where I feel like even some of the cheapest speakers you buy sound really good. I mean, it is a it can be a little bit of a crutch, for lack of a better word, as in you, you know, that it's going to sound decent on nice speakers. But like, how do you make it sound good and not the best environment? And so that's always

Brian Funk (47:03.376)

Ahem.

Brian Funk (47:08.732)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (47:12.935)

Cough

Brian Funk (47:21.927)

Mm-hmm.

David Paul Newell (47:26.718)

the challenge is to like, wow, this sounds really good. And then not stop there, go like, yeah, it sounds really good on great equipment. But like, how does it sound on really awful equipment? You know, or just the not the not the best environment. So trying to do our try. That's like, that's always the kind of like, I guess, like, carrot that's always a little out of reach that you're always trying to get, you know, which is just how can I make sure that this checks all the boxes? So

Brian Funk (47:49.926)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (47:55.338)

Wanting to make sure that that works But I would say that the thing with the drums especially with layering drums natural drums has less to do with Although I mean obviously from an audio standpoint It is a lot about creating balanced sound on all in all environments But I think it started more for us just out of a desire that we don't want to be like a DJ group That was never the desire. We don't want to just set up there and spin I mean Levar comes from the world of live drums

I grew up playing in bands. The dream has always been to take these songs on the road. And so when we produce and record, though, Ableton is very friendly towards electronic music. It's always looking for ways to incorporate as much natural, real sound so that if we do take these songs on stage and we start playing them live, they don't feel dramatically different. It still has the same feel. I've always liked bands that have some kind of way of

blurring the line between what's electronic and what's actually, you know, all analog, natural, organic. And yet I still love electronic because I feel like so much of the sample, so much of that sound is just so pure and so big. But with everything that we do, even with the even with some of the soft sense and those kind of things, I'm always looking for ways of how can I drag that into a real world?

How can we drag that into the studio? How can we, for the album that we're going to release in July, it's called Telescope. And the album, recorded parts of it at a studio called Chase Park Transduction, which I mentioned earlier before we started, but that's where this background is. This is inside the control room of Chase Park. And it's a studio in Athens, Georgia. it's where REM recorded all their albums there. Tori and moi, who I'm a huge fan of.

Recorded some of his albums there. So it's a great studio really great people Yeah, it's a great space great equipment and they have this wonderful neve console and We We went in there mostly for drums who recorded all the drums there, but then everything else like all of our sense all Literally all the other instrumentations we sent through all that gear. We sent it all through the neve and then back into

Brian Funk (49:52.165)

Yeah.

got a good energy.

David Paul Newell (50:19.365)

the box so that we had all of that coloring and that kind of thing. So I'm always looking for ways to bring as much natural character as much of that so that when we do get to the point where we're able to bring these things to life, you know, on the on the road, that it's it doesn't feel like it's a completely different band. I've seen, you know, you've I think we've probably all if we've gone to a few concerts, you've all had those experiences where you see a band live.

And you're like, this does not sound anything like, not that it has to sound exactly like it, but it doesn't even sound like the same band. And I had, for a while there, I worked in Live Sound. used to be an audio engineer for a period in my life in Nashville. So we did a lot of shows and you see a lot of bands perform with a lot of help, a lot of live track playback and those kinds of things on stage. I've just always admired people that somehow figured out that way of balancing.

things that you really could only do in the studio, they're really only possible in the studio and bringing that just enough into the live show so that it doesn't feel like a completely different version, but also not relying on those things for the foundation of the song. So that's the goal, that's the bar, I guess we set for ourselves.

Brian Funk (51:37.735)

I'd like to ask you a little bit about that process of taking your tracks and running them through the console. I love doing that kind of stuff. think, you know, like our soft synths and everything are amazing. but they do have a tendency. I don't know exactly how to put it, but they're almost, they don't exist anywhere. Right? Like, where is like an alive.

David Paul Newell (52:02.892)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (52:06.594)

recorded instrument or even like a mic to anything, it just sort of has its place. But I do find sometimes running it out through some gear, processing it a little bit, even through like a pedal or something. I even have a Tascam 8-track with a mixer built into it. just sometimes I just use the channels just to flavor it a little and bring it back in.

David Paul Newell (52:28.839)

yeah.

Brian Funk (52:32.344)

It makes a difference to just have that signal travel through some electronics in the real world and come back or even through an amp or something. Yeah, I just kind of curious how you guys do that. Is it just running it through the channels? anything? What's that process look like?

David Paul Newell (52:50.238)

Yeah, so I mean, thankfully when it comes to that stuff, I don't have to be as hands on. can just kind of point to what I want to use and then they throw it in. But we have thankfully a couple of great guys that we work with. Brian Dane Hansen, who's a wonderful producer and engineer. He he engineered all of our recordings and then his assistant. So great guy that works for Chase Park. His name is Ben Hackett. So they were the ones to really handle that stuff. I know Brian's a big fan of exactly what you're talking about there.

Brian Funk (52:57.595)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (53:19.798)

He would be a really cool guy to have on your show if you ever wanted to dive into a lot of the technical stuff because he's a very creative out of the box guy. He loves to do stuff where he's got a I think it's a mini moat and he sends everything through it like he records his maybe not everything but a lot of stuff I've seen him do. He's got he plays his bass right into it and then uses the filters on it to give tons of color into him.

He's got a Rhodes sends that through it a Melotron sends that through it so it's just simply using the all the hardware they're available to you and all the Essentially everything the filters I guess is probably the only parts that you can affect with it But he uses that a lot and then in the studio. It was mostly just about trying to get some of the gain staging I think we used some Chandler limited Hardware along with the the neve console

But it was really just figuring out nice settings on the on the game and everything to just per track. And then Ben was able to set it all up so that it was just going right out of the box and right back in. Brian was the guy that was really kind of working all the knobs. We had a tendency to really push stuff. So there ended up being a lot more tracks that we didn't use, just stuff that ended up being distorted or funky or.

There's a couple of tracks though where it was it was really cool like where What we did in the studio was way overkill and it was just too much color too much stuff going on maybe hurt the dynamics of the original audio file, but I was able to use that track and blend it in maybe 40 % with the original file and it just was what it needed So there's always kind of fun little work around so there was a lot of that in

in the finished product, especially with like some of the drums. But yeah, it was a fun, super fun process of just playing around with as much of that. I mean, that studio has got some great gear in it, so you could really go crazy in there. And we didn't have all the time, but we set a day aside of just running everything through all the hardware there. And it turned out to be a huge help. And I think what it brought was it just, to me it brought, I always have this discussion with people that are,

Brian Funk (55:30.383)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (55:46.63)

audio files and engineers. But I think at some point, you're technically probably losing information, right? You're probably technically sacrificing 100 % clarity and 100 % if you want to say quality. I think that term, you don't really know what that means. But it just depends on what your definition is of that in audio. But let me put it this way. We talk about vinyl records.

I love the sound of vinyl records. A lot of people love the sound of vinyl records. Prefer it over mp3s or waves or CDs or whatever. And I think to me that's true. Technically it's less quality as far as if you measure quality by the consistency or the accuracy of what was recorded versus what's being played back. But what you're losing somehow with vinyl sounds more natural, sounds more comfortable.

And so it's it's Degraded perhaps but in the way that it is it feels warm people say that you know, it feels more natural It feels easier on the ears less fatiguing all of that and so I've been having this conversation especially as it relates to ai because a lot of people, know, of course now with ai which can make everything sound pristine Anything that you want there is this real push towards

Redefining our definition of what it means to be high quality audio Because if you're like me you listen to like a lot of stuff that was recorded in the 70s in the 80s And you actually like the recordings better even though technically maybe they didn't use The as much of the spectrum as people are today They didn't push the volume threshold as much as people are today yet somehow that sounds better quality even though our definition of that may be different and

I think what AI is going to have a difficult time doing is following what feels good, just as much as if AI could cook a meal, it's not going to necessarily be able to judge what tastes good, because that's so sensory, it's so personal, and it's so independent on each person. So I think that there's this real freedom when it comes to re-examining what our definition of is good quality.

David Paul Newell (58:08.469)

and perhaps going towards just more what feels good to you rather than what checks the boxes or looks on the spectrum like what it should look like or what fluffs, you know, it's this it is or whatever. But just going by pure feel and then feeling free to just go down that rabbit hole, like make things sound really weird. you don't have to hopefully my hope is is that with AI because because our

Quote-unquote perfection as far as audio is concerned. It's gonna be so achievable for so many people It's gonna open up this new lane which is if you want to be really weird and yet creative and make things that just Feel good. You can do that and you're not gonna have as much competition there so So I really love that about playing around with a lot of Analog gear and all of this stuff and and even the stuff we're doing in the box as much as I can trying to bring

a more natural approach to it and not try to chase some mysterious idea of great sound and kind of go, no, like you can actually roll off tons of low end. You can drop everything out of there if it feels good and it just sounds good to me somehow. Perhaps that's a direction that now can set apart what I'm doing more than if I'm trying to chase this idea of having a really ultra dynamic.

ultra loud ultra using up all the frequencies like For instance not the song that we just played because that was recorded before the other stuff that's coming out but In a month or two, we're going to start releasing singles for what's going to be telescope coming out in july And all the songs on telescope all had a I think a massive passive on the master channel that was Doing 24

dB reduction or maybe it was just a low pass, but at about 18k, which is a super old school method, right? I think that they did that because it actually helped vinyl records to not distort or whatever, but that's across the board. We tried the masters without it and then we listened to it with it and it just sounded nicer. And yet there's actually less information. Plenty of people want to use up that information, especially in the last...

Brian Funk (01:00:29.06)

So you're just filtering off the very high frequencies that we barely hear anyway.

David Paul Newell (01:00:32.385)

years. Yeah, just cut them off completely. Yeah, and but for whatever reason, it just made everything sound to me different and more natural. And so we went with it. And it was just one of those decisions where, like, I think previously, I would have been apprehensive to do that, because I know from an audio engineer background, like you want to hold on to everything you can in that range. And there's even this idea that stuff around 40k will

somehow give you an impression that there's more air going on, even though you can't hear it. But just because I think of the fact that we're more interested now in creating some kind of sonic signature that feels identifiable than we are towards chasing the idea of what good sound is, that it allows us the freedom to do stuff like that. And I would hope that we end up doing more of those kind of things in the future, where we just disregard

what's considered to be the norm. And I think back to like Neon Indian, his first album was crazy sounding. It sounds so weird, but it's great. And I mean, there's been plenty of albums like that, like DJ Shadow's Introducing that came out, you know, a long time ago, but that album, he recorded and mixed it in his bedroom and it sounds like it, but it holds up. And I listened to those albums and I go, there's no way that AI is going to be able to make

those kind of unless you tell it make it sound like this i'm sure it probably could but as far as creating what the new the next thing is going to be that utilizes the freedom to make things sound however you want them to i think that that's going to become a thing and it was actually so it's really cool so i'll tell you just a little bit more to back up in case there's people listening that are like he doesn't know what he's talking about i i was having this very same conversation with

A gentleman who is the head of Sony music that I actually got to know him when I was working in Nashville years ago and We had talked on the phone a couple months ago and I got to catch up with him and he's a super nice guy and He was telling me course in Nashville. They're dealing with most mostly country and Christian and gospel and those kind of things but he said when it comes to we were talking about sync deals and he said pretty much everything that they're getting requests from

David Paul Newell (01:02:55.742)

Whether it commercials or whatever, they are almost exclusively getting companies, production companies asking for tracks that sound like they were recorded in your bedroom. Because it's becoming so achievable to have a super polished sound that it sounds generic. And so he was like, we're actually asking some of these huge artists to like deliver the demo instead of the production version to just get that sound. And that's what they want to use for

TV shows and movies or whatever. And so I found that super fascinating, but to me it just kind of encourages me that there's less of a desire or less of a pressure, if you will, to craft that ultra polished sound. And I think that that's freedom for those of us who just want to make something that's actually unique and feels original. I think there's this huge freedom now to be able to do that.

and not have people disregard it because it doesn't sound quote unquote professional, where maybe, you know, 20 years ago when we started making music, we heard that a lot, right? Like, this doesn't sound as professional, it doesn't sound as loud and as dynamic as all the other stuff. Like now it's like, well, if that's suddenly easy, if that's suddenly the middle of the road, then the things that actually sound unique and outside of that become more noticeable. And there's all of a sudden this openness in the listener.

because they're saturated with things that sound polished, to be open to hearing something that maybe sounds different and that triggers in them more interest because, wow, this doesn't sound like everything else, which I think is a really new avenue that we have available. And so I find that trying to utilize as much of these tools as we can to push that within my comfort zone is gonna be where we wanna go and hopefully what we can do.

Brian Funk (01:04:52.184)

Yeah, I agree with you that stuff has gotten really slick and polished and it is a feat of modern technology and a lot of skill as well of engineers and producers that can get it there. But it sometimes is at the cost of interest, interestingness, you know? Like you said, like the bedroom sound, like that

David Paul Newell (01:05:16.08)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:05:22.788)

That's more endearing than the clinical studio. know, the sterile, perfect sound, I think a lot of times. I feel that's been happening kind of a little bit anyway, even without the AI being able to do it. But cause yeah, like you can really get stuff to sound pretty darn good just by having some of the software that exists today.

David Paul Newell (01:05:28.561)

Right.

Brian Funk (01:05:52.844)

and using some of the samples and built-in stuff. That would have been a lot harder in the past. But it's that kind of thing, like everyone can do that now. It's almost like a Twilight Zone episode or something where everyone's beautiful and that you just want to see someone with messy hair now or somebody that's a little bit different looking just because it's more interesting.

David Paul Newell (01:06:03.769)

Right.

David Paul Newell (01:06:12.431)

Yeah.

Right.

David Paul Newell (01:06:24.675)

Yeah, I-

Brian Funk (01:06:24.708)

It is a cool thing to explore. Yeah, go ahead.

David Paul Newell (01:06:28.579)

I think about it a lot because I think about food a lot and so and I like to cook so But I always and I feel like there's a lot of similarities, of course between food music, but There I kind of think about it and like what you're saying like the whole you know Twilight Zone idea like if they made a machine where you could eat at any restaurant and the machine there's a machine at the restaurant that can turn out The best quality whatever pizza you name it tacos

Brian Funk (01:06:38.692)

Sure.

David Paul Newell (01:06:58.381)

what would consider to be the best in the world are available at every single restaurant by the same machine that can perfectly create out of thin air, whatever food you wanted at the highest quality level. If suddenly that was the case, I think what the the following situation would be would be that people become very hungry for something that's new. Because if suddenly excellent anything is available anywhere,

Though, yeah, they may have interest in that and that would probably still do well. It's not like people are going to take advantage of that. But there is going to be a certain portion or percentage of people that are more willing to seek out something unique and different and perhaps try food that they would have never tried before because it was perhaps not something they would have considered eating, you know, but now they'll eat eel or they'll eat, you know, whatever octopus. What is it? Squid ink.

squid ink pasta or something, you know that they wouldn't have had before because because now it's so saturated with what the middle is or what the middle of road is and so I like that analogy because I think of that in relation to Essentially what AI is doing where it is made the middle of the road even though I'm I don't think it's going to create the best of anything but I think it's going to make the middle of the road very accessible, but

Brian Funk (01:07:58.595)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:08:22.893)

Hopefully the the following effect that comes a little later is that for the audience that perhaps always wanted to be spoon-fed things that were very vanilla has this appetite for things that are truly different and This wasn't my idea, but I did hear somebody else talk about this and I really liked it but they were talking about the trends within the art world like fine art around the ends of the 1800s where as you approach

the, I guess it would have been the 19th century or throughout the 19th century, there was this movement to have all painting be extremely realistic. Things became more and more hyper realistic to where people wanted their portraits painted because it looked just like the real thing. And then of course, the camera is created and people can get their portrait taken and suddenly that's available. And it kind of makes that style of art obsolete to some extent. And yet,

You would think that perhaps a lot of people or the art world would fall off because of the invention of the camera. But in turn, what ended up happening is you have Picasso and you have all these people that are doing really bizarre stuff that perhaps would have never been considered before that, but are suddenly being taken very seriously. And there's a hunger and appetite in people for something that is truly different because now all of a sudden art has this freedom it didn't have before to not be this thing in a box that

that had to look like the real thing, but because that was that box was checked by photography. Now, all of a you know, people that were painting could paint whatever they wanted, and it has nothing to do with reality. There is no need to do that anymore. And so I like that analogy because to me that that really encouraged me as far as what I want to do musically is hopefully I kind of hate the whole like, you know, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, song structure. I just kind of hate it like.

Sometimes you feel like it works, but other times I just feel like I don't like a lot of songs that sound like that. I like songs that surprise me. They don't, you I know what like the catchy song structures are. I like things that catch me off guard. And so, I feel like that, that has always worked because the audience has, has demanded that that works. And yet I, my hope is, is that at time goes on things like that we can get further away from there becomes less of a pressure.

David Paul Newell (01:10:49.639)

to have to have songs be in this box that they've been in for a long time. And there's this new freedoms to really explore things outside of that. And we're trying to get ahead of that a little bit, I think.

Brian Funk (01:11:03.287)

Yeah, that's cool. think it's interesting. It's an exciting path until you go back to your food thing. Like, yeah, if you could have those like, I don't know, five star Michelin chef at their best meals, that would be fun. But I would still want grandma's meatballs, know, like, you know, mom's lasagna or whatever, you know, it is. Because there's something about that.

David Paul Newell (01:11:08.562)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:11:17.906)

Right.

David Paul Newell (01:11:24.423)

Right?

Brian Funk (01:11:34.308)

There's something about when even just anyone cooks something for you, specifically for you even, know, kind of, yeah, maybe this wouldn't make it here or there in some fancy place, but like it's authentic. It's for you. It's with what you had at hand. It's your ingredients. It's your twists, your, all of that went into it. You know, like they say,

David Paul Newell (01:11:59.292)

Right.

Brian Funk (01:12:04.289)

Made with love or whatever. that's an important ingredient. It's not, there's no channel on your session for it. You know, there's no fader, but it's in there and stuff like that. Cause you could, I'm sure there, I mean, there's tons of emulations of these consoles and whatever, you know, and you could use that and it will sound probably pretty darn good.

David Paul Newell (01:12:14.668)

yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:34.049)

maybe you would even get it closer to what you were hoping it would sound like. Cause some, you know, sometimes you've run stuff through the hardware you have and you've kind of stuck with it. I love, I love using like the cassette machines and running stuff through there and you get what you get, but they have plugins for that and I can tweak it forever.

David Paul Newell (01:12:37.914)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:12:46.65)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:12:53.63)

Well, you're on one of my favorite topics because like I think that making decisions that you force yourself to stick with are an important part of the process.

Brian Funk (01:12:54.305)

Brian Funk (01:13:02.647)

Yeah, certainly. That's crucial. Making music is making decisions. Like you decide what to do and we don't have to. And I think that's where we get stuck a lot. It's one of the modern issues for us producers these days. You can download a new plugin, new samples. can...

David Paul Newell (01:13:04.793)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:13:24.961)

mean, even gear, you can go on Amazon or Sweetwater and it's all available. It used to be you had to go to the music store and see what they had and deal with it. So that decision was made for you. And you couldn't return it like you can today. You got a piece of gear and it's kind of garbagey, but I've been learning it and I figured it out and all of that.

David Paul Newell (01:13:28.056)

yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:13:41.465)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:13:47.768)

Yeah.

I think there's even from back in the day before all of these things before the software became so readily available I kept talking about which i'm certainly guilty of I have a lot of plugins and all that stuff, right? Yeah But it's it can be There is something really strange and I actually find it kind of beautiful about having limitations that are either self-imposed or imposed by what our situation because

Brian Funk (01:13:59.275)

I'm so happy we have it. It's not a complaint, it is also, it's the problem too.

David Paul Newell (01:14:19.342)

How many great albums? mean, there's so many when I think about it that like the initial debut album by an artist was fantastic. And then they blow up, they become huge. And then their following album, it just doesn't sound nearly as good. And yet you can from an audio standpoint, from like an engineer standpoint, you well, many times you can hear, yeah, you can hear its quality is better, right? The recordings are better, but it's lost that magic.

Brian Funk (01:14:39.456)

Or it sounds better. Like, better. Quotes.

David Paul Newell (01:14:49.308)

And there's so many examples of that where I think, you just, had this free, all sudden this artist has this freedom to pay for all the studio hours they want to, they, they have the freedom to buy whatever equipment that they want to work with, whatever people that they want to work with. And that doesn't usually equal really good music. A lot of times it equals, you know, pointless direction, which I think you hear on a lot of those albums. And yet,

Brian Funk (01:14:49.537)

Mm-hmm.

David Paul Newell (01:15:19.192)

Like, I hate to use them as an example, but I'll beat up on them a little bit because they can take it. they've been wildly successful. But of course, Coldplay, I think the first album by Coldplay is head and shoulders above everything else that they ever did. I think their second album is pretty good. But to me, the albums that I listen to is I haven't listened to probably every album they've done. But for the years that I had followed them, there was this dramatic decrease in what I felt like was heart.

you're kind of describing right which is that made with love characteristic that was existing in that early stuff that was somehow squelched by judogukai okay

Brian Funk (01:16:01.014)

Yeah, she's good. think she just found a new spot to lay down. I gotta make sure I don't move my chair too much. It's on wheels.

David Paul Newell (01:16:04.936)

yeah. That's cute. But yeah, there's something to that, because I really think that, you know, I feel like self-imposed limitations is really important. So like when we're working on stuff like this new album that we did, like there was a lot of decisions that we just forced ourselves to make where it was like, OK, if we're going to use a console emulator plug-in, we're going to decide on one. And that's it. I'm not.

Using all the things that I have available. We're gonna

Brian Funk (01:16:37.095)

A-B-M for A-B-C-D-E-F-M, side by side.

David Paul Newell (01:16:39.856)

Yeah, yeah, yeah and there was a lot of stuff like that just little decisions that we made I mean What is it the album that we did? Well a couple albums ago. We did an LP or an EP called aesthetics and And telescope actually a good portion of telescope, but a lot of aesthetics we used a jv 1080 on everything so my goal was just like I'm gonna use it this I'd say it's a rack mount synth by Yamaha jv 1080

Brian Funk (01:17:04.384)

What is that?

Brian Funk (01:17:08.47)

Okay.

David Paul Newell (01:17:09.183)

They also made the 2080 they're very similar super popular 1980s rack mount synth So I had bought one and I wanted to use it on every track like no matter what and so That became kind of like a fun challenge which the first part of that challenge was is how many presets can I create out of this thing that I like and the cool thing about the JV 1080 which I mean it would be a great one for you to play around with and see if you can make some some plugins off of that, but the

There's for every sound essentially there's four parts of that sound and I don't know how they break it down But there's literally four buttons on the the front of it. So as you scroll through every preset you can turn off or turn on four voices, but I think they're more than just a voice but Essentially every sound is made up of a lot going on. So within every setting there's essentially four settings So going through and finding all those I spent probably a month

Just doing that and saving all of those presets in the 1080. And then of course, as we worked on the album, was, you know, just sending as much stuff, just MIDI out through, I did play a little bit through the keyboard, through the rack mount, but a lot of it was just pre-recorded with the MIDI and then just send it out from Ableton back in just to get the audio from it. And we used it for everything.

One of the title track from the album, Telescope, the main things you hear on the track is all JV 1080. It's a JV 1080 organ and it's a JV 1080, I think they call it jogging synth, but it's this weird little poppy, it's got like an envelope filter on it that makes it sound really cool and trippy, but it created its own rhythm. So it just had this, and that sound birthed the whole rhythm of the song. So I had just sent it through the JV 1080 back in.

Brian Funk (01:18:39.724)

Hmm.

David Paul Newell (01:19:01.915)

listen to it and I was like, this is the rhythm of the song. And then I just kind of, we designed the drums around the, the scent itself to make it work. so that, that thing became the basis of so many cool ideas that came from it. And so I just love that idea of kind of self-imposing just ideas, whether it to use piece of equipment or to just not use certain things. But I think that that's, I mean, the hope is, is that you keep doing this and you get to be better at it and more opportunities open up.

you get access to more gear, get access to more studios, you do all that. But then to remind myself that like, that's also dangerous. Like just because you have access to nicer stuff and more equipment, just because I can go out and buy 10 cents when I could only afford one, that may be one of the worst things I could do for myself because it doesn't necessarily create things that are focused, that are whole, you know, that. And so.

Brian Funk (01:19:50.53)

Hmm.

David Paul Newell (01:19:58.192)

Yeah, so that so i'm a big believer in what you're talking about because I think that in order to Continue to create in order to continue to push boundaries a little bit You kind of have to self-impose a little bit I think great albums were made under those two like Led Zeppelin four, is arguably one of their best albums, right? It's that whole thing. They kind of restricted themselves in some way. They all went and lived in a house together They had to record in this house. It wasn't a studio. So they fought the acoustics of that and

That's what they chose to do is they made their environment the limitation and they had the recording studio in the van on the driveway, right? But they made that decision in order to give what became iconic sound to that album. And so I think like making decisions like that is part of the fun part of the process that if you have the discipline to ride that, even though it may get frustrating and even though you go like, I could do so much more if I just bought this other plug in or if I just, you know,

Brian Funk (01:20:34.347)

Hmm.

David Paul Newell (01:20:55.493)

borrowed this piece of gear from my friend or whatever. But I think sometimes you wouldn't ever come up with the cool things that you did if you didn't put those restrictions on yourself to some degree. yeah, and I also look back on some of my earliest recordings as like some of my most clever things I ever did, which was like, I would never think to do that now, but I only had like two plugins, I could only do so much to come up with something cool. And what I came up with was super out of the box that like I wouldn't

would never occur to me now to do that. But I was just bored and I only could do four things, you know, in Pro Tools. I only had like four plugins. I think one of them was like Cosmonaut or whatever. And so I played around with that all day long and came up with some weird stuff and it was like, that worked for somehow. And I would never think of even using that today. And yet it really birthed a lot of cool ideas. And I look at all the ideas that I've come up with when I've had access to a lot of great equipment and stuff.

And it reminds me of other stuff that I think is better, but it's not necessarily unique and it doesn't feel as much like me. yeah. So don't know. I haven't fully fleshed out that idea, but I love what you're talking about because I just, to me, I'm a big believer in that concept that if you come up with ways of creatively creating boundaries for yourself, you really create a good ground to grow things.

Brian Funk (01:21:59.852)

Hmm.

David Paul Newell (01:22:23.899)

So, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:22:27.913)

I think that's what creativity is. It's like problem solving really. It's finding solutions with what you have. So you remind me of again, this, I said it was a Casio keyboard, but it was actually Yamaha. It was Yamaha. And I think back, it's like, you know, just one of those toys. Basically you got, they must have mass produced a million of different kinds, but part of the, my own amusement.

David Paul Newell (01:22:33.999)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:22:40.463)

Yeah? cool.

Brian Funk (01:22:56.993)

in those days was seeing if I could use like the really garbagey sounds and make them sound cool. And that was like a creative challenge. It had this like distorted guitar that was just nothing like a distorted guitar. But I found a spot for it and I was like, yes, it works. You know, it's it's right in there. And those are that was a little challenge I had sort of put in the back of my head for when I got stuck or when I needed to.

David Paul Newell (01:23:01.487)

Right?

David Paul Newell (01:23:13.179)

So that's cool.

Brian Funk (01:23:24.555)

come up with something new or when I already added too many guitars or something. And I don't think flipping through the samples of kick drums or going through every preset and then seeing if you can download a new free plugin is creativity. think that's just looking for a way out of it. Whereas when you, like you say, if you decide I'm going to just use this one rack mount synth, like let's make it work. And it didn't.

kind of informs the art that you come up with too. And it all kind of goes hand in hand.

David Paul Newell (01:23:57.044)

Yeah. Well, you have to love it to begin with, right? It's like I'm not picking a piece of equipment that I hate and go like, this sounds like crap. I'm going to figure out a way to use it on everything. It's like, no, you find something that you really love and then you just go, OK, let's just what happens if we only do this?

Brian Funk (01:24:10.183)

Well, for me, it actually was. I did think that thing sounded like crap, but it's all I had, you know? So I didn't have another option. It was the keyboard. I was just, I didn't even think of it. It was just the keyboard.

David Paul Newell (01:24:13.312)

Well, that's true, right? Yeah. Right.

David Paul Newell (01:24:21.302)

But you loved the way that it sounded like crap, right? There was something fun about playing some... Yes. Yeah. See, and that's gotta be... It's gotta be fun. It's gotta be playful. And I think that that's... Like what you're hitting on is the same thing. I mean, the JV-1080 has its limitations. It's not perfect. But there's some stuff on there that just sounds really cool and different. And you're just like, okay.

Brian Funk (01:24:27.425)

I loved when I could get away with it, working, knowing how crappy it was. Yeah. That was fun. Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:24:48.788)

That is enough. That's fun to play with and just like riding that out. Let's see what happens. I'm like you though. I wish I would have held on to it though, man. There were so many. I had a really cool, when I was a little kid, I had a Casio Rapman keyboard. Yeah. Did you?

Brian Funk (01:25:03.091)

Yeah, made a pack out of that. Yeah, a friend of mine had it, let me borrow it, I sampled the whole thing.

David Paul Newell (01:25:12.094)

I think it was a Ratman 2 and it had like the wheel on it that you could like scratch with it. I wish I would have...

Brian Funk (01:25:15.457)

Yeah. Yeah. It had a little scratch wheel on it. It, you know, really. No, I mean, it was fun, but yeah, I did sample the daylights out of that thing and yeah, it's fun to like pull. I've got all the beats off of it and sometimes I'll pull those out and stretch them or something and see if I can make it into something weird.

David Paul Newell (01:25:21.894)

Hahaha!

David Paul Newell (01:25:30.697)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:25:35.867)

yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:25:41.339)

yeah.

Brian Funk (01:25:43.211)

Weird stuff happens to those old keyboard beats too when you start pulling them apart. The way it synthesizes those sounds or whatever it's doing. All those artifacts are interesting.

David Paul Newell (01:25:57.404)

That's cool. Yeah, I've been I haven't got to do as much of that cool stuff that you you've done. I mean, we're always. Dude, that would be awesome. I'll take it. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I I loved it.

Brian Funk (01:26:04.52)

I'll send you the Rapman pack.

Yeah. Yeah, I think I got that in. It's a whole collection of toy synths. call that just toy synths Ableton Live Pack. And it's a, it's got that Yamaha keyboard that I had, which died eventually, you know, just stopped working one day and that was it. But I, sampled that and yeah, sometimes I like to pull those up and just be like, all right, what can I do with these really primitive sounds and

David Paul Newell (01:26:18.713)

yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:26:26.942)

Bye.

David Paul Newell (01:26:36.297)

Yeah.

Yeah, that BA one I think is really fun for that because that original Casio was just kind of famous for that, right? was just like the crappy one that I think was a Dr. Luke uses it on everything. you know, if I'm looking for something that's just kind of playful and fun, that's always a fun one to play with.

Brian Funk (01:26:57.96)

Yeah. Yeah, those things are cool and they're immediate. There's nothing really to dig into with it. It's just, it's got the sounds and then, you know, go with it. It's up to you to make it music. And I think that's where creativity comes in. Cause then you might say, let me see if I can stretch it or put it through this reverb or, you know, where can we take it? You're kind of like exploring.

David Paul Newell (01:27:05.435)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:27:10.012)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:27:27.008)

You get in that side of the mind working.

David Paul Newell (01:27:30.438)

Yeah, it certainly, I think, forces you to grow some sort of skill set, right? When you're kind of like, just like, how can I use this thing to come up with something that I'm going to like? yeah, I think that that's for a while. used to, when I first kind of got started in my journey of music, was co-writing with a lot of artists in house music in Europe. And it was kind of less, less.

sound design, but certainly creativity wise, you know, I was kind of brought in as a ghostwriter and worked with the shapeshifters and Michael Gray and I had a publisher out of Ibiza. And I spent summer of 2015 living in London and spent some time in Ibiza during that period as well, working with a lot of these guys. But, you know, when you're a hired gun, so to speak, you're kind of brought into the studio to work for another artist. You're not like pursuing music you would want to record necessarily or

coming up with something that hopefully they will be happy with. And if they're happy with it, they will invite you back, of course. If you don't like it, that doesn't matter. And many times what you contribute in product will sound nothing like you had ever intended. But it really forces you to develop some sort of skill of like, OK, here I am under the gun in the studio, and I just have to come up with something that works for this song that I'm not even sure if I really like. But.

Brian Funk (01:28:38.568)

Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:28:58.866)

I feel like that was such a necessary step. I wouldn't have wanted to do that forever. Like I did it for two years. I got out of my contract after two years and moved on to pursue my own music. It actually, I think it ignited a deeper fire within me to do my own music. But that period was so necessary. It was like songwriting boot camp, so to speak, of just going through the motions of just like...

forcing myself to be creative when I didn't feel like it, when what the music was doing wasn't really doing it for me, and where perhaps I wasn't in an environment that I was comfortable in, I didn't have access to the gear that I wanted, and then forcing myself to kind of go through that and create something, which, like, still to this day, I don't look back at the music that I made as something that I'm ultra proud of or that I would...

you know, want to pursue more. But I wouldn't give anything up for that because that was such a necessary process to go through and develop hopefully something in myself that learns to like, just because I'm not feeling it just because I'm not at any given moment. And this happens for probably every song I've ever worked on. There is a moment where it just feels like, is this working? Is this not working? I don't know. And then just developing that muscle that pushes through that regardless.

Brian Funk (01:30:01.216)

Hmm.

David Paul Newell (01:30:25.901)

And then you realize that, yeah, that's just, that's just like almost like a writer's block that goes away. If you just continue to move forward with it, you'll finish it. And so there's seldom ever any tracks that I don't finish. We don't release everything, but there's seldom any tracks that I wouldn't say are not 80 % 90 % finished that I just don't feel like I can't complete. And I, and that wasn't the case. I don't think before that I definitely had a tendency to work on something.

And then when it just, the ideas stopped flowing, things stopped feeling like they were new. I got used to hearing the song in my own head, so it lost its novelty of being fresh. Then I would give up and then move on to the next thing or whatever. But I think after that period of just kind of forcing yourself to power through, definitely helped with that process. Hopefully, hopefully you'll hear it for yourself when we release the album.

Brian Funk (01:31:18.336)

I bet. Well, I bet it does. And kind of talked about it a little bit. You get in your head a lot when you do this. And one of my ways around this is just to try to move really fast and just keep going, keep working at a speed that I don't even have time to judge it. You know, like kind of like in that case with your experience sounds like it doesn't matter if you like it.

David Paul Newell (01:31:47.457)

No.

Brian Funk (01:31:48.416)

the point is to just make it and When I'm in that phase, I actually have the most fun as it's like I'm just making music. I'm just doing it and of course, it's not I'm trying to make stuff. want to make and that I like but I'm kind of bypassing that like inner critic circuitry that comes up if I don't go fast enough so when it's just like

in these like more sprinty kind of workflows that I find I enjoy the most and often get the most done just because you're moving. And just don't stop to worry about it. It's not an issue. I just have to finish this for today and then the end. I can judge it later.

David Paul Newell (01:32:35.839)

Yeah Yeah, I was I I think it was fun even when I was kind of in those environments where I when I say that it wasn't probably as natural or it wasn't as fulfilling just because Perhaps I'm really controlling and I just like to be in the driver's seat Which I will admit is the case and of course with midnight mystery club I get to do that and so I'm thankful that I get to do that Levar lets me to do that to some extent so we have a good relationship in that regard

At least in the environment where you're writing for other people, you don't get to be in that. And so it's still fun. I love the people I worked with. Great people. We had a good time, but I always feel like I have a, I tend to judge what I do by how it feels six months, two years, six years later. Like to me, my favorite songs, not just by myself, but by, by anybody are the ones that a lot of times I didn't like or

They didn't hit me as much the first time I heard them. Like wasn't I didn't like it. It just I didn't my brain didn't fully comprehend what I was hearing. And after six months, I was obsessed with him. And I still listen to those songs and maybe they came out 20, 30, 40 years ago. And I still can listen to them all day long. And almost the opposite is true. Like songs that were very interesting and appealing to me early on. They had a really short shelf life.

And I don't really listen to them as much anymore. And there's artists like that for me. And so I think I look back on that period of time where I was forced to kind of be under the gun, come up with stuff and create. I still, I'm so thankful for it. I still had fun doing it, but it was perhaps more in that category of songs that as time went on, I wasn't necessarily as proud of the work that I did. It wasn't to me what I would like to have done. It just didn't feed that feeling.

with Midnight Mystery Club, not every song, but I would say more often than not, we're able to do stuff that I tend to grow to love even more than I did on day one. And that's, I think that is part of that process, is developing that muscle that sees the light at first morning, though you're not there yet in the process. You're pushing through because you've seen the finish line enough times.

David Paul Newell (01:35:02.097)

to make you realize that part of the process is that you, like you're saying, you have to power through some nights. Like some nights it's just like, I just got to finish this to make sure that I finished it. I got to keep working on it so that I don't give up on it. But after a while, that becomes easier and easier because you finished it, you look back on it and you know that perhaps it's a little bit of a misconception, but I think when I was younger and naive in making music, I thought great songs just appear out of nowhere magically.

Like the good stuff you make, you hear all these musicians talking about it. We were in the studio and I wrote the song in five minutes and we recorded it. It was done at the end of the day. And you just go, that's what it's like to make great music. You don't hear all the times about how difficult it was to make really great songs that took a long time and that were super challenging and ran into tons of issues. Like what was it I think I heard it like beat it, had like 93 mixes or something like that before they settled on mix number two.

And so like you go, well, that wasn't an easy process. That was sounds like a nightmare, but, but like, always, I always feel like when I was younger, I was naive. I, I thought that good songs just kind of came to you. So my tendency to like, go, well, this isn't working. Like, I'm not feeling this. Then this must not be good because it's not coming naturally. This must not be worth it because it's not moving under its own momentum.

Brian Funk (01:35:59.136)

Thanks

David Paul Newell (01:36:26.455)

and I'm forcing it. So I'm going to move on to something else that doesn't feel like I'm forcing it. And I think that was a total misconception about the process that I grew out of and that now I kind of go, no, many times it's the opposite. Many times it's like there becomes a point in most songs where you kind of go, is this working? Is this a struggle? I'll save a version of that there in Ableton and I'll label that as one thing and then I'll duplicate that session and then I'll move on from there, you know?

And then I'll go, okay, cool. Well, I'm just going to continue to ride this out. If at any point I go, I've made some wrong turns, I'm now more lost than ever. I have a version I can go back to, but, but yeah, but I feel like I seldom ever do. It's always like, you know, it's just, that's part of the process. You hit, sometimes you hit walls, sometimes you hit these things and, then you learn to have fun, even in the, the challenging times of working, even in the challenging times where everything's not falling into place magically.

Brian Funk (01:36:55.017)

Hmm.

David Paul Newell (01:37:24.493)

you're having fun hitting your head against the wall a little bit to kind of come up with something new.

Brian Funk (01:37:30.547)

Hmm. Yeah, that's cool. That's a great place to wind up, you know. Having fun doing it.

David Paul Newell (01:37:37.752)

Yeah, Yeah, trying to.

Brian Funk (01:37:41.375)

I'm excited to hear the product of it all. So you said that's going to be July where the telescope comes out. Cool.

David Paul Newell (01:37:49.708)

Yeah, so telescope comes out on july 10th. We'll have a handful of singles coming out Probably starting in march and then we'll be releasing singles pretty much all the way through up to the album release I only advise for you will be out on april 3rd And that's actually one of the few songs that's not going to be on the album telescope But that's just released as a single right now But perhaps one day we'll we'll put that out in another group

but Telescope will be out in July. And then, yeah, I think if people are curious, they wanna find out more, they can check us out on our website, which is midnightmysteryclub.com. There's a button there that just says join the club. And if you join the club, you'll find out about all the new stuff. And we try to like release music to people that follow us online before we even release it anywhere else. So I think right now, if you sign up on the website, you should.

join the club, it'll send you an email right away and you can get, I only have eyes for you, even before it comes out. So if you're watching this before July, or before April 3rd, do that now. And probably do that anyway, because we'll probably send you music. If you want stuff, we'll send it to you. If you don't want it, don't download it. But yeah, but it'll be there if you want it. So, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:38:52.905)

That's cool.

Brian Funk (01:39:06.665)

That's awesome. So we've got some stuff to look forward to and, yeah, man, it's, it's been really great to talk to you. You know, we've had those interactions and, it's funny how you find sometimes people that have like kind of gone a very similar path, you know, with getting started and how we come from, we've got roots in our beginnings and all this. but it, yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:39:15.371)

Thanks, man. It was great. Yeah.

David Paul Newell (01:39:23.882)

Right?

David Paul Newell (01:39:29.707)

Yeah.

Only took us 10 years to do this, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:39:36.069)

Overnight success in 10 years, right? That kind of thing. but it's because you you love it and It's definitely apparent talking to you. So I'm glad you shared that all with us and spread that joy and inspiration to people listening. I'm sure You said midnight mystery club comm right and then I know that it's all linked We get socials and all of that from there, too So I'll put these in the show notes as well so people can check it out

David Paul Newell (01:39:46.236)

Cheers buddy.

David Paul Newell (01:40:04.001)

Cool. Awesome. Thanks bud. Thanks for having me, man. This was great. Really fun. Yeah.