Modern Music Education and Overcoming Creative Challenges with Dennis DeSantis - Music Production Podcast #431

podcast
Written By Brian Funk

Dennis DeSantis is a composer, percussionist, sound designer, author, and educator. He is a professor of Music and Technology at Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, where he is developing an all new BM in Music Creation and Technology. Dennis worked as Head of Music Learning at Ableton, and wrote Making Music 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers. 

Dennis and I spoke in depth about his work at Eastman School of Music. We shared thoughts on finishing projects and overcoming creative challenges. Dennis reflected on his work at Ableton and how it has prepared him for his newest chapter in cutting edge music education.

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:01.295)

Dennis, welcome to the Music Production Podcast. So good to have you.

Dennis (00:08.814)

Yeah, good to be here. Nice to see you again.

Brian Funk (00:11.331)

You too. It's been a little while now. I think maybe Loop in twenty eighteen might have been the last time we crossed paths somewhere around there, but

Dennis (00:20.76)

The one in LA? We're where you at that? Okay, yeah, that must have been it then.

Brian Funk (00:22.221)

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good time until the the fires came and made it a little interesting. But what a what a great event, what a great gathering. T anytime people I'm sure you experience this in your in your classrooms, you know, just create creative people with the similar goals and interests. It just seems to elevate everybody and there's something in the air that's really nice to be around.

Dennis (00:30.488)

Yeah, that was wild.

Dennis (00:51.042)

Yeah, loop was pretty special. And I I'm you're right. I'm excited to kind of rediscover that now that I'm in classrooms with people again. There's also something about like the physicality of people in one room. I don't know what that is. It's different than the online thing, which is great because then you can meet with people who aren't near you physically. But there is something kind of special about people in a physical space. I don't know what that is. Well, part of it is like lower latency. That might help.

Brian Funk (01:07.481)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:17.901)

Yeah.

That's true. Somet sometimes maybe from doing these Zoom type calls that I do all the time I in my regular conversations I wait longer than normal before replying.

Dennis (01:21.688)

Ha ha.

Dennis (01:30.658)

Right. Like conditioned to respond to that latency. Right.

Brian Funk (01:35.467)

Yeah. So you've just completed first year, right, at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester.

Dennis (01:43.938)

That's right. Yeah, I started here I think technically my contract started in July of twenty twenty five. So yeah, it's just been a almost exactly one year now.

Brian Funk (01:53.679)

Hm. And I think it's really cool what you guys are doing and it's kind of I guess academia realizing that it's not all just about stuff that happened in the past and looking in the future. So you've got music creation and technology as a major now.

Dennis (02:13.772)

Yeah, I mean it's it's a cool thing for a conservatory. In defense of the way conservatories have have done it, there's always been I mean here and at every other conservatory too, there's always been composition programs, new music ensembles. So it isn't strictly about the past. It's also about the future. But what's exciting about this program is it's it's branching into some different potential futures as well.

Yeah, which is which is very exciting for me and I hope it's exciting for for the place and the incoming students as well.

Brian Funk (02:49.581)

think it's gotta be because I teach high school English so I'm around a lot of young people who some of them are in band, they're doing the kind of traditional thing, but there are other ones that are wanna make beats. They're playing around with band lab or FL Studio or some app they have on their phone and there's really nothing there for them. There's not a lot that they can go into. It's starting to happen a little bit, but

It reminds me of how I felt as a kid. I s didn't have any of that high school band training. I was played electric guitar when I was fourteen and wanted to be in rock bands. And it was my life at that point. It was everything to me. But at school, the best I had was the talent show that we did every year. They hoped our band would make it and we didn't the first year. But it's nice to see that there's some doors opening for people that have some different angles into music.

Dennis (03:46.274)

Yeah, I think that's a nice that's a nice way to put it. Like different doors, different angles. I mean, i the reality is that I expect that a lot of the students who come into this program, I mean, and I'm speaking about in future tense because we don't actually have students yet. We won't admit the first class of students until fall of twenty twenty seven. So between now and the end of this year is when students will apply to enter next fall, not this coming fall.

But I expect that at least for a while and maybe forever, a good portion of the incoming students will be exactly like the ones that you described. They're people who are like

Deeply talented, deeply committed musicians, but in a way that doesn't involve high school music preparation, private lessons on a conventional instrument, etc. At the same time, I think there will be a strong contingent of students who are quite similar to the students that are at conservatories now. They've been studying an instrument their whole lives, playing at the highest levels, playing in all-state ensembles and things like this, but who have also found a path for creative expression.

Through music technology. So I think what's exciting is to think that the incoming cohort will likely be a mix of these two different types of students and then watching the way they bounce ideas off of each other is going to be really cool. But of course, it's a huge unknown. Like we don't really know who they're going to be until they start applying.

Brian Funk (05:10.05)

Yeah.

Right. That's a great point, how they might interact with each other, coming from a very technical background, classically trained to somebody that's more working on feel and intuition.

Dennis (05:25.803)

Right. And also the way they'll interact with this the other students in other programs who are already here. Like I'm I've been using this analogy with people around here a bit, but I'm super excited for the first ensemble that gets put together here that's like a kid with a laptop and a Baroque violinist and a jazz singer or something. Like those students are gonna feed off each other in really interesting ways and

Brian Funk (05:46.411)

Yeah.

Dennis (05:51.276)

That's what makes programs like this kind of exciting, but it's also what make, it's what made music school exciting for me too, was the way students from very different backgrounds and very different musical interests, but operating at a very high level, could come together and make something that was like better than the sum of the parts.

Brian Funk (06:05.902)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (06:10.582)

Yeah. That is exciting. I I bet there are a lot of people like that out there. I have a nephew who's going to the University of Denver, for tuba and he's deep into that and

He's learning Ableton Live. So it's funny to talk to him because he has an understanding of theory and he reads music. I don't read music. So he knows some of this stuff. And and then I talk to him about Ableton Live. And we have this cool back and forth. And it's interesting how he sees it and how he looks at it compared to how someone like me does. And it it just

Dennis (06:27.405)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (06:50.774)

And I've always said this to the people in my other classes too, like you're whatever you already know is going to feed into what you're learning here. If you have some background as a vocalist or a percussionist learning how to produce music and you might not consider yourself maybe as a drummer or someone that might use a drum machine, but you might find that you really take to it because you have some of that understanding to bring.

Dennis (07:14.313)

And vice versa. I mean, the students who come in with strong music sort of music production, whatever that means, but strong sort of technology backgrounds are also gonna get something interesting by seeing how those ideas are represented in things like notation or or how some some things that we might take for granted as being

music tech specific also exist in other centuries represented in different ways. You know, a lot of things sort of have different user interfaces, but are actually expressions of a kind of deeper, more fundamental musical idea, which I think is is kind of exciting.

Brian Funk (08:00.205)

Mm.

Dennis (08:00.684)

And then you see that from multiple perspectives. Like you maybe you were playing around with these ideas in tech, but then you realize that they existed in medieval music, or vice versa. Maybe you were playing the violin your whole life and then suddenly you're you're trying to understand how things that you were doing with your violin can be expressed in a tool like Ableton Live.

And of course it's not all that. It's not like there's a one-to-one correspondence between old music and contemporary electronic music, but there certainly are ideas that are represented in multiple ways.

Brian Funk (08:33.652)

It is neat when some of that comes up. Stuff that you think is kinda newfangled technology and then you realize, wow, look at that. I think there was a

Dennis (08:41.901)

I mean that was a huge go ahead.

Brian Funk (08:43.982)

Yeah, I was I was just to give an example, I was there was a Max for Live device, I think it was called foreplay maybe. And it was the concept of the fugue with the repr repeating melody and th but it did it with slower playheads, faster playheads all playing the same notes. And it was like, yeah, it's like what I learned in that Bach class I took at college.

Dennis (08:54.369)

Mm-hmm.

Dennis (09:05.311)

Exactly. Yeah. And a lot of these ideas they get sort of repeated and recycled, but also kind of reimagined through new new lenses and new ways of of interfacing with music. But of but again, yeah, like you said often they're they they're expressions of something that's sort of deeper.

That have historical precedence. But then if you can come in and now see it from both sides, maybe you can come up with a way of rethinking this in yet a third way, which is maybe a synthesis of the two or

creative reinterpretation or something. And that's what's exciting about, well, it's one of the many things that's exciting about it to me. Like where are people going to take this stuff once they have a deeper toolkit expressed across centuries and traditions and interfaces? And when I talk about interface here, I'm talking about sort of Ableton Live as an interface versus notation as an interface, for example.

Brian Funk (10:03.053)

Hmm. Right. It it is interesting too, young people just they grew up with this stuff. They have a kind of innate understanding of digital interfaces and how things connect. So I find with the younger students there's a lot less explaining about how to put things together. They just like, yeah, okay. They kind of go right into it. They're not afraid of it. It's not as intimidating.

Dennis (10:30.858)

Yeah, that's totally right. I taught a class last semester which was primarily, it was exclusively for graduate students. And most of them were graduate students in the film scoring program. And many of them had, well, they all had really deep experience and chops with digital audio workstations. Like the technology was not

an issue for them at all, but they had very different levels of experience with popular musics, hip-hop, electronic music. Many of them were using the DAW as a way to do sort of orchestral mock-ups.

And their their musical exposure was largely to the classical tradition, the film scoring orchestral tradition. But then for some of them, of course, they'd been growing up listening to pop and hip-hop their whole lives. But for both sides of this equation, the tech was never the problem. We didn't have to do introduction to digital audio workstations. Like they had that stuff solid.

Brian Funk (11:32.171)

Hmm. Yeah, those concepts. That's great. That gives you just kind of skip over that. Okay, let's get into it.

Dennis (11:34.9)

It was great.

Dennis (11:40.16)

Right. Exactly.

Brian Funk (11:43.276)

So you come from that more classical background, you've got that experience. how did you make your way into all of the digital electronic world that you wound up in for so long?

Dennis (11:59.565)

In a lot of ways I actually kind of made my way back to it. So yeah, I mean I have a bunch of degrees in in composition and music theory and all that. But my first interest in music making was electronics. I w I'm dating myself a little bit here, but like I had a DX7 as a child and

Brian Funk (12:20.023)

Cool.

Dennis (12:22.08)

learned my way through interfacing that with an Apple II Plus and running like basic MIDI sequencing. And I was really into music like Tangerine Dream in the 80s. So electronic music was very much kind of in the in the bedrock of what I was doing from a even before I really got interested in taking the

the conservatory study of classical music seriously. I was kind of a late comer actually to notated music. I played in school bands and stuff in high school, but I kind of faked my way through through a lot of the trickier like I didn't really study theory until I got to college.

Brian Funk (12:51.18)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (13:00.396)

Yeah.

Dennis (13:08.218)

but then kind of ate it up. I mean, I was really excited by mostly by putting names to things, to sounds that I heard, like, chords can be represented using Roman numerals, and chord progressions can be represented using progressions of Roman numerals. And this is an interesting way of exploring these sounds that had kind of been in the music that I was listening to anyway, and then getting deeper into how to express that.

stuff in notation. But yeah, in many ways it was like getting back to electronic music rather than getting to it through classical study.

Brian Funk (13:47.499)

Right. Wow. Were you programming your DX seven?

Dennis (13:51.595)

I mean, as much as anybody was, you know, it was a bit of a I'm not sure that was such a healthy environment to start with as a fourteen-year-old or something, just because interface design was not at the forefront of those people's minds. Like well, i it clearly was, but it was a very different approach to interface design. Like it was the opposite of one knob per function. It was like one knob, period. You know, the the DX7 had a data entry slider, one.

Brian Funk (13:59.2)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (14:15.883)

Yeah. That's slider. Yeah.

Dennis (14:20.478)

And I think increment and decrement buttons, but they were it was completely modal. Like what that slider controlled was the last thing you selected, which is a pretty wild way to learn your way through synthesis. But it's it was what I had. And so I certainly played with programming, but I had no idea what I was doing for for a long time. It wasn't until I really started studying, you know.

What actually does an envelope do? What does an LFO do? That I was able to make things with a little bit more intention. But yeah, if I could go back and do it, you know, with a with something that had more controls, I probably would have a very different relationship with synthesis than I do now, where I I came to those kinds of more hands-on interfaces much later.

Brian Funk (15:09.889)

Yeah, that's a notoriously brutal synth to program. I mean FM synthesis on its own, but I guess it was also that time with technology where those kind of membrane buttons were all the rave, so they felt futuristic and it incorporated a little bit of that. But

Dennis (15:27.764)

Yeah, for sure. I mean it was a kind of retro I remember thinking that it felt futuristic and it didn't occur to me at the time that one slider was not necessarily so ergonomic.

Brian Funk (15:38.379)

Yeah. But you make a good point. it was what you had. I think when back in those days especially when you couldn't just download a new plugin or you couldn't get something from Amazon and send it back if you don't like it, you you stuck with what you had no matter what and you really learned that stuff. You had you got a deep relationship with it.

Dennis (16:01.654)

For sure. And I mean part of part of it was that I was constrained financially. Like I wouldn't have been able to afford more. And part of it was that we were constrained technologically. As you said, there was no internet, there was no downloading of anything, and software was at the point then where it was like MIDI or nothing. You know, there was no you couldn't record audio into the computer. There just wasn't.

Brian Funk (16:08.288)

Yeah.

Dennis (16:30.665)

That wasn't possible. There was no digital up to audio conversion available at a consumer price, you know. I think. I don't know when the first digital recordings were happening, but they they weren't available it wasn't available to me in the 80s. So yeah, part of it was necess it was necessity a along a few different axes. And I think that you there is something to be said for that even now though. Like I think, you know, the gear acquisition syndrome.

Brian Funk (16:44.918)

Right.

Dennis (17:00.445)

is a problem. You can convince yourself that the thing you need is like one more EQ rather than digging a little deeper into the one or seven that you already have. And yeah, and it was, you know, it didn't occur to me at the time that it was kind of painful, like you said, to to program the DX7. It was just that's what you did. That's what I had. Right.

Brian Funk (17:21.344)

That's how did it. Yeah. I think it's one of the big problems we all face as the modern musician is there is just too much stuff. It was a lot easier to create something when all I had was a four track and a guitar. Like not a lot of choices. Just now start worrying about the actual music compared to now where what genre, what style, what plug-in, what samples.

Dennis (17:49.386)

I mean you can choose to to restrict yourself as well though, and that can be really powerful, you know. But it I think for me the biggest the biggest eye-opener there was identifying that gear and music were not actually the same thing. And that you could make choices about a restricted palette and make endless amounts of music using that restricted palette.

I think there's something there's a bit of a at least among like gear-focused people, it they it it's possible to sort of look down your nose at somebody who says, you know what, I I'm gonna use this same four plugins for this entire record. But that's actually no different than what you would have done in a hardware studio if all you had were four devices. I mean, if you look at

sort of foundational techno and house records, for example. These were people with limited means and extremely limited gear making whole records or whole maybe like essentially making whole genres out of what they happen to have in the studio. And there was certainly no shame in that then and there's no reason for there to be shame in it now. Like having 800 synths at your disposal doesn't mean you need to use them all.

Brian Funk (18:57.216)

Yeah.

Dennis (19:12.457)

You also don't need to delete them all, but for me, it's it's been very helpful to sort of separate creative practice from tinkering with tools. Both are like fun and rewarding, but they aren't necessarily the same thing. That being said, tinkering with tools often will spark something that turns into a musical idea, but then I have to consciously make the shift and say, okay, we're done tinkering with tools now. This particular palette.

has triggered a musical thing, let's stick with the musical thing.

Brian Funk (19:46.109)

I I think the same way and I always prioritize the music making because I think that's harder to come by to get the exciting idea. It's a lot there's a lot of fun you can have tinkering and you I can sink into that easy, I guess, because there's no risk to it where there is with if I decide I'm gonna make music today, like I don't know if it's gonna be good.

Dennis (20:10.441)

Yeah, and then you're you're really kind of it's very bold and courageous to make a piece of music that you then put out into the world. Because then you're you're expressing something, you're sharing something that you consider finished. If everything stays in sketch phase, you're you're there's no commitment. You're not committing to a thing which someone might then critique.

I mean someone could critique your sketch anyway if you share it on social media or something, but you can always fall back on the knowledge that this wasn't really the thing, an experiment.

Brian Funk (20:44.788)

Yeah. Right. Yeah, and and I I know I struggle with that. A lot of people struggle with that. Sometimes the things I'm finishing, when you put it out, it it feels like this is me as as an artist. This is my whole representation of who I am. And it might just be the one little slice that got finished. And it's such a small portion and the pressure of having that be everything.

that you are in musical form is is sometimes prevents you from doing it at all.

Dennis (21:15.773)

Y Yeah.

Dennis (21:21.139)

And I don't know how much of this is internal or a manifestation of something that comes from the outside. I mean, if you're an artist with a known sound and then you do something that's radically different than that, a fan base will have a reaction to that. I mean, I'm trying to imagine Autecker making like a pop record. What would happen? Like

People would kind of lose their minds and they would search for meaning and maybe they just wanted to make a pop record.

Brian Funk (21:46.678)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (21:54.753)

Right.

Dennis (21:58.879)

But you know, for I think for everybody there's this sense, like you said, like this is me. The thing means something. It's an expression of some kind of inner state or emotional whatever. Or maybe it just isn't. Maybe it's like these were cool sounds that happen to be put together in a cool way. there's a chord progression I like. here's a rhythmic trick that I thought was cool. They might not be, it might not be deeper than that.

But learning to let go of that is a challenge. And I don't claim that I'm good at it. Like I don't I often overthink.

Brian Funk (22:30.419)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I do too. And I like making music that is sometimes just an exploration of a thought or even like a character or or an exaggeration of how I am and how I feel or or just totally made up. And I I definitely don't like the psychoanalytical microscope being put on me for that.

Dennis (22:50.761)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (23:01.523)

Whatever that idea might have been. sometimes it's it's just the result of the play of that day. my my remedy to that is just try to do as much as possible and kind of flood the flood the stream and this way you never know what someone's gonna pick out. Fortunately most people don't pick any of it, so most of it goes unheard.

Dennis (23:22.014)

Yeah.

Dennis (23:27.402)

Right, sure. Yeah, and then you've you've built this entire kind of inner narrative and conversation and dialogue with with a listener that was entirely in your own head. And that's probably d damaging. It's probably damaging to productivity, but it's probably also damaging to mental health, like really overthinking.

Brian Funk (23:38.739)

Right.

Dennis (23:50.411)

can can get in your way. At the same time though, you want, you want to have a filter, right? You don't want to put things into the world that you don't think are expressions of at least quality. Or maybe you do. Like maybe there's maybe that's an experiment as well. Like I'm going to deliberately make the worst thing I can. I I don't want to judge, you know, if there's a if there's a valid reason for that, do it.

Brian Funk (24:16.991)

Yeah. Yeah. I that's funny you say that. I I've had that conversation in regards to content creation where there's when you start getting into the numbers and the algorithms reaction, which is really I guess just the audience watching or not, but you can find yourself doing things that maybe you don't really enjoy as much because it's gonna work and then next thing you know you have to start

Dennis (24:25.375)

Mm.

Brian Funk (24:45.567)

doing that thing now because that's what people expect of you. And that can be probably the the worst curse of all is now y yeah, you maybe you found something but now you have to do it and you don't enjoy it.

Dennis (24:58.164)

But maybe there's a w maybe there's a way to make that yet a third thing. Like we were talking about the the duality of tinkering versus music making. Maybe there's a way that content creation in the s social media algorithmic concept that you're using it can be yet a third thing and not an expression of

Tinkering or music making. Like if you need to do a thing because it's part of your income stream, maybe there's a switch you can flick in your head that says, yeah, I'm clocking into my job now. And separate that somehow from like the real creative practice.

Brian Funk (25:32.97)

Right.

Dennis (25:42.058)

There's no shame in that. Of course, it's one person and one identity, and then eventually it becomes complicated, either for an audience to sort out or for you to sort out or both. But I wonder if there's a psychological trick there to treating that as a separate stream of identity.

Brian Funk (26:03.167)

Yeah, I think so. a lot of musicians are kind of cobbling together their careers. They're doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and some of it is probably more what they wanna be doing and some of it might be a little more of the clocking in to the job type work. And I think that's great because now you're doing what you wanna be doing. You're using your

Dennis (26:18.921)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (26:28.159)

whether it's your creativity, your technical abilities, to pay the bills and allow you to then have the fun of doing the stuff you wanna be doing maybe a little bit more. And I think there's also a lot of people that make an art out of that part of it too. That seems to be I think the people that stick around the longest are the ones that find that nice balance where even the clocking in is sort of an artistic expression on some level.

Dennis (26:55.988)

For sure, for sure. Yeah, I mean

Thought I had a thought. I don't really have a thought, Harry. I think you expressed it. You expressed it well.

Brian Funk (27:04.123)

Mm-hmm.

I I'd have to imagine you probably run into that with students at the school, especially as time goes on. Where they if th especially if they're coming from different worlds and bringing all this stuff together and interacting with others, there's gotta be some interesting things that the young folks are gonna figure out, carving new paths.

Dennis (27:31.4)

I think that's totally true. I mean one one thing that that I noticed most of my students for the class that I taught last semester were are young early career film composers.

And in that world, you're recognizing that often what you're doing is taking direction, right? There are people above you in the hierarchy of making the film who are ultimately responsible for signing off on what you do. They're gonna have influences and creative insights and ideas that may or may not match what you're doing, but you're it's a gig. You're doing it because it's the job.

And how much you get to express your own creativity in that domain is sort of to be determined on a gig-by-gig basis. You know, if you get a job doing a score for a director who has temporary music and they want that sound, and it's very different than the kind of music that you want to make, your ability to execute that music.

is the thing that's gonna keep you on the job or not. And then it's up to you whether that's the job you want.

Brian Funk (28:44.682)

Mm.

Dennis (28:49.289)

But for early career composers in that world, you know, you might not have a lot of choice. You might need the work that will eventually, if everything goes right, spin out into a place where you're being hired for your voice rather than to fill a role.

Brian Funk (28:55.145)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (29:06.438)

Mm-hmm. Start to make a name for yourself in what you're doing.

Dennis (29:10.001)

Yeah, and then and then the more you do that, the more you can exhibit your own sound. You the more you can present what it is that you uniquely bring to the table. And then you start getting hired for that.

Brian Funk (29:15.85)

Mm.

Brian Funk (29:22.684)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's that's a pretty cool place to wind up where we want your music in this film. We w because of how you do your thing. But there's I know I've spoken to a lot of people that do film or even commercial work that

Dennis (29:27.881)

For sure. Right. Yeah.

Brian Funk (29:43.196)

almost find that to be such a relief to get that direction, to say, We need this kind of song and I've had people say to me, I don't know how anyone does any music without that. There's too many choices. I need that narrowed down for me. They thrive in it.

Dennis (29:56.67)

Yeah, for sure. That's a great it's a great creative constraint. Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. I hadn't really thought about that. But of course, w w if the if the palette is completely blank and you can do anything you want, you're you're responsible for making all the decisions. Which is why sometimes it's incredibly hard to do that. But if somebody says, No, I need this and it needs to be four minutes long, and maybe the most important constraint is the deadline, like I need it by tomorrow.

Brian Funk (30:23.572)

Yeah.

Dennis (30:26.459)

then you you have a lot of parameters that are already defined for you. And you're right, it can make it much easier to work.

Brian Funk (30:33.256)

Hmm. That's something with my class, my sampling class that I try to communicate a little bit like

I like to leave it open a little bit. Hey, look, if you are working on something already and this technique that we're talking about this week kind of fits and you wanna kinda shimmy that into the assignment, I'm all for it. But at the same time I'm also sort of saying, But keep in mind if this was your directive from your job and your gig is to make this thing, you don't get to do that. So I I do sort of leave it up to them, kinda considering what they're trying to get out of the course.

So that yeah, if you're looking for that kind of work where you're gonna be hired to do a specific type of thing, then follow these directions closely. But if you're doing this 'cause you want to expand your own creativity and expression and make your own albums and then okay. We can be a little more flexible.

Dennis (31:25.789)

Yeah. Yeah.

Dennis (31:38.121)

I think for a young person, there's a lot of power in trying on as many different things as you can. Even if you think you know what it is that you want to do, doing like the opposite of that for some amount of time is just tools in the toolkit. And then later, maybe you'll have a chance to pull one of those tools out and dust it off a little bit, and it will be completely applicable for some new situation.

Brian Funk (31:45.786)

Mm-hmm.

Dennis (32:08.034)

I mean the worst case scenario is that you never do it at all. You never use that thing again. The best case scenario is like 100% inf efficiency, I guess. So every single thing that you learn is like immediately applicable to all of your work forever, but that's not realistic either. More realistic is you try a thing.

Brian Funk (32:27.775)

Right.

Dennis (32:31.113)

And it changes you and the way you think in ways that are maybe not immediately applicable, but then sometime later you realize, wait, I actually know how to do this thing, which is perfectly usable in this context. And I wouldn't have had it otherwise because it involved doing something that at the time was kind of painful. I don't know. There's like a there's an exercise or sports metaphor in here probably about pushing muscles beyond their.

Brian Funk (32:58.666)

Right.

Dennis (32:58.889)

Of comfort and then, but then they're stronger. I don't know, there's metaphors for all this kind of thing. But when I was, yeah. Right. And but then maybe it balances you in some way that you were unaware of before. And I remember this from my undergraduate, like doing certain assignments that I was like, This is this is painful. Like I I hate this music. I never want to make something that sounds like this. But then

Brian Funk (33:04.82)

Sure, type of workout where you've never used that type of muscle. Yeah.

Dennis (33:27.803)

It's in the tool bag. You get it then. Or maybe even better, you discover something in it that you thought you hated, but which is actually kind of amazing. And then you can synthesize that into your into your techniques and even into your listening that broadens you in a in a more general purpose way.

Brian Funk (33:29.695)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (33:51.358)

Hmm. Yeah, I think that's man, I think everything in my life that I've ever become interested in was sort of a surprise. I didn't know I was gonna I I think back to I think I was in seventh grade taking a general music course in school that I hated. I absolutely hated. It was I I was like, I'm never gonna need this. I don't care, I'm not interested and the way it was taught was

not really to get kids into music. But two years later I was playing the guitar and it was the only thing I cared about anymore. So it was I never would have expected that. And it might have just been the exposure method, the the way you were introduced to it.

Dennis (34:39.229)

And then did you find that there were things from the general music class which were applicable later?

Brian Funk (34:46.172)

Yeah, actually I hate to admit it. But there was just the discussion I remember of duple and triple meter. I I actually remember thinking that was just something why am I learning this? And then learning guitar, learning songs and realizing like, this is I'm counting in threes now instead of fours and then trying to figure out what that was all about.

Dennis (34:56.627)

Sure.

Dennis (35:14.407)

I mean I think I think one of the things that helps to differentiate kind of good, I hate to effective musical educ I don't want to judge anything, but I find that music education tends to be effective when it's grounded in music rather than in sort of extra musical expressions of an idea. Like if if

The duple-triple thing didn't make sense for you until you started learning songs. But the learning songs could have happened as part of the initial introduction. Like, here are some examples of duple and triple in music that you might know. Now you have a you have a real-world expression of this thing, which is otherwise like an abstraction. And then it becomes real for people, right? And then you see, this actually is a thing.

Brian Funk (35:56.724)

Right.

Dennis (36:10.075)

And without a doubt, that's always been the most those are the lessons that have stuck with me the most. Also in music tech, like

Don't just tell me what an LFO is. Show me an amazing example of something fluctuating in a periodic way in a piece of music that I can then go back and listen to. And then I make the connection between the abstract technicality, whether it's a music theory thing or a technical thing, and its application in real music. That just always has sat for me so much better.

Brian Funk (36:25.064)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (36:45.351)

Right. 'Cause it has a purpose now. I find that's a lot of what I what I'm trying to do with students is I want to have fun first and enjoy the process. And then when they say, Hey, why's that bass going whoa whoa whoa whoa And I was like, you've just discovered LFO and now we can talk about how that's modulating the filter and

Dennis (37:07.005)

Right.

Brian Funk (37:12.005)

suddenly that stuff becomes interesting whereas if it's like, Okay guys, before you even touch the synthesizer we're gonna talk about oscillators and you wanna hear the cool noise first.

Dennis (37:20.125)

Right. Yeah, if you start with a yeah, if you start with a signal flow flow diagram, it's probably already lost. But if you start with a beautiful sound and then sort of reverse or back up into how you might make something like that, then I I feel like it's always more effective.

Brian Funk (37:29.022)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (37:41.351)

Yeah, the play part is nice. before the technical, the history, all the other stuff.

Dennis (37:51.175)

Yeah. You can always get there. You just have to give students a a reason to care.

Brian Funk (38:00.977)

I think that kind of approach helps you enjoy music and a lot of the process on so many different levels. And I'll I'll plug your book for a second. I got it right here. You're making music, which is such a great book because it's so practical. but I remember there was a chapter in there about listening to music you don't like and trying to find something about it that you can take away from it. And

For me this happened as I was getting into production and recording and I wasn't really interested in pop music for say, my own enjoyment. But when I listened to it from a production angle, I was like, wow, there's lot of really crazy stuff going on here and how does it sound so slick and clean and neat or all those things start becoming interesting. And

through that kind of lens, it's you you get a kind of I guess those things like the duple triple meter, they become interesting now. And it doesn't matter so much whether you like it from that initial kind of listener perspective, but just from the creation, the how to, how did they do that kind of way of thinking.

Dennis (39:22.77)

Yeah. I mean th the the best case scenario is that you find something to like in all music, which is probably not realistic. For most people there are just there's like an inherent visceral attraction or repulsion to things, which is not it's not necessary to overcome and

It's fine. But I think there's always something to learn from anything you hear. So if you find yourself a captive audience, for example, you're you there's music happening in a public environment that you can't escape. Right. There's two ways that you might respond to that. One might be to shut it out or like be enraged, and the other might be to be like, okay, here I am, I'm stuck.

Brian Funk (39:55.561)

Can't get away.

Dennis (40:06.727)

What can I learn from this? What's going on in this music? Like be able to do a little bit of analysis, whether it's sound analysis or rhythmic analysis or harmonic analysis, you know, how does how do these chords work? What's that sound? If it's acoustic, how do they make this? Does it sound like it's in a closed space or a far space? I mean simple things, but you everything can become a learning experience.

Brian Funk (40:24.157)

Mm.

Brian Funk (40:35.783)

Yeah, especially because music isn't something you can't close your ears and turn it off like you can close your eyes and or not taste the food. It it it's coming to you no matter what.

Dennis (40:46.439)

Right.

And even if it's not conventional music, like I love these videos that show up sometimes that are this refrigerator made the most beautiful ambient record I've ever heard. It's true, like environmental sound can be so amazing. And it it become, you know, there's a lot of music that makes use of found sound or field recordings or environmental sound. But when you're in an environment, you're hearing something.

Brian Funk (40:56.505)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (41:04.872)

Mm-hmm.

Dennis (41:16.454)

Which is why we kinda lose our minds in anechoic chambers, because there's nothing to hear and so you start hearing your own body, which is disconcerting, 'cause we're not used to that, right?

Brian Funk (41:24.061)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (41:29.925)

Yeah. It's proof there's like music everywhere, really. if you hear it as music, if you hear it at the sound as something interesting. I I was at that the Ableton headquarters in LA and Pasadena, doing a workshop last year. And we were the whole premise was to finish music. Bring something, try to finish it, we'll try to but

We one of the things I wanted them to try it out was going outside, walking around and incorporating some of those environmental sounds and noises and things that aren't really music. And part of it was to kind of build in the story of the workshop into the music that if you weren't here, you would not have got that recording of those people chatting and at the coffee shop. So it's kind of

per permanently marked with the experience and builds that story into it. And it was really interesting how we all took the same walk. Some people were shaking trees and bushes and some people were eavesdropping on conversations and all different things, but everyone felt kind of inspired by that. I've got this now, what can I do with it? How can I incorporate it?

Dennis (42:56.754)

Yeah, and there's something I think really nice about the idea that it's yours too. So you you see this over and over again if you read interviews with people who do a lot of field recording or who sample from their environment into their own music. They often talk about how the thing that makes that recording so special is that no one else can have it.

So, you know, we live in a in a world where samples are really easy to come by now, right? Like you can subscribe to a service and get all the samples you'd ever want. But they you never know whether or not someone else has that sample too. And even if you're deeply dig in, and this is true if you're, you know,

Producing sample-based hip hop too and digging in the crates for interesting records. Like someone else may have used that sound and they might they will, of course, transform it in their own way. But a field recording is pretty special. You know that that's just yours. And even if it's wind or rain or a somewhat generic sound that anyone else could have something similar to, they won't have the same one you have.

And so there's a there's automatically this like deeply personal imprint on the sound that's maybe deeper than what you could get through any kind of synthesis or certainly anything that you would get from a sample library. It doesn't necessarily mean it's better, but it's yours.

Brian Funk (44:22.532)

Mm. Yeah, I've grown to the point where when I put up a mic to record a guitar or vocal, I kinda don't care what's going on. I don't like I I definitely don't have a red light outside my doors that says recording, do not enter. if something comes along and gets involved, it's in. I mean I've recordings with dogs barking, cats.

Dennis (44:31.26)

Sure.

Brian Funk (44:51.31)

A an instrument I come back to a lot is a piano I recorded at my mother's house. she has this really nice grand piano and or baby grand and all I had at the time was the iPad 2. So not a great mic at that time. I just put it on there and in the next room my aunt, my mom, my grandma were all having a conversation, kind of laughing, talking and on some of those samples. You hear them.

They're like laughing and then they get pitched up and stretched around and I love it. It's it's not a great recording of a piano, but it's completely mine. Except that I put it out for free download and people can have it. But it's it's special on a personal level, you know, to have like my family in there and and they're talking and

Dennis (45:32.465)

It's yours.

Brian Funk (45:49.403)

I think that helps me connect to the music more that I make with it. And I don't know that it's measurable in the listener, but I I kind of believe that those little touches matter when you're listening to music to hear something alive and kind of one of a one time only sort of things that happened that are preserved. Something special there.

Dennis (46:15.912)

Totally. And it might not even matter if it matters to the listener. It might only matter that it matters to you and that that was enough of an impetus to finish the record, for example. Like maybe if you'd had a perfect, pristine, better sampled piano, it just wouldn't have been interesting enough for you to keep going. So sometimes the the the quality in a kind of abstract or objective way isn't the goal. It might not even be the best thing.

Brian Funk (46:26.876)

Yeah, right.

Dennis (46:45.433)

the the thing that that excites you about it is the the fact that it's unique, that it's yours, that there's these voices that are mixed in it. I mean if something egregious had happened and the recording was like much louder, be a glass had broken or something, you might have thrown it out, you know, you might have have re-recorded that one.

But these these little ephemeral atmospheric things, sure, maybe they mean that it's worse in some abstract sense, but it doesn't matter.

Brian Funk (47:19.142)

No, and if it's that bad I could always pull up the grand piano preset in any software and be good to go.

Dennis (47:27.089)

Sure, and then but then it wouldn't be special anymore. You know, and maybe the generic one is fine for some other purpose, but the personal one matters at at this moment. And that

Brian Funk (47:30.704)

Hm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (47:40.358)

Yeah, that's an angle I hadn't thought about, that it might be the thing to keep me going. Not even just even if it gets completely unnoticed, whether that means nobody ever listened or no one heard it when they did. The fact that it pushes you through. Yeah.

Dennis (47:45.371)

Yeah.

Dennis (47:54.759)

I think that's super important. I think it's really important, right? Like I I talk with my students a lot about this idea. I think I talk about it in the book too, this idea of like scaffolding that you sometimes build for yourself scaffolding that you need.

to to get the music made and then when the music's done you don't need the scaffolding anymore. The building is I'm mixing my metaphors here, but it's the same with like with construction, right? The first thing you do is put up this scaffolding and it's kind of ugly and it's purely functional. And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what the building will look like at the end. You need the same scaffolding to build some pr premium luxury high-rise that you do to build, you know.

right aid drugstore or something, right? But you s you need it until you don't. And these kinds of creative impetus, whether it's an extra musical story or

Brian Funk (48:45.041)

Right.

Dennis (49:00.944)

particular kind of experiment with tools or a piano that you sampled from people that you care about. Like that's the scaffolding for you. And then the music that emerges from that is different than the music that would have emerged without that scaffolding or with different scaffolding. And in the end, the scaffolding means nothing to the listener. Unless you choose to share it and they they take that into consideration. But then you have this artifact that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

Brian Funk (49:30.353)

Yeah. Yeah, that happens sometimes too. sometimes I start with a guitar part that when I'm actually making the song it sounds better when I mute it. And it might have been the core idea, but actually this works better without that.

Dennis (49:42.66)

Yeah.

Dennis (49:49.402)

Yeah, I love when that happens. You you have a thing that was the center, and then gradually other things overtake it, and then you realize that you never needed that thing in the first place. But you did. You needed it to get where you were, and now it's gone.

Brian Funk (50:04.091)

Yeah. It sort of sacrifices itself into the greater good.

Dennis (50:08.516)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (50:11.537)

That can be a hard thing to do mentally though, to because as the person making the music, you're so connected with every stage of the process and that's the foundation. Like, how could I ever take that out? Sometimes it's another person even that says like what's going on with that guitar there? What happens if we take that out?

Dennis (50:34.362)

Right. Yeah, I mean I think I d I can't remember what whose quote it is, but there's some famous quote about perfection is when is not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away. Like strip away all the extraneousness until you're left with what you really need for the thing to be the thing. That doesn't mean that's not an ad that not advocating like a kind of minimalism or anything.

Brian Funk (50:57.575)

Mm.

Dennis (51:02.34)

I'm just saying w it's it's very easy to think that the solution is to add, when often it's to subtract.

Brian Funk (51:11.653)

Yeah. Well, I guess an idea, whatever it is you're trying to put forward, has to be somewhat graspable to the listener. It has to be there has to be some sort of clarity to what it's trying to do. whereas more can distract one. I think I'm thinking a lot now, my my metaphor is going over to writing, where

Dennis (51:38.448)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (51:39.398)

You you need your I the whole point of communication and writing is to be clear and to the point to communicate your idea. And with my students in high school, they think good writing is more words because they've been told things like at least five hundred words and at least all these things say to them, the more I write the better.

And I'm trying to tell them like, no. Sometimes I tell no more than two hundred words. No more than boil it down, take stuff away. And they might even see it and say, like, yeah, it's easier to understand, but it's fewer words. I'm like, No. We we need a little bit of clarity and maybe that's kinda what happens with our music, that the idea gets lost in all the fluff and ear candy and because I have infinite tracks and

New plugins I want to use.

Dennis (52:34.042)

Yeah, I think that's true to an extent. I don't always know if there if there needs to be an idea as a as a thing that you could express on its own. at least in music. Well, even even in writing too. If

If you're trying to do story like narrative storytelling, I mean I'm talking to you as as an English teacher, I shouldn't like that's your domain. But if what you're trying to do is narrative storytelling, sure. But if what you're trying to do is like an experimental play with words, then it may not be the case that there's that there's a line that needs to be perceivable or even that needs to exist. And I guess that's true with music too, right? Like if you're writing a pop tune and

Brian Funk (52:57.915)

No, no, no.

Dennis (53:17.912)

you're you're seeking for some kind of functional functionality in in your pop music. You probably want like a yeah, you probably want a melody and like lyrics that are under understandable. But that's of course only one way that music might work. Music might be about big blocks of texture with no clarity.

Brian Funk (53:24.007)

Some anthemic thing, yeah.

Dennis (53:40.922)

But I still think the subtraction idea is valid, but maybe it's not because you're trying to expose an inner idea, but maybe just because

Dennis (53:55.332)

sure what the answer to that is. If it's not because you're trying to expose an inner idea more clearly, why would it be necessary to take away? It isn't always necessary. I mean with everything, with everything that I might ever say about music, it's like an idea rather than a rule. Yeah, there's always fine, there's always asterisks, you know.

Brian Funk (54:14.406)

Yeah. Yeah.

Dennis (54:19.748)

don't necessarily do this. I do find that in my own music I'm often trying to find subtraction, but I never really think about it because what I'm trying to do is expose a a an idea. Not never. I I'm not usually thinking about it as being about trying to to clarify an idea. It's more just that I have a feeling that there that there's too much clutter.

Maybe when you take more of the clutter away, there isn't a single thing which is more perceivable. It's just that the overall listening experience is somehow less distracted. Or maybe it's just that it fixes the mix. It could be a purely technical thing.

Brian Funk (55:02.382)

Yeah, that's true too. There's a lot of reasons to do it. But yeah, you make a great point. I mean, there's I guess everything we can ever say about art is just maybe a guideline or a suggestion. And a lot of times the interesting stuff happens as soon as you abandon that. Cause yeah, we might want the anthemic song that's gonna create social change or or make you just wanna

kick off your cowboy boots on the weekend and have a beer. But sometimes music is an art, the meaning is somewhere between the creator and the listener and you you let the listener fill in the blanks and that's also a fun experience too to have a piece of music that you're interpreting and you're maybe even differently each time you listen to it, depending on where you're at. So

Dennis (55:59.3)

I mean, that's something I I talk to my students about a lot. Like if they come in with a very strong extra musical idea, this is a piece of music about X. My question for them is often, how important is it to you that the listener hear X? Or is X just the scaffolding, the motivation for you to get the thing across the finish line? And the answers are different, you know?

Brian Funk (56:16.346)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (56:24.334)

Mm.

Dennis (56:25.441)

It's sometimes it's no, the X is the thing that's important. The music is just the vehicle for it. And sometimes it's no, it's just the scaffolding. It's just for me. And other times it's more nuanced. It's like I would like them to have a feeling in the X direction, but the details are up to them. It's up to the listener, it's up to the interpretation, as you said, between the listener and the creator.

And I think it's I think it's good for students to interrogate that. If they come in with a thing that exists before or outside of the music, it's it's good, I think, to question how much do you care about that translating to a listener? There isn't a right answer. but it's an interesting question to think about.

Brian Funk (57:13.828)

Yeah. Yeah, the purpose of it, the intention. And plus I guess this idea of releasing music is sort of letting it go. And sometimes things take on a different meaning. I don't know, born in the USA like

You know, that's sometimes used as just really patriotic song and sometimes it's like kind of a protest sort of thing. but

it gets reused. It's been it's been let go. It's not even Bruce Springsteen's anymore on a lot of levels. It's just the fabric of the society.

Dennis (57:58.34)

Right. Yeah, I mean that's yet another level. Like when it if something becomes a big enough piece of l a big enough cultural artifact that

It it no longer is just about what one listener thinks, but what about like a whole society thinks. And of course, there isn't a right answer there either. The thing is open to interpretation. But you're right, like a song like that is sort of it's a cultural artifact now. It's beyond just creator and one listener. It has it has meanings that are that transcend those things.

Brian Funk (58:19.46)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (58:32.954)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (58:36.748)

Yeah, even if the boss himself came out and said you know, definitively people would be like, Yeah, but not to me. Not to us, not to yeah. That that's the cool thing about it. I guess th could be a little scary on some levels, but it's it's nice that this stuff is almost alive. Gets to go live its life once it comes out of you.

Dennis (58:45.283)

Right. It it might not matter. Right.

Dennis (59:07.033)

Yeah. But you're right about it being scary too, because of the loss of control. If you never release it, you never have to worry about that. But as soon as you do, you you either well, you can choose not to worry about it, but it's a it's an object that could inspire worry.

Brian Funk (59:15.738)

Right.

Brian Funk (59:25.37)

Yeah, some artists never say what the songs mean 'cause they don't want to get involved in that.

Brian Funk (59:35.686)

Yeah, it's interesting how we've come to this too and now things can really change fast with the the way stuff spreads today.

But very cool. I w I wanted to ask you something kind of specific based on something I read that you said about teaching. And it's something I found myself saying too, that you I think you said it in this way. I hope my students learn as much as I learn. And I've kind of said this sort of thing

I I like that. I feel like I'm the one that learned the most this semester or this class. Like after the end of the year I'm like, I learned a lot. I don't know about any of you guys. But I'm kinda curious as to some of the things maybe you've learned or that's memories stick out to you. 'cause I'm sure it happens on a lot of different levels. It could even be something technical. It could just be more philosophical or how you approach I know for me just how I approach people sometimes.

Dennis (01:00:41.912)

I think you you kind of summed it up there. I mean, it's a mix of all of those things. You know, maybe the most the sort of simplest sort of surface level representations of this are when a student introduces you to music that they care about that you didn't know. And that that happened a bunch this semester for me, this last semester for me, students would come in with some music that they were excited about, that they were trying to recreate or emulate in some way.

And it wasn't music I knew. And then it was like something else for me to listen to. Something and that's great. Like if I can discover new music, awesome. Sometimes it's a technical thing too. Like, you know, they they've discovered a practice or or particular tool that I hadn't thought about using in that way or

It I mean a particular case in this last semester is that a lot of these students who are doing kind of orchestral recreations in the DAW, they're they have a really deep encyclopedic knowledge of the world of sample libraries. And it's all I mean, I know I know the tools that are used often in like electronic music. And I don't really know the sample library world much. And these

These students knew all about this stuff, who the big players were, and they're able to converse about the names of these companies that I had maybe never heard of. That was super interesting. But on a deeper level, I think it's it's about individuals and the way they respond to creative prompts or feedback or just conversation in class.

And that's one of the things that I like the most about teaching individuals, teaching people in rooms, is that everybody's gonna hear what you have to say and what each other have to say in different ways, filtered through their own interests, their own experiences, their own talents. And then you get to kind of sit back as a teacher and watch that transformation and dialogue happen. and honestly, it was something I really missed about

Dennis (01:02:51.256)

Making educational products versus teaching. So when I was at Ableton I was working on a team that made these learning resources, which is amazing. Like it's so great to know that you're making a thing that scales to potentially. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I think

Brian Funk (01:03:06.243)

Yeah. Those are great resources, th by the way. Just just to mention quickly, like learning music, learning synths. they're so interactive where people can play around and they do things like teach how how synthesizers work from a real simple level and little by little and you're playing with it as you go. Or

even with the learning music, how you're kind of and I think you can even export what you make in those into an Ableton live session, right? So it's a great way of being hands on and kind of what we were saying before, giving people the next thing as they're having fun playing with it. amazing resources.

Dennis (01:03:38.562)

Yeah. Yep.

Dennis (01:03:50.52)

Yeah, I love those tools. They were so fun to make and the the the people, the the team that worked on them, s they're great people.

I and I loved the fact that they could scale, that you make these free resources that operate on the web, and then at any moment tens of thousands of people could be using them. What I missed though, and what and I'm super lucky that I get to explore both of these things in one lifetime, is the opposite of scale, the direct, immediate connection with individuals.

Because what I missed from the making these things at scale is seeing how that person was affected by it versus that person. And you can do user research and you can do interviews, and then you see what those effects are for individuals, but you have limited cycles to iterate then on what.

Doing. And by the by the end of the last semester of teaching, I realized that I was able to communicate with each student individually in a slightly different way. And you know, you're you're kind of guessing, right? You're trying to figure out what is it that makes this student tick. But I think you kind of narrow in on it over time. And by the end, you're able to have these educational relationships with individuals.

So you lose the scale, but you gain the it the directness. And that's you know, that's something that I love learning from my students is how they work as people and as musicians. You can only get that through direct, direct contact. So I've been I just saying I've been super lucky that I've gotten to do

Dennis (01:05:41.442)

the big scaling thing and the immediate direct personal thing all in one career, which is kind of cool.

Brian Funk (01:05:47.759)

Yeah. Yeah, and probably backwards, right? Probably most people start the other way around.

Dennis (01:05:56.664)

I mean, I guess in some sense I did start the other way around. Like the thing that made me first realize that I loved music technology education was that as a grad student I was a teaching assistant for electronic music classes. And so I discovered it quickly there. You know, many of the people were just a few years younger than me then. But it was the same thing. Like I am I quickly saw, yeah.

this person learns best when communicated with in this way and this person really loves this music but really doesn't love this music, how can I play that? How can I play that game with them that will make that will expand their knowledge in some interesting way? And and inadvertently you expand your own too, right?

Brian Funk (01:06:47.653)

That is a fun puzzle to solve in the classroom to learn what makes people tick. I've had in the last year I've moved to a different part of my district where we work with a much smaller classes. And it's really for students that have had some issues, in the bigger high school, anxiety, the stress of being there, you know, all the

Dennis (01:06:50.115)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:07:14.809)

bazillion of issues that come up in a high school. So working with fewer students and closely and some that start off pretty resistant to you even or distrustful and finding the way in has been very rewarding and all very challenging too and sometimes frustrating and confusing and all those emotions that go with it. But there is something really nice when you can say like, you know, this helped this person.

know, that individual. the the ability to scale is incredible. I mean, you'll never know. Well, even in the classroom, you really never know what your reach is. There's people I'm sure you've taught this year, you've said things that may have just came out of your mouth on a whim and will stick with them forever. But

Dennis (01:07:44.803)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:08:06.648)

this on the scale you really don't get that sense as much and even if you get the feedback it's sort of after the fact compared to watching the light bulb turn on, so to speak, as you're working with an individual.

Dennis (01:08:21.602)

Yeah. Yeah, you don't see it happen when you make tools. but it's great that those tools exist and it's great that that I had a chance to to build those things. Like I think they just serve a different purpose and and they might even serve a different purpose for the same student. Like I it's exciting to me to think about maybe my potential students in my program got their start by playing with something like learning music.

That's a, I don't know if it's true, but it's a cool thing to think about. Because I think those resources are a great way to get into this world in a in a pretty low stress way. One of the things that somebody told us once when we did testing for these was that they they really liked feeling like they were alone. They liked feeling like there wasn't somebody watching over them doing this thing.

Which is cool. Like there's a there's some power that comes from being able to explore things on your own time. If you want to push a button a hundred times in a row, nobody's gonna tell you not to do it. Whereas in a classroom, it's harder to take that kind of free time. But having both of those learning modalities available to you is cool. Like I think it's great to to explore independently and also in groups and also one-on-one.

They they're different ways of getting into the same kinds of things.

Brian Funk (01:09:51.491)

Yeah, that's an interesting point, 'cause there's a real vulnerability to being new at something. And especially if you're in a classroom and you feel like they already know this stuff and my I have a stupid question that everyone's gonna think I'm dumb for asking. to be able to be a, you know, beginner without any

kinda shame to it, which is a sad thing we have anyway, a lot of times when we learn new things. I think as we get older we get less and less willing to go there, to be a complete beginner, to be new and clueless. We we don't

Kids kids will happily do it, they don't care and the I wanna push those glowing buttons on that MIDI controller and just see what happens. But I I've seen it too in with some of the students. Some sometimes they're like, they don't even wanna touch the light up button 'cause they've been told so many times, No, or you're not good yet, or you didn't earn it.

Dennis (01:10:55.853)

Right.

Dennis (01:11:01.227)

Right, right. Yeah, and a button that you if you really don't know the purpose of a button, what is this the self-destruct button? Like you you don't know what are the boundaries of this environment? Can you actually damage something? You know, and that was one of the cool things about when we worked on the learning sites was that we tried to set it up so that nothing nothing bad could happen no matter what you did.

Brian Funk (01:11:10.382)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:11:27.95)

Can't crash it.

Dennis (01:11:29.387)

Right. There there was I mean hope I hope not. But so that every there weren't that many buttons available at any one time and every one had a meaningful purpose that hopefully was relatively easy to figure out and not destructive. But you're right. I mean Yeah. Right.

Brian Funk (01:11:44.472)

Hmm. I I tell people that a lot. Especially with MIDI mapping. Like, don't worry, you're not gonna break it. And if if you really mess it up, open a new session. You start over. You can't break it.

Dennis (01:11:55.105)

Right. Yeah.

Yeah, so giving people safe places to to explore on their own terms, I think is very powerful. And then giving them, if they choose, more personal direction in small groups, individually. I think all of these different learning modalities are are really powerful. And you get something different from all of them.

Brian Funk (01:12:19.822)

Hmm. I saw you have a summer workshop coming up with Aaron Barra.

Dennis (01:12:25.634)

Yeah, in just a just about a week and a half. Yeah. Yeah, for high school students here. And yeah, I'm I'm super excited about I'm also super excited about working with Erin again because she's sh she's as good as it gets. Like what a force. and what an amazing and inspiring educator. Like I I'm looking forward to this because I'm gonna learn stuff from her. but yeah, it's for high school students who

Brian Funk (01:12:30.572)

Yeah, I thought that was cool.

Brian Funk (01:12:36.216)

Yeah.

Dennis (01:12:54.221)

Have varying levels of experiences with music production. We're gonna give them a kind of crash course in producing with Ableton Live. And then the thing culminates in a performance of original music that they'll make during the week at the end. Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. I think it's gonna be great. It's a small enough group that it I think we can get some exciting quality hands-on time with individuals and also in the small group again, like the the various modalities.

Brian Funk (01:13:05.889)

wow. That's fun.

Dennis (01:13:21.545)

most of them will be traveling here and living on campus. So it's kind of like a summer camp. It really is like a summer camp for them, which is great.

Brian Funk (01:13:31.268)

Yeah, and and a real world result too, the performance. So it's not just academic exercises. We're gonna we're gonna make something and you get to share it.

Dennis (01:13:42.423)

Yeah. And what that what that can mean for these different students is totally unknown. Like

Brian Funk (01:13:48.323)

Yeah.

Dennis (01:13:48.757)

Some of them might have experience and they will have an idea, or that maybe they've already been making music using these tools. And maybe they want to do more of what they've been doing, or they want to use it as a chance to branch out. And for some of them, this might be the first time they've ever done anything like this. And so there are no expectations on a standard of quality for the performances or anything. It's these students can come to it, come at it as who they are.

and where they are and we're gonna put it all together on one concert. It's exciting.

Brian Funk (01:14:20.779)

Hmm. Yeah, that sounds like a really cool experience for them. And I've done a couple things sort of like like the one I mentioned to you, at the Ableton headquarters and I did a songwriting retreat once where we got together and wrote music with strangers basically. so of rewarding. I mean so much you learn and

On on a lot of levels too. Again, like that vulnerability part, going through that and just trying to open up and share ideas and react with new people, new new perspectives. you know, some of the most educational experiences I've ever had in those types of situations. It's nice to get young kids like that into that early and make that kind of

A normal thing for them.

Dennis (01:15:17.184)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and a a best case scenario is that some of these students have such a transformative experience here that they're then interested in pursuing this when they get to college. You know, it's exciting to think that there could be a student that comes through this program who's like, wait, I want to do this for four years. And then they could come to do my program. I think that'd be great. It'd be amazing. Yeah, it'd be it'd be awesome if that happened.

Brian Funk (01:15:30.423)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:15:41.441)

Yeah, you'll have the program ready to go.

Hmm. And as you mentioned too, sometimes the best professional development you get is just to work with another teacher. Sometimes even just talking to another teacher and sharing ideas or building something with them. I've always found that's way better than any workshop or you know, whatever kind of thing they make us do every once in a while. Just just let us talk. You get a lot out of

Dennis (01:16:08.692)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it's super powerful.

Brian Funk (01:16:15.817)

So with the if I can ask you maybe just a little bit about what the program looks like, has have you ironed a lot of that out by now or is it still kinda coming together?

Dennis (01:16:25.803)

Yeah, we've I mean, you mean the program for the degree, right? Yeah. So we had to have a full four year layout of the coursework and sample syllabi for every course in order to even get the thing approved by New York State, which is actually I didn't know that that would even be part of the process before I

Brian Funk (01:16:28.779)

The degree, yeah, the music creation and technology.

Dennis (01:16:50.428)

before I got here for this job. I somehow naively assumed like I would get off the plane and walk into a classroom and there would just magically be students waiting for me. I don't know why I thought that, but but it's cool to have the opportunity to really build a new thing from the ground up. But yeah, there's a map of the the whole four years. and it's a mix of new courses and courses that are sort of specifically designed for the program.

Brian Funk (01:17:01.795)

Yes.

Brian Funk (01:17:05.41)

Yeah.

Dennis (01:17:17.706)

And then courses that already exist in the conservatory. So the students will do the standard complement of music theory and music history and piano proficiency with minor modifications. They'll do the same thing that all the other students do. Then there will also be a contingent of courses that they'll have to take through the engineering school. So introductions to computer programming, electrical engineering.

Audio engineering course in a studio, so they'll learn, you know, how to function on a recording console with Pro Tools, this kind of thing. Which is not going to be that's not that's not a course that I need to do myself. There's already professors here who who do all of those things actually for the existing audio engineering focused programs that happen in the engineering school.

So my students will take those courses. And that's great. It feels like a really nice combination of technical and musical. We'll see. I mean, the chances that we got absolutely everything right about the curriculum are are pretty slim. Like I think once we actually have students here and we see where their strengths and weaknesses are, of course, we'll probably need to make modifications. But I feel pretty excited about the blueprint that we have for the for the curriculum already.

Brian Funk (01:18:42.861)

Yeah, that that sounds great and it sounds like a lot of well rounded stuff and o also very specific too, so that they get the skills and not just the general f understanding of everything, but go deep on a lot of that.

Dennis (01:18:58.934)

Yeah, I think so. I mean, what I want is for the the students who come through the program to think of it as primarily a music creation program. Like a lot of what they're gonna be doing is making music, but they're gonna be doing it in a context in which they're also invited to make their own tools or to modify tools. you know, it's exciting to think about a student who kind of reaches a boundary in what I mean, this is why things like Max for Live or

or modular synthesis are so exciting is that they they have transcendable boundaries. Like if you find that you've hit a wall with your environment, you can modify the environment to do something very bespoke, very bespoke, very specific to your own interests.

And I think it's great to think about students kind of hitting those walls all the time, not because they've not because they're doing it as a kind of academic exercise, but because they've actually figured out that they have a musical idea that the software or that the tools don't support well, but then they have enough chops to be able to engineer their way out of that problem and hopefully into exciting new musical ideas.

I mean, for me, all the interesting things that I've ever done with Max have always come out of the same impetus, which is I had a particular musical thing that I wanted to do that I couldn't easily do given the tools that were in front of me. So I just made new tools and then experimented with making music with those tools. And that has been that's kind of how I think about music making at this stage of my life right now. Which is super powerful because it makes you

It makes you be critical and questioning of the tools as they're presented to you. Like this doesn't

Brian Funk (01:20:46.435)

Sure. And the tools do suggest a workflow. They do suggest even the arrangement view that Ableton has and Live and every DAW is a tape metaphor, really. It's that's a tape that we're looking at just on a screen and Live obviously broke that with session view and

Dennis (01:20:50.667)

Course.

Dennis (01:20:59.744)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:21:09.469)

And th that's I guess really the story of live, right? Breaking out of those constraints or making their own tools to

Dennis (01:21:16.875)

course. Yeah. And it's been incredibly powerful. And I as we've been, as we talked about earlier, like constraints can be very powerful. They can help you eliminate unnecessary decision making. But at the same time, I think creative music technologists should always be critical and questioning of the constraints that are presented to them. Because none of this stuff is none of this stuff is unbiased.

And I'm not using bias in a in a negative sense. It's just that when you're using a tool, you're seeing music making through the lens of the people who made the tool.

And you can choose to accept that and still make a lifetime's worth of amazing music. Or you can say, yeah, but what if it did this instead? Or what if it could do a little bit more of this in this direction? And I want the school, the students who come through the program to at least be able to ask those challenging questions of the tools and environments that they're in. Because there's going to be more and more of them. There are more tools with more opinions and more biases. And it should be at least possible.

possible to know that you can question those opinions and biases and engineer your way into different opinions and biases which are no less opinionated but they're yours then.

Brian Funk (01:22:38.712)

Yeah.

I think that's clever 'cause it offers them another possible avenue too in their careers of breaking these boundaries, making new things. They have those experiences. Not just like you said, kind of following the the path and and those biases, which is that's the not a bad word for it really, because it's this is how we've always done it, so this is how we're doing it.

Dennis (01:22:48.757)

Yes.

Dennis (01:23:09.633)

Right.

Brian Funk (01:23:09.815)

But we it doesn't have to be and that's part of the great thing about when you get youth involved too, they see these different ways of working and different ideas and it f it usually shakes things up in a interesting way.

Dennis (01:23:22.037)

Yeah, and and there's a subtext also to what you just said, which is that I I would expect that at least some students who come through this program get so excited about the idea of engineering their way to new ways of thinking that they become they they start a music tech company. You know, that I see that as a viable career outcome for at least some of the students in this program. Some will go on to be performing musicians and composers and

the sort of traditional music school outcomes. But I would expect that some of them are also like, wait, this idea that I have that I'm making music with now is not just good enough for me, it's good enough for other people too. Let's do something with it. And then that becomes a viable career path for them as well.

Brian Funk (01:24:09.889)

Yeah, it's very cool. I get very excited about this. Again, partially 'cause of my own personal experience in school where I didn't feel like there was much room for the rock and roll guitar player. And I think so. we're in short supply these days. But yeah, the the kid that has an MBC or got real good on, you know, note on their phone or something like that.

Dennis (01:24:23.531)

There's always room for more rock and roll guitar players.

Dennis (01:24:36.534)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:24:39.361)

Give them that it's a validation thing too, I think, that some of this some of the technology and music kinda deserves that it's nice to see coming from an accredited college, university type thing. it's a nice exciting time. I think I think we live in the best time to be making music. I mean, there's obviously things people

long for from the past, but I don't know that we have to necessarily choose. We can also still incorporate that stuff and yeah, I'm I have a cassette tape machine right next to me. I love it. It's fun, but it's not the best thing in a lot of the situations, but when I want it, it's great. so it's it's just a cool way to offer students and artists future

Dennis (01:25:11.147)

We don't have to choose. Nothing goes away.

Brian Funk (01:25:34.275)

probably people will hear about one day, a chance to express themselves and explore this medium that we've really just kind of scratched the surface of anyway with music. There's so much to be done. It's a never ending rabbit hole.

Dennis (01:25:48.287)

Right. Yeah, agree.

Brian Funk (01:25:54.09)

So is there any place you wanna send people to check out your work or to the university's work or to possibly enroll in the program?

Dennis (01:26:05.087)

Yeah, I I have my own personal website, which is just kind of my my summary, that links out to various other things. But the the the new degree program has its own website which talks a little bit about kind of my philosophy for the for the thing and how the school is thinking about it, and also links to the admissions and application process, which is basically like a port you submit a portfolio of music that you've made or that you've played on.

Along with some videos of yourself working and showing your your studio space and kind of talking about how you make music. Cause I think one of the exciting things about what I'm hoping for for this first first cohort is that we can get students together who have very different ways of working, very different skill sets, very different musical interests.

and put them together in a space together. So I want to hear these students talk about themselves and talk about how they think about music in addition to like listening to that the actual material.

Brian Funk (01:27:12.289)

I like that. It's kind of an open minded application process too. You're inviting interesting perspectives and people in non traditional ways too.

Dennis (01:27:18.431)

Yeah.

Dennis (01:27:24.126)

Yeah, exactly.

Brian Funk (01:27:26.357)

Sounds awesome. I love it. I'm I'm really happy you're doing this. It seems like such a nice transition for you too from I mean, I remember when I was first learning live and I'd look at the tutorials and that was you teaching them. And then I specifically remember seeing you for the first time when I was presenting at TechServe. You were in the audience and I was like, God, I know that guy

Dennis (01:27:28.052)

Yeah, great.

Dennis (01:27:49.948)

Ha ha

Brian Funk (01:27:51.509)

But you were so supportive and kind and always have been, even through the certification process. I I think this is gonna be a real hit and I think the students that go are gonna be lucky to have you. It's really cool stuff.

Dennis (01:28:05.61)

Well, I appreciate it. I I'm I'm very excited about it. I'm very excited to meet them.

Brian Funk (01:28:11.209)

Yeah. Yeah, I can tell you're gonna get a lot out of it yourself too.

Dennis (01:28:15.358)

Yeah, I hope so.

Brian Funk (01:28:18.603)

Dennis, thanks so much. I hope to touch base with you again sometime soon about it. Find out how it's going. But I'll put all the stuff in the show notes for everyone listening so that you can check it out. I already know it's gonna be awesome. It's gonna be a great hit, so go take a look. And thank you.

Dennis (01:28:26.686)

Yeah, thank you.

Dennis (01:28:37.672)

So. All right. Thanks a lot, Brian.

Brian Funk
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The Power of Mastering with Jeff Graves - Music Production Podcast #430