Developing Your Craft with Consistency w/ Filip from Flow Prod - Music Production Podcast #343

Filip is a musician and producer who runs the YouTube Channel Flow Prod. Filip shares practical tips and techniques that help music producers improve their music and workflows.

Filip and I spoke about his work as a producer and YouTuber. He shared some thoughts on balancing music and life, as well as some practical approaches that allow him to create more music at higher levels. 

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Show Notes:

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:01.213)

Hello everybody. Welcome to the music production podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm your host Brian Funk. And this is a show where we talk about anything related to making music. And today I have Philip from flow prod, a YouTube channel about music production tutorials, Ableton live stuff. I've been following his channel a long time because he does it in a really cool way. It's not just a, this button does that. This

this fader does this. It's more how to be creative with the tools and I find that really valuable. I've learned things that I've used in my own production from his channel. I think you should definitely check out Flow Prod. So I'd like to welcome Philip to the show. What's up, Philip? Nice to see you.

Filip (00:44.834)

Hi Brian, thanks very much. Yeah, it's really good to be on the show. I've been listening from the start actually. So I actually never envisaged ever being on this podcast because this podcast has been running way before I started my YouTube channel and one thing leads to another and yeah, here we are.

Brian Funk (01:02.513)

Yeah, yeah, that's really cool to hear. Thanks for being a listener. You know, you don't always know, I'm sure you feel this with your YouTube channel. You don't really know where this stuff goes once you put it out there. And it's fun to hear sometimes like who's listening and it's like, oh wow, Loweprod's listening.

Filip (01:12.727)

Yes.

Filip (01:17.598)

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if this is like a useful info for you, but in case you ever wondered about where your listeners come from. So I think the first time I heard of your work was, so it was about 2015, which is when I

I think that's when I bought Ableton around 2015. And there wasn't really much in terms of blogs or like, you know, when I first bought Ableton, I wanted to know everything about it. So, you know, is there some sort of blog out there that people talk about Ableton or similar tools and the things that they do with it. And so yours was one of the few that was out there as I was reading that. And then I saw you had like a free sample pack and that you do lots of free sample packs. So the one that you had at the time was called, it was called something

Brian Funk (02:00.065)

Hmm. Yeah.

Filip (02:05.309)

like JP.

Trumpet, JPDM Trumpet. So it was like a really wacky detuned trumpet, but the song that you had playing in the demo video and the beat, it just sounded really good. So I never sort of envisaged using such a kind of detuned instrument in my production before. But when I heard your demo video, I thought, yeah, I'll get that download, download that pack and it's still a good one. I use it all the time. Although I have to say my favorite,

Brian Funk (02:09.678)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (02:14.021)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (02:20.211)

Ah, nice.

Brian Funk (02:26.774)

Right.

Filip (02:37.92)

Pax is definitely the 100 year old piano. That's a staple.

Brian Funk (02:42.533)

Cool, cool. Yeah, that's the piano in my house I got from the Salvation Army about 15 years ago. It's a really funny story with that too, because I saw this piano, it was like $200, and I was like, you know, this is awesome. I always wanted a piano. So I bought it, and I think I spent more money on the U-Haul to get it to my house. And I had three friends with me.

Filip (02:51.682)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (03:12.133)

And we thought we'd be able to lift the piano into the U-Haul, but that wasn't going to happen with us four. So one of the guys at the Salvation Army was helping us, this big, huge guy. And he was screaming when he was lifting it and we got it in the truck. And it was so heavy. I was like, I don't even think we need to strap this thing down. It's, it's not going anywhere. The first turn I take out of the parking lot, you hear like, sounded like someone just smashed every key on the piano at once.

Filip (03:39.723)

Ugh.

Brian Funk (03:40.829)

And we looked in the truck and it was leaning against the wall. It hadn't fallen all the way flat, but it was just leaning. So then we strapped it all together and, uh, it is right. I probably, I think I got a little ding in it and probably messed up some of the hammers and things, but, uh, then just getting it into the house is another ordeal. We backed the truck like right up to the front door and we had to lift it up one step and it was.

Filip (03:51.306)

It's just more character.

Brian Funk (04:10.601)

like such a herculean thing. But yeah, got it and it's got character, you know, and I'm really glad you picked up on that because that's like one of the central things to what I like to do is have stuff that's kind of weird and quirky like the trumpet like those samples were sent to me and when I was talking to the guy, JP, and we were enjoying that fact about it like we

There's perfect trumpets out there, there's perfect pianos, there's perfect everything, and it's great, we're so lucky. But sometimes it's nice to have something that's a little messed up, that has character and stands out from that stuff. Those two instruments are great examples of that, where you might kind of think it's all the wrong things to do, but sometimes that's what makes it right. That's how songs have personality, when you use those types of things.

Filip (05:11.042)

Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Funk (05:12.233)

I'm super glad that helped and it's useful for you. I'm sure now at this point, you're probably that person to so many people where they can go to your site and learn interesting things. Even today, there were some videos I still hadn't seen yet and I was just going through a few of them. You've got like a cool ways to add human feels to tracks, which is kind of the same kind of topic, right? And

I love the one you did where you used percussion, just kind of banging on, I think, your table to kind of create a groove and then apply that to a synth part so that it, using Live's groove pool feature, you apply it to a synth part and then all of those kind of timings and velocities that Live interprets from your audio file get applied to a pretty static quantized midi synth part and brings it to life.

Filip (05:53.899)

Exactly.

Brian Funk (06:10.861)

Like, it's unbelievable, like a person played it.

Filip (06:11.32)

Yeah.

Yeah, so I used to have a push device and I sold that some time ago and still haven't gotten around to getting a new MIDI player since. So during this period, everything that I've been kind of doing in the DAW has been either sample based stuff or just clicking in MIDI notes and chord progressions and things like that. And so the one thing I'm really missing is through clicking it in and not playing it in with my hands is that kind of human feel. So.

I'd been doing it already with percussion parts. I think there's, yeah, one of the similar videos on that I have where I'm just kind of drumming in something on my table. And sure, it's not a real drum kit. It's just me, my fingers and my table. But then I...

record that, put it into the DAW and just add it as a layer. And that kind of real human layer just elevates the whole track, even though it might not be a professional recorded sample, it's the field that adds to the track on top of the maybe professional samples, quote unquote, professional samples that I have in the track already. And then, yeah, I thought I'd take that one step further by taking that recorded parts that I'd tapped in on my fingers on my desk.

use that to add some groove to even chord progression or like a lead synth line or something like that. So at the moment, most of the groove that I add into my tracks that I make, I do that through playing guitar. So that's my kind of real human element. But things like that just add an extra layer to that.

Brian Funk (07:55.197)

Yeah, I never thought of that and you could play these parts on the guitar and Then just kind of lose the guitar but keep the groove from the guitar part and apply it to the synth stuff That's a great idea. I never thought of that because I play guitar too and I'm not Piano player keyboard player. I use them to make music but I you know You wouldn't ever want to hear me just play piano. That's not Good at all

Filip (08:00.942)

Hmm. Yeah.

Filip (08:08.647)

Yeah.

Filip (08:20.905)

I'm sorry.

Brian Funk (08:24.473)

But the guitar I have an understanding of, it's how I interact with music probably the best. So just using that timing stuff, that's such a good idea to extract the groove from that, apply it to whatever other parts I have that might be a little more static or sloppy or maybe too quantized.

Filip (08:47.53)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Let's go ahead.

Brian Funk (08:49.433)

There's a... No, no, please.

Filip (08:53.206)

I mean, I was, what I was going to say on top of that, you kind of remind me, there's this feature on, there's a, it's like a Google project. I don't remember the website just now. I can try and, and bring it out, but people have been using it for a while where you said you can put in a sample and it can transform it into some other samples, so for example, a vocal sample into a violin or into a string part. Do you know the one I'm talking about?

Brian Funk (09:05.569)

Magenta maybe?

Brian Funk (09:20.773)

Is that magenta? Is that part of that thing they had a while back?

Filip (09:23.877)

Let me have a look.

Brian Funk (09:27.065)

So it'll convert your instrument to another instrument.

Filip (09:30.002)

Exactly. Yeah. So that's definitely something that you can play around with. You don't just have to stick with vocals. Okay. So the one I was talking about is called tone transfer. Yeah. Magenta. I can see on the bottom here, it's called magenta. Yeah. I don't know why it's also called tone transfer.

Brian Funk (09:32.033)

Nice.

Brian Funk (09:39.255)

on.

Okay, so Magenta's kind of like a suite of devices that Google's made. I think they use AI and whatnot, but I didn't know about that one. Yeah.

Filip (09:46.958)

see you.

Filip (09:55.142)

And a lot of them end up sounding quite synthy, even if they don't mean to be, you know, they claim to be a violin or something like that. Um, but there's no reason why you can't say play in a guitar part, um, convert that into what magentical strings, which ends up turning into more of a synth process it a bit more and it sounds a lot like a synth and hey, now you've got your own synth part.

Brian Funk (10:00.697)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (10:15.781)

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah, that's a great idea. Kind of abusing the technology a little bit.

Filip (10:23.946)

Yeah, so these are the kind of things that I try to do on my channel. I try to not reproduce. Well, I definitely don't intentionally reproduce videos that are already out there. I try to find something that maybe someone's not done before. It's usually just in my own workflows. I'll be doing something that's maybe saved me time in the future for having done it once and set up a workflow. And.

whenever something like that happens, I just think, hey, why don't I just record what I'm doing right now, post that as a video, edit it down, and maybe other people will find it useful. And that's how the channel started up really. So I'd always wanted to start up a workflow related YouTube channel because at the time there weren't that many. So this is January, 2020. It was mainly like how-to videos, which are really useful. I would have...

not got very far on Ableton if those videos didn't exist, but they're already there, so it doesn't need to be another one.

So I wanted to go get down this sort of workflow route. And I know you'd posted some blog posts on workflow and you talk about workflow quite a lot on the podcast and different books that you've read and that you've read and philosophies and things like that. I found those things quite useful. So I wanted to do a more video centered approach on sort of...

real tips and tricks that people can use in the DAW and primarily Ableton, because that's what I use. But some of these things can be used in multiple doors. You know, they all, most of them have the same features nowadays. So there's no reason why you can't take the same approach and apply it onto, say logic or something like that. But so going back to when I started it, I was using Sylenth. Do you use Sylenth, Brian?

Brian Funk (12:21.625)

No, I don't, but I'm a little familiar with it, yeah.

Filip (12:22.434)

No? Okay. Yeah. So most people these days use Serum and, and many reasons why. But Silent was the first synth that I, that was the first plugin I ever bought actually. So when I first got Ableton in 2015, I thought, you know, I got sweet. I thought, you know, I'll really make the most of this. I'll get the sweet. And

uh, make a good investment and that way, you know, never have to, I didn't even know plugins were a thing. So I just thought let's get sweet and surely that's everything I'd ever need. And then when you first start making music, yeah, you're probably right. Um, but when I first started making music and many people will get this way, you know, the first track you make sounds nothing like the tracks that you're listening to your favorite artists. And you think, why is this?

Brian Funk (12:54.02)

Hmm. It probably is. Ha ha ha.

Brian Funk (13:09.765)

Mm-hmm.

Filip (13:13.162)

Oh, it must be that I'm not using the same tools as the artists that I'm using. So then I started Googling like, uh, what synth does Madion use? And then realized that, um, oh, there are these plugins and one of them is called silent and a lot of the artists I was listening to seems to use silent. So, so that was the first plugin that I bought, but, um, you know, it took me from, let's say maybe that was 2016 when I bought silent to 2020 to realize.

Every time I open up Sylenth, its default state is in this, is to bring up this preset, which no one's ever used. It's called ARP 303 Saw. And the first thing anyone ever does when they open up Sylenth is they open it up, they play.

Op303 saw realized that it's not useful at all and they initialize it and reset it to default. And I was doing the same thing over and over again for four years, opening it up, resetting it to factory default, to just the like init setting, which is just a saw.

And I'm doing that over and over again. And then I thought, surely there's a way to make it open up in this state. And, and there was, it's a bit of a hack way because you end up having to overwrite 303 saw. Um, so.

but I was okay with that. I kind of realized I'm never going to use that preset ever, ever again, so it's okay. And so I set that up and there are instructions on how to do that online, like in a written form, but I just thought, hey, maybe someone would find a video useful. So I recorded myself doing that, posted that, and that was the first video. And from then I just thought, hey, that wasn't too bad. I could...

Brian Funk (14:58.117)

Hmm.

Filip (15:01.238)

You know, maybe I could try posting one every two weeks because stuff like this comes up all the time and I can't remember how frequently I ended up posting videos, but it was funny because I don't know if you found this with your videos, but at first you take a long time because you don't know much about video editing or recording videos. So recording and editing a video takes quite a long time.

I kind of had this impression that the longer I do it, I'll get faster at editing videos and I'll learn these tricks and things like that. But actually what turns out happening is, or at least for me, you learn stuff as you go, not only tricks to make things faster, but also things to make the video better. And those things end up taking more time. So as much as I now probably work a lot quicker when I do video editing and recording,

There are all these other things that I try to add in, you know, to make the style a little bit more coherent and more easy for other people to follow along, that I don't think I'm really getting any faster. I think I average maybe like a minute a day. So if a video is five minutes long, it takes me about five days. And I'm, you know, I'm not talking 24 seven. I do other things with my time, but you know, maybe that's an hour or two a day.

Brian Funk (16:17.174)

Hmm.

Filip (16:25.696)

and recording and scripting and things like that. So yeah, it seems average for me about a minute. A video is about a day of work. I don't know how you found it's gone over time for you, Brian.

Brian Funk (16:32.965)

Thanks for watching!

Brian Funk (16:38.985)

Uh, geesh, I don't know. It's the, I've of all these years I've been doing, I probably should have gotten a lot better at video editing and spent more time honing the craft as I've gone. Um, but I know exactly what you mean. You figure something out, then you figure out a new thing and you start adding. And it reminds me of how it was with music for me. I mean, when I first started recording music in the very early days as a teenager, if I wanted to record a three minute song, it took three minutes to record it.

I just played it and that was it. That's what I had. And it wasn't anything else I could do. It was just a tape recorder. So there it was. But then, you know, you start complicating the setup. You get like your four track and now you can add new parts. So it takes longer to figure out the parts and then record them and get them right. And suddenly a three minute song takes you all day. And then by now you're compressing things, you're EQing things, you're trying to master and mix and.

Filip (17:10.583)

Yeah.

Filip (17:27.147)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (17:35.721)

Now songs take sometimes forever, you know, you can work on them forever now.

Filip (17:38.634)

Yeah.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I actually hadn't made that analogy with music before, but you're completely right. I think I've probably over time taken this kind of like bell shaped approach where like at first it was quite quick to finish a track, so I didn't really know what a finished track was. And then over time, I learned more and more and thought that you need to do all of these things in your track to make it complete, you know, mix every single track and EQ perfectly every single layer and all this kind of stuff. And it would take me forever.

do like a mix down and then I do a stem master and then I do a master and all this kind and a final and then listen to it in the car and then listen to it you know it would take forever and then I've kind of come that back down off of that over time and I feel like now I'm in this sweet spot of like how long it takes me to do a track versus how much real like useful stuff I'm doing during that time.

Brian Funk (18:26.745)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (18:37.057)

Yeah, there's definitely some diminishing returns on some of the really subtle things and I'm trying to be like that too, where I'd rather produce more music than fewer tracks that are, have these really tiny differences that, cause, cause I do the same thing. I have all these versions of a song, all the mix 17, good one, the one, you know, you name them all these things, you get all confident.

And sometimes they come up on my phone on shuffle. And there are a lot of times where like, I don't know why I didn't use mix 16. Cause I can't even hear the difference between what I actually settled on. And maybe it's just like the snare drum has a little more high end or something like that. And I I've, I've kind of like tried to tell myself this, or really, you know, this is, it's always something you strive for, right? Like you have these ideas, but then. When.

it comes time to do the work. A lot of them go right out the window, but I try to remind myself I'd rather just have a song that's 99.9% as good as what would take me another week or two. And this way I can do more music and that's more satisfying for me to look back on, then I have like four extra versions of that same song mixed that I can't even tell the difference from really.

Filip (20:02.142)

Yeah, I think that seems to reflect from your output. I know, you know, you've released an album recently of work, Rectangles, and there was the one that you did with your band very recently as well. That was, yeah, we were still in this year. So, you know, in the space of this year, you've already released two albums at least. I don't know, is there any more than that I'm not aware of?

Brian Funk (20:11.171)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (20:24.601)

Um, no, that's, that's it. Uh, technically we released the band's album, right? It was the day after Christmas we released it because we have a song called the day after Christmas. So we're like, let's do it. But we worked on that album for quite a long time and, um, we started playing together again, uh, in lockdown summer, 2020, um, and started writing songs. And then maybe it was.

Filip (20:27.274)

I mean...

Filip (20:33.215)

Ah, okay.

Brian Funk (20:53.989)

about a year later that we started recording a few of them. And then, you know, we weren't in a rush. We just wanted to do it as we went. And it slows you down, I guess, when you have other people and you got to get together and stuff. But yeah, that was a long time in the making, really. And a lot of the time was waiting for the vinyls to get pressed. That was about seven or eight months of just that before it got released.

So to say I have two in a year would be kind of cheating. But no, I'm happy though with that, that I do have that, cause that's more than I've done in years past. So, I mean, there's stretches of time where I didn't release albums for years. So I'm definitely happy about that. But part of what I did with the Rectangles album was sort of like decide on a sound and like a level of

quality I wanted to get to, where I wanted it to sound good, but I also wanted it to sound kind of raw and rough around the edges too. Having that kind of goal, I guess, that this is where I want to take it. I don't want to take it much further than that. And it would lose the feel anyway. It helped me decide when things were done. Just because...

Filip (22:18.494)

Yeah, you kind of know when it's reached that whatever you've decided is the goal for that album. You kind of, you know when that's happened.

Brian Funk (22:25.661)

Yeah, a little bit of a time deadline I tried to put on myself too, that I wanted to have it finished by this time. So.

Filip (22:33.566)

Okay, how did you decide on that? Because that's sometimes something I struggle with, time deadlines that I kind of have to make for myself that aren't made by someone else. How did you decide on your time deadline for that album?

Brian Funk (22:46.749)

I just kind of, well, a lot of the songs were already written, mostly written anyway, by the time January came around this year. And they came from this January thing we do where we try to make a track every day in January. So I made it a point during January this year to finish these songs, to get the lyrics done, to sing them, to get any extra parts in. So I kind of used my Jamuaries to do that.

And then I spent some time mixing and stuff. And I just said I wanted to have it done by the end of the school year for me, which was June. And then, um, I, I released it on my birthday, August 9th, uh, just to kind of decided that'd be fun day to release an album. So, um, that's all really just kind of made a decision that by this day, you know, by this time, um,

Filip (23:24.238)

Mm-hmm.

Filip (23:36.023)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (23:46.109)

It just helps you know when you're done too. You're like, well, I'm out of time. So I'm done.

Filip (23:50.636)

Yes.

Brian Funk (23:53.093)

But it's arbitrary, you know? It's just, and it's like, I don't wanna be doing this anymore, also. I wanna be able to move on to other things. That's like the reward of finishing an album too, and releasing is like, okay, cool, now I can move on. I can try new stuff out.

Filip (23:59.798)

Move on. Yeah, absolutely.

Filip (24:08.778)

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Because it is always quite tempting to move on to something new and try out a new, I don't know, plug in the new boards or, you know, and use that to create a new idea and spark a new idea. But then you've just got one more idea that you need to now try and finish and do its justice. And so, as you say, giving yourself that reward of, okay, I've tied these things up, now I can do those things. That's, yeah, that's a nice incentive.

Brian Funk (24:37.389)

Yeah. And what you just said too, like once I'm done, now I can play with this new thing. I can try out this new thing in my music. And that's something to look forward to as well. You kind of have like this thing like, oh, okay. Whether it's a plugin or whatever, it might even just be a new style of music or something, but to have kind of a little thing that you want to get to, you know, I've used that trick in a lot of things in my life, like even like exercise, like

Filip (24:46.092)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (25:05.541)

I won't let myself do something else until I've finished some kind of workout. Just makes it, I don't know, a little bit easier to get through it, I guess.

Filip (25:11.915)

Yeah.

Filip (25:19.158)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (25:22.313)

Something that I've kind of enjoyed about your videos and I pick up in our conversation too, is you sort of have this subtext of you don't need more stuff. You don't need new gear. I mean, you can learn tons of stuff watching videos online and a lot of times it'll be like, so then I use this new plugin and I got this cool sound and you're like, oh, that's awesome. I want to try that too. And you learn something from it. But then it

there's that little bit of you that's like, I guess I need that thing now. And a lot of what you're doing, like with making music without a MIDI keyboard even, which is like almost like, I think a lot of people would say like a necessity, but you're showing it's not, and you can still get like expression in your music and personality with the performances, even though you're at first clicking things. And I think that's just an important message for people to hear that.

Filip (25:58.306)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (26:19.201)

You know, you don't need all that stuff. They're nice. It's nice to have the tools, like you said, of your favorite artists, but, um, it's not a prerequisite to making anything.

Filip (26:28.718)

Hmm. Yeah.

I think what's helped me appreciate that a lot is also watching other artists who stream whilst they produce. I don't know if you've ever done that and it can be quite time consuming because they often you know they just hit record and then they make music for five hours and you know we don't really have five hours to of our day most of us to just sit around and watch other people. It can be nice to do.

Brian Funk (26:50.743)

Uh-huh.

Filip (27:00.752)

that doesn't need my full attention. I can put that on in the background. But I've learned a lot through watching some of the artists that I enjoy listening to make their music and see their workflows. And one of the things that always strikes me is how quickly they form ideas and aren't too judgmental at the start. So they kind of...

You know, a lot of these artists will just put together a basic beat, knowing that it's just a start. And if that beats that they've.

laid down isn't groundbreaking and the most incredible beats they've ever made, that's okay. It might not be that at the start, but it's a start and you can develop from that and go back and tweak it later. So I've personally found, and a lot of this has been over lockdown, more people streaming as they produce, but I've been watching those sort of in the background whenever I have

Filip (28:04.085)

And I've learnt a lot through that and appreciated how little you need to do music.

Brian Funk (28:13.001)

Yeah, that idea of just kind of leaving things well enough to move forward, I think is really important. I get stuck with that a lot because I get inspired by the sound of things, right? So if I start with a beat, if I have that thing reaching like 0 dB on the master and it's really pumping and it's compressed and limited and it's full, it's like, yeah, this beat's awesome. But then there's no room to add anything, right?

Also, I might have just have spent about three hours getting that beat to that point, right? Which is... I don't even know where the song's going sometimes after that. And that causes me to get stuck as well. But kind of having that like...

Filip (28:55.466)

And if it turns out later and later down the line in the song that actually the song didn't need that beat, it becomes even more harder to delete it. Cause you spent three hours on it.

Brian Funk (29:04.945)

Exactly. Right. Yeah. You've invested. You've got that, uh, sunk cost thing going on where you've, I've already spent four hours on this beat and I have to keep it, but you lose the big picture. It's, it's something I get messed up with a lot where I'll be working on a song and I, okay, I got a few parts. Let's make them sound completely full. Like, so it's really exciting

go to add the next thing and you inevitably have to go back and pair things down now to make room for it. It's so much better, like you said, to just kind of allow the sounds to be maybe simple or underdeveloped so that you can get the ideas down and then make decisions once you have everything. All right, do I really need that like crazy, huge, thick drum sound? Maybe this song doesn't call for it. Maybe it needs something a little more subtle.

Filip (30:01.098)

Yes. Yeah. You know, and it can be deleting that thing, or it can just be somehow me making it move to the background, you know, um, putting a filter on it, reducing the volume, something like that. One of the, one of the best piece of advice I ever got taught. Um, this was through, did you ever hear of the, it was like a podcast and a blog EDM prod.

Brian Funk (30:27.485)

Oh yeah, I've had EDM Proud on the podcast. Yeah, he was on, yeah.

Filip (30:28.222)

Yeah, so Sam Masler that ran that. Yeah, oh yeah, that's quite possible actually. So...

Yeah, so at some point they did like a mentorship program. If you bought one of their songwriting courses. So, um, one of the guys in that company, Connor, um, he was a mentor for me, um, for a few months. And I found that whole mentorship experience so valuable. I mean, to have someone that you can jump on a call with, you know, once every, uh, month or, uh, just to keep you on track and see, um, what you're doing. And also to keep you accountable. You know, I'm seeing this guy in a month's time and.

something to show for it so I yeah I found that really useful and for a long time I just struggled even finding mentors out there that a I could trust and b were available and so going back to what we were saying before one of the best pieces of advice that Connor gave me when he was mentoring me was at any point in your song when you're listening to it

Brian Funk (31:06.01)

Hmm.

Filip (31:34.986)

you need to be able to identify what's the main thing here that the listener should be listening to. So if you have two things that are competing for attention, then the listener is just going to get lost. So for example, in a pop song, for the most, you know, pretty much from the song, when the song starts to when the song finishes, the vocal is going to be the thing that the listener is listening to and the thing that they sing along to.

And then maybe if there's a drop or like an instrumental chorus or something like that, then maybe it'll be the lead that they sing along to or maybe be a really catchy beat. But at any one time in the song, you should be able to identify what's the one key thing here that the listener should be hooked on to.

And then that makes the mixing decision so much easier, right? It's cause then you know, okay, well, right here it's the vocal. So, uh, you know, I can turn this guitar part down. That's not as relevant, even though I really like this guitar part. And it's maybe the best, best guitar part I've ever written, you know, bring that down is out the way. Or if you really want that guitar part to shine, move it to a section of the song where there are no vocals and let it shine in that section.

Brian Funk (32:23.661)

I think that's great advice.

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (32:48.037)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's a great point because most people, even I think producers too, especially when you're first listening to a song, you're really kind of just on one thing, you're following that lead thing and it should, I think it's your job as a mixer to present that, you know, like this is the main part of the dish here. I guess just the way you'd plate a meal, right? You wouldn't hide the steak under the green beans and the...

the rice or something, right? It's up there presented so you see it. And that's sort of part of what I think mixing is, is to present those elements and kind of guide the listener and make decisions. And a lot of times it's making sacrifices to other sounds to support the main thing. But that really came clear to me playing in this three-piece rock band,

Filip (33:36.428)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (33:48.713)

and I'm playing guitar and singing. And I think I stumbled upon it because it's easier to sing when I'm not playing as much. But generally, the kind of focal elements of our songs are either the vocals or the guitars. So a lot of times, I'm laying out. I guess, I mean, as soon as I said that, I was like, that sounds kind of like conceited or something.

Filip (34:05.57)

So it's either you or you.

Filip (34:16.3)

That's the way it is.

Brian Funk (34:18.233)

but the other elements are support elements. You know, and you don't get to have cool guitar parts without cool rhythms to support you. But it made me realize like, maybe I don't need to play as much so that the vocals are clearly the thing you're hearing. And for our songs, they're songs. There's a lot of stories in them. So like, it's important to hear the words. And then...

F when I'm not singing, then you can throw in your little thing here. So it, it just has more of like a continuity. It's, it's like a relay race. Like, like what your teacher said, like, okay, so when this thing's going, that's the lead, but next it should pass it off to something else if it's taking a break. So then, like you said, let that synth lead come in here, but when you have the two together, it's confusing.

As when we're mixing our songs, we can discern all the different elements because we know they're there. We've heard them all in isolation. And we can tell what's supposed to happen. But to a listener, they're getting all of that at once. It's too much to take in if there's 75 things to pay attention to.

Yeah, it's tricky though, because you don't get to hear your songs for the first time when you're making them.

Filip (35:41.738)

No. And often the thing that gets you excited about the track when you first start making it, you know, some sort of combination between the chord progression and the melody that you've written on top of that, the thing that kind of got you sparked to keep writing and developing it. By the time you finish that track, more often than not, you no longer feel that magic because you've heard it so many times.

Brian Funk (36:08.85)

Yeah, and you're trying to bring it back by throwing more things into it. Like more ingredients.

Filip (36:12.278)

Yeah, and sometimes I never quite worked out, this used to happen a lot to me earlier on, is once I'd finished the track, I'd feel like that thing that I first wrote, that melody or that chord progression that I really, really loved and the way that it played against the beat at the time.

Have, have I somehow ruined it because I no longer feel that magic now after listening to that track so many times. Have I like ruined it along the way by trying to polish it too much or have I just over listened to it? Uh, I never quite figured out what I was doing, but back then I think, you know, when you first start, start off, you learn about all of these tips and tricks and.

always EQ this instrument at this frequency and I was probably doing all these things because I'd heard that they were the right things and not actually listening to whether it was making the track better so I think when I first started I truly was ruining the magic from the first creative spark that I was getting by the time the track was finished rather than it being just a case of me over listening to it.

Brian Funk (37:01.986)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (37:22.105)

Hmm. That's a good thing to keep in mind when you are first working on a track and there's something usually that grabs you, right? You're like, oh, that was a cool thing. And that kind of propels you into writing the rest of the song. To remember that is really important because you don't want to kind of cover it up or wash it away. You want to remember like, oh, yeah, that's cool. Again, to do like a dinner analogy, you know, you might have like

figured out a cool way to season your steak. Right? And that's the main point. And that's what gets you excited about putting all the other side dishes to it. You don't want to then overdo all the sides and forget what was cool about it to begin with. With my band, we had this song called Universe that is on the record. And the way we started playing it was just the chord progression has just like a groove to it.

Dun, dun, uh, and just repeats over and over. We, and the way we started writing the song, we were just like, this is a fun groove to play. So at the end of the song, we go back to that, that part, but we were starting to add like these vocal parts and these guitar riffs. And, and we're just like, I don't know how to end this song. You know, like, what are we doing? Like it's, it's not working. I'm not liking it. And I sang this vocal thing I was doing live. And when I heard it coming out of the speakers, I was like,

It was one of those things that you have to turn it off and delete it. Cause you're like, Oh my God, no one can hear how bad that was. So what we wound up going back to though, was let's just jam out on that part. Cause that was the thing that we initially got, you know, pulled into the song for was because it had a fun groove. And that's what we wound up doing at the end. It's just, we just kind of jam out on the chords and then like a melody comes in. That's the same melody we did over the guitar solo. So.

Um, it was remembering where we started that got us through because a lot of times you forget that as you go along, you start to miss the, the initial thing. You forget that this is a, a steak you're serving and not a lot of really interesting side dishes that, um, you know, don't work if the steak isn't there.

Filip (39:28.907)

Hmm.

Filip (39:38.061)

Yeah.

Filip (39:42.454)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (39:44.921)

That's hard because again, you're in the middle of it, especially when you're doing work by yourself. You're in this, you only get your perspective and you can really easily forget, like you said, like, hey, that thing I liked in the beginning, it's just, I don't know where it is anymore. I don't feel it anymore.

Filip (40:05.335)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (40:07.809)

It's hard. I don't know anyone that thinks it's easy. This stuff is always challenging.

Filip (40:16.663)

Yeah.

But you know, when you're, well, I was gonna say when you're maybe feeling a little low on creativity and these things are getting hard, it's a good thing we now have a book to rely on that can help us through these times. The five minute music producer that you've been released recently.

Brian Funk (40:19.678)

So, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Brian Funk (40:43.213)

Well, yeah, thanks for setting up the plug for me. You know, and this is something I want to make sure everyone knows. You put together a really awesome video that totally made my day, where you followed the five minute producer book for the first 30 days and just went through the activities and showed the process and what you came up with. It was so fun to watch for me just to see

Filip (40:46.787)

Hehehehe

Brian Funk (41:13.205)

what you went through and what your thoughts were and to hear some of the really cool music you made and the fun ideas you came up with. I really appreciate that. I just want you to know that. I want to say it again, you know, on the show that was so cool of you and really brought a smile on my face because like we were saying earlier, you don't know where this stuff goes. You don't know. Most of the people that got their hands on the book, I don't hear from, you know, I just don't know what happens. I don't know if it worked. I don't know if it just sits on the shelf.

So that was really nice and you did such an awesome job, not only with the video, but just what you were able to come up with. It was really cool stuff.

Filip (41:50.654)

Yeah, thanks. It was a really fun process, honestly. I bought the book because I wanted a way to support you really. I have been a big listener for a long time and I thought, this book sounds great. It's like a win-win, I'll benefit from it.

support one of my favorite podcasters. So let's get this book and let's give it a go. And, and whilst I'm doing it, why not just document it? I have this YouTube channel anyway, people probably be interested to hear, you know, how, how it is going through this book day by day. And yeah, let's document it and give it a go. And yeah, there's a funny story with that book, actually, because so I

I think I bought it around sort of January time this year. And so started going through that. So just for some background for people that hadn't seen the video, the idea is that the five minute music producer book that Brian released, you know, it's got 365 really nice short five minutes activities that you can do as a music producer.

And so I thought, okay, I'll go through these exercises one day for 30 days and just give it a go, you know. Otherwise, it's quite easy to get these things and for them to just sit on yourself and maybe do one every once in a while. So, you know, give it a good go and really put it through its paces. So, so I started doing that in January time and was doing one every day. And every time I was do one, I'd maybe record a little bit of myself doing that activity. And then

I, so I went through that 30 days and then my son was born. And so it, thank you. So, um, so I became a dad and then I had, and yeah, you could say so.

Brian Funk (43:35.99)

Congratulations.

Brian Funk (43:41.593)

Wow. Look at what the book does, huh? It's magic. It produced your finest work.

Filip (43:51.634)

And then, so I had this, you know, this recorded and I've done so many days of the music producer book, five minute music producer. But then the video, the footage that I had just kind of stayed dormant on my laptop for so long because, you know, there was other things taking up my life at the time.

Brian Funk (44:09.189)

I bet. Yeah.

Filip (44:12.282)

And it took me, you know, up until sort of August time or yeah, it was, it was about August that the video was released to, you know, edit that footage down into a video and, and finally get that release. So yeah, even though I did the 30 days way back in.

sort of January, February time it took until August before I finally could come back up to the surface and start doing video editing and stuff again. And, you know, when these things happen, you have to prioritize what you continue doing in your life and what you need to kind of put down for a while. And the YouTube channels, you know, as things go is slow down that priority list. But now I'm kind of at the stage where I can start picking up these things back up again.

Brian Funk (45:00.185)

So if you got it in January, did you get one of the books with the typo on the cover?

Filip (45:03.89)

No, I think I just missed the typo. But you know, let me just check that actually. Yeah, no, I don't have the typo.

Brian Funk (45:06.966)

Uh...

Brian Funk (45:10.861)

I spelt the word production wrong on the cover, which I did a podcast on it. I figured I should own up to it.

Filip (45:18.274)

But you know, the way you dealt with that was absolutely, you know, I think so many people would have just brushed over that and.

the way you dealt with that by actually, you know, as you said, release a podcast on it, owning up to making this mistake and, and talking about how you felt initially when you found the mistake and, and that whole process of kind of getting over it and living with it and then correcting it. And that was really, really great to hear. And that's one of the reasons why I like you listening to your podcast is your honesty and when things are going well and also when they aren't going well.

Brian Funk (45:55.589)

Hmm. Well, that was crushing. You know, I was riding this high of I was like, I can't believe I finished this book and it's out and people you can get a copy. It was so excited. Right. And then somebody emailed me and said, like, I bet this book, whatever they said was something like, you know, I bet everything in here is garbage because you spelt production wrong, something along those lines. Right. And I'm like, no. And I looked and it was like, oh, my God.

The funny thing is when I first started this podcast, music production podcast, or maybe it was the music production club. It was a music production club. Actually, I had the same spelling mistake in production for like six months and I didn't even notice it. So I'm aware to spell this word right. You know, and as an English teacher, it just felt like kind of, you know, like it's you're so vulnerable when you do these things and it all came out like, aha.

There it is, Brian. You don't know what you're doing, and here's the proof. And it was just, ugh. And if you want to get a laugh, I still have not figured out how to change the cover on the Kindle version. If you go on Amazon, it still has that typo on it. I've changed the art, I've changed the image. It just won't change that image when you open it up on Amazon. So it's there to remind me, I guess.

Filip (47:10.946)

Okay.

Brian Funk (47:24.845)

But, you know, it was a really good lesson though, because it was, I felt terrible at first, like a fraud and all those self doubt things come to you, but it actually, it didn't kill me. And it also, I think gave me some confidence in that when you put things out, it is scary and it could go wrong and something could be embarrassing about it. But you just get through it. And like, it's

Filip (47:25.235)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (47:54.473)

makes me less afraid to put something out next time, I think. And that's really what I wanted to get across to anyone. Like, hey, look, it is scary to release stuff, and sometimes things go wrong, and that's the risk, but it's not gonna kill you, and it'll actually strengthen you and make you better for the next time around. And that's all it. I mean, as we create, and I think...

Filip (47:58.357)

Hmm.

Filip (48:16.342)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (48:21.845)

I think you've had something in one of your videos about how like the music we make doesn't always turn out the way we expect it to come out. You know, you imagine it one way, and you said it even in the beginning. It doesn't sound like the artist I like to listen to. It kind of never does. Anything I don't think ever comes out exactly that way. And that's something you just sort of have to live with and be okay with. And just keep going at it. That's all.

There's nothing to be ashamed of in a mistake, especially, you know, no one got hurt. It wasn't like an offensive thing or like insulting or accidentally, you know, God forbid. Like that's a scary thing too, if you accidentally, who knows, you just don't realize sometimes what comes out of your mouth. But, yeah, it happens, you know, so you just kind of keep going. And luckily for me, I was able to kind of...

Filip (49:09.976)

Yeah.

Filip (49:18.059)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:21.197)

You know, to have the podcast to just say it. Yeah. To help teach people too. I showed it to my students at school too. I was like, you know, like, look, this happens. So what? Like I didn't get fired, you know, I didn't know. So you just keep going and that's it.

Filip (49:24.194)

as an outlet, yeah.

Filip (49:36.575)

Yeah.

Filip (49:40.426)

Yeah, yeah, no, it is great. And I'm glad that the fear of doing, potentially doing something like that didn't put you off doing the book in the first place because a lot of the times it's those kinds of thoughts that stop us from releasing music or a book or a video on YouTube. So yeah, I mean, going back to the book and this isn't meant to be some sort of plug, I just, I genuinely did find the book.

useful. For those, you know, for anyone that watches the video, I state the three main things that it really benefited me from doing that book. But the main one of those three is this fact that it keeps you in like music making mode. And for people like myself, and most people are probably listening to this podcast, where music isn't the number one priority in their life that they do every day.

Um, other things have to take priority and, um, inevitably making music sometimes doesn't happen on a day or on a week or sometimes at all in a month. And when that kind of thing happens, it can be really hard to pick things back up again, cause it's like, Oh, well, I've not done it for so long. It's going to be really hard to, you know, where, where am I going to start? Do I pick up an old song or maybe you dread even listening back to an old song that you started a month or two ago. Um.

So I found particularly even more so now having after done the challenge, the 30 days of the five minute music producer and then putting things down for a while to raise my son.

It's been a really good way to get back into the flow of doing music, rather than like looking back at all projects, trying to pick up where I started, just getting back into the practice of doing something musical every day, making a beat on my laptop, writing some lyrics, something like that. It's been such a good way to just, yeah, slowly pick things back up again, build the confidence, build that kind of musicality in my head where every day now I'm thinking about writing a beat or an idea pops

Filip (51:48.848)

my head and I write that record it in my into my phone and I feel like I'm slowly getting back into that rhythm now where and it's thanks to these sort of five minutes activities that are no pressure I can just do one it doesn't matter if it doesn't turn out to be a number one hit you know because that's not the idea it's just a five minute challenge I can do it on my laptop quickly or I can depending on what sort of thing it is maybe write a few notes on my phone

And that's it, done, you know, no pressure for it to turn into anything. Mind blowing just keeps the mind in music making mode.

Brian Funk (52:29.197)

I'm glad that that's working out because that's a big part of what I was thinking. And you don't need the book to do this either. If you just have a few minutes, then you can spend a few minutes working on your music or whatever it is you want to learn in life or get better at or pursue. Just a few minutes adds up a lot. Five minutes.

seven times a week is half an hour, so 35 minutes and there's likely days when you would, if you just decide to do whatever that thing is, you'll probably go a little longer. You'll get into it and you just develop the habit. And that's so important because like you said, especially when you've had some time off, it can be really hard. Even for me with the podcast, I had been recording a bunch of interviews and conversations, right?

Um, I think I had them booked until like the very beginning of August. And then I had a bunch recorded, so I was able to release them in the upcoming weeks, but I hadn't actually had a conversation for the podcast from the beginning of August till, uh, last week, which would be, um, end of September. So when I got back to do that last conversation, that first conversation,

Filip (53:52.087)

Right?

Brian Funk (53:57.129)

I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. Like I'm like, how do I turn my camera on again? Like where to like all this stuff that I've been doing this. It's been going on many years now, but a month away from it, you can suddenly feel like, oh my God, what is this thing that we're do? Um, but since last week, I'm, this is, I guess the third one now that I've had. Um, and, and you get right back into it. You know, you, you kind of get into the zone. It's the same thing that's happened with my band. We.

Filip (54:01.666)

Ha ha.

Brian Funk (54:26.049)

Made the album and we worked on that. We got ready to play some shows and then like writing all of a sudden seems scary. And that was like all we did up until we released the album. So then you just kind of get back into it and like things happen. It's, it's starting is always the hardest part. Just getting yourself going and started is the hardest part because we have it in our heads, like we need all this time and it's going to be so challenging.

Filip (54:47.028)

It is, yes.

Brian Funk (54:56.317)

And there's truth to that, but it doesn't take much to get the ball rolling. You know, it's, it's really, it's that fear of just jumping in that kind of worry. Like, like, what if I can't do it kind of stuff? Just

Filip (55:02.327)

Yeah.

Filip (55:11.554)

Hmm. Well, what if I, the one that was always for me was what if I go back in to this idea that I really need to do justice and don't do it justice? What if I ruin this idea that I really, really like? And, but you know what?

Brian Funk (55:21.794)

Yeah.

Filip (55:28.938)

Every time you jump into the DAW, into the DAW, there's a new idea that will come. And you don't need to make every single idea shine into a number one track, you know, and putting that pressure on yourself often makes it definitely not so.

Brian Funk (55:46.465)

Yeah. Nothing's precious either. Right. Um, cause you might, you might ruin it. You might've had an awesome beat and then everything you do after that stinks. I've done that many times, but if you have this idea of like nothing's precious. Like, okay, so that one didn't work out. We'll come back tomorrow, the next day. Um, and I heard that from Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead. I think he said that talking about like his guitar parts. And at the time I heard it, I applied it to playing in a band.

Filip (56:05.773)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Brian Funk (56:16.781)

You might have this, it's awesome riff, it sounds great here, but if no one wants it there, or it doesn't work or whatever, then let it go. So, you know, if they don't like your riff, it's not, they don't like you. It's just the riff. And if you really love it, take it somewhere else, make your own song or something. But if you get, start getting the idea, like this is precious. This is, oh, this is the one. This beat is so good. I got to, you put all this pressure on yourself and

It's almost impossible to ever live up to that. And if you don't, it makes you so terrified the next time. And then you start thinking like, what if I've already done my best work? What if I've run out of ideas? But having that idea, nothing's precious. Just, let's just do another one. We'll just try again.

Filip (56:53.623)

Yeah.

Filip (57:01.611)

Yeah.

Filip (57:04.842)

Yeah, it's better to try it and to fail than to just leave it, not try it and just leave that idea and never pick it up at all, right?

Brian Funk (57:11.427)

Yeah.

Yeah, done is better than perfect. Somebody smart said that. I forget who, but that's better to have it done than, because you're never gonna get it perfect, so it'll never get done. Hmm.

Filip (57:15.991)

Yeah.

Filip (57:23.052)

Yeah.

Filip (57:27.998)

Yeah, if that idea is as good as you think it is, at least give it a chance to turn into a full song. Don't leave it to not be brave enough to ever pick it back up again.

Brian Funk (57:40.225)

Yeah. And if you have to like drive it into the ground and it turns into a garbage song, at least you got practice finishing a song. So like, yeah, maybe you had this brilliant idea and like you're for whatever reason, either your skills weren't up to the level or just you were off that day. You, you're, you know, you weren't yourself. You didn't, you were unlucky when you decisions.

At least you got the practice of finishing. So the next time something comes around, you're a little more prepared. You're a little better. And just, just practice finishing. Even I always tell people make bad music. Like don't be afraid of it.

Filip (58:11.359)

Yes, yeah.

Filip (58:19.402)

Yeah, yeah, it's no, it is absolutely a vital skill. I always find that having more than one project on it, it go more than one song that I'm working on it at any one time is really vital for that because if you just have the one song that you're working on, some days you just don't feel inspired to work on that track or it's just a real tough slog to get through that track and.

As much as I totally understand that, you know.

you need to get over those barriers and practice getting over those barriers. Sometimes you do just need time away from that song to, to come back to it on a fresh head and to realize what those few things are that need doing and not to painstakingly fixate on one thing that actually doesn't need doing. So jumping between different projects I find really useful. So when, when one project just really just doesn't seem to want to get finished, move on to another.

that you're working on that you might feel a bit more inspired to work on, move that forward. So you're still moving forwards on the whole. Even though that one project that you were stuck on is on pause. And then go back to that maybe a week later, maybe two weeks later, maybe a month later, you know, whatever it takes and listen to it in fresh ears. And then you realize, oh, hey, the only thing that needs doing is this, this and this. Let's just do those things and it's done.

I find that really useful.

Brian Funk (59:52.289)

Yeah, me too. And especially in context of like a larger project, like an album, when you're working on a few different songs, you can kind of have like your, your banger or your, you know, hit, whatever you want to call it, your catchy one with all the hooks. And then if you're not there that day, you can kind of work on one of the like album tracks that kind of help move the flow of the album along. And sometimes they have different elements. They might not be.

the one with all the hooks and the catchy choruses, it might be more of like a groove that kind of sets the mood a little for the thing that follows it, instrumental or something like that. And you can kind of shift between those worlds a little bit without having to be like, oh, I can't think of like the hooks, I can't think of the lyrics, I can't think. You can still move forward like you said. Yeah, that's a great way to think. If I can't move forward on this song, what else can I do that'll...

move the project or even just my artistic output forward. Do you find that having the YouTube channel is another way of still feeling productive? Even if like, because this happens to me sometimes, like where maybe I'm not making a song, but I made like something else. I did sound design, I did a pack, I made a video, I did a podcast, like at least I'm still working.

Filip (01:00:56.227)

Hmm.

Filip (01:01:12.792)

Yes.

Filip (01:01:16.832)

Yeah.

Yeah, that feeling of having something done output and kind of posted there for everyone to see, that's something that I've ticked off and done and feel really proud that I've done it. So if I've not done that through finishing a song and I've done it through finishing a video and set, then that absolutely does tick that box for me. Yes.

Brian Funk (01:01:41.841)

I think that helps me a lot too, where I can feel like I'm still working, even though maybe I didn't finish the song or whatever. Something got done. I've pushed the needle forward a little bit. And I think in the past, before I had other outlets, I would do things like organize my cables or like move my...

Filip (01:01:51.703)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:02:08.325)

you know, guitar amp over this corner of the room and then try putting this, all these like kind of rearranging the studio or like things that feel like I'm doing work, but it's not actually contributing to like my body of work, whatever that is. Yeah, it's nice to have those things. But then let me ask you about the other side. And this is something you mentioned we should talk about too, just balancing music and life. Do you ever find that

Filip (01:02:22.862)

Hmm, yeah.

Filip (01:02:28.608)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:02:38.029)

that stuff becomes a way to avoid doing the other work. Cause I've often found myself saying, I spend a lot of time talking about making music, but I haven't picked up an instrument in a week or something like that.

Filip (01:02:44.109)

Yes.

Filip (01:02:52.566)

Yeah, yeah, so I tend to, I like to prioritize the kind of, I think I have like five categories that I prioritize in my life. So there's, you know, I won't kind of go through the order, but there's, you know, my own health and my family's health. There's the kind of work, employment side of things. There's...

my YouTube channel and my music and the students that I mentor and those kind of side of things. So I can have an order of how I prioritize those things. And then I try to roughly keep track of how much time I'm doing those things just to give me an idea of have I got my priorities right this week. So yeah, I tend to

put music above the YouTube, like my own music making above the YouTube channel in terms of priorities. After all, if I'm not making music, then I don't really come up with any ideas for the channel. You know, it should be that way around. I shouldn't be forcing ideas for the YouTube channel. They should come out of my own music making and experiences and then kind of filter down into a useful video for someone. So I try to have things kind of that way around.

Brian Funk (01:04:14.965)

The music in your videos is awesome. There's always some tunes going on in the background or you weave them together real nice.

Filip (01:04:17.206)

Thanks. Yeah. So yeah. So I always, I, there's kind of a nice thing about a YouTube channel is that these days on Spotify, it's quite hard to get listened to. So I, you know, I don't have anything released on, on Spotify, at least not right now, but through a YouTube channel, through, you know, slowly building followers over time, it's still an outlet for.

me to put my music out there for other people to listen to. So it's like an unconventional way, you know, it's not Spotify, but it works. And a lot of people have listened to my music through that, whether they know it's my own music or not. But yeah, you know, all the music on that channel is my own, unless it's like a kind of little jingly sort of piano that's, you know, quite clearly not mine. It's just some sort of...

Brian Funk (01:04:56.238)

Right?

Filip (01:05:09.322)

final cut loop that I've put on, but those kind of things, you know, it's usually pretty obvious when it's that kind of thing. So it's been a really nice outlet to put my own music out there onto. And something that I didn't expect.

Brian Funk (01:05:11.682)

Right? Yeah.

Filip (01:05:22.766)

happen, you know, I put that first video about silence just to help other people that might be in the same situation and then over time realized, oh well if I'm going to show this production technique I'm going to show it using my own music, using my own project, the project that I figured the production technique on and that's my music so it kind of filters from there.

Brian Funk (01:05:44.365)

Yeah, well, when I first started trying to learn on YouTube, like probably going back to like 2008, 2009, where I'm trying to learn my DAWs, um, there were certain people that I got drawn to, you know, they were showing you how to do stuff. They, back then too, um, you have to remember, like it wasn't understood that you can learn on YouTube. It was just people put your videos on, but

Filip (01:06:08.63)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:06:11.777)

I was starting to realize, hey, this person's teaching me how to use logic. This is cool. Let me check this out. And then I found myself listening to their music as a result. I downloaded their album and I'm like, oh, that was cool. So they kind of promoted themselves without promoting themselves. They were giving me something I wanted, which was to learn. And then the sort of trade was I got to hear their music. And then...

Filip (01:06:30.911)

Hmm, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:06:40.481)

You know, it was, I wouldn't have heard it any other way. And I've, I've used, um, a lot of the things I do as, uh, outlets for my music too. So especially unfinished ideas where they're not full songs, but maybe they're cool, little parts or something. So that might become like the opening music for the podcast. Or if I do like a short, a little clip of the podcast, I'll put some little thing I was playing around with as the background music. And

Filip (01:07:06.796)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:07:09.281)

It's not like you can't really go listen to that music anywhere. And it was never going to do anything but sit on my hard drive, but it feels good. It's like, awesome. Like at least this has a life now. And, and almost nobody's ever said anything like, Hey, that was a cool music in the back. But it's nice to know that it doesn't go to waste.

Filip (01:07:21.688)

Yeah.

Filip (01:07:26.194)

No, no, that's actually good that you mentioned it because I love the podcast theme tune that you have. It sets the tone so nicely because it just says Brian Funk as soon as you listen to that you're like, oh yeah, like, and it's comforting, it's like it's got this like slight sort of the thing that we were talking about right at the beginning, this kind of imperfect imperfection side to it.

Brian Funk (01:07:34.382)

Hehehe

Brian Funk (01:07:40.396)

That's great.

Brian Funk (01:07:52.309)

You don't think it's perfect?

Filip (01:07:55.194)

In terms of like the, yeah, in terms of like the, like the tuning of the synths and things like that, you know? It just, it like sets the vibe as soon as I hear that. I'm like, oh yeah, it's a Brian Funk podcast. And I remember, if I remember rightly, at first, did you, were you changing the theme tune sort of every so often? And have you kind of settled on it for the time being, if I got that right?

Brian Funk (01:08:21.257)

Yeah, I started the podcast without any theme song. And this is like something that I think probably we all deal with when you have a project in mind, it gets so big in your head that you don't even know how to start it anymore. And I've got ideas for like videos or segments. And I had all these thoughts for the podcast. But like so many things, sometimes you just got to do the bare minimum. And I just started talking. So the first...

Filip (01:08:24.194)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:08:50.185)

I don't even know how many episodes, or just voice. There's not even any sound on it other than voice. And then it was like a jamuary track that I stuck on there for a little while that was never gonna go anywhere. I realized I'm not gonna do anything else with this. Now I think it's music I made with my 16-bit Ableton Live Pack. So it's got like that Sega Genesis FM.

Filip (01:08:55.554)

Yes.

Filip (01:09:16.042)

Yeah, you get that jingle as it starts that. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:09:20.373)

Yeah, yeah, I'm liking that. I think it has the sort of like curious tone to it, which I like to think is part of the reason I do this is because I'm curious and talk to people like you and learn about how you do it. So I like that feel. It might change though, you know? That's like another actually avenue that's been great lately for me that I've paid a little more attention to is making tracks that

purposely use my sound packs and that's their point is just to showcase what it can do a little bit. And again, then I can make a playlist of these are some songs and then if other people make songs with the packs and they're okay with it, I can add it to the playlist. And it's a nice way to just collect ideas, I guess.

But yeah, to have like some sort of thing that you can then put your music to, I think it's great. And it's probably would be smart for a lot of us too, to think about licensing stuff and like for, for other people like us, right? That there's other people that are making YouTube videos that are, that need music. And, you know, you probably have a wide, diverse collection of stuff you've got that you use on yours, you know, like that's

Filip (01:10:45.003)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:10:45.977)

probably be smart to think about.

Filip (01:10:47.978)

Yeah, yeah, that kind of work seems to be getting harder and harder to get into. I know most, you know, few years ago, um, you didn't really have to have much credentials or even that well-established music to apply to be on these platforms that then distribute to other people. But I found that recently that kind of thing, because there are just, you know, so many great musicians out there now. Um, the bar seems to be a lot higher on, um, being

allowed to contribute to these kind of platforms. I'm sure there are still ways, I don't know if you know of.

Brian Funk (01:11:21.601)

Yeah, I've definitely talked to a lot of people that do that kind of stuff. And I think it, you know, in general, when you look at just music and TV shows, commercials, and it is like a lot better and a lot of shows have become. Like the music is half of what the show is like stranger things. I think is a great example of a show that really kind of blew that door open. You know, the music is

everything, you know, it's just as important as anything else. And there's a lot of shows like that where you watch it for the music. I mean, a lot of movies like the stuff like Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross do. I'll watch those movies just because I want to hear what they did in it. And just they were involved. Like, I don't even know what this movie is about, but I know I love what they do. So it's pretty cool actually to think about that's becoming a thing. Like I'm going to watch shows and

Filip (01:12:06.83)

because they were involved, right? Yeah.

Filip (01:12:12.514)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:12:20.749)

I'm gonna watch movies because of the people that did the music. And as I've gotten to talk to some of these people on the podcast, I've done that. There are people like, yeah, I spoke to these guys. They did the music to Cobra Kai, and now they're doing the Weird Al biopic. And it's like, yeah, so cool to hear their work across different styles and movies and shows and stuff.

Filip (01:12:24.459)

Yeah.

Filip (01:12:35.906)

The weird Al one, yeah, listen to that podcast, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:48.145)

I could see that becoming sort of a thing, almost like people follow directors or actors. It seems like that, at least it's starting to happen to me. And I don't know if it's just because I've gotten to speak to these people on the show. But yeah, it's...

Filip (01:12:54.392)

Hmm.

Filip (01:13:04.59)

Well, there is just so much content out there that you need a way to kind of filter it now. And I think by hooking onto specific people that you rely on, that you maybe associate with, that's kind of a way to filter through all of these different things that we can choose from. You can just be like, oh, well, this guy's involved. So I'll choose to listen to this or I'll choose to watch that.

Brian Funk (01:13:07.576)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:13:22.339)

Mm.

Brian Funk (01:13:29.329)

I would love if, I mean the data's there, right? I would really love if there was a way to search your Netflix that way, or search your Spotify that way, or your Apple Music or whatever. For, like, I mean it'd be so cool if you could look for producers and get the albums they made.

Filip (01:13:41.358)

Hmm. Yeah.

Filip (01:13:48.138)

Yeah.

So I don't know if you find, I don't know if this is like a very music producer thing to do, but I absolutely love on Spotify going onto the, like the more info button and finding out like who was the mix engineer or the master engineer or for a specific track. And, and then finding out like, oh, this guy also did this other track that I liked. And I had no idea that, you know, I really love this track and I really love this other track. And I had no idea that the same mix engineer or the same songwriter were involved, even though they're two completely different artists and things like that.

I love making those connections. I don't know, do you ever look at that? I think, do you use Apple music? Maybe they have a similar feature.

Brian Funk (01:14:23.457)

Well, I don't know if I use Apple music. Yeah. I'm so in the Apple walled garden, whatever they say, right? Yeah. The ecosystem, maybe that's how they'd prefer. We say it, um, uh, you know, like, cause with Apple music, I can just put my stuff, my music in Apple music and it syncs right to my phone. So it's really easy. And then it's also mixed in with everything else that they have. I don't really know if you can do that with Spotify. Um,

Filip (01:14:29.742)

ecosystem. Yeah.

Filip (01:14:44.362)

Yes.

Filip (01:14:49.89)

So yeah, on Spotify, it's called Show Credits. So you right click on a song, which most people don't even right click on stuff these days. I mean, most stuff's on a phone. Who uses a desktop? I don't know, you probably can. But you right click on a song.

Brian Funk (01:14:53.721)

But that's cool, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:15:00.901)

Can you do it on your phone?

Filip (01:15:07.13)

You click show credits and there you've got, you know, written by produced by performed by all these kinds of things. And you see all these names that you sometimes you can be surprised by the huge amount of people that were involved in attract it.

Brian Funk (01:15:12.335)

Yeah.

Filip (01:15:20.246)

you thought, you know, would never be involved in a track like that. So, yeah, I love making those connections of like, who is the mix engineer on this song and who, or even more so like who, who wrote it? You know, it was this band, but also it was, say for example, Sasha Sloan as a, as an artist that I love listening to her lyrics are always so, um, uh, they just.

Brian Funk (01:15:34.616)

Yeah.

Filip (01:15:46.658)

conjure up the imagery in your head when you listen to them. So, and it turns out she's written lots of tracks for artists that I enjoy listening to. And I had no idea until I started to see her in showing up in these song credits.

Brian Funk (01:15:51.461)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:16:03.577)

Wow, that's cool. You know, that's something I miss from having physical music, whether it's an album or a CD booklet, where you can see. You look in it, you know? And I've made those connections a lot. I remember getting the Weezer Blue album and seeing it was produced by Rick Okasek from The Cars. And you're like, oh, isn't that the guy from The Cars? I'm like, you know, a teenager. And I'm like, oh, man. And then you start.

going back and rediscovering things. But it's, I don't know if you, I gotta look into it, how you can do that, if you can even in Apple Music, but we have the data, right? So it would be great if you could pull it up within the app, right? And see like you, Sasha Sloan, right? Then you click on that and then you get like a playlist of all the songs she's written.

Filip (01:16:35.203)

Hmm.

Filip (01:16:45.899)

Yeah, it's there.

Filip (01:16:55.914)

Yes, and as you keep linking through, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:16:58.641)

Yeah, and then you could see, oh, she worked with this producer and oh, here's all the work he's worked on and then, you know, whatever it is.

Filip (01:17:03.69)

Yeah. So you do get some smaller artists that have, you know, how you can make your own playlists on Spotify. So you have an artist and then they've made their own artist playlist. And some of them will have like songs I've worked on or songs I've written to, but the bigger artists tend not to show those things. I don't know if they don't like these things to be known publicly. It tends to be sort of.

or smaller artists that will have those playlists. But the information is certainly there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:17:33.037)

They have to create them themselves, right? That that's, yeah. Huh. Yeah. I wonder if maybe if anyone listening knows, they can let us know that it's probably like, yeah, you can do that. It's on this. What's like IMDB, how you can go on there and you can see like all the movies and actors been in all the production that some producers done. Um, you know, it's, I was, I was doing that last night. We were watching an old movie, the gate.

Filip (01:17:54.486)

Yes.

Brian Funk (01:18:00.929)

this old horror movie from the 80s. And it has Stephen Dorff is the actor's name. And I didn't know his name, but I knew him from so many things. And then it's like, oh, he was the boyfriend in the crying video by Aerosmith with Alicia Silverstone. And we're like, holy cow. Like look at all the stuff this guy's been in. Like, and you know, it's so easy to do with, with that site at least.

Filip (01:18:23.726)

I'm sorry.

Brian Funk (01:18:31.925)

I would love it if they started making that easier because more and more, in my opinion anyway, a lot of music, especially a lot of pop music, like yes, you have your artist who sings it, whatever, but a lot of the magic is happening with all the team that's working with, whether it's the songwriters or the producers. For me, I don't listen to a lot of top 40 pop stuff.

Filip (01:18:50.882)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:19:01.005)

But I do enjoy a lot of the production and I often wish it'd be a little bit easier to find out like, hey, who produced that? And like, let me hear other stuff that person produced because it's really cool. Maybe I'm missing out on something, but it's time, I think. Like we have data on everything and that would be a really nice thing and it would probably really help a lot of people's careers to getting their names out.

Filip (01:19:09.742)

Hmm. Yes.

Filip (01:19:29.342)

Yeah, it's become, I think, maybe, you know, five plus years ago, it was probably a bit of a secret that like, you know, Chris Martin from Coldplay writes for, you know, other people, Rihanna and things like that. Or there's the guy from One Republic as well, who famously writes for other people. Whereas these days it's become more and more public, you know, Ed Sheeran talks about writing for different artists.

Filip (01:19:59.296)

to open up more on the platforms that on Spotify and Apple Music that, you know, there was this artist that released the song, but here are all these other artists that were involved in this track and you can click on one and see the other artists that were involved. So yeah, maybe now that it's not so low, so much of a kind of secret that will be a bit, bit more of a thing. You never know. I I'd love to see that too.

Brian Funk (01:20:17.349)

Mm.

Brian Funk (01:20:21.089)

Yeah, yeah, because there's this whole mysterious world. And at least when we had albums, you could look in the credits and just see. It's been a little bit harder. I'm gonna investigate a little more. I've been thinking maybe I should be subscribed to Spotify just because playlists and all this other stuff that it does have that's really cool. As a music person, it seems like.

Filip (01:20:29.143)

Hmm.

Filip (01:20:33.72)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:20:52.013)

That's how I'm feeling anyway, not to let go of the Apple stuff either, just to kind of know what's going on, you know, to have those different perspectives as a user even.

Filip (01:20:58.721)

Yeah.

Filip (01:21:02.31)

Yeah, I think all of these platforms, whether it's music platforms or film platforms, movies, sorry, like Netflix and Prime, they all have their like one unique thing that's enough for you to want to try that thing out too. And then inevitably have both.

Brian Funk (01:21:17.999)

Yeah.

Right?

Filip (01:21:21.402)

So sometimes these things are nice to like try and see like, oh, do I really need this other feature that, or do I really need to see this series that Prime has that Netflix doesn't have or.

Brian Funk (01:21:32.569)

I know. I mean, I did that. We subscribed to HBO to watch Game of Thrones and that's been years and we still pay for it, you know? And once in a while you watch something on it, but yeah, it's not like I need more distractions in my life.

Brian Funk (01:21:51.221)

Yeah, it's funny. Then that's how you wind up with like 72 different subscriptions and wondering why you can't afford anything.

Filip (01:21:56.542)

Yeah.

Filip (01:22:00.514)

Ha ha ha.

Brian Funk (01:22:04.393)

That's funny. Let's see. Anything else you want to get to any other projects, any other future things? I mean, I know you. Any of the music you kind of mentioned there was a project going on, but maybe it's as it is with so many things. Timing is difficult to get nailed down.

Filip (01:22:14.782)

No, I think that's great. Go ahead.

Filip (01:22:22.698)

Yeah.

Filip (01:22:29.73)

That's right, yeah, so I do have another project that I'm working on for the YouTube channels and also looking to release music now on Spotify as well as having stuff on my YouTube channel. So just planning that out a bit more and some really exciting things that I have lined up. But I think...

saving that maybe for a separate conversation would be really good. We can maybe tease that here and then once that's a bit more out there, we can talk about those things a little more in detail. But so yeah, essentially I have like two artist projects on the go. There's like the music that I write myself and that I've recently become a lot more comfortable with singing my own music.

Brian Funk (01:22:56.792)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:23:04.749)

Yeah, cool. We'll catch up and do another one.

Filip (01:23:19.386)

I mean, there's no better way to express yourself musically than to start writing your own lyrics and singing them and these kinds of things. And it takes a lot of confidence to accept your own voice. I find. And I don't know if you've you found that yourself, but I've kind of got to the point now where I traditionally I would write a song and then I'd get my buddy Chris to sing it or. Because he's a much better singer than I am.

Brian Funk (01:23:20.119)

Nice.

Brian Funk (01:23:24.836)

Yeah.

Filip (01:23:48.722)

I believed or I believed. No, I do believe he is a better singer than I am. Um, but I, you know, I showed him this one song that I'd written. I'd done the vocals for it. And I said, Hey, do you want to give the vocals a go? I think it could be a really good track. And, and he listened to the track and the first thing he said was, Phil, this is the best thing you've ever written. And I was like blown away. I like, I've never heard anyone say, say something like that. You know, he was absolutely, he loved this track and, um, uh,

And he was like, yeah, let's give, let's give this a go. You know, I'll record some vocals. And he recorded a few takes and his voice is, which is much better than, than mine is. And, you know, my perspective was that like, yeah, this guy's voice is great. This track's better with his voice, but he kept listening to it with his own voice. And he was like, you know what? It's better with, with your voice. I don't think you need me on this one. And that's kind of given me the confidence now to, to.

start using my own voice on my own tracks. And so I have this, this one artist project, which is kind of my stuff. It's kind of synthy pop based music. And then I have this other artist project, which is with this friend, Chris, who, you know, we write music together collaboratively and we've kind of every so often he'll come up to visit me here in Edinburgh and we'll write, we'll do a weekend where we'll write some music and record stuff and it's, yeah, I love those weekends and.

Brian Funk (01:25:11.501)

That's cool.

Filip (01:25:12.606)

And so over time we've built up these songs. So we have like a collection of songs now that we've built together with my buddy Chris. And so that'll be one sort of release that I'll be gearing up towards as well as this stuff that's my own. So, but I think saving that for another conversation would be really fun.

Brian Funk (01:25:33.457)

Cool, yeah, that's exciting. That's really nice about what you said about your singing voice too, that you get that vote of confidence from somebody and then, yeah, you're right, there's really nothing more expressive than the human voice. And I think of myself as a singer much the way I think of myself as a keyboard player. Like I use my voice. And I feel like...

Filip (01:25:59.676)

Yes, I agree with that.

Brian Funk (01:26:03.377)

I've learned how to use it a bit, but you know, the technical stuff and I still, it takes me a long time to get there. You know, a lot of practice and a lot of trial and error. It's not like I've been around singers that they just, they go in and they just lay it down perfectly the first time, then they're like, all right, I'm going to do harmonies now and they just right away blast them out. I'm just like, it would have taken me.

Filip (01:26:21.878)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:26:31.697)

I would've got like one line down in the time you did like the song seven times with harmonies. So I'm blown away by that. But you're right, it is, there's like an acceptance thing. A confidence. It's hard to have the confidence, but you sort of just have to like go for it, you know, and just not even worry about it. That's when it works out best for me.

Filip (01:26:33.99)

Yeah.

Filip (01:26:38.134)

Yeah.

Filip (01:26:54.302)

Yeah. Like I know that I don't have the best singing voice, but that's not what this track or a specific track is about. It's not about, you know, here's my amazing voice and listen to this range that I have and the tone of my voice. It's more, here's this track, this music as a whole that, you know.

Brian Funk (01:27:15.033)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:27:18.985)

Right. Yeah. And I think of the vocal parts as like the story a lot more and, and the vibe. So I really try to get into that more. Um, and that was some great advice I got on this podcast from a vocal coach. Just said, don't focus so much on hitting the notes, tell the story, say the words, the way they feel. And that's definitely the way I go. And most of my favorite singers are like that. They're not.

Filip (01:27:24.884)

Hmm.

Filip (01:27:30.071)

Yeah.

Filip (01:27:41.814)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:27:48.741)

They're not American Idol winners. They're, you know, they have character and feeling and, you know, not always in tune perfectly and, but it works.

Filip (01:27:55.05)

Yeah. I've really enjoyed getting into the intricacies of like vocals and lyrics and why certain lyrics like hit better. Like you can use two words that mean the same thing, but.

in this specific part in this song because words have like an inherent rhythm to them one word might work better than another and this idea that words themselves as you say them have a rhythm to them was completely alien to me. I kind of thought that oh specific words sound better in this place than other words but never realized why and it's this kind of mix between where the vowels and the consonants sit and the word that kind of create a rhythm to the word so these kind of things that I've discovered since

Brian Funk (01:28:17.548)

Mm-hmm.

Filip (01:28:40.236)

since writing my own lyrics to songs that I've really enjoyed that side of things.

Brian Funk (01:28:47.105)

That's why most of my lyrics get written while I'm making gibberish sounds. Cause I'm trying to find those, those consonants, those rhythms, those, where's the long note, where's the space? Where do I breathe? Where? And by doing gibberish, sometimes the phrasing comes together nicer. And that's so much what it's about. I really try to have the melodies and the rhythms.

Filip (01:28:56.238)

Hmm.

Filip (01:28:59.863)

Yeah.

Filip (01:29:07.126)

Hmm. And then you can fill in the blanks.

Brian Funk (01:29:16.473)

sound the way you would say it, right? Like to mimic the way we talk in a way. To mimic the way we talk. The boom, boom. You know, and like right there, like so, okay, then the da, da. It kind of goes up, da, and down, you know? That stuff's important where that works out. To me, if I can get that right, then.

Filip (01:29:23.807)

Hmm.

Yeah, I'll sample that.

Filip (01:29:36.45)

I'm sorry.

Brian Funk (01:29:45.681)

hitting the notes is easier and also kind of less important. Some people are like, no, it's important. And they're right. But, um, you can get the feeling and the story of the song out a little better. It's, it's when you have these really strange phrasings and you gotta like hold weird words that don't really get held in conversation that.

Filip (01:29:50.211)

Hmm.

Filip (01:29:58.444)

Yeah.

Filip (01:30:08.062)

Yep. Or squeeze too many in one go or yeah.

Brian Funk (01:30:12.061)

Yeah, and that's where it gets fun.

Filip (01:30:13.59)

It's like the idea, have you seen the film Love Actually?

Brian Funk (01:30:18.161)

Ah, yeah, maybe. It's like Hugh Grant, right? I don't know if I saw it, but I remember it.

Filip (01:30:19.494)

So they're, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they're kind of re reinventing a song for Christmas. Um, and there's one bit where they have to like fit in. They're trying to say, uh, Christmas is all around you, but you know, the original song doesn't have the word Christmas in, so they're trying to squeeze in Christmas and it just, it doesn't work and the guy's getting really frustrated that he has to sing Christmases all around.

Brian Funk (01:30:43.261)

Yeah, right. Yeah, those are important considerations. And that's where you get creative. You break grammar rules. You say words like twice in a row that you just emphasize that really, you know, you know, um, it, you can have fun with the language. Yeah.

Filip (01:31:02.13)

Or even like nothing words that that's one thing I've really kind of hit upon through like looking at other people's lyrics is sometimes you just need an a or a way or, you know, a whoa. Yeah, exactly. And it really is some like it.

Brian Funk (01:31:12.833)

Yeah, well, I do. I find myself saying well a lot.

Filip (01:31:19.954)

It seems like silly when you, when you put that into a song, you think, Oh, that's not a lyric, that's not a word. I'm not, but then you listen to all these other tracks and you've not thought twice about how this song that you really love has a woe in it.

Brian Funk (01:31:29.763)

Yeah.

Yeah, right. Or they just kind of repeat the end vowel. A-O, you know. Umbrella, Ella, that song, that song that came out a couple recently, it was Rihanna, right? Like that's so catchy because she does that though. Umbrella, Ella. And I wonder, you know, I was listening to that song actually in the car with my wife and I was wondering, did she do that? Or was that like the producer?

Filip (01:31:38.186)

Yeah, or even the last word gets repeated.

Yeah, yeah, Rihanna.

Yeah.

Hmm, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:32:00.429)

taking that word and just repeating that last part, you know? Like I'm curious, because that's the hook.

Filip (01:32:00.694)

Hmm.

Yeah, I mean, maybe they just, they recorded it and then they cut up that last file in the, in the door and they repeated it a few times, pitched it up a few times. And then she thought, Hey, I'll re-sing that. And yeah, I mean, I don't know that the guy, um, uh, the guy that does the a lot of Julee for songs, um, Kirk, I forget the guy's name now, but he does a lot of streaming, um, and, uh, he has a lot of videos on YouTube and he talks about how he's.

Brian Funk (01:32:09.838)

Baby.

Brian Funk (01:32:14.893)

Yeah.

Filip (01:32:32.586)

cut up certain lyrics in a certain way, chop them up, and then that ends up being the way that it's sung later on. Ian Kirkpatrick, I think is the guy's name. Is that right?

Brian Funk (01:32:39.611)

Mm. Yeah, right.

Brian Funk (01:32:44.097)

Okay, we'll look that up and try to get in the show notes. I want to see that. That's cool. Yeah. Cause that happens sometimes too, with what I'm doing where I'll maybe play around, chop things up and then it's like, I'm going to sing it that way. Or, or maybe I'm not going to sing it that way and I'm going to use the effect to get that part across. You know, you can, depending on how you're working, I guess you can have some fun with how you put these things together, but yeah, you would never really.

Filip (01:33:08.62)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:33:13.633)

I don't think you would really sit down with a pen and paper and say, under my umbrella, Ella, Ella. You know, that doesn't happen. It has to be either you're singing it or you're fooling around with the audio. You're playing really, whether it's you're playing while you're producing or playing while you're singing. It's, it's really important for me. I almost never write lyrics first. It's very rare.

Filip (01:33:18.626)

No.

Filip (01:33:26.55)

Yeah.

Filip (01:33:37.354)

Yeah, that is a style that a lot of people take for sure. I know I'm big, or especially when I was a teenager, big fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Anthony Kiedis, you know, he has to write, you know, you've seen how many songs that they put out on a single album. That's a lot of lyrics to write. And I understand that he, you know, he just carries around a notebook and he writes, basically he writes poetry or maybe with the intention of these things becoming songs one day. And...

Brian Funk (01:33:41.218)

Yeah.

Filip (01:34:04.594)

And then when it's time to write a song, he just gets his notebook out, looks for one that feels like it suits a certain track that they're writing on then, and there are his lyrics and maybe he adds to that. And, you know, I've never spoken to the guy, so I don't know, but I've heard that that's, that's a lot how a lot of the lyrics go. But, but then it becomes challenging trying to get those rhythms, the rhythms of those words to match the song. And, you know.

Brian Funk (01:34:16.573)

Yeah. Haha.

Brian Funk (01:34:28.377)

Right. Yeah. I write down a lot of things and keep ideas for songs. Um, but usually there has to be some sort of like dismantling and rearranging in order. Yeah. Right.

Filip (01:34:33.835)

Hmm.

Filip (01:34:40.714)

Yes, you just want some bare bones to write around really, and then you can fit that to whatever track you're working on.

Brian Funk (01:34:47.953)

Usually the kind of ultimate moment is when the title happens, when you get that center point idea or the chorus line or something. And then you can fill in around it and figure out like, okay, so what is this about? Like, I often will write down in just words. This song is about somebody who thinks this way, feels that way. This happened to them. And then.

Filip (01:34:52.15)

Hmm.

Filip (01:34:58.135)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Filip (01:35:04.909)

Yes.

Brian Funk (01:35:17.173)

Sometimes you get lucky and you actually wrote a line that you can sing, but at least you kind of plot it out a little bit. That helps me a lot.

Filip (01:35:25.122)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:35:29.477)

There's not an easy way to do it though. They're just tips and techniques and sometimes you just try them on and see if you get lucky.

Filip (01:35:32.492)

No.

Filip (01:35:36.026)

Yeah, and it's good that there's not just one way to do it because it gets boring and you get stuck in the same routine so it's good to try one way or the other and mix things up.

Brian Funk (01:35:47.157)

Yeah. I often like to play around with a technique for a little while, like on a couple songs, maybe, but yeah, it's funny cause like it'll work really well the first time and then you get another one out of it, maybe, but then like all of a sudden it's like, that's not happening anymore. So you have to figure it out again. Try a new way.

Filip (01:36:05.006)

Hmm, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:36:12.329)

Yeah, if it was easy, it wouldn't be rewarding. So that part is a feature, I think. You know, it's what makes this interesting.

Filip (01:36:16.766)

Yeah, absolutely.

Filip (01:36:21.738)

Yeah, that's something I always say. Yeah, that's the same goes for anything. Like nothing worth doing was ever easy.

Brian Funk (01:36:32.779)

And yeah, there's a payoff in the struggle and the challenge. And otherwise, everyone would have albums and hit songs, and no one would care.

Brian Funk (01:36:47.969)

Well, cool, man. Um, so we should obviously send people to your YouTube channel, which is just a youtube.com at flow prod official flow actually, you know, now that I think about it, kind of, um, you're, you're into like, um, the workflow and like getting into the flow and that's really what your channel's about it. You have a lot of great techniques that you can use to get there and

Filip (01:36:59.554)

That's right, yes.

Filip (01:37:05.482)

workflow and exactly.

Brian Funk (01:37:16.973)

That's nice because we all have like this idea of the flow. You get in the zone and, but it's really hard. Like, how do I get into the zone? And a lot of what you do are just like little things you can try that will help bring you into that.

Filip (01:37:21.58)

Yeah.

Filip (01:37:32.242)

Exactly. Yeah, that's right.

Brian Funk (01:37:34.661)

Is there anywhere else you'd like to direct people to check out your work?

Filip (01:37:38.526)

Yeah, the YouTube channel is a great one. The kind of central hub for everything is a website, flowprod.co. So that links to the YouTube channel as well. People can contact me through there. And I also offer mentoring, one to one mentoring through there as well. For the same reason I talked about it earlier, you know, back when I was...

Brian Funk (01:37:46.971)

Right, right.

Filip (01:38:03.278)

of getting into things and starting to develop as a music producer and wanting to get better. I was, I find it really hard to find, you know, a good mentor out there. And so.

Yeah, I provide that service now for anyone that wants to have someone to push them in the right direction, figure out what needs working on to get them to, you know, maybe some people struggle with finish finishing music. Some people have never finished a track before and want to kind of want some help and guidance being able to do that.

Some people want some help with becoming better at mixing and those kind of technical side of things. And some people just want honest, good feedback and someone to keep them on track and someone to keep them accountable every month or so. I let people choose how often they want a session. So that service is there to help anyone that needs it. And I offer the first session.

Brian Funk (01:39:03.693)

That's nice, because some accountability.

Filip (01:39:06.094)

free as well for anyone so that, you know, that gives you a sense of what you're getting into, you're not having to pay and then realize, oh, actually this probably isn't suited for me. So, you know, we have a session that's just you and me, and we talk about, you know, what you might want to work on, how I might help you in that regard, and whether that would be something that's useful to you. And then we can, you know, pursue that further if you like, but there's no commitments there.

Brian Funk (01:39:36.725)

That's really cool. That's very generous of you and your time to do that. And having some accountability is huge. You know, have a mentor, collaborators, whatever you need to do to set up some sort of accountability for yourself makes a big difference. I know even just playing with my band and working on our album, the fact that like we get together every week, I wanted to have something to show.

every week like, we're getting closer, we're getting closer. And I don't think I would have sat down here to work on the album as often and as consistently if it wasn't for that. So I mean, yes, and it's really hard when you don't have anyone like for most of us, I mean, everything else I do, there's no one really waiting for me to come out with the new thing. Like I disappear into the night and

Filip (01:40:19.286)

and not wanting to let them down, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:40:34.537)

I don't even know if anyone would notice that I hadn't put out an album for 17 years. So it's good to have some sort of accountability. Even if it's like you said, this mentor where you're helping them get to the thing, I think knowing that I have my next session with Philip in a week, I can't show up exactly where I was last week. I got to arrive somewhere. I got to do something.

Filip (01:40:58.678)

Yeah.

Filip (01:41:02.806)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:41:05.573)

Well, that's cool. So that's flowprod.co. So all this stuff will be in the show notes, of course. Got some links of things we mentioned along the way as well.

Filip (01:41:08.994)

That's it, yeah.

Filip (01:41:15.626)

Yeah, I definitely put a link to the video with the five minute music producer book as well.

Brian Funk (01:41:21.921)

Yeah, I will. Definitely. I got a few videos of yours I want to put links to. Some of them we talked about and some of them that I just think have kind of captured some of the spirit of what you do and some of the philosophical undertones of your work in general. Because I think it's something cool and unique you're offering. And again, I love the idea that you're... I think it's really impressive that you're working without a MIDI controller even,

Filip (01:41:38.875)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:41:51.949)

just showing that, look, it's possible. And there are ways to do it. Not even just like, as you're just getting by doing it, like you can be creative and have a lot of expression and original ideas with just your DAW, just with what you have.

Filip (01:42:13.698)

Thanks, Brian. Yeah. And thanks for having me on the podcast. It's been really fun to get to know you, get to see you over, over the platform and talk about lots of interesting music stuff.

Brian Funk (01:42:15.086)

Very nice.

Brian Funk (01:42:23.609)

Yeah, yeah, likewise.

Brian Funk (01:42:29.525)

I knew it was going to be fun just by your work. You can tell sometimes. So I'm glad you took the time to do it. Thank you very much for that. And yeah.

Filip (01:42:33.163)

Yeah.

Filip (01:42:37.435)

And one other thing I should thank you for as well, which is, so back when I first started the YouTube channel.

you know, when you start a YouTube channel, it's quite hard to get off the ground and, you know, unless the YouTube algorithms are in your favor, even if you make really useful content, if you don't write the right things, you know, descriptions or create kind of catchy titles, it doesn't reach the audience that often wants that content. So it's quite hard at first to get things off the ground. And I think I reached out to you at one point, you were asking some subscribers of your email list

for project templates and you were offering like a free download in return or something like that. So I think I sent you some templates and I said something like, oh, I'm okay to

not have the download, but I wondered if instead you might be able to offer some advice on my YouTube channel. You know, I've got these videos, but I can't seem to get any traction. I wondered if you might have any advice that you could offer and I think you yeah, you said some really nice words of advice and you said, you know, you're doing the right things just you know connect to other people and spread good positive vibes and do nice things for other people and eventually things will happen and the next morning

Brian Funk (01:43:42.169)

Yeah, right.

Filip (01:44:00.89)

I got up, made my coffee, sat down, I had breakfast, got my phone out and went on Reddit. And at the top of my feed was my most recent video. And I couldn't believe it. I was like, how has my own video got to the top of my own feed? You know, it's completely separate accounts. And the only relevance is that I follow some music production channels on Reddit. And then, you know, one way or another, I realized that

that led back to yourself. And I think you posted one of my videos on your Twitter and that ended up gaining a lot of traction on Twitter and then on Reddit. And yeah, and I just remember seeing this video at the top of my Reddit feed with like so many likes and so many comments. And it was, it just completely, you know, surprised me, took me back. And I remember getting, like opening the door to the bedroom and to my wife. And I was just going.

I've gone viral, which, you know, obviously in the grand scheme of things, there's much bigger ways of going viral. But, you know, at the time it was a big step and, you know, you can see in the. In my YouTube history and statistics that there is this bump at that time.

Brian Funk (01:45:03.791)

Wow, that's cool.

Filip (01:45:20.226)

that's kind of ever since then things have just slowly gained traction. So I think had that not happened, the channel definitely wouldn't be where it is now. So thank you very much.

Brian Funk (01:45:31.797)

Wow, that's cool. Yeah. It's, it's so good to get involved in the community and on so many levels. Right. And, um, nobody does this alone. Um, I mean, human beings, we don't do anything alone. That's our strength, right? We don't have the biggest claws or teeth. We, we're really good at working together and it can be, you know, as I sit here alone in this spot, you know, on going on the internet can feel like you're alone a lot.

but it's important to reach out and talk to people and connect and I'm really happy that moment happened. I didn't know that story, that's great. But yeah, I mean, you've got great stuff. It's nothing I did. It's just your work speaks for yourself. I think one of the videos that really helped me a lot was when you were talking about the like M1 stuff with the Max.

and Rosetta and kind of comparing that because

Filip (01:46:31.818)

Yeah, I did like a practical comparison between, because a lot of people kind of look into like the numbers and things that as a music producer, you don't often care about. You just care like how much faster does my song load or how many more instances of serum can I use and those kinds of things, how low can I have the buffer size so that I don't need to have this big latency in my DAW, those kinds of things. So that's the sort of thing I personally was interested in and just like with any of the other videos.

Brian Funk (01:46:35.959)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:46:45.727)

Yeah.

Filip (01:47:01.912)

and recorded it as I went along and then published that as a video. And I think a lot of people like yourself have found that useful.

Brian Funk (01:47:09.733)

Well, you did it specifically using Ableton Live, right? And I was doing Rosetta, you know, all that stuff, and I was afraid to switch over, and seeing you do it, I was like, okay, all right, you know? I think, you know, a few of my plugins disappeared maybe, but I don't even know which ones are gone, to tell you the truth, and I could use a cleanup anyway, so. But it was nice to have that, and that's a great thing to do with it.

Filip (01:47:29.535)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:47:37.753)

YouTube channels to give really specific stuff sometimes where it's there's a lot of videos on like how M1 is working and all that but Nothing else that I could find anyway That was gonna tell me how the thing I want to do with my computer is going to work and that So that was a good one for me One of the many

Filip (01:47:55.366)

Yeah.

I'm glad it was useful.

Brian Funk (01:48:02.253)

Well, cool, man. Um, we'll send people to flow prod on YouTube and also the website. That's all going to be in the show notes. Um, it's great talking to you and, um, I'm sure we'll do it again. And thank you to everyone that's listening. Don't forget a little bit. Every day goes a long way. We hope you have a great day. Take care.

Filip (01:48:11.434)

Likewise, Brian. Yeah, it's been really fun.

Great, I'd love that.

podcastBrian Funkmusic production podcast, flow prod, filip taneski