Turning Nature into Music with Lomotor: Music Production Podcast #426

podcast
Written By Brian Funk

Lomotor is a musician and producer who makes nature-inspired electronic music on a small farm in Massachusetts. His new album ABCAPSILAHAD combines electronic and acoustic instruments with field recordings and the sounds of leaves, trees, and birds. 

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Special Gifts from Lomotor:

Links:

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

Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:01.442)

Josh, welcome aboard to the music production podcast. Good to have you.

Lomotor (00:05.205)

Thank you. Thanks very much. It's an honor to be here, really.

Brian Funk (00:09.922)

I've been loving your work, Low Motor. You seem to have a lot of kind of philosophical things in common with me, things that I'm interested in, the way I like to make music, the organic thing, kind of some of your philosophies and love the videos you're doing, the jams, the outdoor adventures. It's really awesome and it's inspiring. I'm listening to your music and I'm excited to kind of...

steal some inspiration and steal some of your ideas and repurpose them. To me that's my favorite thing I get out of music a lot of the time or at least one of them is that feeling that makes me want to make music too. So I'm very excited to find your work and learn more about what you do.

Lomotor (00:42.337)

you

Lomotor (00:56.043)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:01.483)

Thanks, are very kind words. I appreciate it. Yeah, with music, and that's a lot right there, music for me is, it's not worth doing if you're just copying something, which isn't to say that like, you can't learn from, you know, I listen to music analytically all the time. Well, how did they get that bass or how did they get that sound just to make myself better? But I always try to put.

something that feels true to myself and my soul into the music. Sometimes that means sampling from my world. I live out in the woods, a lot of that's sampling nature sounds and tweaking them in Ableton. But sometimes it might just mean something kind of just a little touch of something that's just a preset that I did myself. I would never want to just, you know, just kind of cut and paste from Splice or something.

call it my song. I mean people do that and that's from some of that sounds great. just for me it's it's more fun it's more fulfilling to do it to put more of yourself into the music.

Brian Funk (02:12.664)

Hmm. Yeah, I feel the same way. And something that comes up a lot on this podcast and just in now how I think about making music is the story behind it. Kind of like, like for instance, I could pull up on AmpliTube, right? Guitar amp simulator. I could probably get like a really awesome sound that's like a kind of exactly what I need because it has everything and they sound really good.

But if I decide to say, crank my amp and put a microphone in the bathroom or maybe in the washing machine that's hidden behind the curtain here, you know, to me that that's an interesting story. Like, Ooh, let's see what that's going to do. And how am I going to use this in the song? And I think it just makes for a better story for the listener than, yeah, I just pulled up a really cool preset on Amplitube or, even I designed my own preset on Amplitube.

Lomotor (02:49.633)

You

Lomotor (03:06.731)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (03:10.264)

But that kind of effort in the world of doing something kind of outrageous and to see what you get is very exciting. And it kind of shows you that you can, even if you're making stuff in a computer, in the box, or even if it's very electronic, you can really get creative with just your environment and the things around you.

Lomotor (03:31.499)

Yeah, definitely. And even if it's subtle, I think that that kind of thing is cumulative in tracks, right? So somebody might, nobody's ever going to hear like, that guitar was recorded, mic'd from a laundry, from a washing machine, right? But, it might sound, you know, maybe to a, right. But it sounds, yeah.

Brian Funk (03:44.376)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (03:47.8)

except as an insult maybe.

Sounds like you recorded it in a washing machine.

Lomotor (03:56.033)

Yeah, but it's not going to sound like Van Halen or something. If you want that perfect Van Halen tone, then you can dial up Amplitube and there you go. It gives your music something unique.

Yeah, more interesting, right? Even if it's just subtle like that. People can tell, your ear will know there's a little something that's different about this. That's not just a preset.

Brian Funk (04:20.875)

Yeah, I think it was a good word, cumulative, you just used that. It adds up these little decisions that you do along the way. They, they might not be very noticeable and sometimes it's not even a fader or a track that can account for it, but it comes through. It's an energy, something about when we record music, it picks up on your mood. picks up on if you're having fun or not. I don't know.

Again, you can't quantify these things, but it comes across in the listening.

Lomotor (04:55.839)

Yeah, I agree.

Brian Funk (04:59.147)

I think maybe I'll just mention this now to kind of put ourselves on the hook, but we said right before we started recording, we'd put together some kind of sample pack or drum rack with some of your sounds and they all try to work some Ableton stuff, tricks in there to kind of do some sort of collaboration, but that'll be something people can download for free and use in their own music and kind of spread it out and maybe inspire some people.

Lomotor (05:23.563)

Yeah.

Go to to town use some use some some trees and logs and leaves and make something something fun

Brian Funk (05:32.555)

Yeah. Link in the show notes.

so yeah, like, can you maybe tell me a little bit about, so you seem to be in like a rural area in, I think you said in Massachusetts, right? how that you, you definitely incorporate that all people need to do is go on your YouTube or your Instagram and just watch what you're doing. You're outside half the time, your dogs are running around and you've got your push standalone out there. it's a really cool way that you're pulling nature in and, man, maybe just tell us a little bit about the.

Lomotor (05:48.895)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (06:09.185)

the world you exist in.

Lomotor (06:11.713)

Yeah, so I live in Boxford, Massachusetts, which is north of Boston. And it's a rural town. I mean, seems from some of the videos I make, I should say they're a little edited. It looks like I'm sometimes in the wilderness in northern Maine or something. And there are some wonderful isolated places near me that I love, but I'm not living in a cabin without any power.

Brian Funk (06:29.132)

You

Lomotor (06:39.777)

in the woods, but it is very wooded. I moved here in 2011, built this basement studio, was kind of the first thing that I did. And then we have a barn and small farms and some mini horse, a horse, goats. And so that's, I grew up in the woods too, in the Hudson Valley area. It's just always been part of my existence.

I think it's helped me find an identity as a musician. For a long time I was kind of copying other people and I play guitar for a long time in a band, kind of like what you've talked about, Brian, and that's always fun. This is kind of a whole side of my life and personality that I've been more incorporating into the music.

Lomotor (07:34.017)

Yeah, to make it, it's a well that I can pull a lot from. And part of that is being in nature. Even if I, so I'll bring my push. Push standalone was kind of a game changer for me too. I've been waiting forever. Even when push two came out, like, it's not, you still have to plug it in somewhere. But finally with the battery, I was very excited when that came out. I would go out and record samples and then come back and.

Brian Funk (07:53.164)

Hmm.

Lomotor (08:03.809)

and the songs and stuff but now it's you can kind of do that all wall out in nature with the dogs running around and that's just that's just wonderful. Yeah and like you like you said before it's it means I can take very specific parts of my world and turn it into some of my music which I hope makes it sound different or unique or a little bit unlike something else you might hear.

Brian Funk (08:31.861)

Hmm. I think it does. And I say this a lot in my Berkeley class. I teach Berkeley's Ableton Live sampling class online. And I love that class because I think it's a really great way to build your own identity musically or sound because, you know, one of the exercises we do is just recording your day. Just go through your day, find noises that come up and then put some kind of composition to that. And

everybody's day is a little bit different. And even a lot of them only get through breakfast because they're in the kitchen and they're like, I've got, you know, two gigs of sounds now. Like I got to just make something. But even the breakfast routine of everyone is unique and the types of coffee machines they use or pans or pots and bowls and the room they're in, the acoustics, everything comes out a little bit different with their own mark on it and just

Even if it was the same person in the same room, how close do they put the microphone? It's going to make a little difference. So I love that route in trying to make music unique because you're forced to in that way. You're going to get something unique no matter what. Whereas if you go and you pull up presets and I do this too all the time, everyone does. You're getting the same preset as somebody else and, or same sample or something.

Lomotor (09:44.342)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (09:59.189)

Not to say you can't do unique stuff with that. And I think it's probably best to, you know, do some sort of combination of everything. But that's a real sure-fire way to be like, nobody has the sound of this, this tree and this rock making this beat.

Lomotor (10:14.145)

That's right, is the only kick drum that's going to sound like this. This tree. Yeah.

Brian Funk (10:19.338)

Yeah, right. Yeah, it's a really, it's a cool approach.

Lomotor (10:26.143)

which I don't know if you want to talk about social media, because I kind of have a love-hate relationship with social media, but that was part of this driver with me. I should say, feel like it's, in one part, tearing the fabric of society apart. On the other hand, I want my music to be heard by people, right? And for a long time.

Brian Funk (10:44.353)

Yes.

Brian Funk (10:48.577)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (10:50.465)

It just wasn't, you know, and so, I don't know, a couple years ago, I thought, well, I want to at least get it out in front of more ears. But I also want to be myself. Where's that intersection? So make a conscientious plan to post more of what I'm doing, but make it be true to myself still. So this path of filming more in nature and making music in nature was my compromise.

Brian Funk (11:05.132)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (11:20.267)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (11:20.417)

I kind of hate sometimes that I'll be out in a beautiful place and I think to myself like this would this will be a good content if I you know when I can't just you know back on this Yeah, so I'll try to separate the two you know I'll have a plan a day like I'm gonna go film and it's only if it's a filming day and then I'll have another day of Just going out without anything and just to enjoy it know feed the soul that way

Brian Funk (11:29.067)

Yeah.

Just take it in, soak it in.

Brian Funk (11:48.842)

Hmm.

Lomotor (11:50.921)

I do have a few of my special places in the woods that are sacred. I'm not going to film there. Those are just my secret spots.

Brian Funk (11:56.477)

really? That's cool. Yeah. So, you know, that's a smart thing because then when you go there, that part of you just sort of turns off and you don't have to even wonder if you should be doing it or not. Just, no, we don't do that here. This is different.

Lomotor (12:12.724)

Exactly, yeah.

Brian Funk (12:15.52)

Well, yeah, it's a weird time, right? Because we have this amazing power to reach everybody. Pretty much everybody. You know, going back to like the first albums I ever released with bands, like you had to physically find a person and put it in their hands and hope they put that inside their music player and turned it on and all of that stuff. Luckily, at least I guess back then, not as many people were handing out.

Lomotor (12:37.345)

You

Brian Funk (12:44.214)

tapes and CDs, so it was a little bit special, but we...

Lomotor (12:49.695)

I remember going to Newbury Comics with a CD, you know, with like my box of CDs and just handed them to the guy, the guy who worked there, like, hey, can you stock, you know, my CDs, just literally in person, you know, here. And I was so excited when they were in the racks there. I'd go back now and then and check. it's still there.

Brian Funk (12:53.312)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (13:07.148)

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I guess we didn't sell any. Yeah, we did that with like the local record stores when we had them. And we'd go in and they often had like a local band section or something and they put them in and we'd like tell our fans you could buy it at, know, Looney Tunes, which is a local place around here. yeah, real deal. like people go in, I saw it there. And then we'd go back and we'd see it there.

Lomotor (13:16.011)

Yeah, great.

Lomotor (13:25.395)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, we're real now.

Lomotor (13:35.489)

Nobody bought it, but was there.

Brian Funk (13:37.121)

I think like one or two times they said, we sold your CDs. And we're like, what? You sold all four of them? It's amazing. We need more. Yeah. But I have a weird nostalgia for those times, but I mean, there is really something incredible about what we can do now with putting stuff out. So it is smart to take advantage of it. I guess you got to watch out for the numbers a little.

Lomotor (13:42.005)

Yeah, it's a big day.

Brian Funk (14:07.562)

You know, if you put something out and then all of sudden that thing gets a lot of hits that can kind of color your next project. I guess I'm going to make something more like that again. And I, I've found that every once in a while, something like that happens. I'm like, that's what they want. But inevitably it's like, well, I don't really want to keep doing only that. But I think as you, the more you do it, you start building this larger body of work and.

Lomotor (14:17.355)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (14:31.115)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (14:37.96)

I've found with a lot of artists I really like and even content creators, which are artists obviously too, the ones I get into the most are more, they become the person behind it and less so even the work. It's like just interesting what they do. I don't need you to do that one thing that pulled me in at first. I just kind of like what you do.

Lomotor (15:01.601)

I think that's why bands, people come along for the ride for bands like Radiohead or bands that have really changed or had an arc in their career, right? People are there for it.

Brian Funk (15:08.524)

Hmm.

Sure.

Yeah, we're just going to check them out. They're going to do something interesting. And, you know, we probably all have our favorite Radiohead moments and phases, but when they come out with new stuff, it's always like, huh, now what? And it's kind of fun that you get challenged a little too. Like, hey, we didn't do OK Computer again. Or somewhere else. Check it out.

Lomotor (15:18.271)

Red.

Lomotor (15:28.967)

yeah. Anyway. Right.

Right.

And it took people, a lot of people like years, right, to sort of come around to KID-A and that whole electronic, right. They lost a lot of people and then kind of regained them over time. So.

Brian Funk (15:45.996)

Hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (15:52.012)

Yeah, that was a huge album for me, Kid A. I loved OK Computer too. Kid A actually, I think, got me more into Radiohead than I ever was. I always liked them, but when I heard that record, I was like, oh man, this is crazy. And then went back and got deeper and deeper. I think maybe OK Computer is my favorite one now. But Kid A was, when I came out,

Lomotor (16:15.925)

there.

Brian Funk (16:19.487)

like what am I even listening to like I've never heard anything like this before really like

Lomotor (16:24.481)

I was one of those people who was like, this isn't okay computer, what is this? I hear like clarinets. And I didn't listen, I was like, I'm not gonna listen to that. then, yeah, I was one of those people who years later was like, oh, this is great. Now, Kitty is my favorite. Took a while to expand my musical mind.

Brian Funk (16:28.319)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (16:38.537)

Hmm. Hmm.

Brian Funk (16:44.361)

Yeah, that's nice when that happens. That's good art. It should be a little bit of a challenge sometimes. A little push. Yeah, see what you can do with this. Can you take this? It's like Marty McFly in Back to the Future. You guys aren't ready for this, but your kids are gonna love it.

Lomotor (16:49.281)

A little push. Yeah.

Lomotor (16:55.851)

Do you?

When you run into that where you think to yourself like, maybe I just need to make more of this thing that people seem to like, do you try, do you do that? And if so, do you kind of set parameters to still make whatever you're making, you know, feel real and honoring yourself?

Brian Funk (17:27.145)

Yeah, I think over time, a lot of the most successful stuff is more in line with what I want to be doing anyway. Luckily, it kind of works out that way. Yeah, there's definitely been a few things when I look back, I can see like, yeah, I see what I was trying to do there. was trying to like catch people or

Lomotor (17:51.521)

You

Brian Funk (17:54.313)

maybe even a little click-baity at points.

But I've never enjoyed that enough to want to keep doing it. know, I really, once I start looking at the numbers and stats, just, I don't even know how to make any sense of it. And there's just not enough time to care about it too, for me. And I guess, you know, having a day job gives me that luxury where I don't have to really, I don't have to worry about it too much.

Lomotor (18:04.395)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (18:30.281)

You know, if I'm numbers go down on YouTube and I don't make any money off YouTube anyway, but you know, the, the ad sensor, the whatever thing they send you every once in a while when you cross the threshold, it's not really a noticeable dent in what I, so, I try not to really worry about it too much. Once in a while I'll, I'll look and see what was working, but

Lomotor (18:36.417)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (19:00.211)

I don't know. I don't know how to do it, really.

Lomotor (19:00.597)

Yeah.

Lomotor (19:06.529)

Yeah, me neither. I think you kind of have to fully commit to being that kind of artist if you're going to do that. I think you just have to be like, I'm going to be an internet artist and just follow all these trends and learn all that part of it, the metrics. I think it's rare when someone's...

Brian Funk (19:07.787)

I'm not interested enough, I guess.

Brian Funk (19:24.81)

Hmm.

Lomotor (19:33.409)

kind of just doing it with a day job, sort of half. Maybe I'm wrong, you know, I think you can, if you wanted that internet popularity, you kind of, have to fully, I think, do it and pay attention to it. And I don't know if you know what I'm saying.

Brian Funk (19:50.934)

people become, they get expectations too. I mean, this happens to me. I'll see something from somebody on YouTube or something. I love that. And then I look at the other stuff and it's not really that. Or the next thing that comes out isn't what I thought it was going to be. it's like, Hey, you were the one that was talking about like philosophy of creativity and now you're just reviewing a piece of gear. But then there's other people that I know that

Lomotor (20:04.289)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (20:20.159)

they do a great job reviewing the gear and then they come out with something else. I'm like, but I just wanted to know how it worked. So I guess it's, know I'm, this is a long game thing for me. It's already been a pretty long game. I don't see any signs of stopping or desires to want to stop making art and music and sharing it. So, yeah, just, just doing it.

Lomotor (20:25.609)

I know, yeah.

Brian Funk (20:48.703)

just going for it and having fun. If I'm having a good time, think people, someone out there might enjoy it too.

Lomotor (20:48.961)

Yeah.

Lomotor (20:56.577)

I think that comes through. Same for the podcast. I listen to your podcast, you always sound truly interested in it. It's clear you like doing this. I think that comes through. Same in music.

Brian Funk (21:08.683)

Yeah, I really do. It's very interesting. I here I'm talking to you right now, right? Like picking your brain about what you're doing, about music I'm inspired by. So, I mean, that's really exciting. And it's a great excuse to just to talk to people, right? Just to connect. mean, it'd be kind of weird if I listened to your hours like, Hey, Josh, can I call you and just talk? You know, right? For no reason that you'd be like, what? Who's this guy?

Lomotor (21:26.209)

Yeah.

Lomotor (21:34.581)

Hehehehehe

Brian Funk (21:38.917)

but you know, in this context, it sort of gives it a reason to exist. so yeah, I mean, it's just fun. and without having to really worry about funding it and sponsors once in a while, if some sponsor comes along that I like, and I'm into their stuff, I'm happy to do that. And if I can,

Lomotor (22:02.197)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (22:04.68)

I try to even now make it a little more of a fun project than just like, ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you about a new product. And so that becomes like, now I'm still being creative with it. But yeah, don't, there's other things that come through that I see it. I'm like, I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to put that out. And yeah, it might be the hot topic of the day, but yeah, that's not really what I'm interested in. It's nice to have that, that freedom.

Lomotor (22:15.563)

Yeah.

Lomotor (22:28.161)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (22:34.068)

Definitely.

Lomotor (22:38.431)

you have dreams of being a professional musician? Did you think you were going to be a rock star at some point?

Brian Funk (22:45.322)

Yeah, I thought I wanted that. That was like, you know, probably from the minute you pick up a guitar, right? You're like, yes. But I mean, I love playing in bands and still do and like playing shows a lot and do occasionally. I think I really learned this though, in setting up some tours, like little two week deals down the East coast where we'd play probably like

Lomotor (22:52.206)

Hahahaha!

Brian Funk (23:12.314)

seven to ten of those nights and then, you know, drive to the next show in a car. And we had a great time. It was the guys hanging out and playing music. But by the end of that, I was like, okay, you know, it's time to go home. I want to go home. I want to eat a regular meal and not just like junk that we're picking up on the road. And I want to sleep in a bed. And I had a cat. I want to see my cat, you know, I to have a relationship. All these things like

Lomotor (23:17.291)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (23:27.617)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (23:41.119)

I guess you don't realize that when you picture yourself on the big stage, you know, hitting your cord, you know, in front of a screaming audience, you see that, but you don't see like all the other stuff that goes into it. So much more than that. yeah, I'm a home body kind of guy too. I like, I like being home and I just, I liked it, but not enough to want to do it 50 weeks of the year.

Lomotor (23:56.757)

Right.

Lomotor (24:09.887)

Yeah. It seems... Yeah. It seems like a hard life.

Brian Funk (24:10.922)

That became clear to me.

Brian Funk (24:16.912)

I think it is. I mean, people love it. You have to love it, I think, to do it, really. Sometimes you just got to do things to realize whether you like it or not. Even playing guitar for me was that. I didn't know I was going to like playing guitar. I didn't know I was going to like doing this even. I didn't know I was going to like being an English teacher. But sometimes you just got to be in it to really understand what

Lomotor (24:23.83)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (24:46.65)

else is around it and then things clear up a little bit. So yeah, I'm pretty happy with how things worked out musically and I'm glad I don't have to be going on the road because I just enjoy it to a point. But the point to which I stop enjoying it is so much less than what's required.

Lomotor (24:51.413)

Yeah.

Lomotor (25:12.309)

Yeah. You've talked about it, I think, in the past, but I wonder too, like if your life was totally different, you know, if I had no other obligations, not a day job or anything, would you really, would I be doing music as much as in my head I would be, you know, with all that extra time really mean and be making more songs and I, you know, it's hard to, it's hard to know, right? You don't know that's an alternate life.

But my guess is a lot of the time you'd waste some of that time. You'd say, I have all this time I can watch more TV or whatever.

Brian Funk (25:46.153)

Yeah. Well, I get summer vacations, so I do get a little taste of that. And I waste a lot of that time. really do. I try to be productive and I try to do something, but I'm not as productive as I think I'm going to be.

Lomotor (25:52.257)

Yeah, you get a real test every summer.

Lomotor (26:03.201)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (26:03.274)

I don't make four albums every summer. Like in my head I have the plan. You know, come June I'm like, yeah, I'm ready. I'm going to by the end of June I'll have the first two out. It's like, no, you'll have just sat out in the sun because it's nice out. And then you went to the beach and you know, those kinds of things. The pressure of the time constraint when I'm at work makes me more productive.

Lomotor (26:06.229)

Right.

Lomotor (26:13.429)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lomotor (26:18.059)

Bread.

Lomotor (26:22.453)

Yeah, I think I work better.

Lomotor (26:27.489)

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I think I work better if I know I have a, like, say a half-day window, right? If I know I can... I always wake up super early myself just because I like that quiet, dark, alone time. But I know I have that, let's say, on a weekend morning. I have that from 5 a.m. until maybe 11 or noon, depending on other obligations.

he can schedule out that time. One of the things I always try to do is plan the night before what I'm going to do so that I can...

not sit there and just start opening old song ideas and spend an hour and a half just scrolling through live projects that you're never going to finish and doing maybe an instrument or a little tweak for each one and then move on to the next. You can go down that vortex and get lost forever. So I'll plan the night before. Tomorrow I'm going to do...

Brian Funk (27:12.434)

Right.

Lomotor (27:21.781)

this step and find the baseline for that track and finish it or something like that so that then when I wake up I quickly drink my espressos and start doing that right away and you have a structure. And then like you said with the limitations then like if got this time I've got to do it.

Brian Funk (27:41.514)

Hmm.

Lomotor (27:41.589)

do it. Don't look at your phone. Don't avoid distractions for that window. And if you know you only have that little window, it's easier to avoid distractions, right? If you have days, you kind of just get lost in that.

Brian Funk (27:54.314)

Yeah, I could do it later. Well, you know what? Let's go for a walk. Let's have a snack. Let's watch this video. Let's learn something. Learning is my killer, my secret way that procrastination gets me all the time. Like, I'll learn how to use this device, or I'll watch things I already know and just how are they using it? How are they using a saturator in life?

Lomotor (28:00.299)

Yeah.

Lomotor (28:05.749)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (28:21.771)

I have a rule for that for myself where I will only learn from YouTube if I have my music computer open next to it. So I'll be watching the video but actually doing it myself instead of being passive about it. I mean sometimes I'll just watch that stuff while I'm doing the dishes or whatever but I won't.

Brian Funk (28:35.059)

Yeah, smart.

Brian Funk (28:41.841)

Yeah.

Lomotor (28:43.981)

sit and just kind of watch stuff if I should, could be doing, actually doing music. Like at that point, open the, turn on the music computer and you know, do it. Follow along. In that way at least maybe you'll have something at the end of it that you can use to make a song.

Brian Funk (29:00.541)

Yeah, I think that's our big challenge these days is all these distractions, all these other things we can do, infinite choices. I give people, young people especially, that start into music or any kind of hobby these days, I give them a lot of credit because part of how I got into playing guitar was boredom.

I just, I now have anything else to do. I already played the video game that I have to death and you know, it wasn't like I had access to every other video game that ever existed like we do now too. But I always kind of wonder to myself like, would I have stuck through those hard times? Would I have dealt with my fingers hurting and...

Lomotor (29:23.627)

Yeah.

Lomotor (29:40.278)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (29:45.106)

not figuring out the chord and not being able to turn to YouTube to get the answer on how that Nirvana song went. All these things that you can do now. I don't know if I would have survived. I might've just went on Instagram or started watching something else, playing a game.

Lomotor (30:05.185)

It's so easy to do something else now. Yeah. I wonder too. I wonder if will be less creative or something because of that. It's just so easy to be entertained now by everything. I know, I feel like we sound like grumpy old men talking about this, it does seem like it's very different, right? Like you said, when you were kids, like you're very limited and you know, we had four VHS movies. So.

Brian Funk (30:26.408)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (30:32.327)

Yeah.

Lomotor (30:32.961)

I watched Hooper with Burt Reynolds a hundred times because that was one of them.

Brian Funk (30:35.977)

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I see it in my students. Like I don't see as much creativity as I used to. And when I do, I'm like thrilled. Like, good. Yes. you paint. Awesome. You draw. Yay. Thank. Good. You need those things in your life. But yeah, I don't know. I look.

Lomotor (30:49.973)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (30:58.058)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (31:01.671)

I'm trying to look at it like with empathy to realize like I'm the same as them. I'm, we're humans. We're all the same exact DNA. We're not more or less evolved. You throw us a baby born today into, you know, the year 12 and no one would know the difference. Right. So I, I would, I try to remember, I'd probably be exactly like them. And yeah, I don't know if I would have overcome that. Not sure.

Lomotor (31:19.169)

Mm-mm. Right.

Lomotor (31:31.265)

probably would have played less guitar.

Brian Funk (31:34.739)

Yeah, it might have been like, this is hard. But I'm to play this game I found on my phone.

Lomotor (31:37.749)

Yeah.

Lomotor (31:44.041)

Right. Yeah, I think I would have been the same way. I think it's very rare to be that driven, especially as a child. You can block out distractions. And nowadays it's just so easy. It's all on your phone, right? It's all right there.

Brian Funk (31:48.051)

there.

Brian Funk (31:57.638)

I hope AI will fix that for us in the way AI is polluting social media and YouTube and there's just so much content. It'd be like, I don't even want to look at this. I mean, I get that a lot. I can't even look at Facebook anymore because everything is...

Lomotor (32:02.113)

Yeah.

Lomotor (32:08.393)

I mean it'll make it so bad.

Uh-huh.

Lomotor (32:16.651)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (32:18.057)

every video is AI and half of them are people that think they're real and it's just like there's no point in being here anymore. So that's good. I like that. But maybe like, to get back to like your music, I think this might be a drive to go out and do something real.

Lomotor (32:26.838)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (32:45.831)

record like the sounds around you walk in the snow and turn that into music and bang on this log and get your hands on things. I hope that happens a lot. I think it's part of, I mean, I've always been drawn to this, but I think I'm more so interested in it now because the, it's so much more of a statement now, I guess, right? Some of my early recordings where I was

Lomotor (32:59.988)

Absolutely.

Lomotor (33:11.083)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (33:14.845)

banging on garbage cans to make percussion was because I didn't have percussion. So I didn't have a set of congas and all this stuff to play around with. Now when you do it, you're doing it knowing like, I could just get that loop off Splice. I have a preset inside of Logic or Ableton, but I'm deciding to go against that and go through the effort of this. it's...

It feels more deliberate and more of an artistic stance. And I like that.

Lomotor (33:45.323)

Yeah.

Lomotor (33:49.665)

Yeah, I think you're right. It's every, I don't know what you call, AI and social media, every big social entity like that has a backlash or it's opposite. And there's some people I think who are gonna always, I don't know, people might love all those AI videos. But right, I think there's...

Art is sometimes reacting to what's happening in society as a response, as a push back against stuff like that. That's certainly the way I think about it.

say like to go out into the woods and do something different try to make it real. I've messed around with AI videos and there's still up on my Instagram a couple of them. I kind of try to make it obvious that it was AI but I still would get comments like, does it just slop? So I've stopped I just thought well yeah yeah and maybe I'm stealing from you know all the artists that that AI company swept you know through.

Brian Funk (34:47.497)

Yeah.

Lomotor (35:00.809)

every artist in the history of humanity. Maybe I'm stealing from them a little bit by making this video of people dancing in a field. But I also realized like people, some of those videos didn't, they got negativity and didn't seem that interesting to people. You know, sort of less likes. I think people are instinctually interested more in something that's real and human.

Brian Funk (35:04.265)

Alright.

Lomotor (35:26.721)

And maybe AI will get to the point where we can't tell the difference, which is kind of a terrifying thought. Yeah. But I still think it'll be a while before, like, it will be so good at replicating humans that people won't be able to tell. You know, I think we'll always have that, whatever, imperfections that make us human.

Brian Funk (35:34.141)

Yeah, seems to be.

Brian Funk (35:47.689)

Hmm.

Lomotor (35:55.851)

Partly why in my music I'll try to not be too precious about it. Especially with electronic music, it's really easy to put everything on the grid. And a lot of times I'll put a kick on the grid and keep it there. Have something that's very regular, but then maybe play some percussion, some leads or something myself.

which not going to be... I'm not a good percussionist. I'm not a good leaf player. So it's not going to be on the beat or anything.

Brian Funk (36:25.328)

You're not a good leaf player. I bet you're one of the more capable ones out there actually. You're probably more experienced than most.

Lomotor (36:37.849)

But then people will hear that, even if it's subconscious, they'll... Something will tick. Yeah, it's interesting. Maybe more interesting than something that's totally AI produced.

Brian Funk (36:51.26)

Hmm. Yeah, I have, through this app I use for the podcast, Riverside, they do some kind of AI where it'll, it'll make clips for you. It'll kind of figure out what the good trending clips will be, which is funny sometimes how it figures that out, but it has an AI B roll thing that you can have it automatically insert it. So we might be talking about like recording and, you know, how it's like,

Lomotor (37:07.039)

Yeah. Huh.

Brian Funk (37:21.244)

this magical thing and then like a magician will pop up. It doesn't always understand the context or the metaphors you're making. And I was having fun with that, like how it would sort of mischaracterize it.

Lomotor (37:24.417)

That's funny. Yeah.

Lomotor (37:34.304)

Red.

Lomotor (37:37.995)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (37:39.559)

Like, yeah, this song is like a stew of all different things. It's just like a chef. Like, yes, and the chef has like seven fingers and, you know, the dog with like, that's floating in the sky kind of in the background. So these like artifacts would come up and I found those amusing. But I did see comments like, this is obviously AI. Look at the way that spatula is and why is he even there? But.

Lomotor (37:44.289)

You

Lomotor (37:47.905)

Thank

Lomotor (38:02.305)

you

Lomotor (38:06.785)

That's one thing about the internet, Like it doesn't matter how obvious you're trying to make it seem that you are aware that you're making fun of this thing, people are gonna take it seriously, right? Like there's always gonna be somebody who's pointing out the thing that's very obvious.

Brian Funk (38:15.997)

Yeah.

It's not as bad as it used to be either. It just sort of disappoints me. It's way better at it now. When they first came out with it, it was funny. The bass guitar would just suddenly disappear into a microphone. It didn't make any sense. But now it's so much better at it that you almost can't even...

Lomotor (38:26.325)

the air.

Lomotor (38:32.499)

You

Brian Funk (38:38.566)

You know, it's like I'm longing for the lower quality, almost like I'm longing for like a cassette tape for track sound. I kind of wish, but it didn't last long enough. It wasn't garbagey. Yeah. Right. miss those. Yeah. I'm going to ask you a kind of specific question about when you go out and you're doing your, your sampling and then you're working with push.

Lomotor (38:45.055)

Yeah.

Lomotor (38:49.269)

Yeah, that was only like six months. It's already moving on.

Brian Funk (39:07.944)

How do you record those samples? Are you using the inputs on push, the mic inputs, the line inputs? Are you using a different sampler? What's that look like?

Lomotor (39:14.635)

Mm-hmm.

It's just a microphone or my phone.

put that in later but yeah just a microphone SM57 that I plug directly in.

Brian Funk (39:31.324)

Plugged right in. Nice.

Lomotor (39:33.565)

simple try to keep everything portable so that it can fit in a backpack.

Brian Funk (39:37.767)

Yeah.

Right. had, um, I'd found, I had an SM57 I was plugging in and I was getting some weird interference with push when I was doing it. So, um, I kind of abandoned that, but I just got this new, um, it's like an audio interface actually, but it connects right to the mic and it's only about two or three inches long.

Lomotor (39:49.366)

Yeah.

Huh.

Brian Funk (40:06.6)

and then you plug the cord into it. It's actually a USB-C cord, so it goes in like that. And that works great because it picks it up like an interface and then no interference. And it's so portable, too. It's only adding like, just makes the SM57 a little bit longer.

Lomotor (40:11.393)

Yeah.

Lomotor (40:18.145)

Hmm.

Lomotor (40:24.261)

Yeah. Do you get wind issues or anything? Or can I clean it up too? Or do have a...

Brian Funk (40:31.342)

No, it's the same wind is always, cause that's just hitting the mic. just picks it up cleaner or something. But yeah, it's kind of got to worry about, I haven't taken it outside yet though. I've, but it's, it's the same reaction. It feels like a mic normally does.

Lomotor (40:33.92)

Yeah.

Lomotor (40:45.473)

Lomotor (40:49.771)

Yeah. Sometimes I'll just, I most of my samples I'll just record on my phone and I'll put that to the side and just hit record on voice notes to get the ambience, right? And then sometimes it'll just do, start playing instruments and push.

Brian Funk (41:01.895)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (41:09.909)

and then put that ambience in. I'm hearing it even though I have headphones on. I'm still experiencing being in nature, but I'm also recording that separately. I can put that in later on. It's rare though where I'll... Usually at that point I'll try to chop up... I'll try to always do something to a nature sample. It's rare where it's just like a...

Brian Funk (41:24.454)

that's cool.

Lomotor (41:36.161)

just the birds in background kind of going without editing or something. So a lot of times I'll chop it up into a rhythm or I'll, what is it? Is it the shaper tool, the audio shaper? If you, sometimes you run a drum beat on a track and silence it, mute that track, but have the beats trigger the sounds that are in the sample, right? So it might be some birds and stuff, but it's only, it's hitting on the, on the.

Brian Funk (42:00.871)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (42:05.973)

drum beats only.

Brian Funk (42:07.628)

Do you do that with like a gate or an envelope follower or something like that? Yeah.

Lomotor (42:11.009)

Yeah, so an envelope follower, right. So usually the auto filter, sometimes the gate, but like the auto filter is just a little smoother.

Brian Funk (42:19.473)

Mm-hmm.

That's cool.

Lomotor (42:23.263)

Yeah, it's fun. And other times it'll just be a couple of auto filters, right, or a few gates. now with the newer, it was a 12, flat 12. I love the LFO settings. There's so many options, right, where you can do, I think it's the glide.

too long if you just use the wander, right? So, right, so if you get a couple of those in a sequence triggering multiple auto filters or multiple gates or mix and match or sometimes like a reverb, like if it's triggering a reverb real wet but just for moment, you get all sorts of interesting sounds.

Brian Funk (42:41.895)

Yeah, wander and glide. Yeah.

Brian Funk (42:51.751)

Hmm.

Lomotor (43:04.341)

And then almost always I'll take that and at least try to see what it sounds like reversed. I feel like I reverse everything just to see how does this work. Sometimes it's great.

Brian Funk (43:04.711)

Right.

Brian Funk (43:14.309)

Yeah, the verse is so cool. And I appreciate it because the first time I ever did reverse sounds was on four tracks and flipping the tape over and you know, all which didn't seem like much of a hassle at the time because wow, we could do that. But now that you can just, you know, highlight it and hit R, then it just reverses it. I love it. So are you transferring the

Lomotor (43:34.017)

You are, Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (43:42.541)

the stuff from your voice memos to push through Ableton Live or do you plug it maybe into like the USB or the inputs or something, un-push to sample it?

Lomotor (43:53.153)

So from my, usually I'll do that in back here in my studio. So, so I'll, if I, if I come up with a track I like in the push, save it, get back to the studio, put it in my computer.

Brian Funk (43:59.24)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (44:10.857)

and then I will sample, then I'll take my phone and record that just through my interface back into, so I have that recording in live. I don't know if there's a faster way to import from live, from voice notes, that's just the way I do it.

Brian Funk (44:28.289)

I'm trying to think if I haven't tried it, sampling directly from the phone into push, but I guess if you had a cable that went into the inputs or maybe even the USB, see, or regular USB, you might be able to do that. I gotta give that a shot.

Lomotor (44:31.521)

Yeah.

Lomotor (44:40.735)

Yes.

Lomotor (44:49.473)

could, right? You just need a converter, right?

Brian Funk (44:57.765)

be out there doing it. But I think it's cool that you use your phone a lot. I've been telling people more and more like, yo, your phone is a great field recorder. I used to say it in my Berkeley class as like, hey, the phone has a lousy mic. It's not great, but at least you have a mic and you can record it. And sometimes that lousy sound has character and it works. But now like,

Lomotor (45:06.966)

Yeah.

Lomotor (45:14.987)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (45:19.659)

Man, the iPhone mics these days are so good. I just watched a video of a guy, I think he's Sugar Pill Productions on YouTube. I double checked that. He's like a songwriting, indie guitar rock guy I like a lot. But he had a Neumann and an iPhone next to each other and he was side by side and switching between them while he was singing the song. And like, I didn't...

Lomotor (45:45.057)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (45:47.695)

I couldn't tell. I didn't know what was what. I admit, in the context of the song, they both sounded good.

Lomotor (45:48.949)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lomotor (45:57.25)

People can be so precious about that kind of stuff. At least for me, I mess with the sound so much anyway. The source doesn't have to be pristine. Most of the time I'm cutting out all the low end anyway just to get rid of wind sounds. I do think...

Brian Funk (46:05.179)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (46:10.375)

Right.

Brian Funk (46:14.311)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (46:17.217)

Yeah, so I agree. think the iPhone is all you need, really. The only time I've noticed where it's not as good as like a Zoom, I have a Zoom hand-held recorder that I'll use sometimes for bassier sounds. So if it's low end that you're trying to capture, I still use something a little bit better than the iPhone. But otherwise, leads, sticks, yeah, I use the iPhone.

Brian Funk (46:29.232)

Okay.

Brian Funk (46:40.879)

Like, so like if you're doing a kick drum from a log or an old tree, you get the zoom. Yeah. I, I, I don't remember if you told that to me or, or I saw it in a video talking about like,

Lomotor (46:44.767)

Right, right, that's a little more high fidelity with the zoom.

Brian Funk (46:56.295)

Stumps and logs are good kick drums, but we had a tree fall down in my backyard during the blizzard the blizzard of 26, you know, and It's still sitting there and I saw that I was like, oh my god, what's wrong with me? I've got the whole like orchestra laying in my ground I was just mostly bummed because I had a bat box on that tree and It got totally smashed. I never got bats in it, but I was

Lomotor (47:05.025)

You

Lomotor (47:10.465)

Yeah.

Lomotor (47:20.34)

of

Brian Funk (47:24.953)

really excited to get bats to eat the mosquitoes and stuff.

Lomotor (47:28.745)

What? Yeah, I wonder how many bats really go into bat box. I've never seen a bat in a bat box. We had one up for years. Yeah. No.

Brian Funk (47:34.183)

Yeah, it never went in. They have them in some of the parks in the wooded areas around here and I think they do. Yeah, I don't know. I just thought it'd be great. We have some bats you'll see at dusk in the summer. So was like, hey guys, why don't you just live here? But I'll have to turn that into some kind of orchestra. So start recording it.

Lomotor (47:40.065)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lomotor (47:49.046)

Yeah.

Lomotor (47:52.481)

Yeah, that's the same with me.

Lomotor (47:59.628)

Yeah, It's the... You'd be interested to... You know, they're very different tones depending on the age of the old log too. Sometimes if they're wet too, like if it's been raining, you'd find like a good, crumbly, old, old big tree that's like kind of falling apart but still got some body and hit that with another big log. It's a good, good kick drum sound.

Brian Funk (48:08.634)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (48:25.968)

That's awesome.

Lomotor (48:26.401)

And then the newer ones are a little more resonant, right? Like you're gonna get a higher kind of sound that's not as kick drum-y. Right, yeah. I'll pitch down. I mean, a lot of times I'll do that and then pitch down the samples if you wanna get something lower. Add some saturation, pitch it down.

Brian Funk (48:31.908)

Yeah, makes sense. Unless you're Tom's or something. Yeah.

Brian Funk (48:47.748)

Yeah, I like that. That's cool. Yeah, I'm going to make use of that tree. It doesn't feel like a loss. It's kind of the beautiful thing too when you record something or sample something. Like you are sort of taking a sonic photograph of it and making it last. I mean, I always get a big kick out of some of the packs I make and they go around and make it into people's music.

Lomotor (48:53.345)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:17.156)

The one that really made me understand it was the piano I have in my house. It's, it's over a hundred years old. got it from the salvation army. I don't know, probably 20 years ago now. And, when I first got it, was like, man, this piano, look at it. It's had a life. Somebody played this thing. You just tell like the way the keys are worn and it's like, what?

Lomotor (49:30.113)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (49:42.011)

does this piano know? What did it do? And now after sampling it and putting it out there, it's like, then, and it goes on, you know, the story continues. And every once in a while, someone will send me something they made. It's got the piano and I'm just like, wow, how cool is it? Whoever put that piano together, like if they'd only known. Yeah, it's really cool how you can give something life like that. Like,

Lomotor (49:44.929)

Yeah.

Lomotor (49:50.433)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (49:57.429)

Yeah.

Lomotor (50:02.529)

It's extended life, yeah.

Brian Funk (50:09.882)

like an old dead tree. It's going to eventually fertilize the ground, but now it's taking on this whole other direction. That's really cool.

Lomotor (50:18.269)

hope.

Lomotor (50:22.699)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (50:25.124)

I've been very interested in kind of off beat microphones lately. Cause I did make a pretty substantial mic purchase last year. I got a warm audio. She's, I don't even remember. It was like a telefunken kind of remodel. I love it. It's tube. It sounds amazing. It's definitely like the nicest mic I have.

Lomotor (50:44.481)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (50:53.131)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (50:53.254)

And I've got a couple others that are pretty nice, you know, C414. But I feel like I got that covered now. like, sound good enough. So now, like, all these little oddball things. Let me grab one real quick. just want to show you. This one.

Lomotor (51:05.621)

Right.

Brian Funk (51:19.43)

is a soda can microphone. this guy, and I, it's from the seventies, I think it is, uh, 200 years. Oh, it's the, uh, it's the bicentennial. That's what that is, the bicentennial. So it's a, it's a 50 year old, uh, soda can now. Uh, yeah. So this guy, Darwin audio makes these and, um, you can get all kinds of stuff and it's, it sounds like a soda can. It sounds like inside a soda can. It's.

Lomotor (51:22.411)

How old is that soda can too? It looks like a vintage soda can. Yeah.

Lomotor (51:36.641)

That's awesome.

Lomotor (51:46.689)

you

Brian Funk (51:48.551)

Like when you hear it, you'll just know. Yeah. Just like a couple of guitar recordings playing around. made a little kind of like a promo for the podcast. I called it a dedication because speaking of the blizzard of 26, this, I ordered one and it got lost in the mail. It was supposed to be delivered that day. We got two feet of snow. It never came. went through the post office and they were like, somebody picked it up.

Lomotor (51:51.083)

Have you used it on any recordings?

Lomotor (52:15.819)

Huh.

Brian Funk (52:18.342)

And we didn't pick it up. So, yeah, something, it was marked as picked up that somebody came and got it, but the time was weird. It didn't make sense. But the best they were able to tell me is to see if I could get a refund. So I wrote him and I was like, I don't expect you to refund me, but maybe you have insurance or something. And he's like, look, I'll just send you new one. And he sent it to me. And so I made like a little kind of.

Lomotor (52:20.693)

I wonder if it was just buried in snow somewhere.

Brian Funk (52:47.338)

ad promo ad kind of thing form to put on the beginning of podcast, but I love it. It's like you, you want something like a little weird with character. that's great. And I just got this other one too. It's a

Lomotor (52:49.909)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (53:03.558)

It's a telephone mic. Trash Talk Audio, they make this. Turns out they're on Long Island too. Sounds great. It's really nicely built. I made one myself out of a telephone just by soldering a cable into it, which I don't know how to solder, but I was able to do those two soldering marks with the little wires. But they sound awesome. And they sound very different from each other too.

Lomotor (53:05.387)

I've seen those, yeah.

Lomotor (53:32.897)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (53:33.706)

teenage engineering has this one called Ting that, they've got this like little sampling. forget what it's called now. Like they called it like the knockout or something. I never used it, but it's like a little sampler. and, they did like this kind of like reggae inspired one. And it came with this microphone. It's like this little handhold thing that has built in effects and you got to squeeze the button, like on a CB radio or something.

Lomotor (53:47.009)

Yeah.

Lomotor (54:02.401)

That's five. Great.

Brian Funk (54:04.057)

Yeah, but it sounds awesome. It's, and it's low fidelity, but man, character galore. And it's like, don't even have to process these things because they're sort of pre-processed and they have a character and you just leave them alone. Maybe put a little delay or reverb and you're good to go.

Lomotor (54:12.693)

Yeah.

Lomotor (54:17.557)

Right. Yeah.

Lomotor (54:23.553)

Do play, do you sing as part of your band? Do you play live? Would you ever use any of those in a live show?

Brian Funk (54:26.906)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (54:31.557)

I've, I've been thinking about this telephone one. Um, I'm just wondering about feedback because it is in that kind of frequency range. I was using it, uh, the other night, kind of in my live performance setup, then I was just going through my monitors and it was feeding back a little bit compared to my other mic. But I could imagine a situation maybe where I have it.

Lomotor (54:35.254)

Yeah.

Lomotor (54:41.793)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (54:52.149)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (54:58.501)

like next to the regular mic and maybe like on a verse I sing into the telephone and then on the chorus go into the, it can be kind of fun. Or even with this one, you can sort of just hold it up to your head and be like singing like that. And maybe it's part of like the show of it, get on the phone, like playing guitar.

Lomotor (55:01.397)

Red.

huh. That'd be fun.

Lomotor (55:16.031)

Yeah, right. You need a song that's like a conversation now between people. can switch personas. Right. Does anybody else in the band sing? can sing to each other through the phones.

Brian Funk (55:23.213)

Yeah, yeah, we'll have to get another one. Background vocals coming in.

Yeah, yeah, we all do, right? That's a fun idea. But these things are, they got character, they got personality.

Lomotor (55:38.785)

And do you think?

Yeah, would you think you could achieve that a similar sound in Ableton?

Brian Funk (55:48.762)

Yes. Yeah. Pretty darn close. You know, and I've got, I've made racks for myself that are like telephone effects where it's the EQ. You're basically just taking out all the highs and lows. maybe a little compression and distortion a little, but yeah, you're probably like 97 % of the way there. but I tell you when you, when you like,

Lomotor (55:51.851)

Yeah.

Lomotor (56:01.398)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (56:17.315)

talking to these phones, I don't know if it's because, you know, growing up talking to people on the phone, it sounds, it has that intimacy of like you're listening to somebody, they're writing your ear and their mouth is that far from the speaker. And, you know, you're talking about life late at night. It's got that sound that I don't think is the same when you do it with effects.

Lomotor (56:27.871)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (56:38.528)

Yeah, yeah.

Lomotor (56:46.347)

Right.

Brian Funk (56:47.553)

And I don't know what that is exactly, but...

Lomotor (56:52.267)

think probably just holding it too might change your performance, right? Like just the interaction with the thing or with the soda can is, you know, it's different than using into a regular mic and then processing it and able to like you yourself might in that delivery might do something a little different.

Brian Funk (57:13.123)

Yeah, I was playing my push the other night and I had the phone like in my shoulder. Like, you how we used have to do that? Like when you were talking on the phone, you held it between your ear and your shoulder. But that was really fun. I was like, this is great. I'm singing. But after like five minutes, I was like, man, my neck. Yeah, I'm married, yeah.

Lomotor (57:17.761)

Did you ever you're married right? So does your wife ever come in I don't want to get too personal if you don't want to talk about but like does she ever come in with something like that? Yeah, like what's going on?

Brian Funk (57:38.102)

Like, what the hell are you doing? Yes, she does. She's pretty used to it though. She'll like, okay, why are you recording that? Now she's more like, you should record that. yeah, there have been a few times where she's like, what? The worst, most puzzling thing I ever did for her was just I was recording guitar feedback for our...

Lomotor (57:52.705)

That's good, just I'm a team.

Brian Funk (58:07.439)

band's and I my friend's orange, it was like a practice amp, orange amplifier, but it had just a great feedback when you cranked it up all the way. So I had it all the way up and I was just moving my guitar around the amp, making all these noises and just sampling them all. made a sample pack of that guitar feedback and turned them into instruments, which are surprisingly gentle actually when you start putting them in samplers.

Lomotor (58:08.886)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (58:34.255)

Cause you know, it's like a screeching feedback, but when you put it in there, it's like all soft and mellow. yeah, yeah, it's really good for that. Actually. I thought it would be tearing through the speakers, but no, it's, it's interesting how it just like tames it. But that day she came down. She's like, what are you doing? What is this? Like, I think she was also just worried if I was okay.

Lomotor (58:39.497)

Yeah, I bet you could get some good pads from it.

Lomotor (58:57.153)

You

Lomotor (59:03.221)

You're lying there.

Brian Funk (59:03.599)

Like am I on fire, like passed out on the floor? Yeah. Like what's happening down here? But yeah, I can understand that day. Like,

Lomotor (59:13.793)

Yeah, I did something similar. I have this old box AC30. I got it because of OK Computer. It's what they use. I think it's what they use when they're recording. I like, love that amp. But I have a red. We have a double height living room. I ran. I can stand in this room and put the amp all the way up in that other room. And I have long cables that go to it and record.

Brian Funk (59:22.173)

yeah?

Brian Funk (59:28.133)

Beatles, I think, as a history.

Brian Funk (59:42.18)

Cool.

Lomotor (59:43.298)

But it's, you know, the neighbors can hear it. I'm out in the woods, right? Like it's loud. And I remember my mom was visiting. They were out for the day, but my mom was visiting. She came to this little window in the basement and just was like banging on the window like, we can't come into the house. You gotta stop.

Brian Funk (59:59.429)

Yeah, we can't come in. That's funny. I'm pretty lucky right now where I am with my neighbors. I don't think they hear too much of what I do. Being in the basement and a little bit of space. But where I used to live, I got visited from, think, every neighbor on every side of me at one point or another.

Lomotor (01:00:17.857)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:00:27.542)

Mostly being a little obnoxious too late at night. It always starts out like it's two in the morning, your friends and your buddies, you're coming home, you're like, let's play real quiet. You do for like two and a half minutes, but then next thing you know, we're crashing on the cymbals and turning on the overdrive pedals.

Lomotor (01:00:30.497)

Uh-huh.

Lomotor (01:00:39.841)

You

somebody turns up a little bit.

Lomotor (01:00:50.251)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:00:52.802)

So yeah, my neighbor's probably glad I don't live there anymore.

Lomotor (01:00:57.377)

Haha.

Brian Funk (01:01:00.932)

What are you gonna do?

Lomotor (01:01:02.187)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:01:05.634)

What? How do I pronounce the name of the new record? That is something I wanted to ask you.

Lomotor (01:01:10.539)

That's a question. Abkepsil ahead.

Brian Funk (01:01:13.6)

Abcapcilla had, okay?

Lomotor (01:01:15.649)

Yeah, ab caps ill ahead.

Brian Funk (01:01:18.04)

That's coming out June 6th, just so people know. But what is that?

Lomotor (01:01:21.473)

Thank you, yeah. It's a, that name. It's a good question. It came, I don't know exactly. It came to me in a dream years ago and I kind of half woke up and wrote it down on a bookmark that I had next to the bed. And then it just kind of sat there and I forgot about it. And I was just thinking about, I think it's at that point I thought, well, maybe I'll use it for something. I don't know what it means or whatever, but I'll just, I'll use it. And this album is.

Brian Funk (01:01:38.242)

Yeah, okay.

Lomotor (01:01:51.17)

It's a collection of tracks that kind of mix my nature and where I am now but I also grew up in nature and it mixes that.

the memories that I have being a child in running through the woods with the dogs or finding an old beat up car in the woods. I had a lot of freedom as a kid, that freedom with my brother and friends, we'd just go explore and probably hurt ourselves doing something, but it was just so much adventure. And I try to capture that feeling in these tracks.

And all that was, it's all nature is a theme through all that, right? So there's a lot of nature in it. But to me, that word at Capsule Head is this imaginary land that is maybe stemming from my childhood memories that have kind of turned into, obviously no childhood is ideal, but you know, have that ideal in your head. So it's a mix of that feeling and sort of my life now with nature.

Brian Funk (01:03:00.622)

Yeah, okay.

Lomotor (01:03:00.993)

I still have some old home videos too. You can see I've actually got them. There's my old VHS and some of the old home videos. And my dad, I know I've heard you talk about it. My dad, in 1980, he recorded just sort of everyday conversations around the house. And I have that cassette tape. It's two full sides.

Brian Funk (01:03:10.34)

Cool.

I got a VHS down here too.

Lomotor (01:03:30.419)

So I of used bits and pieces of my childhood throughout the songs. So you'll hear them kind of come in and out. It's usually it's pretty subtle and it'll just be like what I was talking about, some kind of rhythmic thing that's actually the voice of my dad cut up or that conversation that's chopped up mixed with some bird sounds or something that's also chopped up.

Brian Funk (01:03:35.108)

Nice.

Brian Funk (01:03:44.824)

Hmm.

Lomotor (01:03:53.334)

But all that is using synths too. I wanted to make it musical. And I love electronic music, like electronica, especially Apex Twin and Boards of Canada. Boards of Canada are kind of my north star. And they've always, that type of music, that kind of older synth music also has a nostalgia to me. So somehow the, I don't know how cohesive it is, but somehow that combination of synths.

Brian Funk (01:04:06.521)

Hmm.

Lomotor (01:04:22.813)

nature and bits and pieces from my childhood or what the album is.

Brian Funk (01:04:28.036)

Yeah, I get that actually a lot listening to it. It does sound almost like memories, kind of the way they exist in your mind, and all jumbled together kind of, and interacting.

Lomotor (01:04:37.109)

Yeah, it's good to hear because, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that comes across to people or not. So, I appreciate it.

Brian Funk (01:04:44.216)

Yeah. Why is there a song called 1980 was a long time ago? Why are you calling out 1980?

Lomotor (01:04:52.289)

That's from specifically one of those recordings. Yeah, I have the tape over there. Oh. Okay.

Brian Funk (01:04:56.228)

It was 19A.

Brian Funk (01:05:01.709)

That's the year I was born and I'm like, no. I felt like called out for being old or something.

Lomotor (01:05:07.621)

I knocked over my little Zabeverchoo blog that I use for percussion. Yeah, mean, no, so I'm not trying to... My mom in that cassette recording actually says, yeah, yeah, that was a long time ago. So you'll hear her say it kind of in the background, but...

Brian Funk (01:05:15.989)

that's cool. Beavers, what cool animal.

Brian Funk (01:05:30.743)

huh. Okay, that's cool.

Lomotor (01:05:35.49)

and it was recorded in 1980. I'm not trying to call out anybody for being a I was born in 78, so... My birthday was yesterday. Thanks. Do you ever feel... I have to get over that... the concern of...

Brian Funk (01:05:45.011)

happy birthday. Very cool.

Lomotor (01:05:53.674)

sounding like old music or whatever. The music I make is the music I make. My thought was like, this is not for the youth of America or the world. Whoever likes it will like it. Probably not gonna be a 19 year old, but I can't concern myself with that, right?

Brian Funk (01:05:58.179)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:06:02.7)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:06:11.03)

I don't think so. And I guess a lot of the music I was making when I was 19 wasn't for 19 year olds at the time anyway. yeah, I don't know. don't, I don't feel old really. I still feel kind of like a kid that's fooling everybody. Like they think I'm a professional. They think I'm like, I get invited to meetings at work and I still kind of feel like.

Lomotor (01:06:17.983)

Right.

Lomotor (01:06:27.391)

I know.

Lomotor (01:06:31.637)

Me too.

Lomotor (01:06:35.691)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:06:39.672)

You sure you want me there? Like, when, when are they going to realize that I've been like fooling everyone? The imposter syndrome thing, I guess, right? Like, I, I'd feel that.

Lomotor (01:06:40.001)

They're gonna call me out, like they're gonna notice. I don't belong here. Yeah.

Lomotor (01:06:49.621)

Do think you'll be like that always? Like do think you'll be 80 and still feel like a kid?

Brian Funk (01:06:56.162)

Well, yeah, I think we all are. I think that's the real thing about it is we're all really just winging it. know, we're adults. We don't know what we're doing. We're trying our best. know, we might have learned from some experience and taken in what other people have said, but I mean, when you really get down to it, we don't know.

Lomotor (01:07:11.649)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:07:23.105)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:07:24.036)

I think maybe that's part of why when you're a teenager, you might resent your parents and authority. Cause you start to realize like, like you guys don't have your lives figured out. You're telling me what to do with mine. And that has changed more to, I guess, empathy now where I'm like, Oh yeah, they didn't know what they were never trying, what they didn't know. can't, I can't blame them. Cause I don't know.

Lomotor (01:07:36.967)

You

Lomotor (01:07:47.019)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:07:51.926)

I mean, being a teacher, think has really made me see that because sometimes that really weighs me down. I've sat in bed at night and been like, my God, especially if I don't know what I'm teaching the next day, if really, or it's not working out. Like, man, I don't know, what am I doing? These parents are giving me their kids 40 minutes a day, five days a week, and little do they know, I no idea what I'm doing.

Lomotor (01:08:08.565)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:08:19.647)

Right.

Brian Funk (01:08:20.129)

You start thinking that way and you go down these like spirals and I've had to find ways of dealing with that. because yeah, I don't, I don't know. We don't, I don't think we know as much as we pretend we do or as much as people think we do. I'm trying to find comfort in that nowadays. More than anything. There is a weird comfort in that like, you know, we don't know.

Lomotor (01:08:27.989)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:08:40.043)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:08:50.285)

We're trying, but.

Lomotor (01:08:51.829)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it's if you can come to terms with that and just embrace it accept it You know, then even then it's enough to stress about like what's the there is no point in worrying about like no Am I mature enough like you are who you are? Yeah, don't be nervous or I think and to your point I think probably the most of those other people in the room that you're with feel similar to the way you do Right there, but they might be thinking you have your life put together much more than they do

Brian Funk (01:08:58.156)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:09:06.595)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:09:16.107)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:09:21.237)

Right. Yeah. We had like a, we have these like spirit days at school and, there's one day we had like rock music day and I brought my guitar in and had like a wig on. And I was like, little do you guys know this is like actually me in my natural state. Today is the only day I'm not dressing up. know, it's the day I finally feel like myself in costume.

Lomotor (01:09:35.201)

And you have your telephone and one shoulder and the soda can and the other.

Brian Funk (01:09:50.155)

Yeah. Yeah. Like this is who I am. I'm not that serious of a person.

Lomotor (01:09:58.37)

I that kind of stuff is so important for creativity, Just to have that freedom. I don't know if it's Picasso. Yeah, to play exactly. Some famous, it might have been Picasso, loved watching kindergartners paint, right? Because there's you know, presupposed ideas of what art should be, right? They're just totally making it for the sake of making it without like...

Brian Funk (01:10:03.394)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:10:06.893)

play.

Lomotor (01:10:25.089)

him learn how to make a hand the right way or whatever, draw an eye, right? It's just, I think that's actually have sort of through, you see some things throughout the room. I've intentionally left toys from my childhood. I've kind of scattered around. I have some Star Wars figures hanging from the ceiling and stuff just to just keep that childish mentality.

Brian Funk (01:10:27.875)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:10:44.451)

Hmm.

Lomotor (01:10:52.105)

in here, when I'm making music I want to just be that tree to make whatever you want. There's always a time and place to curate it later on and mix and master and all that stuff. be a child, be free when you're in that first creative process.

Brian Funk (01:10:58.839)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:11:11.917)

Hmm. Yeah, I do the same thing. got some toys scattered around and little knickknacks that are just for no other reason than just like exactly what you said. It is pretty interesting how kids will just jump in on things. They'll just do it. They're not thinking if they're good at it or bad at it, but something does happen along the way. I'm teaching eighth grade this year for the first time. I've always done high school.

Lomotor (01:11:18.571)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:11:41.986)

And I see it even in them. they're a little more free and like when it's, if we're going to draw something in class, like, okay, yay. And even just ninth grade, they're like, I'm not good at drawing or I don't know how to draw. I can only do stick figures and like all these things they've somehow now put in their identity that the other kids, the eighth graders I'm watching changed. Like it's like, they're different than they were in September.

Lomotor (01:11:44.521)

a little freer.

Lomotor (01:11:56.321)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (01:12:03.659)

Yeah, it's sad, isn't it?

Brian Funk (01:12:12.109)

They, first of all, they're cool now. Like, I'm cool. I don't care about anything anymore. Watch them like they have recess and they go play outside. And in the beginning of the year, it's just like kids running around chasing balls, doing cartwheels and backflips. like, you're like, look at these crazy kids. And now like they're back outside again, it's a little warmer and there's a lot more standing around in groups and like huddling around in the distance.

Lomotor (01:12:14.335)

Right. huh.

Lomotor (01:12:26.539)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:12:33.569)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, everybody's like worried about what the others are doing, thinking about them. Yeah, it's sad. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:40.523)

Yeah, I'm like, no, it got away, you know? You let it get away, someone or it squeezed out of you or something.

Lomotor (01:12:50.657)

Yeah. But isn't, I think, becoming a creative adult is learning to really embrace that freedom, right? To forget about that concern about what are the cool kids thinking, you know, over in that corner about what this silly music I'm making. I think the faster people can get over that concern about what others think or their own insecurities, the more fun you'll have making something.

Brian Funk (01:12:59.288)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:13:03.587)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:13:16.225)

Yeah, I think so. I think that is almost the entire trick of it. I don't think I ever left that so much, you know? Yeah, like, well...

Lomotor (01:13:26.689)

Good for you. I think me too. I'm just secretive about it.

Brian Funk (01:13:31.893)

Yeah, like, you know, my friends growing up, we've always embraced being silly and a little weird and we laughed at it and, got a kick out of just that in itself. And we were always drawing and then we were getting into music. So we kind of kept a creative thing going. And, and I guess cause of that, we got a little bit better than maybe our average peer. And maybe that helped us get through that a little.

Lomotor (01:13:50.251)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:14:00.332)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:14:01.622)

But yeah, I've always tried to keep that and enjoy that even like being around like little kids and not being afraid to just play whatever they're doing on the rug and being around even, even the high school kids, even though they are really concerned about all that stuff, they still have a freshness to them. Or at least some of them, you know, and

Lomotor (01:14:23.115)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:14:28.833)

You

Brian Funk (01:14:30.946)

That's, that helps. But I think you really do. You got to not worry about it. As soon as I start worrying about that stuff, I always kind of run out of steam. If I start thinking I need a clever progression or an interesting whatever, I need to impress fellow producers or, you know, show that I know music theory a little bit. All these things.

Lomotor (01:14:32.843)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:14:41.375)

Yeah, it freezes up real quick.

Lomotor (01:14:55.295)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:14:59.052)

Half of the music that I love is so simple. Most of it is. It's really basic. Just a few twists here and there maybe, but...

Lomotor (01:15:01.888)

Right.

Lomotor (01:15:07.765)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:15:10.206)

I don't know. I find that's the worst thing that happens to me is when I'm thinking about it and wondering if it's good or if people like it or if I like it even.

Lomotor (01:15:20.725)

Yeah.

My arm.

Brian Funk (01:15:24.1)

I like working real fast for that reason, so I don't have time to think about that.

Lomotor (01:15:28.735)

yeah, me too. Fastest. Don't, don't, don't worry about, don't judge the decisions, right? Just go, just keep, keep that momentum. And then if, especially if you're, yeah, if you're feeling like, if you like it, then just keep, keep, you know, ride that wave for as long as it lasts. Try to, try to maintain that, you know, if you have one idea and it brings to another and then branches out to a couple more, try to do all those.

Brian Funk (01:15:35.98)

Yeah. Go and react to do it. React to it. Make something else.

Brian Funk (01:15:55.778)

Hmm.

Lomotor (01:15:56.044)

follow those trails as quickly as you can to, cause it dries up, right? Like it definitely, if you think like, I'll stop now and come back tomorrow or something, it's so hard to get right back into that rhythm. It's much better just to, no, no.

Brian Funk (01:16:08.374)

Yeah, you're never the same. You're not the same person. The atmosphere is different. Something happened in the news or, you know, it is very hard to get back to that.

Lomotor (01:16:15.818)

Right.

Lomotor (01:16:20.501)

better to put it all out. Don't worry about what it is that day. Just get everything. It's like the opposite of Michelangelo, like make...

Brian Funk (01:16:24.962)

.

Lomotor (01:16:27.487)

make the rock as big, make a huge boulder of stuff, right? You can always go back then the next week and start to carve away that boulder that you've made and then you find the sculpture within. But try to put it all out there first and, know, mute tracks at that point. Later on, then you can sort of go, well, do we really need these 15 extra synth lines or where's the core of this? Maybe I can get rid of all this stuff.

Brian Funk (01:16:51.442)

Mm.

Lomotor (01:16:55.637)

That part for me is the part that takes forever. I like this part, but I like this part too, but the clash, which one do I pick? That'll take months sometimes.

Brian Funk (01:17:03.906)

Mm.

Brian Funk (01:17:08.042)

It's tough because you put the time into all of it and they're all your babies. They're all like kind of precious and special and, but yeah, we need to have that little thing.

Lomotor (01:17:10.667)

Yeah, yeah. If you like them all. Right.

Lomotor (01:17:23.573)

That's where you wish you had some other ears to Which one? Tell me which one to pick.

Brian Funk (01:17:29.366)

That's one nice thing about collaborating, working with other people and in the band it can just be like, no, no, don't do that. Just do this or do this instead. And you're like, okay.

Lomotor (01:17:33.291)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:17:37.729)

Right.

Yeah. Sometimes you're like, okay. But I really like that part. My, just.

Lomotor (01:23:57.396)

It reminded me of a story, or something that just happened to me recently with my daughter, who's just about to turn 11.

Lomotor (01:24:10.401)

No, I'm sorry, 11. She's just about to turn 10. She's acting like a 14 year old. But, no, she's nine for the next month. She...

When she was in kindergarten, she had a friend on the bus and they would start writing songs just out of the blue. They'd write down their notebooks and they'd memorize the melodies. They had like 15 songs just that they just would create on the bus. And I didn't want to put any pressure on them or like, you know, be a musical parent, right? I just kind of offered my services. Like I could record and put it out there in the world. They didn't even know what Spotify was. were like, we want to know the internet. And I was like, I can do that.

So we recorded it down here and I think a few times I tried to be like, you know, sure you want to like, you want that part to be on, you know, to a rhythm or something. They're like, no, the response to anything I suggested was like, definitely not. So it's totally their thing. It's just them singing. Yeah. But I was totally, I did some producer things. I realized that like this is, I'm getting sidetracked, but I did at one point, like this is a little later. They've done a couple of songs now, but their met their energy level was low.

Brian Funk (01:25:05.579)

That's funny. Yeah. You're the producer.

Lomotor (01:25:21.161)

And I was like, sing more and they weren't doing it. So was like, okay, you two, like, I'm gonna leave the room. Scream as loud as you can for 30 seconds and jump all around. And they loved it. like, yes. And like, you know, they did that and came back and recorded their song. it was like their energy level was much higher and it sounded good. But my point for the story was...

Over a couple days my daughter kind of brought up, she was like, you know that old song we did in kindergarten? I if I like that one. I was like, no, I think it's fine. were in kindergarten. Then she brought up again. And it turned out she was getting into bed and she was like, some girl had made fun of her song and heard it and said to make fun of them for singing it. And she was all kind of torn up about it. So we had this long talk about creativity, what you and I were talking about.

My point was, even Taylor Swift, K-pop, Demon Hunter, millions of people in the world love them, and millions of people will hate them, it doesn't matter. We had this whole good talk about creativity.

You shouldn't, you can't worry about what other people think. She was like, do people ever make fun of your music? And I was like, yes, they do. And this is a topic I can absolutely talk about. I can help you with this one. It was a rare occasion, feel like as a parent where could, I could actually be helpful. You know, she was at the end, she was like, thank you. But it's not, I'm hoping that she gets over that, right? Yeah. And I think, I think it did actually help. Yeah. I'm hoping that she, she can kind of just.

Brian Funk (01:26:40.724)

Hmm.

Hmm. That's great you were there. In that moment.

Lomotor (01:26:52.085)

brush that off. You're going to have to learn to brush criticism off anyway.

Brian Funk (01:26:55.838)

Yeah.

I mean, that's really cool they got into that. And then I could imagine you, you're probably like, boy, like, come on in. then, yeah, then the temptation and yeah, you want, hey, let me show you something cool. But to let them just kind of have at it and do it. But yeah, that's kids too. Like they're ruthless and...

Lomotor (01:27:05.683)

Yeah. Right. Do want me to reverse your voices? No.

Lomotor (01:27:24.865)

to.

Brian Funk (01:27:24.926)

You know, it's like so natural for us to want to be, to want to fit in. Like our ancestors that didn't fit in, well, we don't have those ancestors. They didn't have children. didn't survive and pass on their DNA. So we are descendant of people who were accepted. And that's a big reason humans have been able to survive in nature is because we had each other. so that's, it's a real pull, but,

Lomotor (01:27:36.161)

bread.

Lomotor (01:27:52.117)

to fit in, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:27:54.719)

to be able to help her through that, to get to the bottom of it too, that it was like, yeah, somebody said something. If she takes it down or deletes it or whatever, you've just empowered her.

you've given her too much, now she controlled you. And that's so much you see it with kids. They're like, watch this. Watch what power I have over this other kid's feelings. I'm gonna go be mean to them and like, yay, look at me, I'm empowered. But yeah, you kinda see it. mean, they tease each other a lot.

Lomotor (01:28:13.589)

that.

Lomotor (01:28:22.411)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (01:28:28.629)

You must see that a lot.

Brian Funk (01:28:37.568)

It's funny that, and then they're best friends though too. It's like my best friend poured chocolate milk in my backpack. like, I think that's how we express, we're constantly trying to figure out our rank on the totem pole and it's always changing. But I, I've kind of just been saying, I'm like, that's your friend. picked him. You know, like that's what you guys do. And you wish she could just like, put that in their heads, like knowing what you know now, of course, right? Like.

Lomotor (01:28:49.569)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:29:06.526)

Yeah. The kids that nobody bothers are the kids that nobody can affect. I mean, I had that growing up. Like it was like my last name, Funk. Like there's a lot of fun ways to twist that around and make a kid's life miserable. I was a pitcher and I just threw the ball as hard as I could and was able to do pretty well in Little League, right?

And the first time I ever heard like, we want the funk or play that funky music was from the other team singing it at me to frazzle me. Like that's when I first heard those songs, you know, kids singing at me aggressively, know, taunting me. And it would really drive me crazy. And I couldn't throw a strike anymore. I'd be mad and like fuming and kicking the dirt.

Lomotor (01:29:46.187)

Huh.

funny.

Lomotor (01:29:54.389)

Huh.

Huh.

Lomotor (01:30:01.558)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:30:04.852)

But like one day I was just like, I'm not gonna care about that anymore. I just, for whatever reason, decided I'm not gonna care. It's my name, you know, we don't pick our names, whatever, you get what you get. And as soon as I did that, like, it just changed everything. Like they would do that and I'd be like, they must be worried now, cause, you know, and then I would sort of fire me up or, and then from there, like people were like, it's a cool name, you know, instead of like,

Lomotor (01:30:16.651)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (01:30:25.793)

right.

Lomotor (01:30:33.621)

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:30:34.336)

turning it into like a curse word or whatever. Then as soon as it didn't have the power over me, it changed. And that was a big lesson growing up. you wish, like you see some kids getting so upset about what they're saying and I'm like, all you have to do is not care. Or at least pretend you don't care for long enough. And I make.

Lomotor (01:30:41.323)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:30:54.549)

Yeah. Right. So much of high school, yeah, or middle school, both for me was that. I just, I look back and I'm like, why was I so stressed about what people thought of me? So embarrassed about things that are totally not embarrassing. Or even if they are, so what? know, kids just... Yeah. Right. Yeah. The sooner you can get over that, the...

Brian Funk (01:31:15.924)

Yeah, most of it's, everyone's going through half the things anyway. Yeah.

Lomotor (01:31:23.797)

better it should be for it. Don't, don't. Right. I think you just have to live it.

Brian Funk (01:31:25.662)

You just don't have the world view yet. You know, you're so tuned in. Your own perspective is all you got.

Lomotor (01:31:33.377)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:31:34.816)

You feel so alone and in that. Yeah, it's tough. I don't envy them. I'll tell you that. I'm never looking at them like, I wish I was in that grade again. It's like, I'm so glad I don't deal with that crap anymore.

Lomotor (01:31:43.201)

Yeah. Yeah, no.

feel like that, we want the funk or something, like that should be your walk-off song as a pitcher, right? Like, that's... Yeah, that's funny.

Brian Funk (01:31:57.184)

Yeah, well they had weaponized it on me. Like, we want the funk. Like, oh man, like, they were like, you have no idea, I'm just so mad. It's like, because I can't throw a strike anymore. just furious and everything fell apart from that.

Lomotor (01:32:09.249)

you

Lomotor (01:32:14.483)

funny

Lomotor (01:32:18.549)

Huh.

When I first started listening to your podcast, thought it was a made-up. I thought it wasn't your real last name. It seems like a musician would, you know, that's your music persona. I'm Brian Funk. I'm the funky guy.

Brian Funk (01:32:29.151)

Yeah, well, and I resisted that for a long time because of funk music. I don't make funk music and I didn't want to have a preconceived notion. But it's so much easier once I decided to just be it.

Lomotor (01:32:47.061)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:32:50.951)

I don't know. It's kind of weird we have to come up with artist names anyway. You have an artist name? Like, where does that come from? I've never heard that word before. Low motor.

Lomotor (01:33:02.005)

Yeah, I just made it up. just drew a long, long list. Yeah, I just wrote a long list of options. I kind of just tried to throw letters around and then whittle it down to that. And I just liked the look of it. I kind of like how the O's. I like spelling it too, L-O-M-O-T-O-R. Like it just, I don't know. Yeah. And at the time, I was kind of thinking more.

Brian Funk (01:33:03.967)

Just like the album.

Brian Funk (01:33:22.483)

Yeah, they're spaced out like that.

Lomotor (01:33:28.777)

techno-y music wise I thought it kind of looks like a car even. The O's look like wheels. It's kind of cool. It's not really a nature-y thing. Now it's just made up and I like the sound of it.

Brian Funk (01:33:41.533)

Hmm. That's cool. You know, you don't even think about it after the first time you process it. It almost just goes away. That's just what they're called. You know, any artist, you're just... After a while, you don't even realize you're saying it.

Lomotor (01:33:49.355)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:33:57.89)

and Funk Railroad, just talking about funk. What a weird band name, you know, they're just a band. You don't think about it.

Brian Funk (01:34:02.687)

Yeah. Yeah. That's the funny thing about my whole life has been most of the time people show me these or bring them up or sing them at me before I ever hear them. Like, I don't know what they're talking about. I think like somebody called me Grand Funk Railroad before I ever knew what it was. Like, what the hell did you just call me? Like, what? You know, but it's a funny existence, I guess. We all get...

Lomotor (01:34:13.803)

that you don't

That's a weird thing to say.

Brian Funk (01:34:30.897)

little things like that, you know, helps you not take yourself seriously, I guess.

Lomotor (01:34:37.151)

Yeah. I also kind of like just talking about names. I like when there's lore behind a name and it's not so straightforward, right? Like maybe it's annoying to people, right? I've wondered about this name in the album that Capsula had. Like that's hard to spell. Nobody's going to remember how to say it. But I kind of like creating maybe a little mystery or at least that question in people's minds. What does that mean? Maybe that's like putting too much on.

I don't know. To me I prefer that over something that's just called album one or something.

Brian Funk (01:35:12.657)

Yeah. Well, it kind of gives it a world a little bit, you know? Like you said, it's a world. I have no preconceived notions on it. You I'm not connecting it with things I already have experience with. So there's something cool about that. Yeah.

Lomotor (01:35:17.291)

Yeah, right.

Lomotor (01:35:26.038)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:35:30.763)

Yeah, right. Yeah. I think that's it. No, no preconceived notions about what it is. Make it unto itself. Yeah. Right. That's good.

Brian Funk (01:35:38.493)

Yeah, I mean, I really had no idea what I was going to hear when I opened it up, you know, which is cool. You're going fresh.

Brian Funk (01:35:51.314)

I guess we've kind of been hitting on these just sort of by the nature of the conversation. But one of the cool things you sent me was your creative guide. So you have this kind of seven pillars, seven statements here, your creative guide. You got be consistent, be creative for yourself, ride the social media wave with caution, convenience, make it yours. Perfect is the enemy of good. And one song at a time.

How'd you come up with those? I see some of them might have some stories behind them as well. Any ones that you think are especially important or?

Lomotor (01:36:35.073)

Yeah, most of those are just through experience or listening to other people. I think I heard BT on a podcast talking about how he has stations to make everything convenient. It's so easy to... I mean, I do it all the time. I was like, I could record this with the synth over here, but it's turned off. It literally, it's like two buttons to turn on.

And it's just like, I'll just do it in Ableton. Which is what, like, most of what I do are Ableton softsense, and I love that. like, I try to set up everything in the room here to make it as easy as possible to do it. Because if it takes 15 minutes to set up, you're with loss, right? And if you have an idea, you want to do fast, I think you've talked about this too in your room.

make it quick. Everything on this side here I've got on one power strip.

Brian Funk (01:37:34.333)

Hmm, that's fun looking. What do we got? Some petals and... Let's see, something's like a... Hmm.

Lomotor (01:37:40.95)

Yeah, so drum machine, there's a Russian drum machine, some synth and stuff, they all, each synth has its own chord outputting from it. So all I have to do is, I run them all through the pedals, but I'll just plug that one in to the pedals chain, turn it on. It's all in one power strip, so just one on button. My interface is always on anyway, know, and the preamp, and then you're ready to go.

Brian Funk (01:38:00.137)

Hmm.

Lomotor (01:38:10.273)

So it's under 10 seconds to get going. think that's the same on the other side, just a different station, right? It's all connected to one power switch, turn that power switch on and you can go.

Brian Funk (01:38:15.763)

Yeah, that's...

Brian Funk (01:38:20.212)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:38:25.201)

And we keep like all the mics on the drums and the guitar amps. And I got a template in live that I just opened and it's ready to go. It's already half mixed and we can just record band practice and all of these things around me are ready to go. I've got the like smart outlet things. I think that's what they're called. They're like a little...

Lomotor (01:38:43.029)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:38:53.535)

You plug it into your outlet and then you plug into that. So it's just like a little box, but it's connected to Siri. So I just have to tell her to turn it on. I don't want to say the exact words because she'll, she's very sensitive to that. She's always listening, but, um, I look like, what does it save me?

Lomotor (01:38:57.579)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:39:08.991)

You

Brian Funk (01:39:17.343)

probably 20 seconds and maybe just like bending down on the floor to flip a few switches, it makes a difference. It's just nice to tell it to come on and turn off and then I can just start. Those little things are a lot. mean, micing the drums or just even having the tracks inside the computer, like that could take a while and that's the difference between us recording practice or not.

Lomotor (01:39:19.073)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:39:26.027)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:39:45.974)

Right, yeah, definitely. And that's cumulative too, right? Like, I think if you only do music a little bit, it doesn't make a difference really. But if you're doing music every day, you know, if you have a couple of those conveniences, it does add up, just smooth.

Brian Funk (01:39:47.101)

You know? So, yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:40:03.11)

I think so. If you can steal back a minute or two here, there, a few different times every session over the course of a year. I mean, you've got extra bonus sessions basically. And you're yeah. And you're not like, I have this idea. It's great. It's great. hold on. Let me wire everything together. And then what was that idea? that's not a great idea. And you're out of it, you know? So.

Lomotor (01:40:15.211)

Yeah. And then you're just keeping your brain creative instead of thinking about the life. Yeah. Right.

Lomotor (01:40:28.755)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:40:32.466)

Yeah, that's a good one. Convenience.

Lomotor (01:40:35.361)

What else is on the list? consistency too, just doing it. I get up early every morning just to do it. Even if it's a short while, 20 minutes or something, I think it's good to have that routine. Just get used to doing it every day and then a lot of what you produce will probably be stuff you hate. But if doing it every day...

you're just increasing the odds, right? It's that simple. Increasing the odds that you'll create something that you like and can create something more out of it. I'd say probably 90 % of what I'm doing, I don't go back and finish. It's just some live project saved. But then if I hit on something and I'm liking it, this is where the one track principle comes in too is...

Brian Funk (01:41:17.982)

Hmm.

Lomotor (01:41:26.785)

Chase that down for as long as you've got the energy to do it. Don't give up halfway through. When you do hit on something you like, finish that and don't leave it in your files for another year or whatever. Finish that song, follow it through, spend the time to finish it. I think you've talked about this too. Then you get in the habit of finishing things also.

Brian Funk (01:41:34.59)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:41:39.816)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:41:53.138)

Yeah, there's a habit to that. Yeah, the longer it sits on the computer, the more likely it is gonna not exist. It's like, what is that? The first 48 hours of a crime or something, right? Like detectives talk about are the most important. It's kind of that way with music too. Like otherwise, you know, the dust settles, the evidence is contaminated and you you don't feel it anymore or another idea came up.

Lomotor (01:41:53.909)

more.

Lomotor (01:42:09.022)

You

Lomotor (01:42:12.353)

you

Lomotor (01:42:16.949)

Red.

Lomotor (01:42:23.733)

Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Funk (01:42:24.114)

Yeah, you have to really push the ideas through as fast as possible, I think. There's some exceptions to that, but it just increases your odds. And I think it's a good way to look at it. It's sort of like a numbers game, just quantity showing up, showing up, showing up. And every once in a while, something gets there.

Lomotor (01:42:44.363)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:42:51.201)

Yeah, you dig through a lot of coal, but then you might hit a diamond now and then.

Brian Funk (01:42:58.994)

Yeah, you gotta show up. Gotta keep doing it. It's so much more free too, because when you have one project, this is the one of the year. It's too precious. It's your artistic statement. There's too much wrapped up into it. If you're just pouring out tracks, you're be like, yeah, sometimes I'm weird. Sometimes I'm silly. Sometimes I don't make sense. Sometimes it's cheesy.

Lomotor (01:43:10.475)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lomotor (01:43:21.697)

Mm-hmm.

Lomotor (01:43:26.209)

I know some creative people who are worried about all that. They're so good and they're just worried they don't finish anything. For whatever reason it's not good enough. I listen to stuff and don't Yeah, right. Everybody's so worried. I can't put it out. It's not exactly what I want. Sometimes it only comes out. I don't know.

Brian Funk (01:43:39.87)

That's perfect as the enemy of good. You got in there too.

Lomotor (01:43:52.61)

I think that's a way of paralyzing yourself. What's the point of it? Maybe if you want to listen to it for yourself, great, but if you're nervous about releasing it.

Lomotor (01:44:07.615)

That's what I'm talking about.

Brian Funk (01:44:11.656)

You know, the things that I've labored over the most, I think have the least amount of longevity with me because I've already put in so much time with it. So familiar with it. It doesn't surprise you anymore. But the things that I kind of power out and then I can hear it a month later and be like, yeah, this song. And like, that was cool. What happened here?

Lomotor (01:44:20.907)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:44:40.718)

Those tend to just stay interesting longer. Maybe there's just a kind of limit to how much you can listen to any piece of music. If you're going to labor over it, you'll get there sooner. Whereas if it's a fast thing, you come back to it, it's always fresh.

Lomotor (01:44:51.648)

Yeah.

Lomotor (01:45:01.109)

have both. I have more fun doing the ones that come quickly, That's the most fun I get.

But I have one track that I can think of in particular, Be in a Bag, where I really liked, I knew I was like, this is a good synth line, I wanna make a cool song out of this. And I recorded a Yellowjacket, a Ground Hornet was in the house. I caught it in a brown bag. I was flying all around the bag as I was taking it out. I had my phone, was like, this sounds wicked, this sounds really cool. It's like this weird crackly, buzzy noise. So recorded that and let it go outside.

But I had this song that had the synth and the matte sound. And I spent, I don't know how many hours and hours laboring over trying to get, I was like, I knew there's something here. I just, like, the mix is wrong or the drums aren't right. I just kept going back to it over at different periods. Finally, like, I still like that song. It's one of my favorites and people connect to that one. They like that one too. But it took a lot. And some, and you never know. That's the hard part I think about.

me anyway being a musician is is this worth it? I spend so many hours on this stupid thing. You know and then you get, you go ahead.

Brian Funk (01:46:08.934)

Yeah. That one's cool. I have a sample of a bee inside a...

It was like a, I think it was a Chinese food soup container, like a little plastic like quart. You know, he was in down here and I caught him in it and he's like, inside the thing and I sampled them and I've had the intention of putting that inside the sampler and seeing what I come up with. So I saw that. was like, no way. Same idea.

Lomotor (01:46:23.44)

huh. Yeah. huh.

Lomotor (01:46:35.617)

That's funny. Yeah, I wonder what kind of tamber the Chinese food container has versus a brown paper bag.

Brian Funk (01:46:42.49)

Yeah, I bet it's different, you know, instead of like hitting the paper. But again, there's like a story, right? Like, and that was an accident. The bee was in your house and that was, and the point of you catching them wasn't to sample them. You're just probably trying to just be humane and let them free. And then you realized, cool. Look at this. Like you sort of listened to the universe.

Lomotor (01:47:05.332)

Uh-huh.

Lomotor (01:47:09.761)

I've had to say that to many people on Instagram. Yes, the bee is okay. I let it go. didn't, yeah. I've got a couple of those like, yeah, you're a killer.

Brian Funk (01:47:15.804)

Yeah. You animal, you monster. Don't you know bees are endangered and if we didn't have bees.

Lomotor (01:47:25.057)

Like I know, I know, but it's really hard to put that in a, you know, an Instagram story cover. Like this song is called Be in a Bag, but I didn't kill the bee. Yes, I really value animals and I didn't, please just be nice.

Brian Funk (01:47:31.378)

Yeah, right.

Brian Funk (01:47:36.542)

Yeah. That's pretty funny. Well, hey, that's what you do. You stir up a little controversy once in a while.

Lomotor (01:47:47.873)

Yeah, yeah, yes.

Brian Funk (01:47:52.262)

So I want to be a little mindful of your time here. Really enjoy talking to you. We should tell people, of course, like they can find your music at your own bandcamp. Apple Music, Spotify, all that stuff, Low Motor. You've got the new record June 6th is the date, right? Coming out June 6th. So that'll be pretty soon. Something for people to look forward to. It's really cool. I'm...

Lomotor (01:48:13.249)

June 6th.

Brian Funk (01:48:20.835)

I'm in love with it. I'm really enjoying it. It's inspiring too. And it's fresh sounding and all kinds of stuff that I'm enjoying about music these days. So I think, I think people will get a kick out of it and your workflow is really cool and different and it comes through. It's really, it's worth all the effort you're putting in, I gotta say.

Lomotor (01:48:45.281)

Well, thanks so much, Brian. This has really been a thrill to talk to you. I know it sounds weird, but I have been listening to your podcast for a long time. I was kind of shocked when you like, yeah, let's talk. I feel like I'm meeting a celebrity. It's been a lot of fun to talk to you. But you're a very down to earth grounded kind of guy. it's been a real honor to have this conversation. Thank you for listening, and thanks for having me on.

Brian Funk (01:48:55.643)

Yeah, thank you for that. That's great.

Brian Funk (01:49:15.623)

Yeah, well thanks for being on. Hopefully this is not the end of it all, only the beginning, you know?

Lomotor (01:49:21.857)

Yeah, let's definitely stay in touch. I'd love to.

Brian Funk (01:49:25.021)

Cool. Well guys, go check out Low Motor, L-O-M-O-T-O-R. You can go to lowmotor.net. You can go to Instagram and YouTube. I'll put all the links in the show notes so you guys can see them. Check them out. It's doing cool stuff. Thanks for listening. Have a good day.

Lomotor (01:49:42.017)

Thanks. Bye.

Brian Funk
Next

The First Light - My New Album!