Permission to be Imperfect with Nick Culbertson - Music Production Podcast #425

podcast
Written By Brian Funk

Nick Culbertson is a musician and app developer who runs Moby Pixel, a mobile app creation studio. The Moby Pixel YouTube channel covers the latest in iOS music apps and his journey in his own app development. Nick just released Mighty Synth Sampler, a fully featured synth and sampler for iOS and Mac.

In Nick’s return to the Music Production Podcast, we discuss his new Mighty Synth Sampler and the journey to create it. We get into how to avoid perfectionism by learning to enjoy the process. There's also a lot of talk about the creative workflow and avoiding burnout.

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:02.17)

Welcome back to the show, Nick. Good to have you.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (00:09.093)

It's good to be back. It's been, did we decide it's been like three or four years?

Brian Funk (00:14.018)

Yeah, three and half years, October 2022.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (00:17.903)

I got to re-listen to the podcast because I wanted to see what we talked about and it's a totally different world now than it was four years ago. And so I took some notes, some things that have changed. You are in a band now and you put out an album. You wrote a book, a book, and you've done jammuaries like every year, right? And I have said I'm going to do jammuari every year and then haven't done it, but

Brian Funk (00:25.822)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (00:41.41)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (00:46.971)

At least I'm consistent. I did do it one of those years though.

Brian Funk (00:50.466)

Yeah, I feel like I remember seeing you posting something about it and showing up.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (00:56.903)

Yeah, it was awesome. I tried to like record a different sample for each day and then sort of like make music from the sample. So that's sort of led to this whole sampling world thing that I'm doing now. But also in that time, I, you might not know this, I made presets in 10 AudioKit Pro apps, including SagaSynth. So Matthew, he's just a machine. I can't believe he's released like over 10 apps and

Brian Funk (01:04.162)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:20.942)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:26.663)

that short of time. I've been doing a bunch of YouTube videos, I've been making all these like MIDI gadgets and stuff that are behind me. And then I released the app, Mighty Sense Sampler. Thank you, man. It's been a long time coming here. there were times whenever I was like just not interested in it, you know, because you've spent so much time working on something and throughout the course of making it,

Brian Funk (01:38.584)

Yeah, congratulations.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:55.015)

I've kind of tried on different tactics to keep focused on the project. And sometimes that the tactic is stop working on it for a while, know, step away from the computer, which is not something I normally decide, but it's a good way to not get burnt out if you do that. I think also I would, do the monthly challenges, you know, just like January, instead of doing it for music, I would do it for things like I'm going to work on

Brian Funk (02:07.182)

Hehehe.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:24.261)

Updating apps every day and so it would be it didn't matter if it was five minutes or an hour I would do that and I might just have different steps and so I found that to be super useful throughout this Let's see, also, you know the pomodoro timer It's stupid, but I swear it works sometimes that one Then you also think about like who you're serving like you think about the end users that are gonna have your product And so each of these things

kept on trying and that's what would bring me back to it. But the reason I bring this up is because near the end of the project, whenever I was like, you know, fixing the 10,000th bug, I thought after I get done with this, I'm going to go back on Brian Funk's podcast and I'm going to talk about making this app. And, yeah, that was, you were the wind beneath my wings.

Brian Funk (03:16.31)

Wow, that's the best thing I've heard in a while. I've always wanted to be the wind beneath someone's wings. I'm it.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (03:19.977)

hahahaha

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (03:24.169)

I mean and then there's there's there's like the conventional ones too like Seth Godin He says like just show up every day. He shows up

Brian Funk (03:33.394)

Yeah, I read his blog every day, even just the fact that he's showing up every day. Like sometimes it applies. Sometimes it's really marketing specific and you know, it doesn't really resonate with me, but I like just seeing like, he is again and again and again. So I have a few people like that that I follow because I'm just like, okay, they're still going. Keep going.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (03:51.528)

Yes.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (03:56.326)

Yeah. Well, the one thing that really resonated with me and making this that I came across because I was, I do a few interviews on my YouTube channel. It's not a podcast because it's too random when it happens, but I talked with Merrick, the guy who made Koala Sampler and I got a quote here from him. So this is from his website for Koala Sampler where he's talking about sort of the inspirations behind Koala Sampler. So if you don't know,

Brian Funk (04:06.914)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (04:14.701)

That's a cool one.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (04:25.939)

Koala Sampler, it's like an SP404 type sampler thing for iOS, Android, and all these other things. And for some people, it's like their main DAW that they use. He said, the idea behind Koala was to make a sampling workstation with no brake pedal, no way to stumble down the rabbit hole of micro editing, tweaking parameters, undoing, redoing, et cetera. I just want people to be less precious about their creations and get on creating.

It's like drawing with a permanent marker instead of a pencil. For some reason, that message just hit me at the right time. I think because I have a tendency to be a perfectionist with the work that I'm doing, which we all do. And what makes you really double down on it is when you spend a long time trying to create something, right? It's like someone who's in graduate school and everything is saying,

Brian Funk (04:58.733)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (05:21.317)

Every fiber of their body is saying, I might not get a job at the end of this, but then they're thinking, but I've already been in school for, you know, a million years. So I got to stay the course. and so you kind of have to set that aside because what happens when you're trying to make something perfect is you would think that would mean you would put more work into it and make it better. But really what happens is you can start self-sabotaging yourself and you can get

Brian Funk (05:25.388)

There.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (05:50.846)

Frozen because you have to make a decision, you know, and instead if you're just thinking I'll make a decision I'll give you a concrete example when this happened is as I was finishing the app I was gonna make a launch video for it and You know three or four years have gone by I was thinking what am I gonna talk about in this video? I could talk about a million things and then finally I came back to this not being precious about the work and just thought Whatever I put down. That's what the video is and that's fine, you know and then

Brian Funk (05:54.562)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (06:20.635)

If anything's not right, then you fix it in the future, you know? Because, yeah, the perfectionism, think it has, just as it's a lens as you're looking at your work, it's also a mirror pointing back at you. It's the same reason why for a long time I couldn't read reviews to my apps, because I was afraid something was gonna be wrong with it, right? So you're just, and I think that applies to everyone. Like, you might be...

Brian Funk (06:43.053)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (06:48.507)

Not wanting to put your music out into the world because what if people reject it? What if you know, you're not as good a guitarist as this guy on tick talk. So who are you to post your stuff? but I think if you just are not precious about it and you just do the work and you're enjoying the process, then that can sort of be the prize right there. It's not about the result. What people think about it. It's great if they like it, but that's largely out of your control.

Brian Funk (07:18.253)

I love that. think it's important because you want to put out this thing and get it done and make it this get it done first of all what does that even mean so you've got to figure out where your line is and of course in your mind you want it to be as good as it can be but you do you get so focused on what it becomes and the product of it and lose sight of the enjoyment and the process and

It takes a lot of fun out of it and like you said, paralyzes you too. I like to think of it sometimes almost like if you're doing a crossword puzzle or something. Like I don't just want the answers, right? I'm not, it's not that I want the answers. I want this thing filled out. It's like, I want to go through it. Specifically, I do like the word all a lot and I do it with my students at school and sometimes like there's a kid in the class that already did the word.

And I'll joke with him and I'll be like, well, just tell us then we don't have to do this. all the other kids are like, no, no, no, no. And I try to explain to him, well, that's kind of like writing. It's not so much what you get. It's also just going through it. It's just creating. And I try to remember that in the music making process because otherwise you can make yourself a little nuts because then you start comparing it with other stuff to see if it is perfect. And you'll always find something.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (08:19.55)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (08:43.969)

to be upset about or disappointed or let down with, or even if it is as perfect as it can be, like you said, that other person on TikTok can just play better guitar than you.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (08:54.555)

Right. I think what I'm searching for is a permission structure to not be perfect. And one way you can find that is sometimes by listening to some of the music you might've listened to when you're a kid, because in your mind, that stuff sounds great. And then you go back and listen to some of it, like some of like the underground bands, and you're like, I mean, what was great is the raw energy and stuff is the song, but the recording isn't so great. And

Brian Funk (09:04.813)

you

Brian Funk (09:13.997)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (09:23.197)

Honestly, if I listen to some of the modern music now, I mean, this is old man yelling at the clouds, but like the loudness war is killing my eardrums. Okay. So like sometimes like something whenever like every beat of the snare and the kick sounds like an explosion after a while, there's just like no dynamics to it anymore. and not that like I'm a professional mix engineer. As a matter of fact, I feel like the type of music I'm more drawn to now.

Brian Funk (09:45.101)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (09:52.572)

It's just like lo-fi beats, stuff I can listen to, I can do what I'm focusing on and the music is more trying to evoke a feeling in the background. It's like, it's setting the mood, you know, as opposed to, hey, look at me, I'm going to do, here comes the shred guitar solo, you're not looking at me.

Brian Funk (10:13.598)

Yeah, right. I feel lucky that I appreciate the lo-fi aesthetic and I like things that are a little rough around the edges. And some of that stuff that I like about music I used to listen to as a kid, it has that. It has that. When you listen back, you're like, wow, they really speed up in this song. Yeah, the vocal is a little, those harmonies aren't perfect or all those things that you can kind of hear now.

At the same time, you're like, but man, they just captured it. They got the feeling. And that's my kind of goalpost now, much more than did I do it right? Did I compress the drums properly? I just want it to sound interesting and cool. And I do like things that are a little fuzzy, like instead of 4K, perfectly clear.

There's some bit of imagination that you have to fill in, I guess. And that sort of stuff.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (11:13.179)

Right. Well, also it's, it's kind of campy, right? You're, you're creating this vibe that has like, it harkens back to an older time where things were actually cut to tape. And, if there are some things that are imperfect in the mix, it's by design, right? Wink, wink. whereas if everything is just like polished and everything else, there's nothing wrong with that. There's a place for that. But if there's been one, you know, side good benefit about.

AI music and all this stuff is like now there We want people to be flawed. We want people to present themselves as they are warts and all Cracking voice and all you know, and I think there's gonna be just increasingly more and more demand for that Unfortunately, we also live in a world with social media. So you're gonna have to try and cut through the algorithm for people to hear it But I also don't think that music is necessarily created

Brian Funk (11:55.148)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (12:13.235)

to get the most number of clicks and likes and things like that. I've played a lot of music, making the presets for those apps, just sitting right here, just playing with sound. It's like I'm not really playing songs, but I'm shaping the sound, right? And then I'm creating songs for demos and stuff like that. And I'll tell you, that fulfills the musical need just as much as...

Brian Funk (12:35.788)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (12:41.019)

recording something and trying to sell it or recording something and trying to beg people to go stream it so that I can earn pennies. So yeah, there's I think I think that's another important thing in this is is sort of not just using other people's motivations for why do we create in the first place, but instead like deconstructing it and saying why do you create and then it's even helpful in

reverse engineering that, if you can look at the outcome and you can steer your motivation towards it. So what I'm sort of saying is you're in games, it's called the wind condition. So you're trying to change the wind condition. So one way that that happened, I, my daughter's nine, I go out and play tennis with her. she has endless energy, right? So, but sometimes I'll get tired and I'll go out there. And one day I just decided,

You know, every day I get to go outside and play tennis with her. It's a great day. Right. So it sort of changed it. There was no longer this focus on, I'm tired. This, the days are endless. But instead it was like, it's just a reframe, right? We all reframe. And, I think that one's really powerful for music, especially in a time where there's so much music that people aren't necessarily sitting around to hear your next song.

They're not waiting for me to create an app that's going to fulfill some need. I created an app that was released a few days ago, then Roland just created a monster app yesterday, then Reason just created a new app today. We're inundated with music and software and everything else. So I think, as we've always said, the art is in the process. I think also the rewards are in the process.

Brian Funk (14:37.356)

I think so, right? For your tennis example with your daughter, I'm sure you're not going out there to win, right? The winning condition is not to defeat your daughter in tennis, right? Okay. Okay, there you go. But yeah, just the fact that you get to do that is cool. That she wants to do it still with you is cool. That you have the opportunity to...

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (14:45.813)

Now.

Well, I don't think I would win anymore. So I had to change the win condition. That's what I'm saying.

Brian Funk (15:06.834)

is great, it's a great way to spend time and you're both lucky and fortunate to be physically able to and to just enjoy the process of it is really nice. I like that concept of the win condition because more and more I think it is just showing up, experiencing it, doing it and I get a lot of what you're saying about making the demos and stuff.

I maybe put more pressure on myself to finish songs and take ideas to completion, but a lot of these like jamuary things, for instance, you know, you got a lot of ideas and some of them might have legs, but some of them are just nice to stick behind the little clips I make for this podcast that I put on Instagram and YouTube shorts. And it just kind of serves as the background music for that. And I'm like, cool, like now it's alive and it's out and.

I don't really have to feel bad about it sitting on a hard drive anymore. That's enough for this particular piece of music.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (16:11.174)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (16:15.975)

Yeah, I mean, would be, it would be disingenuous for me to say that I didn't also want to release more music because like I've said that whenever I look back at my past of I don't wish that my music sounded better. I wish I'd just release more music. Right. And I think that's the case now, but I've, get so focused on making YouTube videos or finishing the next app or just

working on whatever things that you just defer, defer, defer, right? And eventually you'll get to it. which, know, I'm going to, that's something I wanted to ask you about because you, this is like my full-time gig, right? Like I'm working on apps. I'm working on YouTube videos and stuff. You've got, you've have an adult job. so how are, how do you really balance all these things between, because I mean like,

Brian Funk (17:04.971)

That's usually how I call it, my grown up job.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (17:13.437)

You wear so many hats that we probably can't name them, but let's go for some real quick. I do. It's got toe jam on it. yeah. Yeah. Heck yeah. Represent.

Brian Funk (17:17.343)

You have a hat on, I don't have a hat on. It is ToeJam, nice. I think one of the first sampling things I ever did was sample those drums from ToeJam and Earl.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (17:30.57)

Oh really? It's got some funky bass lines in it too, you know? I would say you sample the drums. You know, there's a, if people want to go down the internet rabbit hole, you can search for Dr. Washington. He has this person. Now I don't know if we're going to leave a link to it because it links to like a mega fire site where you can download the thing, you know, those sites are not always the most official, but he created a,

Brian Funk (17:35.753)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (17:56.363)

yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (18:00.903)

basically all of the Sega games dumped the CISX files so that you can load those into something like DeX so you can have all of your all of like the old Sega Genesis games because there's FM synthesis happening on Sega's chip the YM2612 but it's a four operator instead of six operators so you can pull it off with DeX DeX is just kind of overkill for it

Brian Funk (18:11.659)

cool, cool.

Brian Funk (18:18.72)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (18:31.403)

Nice. Yeah, I've got this contraption you hook up to the actual Sega Genesis. It's a cartridge and you can load those in there. I've got to look into how to do it again because it's been a long...

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (18:43.657)

Yeah, oh, oh wait, can load this, you can load the SysX patches to, also I've never heard anyone say this word. I don't know if I'm saying it right or not, but I know it. Okay.

Brian Funk (18:50.441)

you can load

Brian Funk (18:55.027)

That's how I say it, CIS-X. That might just be what I thought it said. Yeah, it's... Man, I gotta remember what it's called right now. It might just be like...

I don't know, it's a cartridge type thing or it's actually, maybe it's even, might be in the control socket. I kind of look at it.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (19:17.501)

Yeah, I think I remember whenever Saga Synth came out there were some pictures of it at the time and so

Brian Funk (19:23.839)

Yeah, that's how I got a lot of those sounds. And I was able to get like, you know, the bass part from Streets of Rage 2, you know, the sound, not the melodies or anything, but then I would sample the sound of it and Sonic the Hedgehog, like certain sounds, know, pad or something. And then you can play that pad, you know, in the Saga synth. And I did a 16-bit Ableton Live Pack.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (19:43.93)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (19:54.057)

with all that stuff.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (19:55.614)

Yeah, that's your podcast intro music, isn't it? From that?

Brian Funk (19:59.05)

Yeah, it is. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, OK. You know what you're talking about.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (20:02.057)

Yeah, Check this out. Alright, so this is, I've said I've been doing some tinkering. I made this little guy. This is called micro dext. Or is it called mini dext? It's called mini dext. It's called mini dext. This thing is a TX8 something. It's the one where it's like the DX7, but there's eight of them. Right?

Brian Funk (20:29.354)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (20:30.077)

So basically engine-wise, it's using Dext, the same engine behind Dext, except for you have eight instances of it. Yes, Dext is.

Brian Funk (20:36.745)

Yeah, that's free VST people can get, right? So we'll put that in the show notes along with all this other stuff that you're telling us about.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (20:46.057)

But yeah, that's another way that like I use that to get some Sega sounds right By using loading in some of those ROM packs I created some like ROM carts for Sega stuff like by going through all of all the video games and just getting the best Sounds it took forever. I mean that's part of whenever you're making sound packs is like you're just in mired in

Brian Funk (20:53.397)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (21:14.813)

gigabytes of sounds and you just go through it like one after another just like me and You know, and then finally find stuff fortunately FM sensitive stuff. It's it's pretty Unique sounding so you kind of know if you have something right away there or not

Brian Funk (21:22.293)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (21:32.371)

Yeah, I've got this right next to me too. It's called Mega FM by Twisted Electronics. And it's, yeah, it's a, I think it's got two of those chips in there, the YM2612s and you know, you can play chords on it and everything. But it is, I will say for like FM synthesis, it's nicely laid out how to program, but it's so...

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (21:38.139)

yeah.

Brian Funk (22:01.678)

easy to just get these really harsh, like painful sounds. It's tough to find things that are pleasant. That chip is just like unhinged. It distorts in this like really digital. And there are some Sega Genesis games that like you listen to the music and you're just like, my God, like so like just chainsaws running around.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (22:07.359)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (22:15.045)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (22:26.866)

Right. Yeah, so that's the difference, right? So you're listening to the actual chip, how it's as opposed to being an emulation of it, because they have emulations of all of these different FM synth chips, because the arcades used a bunch of them too, right? And it's cool to sort of go down that rabbit hole and see what all sounds are where. And then even once you get into the PCM samples, which are the audio samples, they were

Brian Funk (22:55.636)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (22:56.232)

they had a different bit depth to them, right? And so they had a different sound. Things would still, that's why it sounds sort of, the badness sounds nostalgic to it sometimes. Like if you're playing, which one, Link to the Past, you know, like in you're in the woods and it has like the little pad sounds. If you had that on a modern synthesizer, you'd be like.

Brian Funk (23:07.548)

Yeah. Right.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (23:24.23)

what would I use this for? But the fact that it comes from our childhood, it's like, if you experience that, you're like, that's instant nostalgia. I want that. I want more of that. And I think that's what a lot of this like sound pack design comes down to is trying to evoke a feeling of being a child and things like that. One thing that I found though is because one of the sample packs I made was like a tape sample pack running things through different cassette tapes.

which I know you've done, have you found though that sometimes it's like we're more nostalgic for what we think tape sounded like versus what tape actually sounds like?

Brian Funk (24:06.036)

Sometimes, I mean, there have been times I've made things on tape and VCR tapes and felt like it doesn't sound enough like a VCR or it doesn't sound enough like tape. you know, it's hard to tell. So then, like for instance, on some of the tape packs I've made, I've got a layered instrument rack where you've got the thing I sampled and the sound, and then there's another layer and it's just the hiss.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (24:21.447)

Right.

Brian Funk (24:33.532)

And that's just a volume knob you can turn up and down because sometimes you're like, where's the noise? I need more of that. But sometimes it's how you record it. If you, I tend to like to push the tape a little bit by giving more volume to the tape. So it sort of saturates a little, but when you do that, you don't get as much of the hiss because it covers that noise floor. But if you record it at a quiet volume, then you have to turn everything up to really hear it, which makes the hiss come up too.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (24:33.736)

Yeah, yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (24:40.86)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (25:03.534)

So there's this funny choice you have to make. Like, do I want to get that saturation or do I want to hear the noise of the tape in there? you know, sometimes you don't even get to choose just the way the tape machines work. You just get what you get.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (25:21.382)

Right. Well, and then, mean, usually doing something like that, you're like running through a bunch of presets you already have ready, right? And you might be doing one note per octave or you might be doing two notes per octave. usually it's ones that you least would expect sound good. And sometimes if it's a really noisy tape, you do want to raise that noise floor or lower that noise floor, not have as much noise.

Brian Funk (25:47.252)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (25:47.721)

And then sometimes you'll have something that you think is big and beefy and you put it in there and then once you listen back to your recording, it's like, meh. You're like, where did the girth of this sound go? You know, and it just isn't captured. Also has to do with the quality of tape recorder that you're using, you know, like I'd love to get like a little reel to reel thing, but the, with what I was creating, I was trying to do sort of the, the little shoe box tape recorders to get like,

Brian Funk (26:07.24)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (26:17.118)

Yes, rectangle thing, yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (26:17.502)

the extra bad tape noise. One of the ones I used was, I don't know if you know this or not, one of the packs I went to an arcade at this guy's house. So this guy has an arcade collection. He lives on the East Coast. The biggest arcade collection of pre-80s video games on the East Coast. And so I went around with him. His name was Scott and the name of the arcade is

wieners and losers, can actually stay at this Airbnb and play the arcade, all the games in it. And so I went around with him and he was just like, you know, playing the games and I put this up to the speaker on each of them. And so I had like actual arcade sounds that I could create a sound pack with. that was very early in this process of after I talked with you last, at this point,

Brian Funk (27:02.952)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (27:14.346)

The the app was going to be an arcade synth And then just over time everything has changed Also AI came out right and that's that's been a tremendous change in sort of the development space but I'm I am kind of happy to say that I put a Lot of sweat equity into this one. So this isn't like AI vibe coated app in the future

Brian Funk (27:17.95)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (27:41.271)

I probably will be using AI more for coding. And that's sort of where development, it's created a fissure, right, between people who are pro-AI and people that are anti-AI. And unfortunately, it's like polarizing and there's not a lot of space in the middle, you know? Whereas I kind of am in the middle. Like, while I see it as being a useful utility,

whenever you combine it with domain knowledge. So if you already know how to program and you're using AI, then it can be really powerful. But I'm also aware of the fact that it's trained on stolen data. There's a whole generation of junior developers that aren't getting jobs. There are people that are putting out AI slop and the environmental impacts, right? And all these things affect, they don't affect people uniformly.

One way that I was affected recently, which is, know, in my tiny little fiefdom is whenever I tried to submit my app, I had to wait two weeks for it to be approved. And they said that the app review times have gotten super backed up because of all of the AI apps that are, they're getting inundated with. So it's like, yes. Yeah.

Brian Funk (28:58.643)

That's like with the Apple Store, or whatever they call it now. They call it the Apple Store now, or they call it the iPhone? iTunes? It's not iTunes. App Store, right? It's the App Store. Yeah, OK.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (29:05.482)

They call it, I think, App Store. But I think so much it's the App Store that they like, they have a copyright over it or a trademark or whatever. So you can't call your App Store the App Store. They are App Store.

Brian Funk (29:16.297)

Hmm.

Yeah. There's an app for that. Remember those commercials? There's an app for that. So.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (29:24.86)

Yeah. But yeah, I don't want to dwell on AI for too long, but I will say it especially affects people who are getting affected by generative AI. And some people with coding, kind of, there's a weird arbitrary line that people draw for it right now where they'll say, if you could have created the code on your own, then it's okay to use AI. But if you don't know what you're doing, then it's not okay. And

To me, that just feels kind of like still gatekeeping a little bit because whenever I was learning to code, I was self-taught, right? And this was like 15 years ago. I was going on to developer forums and I, you know, get berated by people who know 10 % more than you. That's what happens on those forums. But I'm not going to say no, you have to get berated to learn stuff because you can use AI and learn at the same time.

But that aside, generative AI is a different beast. And of course with Suno and things like that. And again, AI is the big thing that has changed since the last time we talked. Whenever we were talking last time, I was talking about how open source was so important because it was empowering people to create these things they couldn't create on their own. Well now AI is doing that. The only problem is we don't know that it's not stealing this stuff. And in fact,

We kind of think it is stealing the stuff and we're just not paying attention to it. But with music, it does feel like it's different this time, but however, we've sort of lived through this with all these different things over the years. Whenever I was in college, LimeWire and Napster came out and we thought like, well, this is it, music's worthless. Then suddenly YouTube and Spotify have all the music and they're just.

not paying anything out really to people, especially Spotify. So it's like, well, this is the end again. Then the pandemic happened and people were not going on tour anymore. It's like the service industry and performance industry just stopped. It's like, well, this is the end of the road. so somehow through all of this, we've, we've found ways forward, you know, and I am confident that's going to happen again, but an unfortunate

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (31:49.823)

byproduct of this is the infighting that's occurred. That like, if you're an artist and you're touching AI to a non-zero percent of your audience, you've sullied it. So you have a couple of options. You can choose not to use AI. You can use AI, but then just hide it. Or you can use AI and try to educate people on where you used it and why you used it.

Brian Funk (31:53.875)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (32:19.71)

and things like that, which is what I've tried to do with open source development now. I, because I am creating open source products and or projects and sharing them with people, the code is free, right? But since other people are ingesting that code into their projects, they need to know the source of the work because some people are vehemently opposed to it. just like if you gave someone of a hamburger and they're vegan and you're like,

Guess what? It actually is real meat. Like, that's not cool, you know? So part of like being transparent is being considerate. But people that are transparent about using AI need to get over this stigma that just because you used AI doesn't mean that you didn't create something, doesn't mean that it's just totally vibe coded. But unfortunately it's super murky right now. And four years from now when I've

Brian Funk (32:51.6)

Right.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (33:18.792)

release my next app, it's probably going to look totally different.

Brian Funk (33:21.897)

Yeah, I guess that's the one thing we know. It will probably be a different story. Yeah, I don't know. There's things about it, obviously, that are really helpful and nice and other things that, you know, I guess, you asked me a little while back about...

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (33:29.075)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (33:45.789)

balancing things. I think it's important to say I come at this from this perspective as I do have the grown-up job where that's what I rely on for survival. Anything I make off music is just the side hustle, although I think about it at least half the amount of time.

I haven't worried too much about it. for one, like, like we talked about the process, like I like doing it. So it's, you can't play my guitar for me, right? It can't make a sound. I can make a sound form, but it can't, I, I like making the sound. I like discovering it and finding it and creating it. So that, you know, whatever.

As far as the choices in my music making, I like solving the problems, even though they drive me crazy sometimes. I do enjoy all that stuff. And as you also said, I'm finding myself really appreciating more of the human quality in the music I listen to and in the music I'm creating. The next thing I'm going to release, which will be pretty soon, I've...

got it mastered and everything. thanks to Animus NVIDIUS who edits this podcast for doing the mastering. It's all acoustic music that these are songs that what you will hear is the first time I hear it too, where you're writing a song and you're getting it together and you're like, all right, let's see if I can play through it. And that's the recording that I have. it's...

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (35:38.068)

Ooh.

Brian Funk (35:41.169)

And I'm trying to think of a name for this album, something like along the line. I need a word that means like the moment a song is born, you know, the first time it comes out into the world. But that's what I'm capturing in this. yeah, like I could play them better now. could probably even, there's a few parts I might tighten up or alter and arrange slightly differently, but I really just enjoy these.

moments of when I'm in the zone with this song and like, okay, let's see if I can get through it. And this is how it's supposed to go. Whereas in the past, I might've been like, okay, well that was cool. Nice that I recorded that, but let me now properly do it. I'm enjoying that kind of stuff. And also I think I'm spending less time on social media because there's so much AI on it. it's...

making me say like, whatever, I don't even want to be on here anymore. So I'll be on like Instagram or something, is probably YouTube, I guess is the one I really spend the most time on. But I'll be watching a video on YouTube of something I'm really interested in. And once I realized that it's an AI video, it's got the voiceover and I'm like, I'd lose something. And I'm realizing the people that I follow on YouTube, it's as much their personality as.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (36:37.033)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (37:02.118)

what they're talking about. They're little jokes or little subtle things. I'm even just watching your video about the story behind, I think it was this one, the story behind Mighty Synth Sampler, where you go into this kind of like, what were you saying? I'm trying to like right now, but you kind of do this funny voice thing and you cut to different angles of you saying, sampler. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (37:29.652)

Bro, you're talking about the SuperSaw.

Brian Funk (37:32.871)

Super saw, yeah, super saw. And you go like for it. And just like that is fun, you know? And even the fact that you went into like, and this would be like having two million salt waves playing at the same time. I like that. I like the joke. I like the humor, the silliness. There's a person behind it that's really dedicated to their work. They're also not.

taking themselves too seriously, but they're passionate. That's a fun collection of traits that I really appreciate about your work is you're obviously passionate about it you do take it seriously, but you don't take it too seriously and that you have a sense of humor about it. And I might be tied into what you're saying about keeping things from becoming too precious, but all of that stuff is impossible.

through the machine.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (38:33.958)

Right, right. yeah. Well, first of all, thank you. But also well said. Yeah, you threaded that really nicely because I totally agree that it is like the storytelling and being human is the commodity, right? Is like is and and you're absolutely right that the perfectionist part comes in. mean, part of the the joking is also like make fun of yourself first so no one else can, you know, like that's the

Brian Funk (38:35.656)

I can't feel any of that.

Brian Funk (39:02.034)

Hehehe.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (39:02.804)

That's the defense tactic of anyone who's ever been in high school. So, but yeah, that AI, it can give you pointers on storytelling, but it can't actually tell the story and it can't give your unique perspective of events, you know? If it could, then they would have figured it out and it would all resonate with us, but also different things resonate differently with different people.

If I'm saying something about don't be too precious about your work and you're a slacker and you never get anything done, maybe you don't need that message. But for someone who has a, a perfectionist tendency and are so. Absorbed and just thinking about the, what they're creating and how people are going to receive this. It's like, you just got to like, shut that voice up, you know?

Brian Funk (39:42.993)

Right, yeah, sure.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (40:01.93)

And you sometimes do that by being like, this isn't such a big deal. And that's freeing. It's so freeing because then you're like, I know that there are more projects in my life that I want to get done than I'm going to get done. And that has to be okay. But whenever you are have like sort of that hat on of like, okay, I just, I need to get this thing done, this thing, and then I'll be above water. It's never going to happen. You know, I

Brian Funk (40:16.925)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (40:28.01)

I felt like once I released this app, like I was going to be done and then immediately jumped right into stuff, you know? And then I'm thinking about the next thing. I'm thinking about sound packs, which was one of the big things I want to talk to you about. It's like making sound packs. And what I love about what you've done with sound packs is we're all little sisyphuses, sisyphetuses pushing our stones up the hill, right? And, uh,

Your stone has been sound packs, man. It's been sound packs. It's been Ableton. It's been this podcast. And at least from the outside looking in, it's like you've, you've, I'm going to mix metaphors. You've refined the diamond, but you haven't changed course. And I feel like in my career as a do all the things I've just changed a lot. Like I was

In Nashville, I was a guitarist. That was my whole thing, playing guitar for people. Then I got into software development, creating apps. Then I got into game development, which while I was making apps, game development is totally different from other stuff. Then I got into the audio development stuff and I got into the YouTube stuff. And I've just sort of burned the bridge to my past self a lot of times once I get onto the next thing.

because I'm excited about it with this whole learning curve of going up synths like before I was totally in it. I'm still totally in it. But now that I've created an app that was a sampler, people are like, how can you change the DAC level? Okay, so I'm pretty naive when it comes to samplers, but I'm seeing there's a whole other world with samplers that's different from synths. And I'm kind of excited to start going up that learning curve next, you know?

Um, but you seem like you've, you've carried it with you. It's like, it's been from the outside looking in. know it never feels like this from the person, but it seems like you saw what was ahead of you and you just marched on towards it. Right? Like there was a rhyme and reason to each move with this because now how many sample packs have you released? It's like 250 plus now.

Brian Funk (42:48.967)

Something like that. But no, it doesn't feel like that from here. It feels more the way you described yourself. And I don't know, maybe that's just how it is from the inside. It wasn't a mission. It wasn't a plan. It was kind of try this thing. Oh, now I'm into this. I didn't know I was going to get into this or that or the other thing. Maybe when you look back, things sort of make more sense.

No, I guess, kind of like you, when you were describing yourself, you were following what was interesting to you, and it went into different types of developments, but you're into this development thing, and how people make the things that we use. To me, that looks like kind of your stamp. Like, yeah, that's what you're doing.

And sometimes I can look at myself and be like, I'm all over the place. Like, sure, I've been sticking with a few things along the way, but they're kind of just all these random interests that have come up. so I don't necessarily feel like that about myself.

It's kind of cool to hear that you think I do. You think I have a plan, but.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (44:04.842)

Well, I guess but part of the not being precious about things is you you don't want to take too much stock in what other people think but yeah, I think Whenever you're working all the time. I mean I imagine you You know if since you have the adult job and then you get home and you have so much output here You're probably spending a lot of time working and whenever you're just working working working you've often you're Put yourself last

Like the last thing you do is sort of stop and reflect on things. If I release a YouTube video, chances are my video file, I haven't even saved the project. Like I have uploaded the file right away and then I'm like, thumbnail. All right, let's get the thumbnail going. You do the thumbnail and then like while the ink is not even dry yet, you're onto the next thing, right? Just keep going, going, going, going. And it's like, you don't really have the time to stop and correct course, you know, which

Brian Funk (44:56.228)

Hmm. Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (45:04.19)

I'm saying it like a bad thing, but it's a good thing a lot of times, right? Because you don't want to just do one thing and stop and evaluate it and be like, how did this go?

Brian Funk (45:14.161)

Well, especially with YouTube, something like that, because you get all this data and you can look at when people stopped watching your videos, what the high points were. You can AB video titles and thumbnails and you can really leverage that and probably expand your platform and get more revenue from AdSense and whatever.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (45:16.628)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (45:41.914)

And you can get caught up in it too. I guess, yeah, I'm just like, I don't really want to do that. I just want to keep going and doing something. And probably that's to go back to what I'm saying about having a job. I don't have to, you know, I don't have to make sure I'm maximizing every one of these things. I can just make something else. And if I get lucky and something hits and I make a pack and people want to buy it, great. But if not, I can just make another one.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (46:12.274)

Right, right.

Brian Funk (46:12.647)

And all of these things are really motivated, I think, much like you, in that I want to explore this. So the podcast is now nine years running. And if it dried up where I just didn't have anyone I felt like talking to anymore, I wouldn't do it. It would just end. But it's like, you sent me an email, like the app's coming out. like, cool. Yeah, let's catch up. Let's talk.

I find someone here and then I reach out and I want to know what this person thinks about that or the other thing. That just keeps it going. And the same thing with the sound packs and doing Ableton Live sample packs. I still love using Ableton Live as much as ever. It's always exciting as you're discovering with the Mighty Synth Sampler. You put a sample in there and sometimes you think it's going to be awesome and it's...

it's not or it's awesome in a totally new way, there's always an element of surprise. There are certain things, I guess, about making music where you kind of know what's going to happen. If I know, like, if I'm going to boost, like, the frequency, 1K, I kind of know what that's going to be or I kind of know what it's going to sound like if I decide to compress this sound, you know, this technical stuff.

When I put something in the sampler and I reverse it and I play it at like way pitch shifted, it's always kind of surprising and interesting. And what's also surprising is like how it makes you feel when you hear those sounds. And next thing you know, you were designing a sound and now you're making up a song. So these like surprise places you wind up can only happen if you just search for what is interesting and it's still interesting.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (47:56.648)

Right. Yeah.

Brian Funk (48:07.172)

music is like that it's that infinite rabbit hole like you were saying about the guy from Koala Sampler. You can just keep finding new stuff.

I think I got lucky in making the podcast because it's this platform where it's an excuse to talk to people, right? Like, you know, sometimes it's weird to, you know, call someone up and just talk, even, even like your friends. It's like, Hey, like I was saying hi, you know, that's like weird now, but, having the fact that we're going to do a podcast and suddenly you're talking to all kinds of people.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (48:41.099)

Yeah

Brian Funk (48:49.356)

or you're going to make an app and now you're designing all these sounds because you got to make sounds for your app. And these things like feed each other in a lot of ways. Playing with a band, know, same thing like, we got to make a song. Okay. What do we want to play? I got this idea. Let's and then it happens, but it, it, there's that vehicles there and you just get in and go for a ride.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (48:59.401)

Right. Well, I think there's...

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (49:14.879)

Yeah, so we're, are getting meta because we're talking about your podcast on the podcast. But one thing that I have noticed is that there is a through line there that it doesn't matter which guest I'm listening to. They have like a similar. We're all in the same space, but looking at it from different areas. So it's like each conversation is different because you're getting a different perspective of the same picture. Right.

Brian Funk (49:19.92)

Uh-huh.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (49:44.702)

And it's great to hear from, you know, the big names, the Roger Lenz and the Jordan Rudeces, but it's also cool. Like I've listened to one today of a DJ who's also a teacher. and just hearing his perspective and what he's teaching kids, and talking, you know, doing case studies of what Rihanna is doing, because that is so not my world now. I went to school for music business, but like anything I would have learned back then is.

out the door, you know, social media was my space at that point. So there is like, it's nothing like what it is now. but I also think we, we sometimes are guilty of looking at the person who's the most famous, the, the most financially successful, and we aspire to be that person as opposed to just being someone who's in the moment and enjoying

you know, tinkering, turning knobs. Like you probably, whenever you were messing with the FM synth behind you, the little, the mega thing, it's kind of like that's in a quiet moment where it's just you playing with the device and you're just exploring. It's, and there's something special about that, but it's not monetized. And it's also not something you're sharing on social media. It's like you're just in the moment actually creating something and

whenever we're so focused on, now if you want to write a song, yeah, you gotta do the demo. Now you're gonna, you need to make it sound good. You're gonna need to make a video for it also. That's too long, you need to make a short for it. we don't have a square video? Okay, record a video in square orientation too, because Instagram likes that. And at the end of it, you've done like all the, and then you get some likes on it, like okay.

Brian Funk (51:33.03)

you

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (51:39.936)

Then you go into the gamification mode and you're looking at your analytics. Like, okay, they like, they fell off this part. Okay. I got to get straight to the guitar solo because they didn't even stick around for that. And you just lose sight of the whole point of like creating music. I think that's, I think that's another reason that we like listening to music. We listened to whenever we were growing up is because there were all these possibilities then, you know, it sort of takes you back to that time where.

Brian Funk (51:51.791)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (52:09.653)

playing guitar and jamming out in front of the mirror, you're just sort of dreaming about those things, but you're still just having a fun time in your room learning guitar, just going up the learning curve. And I hope increasingly so, as it's harder for musicians to make a living in music, that they can find rewards from that and that they can somehow change that to be their win condition.

I went and played tennis with my daughter today. I made some synth presets today. Maybe those can be the things that lead to your fulfilling life. And if you don't become Kanye West, that's okay. He's not my goal person, but I've seen people who are like, I want to be, you know, it doesn't have to be him, just any big name celebrity. They want to be that person, have that level of fame, have all these people love them, you know? And,

Brian Funk (52:38.277)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (53:07.687)

Another thing, whenever I was a musician in college, I would look at all these other bands that were famous, quote unquote. They were bands that were just like, I think you have a tendency to always look ahead of yourself. Who's like on the next rungs ahead of you. So while I was in like a post hardcore band, I would look at the other bands that had made it. And a lot of those bands were done like after that album, whatever album it was that I was in love with in the early 2000s.

They were kind of done. Some of them are coming back now on like nostalgia reunion tours, you know? But I think we get sort of wash, we get wrapped up in what other people's values are and we don't like stop and reflect on what our own values are. And then you don't realize that you can create your own values, right? And you can formulate them to where like,

Brian Funk (54:02.126)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (54:05.705)

You can say that every day that I play music is a good day. And so then you start playing music and you feel satisfied with that. You can do the same thing and you can say, man, I'm playing music every day, but I'm not as famous as this guy over here. need to post more videos. you get just, you know, you're trying to feed the algorithm instead of just focusing on you and your limited time on this earth to create something cool. You know?

Brian Funk (54:34.223)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (54:35.101)

And yeah, we hope to make some money from it, but God, that can't be the goal. It can't always be the goal, you know? Like, you just, you know, in the UK, they have something that we've lost here in America, and it's a thing called hobbies. We just don't have hobbies. A hobby becomes a side hustle. you can knit pretty well, or you can bake pretty well. You need to start selling that stuff, you know, to make money for it.

Brian Funk (54:57.157)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (55:03.551)

What if you just enjoy baking? You know?

Brian Funk (55:06.693)

Or you like baking? Are you any good? You know, you play guitar, are you good? Do you play out? you like, are you making, like all these, we do that a lot to whatever hobby people have. Oh, you like to paint? Do you do anything good? Like, have you ever had an art gallery? Like all of a sudden it has to be justified with all of this. And you mentioned like playing guitar in the mirror when you were a kid and imagining, you know, what you can do.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (55:10.675)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (55:36.112)

You're only imagining those high points, know, those moments maybe like on stage or something when everyone's going crazy. You're not imagining sleeping on the floor. You're not imagining being in a room of lawyers telling you that you need this or that, or executives that say they need another song like that last one. And I've talked to a lot of people that really lament the fact that they can't just play their guitar.

they have to be making it. gotta be, this is the job, this is the work. I talked to a guy recently that I work with that said he's doing photography over the weekend, but it was like an engagement thing, know, like engagement photos. He's like, yeah, you know, now I have to like make money doing it.

and I don't just take pictures. It's like I'm going out to do these photos that I've done a million times. We're go out on the golden hour and we're gonna do all the same poses. You lose that sometimes. I've had some moments with the guys in my band where we're just playing and we're kind of like, you know, we don't have to do this and it doesn't matter.

if we are ready for the show or we get, we have our goals of like recording the song by then it's like we got to do it however we want. And, maybe that's where we have it the best possible way in a lot of ways that it's still pure and it's still only, we don't have any delusions of fame at this point and all of that. and, and I don't think we want it either.

I, some of the stuff playing in bands, like going and doing little mini tours, I had a lot of fun, but I didn't want to do that for 50 weeks a year. You know, we did like two week tours and I was like, all right, let's go home. Like that was great. We had the time of our lives, but ready to go home. You know, like I don't want to have to do that and suffer my health and not have any kind of relationships with people that are.

Brian Funk (57:56.026)

genuine and there's always a cost for all that.

So we don't fantasize that, you know, in our fantasies, it's just like, yay, all the fun of being that person and their success. And when you compare yourselves to them, you're just seeing the parts you want to see. You know, I think even when you mentioned Kanye West, you started to realize like, he's an example of somebody that has gone off the deep end quite a bit, quite a few times that he's hard to be a person to aspire to want to be anymore. But

I think there's probably a lot of those sides to just like there's for everything. Nothing is, you know, all moon lights and rainbows and unicorns.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (58:48.125)

Yeah, I just I I don't see it getting any easier to make music and to make a living with music So I just I just think finding ways like you talking about playing music with your friends and getting ready for the show I don't miss the show. I miss playing music with my friends, right? Like I I miss that time of hanging out

Brian Funk (59:04.581)

you

Brian Funk (59:10.981)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (59:15.815)

And I still love to play music, but it just looks very different now. Instead, it's for a YouTube video where I'm exploring different synth patches, whereas before it would have been, you know, really that's whenever I try to do the perfection thing too, is like, okay, I need to know all these parts. And then you, you know, what are you going to do? You're going to have a little liquid courage at the same time. And so like, it's just not who I am anymore. Like I'm not going to go.

Beyonce, I mean, it's 10 o'clock, it's bedtime, okay? I remember there were some shows that we'd play where we wouldn't start until, even the opening bands wouldn't start until after 10 because it'd be on a college campus, you're waiting for everyone to show up. The music business was so different back then because, yeah, social media wasn't a thing, but it was also like, I played with some artists. I was in Nashville at the time whenever like,

Brian Funk (59:48.451)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (59:57.317)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:00:13.831)

after Taylor Swift was big for the first time. And so there were a lot of young artists whose parents were trying to make them sort of the next hit person, you know? And so a lot of it was like playing showcases and things like that. But you're really just waiting for someone to give you your big break. It wasn't something that you could go out and grab yourself. And I do feel like that's been one good thing is it does seem like more artists are in

power to create things for themselves now. Like some of those gatekeepers are gone. But in their place, the new gatekeeper isn't a gatekeeper, it's just that everyone is doing it. You have to, right, right.

Brian Funk (01:00:56.354)

the floodgates, yeah, it's coming out of the noise.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:01:01.799)

Yeah. but yeah, I mean, I, I, so now that I've, I'm sort of gotten done with this synth, the sampler app, I want to start making these sound packs, but I want to get back to making music too. And it's not going to be like what it was before. It's probably going to be like vibey lo-fi stuff that is just chill that if I'm doing live streams or something, it can be in the background. cause that's what I listened to. It's what I want to make. And it's also.

Again, it's another one of these like interesting learning curves to go up to. don't, if I pick up my guitar and I start playing right now, it's gonna be a bunch of like blues shred licks. And I'm just, I'm over that stuff, man. Before the internet was what it was, I was a great guitar player. And then the internet came out and you're like, maybe I was good for my town, but.

Brian Funk (01:01:53.398)

You

Brian Funk (01:01:57.509)

There's thousands of seven year olds that can run circles around you now.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:02:01.311)

my gosh, especially on the keyboard, right? I mean on the guitar too, but keyboard has been a different beast for me. I've literally learned how to play it, creating synth patches, just sitting right here sort of playing stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's how I've learned stuff about synthesis too. It's been through coding it and then Matthew will put some kind of new feature, like he'll add cross mod in one of his new synths. And I'm like,

Brian Funk (01:02:05.305)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:02:14.18)

That's cool. But a cool way, actually, right?

Brian Funk (01:02:30.371)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:02:30.923)

Ooh, what does that do? I can create a bell tone with it. So I love that stuff. That's just a great way of just discovery by just messing through all those things.

But now that this app is out, I don't know what my next chapter's gonna look like, but I hope it's not constantly sitting in front of this computer. Like, I love the work I do. I'm also 43, I'll be 44 later this year, and I just feel like if I don't go out more mountain biking, just go out in the world more, I mean, maybe even take this thing out and create

sample packs with it. That's what I really want to aspire to do. Like I would rather do that than be Kanye West. Kanye is going to be my running gag.

Brian Funk (01:03:23.492)

Well, there is a good way to, it's a good way for you to kind of marry the two, right? Like you get outside, but you've also got this musical mission with you. You know, you got the, the, the field recorder and you seeing what happens. You've got your app now where you can drop your samples in. And, that's a cool way to go about it. So I.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:03:37.237)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:03:49.216)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:03:51.277)

I guess like that's another one of these human things, right? That you can combine your interests and see almost like the way people combine genres where you can bring this out with you and you'll get inspired in different ways.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:04:10.793)

I want to do that, but I also am hoping that I have this thing set up eventually where it just empowers other people to create stuff. So then I can just like, I can just be a fan of what other people are putting out, right? so that they can do, they can experiment with sound and stuff like that. Before the AI boom, I was making tutorials for developers, like showing them how to do stuff with audio kit and I was making open source projects. This, that stuff's just gone now.

Right? Like you can still make tutorials, but people are not going to tutorials to learn stuff. They're going, they're just headed straight to Google or headed straight to Claude or whatever. it's not to say there's not value in that stuff anymore, but it's just like its utility has greatly diminished.

Brian Funk (01:04:57.838)

Well, you got to give Claude and AI something to source from. yeah, doing your part.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:05:02.827)

That's right. Yeah, I'm feeding it and it really does like It's interesting because you can you can hand it your own documentation for stuff and you can say follow just what I have here So then it's not really pulling from these external sources You're really just like feeding it with these type parameters and that always does better than if you say Make me an action figure and it could be anything, right?

And then it spits out He-Man and you're like, no, I wanted it to be a Centaur. Why didn't you do that? You know, but you find there's sort of a feedback loop and a lot of times with it encoding the, the, it's not the AI that's the problem. It's you are the problem because you aren't giving enough feedback to it. You're not giving clear direction because it's just a dumb robot. It's a dumb robot that knows everything, right? But you need to give it, you need to steer it in the right direction.

Brian Funk (01:05:37.891)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:06:01.099)

but I don't know the AI stuff. It's not going to stay like it is right now, but I'll tell you, it's some of that stuff I was saying about gen AI and how people hate gen AI. It's spilled over into the development space now. like developers, if everyone was using it responsibly, like a, an expert touching AI, then it would be different. But there are people that don't care about their work. They'll just generate some slop and they'll.

Release it and then it just kind of It dampens the whole thing for everybody. It makes people that hate AI hate AI more it makes people that use it as a tool Just want to distance themselves more from no, I I don't I don't make slop You know and but I will tell you without naming names in the audio space The biggest audio developers I can tell you are using AI

from the biggest framework for making audio, the head guy from that, to the largest open source synth, those people are using AI. And unapologetically so, one of them has been developing so long he said like, if you're gonna criticize me for using AI, let me see how you arrange your punch cards. So he's going back to the Fortran days.

Brian Funk (01:07:27.812)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:07:30.685)

And I guess if you've been developing long enough, you've probably seen all these new things come in and sort of change the game over time. But ultimately, I think what's important and what hasn't changed if you're using, no matter what you're making something with, is you have to be empathetic to what pain point you're trying to solve for your users. And I think we get caught up in

hey, I'm gonna create this cool thing that's gonna impress people rather than what's the problem that I'm creating a solution for? Because that can be the wind in your sail again. That it's like you start thinking about, in my case, trying these people who had contacted me saying I wanna make a sampler app, I wanna make an app just like yours, and it's like, well maybe I'll make an app where you can put your sounds in it. Then you don't have to make the app.

Brian Funk (01:08:27.543)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:08:28.053)

then you can focus on doing what you do well, which is being a sound designer, right? And I can do what I do well, which is sitting in front of my computer.

Brian Funk (01:08:33.08)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:08:38.083)

Yeah, we do find ourselves running into a lot of other things to solve problems, you know, that we have, like even just, I mean, like I've got a camera here. I never get involved in what a camera does and how to work it, but I'm trying to solve the problem of getting stuff out there about the music and the conversations we're having. And so you wind up going there.

I kind of wish I did have an AI that would just like be a good camera for me and I didn't have to think about it, you know, like, cause I don't care. All right. That's not my interest is not in the photography aspect of this. Not, it's just not my interest. know, photography is amazing. think anyone that pulls out a camera in 2026 and takes a picture when you've got a phone that's really good at it. I think that's really a cool thing to do.

That's art in there, just making that decision to take a camera, you know, when you could just, you got one in your phone. yeah, like we do go in a lot of these directions. for someone that wants to be able to put their own samples in a thing, like your app or any app,

that they don't have to build it themselves is a cool thing. So that's a great service that you're providing and I'm sure it's gonna unlock a lot of creativity for other people.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:10:12.768)

Yeah, yeah, mean, was specifically people wanted to make apps that were powered by AudioKit. So that's the software that's behind all this. AudioKit, yeah, so Matthew Fetcher is with AudioKit Pro, not to be confused with AudioKit, the audio framework. So the two are not the same, but yeah. So it's...

Brian Funk (01:10:21.251)

And that's the Matthew we keep talking about Matthew Fetcher

Huh.

Brian Funk (01:10:38.635)

Okay.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:10:40.564)

I've kind of like tried to differentiate the two, but every time I do that, it keeps coming back to the point where somebody made a sample pack for my app and they put it inside of their AudioKit pack with like all the AudioKit Pro stuff. And I was like, well, it's not an AudioKit Pro app, that's, get, I can see the confusion a little bit. I do think that like part of the revenue from the AudioKit Pro apps goes to support AudioKit, the framework.

regardless of like who developed the app. So there's some kind of split that's happening there. but just like a few months ago, Ari, who's the other, he's the guy who started audio kit and kind of co-founded it with Matthew. I think what Matthew did is he, he brought Swift into the equation and he worked with Ari to create their first sense that they made. so early on in the development of audio kit, he, he was totally instrumental with it.

And now he's instrumental with it, but in another way. Like he's not committing code to the code base so much, but he is releasing apps under the AudioKit Pro name, which is then generating revenue to keep the whole ship afloat, you know?

And that's my summation of it. It may be slightly different from what I said, but suffice to say the two aren't the same. But whenever I made my original Overdrive synth app, I had used AudioKit as the engine. And so whenever people wanted to create apps, was, that was my point of reference is like, okay, I'll teach people how to make AudioKit synth apps. And so that's the differentiator of this particular sampler.

is it's a sampler built on top of AudioKit stuff. So it's almost like you get to become your own Matthew Fetcher and make your own AudioKit Pro app, because it's using the same filters, it's using the same reverb, all this stuff that's built into the AudioKit framework, which then ties to other open source libraries like Soundpipe and things like that, which is a DSP library for all these various effects.

Brian Funk (01:12:58.413)

Hmm. It's a cool app. I do want to talk about, I know you're, you don't want to be too salesy and all, but I think this is an important point. said this before we started recording. I mean, creatives are kind of notoriously, anti self-promotion and you know, if they feel cringy, it cheapens it. They're not sales people, they're artists and all. So, I'll.

I'll help steer that part of the conversation that it is a really cool app and it's nicely laid out. It's simple to use. It's on iOS, but also you got it on your Mac too, your computer. Is it just Mac though? Because I think it's AU3. I'm not sure how that works.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:13:39.244)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:13:45.769)

Yes, it's AUV3 and AudioKit in and of itself is built on top of Apple software. So if I were to try and make it cross-platform off of Apple stuff, it would be a big headache. So that's sort of the advantage to it is it's easier to get up and running because you're using AudioKit, but you are stuck just to Apple's ecosystem, which for mobile is okay because Android doesn't have the concept of a plugin yet. Right. So.

Brian Funk (01:13:52.653)

Okay.

Brian Funk (01:14:09.472)

Yeah, but.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:14:15.872)

That's fine. But yeah, you lose the Windows users and Linux users. everything I have is Apple and I'm on Mac. I'm not like an Apple fanboy by any stretch of the imagination. Part of the reason that I have all their stuff is because you have to pay the Apple tax. if you want to see if your stuff works on the latest device, you got to buy the latest device. They're not going to give it to you. But...

Brian Funk (01:14:40.844)

Hmm, right.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:14:44.296)

Unfortunately, this AUV3 thing, was, whenever we did the last podcast, it was a relatively new technology, which is basically just plug-in, the plug-in format, where also you have a UI built into it and everything else. And it's just an extension, so you still have your app as it's standalone, but then you can use a plug-in view of it in whatever your DAW is. And...

Brian Funk (01:15:09.11)

Yeah, and it's cool. And I like that you have just the effects of it. So you can just use the effects you have in there separately to process audio, almost like some synths allow you to route audio through. this is just that, which is nice, and just the sampler end of it. So it's very convenient. It's easy to use. And it's cool that you can have it on your computer and then on the go.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:15:13.269)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:15:33.803)

Yeah, the idea is to make it like a full utility belt, like the Batman utility belt, where, you know, because there is like the MIDI controller you can use. Like I'm working on it currently, but I'm adding like an arpeggiator inside of the MIDI processor that you can use in AUV3. So now everyone will have like a free arpeggiator when they have the app also. And then they don't even have to use it with my app. They can use it on their own apps that they have, you know.

Brian Funk (01:15:40.481)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:16:03.542)

That's sort of like the beauty of this whole AUV3 thing. So rather than looking and trying to think what is the next app I want to release, I'm just going to keep experimenting with this and just keep adding stuff to it, which is counter to what I did previously. Previously, I was kind of just like releasing stuff and then I, you know, okay, that's done. What's next? What's next? I've, I've released over a hundred apps, like in the time that I've been a developer.

Some of them share a similar code base, like I did a bunch of radio streaming apps, which are basically the same except for you have a different curated list, you have different icons and all that stuff. once you know how to handle streaming properly, you can use it in all these other internet radio apps. But I had friends all along the way who would just have one app, and that would be their main app.

A buddy of mine made this app called Pocket Yoga. What's up Sergio? He got featured by Apple. They gave out his app at Starbucks, like a free download thing for it. But that has been his one app and he's just stuck with it. That's what Merrick has done with Koala Sampler. I think he'd released a couple other apps, but he's just devoted all of his time to it.

Brian Funk (01:17:04.45)

Thank

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:17:28.086)

That's what I kind of want to do with this is give it some time instead of just like releasing it and looking on to what's next is just see how I can like work on this and evolve it over time. And then really just listen to people and hear what do they want? Because basically what I've done with this app is what the advice I've told people not want to do. I say don't spend too long on an app. Have your idea be as small as possible and then just

have that one feature and shine on it. And for some reason, I don't know, stupidity, I was like, I think what happened is I thought this was going to be an easy app to make. I'm going to make a sampler and people can put their sounds in it. Well, I used the wrong engine at first. I was using Apple's sampler they had built in. So I had to get rid of that. So then I started using this Dunn sampler, which is another sampler inside of AudioKit.

Well, doesn't have what I needed, so I needed to sort of fix that. And then you just keep on adding things and adding things. One of the late additions I added was I was like, man, I wonder if I could get unison mode to work. And it changed the app. I was like, this unison mode sounds great. Well, guess I better go redo all the presets again. You know? And so it's like just each thing just kept on pushing it further and further. I think once I realized I had to redo the presets,

Brian Funk (01:18:46.244)

You

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:18:53.354)

That's when I was on the bike ride listening to your podcast and I was like, I'm going on Brian Fung's podcast. It all comes back to that. But, I loved it. The, the, reception from people has been great. You know, I've, I tried not to get too tied up with it, but I've also had enough experience now that I knew people were going to need things fixed, like right after the launch. The, the first apps that I released, I'd never really thought about that.

You know, and also it's different when it's music apps because there's a really strong community for mobile music apps and people are hungry for it. People that have a feature requests and things like that. Whenever you launch a game, people just accept it as a game and they like it or they don't like it. Whenever you do a streaming app. Yeah, they expect it to work, but the feature requests they are, can you put a sleep timer in it? You know, it's not something like this where someone's like,

Can you invert the polarity of the envelopes? And you're like, I don't know what you said, but I'm going to ask Claude about it. No, I'm going to Google it. But then it becomes the whole thing where you're learning. You're learning with it. And that's how I'm learning about the sampler now. I've realized that I created in my mind what I thought a sampler was without looking at all these conventions and

Brian Funk (01:19:58.38)

Okay.

Brian Funk (01:20:08.512)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:20:20.604)

You know years and decades of works that have gone into samplers. That's why people are like let me change the bitrate. Let me change different ways. So I assumed with a sampler whenever you play a higher note if you have it just sort of pitch shifted it's almost like if you're playing a tape faster, right? Like it's just going to play faster. Apparently there's different ways of interpolating the pitch changes so you could keep the attack shorter.

Brian Funk (01:20:40.769)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:20:50.57)

and then have it, or you can have the sound be the exact same length, but it's just pitch shifted. That stuff's magic and I'm not gonna add it, but I'm just saying those things exist, right? And so it's another one of these fun things where as people request stuff, you start learning about it and then you have more of appreciation of sort of this whole ecosystem. Whenever I got into the synth stuff, I had...

Brian Funk (01:21:03.969)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:21:18.26)

I didn't, I knew I liked the sound of synths, but I didn't know that I loved a Juno, right? I didn't know how the J8 is different from, or like a Jupiter is different from a Juno. And that's been one of the greatest things about making these presets for Matthew's apps is I get to like go up the learning curve with that. And whenever I receive an email from him with like a new beta he's working on, it's kind of like Christmas morning.

like this is awesome and the best part is if I find bugs I don't have to fix them

Brian Funk (01:21:47.627)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:21:53.568)

Yeah, that's cool. It's a great way to learn about that stuff. And also sometimes not knowing, you know, like maybe if you knew what you were getting into, you might've been like, that's too much or you might not have gone that way or you might've gone the completely traditional way and done something that's been done a million times before. you get

the kind of advantage of not knowing in a way instead of it being a disadvantage.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:22:25.612)

Right, and I feel like the new unknown thing is gonna be diving into this sound pack creation world. Because I've done it some, right? But I haven't, certainly haven't done 250 plus packs. So, that's gonna be really fun. Even whenever I did the Jamuary, one of my favorite ones was I had a pine cone and I just flicked one of the quills on it. Is that what they're called? Anyways, just made like a

Brian Funk (01:22:41.505)

Huh.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:22:55.38)

sound but it had like a slight pitch to it and then you just start pitch shifting it and you can play an actual song with it. It's amazing. I want to go into Walmart. I want to record all the toys in Walmart. I want to use the EBO thing I was showing you. I want to do like all these things. So it's like it's a whole new thing of like I think it's good to not get too carried away and just jump into the next thing, right?

Brian Funk (01:23:02.815)

Wow, that's cool.

Brian Funk (01:23:09.503)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:23:23.958)

But at the same time, I'm pretty excited to just explore and do more playing with sound because that's what I've been doing all along anyways. if music comes from it, that's fine, but I'm making music in the moment, you know, whenever you're making a sample pack, you're playing through it, you know, in that moment, you're not, you might not be sharing that eventually you, you'll share like a demo video of it or something, but whenever you're creating the instruments and you're finding the loop points,

Brian Funk (01:23:43.67)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:23:53.993)

It can be monotonous, it's also like, that's part of the joy, right? It's like you're an explorer sifting through all these different sounds and you're finding things that are just totally surprising to you. And if the things that you're capturing sounds from have a story in and of themselves, then it just adds layer of depth on top of layer of depth and it's just like, it's really cool.

Brian Funk (01:24:19.593)

Yeah, I agree. And that sounds like a fun adventure for you. There's so many factors, like I'm thinking of you being in Walmart, sampling things, you're going to have background noise, right? You're going to have people shopping. You might get a cash register beep in there somewhere or somebody laughing or coughing. And sometimes that's an awesome touch. It becomes this life behind the sound that

adds character and personality and you've captured a moment that you're now playing around with and making music with. So even just the room you're in, the reverb of the room, the natural kind of sound, all of that stuff, it gets involved in your sounds. you know, there's even your microphone, like you might have your nice field recorder one day and then another day you might have

just your phone or you might have something else and everything matters. And it's not even like it's better to be in that sterile environment with some fancy Neumann mic because sometimes there's just nothing to it anymore. Half the reason you're sampling things is because it's going to be this unique thing and this experience. So I'm often like, don't care what's happening in the background.

you know, whatever mic I have or sometimes let's find a really cheap mic to record this.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:25:54.347)

Yeah, yeah, and I've got, that's the one thing is I'm not, I'm good at creating sounds once they're in the box, but we'll have to see about capturing sounds. I do have some good mics. I mean, I've got the Rode NT1A. I think everyone has that mic. It's a good mic. And then I got the Joe Rogan mic. And this little guy, it served pretty well. The good thing about this is you can be incognito with it, right?

Brian Funk (01:25:57.195)

Okay.

Brian Funk (01:26:23.86)

Yeah, your phone too. No one.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:26:24.012)

I'm probably gonna go. Oh, yeah the phone I'd You know we talking about YouTube. I watched this guy record I don't know what the the professional mic is like a Neumann or something He's using that but then he was also recording just the built-in mic from his phone and Whatever post-processing he did with it. They sounded almost identical, you know, so it's like

Brian Funk (01:26:42.826)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:26:48.692)

I think I know what you're talking about. He does like kind of pop punk. That guy, right? With the glasses. I like that guy. I forget what his channel is called right now. But I saw that video. Yeah, and it sounded really good. Like I could barely tell. I could tell they were different, but I wasn't even say one was better than the other. It's just.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:26:53.014)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:27:10.036)

Yeah, if we're talking about the same guy, he I mean he I watched like another video and he was talking about side chaining compression like for making synthwave stuff I don't know man. Anytime I learn like a little piece of knowledge like that that isn't something you just come about from your own experimenting. It still just feels like Like it's Willy Wonka and you're finding the golden chocolate bar, you know, I kind of I love that stuff

Brian Funk (01:27:36.2)

Yeah, right.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:27:39.853)

So that's been cool. I still have stayed sort of motivated with it and kept positive with it. Even though I was kind of like, you got to push things out of your mind sometimes because sometimes I would look at my friends that were releasing apps and I'm still just kind of stuck here working on it. And you do tend to feel a little bit of jealousy. You're like, I wish I kind of, it's like good for you, but kind of here I am.

I think you got to sort of push those, push through those things. Like, cause it's not that that isn't a true feeling and you shouldn't listen to it, but it's not serving you at least not in the way you want to, you know? So part of it is if you can look at this community and the people around you that are releasing stuff and you can truly feel like their wins are your wins, then it just,

It feels like it's all ships rising and I do think that's probably more consistent with reality than whatever this formulation of reality is in your head, right? Like no one is looking at your work and thinking, this is good, but it's not as good as his, you know? You're the only one comparing yourself to other people, you know?

Brian Funk (01:28:50.579)

I think so, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:28:57.6)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:29:01.76)

I think so. And it is building a community and interest.

It, I don't think it's, it's not a zero sum game. It's not this, winners and losers type things. everybody can benefit from that kind of stuff. And I, the stance I like to try to give myself is if someone else does it, it's like, Ooh, it's possible. You know, wow. can do it when people finish songs even sometimes.

I'm just like, God, thank you. Like it's not impossible. Cause sometimes it feels that way when you're making music. Like, I just can't figure it out. I can't do it. And it's not possible. And then you see someone do it and you're like, okay, all right. So celebrate their wins as just evidence that a fellow human can do it. So can you.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:29:54.764)

Yeah. man, see that's such an empowering perspective to think that, you know, and it's a choice, right? But I think, I think you make, you make that choice like enough times and then that becomes your de facto response that you're like, you are happy for, you see someone makes a banger YouTube video and you're like, yes, I'm happy for them. man, that one's popping off instead of being like, I wish my video was popping off, you know?

Brian Funk (01:30:02.876)

This is choice. A lot of it is choices.

Brian Funk (01:30:23.669)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:30:24.245)

Like that stuff, it's just not going to serve you, not in the short term, not in the long term. And it's also, it's, it ignores the fact that a lot of this is just chance and repetition, you know? you know, one thing, all right. So we're, we've been going for a little while. I want to, I want to walk away with stuff. So I'm turning the microphone back onto you. I want to, I'm, I'm a tactics guy. So we talked a little bit about like how you,

Brian Funk (01:30:36.564)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:30:47.072)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:30:53.885)

like you manage your time and stuff, what does that actually look like? Like when you get home from adult job, Mr. Funk, when Mr. Funk gets home, what does it look like? How do you, fill in the blank, how do you?

Brian Funk (01:31:11.358)

Well, you know, I got my dog, I take care of her. I try to do something every day. And something. It's not always a lot. Sometimes I have more time than others. Having the restraint of I have to spend a good portion of my day at work is actually pretty helpful because I'm...

Like, okay, I only have a few hours, you know, it's going to be dinner soon. There's going to be bedtime coming up. so let's try to make the most of it. And sometimes it's also, you know, coordinating it with my wife, what's going on with her? What are we doing together? So it, those limitations help a lot. Cause it says to me, I have to do it now. It has to happen now. If I'm going to do something I try to keep, you know, my, I've like lists of to-do lists.

things and stuff like that, that I want to work on. And some of it's different projects. Some of it's, you know, just the next step in a project, but it's not really much more organized than that. Like I want to move forward today. Like I do think of it almost like it's almost like exercise. Like, you don't just stay as fit as you are right now. And then you work out in a month and you're more fit or

You know, you're either going one way or the other. So I try to make sure at least I take a step, at least a step. And I can feel good about that. And it's not so much like I have to do two hours, I have to do 20 of this or finish this song necessarily, but at least progress it. And just sort of trust in the long game of it that if I do that consistently, stuff happens, things get done.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:33:06.093)

So you say the long game, but it feels like you're playing four games at one time, right? Because you're Sound Pack Brian, you're Podcast Brian, you're creating music Brian, you're creating your next YouTube video on whatever, and then somehow writing a book. Just like all these things, it you move forward with each thing a little bit each day? Or is it like, I'm going to finish this to completion, then I'm

Brian Funk (01:33:06.207)

I

Brian Funk (01:33:12.563)

Sometimes, I mean...

Brian Funk (01:33:29.841)

No, it's more something.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:33:33.909)

then I can turn my attention to the next thing.

Brian Funk (01:33:36.71)

It's more something. So like I tried to do a podcast every two weeks. So I know that, okay, got kind of the plan, you know, of what needs to get done, what I need to get ready. And then if I'm to make some clips or something, I know I got to do a couple of those, schedule those out and band practice usually falls on a certain day every week. So that's sort of decided for me, right? Then

doing packs or doing like our live meetings with the music production club happens. It's scheduled, right? So this meeting is scheduled. So that was easy. Today was easy. I know I'm going to talk to you at this time. When it's not on the schedule, I prefer to the to-do list and say, okay, well, I want to, working on these songs. I want to get that going. I want to finish this. I got to send emails today. Sometimes it's stuff like that even.

But yeah, the sum of it, having something like the podcast that I try to do regularly and the music production club is like a regular thing, that helps structure those decisions a bit. Having the band practice a weekly thing that puts it into a structure for me a bit. And then the other days are more where I can do whatever I want, kind of pick from whatever needs to be done.

Brian Funk (01:35:08.689)

It's not really anything well crafted other than just something every day. know, and to have, guess, those little things that are regularly occurring events, like the podcast, music production club, you know, that helps add the structure. So that was kind of a smart move on my part.

Um, in the beginning, even when I started doing packs, I wanted to do one every week. So that's, I knew I had to do one every week. So I have to work on it. That became a lot to do. So after like a year or so of that, I slowed it down a little bit, but, um, it's having like a club or this usually, it's usually kind of like a monthly cycle. Um, you know, that stuff.

is helpful because it reminds you it's built in deadlines.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:36:06.923)

How do you feel about...

Okay, so I get the paying for sound packs in the music production club. but, but what about paywalling the community? Does that stifle growth at all? Or is that even a factor? you, do you think about it? Or is it one of those things where people are paying to be a part of the community and to get the sounds and therefore, how do you think of that?

Yeah, sorry, I just realized I'm not asking full questions, but that's my M.O.

Brian Funk (01:36:42.803)

Well, think it's all like a

No, I've thought about this a lot and I do think about it and consider it. It's kind of like a whole package thing you're buying into if you join the music production club, right? We're going to have meetings twice a month. There's our Discord community. There's packs that come with it. And really anything that I create will go to the club. even if it's when I did the book, it comes with the club. That's just part of it. So.

Um, opening the community has been a thought like, like maybe the discord, you know, but it's also kind of a special thing too. Um, it's at a point where I can go in there and actually listen to the music people post and people share. And when we do January, I'm giving everything pretty much a listen, you know, as best I can.

And then I'm adding it to our playlist so that we're all collected and together on SoundCloud and just because SoundCloud makes it easy to do a playlist. If it was open, maybe there would be more people and maybe I would get more people to subscribe and pay ultimately. But then it's like I'm not able to be in the community anymore, right? Like because there's a limit to that. And then when we have our meetings, if there's

When we anywhere five to 10 people come, you know, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more. but it's very personalized, you know, if it was 30 people, that changes it a lot. It's like a classroom too. Like when I teach, when I have these small classes, it's nice. You really get to know everybody. When it's a large class, it's instead of these individuals. Now it's a crowd, right? It's one crowd instead of.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:38:39.339)

Yeah, when I've certainly seen some discords where it's like, it becomes the moderator's discord. It's not really the person who created it anymore. And that thing, for better or for worse, can take on a life of itself, you know? And so it doesn't, which doesn't necessarily stay true to, you know, you want to be involved with these people. I think that...

Brian Funk (01:38:49.053)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:39:01.695)

I've never had an issue either with like there's someone that's a problem. You know, like someone's mean or cruel or inconsiderate or if you open it to everybody, you know, then you're going to have people that just are going in there saying what they want to say and leaving. They're not really part of it. It could be

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:39:07.21)

Right.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:39:24.205)

Well, you know, they have that thing where they have the thing where they say if you spend even a dollar, then you're going to be more interested in it. You know, you've got skin in the game, whereas like you could be giving away the same thing for free and at the same time bring more people in, but it devalues the experience for everyone at the same time, you know. But if I've paid money and I'm a part of it, then I want to get my money's worth, you know, so I'm going to.

Brian Funk (01:39:34.173)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:39:47.004)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:39:52.874)

Interact and be a part of that community and that's the cool thing about sort of this new creator space We're in is people get to create their own rules if you just want to have a patreon where you're doing Streams to those just that crew you can do that or if you want, you know it yeah, we get to make our own rules and It's kind of whenever the only thing you're relying on is social media. Then you're just playing by the algorithms rule

you know, and you don't really have as much control over it. so yeah, I was kind of just curious about it. I wasn't, I don't really think that it needs to be free or paid. I was just curious in the sort of the choice with it because like I have a discord, it's free and I'm the only person that posts in it. so it's one of those things where like, I have people post on YouTube videos and stuff, but like creating a community on those various spaces.

It's really difficult. Like I'll post something on the AUV3 Facebook group and it'll get a lot of attention because people are there for it. Then you post the same thing on threads or blue sky and it's, you just wonder why did I even do this? Why did I waste the time doing that, you know? I think it's out of habit. Fortunately, it doesn't take a lot of time. But I think with you saying like the time you spend with stuff and how you schedule things.

I think it's one of those things where it doesn't feel like it's magic to you because you're the person doing it. Just like how Eddie Van Halen probably just thought he's just playing guitar. This is just how I play guitar, right? So because some of that stuff, it's just not, we're all different when we all have different things that pull us a certain way. I have tunnel vision. I will like not eat.

I will just be focused on a task until I can move it to a certain space where I'm happy. And usually if the perfectionist part of me is talking, it's not going to be happy no matter how much work I put in. like maybe my daughter is at a, a run club or something at the end of school. Well, that means I get a few extra hours of working. So I'm just going to like kind of push on and on. And, uh, what I've always wanted to be able to do is to

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:42:14.153)

jump between different things to do a YouTube video for a while to then work on app development or whatever else. And I have done a decent job of that, but it, to me, it feels like you're trying to keep a bunch of balls in the air and something's getting neglected. One of the balls is over in the corner and it has cobwebs on it and you forgot it existed and you turn over and look at it you're like, man, I hate that. Unfortunately, that, that one is usually something like my wife saying, go out and trim the bushes.

Brian Funk (01:42:31.71)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:42:44.533)

And then it's like, sorry. It's avant-garde, you know? But yeah, so where do you think you kind of, I guess you've done it enough. That's what sort of reinforced the behavior. But did you, who helped you formulate that originally? Did you go with like the getting things done route?

Brian Funk (01:42:51.452)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:43:09.39)

I love that book actually, getting things done in the whole format. That's my to-do list is set up in that format actually. It's like, yeah, your in tray or kind of ideas. then it's like next actions projects someday maybe. Right. I have that in my list and I have like in, my like projects, it's like music production podcast. And it's like, okay, I got

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:43:29.483)

Yeah, exactly.

Brian Funk (01:43:39.325)

these things that I'm trying to work on or packs, you know, and someday maybe I've got Ableton Live pack ideas. I've got ideas for the music production club, but then next action is like, send this email about, the update to the club or release that video. You know, the, the next action thing is there's a verb, you know, write the blog post for your new pack.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:44:03.692)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:44:07.597)

Mmm.

Brian Funk (01:44:07.838)

So it's a very specific thing. I find that very helpful. That was a real big eye-opener for me, that book, actually. It just helped me categorize all the stuff in my head, all the ideas, and take it from just long to-do lists and ideal lists to, like, this is the thing I'm working on here, this is the thing I'm working on here.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:44:30.379)

Yeah. He's like, you don't do a project. You do an action or a task, whatever it was. I think that his writing style, Paul Allen is that the name? David Allen, he's, he just is directive based. So he's just telling you what to do. Sometimes you want someone to tell you just what to do, because sometimes you want to be the manager. Sometimes you want to be the worker bee, right? And if you've already made that decision and you've, like you said, you're having a verb.

Brian Funk (01:44:36.371)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:44:40.978)

David Allen, yeah. Allen.

Brian Funk (01:44:47.228)

Yeah, it's very business. Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:45:00.435)

of single action item. It's kind of like you can look at that and do it. What do you do? Okay, so another book is that talks about the resistance. What's that Malcolm Gladwell? What do you do when you feel the resistance whenever you've... press filled, sorry.

Brian Funk (01:45:13.202)

That's Stephen Pressfield. That's War of Art. Malcolm Gladwell's good too. But Stephen Pressfield, yeah, the War of Art. Resistance.

The force that is actively trying to prevent you from doing your creative work is pretty much how he defines that. And I love that concept that he identifies it, names it, calls it out so you can say that's what it is. That is, it's just like he says, it's every single day, every single minute you're facing the resistance.

It gets me all the time. I do all my dishes before I make any music. I clean things. I get all the chores away. Chores are easy, right? You know you're going to finish the dishes. You can do that. Like, I don't know if I'm going to make a good song or a good sound or a good podcast or anything creative. Like that's the question mark. but I guess I try to identify, try not to think about it too hard.

You know, don't question things, just try to go. That kind of having like lists helps me with that, pick something and go. But I guess I also kind of accept it as part of the process. And one of the great things about doing this podcast is everybody deals with this stuff. And not that I want to wish my suffering on anybody, but...

every single person I talk to struggles with all this stuff. People that have it down, that have won awards, and you know, every marker of success you can think of still struggle with everything. And when that comes up, that's sort of like, that's what makes it glorious when you get through. Right? Like...

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:47:14.285)

Yeah, I think for the people who do have it all quote-unquote figured out A lot of times the things they're saying are aspirational. It's not necessarily what they're doing You know, it's that rules for thee not for me So Yeah, man that's it's interesting that so many people because I a lot of times whenever I'll listen to some of the podcast things everyone does have such a defined

Brian Funk (01:47:18.301)

But

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:47:44.13)

perspective, I guess you always kind of feel like everyone's got it figured out and you're still figuring it out, right? Just like I said, whenever you were, it looked like everything you had done was with a rhyme and a reason for getting the sound packs and like every piece of this puzzle just fits together so nicely, right? But I guess there's had to been times where you've just had like

an entire week or longer where you just can't put the proverbial pen to the paper. Do you feel like you've encountered some of those burnout or have you recognized it enough to where you can veer off early enough?

Brian Funk (01:48:20.114)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:48:29.753)

It might be helpful to have a few different things to turn to, to avoid the burnout, right? Like a couple, if I'm tired of doing the podcast, I can do something else, right? It's not the only thing. If I don't feel like writing a song, can, whatever, right? It's, but yeah, like for me, I guess that comes in the form of like, I feel like,

it's pointless, you know, like the world is full of issues and problems and here you are tinkering with sounds that you made with like the spoons you found in the closet, you know, like what are you doing you idiot? Like those thoughts, you know, and then it all always like comes, if I follow that it'll start to become

everyone's going to find out you're a fraud. You know, they're to realize you're just some idiot. And then they'll find out at work, you're a bad teacher. You'll be on the news getting fired. And, you play out these like worst case scenarios. um, but it's just all thinking. It's just thoughts. You got to like turn that movie off in your head and put a different movie on.

Brian Funk (01:49:53.295)

Notice it, guess, is noticing it is the key. When you're getting there, just realize like, I'm being stupid. Like, that's not real. That's just a story that's going on in my head.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:50:05.761)

Hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:50:07.545)

It's not easy to do though. I you get into those feelings and it, but a lot of times for me, it's the music that pulls me out of it too. You know, like I'll listen to music then in that case, and then I'll feel good about it and realize like, this is important.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:50:18.647)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:50:26.325)

Yeah, I tend to like having little projects. I'm moving back into the little project thing because I think you get a little charge with each thing that you get finished and you can actually finish something to completion. Whereas whenever it's sort of like a slog and you just keep working on the thing, then yeah, there can be some dark times that you sort of go with it. I also think, you know, it's not going to be uniform for everyone, but as you get older,

just stuff from your childhood starts coming back, different things. You're like, I'm ready to work right now. Why am I thinking about this trauma? Okay, now I'm just gonna focus on work. And then it's like, you can't. It's like, you can't focus on the work that needs to get done because there's some other part of you that's like, yeah, you need to handle this other thing first. That doesn't always happen, but I feel like as I've gotten older, that'll sometimes happen.

I think it's also a byproduct of, what did you say? You said something about getting your feelings. I like that saying. Like sometimes you're your feelings, you, you get, you, it's a part of your body. There's something physically changing in your body when you're feeling something and you really have to like shake it up. think having, trying on different perspectives, again, getting out from behind your computer, going into the touching grass.

Things like that can be really powerful to sort of change your perspective. But for you, it really sounds like your routine is sort of like the guiding factor amongst other things. I've seen that with myself sometimes that if I have, back to Matthew, he says he'll set a launch date for an app before the app is done. Because if he doesn't have a deadline,

Brian Funk (01:51:54.727)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:52:21.717)

He'll just keep working on it forever. And yeah, I can attest to that. So for you, when is your quitting time? When are you like, it's non-negotiable, I'm not working past nine or 10 or 2 a.m. or whatever it is.

Brian Funk (01:52:42.252)

I mean, I kind of got to get to bed for work, right? I got to get up pretty early in the morning for that. So I have that little thing on your phone that tells you it's like bedtime. I forget what they call it, but you know, it's just like makes a little chime. That happens at 9 45. That's like, all right, time to start getting ready. I mean, it depends on the day. You know, if I'm really rolling, like sometimes you just got to go with it.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:52:47.289)

yeah.

Brian Funk (01:53:10.31)

You know, but it is, it's nice to turn it off, you know, to say like, okay, I'm done for the day. did something. Cause otherwise you find yourself deciding to relax, maybe like watching TV or something. And you're not, you're feeling guilty because you're not doing the work. And now you're really doing nothing. Cause you're not even relaxing. You're not even doing the work. You're just, you know, brooding in this like.

hatred of yourself and your lack of predictivity. So it's nice to just to say like, I'm okay, I'm going to stop now and tomorrow we'll pick it up again. And now I'm relaxing without the guilt of it.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:53:57.101)

So where, for you, where's, sorry man, I totally turned it on you, but I said I was gonna turn it on you, sorry, not sorry. What's the reward for you? Is the reward in I have completed a task and shipped something, or is the reward in the work itself?

Brian Funk (01:54:03.15)

Yeah, it's interesting to think about actually.

Brian Funk (01:54:20.664)

I try to get the reward out of the work itself. And a lot of times I do because when you get into it, it's one of those things where you kind of forget about everything and you forget about your problems, what was bothering you, whatever you're going through. And then when you come out of it, you sort of snap out of the world of making music. And then you see things from a different angle. There's a couple of things I like to do like that, you know, that you forget about.

you know, exercise does that for me a bit, where then you come out of that, you're tired, and you're like, yeah, was mad before. Then you're like, that was kind of silly. Like, what was I mad about? You know, you see it differently or, yeah, that's, I guess.

Brian Funk (01:55:10.853)

I don't know. I kind of forget what I started saying here all of a

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:55:14.635)

Yeah, I think we'll like the reward being in the process trying to do that

Brian Funk (01:55:18.514)

the reward. Yeah. Yeah. But I love riding to work the next day and playing what I did in the car, hearing it, you know, you know, I'd love that. I love, I got all that stuff on my phone and I listened to my phone on shuffle a lot, Apple music shuffle. And every once in a while it's like something I did. And sometimes it's something I want to hear and sometimes I just skip it. But, yeah, I enjoy that. I like listening to the music I made.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:55:25.052)

yeah.

Brian Funk (01:55:48.806)

going back into it.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:55:50.071)

Are you protective of your time when you're creating to not watch YouTube, not click on the latest What's Happening in an Iran article or whatever else?

Brian Funk (01:56:04.294)

Well, I try to be a little bit, yeah, YouTube is a dangerous one because you can justify that as being productive because I'm learning, I'm figuring out how to use this thing or I'm deciding if I should buy this or that. So it's tricky. But I tried, I don't, I try to stay out of the news a lot and the social media as much as possible. I have a timer on the phone for that. I only get like an hour.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:56:11.746)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:56:33.284)

I think 45 minutes actually of any sort of social media or news.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:56:38.998)

And then what happens? Your phone explodes?

Brian Funk (01:56:41.238)

It tells me you've hit your limit, and I can ignore it if I want, but usually that's enough to shame me into putting it down.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:56:49.876)

Hmm. I really like this man. It sounds like you have some guardrails in place that really protect against the monkey mind, right? So that you can, it helps keep you focused. It helps keep you on task. Because ultimately that's where the reward is, is in doing the work, right? As opposed to just being endlessly dis-

Brian Funk (01:57:15.674)

Well, it's almost like, it's like accepting the monkey mind, maybe. You you you can't fight it. Like in my mind really does feel like there's a bunch of monkeys pulling levers and buttons all the time. I think everyone's does. that doesn't mean you have to be whatever button gets pressed. You know, like meditation helps with that, you know, like paying attention to how your mind drifts.

Like the whole type that I do is where you're just maybe breathing or whatever and you just notice that like, now I'm thinking about like squirrels in the winter. And now I'm like having this like fantasy of what I would do if I ever got told I was messing up at work. like, you you find yourself in these weird stories and then you're like, that was just, that was nothing.

Nevermind, back to the breath. And every time you remember that you've drifted or you notice that you drifted, it's like, that's the win. It's not to clear the mind, it's to notice that your mind likes to go off on its own little world all the time.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:58:16.888)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:58:33.622)

Yeah, I did the the Headspace app for a while and I really enjoyed it at the time but a lot of these habits just don't stick or enough time passes that you're not doing the thing.

Brian Funk (01:58:38.94)

.

Brian Funk (01:58:46.414)

Yeah, it's a practice, know, it's not a destination, I guess, just like everything. You have to pay attention to it.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:58:54.264)

Yeah.

Well, I come from a long line of over workers and if you're not overworking and whipping yourself while you're doing it, then you're going to feel bad. So you keep the bad away by working through it, which obviously as I'm saying it, I realize that's a bad perspective to have, but those things are really hard to break and it becomes like your default thinking. And whenever you're working, you're not spending enough time to actually stop

Brian Funk (01:59:01.34)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (01:59:25.23)

and listen to those voice. You're not observing your own thoughts. Instead, you're just making the decision, but it feels like you're on autopilot. So I guess it's...

I don't know what I, I think it's just sort of different ways of looking at it. Like one, one way is I want to try and set up a system where I can work and it can be effortless and I have a schedule and things like that. And at the same time, I need to step away from work and I need to like really just think, do some soul searching and see like, are you doing what you're doing? Because whenever you're, you're stuck working,

The last person you're thinking about is yourself, you know, you're thinking about your dog. You got to take your dog out the dogs barking Okay, you gotta bring the dog in here thinking about your family and their needs, you know, and it's just so easy for me to like not go on a bike ride today because I Instead I can get more work done if I don't take that hour out of my day, you know And so I think it's just a balancing act

It's, it's constantly is, but a big piece of it is just managing your own expectations and realizing that if I don't get everything done, that's okay. You know, it's good enough as things are now. And if someone is, is put out by that, that's okay too, because you don't realize it, but you're pitting yourself out more. And then eventually you will be of service to no one. Right. Cause you're going to be totally worthless.

Brian Funk (02:01:08.997)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:01:11.566)

useless to yourself and others. it's a...

Brian Funk (02:01:11.611)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:01:17.88)

Do you still do meditation? Is that a routine thing?

Brian Funk (02:01:21.891)

I try to, I got an app I use.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:01:26.798)

Spotify? No.

Brian Funk (02:01:28.443)

No, Sam Harris is that waking up. Um, yeah, I like, he doesn't say a lot in it. He just kind of tells you, I'm take some breaths. And then he goes away and then he pops back in and he's like, and just think about it. And then you realize you're thinking about something totally different. His voice kind of just pops in to remind you that you're meditating, you know? And, um, uh,

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:01:32.396)

Hell yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:01:48.705)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:01:55.244)

I think it's different for different people, but what I found with the meditating is that then just like if I was feeling stressed later on, I could just focus on my breathing for a second and like instantly it's like it flips a switch and kind of puts you back in the relaxed state.

Brian Funk (02:01:57.947)

you

Brian Funk (02:02:09.509)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that, I try to get some kind of exercise every day, something, you know, I don't ever, I don't usually go too wild, but, um, just something, you know, even just a little bit. And most of it's just like body weight stuff or a quick jog or, but, that helps a lot. I think, you know, just kind of knowing that.

Trying to take care of myself helps.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:02:44.213)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:02:48.96)

Is that a early morning thing or is that an after work thing?

Brian Funk (02:02:52.557)

It's usually after work. I would love it to be in the morning, but it's just too early. So some time after work and sometimes I'm like rushing to do it real quick before dinner. Sometimes I have a little more time and sometimes it's like I space it out in my music making. Like I'll do a little music and then I'll do like pushups and you know, whatever, just back and forth. I find that

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:03:06.733)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:03:17.302)

Yeah.

Do a few pushups, do some arpeggios, and just switch it back and forth between them.

Brian Funk (02:03:25.307)

It's funny, but it does help. Especially if you're at the computer making music, you're sitting, you know, and you're trying to make exciting music. Like, here you are, hunched over the keyboard. So getting the blood flowing helps me be there for it and actually feel like the stuff I'm making.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:03:38.814)

yeah. yeah.

Yes.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:03:48.751)

Yeah, around my neighborhood, there are these mountain biking trails that I can just go out of my garage and then just be on the trails. It's amazing when I do it. But then there's, there's usually whenever I do it, I have to get home, take a shower, then I have about an hour before my daughter gets home. um, my day basically is like three 30. I'm kind of done for the day because then my daughter's home and it's like, it's just playtime.

Yeah, so I have a lot of hours in the day to get stuff done and if I Know I'm going on a bike ride if I got up earlier than I could get more work done But I I don't know I don't think the answer is getting more work done. I think we feel like that is the answer Derek Sivers has

Brian Funk (02:04:18.446)

Yeah, that's cool.

Brian Funk (02:04:37.572)

Hmm. Yeah, we want to go on these marathon things all the time. Like I need to do like all this time, but we kind of underestimate how much the little drops add up in the bucket.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:04:50.582)

Yeah, I think you can also though spread yourself too thin if you're thinking of I need to do YouTube video then I need to do this like I have a list of a few YouTube videos that I've told people I was gonna make for their stuff and It just kind of piles up and it weighs on me if I ever do sponsored videos That becomes a huge stressor this one. I did this with PCB way

Brian Funk (02:04:55.61)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:05:19.374)

And this is sponsored by PCBWay. And anyways, they made me a little PCB with it, so that was cool. But I knew I had to make a video for them. like, it sort of took some of the fun out of it. Well, it's not that took the fun out of it just like raised the pressure. And not only that, I needed to figure out how to fabricate PCBs. So, it's cool, now it's done.

Brian Funk (02:05:27.898)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (02:05:41.786)

Okay.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:05:44.878)

But I 3D printed the enclosure, I got these little buttons, I programmed it, I soldered it, designed it, and I'm glad I went through it, but it certainly was a lot of work for a small YouTube video where basically all I got were the free PCBs out of it, right?

Brian Funk (02:06:03.322)

Hmm. Yeah. I've had the situation where do sponsored stuff or, know, can leverage your followers or whatever. those things always weigh on me in such a different way. mean, it's awesome. They sent me this thing. They're going to pay me too. It's like an honor, you know? And I, but it's like, now I got to do it.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:06:20.952)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (02:06:34.52)

That's when it's work. Now I've turned my music into work. There's just certain things, I guess, that I've kind of realized, like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that thing or this thing. There's other things I still enjoy and I want to do. So having that understanding of, like, I'm just not going to do that. Like, a sponsored video I just don't want to do.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:06:37.196)

Right.

Brian Funk (02:07:03.214)

can do if it's something I believe in, could do some kind of promotion podcast thing or some kind of team up. Maybe it can be something like, that I can give to members of my music production club. Maybe that's an angle we can do so that it's works together with what I want to do. But yeah, I used to write like reviews. used to do like descriptions of products and things.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:07:22.776)

Right.

Brian Funk (02:07:30.008)

And it was cool because yeah, like you got the thing and you got the money and, but that's not, I don't want to do that. That's, that's a different type of work.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:07:41.429)

Right. In this, in the mobile music space, usually people will just offer you promo codes and then whoever you're sending this stuff to will or will not make a video. You really don't know until after you've launched it. But paying for reviews and stuff like that really doesn't happen too much. I don't think until you get over a hundred thousand subscribers or something, right? Because, and then there's

And then those people can ask a handsome sum for their videos if they're making them. Like on my last app I was doing, I contacted a YouTuber that had, it was like a big synth YouTuber that has like 800,000 subscribers. And they were like, yeah, I can make a video. It'll be $3,500. It was like what they quoted me. And I was grateful that they told me a price.

And it probably is worth that if you have the right conversion rate and if you're into analytics, I do neither of those two things. So it was kind of like, well, that's, it's a cool data point, but I appreciate it. But yeah, I can't do that. But yeah, what I've found is most useful if you are a creator or a musician is you kind of got to create your own platform. You know, you got to like,

Brian Funk (02:08:53.316)

Hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:09:07.346)

You need to have your own audience that you're growing on YouTube. And how do you do that? You do it by not shining a light on just yourself, but you shine a light on other people in the community. You know, then it's like, it's not really about reviewing someone else's app. It's more like, Hey, here's this cool free app that came out. Let me just show you what it can do. And then you, you go from there and people are appreciative. Sometimes my favorite comments to read are whenever someone just says, thank you.

Brian Funk (02:09:27.012)

Yeah.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:09:36.428)

And there's nothing else. They don't even have a profile picture or anything else. You don't know where that person is in their life, but they cared enough to just even say thank you, you know, which is nice compared to the other end of the spectrum where like someone's like, you know, they're going to dog you for any random thing, which is fine. But, I guess it's again, it's, it's where you choose to put your focus, you know? And I like to think of the person who gets value from something and

Brian Funk (02:09:46.03)

Right. Yeah, that's cool.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:10:05.73)

They don't have a platform of their own or maybe they aspire to do something or maybe they they're just grateful that you spent your time to Shine a light on something for them You know Unfortunately, a lot of these creators who are just like we're not monetized well on through YouTube and through ads and things like that So a lot of people who don't have other income streams they just really can't make it on YouTube they have to do

Brian Funk (02:10:16.548)

you

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:10:33.698)

Patreon or anything else fortunately for me. I've had some success with my apps So that's that's what's kept the ship afloat And so I haven't had to worry about YouTube being the main thing or this new free app I've made if it doesn't make money. I mean it kind of sucks. I haven't looked at what it's earned and It doesn't really make too big a difference to the bottom line. I realize that's from a privileged position

But it's also a privileged position that I work to get to, you know? I've put the hours in on my butt cheeks sitting in this chair.

Brian Funk (02:11:05.081)

Yeah.

well yeah that's

Brian Funk (02:11:11.832)

And part of that is probably why. If you were to take that turn and just try to earn your affiliate commissions and all that stuff on your channel, now it's not your channel anymore.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:11:24.14)

Yeah. No, yeah, I think that's why this, the PCBWay thing just felt so kind of wrong to me. Not that the company's fine. The product they have is fine. It's me, like, who has a problem with, like, feeling like I'm shilling something, you know? Like, if I can present something to someone in a neutral way, then they get to make a decision, I'm fine with that. But if I have skin in the game or someone has...

Brian Funk (02:11:35.449)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:11:52.579)

purchase me to say something, it just feels so inauthentic that I, what's the point of me doing it? Then it is just like advertising, you know? And we're just advertised to so much with everything, like so much so that you'll see stuff on social media and you don't even know what it's advertising. Maybe they're just trying to grow a following so that they can then sell the account or yeah, I don't know, that's just speculation, but

Whatever it is, the algorithm doesn't really care how much money the creator's making. They just care about you staying on the site. And they're going to feed towards whatever impulse you have that, unfortunately for me, I've clicked on the YouTube drama video, so it keeps on serving it to me. So now I know everything there is to know about these people I will never meet in my entire life.

Brian Funk (02:12:48.345)

Yeah. I mean, I don't want to give the wrong impression about any of that. mean, there's a lot of people, I really enjoy their work. They're reviewing products, they're talking about features and they might have a sponsored video and they're informing me and the way they do it is it doesn't feel like anything like I'm being just a product that's a commercial I'm watching or something. And

I think all the more power to them and I'll often, if I'm into what they're doing, I'll click on their link specifically to support them if I'm gonna buy something. So there's definitely a lot of cool ways to do it.

I, yeah, just, you know, that's, it's cool that people can do that even. Like you can be like an enthusiast and be sharing what you learned and make some money doing that and informing people in a way that feels like value and not just sales pitch.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:13:52.002)

Yeah, I think it takes a certain business savviness to be able to do it. And I think part of it is if I really don't think of what I do on YouTube as a business, right? I don't think I'm just diluting myself with that thought. It's really like, and maybe it's easy to come to that conclusion because it does earn such a small amount, right?

But what you get from it is you get community, you know, it's great that on a video in the comments, you see some of the same people and some of these people you talk to outside of it. Some of them you see on different platforms and some of these people you actually get to know in real life, you know, and you don't know what opportunities it's going to lead to, you know, so I really can't bag it for that stuff. And I agree. I don't have any problem with people doing it. It's more about having the self-awareness to see does this thing work for you because

Brian Funk (02:14:17.635)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (02:14:21.049)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:14:46.71)

Something can be the best plan in the world, but if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work, period. The best plan is for you to be on all the social media sites and engage with everybody and be posting every hour. You need to post 13 tweets a day, okay? Then you need to have shorts. Make sure you do the shorts, but you can save time by posting that same short over on Instagram. But since you've done that, and it just goes on and on.

If you do that and you feel like I just don't even want to make the art anymore, then just stop. You know, maybe you won't be as successful as you could be with that stuff. but maybe that works for someone else and it wouldn't work for you because it doesn't work with your personality type. That's a big thing I found with like, social media because social media could easily be a full-time job for all of us. Right.

For me, a lot of times it's an afterthought. It's like, I did the thing, I made the thing, I gotta go tell some people about the thing right now. How do I post again? Okay. Instagram doesn't do horizontal pictures, so I need to do something else. It's sort of like the last box you tick before you're like, okay, now I can breathe, what's sort of next on the pipeline?

Brian Funk (02:16:02.413)

you

Hmm.

Brian Funk (02:16:10.701)

Hmm. Yeah. There's like so much you can get involved with, but it's gotta be enjoying yourself ultimately, I think. Cause you can take the thing you love, like making music and take all of the love out of it. If you're not careful.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:16:29.708)

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I think I'll, I'll close on this. think I've mentioned it before, but a lot of this stuff we feel like we need to make money from. think if someone feels like they're making a piece of software and, selling it to people or giving it to them, they need to have a way to monetize it and make money. And, there are just so many other ways to live a fulfilling life. There's so many other ways to create something.

and to get rewards from it. But you kind of have to examine it and be counter-cultural to think that the maximum amount of fame and the maximum amount of money does not always net you a win with what you've done. Instead, you can just play guitar for 15 minutes and enjoy doing it. You can play Disarmed by Smashing Pumpkins.

and just sing it really loud and be like, man, that was really fun. I love that song and don't post it anywhere. You don't have to worry about getting a copyright strike. You're in your living room right now. You know, so I would just encourage people to try and find fulfillment through the crafts that they're doing without necessarily turning it into a business. If you can make some money from it, that's great. If you don't make money from it, you're not a failure, you know?

Brian Funk (02:17:37.785)

Right. Yeah, exactly.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:17:58.262)

You don't, that's a part of the whole perfectionist thing. I didn't maximize it, you know? Maybe you didn't need to. Maybe you maximize by not maximizing. Okay.

Brian Funk (02:18:09.463)

That's true, sometimes... Less is more.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:18:14.122)

If you keep saying words, then eventually it makes sense. I don't know, I didn't get there. Well, Brian, man, I hope we get to do this again, and I hope it's not four years next time.

Brian Funk (02:18:18.211)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (02:18:23.789)

Yeah, well, that would be great. You keep doing cool stuff. So there's a lot to talk about.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:18:30.018)

Yeah man, I'll actually start a podcast and then I'll have you on my not a podcast.

Brian Funk (02:18:36.151)

Nice. Yeah, well, we should tell people just drive it home. Mighty Synth Sampler is on the App Store, Mac App Store, the mobile app store, whatever you want to call it. I'll put links to it. Yeah, I I love what you're doing. I love your attitude, your energy. And I'm glad we got a chance to reconnect here today.

Nick Culbertson (Moby Pixel) (02:19:00.248)

Well, thank you, man. The feeling is entirely mutual. I'll keep listening to the podcast. I appreciate your time. And yeah, I'm going to take some notes on some of the stuff you said. Just sort of.

Brian Funk (02:19:04.205)

Yeah, thanks.

Brian Funk (02:19:12.109)

Yeah, me too. took quite a few notes from you. So I'm thankful I got a chance talk to you again. And thankful to the listeners too. Thanks for sticking with us and enjoy your day.

Brian Funk
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