Rich Shivener: Living Digital Media - Music Production Podcast #399

Rich Shivener is a musician, producer, and professor. His book Living Digital Media explores how creators producer works. He documents the emotional journey creators go through and the behind the scenes experiences that shape their work.

Rich and I are reconnecting after meeting and working together at my Finish February workshop at Ableton’s headquarters. Rich shares his experiences writing his book, creating music, and live streaming.

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Takeaways:

• Collaboration can lead to unexpected and rewarding outcomes.

• Vulnerability in sharing creative work fosters connection.

• Creating in public can alleviate pressure and inspire creativity.

• Accountability in a group setting enhances productivity.

• The story behind music is becoming increasingly important.

• Free content can help reach a wider audience.

• Unique sounds create memorable experiences in music.

• Templates can streamline the creative process.

• Exploring sound design can lead to unexpected discoveries.

• Embracing human errors can lead to more authentic music.

• Finding a balance between perfection and completion is crucial.

• Community plays a significant role in the creative process.

• Constraints can lead to innovative solutions in music production.

• It's important to recognize when a project is done and share it with the world.

Links:

• Living Digital Media by Rich Shivener - https://www.ccdigitalpress.org/book/ldm/

• Rich's SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/rikshiv

• Brindl SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/brindl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you for listening. 

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

Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:01.012)

Alright, welcome aboard Rich, good to see ya.

Rich Shivener (00:04.203)

Good to see you too. you know, on the digital forum, I've, you know, had watched your content for so long and then we met, you know, not long ago and that was really cool. I'm he exists, he's real. He's not just an algorithm.

Brian Funk (00:13.592)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (00:17.742)

That's how I felt about a lot of you guys. So we met at the finished February retreat in Pasadena, Ableton headquarters. I had a great time, I really did. I was stressed out about it, like crazy leading up to it. But as soon as you guys got there, all the weight came off my shoulders. It was just so fun, the energy was great. Like you said, gonna meet you.

after knowing you from our discord and hearing all your jammuaries and your music and just interacting. Such a great experience. It's really funny to get to know somebody through their music and then meet them. usually in life, I guess, like you meet people and then you hear their music. You find out they make music and all that. But the other way around is also really interesting.

Rich Shivener (00:52.427)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (00:59.454)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:10.151)

Absolutely. mean, there were a few people I think I met at the Ableton event that we were at or the workshop finished February. Yes. And during that, I think it was Jeremy whose baby tiger beats, right? Yeah. On, Sunclaw. Yeah. And there's one or two at at Brindle. Right. So we did, we're working on a collaborate now. It's just great. And just kind of see like you're, yeah, you're a real person. There's, there's an energy in the room that you get when you walk in and, know,

Brian Funk (01:24.14)

Yeah, baby tiger, yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:39.903)

This is like the thing I said in the review. And by the way, Brian, you didn't pay me to write this review or anything. So I'm just going to say it. But as I said, like you just did such a good job building community and with everybody and walking in seeing that there were already things like inspirational books we could work with, which I bought. I bought the book of obscure shadows because you showed us that the first day. And I've been obsessed with reading that.

Brian Funk (01:46.702)

Hahaha

Brian Funk (02:05.808)

good. Yeah.

Rich Shivener (02:09.759)

You had copies of your book. You also had plenty of snacks and waters and all those things. just immediately were like introducing people from, you know, Ableton and so forth. think Alberto we met as well. That was great. It was just such a like, I mean, I think the first day we just kind of just talked, you know, and got some ideas of what we were working on. and that's the stuff that you don't really get. You can get that community on discord, right?

Brian Funk (02:09.774)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (02:17.262)

you

Rich Shivener (02:39.179)

you could share that content, actually just being there was super powerful and interesting.

Brian Funk (02:45.102)

There's a really cool space that Ableton has in Pasadena with the classroom set up and then the studio upstairs and little like nooks and crannies you can hang out and work on your stuff outside on the rooftop there. And they just opened their doors to us which was incredibly generous to just be like, hey guys, it's yours, have fun. yeah, Alberto was amazing, Aileen was so much help. Aileen was funny.

Rich Shivener (03:11.808)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (03:13.524)

there because she knew what I needed before I knew. I was talking to Dan, I think it was, the time, and she just was like, here. And she gave me a headphone splitter. was like, I was just realizing I needed that. How did you know? She's like, I got you. They were so hospitable and I just, I couldn't have imagined it going that well. In my head,

Rich Shivener (03:26.899)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (03:39.189)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (03:41.118)

I saw all the possible things that could go wrong, so I spent the leading months trying to figure out how to avoid all that stuff.

Rich Shivener (03:49.329)

Mm-hmm. It's a bit like teaching right you have like a plan and you don't know until everybody gets in the room if it's gonna work you don't know what the relationships will be like or the interactions with people and I just loved that everyone there Wasn't trying to posture in any way to say like I'm doing incredible work or look at me It's like I'm I really appreciate what you're working on and let's work together just kind of alongside of each other whether we have our headphones on

Brian Funk (03:53.773)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (03:58.082)

Yes.

Rich Shivener (04:19.141)

Or in the instance with Aileen, think she was in the demonstration demo room or the showcase room with all the pushes and moves. And it was near the end of the evening where a number of people along with her were recording with materials, kalimbas. And I think there was a handpan involved sampling the moves. It's just very magical, right? No one was sort of resisting that.

Brian Funk (04:19.246)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (04:46.129)

idea. It was okay to kind of fail a little bit, know, and experiment and play.

Brian Funk (04:49.068)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that was one of the moments that I only got to see after in video because I was involved in other magical moments that were happening elsewhere. So it was really nice to see that that was all going on. But you're right, that kind of openness that was there that's so important in collaboration and music making and art and all of that, that people were just...

kind of like, I'm here, this is who am, this is what I do, and I'm excited to do it with you guys. it made for some really cool moments, and I think one of the highlights for me was when you and Brindle started collaborating, and she sang vocals for you. She christened my new SM57 that I brought for the event, so it was cool to know that thing got off to a good start.

Rich Shivener (05:23.637)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (05:37.746)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (05:46.03)

For me as well, to know both of you guys musically and to see you come together was just a really fun kind of like reward of the whole event.

Rich Shivener (05:56.853)

Yeah, I remember meeting her the first day and saying, you know, I was a fanboy of your submissions during their January because, you know, they were atmospheric and, you know, brief in the way that you would get a really good sense of the idea and then, you know, it would fade. It would be a minute or two. at the beginning of January, I put so much pressure on myself because I knew this was going out like to public, right?

I don't know, you just wanna make sure it's got something there, but a number of folks, including her, would just put it out there in, they were polished, don't get me wrong, but they were ideas, they were just sketches, and I was just like, you know what, can kind of, I can take this and put these ideas to like one minute and be okay with that, be content, doesn't have to be a finished song by any means. So there was a lot of inspiration just sonically.

listening to her work and it was a real pleasure just when we, randomly, know, we're sitting next to each other by each other at the place and I just said, do you wanna sing on this? This would be great. you know, the open idea was very interesting because I think there was a time where you were sitting next to me, right? And she's singing, and she's singing in a room that, you know, I would say it's.

A room that you may say is not treated for singing. There's air conditioning going on, creeks, there's people outside. But I still love that idea of just doing it right in the moment with a kind of abandon for everyone to see. They could look in the window and see someone singing and that's just, it just shows that kind of open creativity that might inspire others, I think. And yeah, we're continuing to work on stuff. So I'm hoping we can put something out in the near future.

Brian Funk (07:32.909)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (07:53.296)

that's great to hear. It's like everyone kind of let their guard down in those moments. know, we're vulnerable when you're sharing your creativity and your music. There's just so many levels you can feel insecure on, you know? So to just have everyone be okay with that and those moments show you like, you can do your thing.

Rich Shivener (07:53.301)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (08:03.582)

Hmm

Rich Shivener (08:19.167)

Hmm

Brian Funk (08:19.894)

And your thing is appreciated because it is your thing. It's who you are. I think like with Jamuary and those kind of rapid fire challenges, even like some of the meetings that we do with the music production club where we give ourselves a very limited amount of time to work, the pressure that comes with it kind of alleviates the pressure because it's one day, it's one hour.

Of course it's going to be the opus grand masterpiece. But sometimes in that spirit the masterpiece has come out. This is just a weird irony that really kind of fascinates me. I think this is a good way to bring in your book because you kind of talk a lot about this creating in public and sharing and letting people have access to you as you're working.

Rich Shivener (08:51.307)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (08:55.946)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (09:19.214)

which is a very vulnerable state to let people in while you're creating. And sometimes I feel that way when I'm doing stuff. I might make like a song like, I should be streaming this or sharing it or something. But I only can know that when it works out because there's so many other times when it doesn't and you don't want to make that your display. But yeah, I thought...

Rich Shivener (09:19.241)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (09:32.384)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (09:42.432)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (09:46.37)

I wanted to really speak to you about your thoughts on this topic of sharing the work in public and being vulnerable like it was, like we were in a lot of ways in California.

Rich Shivener (09:58.079)

Yeah, I love that segue. Thank you, Britt. So yeah, I book Living Digital Media. There's sort of two parts to it that came from it. I got interested in just kind of behind the scenes stories of how creators, starting with scholars, because I myself am a professor full time at York University, and producing a lot of scholarship.

And I think one thing I started thinking about during my dissertation is just, phase a couple of years ago. Wow, this is, that was 2018. Jeez. So long ago now is revealing what goes on behind the scenes. Right. And so I'm making all these claims or these ideas that we need to be doing this as a fields. And there are numerous people before me who were making those kinds of arguments.

And I said, okay, if I'm going to continue pushing this argument forward and like understanding how people make, why don't I practice it as well? And I think it came at a time really during the pandemic too, when, you know, we're kind of a lot of people, I will say just, I think that's fair to say we're getting kind of lonely and feeling in isolation, myself included, all of my classes, as I'm sure yours were removed online.

You know, and so we're just staring at a screen. We need to build community in some ways. I had built some of that community by playing on Discord, playing games, had never done anything creative on Discord. So I started thinking, why don't I just document my entire process for this book? And I started just doing it offline at first, recording my screen, sort of as we're doing now, and trying to come up with, I guess, time lapses of how...

words and ideas would come together. And then, someone had asked me sort of what I wanted to do, why I named the project this, but I started streaming on Twitch. I came up with this idea of 100 days of writing. Let's just get on Twitch for 100 days and record for at least an hour. Maybe sometimes less if I was out of ideas, but maybe even longer if I was going, because I wanted to know.

Rich Shivener (12:20.231)

what that was like because game developers were telling me that there was an enormous value in live streaming. You got immediate feedback, you built community, you raised awareness of a forthcoming project, or you solved problems. And I just admit, like it was terrifying to get it to turn on the record button, have my face on there, which is a choice I made, and have my screen up with something raw, know, unfinished, just...

code or text. I remember one of the first comments I ever got the first few days I was streaming, someone said, why are you writing the conclusion of this book when you haven't even finished it? But for me, it was like a matter of trying to just get words down. And that's how my process works. really I write, I don't write from beginning to end, I write kind of my way through the middle. And then I'll write a lot of pieces and then just sort of remixing them and cobbling them together.

as I go. But for me it was like, I gotta do something here on the stream. What can I do? I can just write a lot of placeholder text in different ways. I'll get to that part later. Or can outline or do something. And where is my thinking going with this? Yeah, it was just a matter of trying to see what it was like to be so vulnerable because I had followed people on Twitch as well who were streaming their game development.

And had enormous communities as a result, right? Getting on every single day and streaming their work. I'm like, what is that like? I mean, how do you, how do you sort of deal with those pressures or do they feel like pressures? they, are you okay with being vulnerable? What's at stake when you do that? And yeah, as a result learned a ton of things about processes and then started thinking.

as academics like to do theoretically about what it means and what are the key kind of terms that come out of it and the things that I sort of organize the book by our collaboration, revision, and delivery, how we do those things and they're all kind of interconnected in different ways. And then lastly, I'll just say, because I'm sort of going on about this, but as I started doing it too, I was thinking, okay, we could do

Rich Shivener (14:42.985)

I could do a book that grounds all these findings in, I could stream it and show my work, but what if I make the entire book open access? And everything you can access just by downloading it, the images, the sounds, the book, making it part of a, putting it under a Creative Commons license. And that was also different too, because I think in academia we like,

There's a real like insistence sometimes to have like, you know, the physical copy, the print of what we do, but this is going to be all digital. And so I'm designing it and writing it from the ground up, you know, with some templates, things of that sort, have to mind you creative comments, materials, but all I'm working as a temporary publisher and the writer before it gets anywhere. And I just said, like, look, if I'm going to try to get other

people, readers, to think about this stuff, like open access, and being open and vulnerable as a creator. I gotta make it open access. It's the only way. It's it's reciprocal too for all the people who gave their time in participating in interviews and so forth.

Brian Funk (15:58.67)

It's like meta, I guess you would say. It's a form following the function and kind of walk in the walk while you talk the talk.

Rich Shivener (16:00.521)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (16:08.907)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's very, very easy to publish. I think publishing in places that are maybe read by a few or just folks who are in the fields. Certainly we have amazing, like I say we is like the field that I'm in is rhetoric and writing studies to publish in another fields that might be behind paywalls, know, other really great journals.

Rich Shivener (16:39.167)

We have a number of open access sort of publications as well. But in a number of cases for print ones, I've had to apply to make it open access. So it's either a fee that I would pay or that my institution would. And that's all great. But I'm like, what if I start from the ground up and just say, like propose it to be an open access book? And that's why I went with the publisher idea, Computers and Composition Digital Press, because...

they're a digital imprint. were already open access. And I said, you know, I don't care really about the pay in this book. It's about the visibility. there are other ways of, I have a job. I full-time jobs. It's great. But again, it just felt kind of icky to do all this research about openness and then not try to make it open access itself, if that makes sense.

Brian Funk (17:35.544)

That's a great opportunity. I'm sure that informed your research though as well. mean, because you have the experience and you're living it. Living, living digital media.

Rich Shivener (17:41.259)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (17:48.107)

Yeah. And don't get me wrong, like, I learned just a fraction of what it's like to live digital media. But to see and speak with creators again who stream six, seven times a week for even five or six hours at a time or more, that's their job. Their job is really as a streamer.

so they can make income to produce games. And even when they do, it's not a lot. I don't have to tell you twice that YouTube is a saturated market. There's a lot of stuff you have to get out there to get subscribers and views. And they do that just to produce their work. I'm like, yeah, if I were to sell the book, I'm sort of profiting off this creative market that kind of...

really, really works very hard to maintain visibility and community. I mean, yeah, even in the 100 days I did it, it was great. Sometimes I would have one viewer who I didn't know if it was a bot or somebody else, or I would have 100. But then I started meeting regulars who were on Twitch and who were checking in.

you know, every time I would stream and I would, I would check them out and we kind of have this relationship, right? Online. There was in fact one writer I met, you, think they were in Alberta and they, they came into the Toronto area and said, like, I'm going to be in town if you want to, you want to hang out and catch up. And it was just this like real moment, almost like our workshop, right? We had been in this intense period online, commenting on each other's work every day for

30 days or more and then we're like let's celebrate let's meet you know it's it's all worth it.

Brian Funk (19:49.026)

Hmm. That's pretty cool to get it in real life too. But yeah, it's interesting. It's an interesting way to create because I guess they like, what I'm trying to remember what this phrase or term is, but like where when you're being observed, changes your behavior.

Rich Shivener (19:52.042)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (19:55.563)

Absolutely, yeah.

Brian Funk (20:17.784)

Like we know that even down to the quantum level, like when they look at particles, it changes how they behave once they're observed. But it's true about us when you know there's a camera on or someone's recording, it does affect how you create. And I found myself, it's, I don't know how exactly, but I know it's different when, if I'm streaming say, which.

Rich Shivener (20:18.752)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (20:24.618)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (20:30.101)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (20:47.32)

I should probably do more of now talking to you, but you feel a little bit different. Like for one, I know I'm way less prone to be distracted. So I'm not going to like go on the internet as much as I would when I'm making music by myself. I get stuck. I can always bail out and like watch a video or read a manual or do anything besides face the problem. when you're being watched, or at least you might be being watched, you

Rich Shivener (20:49.801)

Ha ha ha ha.

Brian Funk (21:16.888)

Definitely stick with it more. least that's how I felt about it.

Rich Shivener (21:20.81)

I get I want to relate it back if I don't mind to you know our shared Full I mean our shared teaching commitment of writing you know it it's what like somebody watches you teaching writing You know observing Yes, you're like whoa, okay? I'm gonna. I'm gonna perform and in a kind of way or you know and Even that word is like tricky right because it doesn't feel like a like live performance, but it is

Brian Funk (21:37.22)

when I'm being watched teaching, yeah.

Rich Shivener (21:49.931)

because you are hyper aware of everything you say, know, may be picked up and have consequences. I will say though that, for the most part, you know, I mean, and this is something I talk about in the book, there's a number of like trolls out there, on different ways that will say stuff that, you know, will disrupt the conversation or something else. I think in the communities of

Brian Funk (22:12.494)

Yes they are.

Rich Shivener (22:18.859)

creators I was speaking with, it was more of an issue. For me, know, was, it was, even though 100 days, I would say is a pretty significant time to do it, like a concentrated time. You know, the, the amount of engagement I would have versus, you know, people who are still on Twitch and doing it, whether they're musicians or creators, you know, far outweighs what I was doing. And so they have more visibility.

they're gonna find maybe more people or bots and things that have things to say that may be nefarious or disruptive, right? And I've even read some articles about how people engage with them and so forth. But yeah, it's like knowing that at any time someone could say something and you've gotta decide how you're going to respond or if you make an error, realizing it's okay.

to do that because it's live. There's nothing you can do. yeah, it's like, and that was one thing I loved was, you I would sit here and as we've sort of gotten now, like, you know, when I'm, while I'm looking at this and talking to you, I've got us on one screen, I've got, you know, another screen with some other material and having that just all there and saying, look, I'm having this problem with this code.

Brian Funk (23:19.904)

Mmm. It's part of the thrill.

Rich Shivener (23:45.317)

Or I'm gonna work on a voiceover for an hour, you know, in Ableton or move into Premiere later on, you know, mixing all these things. And just having someone say like, you know what, make sure you back off from the mic a little bit. You've got a real like wolfy sort of sound about you while you're doing this. Or, you know, I can still hear your, like your ambient sounds in the background, even though I try so hard to eliminate those things.

Brian Funk (24:04.024)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (24:13.835)

It was this kind of community problem solving that would happen, but I would always frame it like that. Like I'm having this issue, does anyone have some, even like a little marker on the side that's like a note that would say today, this is what I'm working on. And it sort of changed the message from like, this is just absolute garbage. Like keep working on it too. Like, let me help you turn that garbage into something interesting. Right.

Brian Funk (24:36.728)

Yeah.

Gotcha, so you're not saying this is a show of my virtuosity as a writer, watching me work in an hour and turn out gold. You're saying, yeah, I've got this thing I'm working on, here's the issue, here's... I like that, that's a nice way to frame it.

Rich Shivener (24:48.083)

No.

Rich Shivener (24:53.899)

I think you can you could approach it with music right like in two ways you could say You know, I'm gonna get everything ready to have a nice stream. I mean Let's just compare our two cameras, right? Your camera looks amazing. Like I could see you turning it on just jamming You've got it all set up right and you go and there's no stopping. You're just gonna jam and play That's it. Like that's that's all there's tons of those on YouTube and and twitch and I love it cuz like

Sometimes you just see like the power goes out or something or with DJs, you know, they perform live and then they get kicked off YouTube in the middle of their stream. That's it. There's no recording or anything. It's like, I gotta come back. I gotta start back up. Or you could talk about process, which I'm kind of more interested in that. So like, I think I would rather see like you, would rather see anyone start from the ground up with an idea and just show us.

what I think, I think it's safe to assume that this stuff is really hard, know? Like writing, whether it's textual or songwriting, it's really hard to do. Like, and it takes a lot of like cranking in the mind to get this out. But I think we don't, I'm gonna say we, I should just step back a little bit when I say that. I certainly don't show enough of that struggle while I'm working on it. But there are times that I'm like,

Brian Funk (26:07.554)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (26:20.861)

Standing up and walking around I'm getting snacks, you know, I'm sitting just staring at this piece or I'm just reading You know and maybe referencing some tracks things like that But that that's all just kind of like off the screen, right? for for for myself, especially now but I keep thinking like should I go back to doing this because it I don't know. It just holds me accountable as well. I find in some ways. Yeah

Brian Funk (26:48.204)

Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at, how I've felt doing it. It's like, you know, I'm on now and I'm, you know, I'm trying to do my best, but also just, I'm not gonna fool around as much as I might. I mean, that even happens when I've been practice and, you know, the guys are here and we're working on something and like, we got to power through a little bit and there's...

Rich Shivener (27:14.74)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (27:15.544)

you know, waves of energy and stuff and where I might get a little low. If I'm on my own, I might bail out. I might do something different, take a break or like I said, get distracted by the entire wealth of human knowledge that's on the computer right at my fingertips. But when there's other people there, sometimes their energy might be up here so they can kind of pull you up or you just know like

Rich Shivener (27:25.717)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (27:34.902)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (27:45.282)

look, we only got this amount of time for the whole week, so we got to get to it. And there is a bit of, like you said, accountability to that. And it's healthy because, you know, it's not, there's no gun to my head, so to speak, that we have to do it. But it does make you say, OK, let's get to this. Let's get down to business.

Rich Shivener (27:49.961)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (28:08.457)

Mm-hmm. Let's make make sure it's worth your while if you're tuning in and In addition to that, you know where you're creating and in my case I was creating something whether it's again bits of audio or Video but mostly just writing the chapters You know, we're also dialoguing with people maybe like sort of like band practice right iterating together

Brian Funk (28:12.952)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (28:30.286)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (28:37.422)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (28:37.523)

But in this way, it's text on your right or left side of your screen. Someone's saying something. What are you working on? What about this? And having that community at the same time. And that's something I'm actually giving a talk this week about this to another university, is sort of ways of trying to break out these tasks. mean, mostly just speaking from my own experience on the book, but.

how I would say like, I'm gonna set my timer on the screen for 50 minutes, similar to how we've done in the production music club. think I've come to one meeting so far, so I need to come to another one, but yeah, excellent, yeah. But I like that you sort of give us a time limit. And in writing groups I've been in, they do the same thing, the Pomodoro timer of 25 minutes. I always extend it to 50 because I just find after 25 minutes I get up.

Brian Funk (29:15.512)

Doing on Thursday.

Rich Shivener (29:34.549)

too much and I guess it's distracted very easily so you know for the same thing for the stream I set it for 50 minutes with a goal for the day which is to work on like code or or again a piece of sound you know treat like edit or scrub a piece of sound and it just kind of gets everyone focused a bit but then you can still have that community conversation if you feel like it at the same time you've got like a clear

Brian Funk (30:01.55)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (30:04.243)

agenda that viewers I I mean just again from my limited experience like appreciated and really respected and I see that a lot in on Twitch too for writers they didn't kind of sort of say you know 30 to 50 minutes of this and then we'll chat and vice versa it's just it's a nice sort of way of also encouraging your your audiences to write with you, compose with you.

at the same time.

Brian Funk (30:36.524)

Yeah, that's kind of the format of the meetings we do at the Music Production Club. We talk a little and then winds up being about 45 minutes of making music and then come back and share what we did. I think I'm going to try to tighten that up a little because sometimes in the beginning, the talking and the chatting and sort of waiting for people to arrive winds up going about a half hour. I think I'd like to dial that to like 15 minutes so that

Rich Shivener (31:05.749)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (31:06.35)

we've got about an hour because it's still a really short time. But I definitely find myself being like, oh, I just had like a couple, I mean, guess I'll say that in an hour too, but I'm not really, I mean, it's so rare that I'm able to get like a vocal part, say, and the music and all these things that I want to get. And I don't want to leave.

Rich Shivener (31:21.099)

You

Brian Funk (31:36.428)

that moment of inspiration and a lot of times I find myself cutting out before it starts dropping off. You know? So, I don't know, maybe another 15 minutes and then this, you know, we're not staying up all night, too, by kind of wrangling that in a little, but when you're on that wave, yeah, it's hard to just bail.

Rich Shivener (31:42.813)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (31:51.723)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (31:56.401)

It's tough, like, yeah.

Rich Shivener (32:02.299)

Yeah, and yeah, it's usually like two or three reps, I guess you could think of 50 on off. It's like the second and third one. I to really hit that groove, right? Of whatever I was working on for the day. So the first one is just, what am I trying to do here? Okay, you know, and prepare. But I found actually, and I'd be curious to know like anyone else who's listening to who

who streams if there's a lot of preparation before. So, you know, with the music production club or with streaming, I was making sure, the one time I did it again, I just had joined the music production club, think in December, because I wanted to come to the retreat and I was like, yeah, why not? Let's just join this too, this is great, and I'm gonna make. But I'd have kind of a plan.

you know, each day and then with coming to the club like, okay, I'm gonna work on this today. And even when I'm starting my like, writing now and I'm working on those 50 minute sessions, whether it was on Twitch or not, I'm saying, why don't you know, what am I gonna do? Like what's my schedule so that I can just come in and start working. And yes, kind of perform a know, perform for people like a writing task. It's, I don't know. So it's kind of just interesting to sort of say like.

There is spontaneity that comes out of it by just knowing that there's no editing. This is all me, but there's still kind of like a plan behind the scenes, Like our theme or something like that.

Brian Funk (33:43.886)

Well, you can do anything, right? So when you have infinite options, it's really hard to decide. And I can lose a lot of time just being like, maybe I'll do this, but trying out searching sounds, presets, and yeah, it's...

Rich Shivener (33:45.291)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (33:59.466)

It's much better when I kind of say, I'm going to do this and I have to hit the road on it. You know, as soon as that time starts, let's go. Time to move, not, what am going to do tonight? You know, where's the wind blowing and how do I feel?

Rich Shivener (34:03.498)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (34:12.191)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (34:17.13)

It's, I think it's so many of it. So much of it is just making the decision on every level, just deciding, deciding, deciding. yeah, that, and I've also learned to tune my guitars beforehand because that has messed me up a bunch. You know, just a couple minutes that takes, takes a little wind out of your sail and, you know, make sure everything's kind of working.

Rich Shivener (34:23.115)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (34:30.857)

No.

Rich Shivener (34:43.563)

Yeah, mean, you know, certainly like I'm thinking about streaming stuff there. There could be a there's an audience out there for people who want to watch you tune your guitar. And there's an audience out there for people who just want to watch you like clean the dirt off or the like dust off your gear, you know, and hook everything up like the technical end. But.

Brian Funk (34:56.11)

you

Brian Funk (35:02.265)

That's One of my favorite tools for that, I've got a paintbrush specifically just for the keys and in between the knobs. Really, it's a great important tool. It doesn't get enough credit. Yeah. Maybe we'll do like ASMR or whatever, A-S-R-M, you know? Does that stand for anything? I don't know. Do you know? Well, we could.

Rich Shivener (35:06.783)

Yes!

Rich Shivener (35:13.855)

Hashtag cleaning, you know.

Rich Shivener (35:22.219)

So, you know what, I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but it's like auditory stimulation or sensory something. again, apologies to listeners, but yeah, I know it's a response to something ASMR, but yeah, a whole market for that of just, you know, our interest of like, but I think I found that if I was stuck, there was always those other options to show.

Brian Funk (35:30.722)

Okay.

Yeah, I can look it up.

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (35:51.593)

behind the scenes material. Again, like sometimes when I see, let's say DJs who will stream live on Twitch or another platform, like I would be really interested in just watching them curate their list and say, this is what I'm thinking about doing or like, you know, taking apart like a CDJ or something like that, thinking like, what, what goes on? I think like you just get to see some kind of human aspects when you, when you do those things on my end, you know, I just say that because

There were times where I'm looking at what I was gonna do for the day, I'm like, wow, what am I gonna do on this stream? And it would just be line editing. And to some folks, that's incredibly boring to do and annoying. Yeah, like you would.

Brian Funk (36:34.21)

Now we're talking about like, writing, like grammar and just that kind of stuff. Yeah, okay.

Rich Shivener (36:39.647)

Fixing a sentence, yeah, exactly. Or like writing up like the abstract for a paper, know, the summary of it. But also like, you know, there were times where I just spent, I think I did a couple sessions of this where I would just edit interviews that I was putting together or like my voiceovers and just showing that everyone that I would do like three or four takes of it and then scrub parts of it as I go, right?

You know, again, that's tedious work, think, that we don't think about. No, we don't think about, but it just often lives off in isolation and something we're doing when we're polishing up and isn't made content. I keep thinking the things we may just take for granted, whether it's dusting with a paint brush, which I may have to do.

That's all that's like interesting maybe interesting content for somebody and just they might say, know, I do the same thing man. That is like, I love that idea and it's trivial to us but perhaps fascinating for another person.

Brian Funk (37:56.162)

Well, I'm probably not going to watch too many videos of people dusting their gear, but I did watch one somewhere along the way that gave me the idea and it did change things. that's kept my stuff cleaner, probably working longer and, you know, a little more appealing to touch. I mean, for all the things I've watched over my lifetime on the internet, I mean, that's one that stuck around. So...

Rich Shivener (37:59.925)

Hahahaha

Rich Shivener (38:15.07)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (38:26.264)

There's something to that.

Rich Shivener (38:27.435)

Yeah, I mean, I just had to make sure I got his name correct, but Liam Killen on YouTube, he's in Montreal. He has this thing where he does interviews of folks where he blows the, he's like a dustblower, air cleaner and like brushes off everything. And it's just this like ritual he has, but I think people are here for it. They're like the little, yeah, it's just like this kind of funny thing that.

Brian Funk (38:49.25)

Like what's gonna come out today, kinda thing.

Rich Shivener (38:55.743)

you know, when his ears will sort of laugh at, laugh with him about, but you know, it's become like a staple, just that two seconds of like, you know, blowing it off and, but yeah, certainly like, I don't know if I would, I agree with you. I wouldn't want to watch like too many streams of somebody dusting, you know, but you always have that as a backup realizing perhaps that we shouldn't, we shouldn't waste content or

opportunities, right? Like, it could, it could certainly be a, like a state once a month of, of Brian cleaning. I'm trying to imagine what that would be like.

Brian Funk (39:33.23)

This is me avoiding making music and trying to feel productive.

Rich Shivener (39:38.003)

You all right? Well, that's the thing too, is like sometimes we need to, we need those things to be productive. Like, okay, so for example, like this, this is a, this is my basement. You know, it's got concrete all around it. It's, it's a nightmare to any recording person, but still, you know, I spend so much time.

Brian Funk (39:50.061)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (40:06.431)

and I'm curious if you do this too, unraveling wires, fix, you know, all this stuff. I'm, mean, this thing we were talking about together online, this microcosm, you know, like I am, it's sitting here and all the wires from the trip are still here, like in a suitcase. I just didn't take them out, you know? But I have to like do those things to be creative. So I'm like, okay, if I were to go back and do...

this kind of live work, maybe I'll just send, you know, just every once in while show somebody like how annoying it is to unravel wires, you know, but not not too often.

Brian Funk (40:42.541)

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (40:46.094)

But I'm kind of looking around and some of the little minor things that I've done to make my life easier and to make this easier and faster to get to work are important. Like they actually really do matter. I've got like some of my own version of cable management going on and the way I like to store things so I know where to find it. So I'm not just looking all the time.

Rich Shivener (40:54.155)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (41:12.395)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (41:16.002)

I was even just thinking, after we speak, I'm going to record the intro to this podcast. So I don't know, maybe there's some content there. Just this is how the show goes. And for somebody that might be doing one or trying to think about do one or it might just, I don't know. But it does also make me think a little bit about a bigger theme that's been coming up a lot in these conversations is like,

Rich Shivener (41:20.669)

you

Rich Shivener (41:34.537)

Yeah, yeah, maybe.

Brian Funk (41:46.776)

You know, with like AI, of course, coming around and doing everything for us better than we can do it. The humanity in what we do seems to me to be more and more important. The story behind it, the people, the feelings, emotions, and you know, obstacles we overcome and we endure to make stuff is interesting. And so much...

Rich Shivener (41:52.894)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (42:13.984)

in looking back in my life and like the stuff I've enjoyed, the music, the artists and all that. It's often the story like you hear somebody say, who is this? And you want to know like, who are these people? What band is this? And what do they stand for? And what's this artists like approach? And all of that becomes interesting. And to bring it back to something we did in the retreat, we were

Rich Shivener (42:23.805)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (42:37.546)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (42:41.656)

We did our sampling field trip where we went around the block and we spent like 10 minutes or so just recording sounds. And we all thought about the one Billie Eilish song where she recorded the streetwalk sign. It was like Australia or something. I forget where, but yeah. And even her in general, like her whole ethos working with her brother in their childhood bedrooms. Like that's part of the mystique of that.

Rich Shivener (42:57.126)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, if any of us.

Rich Shivener (43:11.177)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (43:11.742)

And that one hi-hat sound that's really the crosswalk is a hi-hat sound that stands out amongst probably billions of hi-hats that we hear every day and never think twice about and don't care about and don't even wonder about. So it's all because of the story. It's because there was something human to it. So sharing these little things might...

Rich Shivener (43:23.583)

Mm.

Rich Shivener (43:31.231)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (43:39.694)

I don't know, they might be more and more interesting as we get deeper and deeper into a world where, I'm really starting to see so much of what I'm interacting with is AI and I don't even know it. I'm realizing it now from my podcast when I get emails about guests being on the podcast. I used to be able to spot them easily. It was like, hey, Brian Funk music. We think we'll be the perfect fit for

Rich Shivener (43:52.467)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (44:05.227)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (44:09.804)

your show or your podcast, the music production podcast, they've just felt the so, you know, fill in the blanks kind of thing. Insert name here. But now they're like, we really enjoyed your last episode and it has like a brief summary. But I was like, and that's usually the trigger for me. Like I'm going to interact with this because this is somebody that's really talking to me and they listened. But recently I'm like.

Rich Shivener (44:10.858)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (44:38.446)

This just seems weird and it seems a lot like the other ones I've been getting like this. So I've been kind of running them through detectors and like, damn, everybody is just sending AI to everybody else.

Rich Shivener (44:43.924)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (44:47.871)

Wow.

Rich Shivener (44:52.939)

I mean, look, like I just watched a couple videos about the whole new thing now is about.

I think it's called Model Context Protocol, if I ever rec, MCP. And it's about basically creating AI agents to do things like you were just describing, fill out forms, write responses. There was even a number of videos out there now of having someone pull an AI agent, we'll say, pull the latest trends in anything, music, artificial intelligence.

writing a script and then transferring that script into a voice and video service that sounds just like you. I think it was Crater Magic, that's the name of the creator who showed this whole process. Showed behind the scenes rather than sort of saying it's me and actually showing how he did it all the way through it. Super interesting to see. But you know, yeah, like just knowing that.

you're feeding a system in a different way when you're working with AI, you're interacting with it, so you're training it in a certain way. And I think like, this is something I wanted to bring up to you actually thinking about this. It was sort of spinning around in my head when I was, when I was, we were talking about jumping on the call is these AI systems are trained on things like freesound.org.

and other publicly available information, which as I was composing the book didn't quite occur to me. It had not really taken off as rapidly and as visibly as AI had not at the time. And my content that's free, and even though it's Creative Commons, can be trained, these systems can be trained with my material.

Rich Shivener (47:00.395)

And so what I wanted to ask you actually, I can turn it to the host, if you don't mind, is how do you feel about putting things out for free now? Because as many people probably have, as I told you, I got to know you because of your content you put out there. I signed up for something you put on Gumroad, and I got notifications you released a lot of great sample packs and materials for free to use. And then if you want to get the advanced one,

here's another level or you have some paid things. But there's a kind of vulnerability that's different than the vulnerability we've been talking about earlier of putting your samples and things out there. I don't know, how do you feel about this sort of stuff? I guess I want to ask.

Brian Funk (47:48.014)

Well, I'm what, 230 free Ableton Live packs into it. 236 at today's date. So I feel pretty good about it. I like doing that. like...

Rich Shivener (47:54.661)

Ha ha ha ha!

Rich Shivener (47:58.846)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (48:08.258)

putting stuff out there for people that is maybe a little different, weird and quirky and that people can just get it and that doesn't cost them anything. mean, there's a lot of people that even if it was like five bucks, that's too much. You I've already spent all this on all this other stuff to even make anything. So I definitely like that. I like that it gets a wider audience because more people are prone to download it.

Rich Shivener (48:14.741)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (48:36.63)

It kind of gets my message, whatever that is out there a bit too, if even subconsciously on some level. I think it's really only helped me because that's really how I first started getting any attention from anybody about anything I've ever done musically was by sharing this stuff. then, you know, if you're

Rich Shivener (48:45.373)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (49:00.235)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (49:05.654)

watching the video, there's a good chance like even just the background music is something I made with it. And I think it brings people into my world a little. I like that it puts out this idea that you can make like your own stuff from sounds that you find, which because often a lot of the stuff is like sample based instruments, not always, but often. So

Rich Shivener (49:10.816)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (49:29.803)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (49:35.562)

I think, I don't know what AI is learning from me, guess. I haven't really thought about that with the sounds. But I think it seems like it's been listening and scouring everything, not just freesound.org, know, like commercial, non-commercial. I get the feeling like this stuff is, they don't tell you a lot about how they're training this stuff, but.

Rich Shivener (49:50.971)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (50:03.086)

There have been people that have used certain apps that make songs and been able to almost recreate music that exists already.

Rich Shivener (50:03.211)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (50:10.965)

Yeah, yeah. And we've seen it with our sort of like MIDI generators and it's everywhere. There's all kinds of ideas we can kind of pull from, I think. But I sort of bypassed one thing that you were talking about earlier with the sound samples and so forth. We have with AI, we can ask for generations that come from.

Brian Funk (50:27.022)

you

Rich Shivener (50:40.309)

sort of found sounds or things like that. But I find I'm more more interested in kind of creating like, almost like open but still sort of intimate pools of sounds. for example, like with Pasadena, all the creators, I don't know how many sounds we sort of contributed to that sample folder that we made, but it was great to just have

like 30 to 50 sounds and say that's your pool that you can work with. And then taking the time to mix it in a way that's interesting and unique to you. Now if you use AI for that, maybe that's interesting. But I find you just lose sometimes the life from it when you take it out. One thing that did come up with my book, I'll say, is

I was putting the final touches on it with, I think, Adobe products. And I know that they were baking in a lot with a transcription and so forth. So for efficiencies like that, let's just get a quick caption set we can do right into our filming, or using like Otter.ai, which I've done before, to produce like transcripts. That's like such a time saver in some ways.

Brian Funk (52:05.454)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (52:06.409)

I think it's kind of this difference between technical and kind of operational things that you may have to do versus the creative work, right? But sometimes that creative work can be in sound treatment. So I think that's interesting about music is all this pastina samples, I wouldn't want to isolate just the bird. I want the air in the car is passing it. And I want to think about how to use that creatively.

But when we think of just voice, sometimes you just want that really sucked in sound, Like a podcast, right? You don't want to hear my son stomping around upstairs like he does now. But if you do, it's a little human. like, wow, there's some ambience to it. I don't know where I was going with that so much, but I think that the more we can appreciate.

Yeah, the rawness that comes from our own sounds and found sounds, the better. that's something I want to try to do in another project soon, is just continue to collect these raw found sounds and make things out of it.

Brian Funk (53:17.458)

there's an adventure attached to all that. You went out and got that. We all went out and got those sounds and even at the same time and almost everybody sampled the crosswalk because we've been thinking about that, right? So in like our samples that was like the cliche thing to do, right? But we all got a different sound because

Rich Shivener (53:25.726)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (53:40.13)

different people were walking by, different cars were driving by, different conversations were happening. I held my phone at a different position on the little speaker than I think you had a Zoom with you, right? So you had a different mic even. We all got something different out of that and you know, marginally different, but there's something there. And I think in the course of like a song or even like your entire body of work.

Rich Shivener (53:52.616)

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Brian Funk (54:10.424)

There's, that's a factor that comes into play. It's not a fader in the mix that you can turn up and down, but I think you feel it. And I don't know, like as much as I love like weird sounds and samples, I never really got excited about like Splice for instance, or like services like that because, not because, mean, there's great stuff on there. It's amazing.

Rich Shivener (54:14.155)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (54:20.233)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (54:31.692)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (54:39.244)

and I'm no shade on it or anything like that, but I just kind of like wanted to do it myself and work with what I have already. To me, I get a kick out of it. You know, I get a kick out of knowing like, I did that. Or I went on that adventure to record like my feet walking through leaves. Or that's like my dog that barked in the background and I'm gonna leave it in the take.

Rich Shivener (54:45.653)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (55:01.867)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (55:07.595)

the

Brian Funk (55:08.204)

I just like that. It brings it to life for me. And when I listen to it years later, even I'm reminded of what was going on there and what I was doing. Same thing with like the packs I make. Like they're little time capsules for me too that like I remember that when I came up with that and found that or stumbled across it or when I went to the thrift store to buy like four VCRs, cause I wanted to make sure I got one that worked and they were like

$3 each. it was just part of the experience for me even just to enjoy this process a little more put a little like I don't know like TLC or something into it.

Rich Shivener (55:54.603)

Absolutely, I a little promo time for your packs, we could say. But I want to say one thing I really enjoy about your packs is we get to see the thinking that went into it, even though you have the notes and stuff of how you did it. But just looking at the material in its way that maybe Brian put it together, I learned a lot with MPC when you will give us.

Brian Funk (55:56.76)

and

Rich Shivener (56:23.467)

You know packs we can kind of play with or you were doing that for the workshop I'm like, okay. How did he do this? that's really interesting and now I can like kind of break it apart and make it my own in a really unique way and I think I share that reason that same idea with Working with a lot of like sample packs or like a subscription service like whether it's like loop masters or splices I Don't get the behind-the-scenes part, right?

I think they sound like amazing. All the times I'll hear like a sample and I've used some of them. But I'm like, how can I take this and kind of like warp it in a really interesting way? You know, now that I have it. And I just like when I see it with inside the DAW and like the way it was produced, there's that extra layer of like learning that I get, you know, and I want to just.

I don't know. And I think that's, again, with the book too, is just showing the raw stuff that enabled me to put something online and saying, can look at the code behind this at any point. It's on GitHub and all that sort of stuff. I feel like it's easier to reverse engineer maybe how it was created. And so I'm like, yeah, Brian, what are my favorite things I made? And a friend of mine who was listening to some of the stuff from January was,

your video game, I was like an eight bit, sort of 16 bit hybrid pack that you had, video games, and you had this like follow action thing on Ableton that was following all the drum samples and loops, and I just like changed it up completely, like switched all the knobs, randomized it, and I was like, this is super fun, but I was like, how did he do this? And just kept looking at how you assigned like macros and.

the arps and all the things that you put into it, like, you could have just given us the samples and we could have done that, but you showed us both and that was super cool. yeah, shout out to you.

Brian Funk (58:24.942)

I'm glad you enjoy that because yeah, like the samples are one thing, but it's more for me what happens with them. So like it's cool to like get those sounds out of the Nintendo or just get like one shots out of my synth going into a VCR tape or something.

Rich Shivener (58:36.234)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (58:46.502)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (58:48.736)

It gets interesting for me when I start putting it inside of live and start playing with the effects and the macros and seeing what happens and finding interesting ways to work with it. mean, that is something you can really get though. I mean, at least with the stuff Ableton puts out, there's real people behind those packs they make and...

Rich Shivener (59:12.832)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (59:14.092)

Dissecting them is such a cool way to learn and get inspiration just to see like, wow, how'd they do that? How does this work? And a lot of times I'll do that and I'm like, I would have done that a totally different way and look at how it turned out here. And maybe it's more efficient or maybe it's just a different result, but that just gives you more ideas for the future. And making those little instrument racks,

Rich Shivener (59:18.219)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (59:35.006)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (59:39.497)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (59:43.65)

They're there forever now, like you've always got them and they're contained and you kind of inform how to play with them when you choose which macros to map and what effects to put onto them. And sometimes that is a little difficult because you're like, I don't know, I wish I could do that too. But I guess now that they let you have 16 macros, it's not so bad because that's plenty. know, 16 knobs, like you can do a lot of damage to a sound.

Rich Shivener (59:47.147)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (59:54.699)

Mm.

Rich Shivener (01:00:02.825)

Mm.

Rich Shivener (01:00:09.125)

Mm-hmm That's still more six more than your your digits will allow like your head so it's you know, it was great but I think to another thing is about this is There is certainly like value and I watch them all the time, you know online tutorials for how to do certain things in Ableton and Then there's also just

Brian Funk (01:00:17.23)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:00:37.653)

providing the materials and letting someone sort of figure it out with the tools that are available. And I think there's such a power in just exploring and kind of failing with those materials for a while. I mean, yes, under time constraints for Jamuary, I would have an hour or two, know, so I couldn't get super deep into these live packs and so forth. But like, I could go back.

sometime and just sit for a week trying to unpack what Brian was doing on this. know, and I think that's kind of interesting for learning, but it just shows sometimes like a template or something can be the word that's coming to mind and I, and I hate using this word exploited, but it could be, you know, used like to, to a real, to, to a real original way for yourself. Right. And for me, like when I take things like

for my book, used a Creative Commons template, from a developer named AJ on a website called html5up, and downloaded that, and it was a template called Massively, but I insisted in trying to take it apart completely, and building it from the ground up, in a way that fit the vision I had.

I just didn't have the skills to build something completely, nor did I have AI at the time to tell me to build web templates or anything like that. I wanted to learn from it, but the way I did it was just downloading it and kind of looking at every bit of it, like the HTML code, the CSS, everything like that. And learned a lot from it. Now I can teach that sort of stuff in classes and attend to my own website that's built from the ground up with a template, but everything inside that sandbox.

just like a live pack is made by me, and it's super gratifying in that way.

Brian Funk (01:02:37.154)

Yeah, well that's, I guess I can learn about a lot of things when you just take them apart and look inside and see what's happening. But then you don't have to do that, you can just use it too and just be off to the races. Like we were talking about getting started and preparing for like a live stream, having a template that you can exploit in the most like positive sense of the word.

Rich Shivener (01:03:00.883)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:03:02.87)

that allows you to just get going and work. It provides you a little bit of a workflow. Like, all here's a direction you can go. And then you're free to adjust and change and fool around as much as you want. having a little bit of a starting point, I mean, that's how I usually would teach Ableton Live, especially to like kids when I had my club after school. Yeah, it was great.

Rich Shivener (01:03:28.943)

he did. Okay, cool.

Brian Funk (01:03:31.906)

got cancelled unfortunately because there's no money to pay me like nothing which I don't even know. It's like they got to cut something so let's cut this thing that doesn't cost anything. Anyway, I'm not bitter. No I'm not. No I'm not but it's a little frustrating because it was really valuable to a lot of kids but I would kind of put them in lanes.

Rich Shivener (01:03:36.724)

Yeah, yeah.

Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah. man. Yeah. I can tell. Yeah, it would be.

Brian Funk (01:04:00.716)

to have a push in live, even live intro, is too infinite. So it'd be like, all right, here's a drum rack. Let's just make me a beat. I'll show you how to do it a little bit. And I'll make two and then I'll set up maybe like the arpeggiator. So now you can just kind of hold a couple notes and we'd be in key mode and.

Rich Shivener (01:04:18.101)

you

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:04:23.55)

know, little things like that. I might even like set the clips up so that they don't have to worry about stopping recording. They're just empty clips that they can just hit record in and then they'll fill up as they play. So...

Rich Shivener (01:04:24.821)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:04:35.307)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:04:37.954)

That helped a lot and that helps me too, if I've kind of like want to make something certain. Sometimes like if I want to make a certain type of song, I'll open another song I've made in that style and just delete everything out. You know, like all the clips, but keep all those tracks and all those effects and just work from there again. I mean, that's like a template that I haven't made yet. I'm just saying like, yeah, I want to make a couple more songs in that style. That was fun.

Rich Shivener (01:04:53.319)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:05:07.797)

Yeah. I was gonna ask you, I remember, do you still do this? There was an email you sent once with, it was an update for the new pack you releasing, and it was about the fact that you just, I think it was with your drum, like, go-to drum beats. I think that was the one. You said, I just wanna be able to show up to my studio and say, turn on. I won't say the person's name, because I don't want it to affect your studio right now, but.

Brian Funk (01:05:07.888)

So

Rich Shivener (01:05:36.971)

it was like a voice automation system. You're like, yeah, yeah, like turn everything on, you know, and you go. There's just value in kind of, again, like pre-setting up, like setting up everything to just be creative on the spot. Whether it's like streaming, you know, yeah, setting up like a template that it's, you know, with your open broadcast studio or something else, where you've got everything there, the sound and everything is ready to go. I mean,

Brian Funk (01:05:39.778)

The apple one.

Brian Funk (01:05:44.514)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:06:06.129)

I find at least that just kind of takes as long as the stream itself, you know, like as we talking about earlier, just getting that rhythm. So I was wondering, one, if you still do that, like now, and then just wanted, I wanted to confirm what you were saying too, that do you use like a lot of pre-made sort of live sets or templates, depending on the style? That's something I've really thought a lot about since January.

and haven't really imported yet. I've been trying to set up different, like, think of like, what's the best, like, live set template I could work with that encompasses really anything I'm thinking about so I can just jam, you know, and maybe stream this stuff, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:06:49.646)

Well, probably the best one that encompasses everything is going to be too much. Right? Like you're going to have like 32, 64 tracks and they're all, you know, it's too much. But I, yeah, I do have everything pretty well set up down here, ready to go. So what you're referring to with turning everything on, I have these little, they're like, you plug them into the outlet. It's just like a little brick, you know, I don't know.

Rich Shivener (01:06:53.749)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:06:58.697)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:07:05.707)

Mm-mm.

Rich Shivener (01:07:15.423)

Hmm. Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:07:19.214)

about this size, I'm holding up like an AirPod case. It just plugs in and it's got a plug in it. But it's a Siri enabled thing or might also work with like Alexa or any of those. And through Apple's home app, you can just set it up so that you can ask Siri, don't react, to turn it on. And you name it something, mine's called the practice space. I call it that because

Rich Shivener (01:07:20.477)

Okay, yeah. Nice.

Rich Shivener (01:07:30.911)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:07:45.707)

okay.

Brian Funk (01:07:48.414)

I want to... it was going to be the studio for a while, it might have even been, but it was too serious. this is just practicing. This is where we do our practice of making music. But it's, I think, like three or four power strips that I used to walk around and just flip on. So, this isn't a major time saver. We're talking probably like 30 seconds tops.

Rich Shivener (01:07:53.387)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:07:57.195)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:08:03.083)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:08:13.963)

Still, right? Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:08:15.842)

That's probably not even that much, but it's climbing on the floor, reaching under the desk and flipping the switch, you know. but now I can just tell it to do it and everything comes on. And that probably makes a difference between me getting going certain days and not some of those lazy days. And I'm not sure all I have to do is just tell my phone and turn everything on and then it's gone. So that makes it easier. I do have.

Rich Shivener (01:08:21.642)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:08:27.603)

Excellent.

Rich Shivener (01:08:34.016)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:08:39.445)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:08:45.378)

things like mic'd up and plugged in to my interface. I've got, a drum kit behind me. I don't know how well you can see that, but that's all mic'd up, ready to go. Guitar amp is mic'd up. These synths are plugged in. And inside of Live, it's not so much that I have like a set as a template where I open it up and everything's there. It's more like individual tracks. So I don't know.

Rich Shivener (01:08:52.992)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:09:15.214)

If you're familiar with it, think you probably are, but so everyone knows, an Ableton Live set can be dragged inside an Ableton Live set. So you can be working on something and then drag another set to the right and all of that stuff will pop in. So I've got a bunch of little sets and one of them is like acoustic drums, which are behind me. So I drag that in and then the seven or eight mics that are on the drum are just there, routed, ready to go.

Rich Shivener (01:09:24.587)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:09:44.587)

It's already beginning. Okay.

Brian Funk (01:09:45.996)

Same thing with the electric guitar, same thing with the Prophet. I've got one of those external instruments all set up and it's in an instrument rack that has a delay and a reverb and I think a chorus on it, filter. So I can just drop that in and start playing it so there's not a lot of problems with it. Even like we were talking a little bit, I don't know if you've worked it out yet, but I got this chroma console pedal.

Rich Shivener (01:09:59.455)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:10:04.149)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:10:15.436)

right here to compliment the, I forget what the one you have is called now, microcosm, right? So they're like brothers or something. But that setup is an external audio effect that I can just drag in and I can, now that everything's running through that real nice and easy. So that stuff helps a lot. It saves a lot of time. So it's not so much that I have

Rich Shivener (01:10:22.213)

the micro-hazel? Yes, yes.

Brian Funk (01:10:44.194)

different templates, though I do have one for my band. So that's just a set. just open up and everything's ready to go. Guitars, bass, vocals, drums, hit record. Otherwise we don't record. You know, that's the alternative. So it's so fast and easy that we don't even have to think of it. I just have to remember to hit the button. But that, yeah, like those little things make a difference. So I might decide, I might be making like some weird electronic.

Rich Shivener (01:10:57.291)

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:11:13.716)

song but then decide I want some drums in it and I can just drag that in like I'm dragging anything into live and then run over there and record.

Rich Shivener (01:11:24.181)

See, by the end of this episode, I'm hoping I convince you to make a few videos of all these even 30 second things you do because someone out there wants to know. I want to know.

Brian Funk (01:11:33.356)

yeah, realizing I'm sitting on some, some content creation right here.

Rich Shivener (01:11:39.307)

Some gold now.

Brian Funk (01:11:42.27)

It is gold for me. It might not sound like much, but how often do we spend lying on the floor under the table following wires? We went through that at the Ableton retreat with the Prophet. I don't remember if you were there for that. I think you were. We were trying to figure out how to get into the interface. After a while, it's kind of like, let's just...

Rich Shivener (01:11:45.311)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:12:01.013)

that's right.

Rich Shivener (01:12:05.001)

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yes.

Brian Funk (01:12:10.258)

let's just make this as simple as possible because we don't understand the wires that are going on here and I think it had recently been kind of moved around so rather than all this troubleshooting let's just get another set of wires and you know because that was like the first moment I felt like we really making music all right now we're struggling with connections so this is this is what it's really about but

Rich Shivener (01:12:25.289)

Yeah, problem solving, yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:12:33.291)

you

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:37.932)

To eliminate that out of your process as much as possible makes a difference. And especially if you want to be like live streaming or collaborating with people, like no one wants to watch you like, hold on, let me just climb under here and follow this wire. You hold onto it on that end and like pull it. Is this the right one? Like all that stuff is, that's not fun.

Rich Shivener (01:12:56.341)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:13:01.739)

Unless that's like the focal point, right? Like I'm thinking my friend Brian Neese, he does stuff on like Instagram where he'll just turn on the camera and he's like set up with me recording a band. And it's like an hour and he'll just check in and chat and do that. But again, that's like, that's the scope of it. It's not, we're gonna record, let me stop. You know, it's like.

Brian Funk (01:13:18.872)

Hmm. Okay.

Rich Shivener (01:13:30.09)

some way so I don't know that's kind of funny to think about but I'm also like I'm thinking about the Bob Ross streams that are on Twitch now you know and when I listen to those or just put them on the background you know there's that like constant sound of him banging against like the bottom of the canvas like cleaning off the the paint and everything like that like I forget how he basically just like bangs it against it to

Brian Funk (01:13:54.754)

Hmm. You can't know.

Rich Shivener (01:13:57.739)

Yeah, yeah, it's it's a very like interesting percussive sound right like That would be actually fun to sample sometime, but I'm sure somebody earned countless people have done that but You know, it's like just hearing that it's like it feels human and I'm like I could just Yeah, just Sort of see like every once in a while like how would hit what what does he do? Beyond that like to clean and all those things

Brian Funk (01:13:59.032)

Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Rich Shivener (01:14:25.843)

I don't know why. I think it's just probably a result of all this behind the scenes stuff. I've just been fascinated by it as like a both and, right? As like content in addition to like the thing that you're most, you're known for or you do is whatever it's creative or it's writing. It just, yeah, I think it goes back to what you were saying too, just the humanness of it. We get those, we get those elements, right?

Brian Funk (01:14:50.126)

Well, you're right, probably miking up the drum set or connecting a synth and the thought process that goes behind it is, you know, if you're going to use any of this gear, like you're going to have to do that. yeah, that does make sense. I've watched plenty of videos on miking drums and, you know, wiring synthesizers into the computer. So it is an important part of it to just know how to do that and think, think through the process.

Rich Shivener (01:15:08.611)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:15:12.427)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:15:19.795)

Yeah, yeah. Have you ever live-streamed your band?

Brian Funk (01:15:21.026)

it

Yeah, a couple of times, usually very spontaneously. I think we want to do more of that sort of thing. You know, we get out to play very rarely once in a while. We did go out last week though. That was a lot of fun. And we were kind of like, we should have had just something going. But again, part of the problem was also just

Rich Shivener (01:15:24.639)

Yeah, I'm trying to, yeah.

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:15:41.529)

yeah.

Brian Funk (01:15:51.918)

You know, we didn't know how it was going to go until we were going. So there's a little bit of that fear in there, but I think we were talking kind of saying it would be nice if that was part of the process, just like me getting my pedals and guitar cables together as part of my process. Maybe just grabbing like an extra stand for put an iPhone on. For the hell of it.

Rich Shivener (01:15:54.708)

Right, yep.

Rich Shivener (01:16:10.389)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:16:19.647)

We saw that in Pasadena, right? There was a jazz band that had a camera set up, I think when they were rehearsing, was literally across the street from the headquarters. Yeah, was just very small, but they put it on and there's no going back, there's no fixing. People were like, I think they were probably, it seemed like they were doing it from YouTube or Instagram, but it was just there.

Brian Funk (01:16:21.048)

You know, just to have it.

Brian Funk (01:16:32.322)

I didn't see the camera, yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:16:47.795)

for all the ambience and everything around around people like walking and cheering and all that sort of stuff I assume but yeah something about that just turning it on and in its raw way I think is like another avenue I mean I'm personally haven't done for music creation but I think would be interesting to try at some point

Brian Funk (01:16:50.339)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:17:10.126)

Well, even if it turns out disastrous, there's something in there that's probably what people are rooting for. Almost like when they watch like NASCAR, you're like, want to see crashes. I don't know. I don't want to see people crash, but I think that's part of the allure, you know?

Rich Shivener (01:17:17.299)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:17:27.997)

Yeah

Brian Funk (01:17:31.138)

But yeah, that's live stuff. There's a little bit of danger. This could go wrong, and how do you handle it? Those are important lessons too. I've definitely been in situations and seen people play where they break a guitar string and they lose it. And that's really uncomfortable.

that kills it. And then you've seen people where something like that happens and it becomes funny. It's part of the show and you roll with it. And then it's, I was at the show and that thing happened and it was cool, like how they dealt with it.

Rich Shivener (01:18:06.801)

Mm-hmm. I mean, I'm gonna mark this occasion as my confession that I've had, I've played live shows with bands for a very long time before doing the stuff I'm doing now, and have had instances where the power goes out, but I've never had, I've only played a few gigs DJing or doing sort of a bit of light live performance with.

with Ableton and then external gear, but the power hasn't gone out in those instances. I think if the power went out with me just on the laptop and with external sense and it's just me.

I would be absolutely terrified, mortified by the experience. But if it were online and it happened, it'd be a different story. I'd be like, sorry. mean, plenty of times.

Brian Funk (01:18:55.853)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:19:05.462)

I guess if the power went out, you'd be disconnected, right?

Rich Shivener (01:19:07.965)

Yeah, it wouldn't matter, right? You can hide. But have you had that happen to you? Like when you performed solo, like the power just blows up. Like I know Rachel Collier's talked about that and other electronic music producers have talked about that. That's... Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:19:22.346)

I've been very lucky. I've never had the computer crash or the power go out. The closest thing that I can think of right now anyway was on the old APC-40, the original, the crossfader was at the bottom and so was the play, stop, and record button. And I was, I used the crossfader to

Rich Shivener (01:19:38.879)

Hmm. Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:19:46.219)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:19:51.57)

modulate a delay. So you know delay has the repitch mode so it sounds like it's going up and down a pitch like kind of emulate like old tape delays. So I would use that almost like a scratching sound like no feedback and just the crossfader would just change the time. So we get that like kind of something like record scratch sound or something. One night I was playing and I was doing that and I just hit stop.

Rich Shivener (01:19:53.419)

Mmm. Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:20:10.859)

Mmm, okay. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:20:20.716)

like my finger just hit the stop button. Like everything stops. that's it. The song is not even at a musical moment. It's just stop off, you know? And it was like, but what it taught me, the valuable lesson was I started mapping the stop and play button and the record button to something very inconsequential that doesn't really do anything. So I decided I would...

Rich Shivener (01:20:22.891)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:20:32.425)

Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:20:48.491)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:20:50.922)

map it to like the track header so all it would do is select a track. But then that became actually handy once Push came around because Push will turn on the musical notes mode for whatever track you have selected. like auto arms it. So I had the play button I think was like for the drums and the stop button was like a synth and the other is like another sound.

Rich Shivener (01:20:55.371)

Rich Shivener (01:21:04.299)

Mmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:21:17.302)

So it's just three different sounds I can load up now by hitting play, stop, record. And this way, if I hit those buttons, everything doesn't just stop playing.

Rich Shivener (01:21:21.257)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:21:27.083)

Yeah. I mean, yeah, you hear about backups. People have two laptops or machines and wild stuff that prevents a...

Brian Funk (01:21:32.3)

Yeah, yeah, redundant systems and stuff.

Yeah, if you're doing arena shows, like you can't really, you know, I was playing like, I don't know how many people, but it was like, I was on the floor with them. wasn't even on the stage at that night. So it was just kind of like, you know, you just got to go with it. Like, happened? All right, we're going back. You know, you just.

Rich Shivener (01:21:42.975)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:21:53.107)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:22:01.302)

Yeah, I think it's like, no, I was gonna say, yeah, they have fun with it. I mean, with your live bands, I'm sure you've, I had plenty of times a situation where, yeah, something would shut off or a fuse would blow, so the drummer's just like, grung, gung, kaka, gung, just going on, you know, and that's super humanizing, all right, to you, like, okay. And I don't know, I think that's just like a,

I think maybe to kind of combat AI or coexist with it now, we have to be even more aware and sometimes celebrate those human errors and just like, hey, you know what? This is a human who made this error, not an AI we have to train and correct until it's wrong. I think other than that, with DJing stuff, I've...

watched a number of videos of course and like practiced it but the idea of you know a number of DJs saying that they don't do syncing and stuff like that they just cue things up and listen like that just seems like even more important now right we can just automatically sync things perfectly or we can choose to kind of do it by ear and I'm gonna qualify that by like saying I absolutely love how well warping

happens in Dawes and things like that. And for a live performance, having fellow actions like in Ableton, but also being OK with sometimes something's just slightly off the grid and all that. maybe it's only like 33 plus or whatever it always shows me or something like that. OK, this actually still kind of works. Let's just keep it. I don't know.

Brian Funk (01:23:31.032)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:23:57.051)

But I have yet to show, I guess, how that might be valuable. I've just seen a number of other creators say, you know, we can kind of keep this a little loose. And that's refreshing, I think, Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:24:10.094)

I think so, and those are...

interesting moments when things go a little wrong or unexpected. You kind of get an insight into the performer's personality a bit and how they handle it, how they deal with it. And I've definitely seen acts where things go wrong and that's kind of like the endearing moment. Like, like, this so cool, you know, that's, that's, they're going to remember this. This was a moment we had together and the way they handled it was really neat.

Rich Shivener (01:24:22.827)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:24:42.958)

It's human, like you said. And some of those things, like not quantizing, not beat mapping perfectly, there's something to be said about that. There's feel in there. When you get it right, it can be really better than the quantized, better than the computer version.

Rich Shivener (01:24:55.115)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:24:59.605)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:25:06.655)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. It's being OK with, like, in the project, which I appreciate the opportunity to talk about, especially as knowing where there are errors in the code. I can't fix them all. But they still result in something really interesting to me, know, expressively. And someone could take it up and totally tear it apart and...

build something more, even more optimized or something like that. But I was like, I'm going to just work within my capacities and that's it. Like I could iterate forever on these things and use every tool available to clean it up. And I know if I'm fine to just leave it as is. And you know, like a lot of digital projects as I sort of talked about it, it kind of, they can always go on. They can never like infinitely, you know, they're living beings that you just constantly update and put out.

Brian Funk (01:25:56.236)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:26:01.603)

Sometimes it's I've been kind of thinking back about this stuff too is Sometimes it's okay to just stop and put it out as is in the world, you know And let it you know see uptake from different people because you've had your turn with it It's so if my work is creative commons That's an opportunity for someone else to pick up where I left off or completely change it And I think yeah, that's what I've appreciated about your work is you just put out so much content that we can kind of

Brian Funk (01:26:17.528)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:26:31.849)

work with, Yeah, no way, dude. It's awesome.

Brian Funk (01:26:32.622)

It's all bad. It's all incomplete.

We get really attached to things we're working on and we want them to be perfect. There is an exercise in calling it done and there's something there that we need to work on to say, I'm going to leave it, because you can over bake the cake.

Rich Shivener (01:26:55.209)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:26:59.019)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:26:59.806)

burn the dinner with music. It's like food in that way. After a while it has to come off the heat or else it loses something.

Rich Shivener (01:27:10.261)

Yeah, and it needs a simmer or sit in the fridge for a number of days and you know, yeah, exactly. Like it's not a done, it's just we're done. Done period, we're done for now with this. Like there's so much I still haven't touched from January as a result. you know, it's just because it was done for now.

Brian Funk (01:27:15.288)

Yeah, marinator.

Brian Funk (01:27:35.662)

here.

Rich Shivener (01:27:40.619)

I'll come back to it later.

Brian Funk (01:27:41.334)

some of it will be done for good. know, like, from my experience, most of it, like it's just too much stuff to really give attention to, but that does make the stuff you pick kind of special too. And part of that whole exercise is just the practice of it. Just doing it, just making, creating.

Rich Shivener (01:28:00.992)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:28:04.942)

It's not so much what you create, it's just that you did it. And some of it's worth going back to and some of it might also be worth it, but you just can't do everything you want. You can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want. So you got to make those important decisions.

Rich Shivener (01:28:20.34)

I think that's also another thing too, is the body figures so much into the work we do. And with live performance and its rawness in streaming, there's a body there oftentimes, even if it's just hands. Or like a V-tube, right, an avatar.

or nothing at all. There's still like this someone making something in the background. And I think it's just like that whole, this whole endeavor. then when we were at the workshop in Pasadena, it just reminded me like how, yeah, how like the body figures into everything we do with the desk we're at or where we want to sit for the day. Like I'm like, yeah, I have to show people.

Brian Funk (01:30:42.892)

Get hungry, tired.

Rich Shivener (01:30:47.503)

indirectly, like what my habits are and I don't do that often, like in the, you know, in the studio, it's just me. so I'm like, I really like sitting upstairs on that couch next to the prophet. Cause I love looking at the prophet. And like, I felt very anti-social the first day when I was like, you mind if I go upstairs and just work on like track on this prophet, you know, and it just felt self-indulgent, but I was like, I'm here to work. I'm here to show my process a little bit.

Brian Funk (01:31:00.534)

Okay.

Rich Shivener (01:31:17.479)

And you guys were all just like, cool, no problem. Go for it.

Brian Funk (01:31:20.184)

Hmm. Yeah, I was glad you wanted to. And also, you know, just by you doing that kind of signals to everyone else too, like we can spread out a little, you know, like we can have our classroom experience.

Rich Shivener (01:31:34.475)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (01:31:35.206)

and we can have that kind of solo thing. I really like the way it wound up working out. If we were all just sitting in those seats, which were great, the classroom's awesome, but you know, after a while, like, you get tired of anything. So it's a move around.

Rich Shivener (01:31:51.039)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:31:54.018)

new sceneries, even here, like I've got this set up as we've been talking, it's pretty nice for what I like to do, but sometimes I just don't wanna be here. I wanna go outside or I be upstairs, I want more sunlight or anything.

Rich Shivener (01:31:59.839)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:32:09.309)

Absolutely. I mean, I love something I've been trying to do more just to kind of be present, you know, even passively, but limit myself creatively sometimes, which would not work for a stream, I guess, for me is take just one piece of gear, like the push or, you know, my go-to sort of companion for a lot of things like electron.

is take it and sit just with that but near somebody else because I don't know like I know that they're there and I'm not trying to to share the music it's in my headphones but it's just like being co-present you know like I love just I do this a lot during January I'd work a little bit like on it in the morning or something on the weekends but a lot of times it's just like

Brian Funk (01:32:54.019)

Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:33:02.997)

quickly doing something while my wife or son is watching TV and like knowing that that's my time limit, you know, or knowing that like with my laptop, it's getting past five years old now. It's still pretty, it works pretty well, but like it has a very limited battery now. And for January, it was so interesting to like, to me to say, okay, I have an hour before this thing dies. And when that thing dies, it's over.

Brian Funk (01:33:29.248)

And you get the timer too.

Rich Shivener (01:33:31.199)

That's it, you know?

Brian Funk (01:33:35.028)

If you start loading in some heavy plugins, that timer moves a little faster.

Rich Shivener (01:33:39.115)

100 % yeah so I just said okay like that's constraint I have let's let's do it but it's also because I like to just move around a lot you know and I find it very very lonely to be like you know you know in a basement all the time it's so just saying okay if I'm gonna make this work I've got I can't take up my entire studio you know it's like I could take a few things so last night I was just sitting on the floor by the kitchen with like

groove box and you know like a one of my field recorders and just saying okay like that's something I can pick up and put right back downstairs when I'm done but at least I'm around people you know and that's I don't know just passively like invigorating I guess to to be around people yeah

Brian Funk (01:34:27.18)

I think so. I think you feed off energies and all that. mean, look at Chuck Sutton came down a couple days just to work because he wanted to be around people that were working and just soak it up. it put, was, we were talking and he was saying like, you know, this is nice because, you know, if I'm home, I might get distracted by this or that or.

Rich Shivener (01:34:32.203)

Mm.

Brian Funk (01:34:50.282)

Here, it's almost like when people go to the coffee shop to write, you know, because you're just around other people sitting there doing work. There's something that you feed off of that on some level.

Rich Shivener (01:35:01.897)

Yeah, like you don't know what they're working on, but it seems like they're really invested in whatever is on their screen. They could just be chatting with somebody like odd messages, but they're there, you're there together in this shared space. It's really powerful. I have a little story about Chuck. I appreciated meeting him and talking with him at the workshop. There was a moment where at the very end we were all preparing to share our songs and I'm...

trying to put the touches on this thing that we're gonna share. He's on the right side of the couch, I'm on the left. And Chuck is very expressive when he's listening to his music and he's playing it. He's like doing a lot of this and stuff and I just love that energy. Yeah, almost like he's got it in his headphones and he's showing us some of the stuff and like heads bopping. You know that this sonic energy is just moving through him. And there was one point where I was

Brian Funk (01:35:43.214)

He's a dancer. Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:35:59.851)

mixing something. He's doing the same, but our heads are like almost bopping at the same time. So I thought he was listening to like he could hear my stuff, but it turns out we had the exact same tempo. It was like 123 or something like that because I asked him later. I was like, what was the tempo of that song you're working on? He's always 123. I was like, wow, dude, that is like that's just magical, you know, like unplanned and all that sort of stuff like. But you can't it's hard to get.

Brian Funk (01:36:13.642)

yeah, that's funny.

Rich Shivener (01:36:29.373)

alone, And I think just, yeah, being in those communities is enormous for my process. again, just the whole scope of the book was about that open communities and trying to operate that way more as a creative.

Brian Funk (01:36:50.434)

Yeah, I don't know if we have scientific evidence of it or not, but I think there's really something going on. There's like an extra, I don't know, like level, like waves or something happening, that the energy, you really do feel it and something happens when you're around other people.

I don't know if maybe we just don't have like the right, you know, sensory organ to pick it up or maybe we do, we just aren't so conscious of it, but we can't quantify it. I don't know what it is, but there's something to it. There really is. mean, when you're around people that are excited and inspired and they're doing something, like we feed off of that. It's a great thing to...

Rich Shivener (01:37:21.387)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:37:38.09)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:37:40.822)

put yourself into from time to time. Because, I mean, here we are about a month out of it. I'm still excited and it's still carrying over into other things I'm doing in life, even in my teaching at school. It's had a real important effect and especially for me this time of year, it's the long stretch between breaks. It's helped me through that. I was kind of worried that

Rich Shivener (01:37:52.875)

Mm-hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:38:05.322)

Yes.

Brian Funk (01:38:10.12)

using my break to go to California would kind of rob me of the replenishment and the rejuvenation that those breaks give you. But it was quite the opposite. Just being around that energy got me inspired in a lot of different areas of my life. Not even just music.

Rich Shivener (01:38:18.229)

that you need.

Rich Shivener (01:38:28.821)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, for me, it got me to reach out more to people about collaborating, right, in different ways. So there's creator from the workshop, writer, that I'm working on something with now. We'll keep it little secret, you know, but for a minute. like, we decided to meet up and we said, okay, kind of in the spirit of like,

Brian Funk (01:38:54.808)

interesting.

Rich Shivener (01:39:01.595)

jamming and parameters, know, why don't we just say, name the tempo, name a song key, and come back two weeks later. And just see what we make, you know. But we're kind of both still interested in the similar genres, so it works out well, but like, you know, was just recently, actually yesterday, today's Monday, so Sunday, we shared.

the first drafts of just eight bar, like 16 to eight bar loops, Eclipse, and we're like, all right, dude, let's go, you know, and work on it together. So now we're gonna come back with arranging, respectively, like, almost arranging each other's work, and I'm like, that's a way of getting feedback. But it started with the in-person part, like, I haven't really done too many, like, collaborative first online then.

Brian Funk (01:39:34.859)

So cool.

Brian Funk (01:39:43.917)

Hmm.

Rich Shivener (01:39:54.453)

finishing later except for like the NPC which is more of sharing and building community but like I'm curious to see how this plays out later on so yeah

Brian Funk (01:40:04.482)

That's so cool. I no idea. I love it. Just a cool, creative way to interact. So I guess we should probably wrap this up, right? That's okay. Where is the best place to send folks to see your work? If we can give it a... Yeah, no problem.

Rich Shivener (01:40:05.737)

Yeah, that was fun. It was fun.

Well, this is great, yeah. Yeah. One sec, one sec.

Rich Shivener (01:40:19.321)

Yes, sorry my camera went out.

Rich Shivener (01:40:29.291)

Oh, sorry. Best place, yes. So it is for music. It's on SoundCloud. I've been playing with this a little bit. yeah, it is, I think it's Rick S. Music. Yes, so that's what I've got, So that's everything from Jammy where he came out there. And some of them I'm gonna come back and make Creative Commons just because I feel like they're,

Brian Funk (01:40:47.342)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rich Shivener (01:40:56.965)

existed there and I might use them in some way but I want to think about those. And then the book, yeah, I've got the link I sent to you so it's ccdigitalpress.org slash LDM, that's what that is, and that's kind of the main, like the thing I've worked on for a couple years and I was really proud to sort of put out. I think that's kind of the split between my my

I would say like day job as a professor, you know, and my, my, mood lighting as a, as a creator and stuff like that. But then again, like what's interesting, not again, I guess to say, but what's interesting to me is these things like overlap a lot, right? Like I need to make, I want to produce content so that I can teach it. Right. And it just, you have this kind of ethos, when you come to the classroom, when you're making podcast material or.

sound installations or video, you want to show all this sort of content creation things, not just through examples, but your own work. think that's... You build some trust with your students when you do that. And it's also just fun to know how you do it. I'm real grateful I have that opportunity. But yeah, those are the two places I mainly operate out of.

Brian Funk (01:42:23.904)

I'll definitely put that in the links for this episode. I'm really glad we got to do this. yeah, thanks for coming on. And thank you to the listener for tuning in with us. Hope you have a great day.