Plug-in Design, Creativity, and Balance with The Him - Music Production Podcast #364

The Him is a music producer, DJ, and plug-in designer with over 500 million streams on Spotify. He's toured some of the largest festival stages and done remixes for artists like Tiesto, The Chainsmokers, and Miley Cyrus. The Him just released his first plug-in, Sub Ninja, which allows producers to get an accurate understanding of the bass frequencies in a mix.

The Him and I spoke about his career and Sub Ninja. We discussed the creative process and how he stays enthusiastic by balancing different projects with time off and rest. The Him generously shared lots of useful insights we can all use in our own music production.

You can get 10% off Sub Ninja with the code: MPPODCAST

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Show Notes:

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:01.346)

Welcome to the show, Jay.

Jay (The Him) (00:03.732)

What's up? What's up? Thank you so much for having me, man.

Brian Funk (00:06.326)

Yeah, it's great to have you and congratulations on releasing your first plugin, Sub Ninja.

Jay (The Him) (00:11.656)

Pretty crazy, right? Yeah, thank you so much. It's been a wild ride.

Brian Funk (00:15.226)

So I have to imagine, yeah, cause you come from like a musician producer background and I'm guessing that this device came out of some sort of need for you. Like, where is this thing that I want? So I guess I have to build it.

Jay (The Him) (00:27.025)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like funny enough, I had something like that.

that I've been using for years and years already. Like I had it, I use Reaper, it's a fairly unknown DAW, but it has like a lot of customizable options and including in that is like a small scripting language that allows you to make kind of like plugins that run in Reaper. So I hacked together like another scope that was running in there. I put a filter in there and changed some stuff around so that I had something like this. Yeah, and I literally always have it open on every track on my master,

eight years or something. So in that way, I was supremely convinced that this is a useful tool because I literally do use it myself all the time. And then I really wanted to make it into a plugin, you know, and I thought it was kind of simple to do and then to build it out and like to test the waters a little bit on how plugin development would go.

Turns out it is actually quite complex, but that's just how these things go. But yeah, man, yeah, it's very cool to me that it's now a real thing that everybody can use.

Brian Funk (01:37.934)

Do you mind just describing it for anyone that's not familiar with SubNinja?

Jay (The Him) (01:40.292)

Absolutely. So it's basically a scope plugin. So like it's a plugin that shows you the waveform of the audio that's going through it. And I recommend just putting it on your master bus so you can see the waveform of your audio, you know, and like to total beginners that maybe are not as deep into producing yet. It's kind of like when you have an audio file and you just see the lines on your computer.

And this will show you like for example, I always have it set up for one bar It'll show you the waveform of one bar and then the nice thing that sub ninja does it Allows you to only see the waveform for the low frequency So there's a low pass filter in there so you can for example only see the frequencies under 100 Hertz and it turns out that

This is actually, in my opinion, but I've now also gotten feedback from many, many people that use it, this is the best way to be looking at your bass information. Because I know many people are used to, for example, maybe looking on a spectrum analyzer, like the thing you'll have in your EQ. And that will bounce up and down a little bit, and it'll give you a little bit of brief snapshots after each other of what your...

what your spectrum, your whole spectrum is looking like, but that's not enough detail to look at the bass at all. And on top of that, like...

The scope, the waveform will actually show you that information over time. So it will show you everything that's happening over time. It will show you how low the wave is going because you can see how far the waves are apart. And it will show you how loud the wave is in that particular time because it will be higher or lower. So you can see your kick drums, you can see your bass, you can see how your sidechain is interacting. You can see if there's things overlapping, if there's too much bass in something.

Jay (The Him) (03:31.196)

Basically in one frame, in one full picture, you can see right away what is going on in your bass. It's like kind of like poking your head underwater, you know, and looking like what is going on. And these frequencies can just be really hard to hear, like especially in small studios, not optimal acoustics, you know, and even in a great studio and great acoustics, it can still be difficult to get the bass right. And yeah, that's...

Brian Funk (03:40.878)

Mm-hmm.

Jay (The Him) (03:56.944)

It's not a, sorry, this is a long pitch, but I'm, I'm yeah. Very for me, it's exceptionally useful in showing you what is going on in your bass.

Brian Funk (04:07.266)

Hmm. You know, for me, like as I've been learning and throughout my life, like once I finally got a computer that showed me the EQ spectrum and the frequencies, I was really fascinated by it to see like, oh, this is what's happening. And then my initial thought would be like, well, I guess I probably want them all even. I want them all to be like the same volume that would sound balanced. You'd think that, but that doesn't really sound good when you actually do it that way. So by like.

Jay (The Him) (04:29.439)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (04:35.806)

Just watching songs that I like the mixes of on the EQ spectrum just taught me so much. But you're right, you're only seeing what's happening in the moment. It's just right now, right now this is what's happening. But what is cool about Sub Ninja is that it shows it scroll by and that you can actually see it but you can also just see that bass stuff. That is one of the hardest things I find to get right. Because

Jay (The Him) (04:42.663)

Yep.

Jay (The Him) (04:46.866)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (05:04.446)

It changes so much, especially I'm not in the most professionally treated place right now. I think it sounds pretty good where I sit, but if I move at all, everything changes, and especially in the bass. There's certain times I like to walk around the room sometimes as I listen just to get a sense of how the sound changes in the different spots. There are certain places I can stand where there's either no bass or it's like thunder.

Jay (The Him) (05:23.378)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (05:31.03)

Without something else to kind of give me a little more information, it can be really tricky to know like, where do I want this to work? Where do I want it to sound the best? Where do I want it to, you know, it's the same thing.

Jay (The Him) (05:41.712)

Yeah. But the great thing, Brian, is you're already aware of this problem.

So like the things you are explaining now to me are already super advanced in terms of like, you are aware that actually the bass that you're hearing in your room is not really equivalent to what is probably present in your track, you know? Like you can notice that by walking around, like that is great. But you know, like I think that already is kind of a realization that took me a while to like figure out, hey man, like what I hear might not actually be what is going on, you know?

Brian Funk (06:14.574)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, that's the first thing I think you learn when you make a mix and then you bring it into another system or your car, you play it somewhere else and you're like, what, like, this isn't what I made. It's totally different.

Jay (The Him) (06:22.992)

Yeah, yeah, very familiar.

Brian Funk (06:31.09)

So I think it's a funny thing you said that you thought it'd be relatively simple to translate this. And turns out, of course, it's not, right? There's way more that goes into this stuff. Do you think that was actually a benefit for you? Like an advantage in that? Because if maybe if you would have realized how hard it was, would you have still went ahead and done it?

Jay (The Him) (06:37.106)

Yes.

Jay (The Him) (06:56.12)

No, and the cool thing about this whole process of diving into building my own plugins and doing all that work is that it's like also got me thinking again about my music, you know, because I've been producing for a while and you, this might be familiar to you as well, but you kind of like lose those beginner's eyes, you know, like when I start on a project, I kind of already know where it's going maybe. And I might be, you know, less optimistic about it.

beginner and you don't really know all the ways you're gonna feel, you're just like, oh this is gonna be freaking great, you know, I'm gonna do it and I'm just gonna go at it and do this and do that and then yeah as you go along, you know, it turns out that everything takes like, well I want to say like five times as much time as you think, like there's been many things that I thought were gonna take like two days and took at least two weeks. Yeah.

Brian Funk (07:50.09)

Yeah, that's so true about so many things. Even if you're getting like work done on part of your home or something, the estimate is always so optimistic. But it's so true about like creative projects too, where you kind of think you're gonna be able to get through it pretty quick. But yeah, when you're first starting out, you don't know what you don't know. So you don't know that like, oh, I could mess up the

Jay (The Him) (07:53.169)

Yes, yeah.

Jay (The Him) (07:59.236)

Yeah. Oh yeah, the home is the worst.

Jay (The Him) (08:15.429)

Exactly.

Brian Funk (08:19.49)

the bass frequencies in my mix or I might like I might have phasing like you have to you have to make a lot of these mistakes before you realize that they're mistakes you can even make

Jay (The Him) (08:21.415)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (08:29.016)

Yeah. And it's interesting that the coin always has two sides. Like on the one side that can cause you some frustrations along the route, but it can also be that small thing that gives you that little bit of craziness that you need to go through. Because at the end of the day, if you just keep pushing through all those hurdles, then you're going to end up way further than you ever thought you would. So that is really cool to see again in a different field for myself.

Brian Funk (08:58.25)

Right, yeah that's what I'm kind of getting at. The fact that you didn't know how long and winding the road was. You get on it like, okay, here we go. No big deal.

Jay (The Him) (09:04.44)

Yeah, oh yeah.

And I'm in the middle of one of those things right now because...

I've decided that I want to have an update out for SubNinja very soon that is faster than the version one, that's much faster in drawing because when I built the first version, I tested it a lot on my own Macbook, which is fast, you know? And like, I never had any problems and now I have like thousands and thousands of users and like there's people running it on slower machines and they might want to run two at a time. I don't know why or four at a time, but they might want to, you know? So now I'm all of a sudden like, oh man.

I wish it was much faster. So like I already know that there's gonna be like I'm working on a version that's much faster than V1 But dude, I thought that was gonna be like one or two days and I'm like two weeks in and I'm like, oh my god Where's the end of this, you know? Again, it's yeah, maybe you just need that craziness to get there It's a gift and a curse

Brian Funk (10:06.642)

Yeah. It's good sometimes what we don't know is what saves us. A lot of things I think, I don't know if I would have got involved, if I would have known how involved I needed to get.

Jay (The Him) (10:12.68)

Very true, very true.

Jay (The Him) (10:18.956)

Exactly man, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Brian Funk (10:22.358)

So do you find yourself like buying old computers now with like slower systems?

Jay (The Him) (10:28.228)

I, yes, well not buying, but like I have a habit of keeping my old laptops, my old production laptops and kind of leaving them in the state that I had them. So like I literally am here looking at my old Windows laptop. It's like Windows 10, I think on there. So I can do some tests on there to see like, okay, what's going on. And then yeah, I might even try it on some older machines. Yeah. Yep.

Brian Funk (10:52.55)

Yeah, just to make sure. Yeah, well, I mean, I think in music too, there's a lot of people that kind of stick to what works, right? Like, hey, my system's working, so I'm going to stay on the old version of the software. I'm not going to update. I'm still on Mac, but I'm still not on the latest version of the OS because I'm kind of like, I don't know, I got this...

Jay (The Him) (11:01.298)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (11:13.872)

Now, yeah.

Brian Funk (11:18.426)

old interface that's working great and I don't know what's going to happen on the next jump. So you sort of have to account for that.

Jay (The Him) (11:21.318)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I know that pain very well. And especially I went from Windows to Mac like a few years back and the whole M1 question mark if all the plugins were going to work. But I do think like at a certain point, you know, I talked to a lot of DJ friends that have exactly the same problem. I had one.

Brian Funk (11:38.219)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (11:51.328)

One friend of me, I sent him Sub Ninja and I was like, oh, you got a chicken. I was like, so cool, I really want to try this. And he's like texting me like, oh, it's not working. I'm like, what the hell, you know, why is it not working? Like my mind was really blown. And then I started asking him, what version are you on? And he's like on a way old like version of Mac OS that I don't support anymore. I don't fully know why I don't support it, but I know like the framework I use has certain limitations. Still something on my to-do list to look into, but I know this fear, but I do want to say like,

getting free from that or at least a little bit freer from that, especially in like a professional setting is nice and important in my mind, because at the end of the day, you know, your computer might crash and burn today and you might want to get back to work tomorrow. So, um, yeah, it, it is a bit of a balance of, of doing that, but also a huge pain to update everything and try to get it to work.

Brian Funk (12:48.33)

Yeah, and I guess too, you mentioned the M1 thing, and there was Rosetta I was using for a while to kind of translate, I guess, the old versions of the plugins and stuff into the new stuff. So there's probably a lot of people still kind of sitting on that sort of edge of, I'm going into the new thing, but I'm still kind of here in the old one. And for you to come in at this point, is it just...

Jay (The Him) (13:14.117)

Yeah, totally true.

Brian Funk (13:17.75)

Let's stick with the new. Do you go back further to those older pre-M1?

Jay (The Him) (13:24.656)

Well, I suppose I support pre-M1 for sure I support I think I want to say up to like 11 or 10 or something macOS. So I'm definitely back a decent way When slash if I have more time, I would definitely also consider looking into what it would take to build it for those older systems because you know often with software development like this is built by

geeks like myself and like we want to make sure everything works, you know, so a lot of the time it's Changing a few lines and it should still be possible But yeah right now with the onslaught of the launch and the updates I want to do I just didn't I got to focus on where like the most people are gonna be served So like it's on my to-do list if I could I would Yeah

Brian Funk (14:11.058)

Yeah. Right. Well, I can relate to that on a much simpler level. Like I do a lot of instrument packs for Ableton Live and there's like, well, what version should I make it in? Like they're about to release 12, Live 12. So do I make it in 10? Do I 11? Do I, you know, cause like once you pick one, you can't go back. So.

Jay (The Him) (14:20.37)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (14:37.176)

Oh, yes. Yeah, there you go. Well, and do you know where your customer base is?

Brian Funk (14:39.082)

anything in 10 won't work in 9.

Brian Funk (14:44.862)

Well, to some degree, but no, not completely. And I know that there's a lot of people that are still way back. I get an email every once in a while like, will this work in eight or nine? Or I think recently even seven. I was like, no, like that's, I don't even, I don't think I was making stuff when seven was out, but it was, it's always kind of that question I have. Like, do I want to throw in these new little bells and whistles? I can do with a newer version.

Jay (The Him) (14:48.145)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (14:59.384)

Yeah, I can't go back that far.

Jay (The Him) (15:04.133)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (15:13.267)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (15:13.458)

Or do I make it in the older versions so that more people can use it? And you're like, hmm...

Jay (The Him) (15:17.136)

Yeah man, so what's your answer?

Brian Funk (15:20.394)

Well, if it's... I'll do kind of sometimes two things, right? So if it's integral to the thing I'm trying to build, then you have to use the newer version. If I can kind of do like half of it in say, an older version, and kind of get something like that'll work, I'll do that and then maybe I'll take it to the next level in another version of it.

Jay (The Him) (15:46.097)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (15:46.77)

So you can have the older version for, say, Live 10. But if you want all the features, you'll need 11. And you'll use this version instead. But beyond that, yeah, I'm not going earlier than 10 anymore, just because there's only so much time in a day. Yes.

Jay (The Him) (15:58.277)

Yeah, I think that's a good solution.

Jay (The Him) (16:10.032)

Yeah. Have you played with 12 beta? What's your thoughts? Do you like it?

Brian Funk (16:16.182)

Yeah, I've had it for quite some time now. I really like it. I use it mostly. There's a lot of great new features. A lot of the MIDI editing is really nice. There's some cool new transformers and generators that can just really get your ideas going. So it's great when you're kind of not sure what to do and you just need a little nudge so you can play with that stuff. Some cool new devices, nice updates to the look.

I'm still getting used to the new browser system. I've gotten so comfortable with the old way, and they did make some pretty significant changes, so now it feels unknown. And I haven't really dove completely into some of the new features on it, just out of fear that if they change it, like there's this new tagging thing they have, and filtering your tags and stuff. So...

Jay (The Him) (16:55.879)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (17:13.67)

I didn't want to dive too far into that because if they change it, I'll lose all my work of tagging everything. There's that thing too, if you're using a beta, how much do you want to lean on it because things can change in the next release and then you just kind of, uh-oh.

Jay (The Him) (17:19.816)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (17:32.386)

but I'm excited for when it actually releases so that I can just be all in.

Jay (The Him) (17:37.08)

Yeah, yeah, cool. I used to be a big Ableton user, and I couldn't help myself but buy the 12 license when on like the, I don't know, they always do one of these pre-enrollment programs, so I did do that. I'm definitely curious to check it out, and yeah, maybe start getting back into Ableton a little bit because I do miss some features of it. I really loved it as a program.

Brian Funk (17:51.775)

Right.

Brian Funk (18:02.922)

Are you using Reaper then? Because I hear a lot of people, I've never used it, no. But I, and here's the thing, I've kind of like, I don't know if this is even right, but the kind of connection I make in my head is Reaper seems to be more for people that wants like complete control and freedom. Kind of like the way I think about Mac and Windows people. Like I use a Mac because I don't want

Jay (The Him) (18:04.636)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever seen that?

Brian Funk (18:32.182)

to worry about the computer so much. I wanna work and have the computer sort of be in the background, but I have friends that are more into programming and coding, and they want that stuff front and center. So I don't know if that's the right way to look at it, but that's always sort of how I've seen that in my head anyway. But maybe you can...

Jay (The Him) (18:51.537)

There's some truth to it. I think...

Yeah, I don't really know how to put it. What I think, let me say this, what is great about Reaper is that you have endless ways to customize things. You can, everything can have a shortcut, you can make macros, you can even program your own scripts. I have a bunch of custom scripts, I have a bunch of custom visual things, endless customization. Really, anything you can think of pretty much, you can do.

It's fast, it's stable, it has all the geek features. So like when we were talking about the moving from the this version to the that version, I don't know how long this has been in Reaper, but I can like load different plugin versions in different projects and in different ways. So like I'm never too worried that something's not gonna work. I tested this out before I updated as well. And then...

You know, like that is really nice because even before the M1 thing, it wasn't always sure if like VST3 was working in Ableton or something. I don't even freaking remember. But back then everything would always work in Reaper. So that's a great benefit. Um, so that's amazing. The biggest, biggest downside to me is that a lot of things are aesthetically not as pretty.

So like they have left some things just kind of like the default operating system menus and stuff, which I just think is off-putting and it's not nice for a creative process. And I do think it's really important for user experience. And because it's so customizable, everything is different for everybody. So if I was working with somebody that had Ableton,

Jay (The Him) (20:37.968)

we could both just interchangeably work because your shortcuts are my shortcuts and like we know how the system works, you know? That's why it's kind of like Apple. But Reaper, my whole keyboard is gonna be set up different from anybody else using Reaper and there's ways to like swap in and out like shortcut sets, but nobody wants to do that. So it's like you have endless possibilities, it's a great program.

Brian Funk (21:00.792)

Right.

Jay (The Him) (21:05.956)

If you're like down in the weeds and you want to have all the options, go for it. It's freaking amazing. But yeah.

Brian Funk (21:14.542)

Mm-mm. Yeah, I could see how that's both good and bad. Sometimes that freedom lets you do crazy, unique stuff. That's all you. But it is also kind of nice to be invited into a bit of a workflow. There's a lot of devices, instruments, and tools I have here that I really like that it

Jay (The Him) (21:19.078)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (21:24.69)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (21:30.757)

Yes, I agree.

Brian Funk (21:40.142)

only sort of does like the one thing it does, but it does it well. And there's other things that does everything. And it's like, I don't even know how to get around this thing. It becomes a bit overwhelming.

Jay (The Him) (21:50.264)

Yeah. I mean, like we could talk for three hours about the differences between these programs and I have so many opinions about it and like I find, I would find it hard to recommend any program to anybody for particular reasons. But I gotta say like Reaper is so awesome and it really deserves much more.

users and people to be excited about it than they have, but I also see the drawbacks for people, you know? I get it, I get both sides of it.

Brian Funk (22:21.514)

Right. Yeah, and at the end of the day, I think it's what you know, right? Like where you're comfortable. I certainly know people that have either like stuck to the old software or just use like antiquated gear, but they're really good at it and they know how to get results out of it. So.

Jay (The Him) (22:28.488)

Fair enough, yeah. Totally, yeah.

Jay (The Him) (22:40.24)

Yeah. Yeah, that's the most important. It's just a tool to like help you make music.

Brian Funk (22:47.55)

Yeah, I think as producers ourselves, we think that stuff's much more important than it is. We might listen to a song by an artist we love and wonder, how do they make that? What software do they use? What synths are they using? Which kind of guitar is that? But the average person doesn't... Even before I got into recording, I wasn't thinking about that stuff. Maybe I thought about guitar playing, but I wasn't even thinking about what kind of drums are those.

Jay (The Him) (22:54.728)

Ha ha.

Jay (The Him) (22:59.731)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (23:09.873)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (23:17.182)

It's just, I guess when you're deep in the weeds like that, those are the things you think about and that you think matter, but it's the result is what counts.

Jay (The Him) (23:17.19)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (23:25.35)

Yeah.

Yeah. It's, Oh man, Brian, you're dragging, you're dragging me down. You're dragging me into the weeds. I, yes, I totally agree with like, I totally agree with you, but then there's also this part of me that is like, Oh man, but if you can optimize your workflow in flow in certain ways, that can be like huge in terms of not getting you out of the flow.

Brian Funk (23:33.922)

Hehe

Jay (The Him) (23:53.176)

And that has also benefited me greatly. So I kind of have this running gag with myself. I'm also into home automation stuff. So I have a lot of home automation stuff at home.

There's this open platform called Home Assistant, you might know it's really cool. And I often like joke to myself, like I've already spent so much more time programming my whole smart home than any of these automatic lights or alarm systems or anything are ever gonna save me. It's the same with Reaper, I spent so much time like customizing everything, that's more than it's ever gonna save me. But that feeling of like.

Brian Funk (24:22.568)

Right.

Jay (The Him) (24:31.524)

You know, hitting one button when I want my EQ with automation right in front of me, or I want my favorite reverb with automation on a dry wet, right on the track with one button. And that keeps me in the process in that moment. That can also be very valuable. So.

Brian Funk (24:47.838)

Yeah, that's funny you mentioned that too, the home automation, because I recently did very minimal. I can now come down to my studio here and tell Siri to like turn it on, turn it off, instead of flipping on like all these switches. Because as silly as it sounds, and it makes me feel like such a lazy person, sometimes the thought of turning on like six switches

Jay (The Him) (25:01.242)

Yeah man.

Brian Funk (25:18.01)

setting up a stupid microphone, say, is enough to make me not do it sometimes.

Jay (The Him) (25:25.004)

Exactly, exactly. And that is if you can pass that hurdle and make that less like more frictionless Like as frictionless as possible. That is a very valuable thing So like I for sorry good

Brian Funk (25:29.579)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (25:37.194)

Yeah, but I will say that I was just to finish that thought the night I set up that system. I thought that was gonna be like a short thing and then I was gonna make music and I just spent the whole night making the automation. I didn't even touch the software or any instruments.

Jay (The Him) (25:49.82)

There you go. Yeah. One of my best friends, I'm in this big creative building with lots of creatives. And he used to be in a studio right next to me. He's a photographer, like a fashion photographer. And now does a lot of 3D stuff. He made the 3D intro for Sub Ninja as well. And he used to come over here and like...

walk past my door and knock on the door and like we'd have coffee for hours. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the English word for that would be, but like we'd sit on the couch and like talk about like kind of procrastinating our work, but also how important that can sometimes be where you like, you know, you kind of go through that motion of putting it off, but actually maybe your subconscious is already kind of thinking about it and getting things ready and preparing. I am a huge believer in that. So don't, don't see it all as wasted time.

Brian Funk (26:44.882)

Yeah. Well, that's the funny thing about it, right? Like you can really avoid the work by doing cable management and making sure everything's connected and cleaning up and rearranging, but you also get a lot back from that too. And it's, I guess it's important to just be honest with yourself. What are you actually doing? Is this necessary? Are you avoiding the task? But as you said, sometimes.

Jay (The Him) (26:53.907)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (27:10.788)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (27:14.646)

Just doing that stuff lets the ideas kind of ferment in your mind a little bit and play around and straighten themselves out.

Jay (The Him) (27:24.108)

Exactly. And I, to me, like the difference is, are you like exactly what you're saying? Are you honest with yourself? You know, it's like the difference between the person that is going to the gym every day, but it's just having coffees there and talking. Yeah. Then you're going to the gym and then you're not doing anything there. But like, yeah, exactly. Then nothing is happening. But if you actually go there and like, okay, you know, maybe some days you don't do anything and you're chatting and you're making friends, but like, if you.

Brian Funk (27:40.799)

I'd say four hours.

Jay (The Him) (27:53.836)

are using those friends the next time to come back to train harder, that's when it's useful. And that's the distinction, you know? So like if somebody was like just telling me how they got the most perfect setup, but never made a song yet, then you're on the wrong side of that, the balance that you need to strike. Both things are really important.

Brian Funk (27:57.826)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Brian Funk (28:11.786)

Yeah, yeah, and I guess there's, you know, evidence that some of that's so extra. I was talking recently on a podcast and they were telling me about somebody that was working on an album and I guess like their system crashed, you know, and.

In order to finish the album, they went to the Apple store with the USB stick and put it into Logic and was just like kind of working at those computers for as long as they, so they caught him basically. And then he just kind of come back later. But like there's like the other end of that where just I'm going to get the work done and do what you got to do.

Jay (The Him) (28:42.568)

Yes.

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (28:51.782)

Yeah.

Yeah, man. Yeah. And you also need that. You also need that mindset and that, you know, you also need to finish sometimes for real. It's super important.

Brian Funk (29:03.006)

Yeah. Yep. The thing we get the least amount of practice doing is the finishing part.

Jay (The Him) (29:08.496)

Yeah, like you mean the finishing of the songs?

Brian Funk (29:12.298)

Yeah, yeah, that whole end process. We start them all the time, right? And after a while you get good at that. But to get to the end of the race, that's the hardest place to be.

Jay (The Him) (29:14.616)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (29:24.1)

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Especially when you don't have like real, uh, real world deadlines, you know, like I was last week, I was doing a podcast with these Dutch guys, um, also dance producers, uh, artist coaching, Joey Zucchi and, um, and Jay Hardway. And we were talking about this thing as well, where, you know, like finishing tracks, that's like so important if you're, if you're a beginner and.

If you want to learn how to make music fast, give yourself like a deadlines. You know, it doesn't matter if it's perfect or not, like finish the things up to where it's a whole thing. And that, like, like you said, like that might be the thing we get the least practice in, but if you can take any idea and finish that into a song, like you could give me any eight bar loop and I could make that into a song to you. Like if I, I've done a, I've done a lot of remixes and

Yeah, you know, they have deadlines. It's easier when other people give you deadlines because then you feel the pressure. It's much easier. But like I would just know, you know, like I take a week to make the remix and I knew at the end of the week it was gonna be done. It might not be perfect. Might not be my favorite remix, but it was gonna be done. You know, and actually...

Brian Funk (30:24.193)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (30:39.896)

I think as you go along, I'm totally off on a tangent now, I'm sorry, but I think if you go along long enough, you'll find out that, you know, what might be like a six and a half for you because you're so like deep into it and you don't even freaking know left from right anymore. Then maybe actually it's actually good in the real world. It's good enough or like, I don't, I don't really like saying that because that makes it sounds like, Oh, I'm just half-assing things as long as it's good enough. That's not how I perceive it. But sometimes

We're probably all more perfectionistic than we need to be. So sometimes we just got to be like, Hey man, this is good enough. Onto the next one.

Brian Funk (31:17.61)

Yeah, that's a good point because there is, I think we all have that, right? That perfectionism and if not, we at least have like the critic that will come in and be like, I don't know, are people going to like this? Is this good enough? Is this smart enough? Did you clean it up enough? When you're working on like those types of deadlines, how do you get around that?

Jay (The Him) (31:28.325)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (31:33.105)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (31:41.966)

Because like you said, sometimes you don't know which way is up and down, left and right. You're so in the... you're too close to it almost.

Jay (The Him) (31:42.33)

Um...

Jay (The Him) (31:48.94)

Yeah, man. I mean, I've, I've said in the past that my songs are finished either when I stop working on them or when I die, you know, like, cause you can always keep tweaking, um, but yeah, I, the thing is like, okay, so just to give you like a real answer, how I really think about it. It's, and it's not maybe like the most obvious one-liner there is, but you need to strike that balance between being that guy in a gym that goes there to do nothing. And.

Brian Funk (31:58.907)

I'm gonna go.

Jay (The Him) (32:18.108)

the person in the gym that goes there to train. I need to strike a balance between finishing tracks and making new stuff and exploring. And those are different things. You don't need to have different time schedules for it, but when I have a remix request assignment, then there is a deadline. When you do this professionally, you cannot spend limitless time on every track that you make because this is your job.

And I've gotten now to the point where that's just so ingrained in me because that's what I learned, but way in the beginning, there was a time when I was doing bootlegs and remix competitions. And one of the first things that got the hymn started was a remix competition for Chesto, and the idea was to make that in 24 hours. So I would make the track, mix the track, master the track all in 24 hours. I think.

that they started at like nine o'clock and ended at like two o'clock, but then it was done. And it was handed in and it got second place, I think. And that was one of the first times I thought like, hey man, shit, this is like, yo, this is something real. People like this has value in a way, you know? But that was an arbitrary deadline. Like I was just busy doing other things as well. So I thought like this needs to happen in a short timeframe. This is all I have and it's just gonna happen, you know?

Brian Funk (33:25.922)

Nice.

Brian Funk (33:46.626)

Hmm.

Jay (The Him) (33:47.392)

And this is something anybody can do. Anybody can give themselves a deadline. I'm gonna finish one track a week, one track a day, one track a month. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as you make that deadline for yourself and stick to it. And it doesn't need to be perfect. This is the whole inner struggles is real. I have that too, everybody has that. But if you have that bigger goal of like...

I'm actually learning how to finish this. I'm not learning how to make the perfect song because that's never gonna happen. I am practicing now finishing stuff. And then that's what you gotta set out to do.

Brian Funk (34:24.216)

I like that way of thinking, like just the practice finishing. I recently had somebody in my...

Jay (The Him) (34:28.465)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (34:32.79)

Discord for my music production clubs say something like, I can't make songs, I can't do it. I'm like, my response was, I bet you can make really bad songs. Make terrible songs. And I think that was one of the first episodes I ever did of this podcast was just called Make Bad Music. Just for the sake of getting through the practice. I guess it's why sports.

Jay (The Him) (34:44.112)

Yeah, there you go. Yeah.

Brian Funk (35:01.514)

teams will have scrimmages, you know, that don't count. It's just a matter of going through the game, getting the practice in, and if you lose, you lose, who cares? But it's so important to just know what it's going to look like when you get there, when you get to the next stage, and what's going to happen next, to just get the practice. So even making songs that aren't good, that you don't like, aren't failures. They're just...

You know, they have reps at the gym, you know. Maybe they weren't your personal best bench press, but you still did a bench press. You didn't go backwards, you didn't stay the same, you moved forward a little bit.

Jay (The Him) (35:32.508)

Yeah, exactly.

Jay (The Him) (35:38.777)

Exactly.

Jay (The Him) (35:43.216)

Yeah, no, that's so well put, like making, like sometimes that's just the assignment you gotta give yourself, you know, make a shitty track, make a shitty song. I do that too, you know, I make them inadvertently, but I also give myself the, maybe, like the assignment or like the permission to make something bad and then, yeah, you do that often enough, then something good might pop out.

Brian Funk (36:09.259)

Yeah. Yeah, you have to have that permission is a good way to put it. Like allow yourself. That's where I get stuck is as soon as I start questioning if it's any good, if I'm doing it right or if people are going to like it or or, you know, is it I always think about like, is it clever enough? You know, all these chords are too common. I always get hung up on that, you know. And the funny thing is.

Jay (The Him) (36:26.757)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (36:31.037)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (36:33.266)

So much of what I love is so simple musically. You know, it's maybe got a thing or two that's interesting, but basically, you know, first month of music theory covers what they're doing in these songs. But it's so funny that a lot of, if you just kind of follow through on ideas too, they almost always reveal something. Something interesting can happen from it.

Jay (The Him) (36:36.434)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (36:46.362)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (37:01.863)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (37:02.29)

I've seen it in myself when I forced myself to do it, but I've especially seen it watching friends or other people that are working on a song where I might actually think like, that's a bad idea. It's dumb. Just try something new. And then the next time I hear it, it's great. It's so much better. It's so funny how often that happens and whether it's from me doing it and just following through or watching someone else do it.

that it makes me feel like you just never ever know.

Jay (The Him) (37:33.72)

Yeah. And it's so hard, man. It's so hard to do that right, you know, to get that balance right. Like I do, or I used to do definitely a lot, a lot of like writing sessions with songwriters and, and get to get songs, you know, and, um, and then like often, especially in the beginning, I would like be halfway, you know, in the first hour thinking, ah, this is total crap. Like this is, it's not going to happen.

Brian Funk (37:59.435)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (37:59.804)

But I've learned that one of the best things you can do is just like, go with it, man. And then just say like, oh, why don't we record this one? Cause like people, that's how you keep going. You know, like maybe they needed to get that out of the system to get to the next song. You don't know what sparks that next idea. And like, just like you said, your friend might play you something that you think like this is total crap. But then next week, actually you hear the variation on what spawned from that little bit of crap.

And that could be a great song, you know, like that's just how this weird creativity thing works.

Brian Funk (38:34.718)

Yeah, it's so funny that it's like, I guess just the future is unknown, right? Like anything can happen and that's just the way these songs work. I hope people aren't getting tired of me mentioning this, but in January, I do the Jammuary challenge to make something every single day. And...

Jay (The Him) (38:44.272)

Yeah, absolutely.

Jay (The Him) (38:57.114)

Nice.

Brian Funk (38:59.182)

The beauty of it is, is just that you just usually don't have time to decide if you like it or not. You don't have that luxury. It's like you're running out of time, it's getting late, you gotta finish it. Just you gotta see it through. You gotta get it to some presentable point. And the bar is really low. It doesn't have to be a finished song or anything. But man, it blows my mind when I listen back to some of that stuff and I'm like, I really thought this was...

Jay (The Him) (39:05.669)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (39:11.367)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (39:27.134)

junk when I was making it and I was just trying to get it done but like I kind of like it. There's something nice about it. There's something interesting going on here and also just the sense of satisfaction that it's not impossible. You can do it.

Jay (The Him) (39:40.952)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And great, great challenge. Everybody that wants to be serious about making music should try stuff like that. Um, and there you go, you know, and it's going to hurt and some stuff is going to suck. And I'm pretty sure there's also research out on like.

Brian Funk (39:52.458)

That's got the deadline every day.

Jay (The Him) (40:00.796)

that actually the most successful creatives are usually also the people that produce the most things so they have more to pick from. Again, this is all definitely a balancing act and it's never as simple, but yeah. Yeah, I would even, it would be great for me to do something like that again as well soon. And...

Brian Funk (40:20.938)

Yeah, most of my favorite people that talk about songwriting and music production talk about it just like it's this everyday thing. You just show up and put in the work. You don't wait till you're inspired. Maybe you got to find it. You got to sort of hunt it down and just see it through. Yeah, you got to be at the pond, right? You can't be at home being like, oh.

Jay (The Him) (40:39.524)

Yeah. It's like fishing, you know?

Brian Funk (40:50.346)

It'd be great to catch a fish right now. Yeah. Right. Jeff Tweedy from Wilco has a new book, fairly new, where he talks about songs that affected him throughout his life. Good or bad, and some of the songs he talks about he doesn't even like. One song he talks about was Dolly Parton's I Will Always Love You, the one that Whitney Houston did.

Jay (The Him) (40:53.008)

That would be great, but it's definitely not going to happen when you're sitting on the couch.

Brian Funk (41:19.546)

And the thing that just stuck with me is like, she wrote that the same day she wrote Jolene. So this one day, Dolly Parton sat down and busted out two timeless classic songs that people still know and love today and have been covered, probably have set up generations of her family financially.

Jay (The Him) (41:26.46)

Hmm. Well... Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (41:34.45)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (41:45.536)

Yes, yeah.

Brian Funk (41:48.758)

What if she didn't show up that day? What if she was tired or just, you know, decided to do something else, you know, watch TV or something?

Jay (The Him) (41:51.981)

Yeah, man.

Jay (The Him) (41:57.287)

Yeah.

Yeah, but Brian, let's be real. We don't know. Maybe she stayed home the day before and that's why she wrote those bangers the next day. I don't know. No, it's, uh, yeah. She definitely did. Yeah. And one thing is for sure. If you don't go fishing, you're not going to catch anything. Um, yeah, I've, I always find it so hard. Like I've definitely come to learn that I'm, I'm very much an advice seeker. So like.

Brian Funk (42:06.259)

It's true, yeah.

Brian Funk (42:10.912)

She showed off the day the fish were biting though.

Brian Funk (42:19.38)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (42:30.296)

I've read a lot of books and listened to podcasts and I love learning about creativity. A lot of the things we're talking about and we're thinking about and you're talking about and mentioning, they really hit close to home. But I've also learned much more that in different phases of my creative life, I've learned much

The opposite advice can be the advice that I need. So I'm always a little bit hesitant to even say like, oh, you got to show up every day to go fishing, you know? Because maybe the person listening to this right now actually needs to hear from us, hey, man, or, you know, like, yeah, man, you've been fishing like five weeks straight and it's not biting, that's fine. You need, like, maybe you need to take a breath.

Brian Funk (43:11.918)

take a break. Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (43:23.36)

And I think probably it's going to sound very lame, but probably the most wisdom is coming from knowing in which phase you are yourself.

Brian Funk (43:33.994)

Hmm. That's great advice there, that your advice doesn't always apply that you receive. And yeah, sometimes if you're showing up every day, maybe you're getting stuck in a rut and a pattern that a little space will allow you to try something new. Um.

Jay (The Him) (43:40.965)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (43:51.365)

Exactly. Yeah.

Brian Funk (43:53.926)

I recently came across something, because I'm the same way, I like to learn about learning and getting advice and all of that. Thinking like one day I'm going to get the secret answer, right? That will help me forever. But it was about practicing. How people that practice for short periods of time and then take a break and then practice again for short periods of time, take a break, wind up...

like, what do you call it, retaining and growing with that practice a lot faster than the people that will sit down for like three hours, nonstop, and work on it. There's something about that taking short breaks, you know, every couple minutes, to just kind of let it set in, and then coming back. And I felt that in my own playing, in my own songwriting, sometimes when I take a break,

When I come back, I'm a little fresher. I'm more apt to try something new or more excited even. Sometimes it's just, you just need a little break to get excited again.

Jay (The Him) (45:05.856)

Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I would again say in this example, the hardest part is knowing when you need that break and when you need to stick it out. And I can tell you, I suck at that. I always go on too long to the point where I'm like completely over it and like, oh, you know, it start feeling, starts feeling annoying and like a chore and then.

Brian Funk (45:14.712)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (45:20.438)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (45:32.272)

Yeah, you know, there's, I mean, I think it's probably also part of my creative experience, at least that it goes in waves and ups and downs. And yeah, you got to, you got to still have that mentality of keep on going with the whole project.

But yes, sometimes learning involves taking it in bite-sized chunks and taking breaks. And there might also be times where it actually means, no, now you just got to grind. And to know which is which, I don't know, man. If you could tell me, like when I was saying it would be wisdom to know which part you should pick, I was meaning, I don't know. You know, I absolutely suck at this. So that's a hard one.

Brian Funk (46:15.533)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (46:21.122)

That's hard to know. I think that's why back traditionally we had producers and people like that to tell you. Almost like you have a trainer at a gym that'd be like, no, you need to push harder or now it's time to rest. You kind of need some sort of direction there. But now we're doing that all ourselves. So we need to... You need to kind of like...

Jay (The Him) (46:22.558)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (46:36.164)

Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (46:45.798)

let go of yourself so that you can get creative, but you also need to be in touch with yourself to know there's so many opposing things.

Jay (The Him) (46:50.972)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (46:56.512)

Yeah, it's kind of like meditating, you know, like sitting down and trying not to think. Like it's crazy, it's impossible. Yeah, it's the same with this. What would be your biggest challenge that you are like, that you face on the regular or that you are in right now? Like how do you perceive that in the creative process?

Brian Funk (47:01.71)

thinking about not thinking.

Brian Funk (47:18.666)

Um, I don't know, cause I feel like every single part of it is hard. That's where I'm at right now. Like starting is hard, finishing is hard, sticking with it is hard. Staying focused is hard. Um.

Jay (The Him) (47:27.602)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (47:36.506)

I think that I'm trying to just remind myself that it's always like the first part of everything that's hard for me, whether it's actually getting started or moving on to the next part. Say I've got like a loop I'm working on, you know, I might be feeling real good, but like, all right, now let's come up with some place for this to go. All these transitional moments, I think, are where I get hung up.

Maybe I'm dividing things into stages too much or... Oh, I don't know.

Jay (The Him) (48:10.916)

What are stages for you then? You mean between mixing and recording and editing?

Brian Funk (48:16.266)

Yeah, I guess writing, recording, sometimes I'm doing them all at once. Um, a lot of times I'm doing them all at once actually. So there's a lot of switching gears, I guess. And, uh,

Brian Funk (48:33.675)

That's tricky. That's where every time you switch, I think, you run the risk of falling off the track a little bit.

Jay (The Him) (48:35.26)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (48:42.811)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (48:45.706)

Yeah, I don't know. And you've kind of said it already, but this stuff is still hard for you. And everyone I talk to says it's hard. So I take a little bit of comfort in that. Not that I want my suffering to be wished upon anybody, but it is kind of nice to know that these things are hard and that's part of it. So I'm at my best when I realize that in the moment.

Jay (The Him) (48:57.384)

Haha, yeah.

Jay (The Him) (49:01.393)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:12.598)

when I'm like, yeah, this is hard, but that's good. We want this to be hard, you know? If it was easy, it wouldn't matter. If it was easy, anyone could do it. And if it was easy when you did it, what would be the big deal? Yeah. So, and if it was easy, I'm probably not learning anything either. So every time it gets hard is kind of a good thing, but...

Jay (The Him) (49:18.118)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (49:27.86)

It would be worthless. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (49:40.842)

That's when I can remember that in the moment. I need a sign, you know? Like something that's, I need to sum it up. Like if it's difficult, it's good, or if you're struggling, that's good.

Jay (The Him) (49:44.2)

Yeah. That just says like that.

Jay (The Him) (49:53.552)

Yeah. Well, there are some of those like the obstacles, the way you kind of thought. And I don't know if you it's kind of like, yeah, yeah. I think I might have read it. It's not that I'm not really recommending that book, but I'm more meaning like that idea is out there. And there's definitely a lot of truth in there. You know, like usually where you feel the most resistance, that's probably where the most growth is as well.

Brian Funk (49:58.79)

Right. Yeah, that's Ryan Holiday's book.

Brian Funk (50:20.888)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (50:22.564)

And also a lot of opportunity for like, you know, the satisfaction of overcoming that. Uh, yeah, that resistance. There's this great book by, um, Stephen, the war of art. It's over there. So what's his last name again? Pressfield. Yes. Great book. He talks about the resistance and I've read it a bunch of times and it always gives me a little bit of that jolt again, like, ah, you know, you got to.

Brian Funk (50:36.754)

Yep. Press field.

Jay (The Him) (50:49.544)

It's the enemy that you gotta fight. And I think that's what you're kind of naming as well. That obstacle, that resistance, that's what you're up against.

Brian Funk (50:54.421)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (50:57.95)

Right. And I love that he put it to a name, resistance, capital R, you know, proper noun. And it's a force that stops you from doing it. I love that book. I've read it so many times. I listened to it. He's got a great audio book and it's got, it's got almost like military music, like in the background sometimes. Just cause it, yeah. Cause his voice is, it's like a coach kind of kicking your ass a little bit.

Jay (The Him) (51:01.744)

Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yes.

Jay (The Him) (51:13.421)

Oh yeah?

Jay (The Him) (51:18.316)

Oh amazing. I need to get that.

Jay (The Him) (51:27.14)

Yeah, yeah, sometimes you need that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Brian Funk (51:28.974)

And I'm like, cut the shit. Let's do this. Yeah, it's a good one. Definitely one of my favorites. I think probably I've given that to a lot of people as a gift. I was like, you gotta read this. Just kind of change your life a little bit.

Jay (The Him) (51:40.539)

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

Yeah, any other books?

Brian Funk (51:49.678)

Well, I just finished, and this is just the most recent one on my mind, a book called – he wrote Essentialism, but this one is called Effortless. Greg McEwen, I believe is the name. I'll put it in the show notes. And again, some of the things we're talking about, he mentions some –

Jay (The Him) (52:06.63)

Sounds very familiar.

Brian Funk (52:18.166)

this idea of effortless, that you want to make the productive things in your life easier to do and the non-productive things harder to do. You know, like kind of just, it's easier to do this thing. But you know, one thing he talks about is be willing to make garbage, be willing to fail, be willing to all that. But he was, what was it, saying, oh, this idea like...

Jay (The Him) (52:26.609)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (52:47.446)

You want to do enough where you're making some progress, but you also need like an end time too, which is something I'm really enjoying thinking about, like kind of leaving something on the table. Like I don't want to work too hard today so that I can't do anything tomorrow. And I want to also sort of leave myself hanging a little bit so I'm excited to start tomorrow. I think Ernest Hemingway used to do that. I think he used to...

Jay (The Him) (53:11.812)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (53:16.368)

Where you stop mid-sentence or something, right? Yeah, yeah. Is that working for you?

Brian Funk (53:17.782)

Yeah, right. Yeah. I think that was the legend. I do think that helps because it's kind of like, I don't have to think about where I'm going to pick up the next day. And that sometimes is a really big hurdle. I spend a lot of time like wandering around, considering the things I could do next. Whether it's, it could be a lot of things, it could be like household chores, or it could be...

Jay (The Him) (53:39.44)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (53:45.878)

musically what I'm gonna do next, but to just be sort of, all right, this is the next thing, without that question, without that thought of like, should I do this now? I know I just, this is what's next. And then you're not questioning it, because if I decide, yeah, I'm gonna do this, oh man, maybe I should have done the other thing. You know, like that, so then you never really get into the thing you're actually doing.

Jay (The Him) (54:07.972)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (54:12.898)

Yeah, very interesting.

Brian Funk (54:15.734)

Yeah, I enjoyed that one a lot, effortless. It actually took me, I listened to it. So I don't know how many pages, but it was probably about like an hour and a half into it. And I was almost ready to just be like, I don't need this right now. Sometimes things just don't grab you. But once I got to that point, I was like, oh wait, that was good. I'm gonna get something out of this.

Jay (The Him) (54:33.191)

Mm-hmm.

Jay (The Him) (54:40.368)

Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Glad you stuck through it.

Brian Funk (54:45.23)

Hmm.

Now let me ask you, like, taking on this plug-in making job, that must have taken up a lot of your time, and I bet that was a break from music, right? That must have taken away some of your time. Did you find pursuing something else like that, it's got a musical thing to it, obviously, but there's a lot of much different skills.

Jay (The Him) (55:15.664)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (55:17.302)

How did that affect your whole flow? Did it change the way you make music? Did it give you some of that fresh air and time to breathe a little bit?

Jay (The Him) (55:26.192)

Yeah, absolutely. I think I like somewhere last year, somewhere in 2023 or 2024 right now, I'm like, I'm to the point where I started losing the years somewhere at the beginning of last year, I was like, I really need to do something else and just make a music like I was kind of feeling a little stale, like the music felt a little stale, what I was doing felt a little stale and it felt like this kind of loop of, oh, next release, next release, like.

you know, not as inspired anymore. So I, first I just kind of picked up the audio program thing on the side and just, just exploring a little bit if there was anything interesting there. And then I started catching some steam and seeing that some of the things that I wanted to make were possible and how they were possible. Um, and I am.

There has been a period in my life where I could really combine it to things, where I was doing some programming and some making music, because I was always already making scripts for Reaper and improving my workflow in there and doing a little bit of both in that way. But then I was always much more focused on, oh, I got this idea for my workflow that I want to improve.

you know, let's make that and then use it. And that kind of went back and forth. But with the plugin making, there was definitely a big period where it was just like, okay, I'm actually, if I'm honest, it's like now 80% making plugins and 20% making music. Um, and I'm now even worse, like the last couple of months, uh, it's more like a hundred percent plugins, which is also slightly due because I just five months ago now already had my second daughter.

which is just, thank you, one of the best things in life, but it puts the schedule under pressure cooker. So where I could normally combine everything, I currently just have much less time and less energy as well because of the sleep and stuff. And I don't know, do you have kids? I don't know, okay, well, just don't sleep for a couple of nights and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Brian Funk (57:12.11)

Congratulations.

Brian Funk (57:31.726)

I don't know, but yeah, I understand it. I understand it's a big commitment.

Jay (The Him) (57:40.82)

It is, yeah, if you want a big commitment, do that. So like I've been doing a lot of plugin work, but I'm actually...

feeling like, especially when we start talking about creativity again, I'm like feeling this urge that I want to make music again. And I'm thinking about what I want that to be. And, and yeah, I'm really getting more, I feel like I'm getting more and more excited again to get a little bit back into active, like really active music making and pushing myself in the ways that I used to do, you know, in the ways that I know, uh, where you grow.

things as you become more professional in music is that the growth is what makes things fun. That's how I see it at least. When you're a beginner and that's in plugins and sports and whatever you do, the growth is really fun and the further you get along your...

career, between quotation marks, the harder it becomes to grow. And that doesn't mean that I'm so good that I can't grow anymore. It might just mean that I've done it for such a long time that I don't have that fresh perspective anymore where, you know, anything that I used to read like manuals of synthesizers and like freaking like watch and read anything I could get my hands on.

But at a certain point you become a professional and it's like less of that and it's more of just making the thing, which is also great. Um, but like actually having some perspective from this whole plugin thing, I'm getting more and more excited to, to apply some of the things I've learned there to like making music again. Yeah.

Brian Funk (59:23.778)

That's cool. So it kind of builds a little bit. So rather than every day you're letting out some of that creative steam, now it's kind of building up a little bit. And when you get a chance to do it, you have some desire and direction.

Jay (The Him) (59:33.893)

Yes.

Jay (The Him) (59:39.948)

I hope so, man, but it might, like I already know, like when I'm, I did a session last week, I thought I was going to be way rustier than I actually was, but I know I'm going to be a little rusty. Like I know I'm going to be like, you know, a basketball player getting back on the field after like a long vacation. Yeah. The first couple of days, I don't know, weeks of doing that, everything's going to kind of like feel floppy.

Brian Funk (59:56.981)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:00:05.936)

You're not going to jump as easy as you thought you'd do. You're not going to be as fast as you thought you were. You know, like it's going to be very frustrating. So that's going to be a whole challenge in itself, but I'm pretty excited to like, get that going again.

Brian Funk (01:00:20.202)

Yeah. Well, it's, I guess that's the way it is when we learn. Like when you first learn something, you're growing so fast, right? Like it's...

Jay (The Him) (01:00:29.779)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:00:30.938)

every new thing you learn doubles your knowledge of what you already had. And then reading the manuals for synthesizers, and you're taking in all this knowledge. But that has to kind of slow down at some point. And I think that is a point where a lot of people kind of lose interest when they stop learning. Because you could read the manual for another synthesizer, but do you really need to know about oscillators again? Like, you kind of got that thing under control. So...

Jay (The Him) (01:00:33.733)

Yes. Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:00:48.189)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:00:55.737)

No, exactly.

Brian Funk (01:01:00.714)

It can feel like you're stagnating, I guess, and that nothing's really changing, there's not a lot of growth happening. And that can be frustrating.

Jay (The Him) (01:01:07.296)

Yeah. No, exactly. And I don't know if this is for everybody, but at least for me, that feeling of growth and achieving things, whether it's your personal goals or goals in the out in the world, that is what makes things fun, you know? Yeah. How much like how do you do that? Like how much time do you spend making music? Like, do you have a schedule for that? Like, is it?

Brian Funk (01:01:23.619)

Yeah, to see a little bit of progress, to see things happen.

Jay (The Him) (01:01:36.632)

every hour you can do is in the studio like how does that work for you?

Brian Funk (01:01:40.806)

Yeah, well, here's the funny thing, right? Like when I'm working, when I've schooled, I'm teaching, I'm probably more productive, which is funny because I have less time. But when I go on to break, I'm on a break for this week, and I'll say summer vacation, it just seems like I have so much time and it's not as precious, right? So I don't have to hustle to do things and a lot of it gets wasted.

I mean, I thought I was gonna have like four albums done by this point of the week. And here I am, I've got like barely anything done. But it's funny how that helps motivate you, move you when you run out of that. So it's not so much that I have a schedule, but I know like when...

Jay (The Him) (01:02:12.392)

Ha ha

Jay (The Him) (01:02:25.052)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:02:31.346)

I get out from work, I got some time to work on stuff. So it might be producing this podcast, it might be working on some music, it might be building some sounds or something, whatever it might be. But I always try to make sure it's something. I got kind of like, with a podcast, it sort of has its deadline. I try to get one out every week.

Jay (The Him) (01:02:45.022)

Yep.

Brian Funk (01:02:53.21)

I would like to be a little more disciplined with a lot of the other things too. I don't know why the podcast is easy for me to meet that goal. For whatever reason. Just the regularity.

Jay (The Him) (01:02:57.637)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:03:03.1)

Well, I'll take a guess. I mean, is it maybe like when, back to the gym analogies, like when the gym is really close to house, then you always leave quite late and then you don't go, whether when it's like an hour or like, no, nobody's gyms an hour away, but like a 15 minute.

Right? You know, like then you actually have to plan it in and you have to do it. So like maybe your podcast involves setting up these meetings, you know, you can't call your guests the day before. So you have to schedule it in advance and you know, you, you know, you have to set certain things in plan. Um, I know this, I'm saying this because this is what happens to me all the time. You know, like it's the things that, you know, have the flexibility that you actually then give the least attention, but they might be the most important thing.

Brian Funk (01:03:25.793)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:03:33.343)

Right, that's true.

Brian Funk (01:03:50.706)

Yeah, that's a great point because there's other people involved, right? Like we made this plan to be here at this time. I can't be like, well, you know, I'm going to just kind of like lay around a little longer today. And then the release of it too is like, you know, people sat down and talked with me. I have to make it happen. You know, if it's six months before this thing comes out, you're going to be like...

Jay (The Him) (01:03:50.916)

Like, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jay (The Him) (01:03:58.651)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:04:02.104)

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But that's funny.

Jay (The Him) (01:04:13.543)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:04:19.394)

like, Brian, what the hell? You know, what happened? So yeah, that would be probably a really smart thing to just build into life where there's, hire somebody to just like yell at me. Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:04:21.956)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, interesting.

Jay (The Him) (01:04:38.074)

Yeah, and if you find that person, give them my details. They can yell at me too. Yeah, exactly.

Brian Funk (01:04:43.486)

I got some referrals for you. This idea though, it doesn't have to be like making a plugin or something, but finding some other pursuit that you take up that will eat up some of your time so that maybe, you know, if, and this probably only works if you are

really in the routine of making music constantly, and you need something that's sort of give you some space to feel fresh about it again. I guess some sort of, could be some other art form or like you're doing, like making a plugin or something. Could be a really healthy way to stay productive and then feel rejuvenated when you return.

Jay (The Him) (01:05:15.836)

Mm-hmm.

Jay (The Him) (01:05:28.88)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that is a healthy balance. Like I've often in my life had two things going on at the same time and like kind of stepping off one stone to step on to the next one. And

And it can mean stepping back and forth as well. And I think that's, for me at least, it's a healthy thing to have multiple things. Because it can also be nice. You know, like when the music thing is super annoying and then I think, oh, I'm going to do something on a plugin. And that can be really rewarding. And this got a little bit out of hand. But I mean, why not? If it's possible, I think it can be a very healthy thing.

Brian Funk (01:06:16.666)

Hmm.

Jay (The Him) (01:06:17.564)

A lot of people, I think, you know, a lot of people, sometimes I talk to people about music and what I do. And I know I'm super privileged to have been able to make music my job and my main thing. And I see sometimes, especially in beginners, like that envy of like, oh, I wish I could do music as my full time thing. But I think...

You know, you sometimes it's easy to forget how nice it can be to bounce back and forth, you know, and lean on that wall that's your other thing to be free in that thing that's your music. And because once it becomes a professional thing, there's a whole other pressures that you're going to have to deal with. So there's a lot of value in doing that back and forth between pursuits, maybe.

Brian Funk (01:07:10.878)

Yeah, I hear that a lot about, I've talked to people that say like, you know, I don't pick up my guitar and just strum it anymore. You know, like, and, you know, I know people that come home from work and just play their guitar. No point. It just goes out into the ether. It's relaxing. It's just pure nothing. And

Jay (The Him) (01:07:21.756)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:07:34.047)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:07:38.525)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:07:39.854)

For me, a lot of times it's a means to an end. I'm trying to make a song, I'm trying to finish something, I'm trying to produce something. And that can be sometimes what you lose when you get into things professionally and you make it a job or a business. And I think it's important to remember to keep that as part of it.

Jay (The Him) (01:07:47.106)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:08:06.576)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it's hard. Again, this is one of those things that, at least for me, that's an ongoing challenge of finding ways to deal with that, you know?

Brian Funk (01:08:18.39)

Hmm. Well, let me ask you, like, are you going to be doing any touring anytime soon? Because I know you've done, like, you do the festival circuit, lots of big stages. I'm sure that's, I mean, I'm obviously thrilling, right? But does that ever also suffer from the same problem of, here we go again, kind of?

Jay (The Him) (01:08:41.74)

Well, I definitely know that in the periods in time where I was touring a lot, there were also moments where you're like, oh man, you know, it's hard to imagine, but when you are like, oh, I don't want to go, you know, I don't necessarily want to go away again. Like being, don't get me wrong, being on stage, best thing there is, it's so amazing, so cool. But like the going and the traveling, that can be super taxing.

Brian Funk (01:09:01.367)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:09:12.356)

I do, I want to perform, I love performing. I love being on stage. So it'll happen. It's not my main priority right now, but it'll happen and like I'll be super happy again to interact with fans and to be DJing. And yeah, it's just a whole nother level of excitement. But I just have so many things I want to do, like these plugins and like Sub Ninja was only actually

Brian Funk (01:09:22.327)

Mm-hmm.

Jay (The Him) (01:09:41.392)

the very first thing that I wanted to release, I'm actually working on a much bigger thing as well. And I wanna finish that and I wanna make awesome music. And then I got so many things I wanna do at the same time. So I'm sure touring will be a part of my life again. But yeah, we'll see, we'll see.

Brian Funk (01:10:01.994)

Yeah, I'm sure, especially new family member now. So, you don't, every day is a new advancement at that age, right? Kind of like when we talk about learning music, like learning life every day is a giant step.

Jay (The Him) (01:10:06.116)

Yep, yep, yeah, that's also.

Jay (The Him) (01:10:11.18)

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:10:19.998)

Yeah, so I've played in bands and we've organized our own tours, you know, very DIY punk rock, reaching out to other bands. Can you guys on a show in Pittsburgh? And like, yeah, okay, cool. We'll set you up here on New York, you know, kind of trading stuff. But we've organized some tours and I mean, it's like you said, like playing is that energy is hard to find anywhere else. You know, that exchange when it's

Jay (The Him) (01:10:24.488)

Mm-hmm.

Jay (The Him) (01:10:35.514)

guys.

Brian Funk (01:10:47.446)

people are into it, you're into it, it's magic and it's greater than the sum of its parts.

Jay (The Him) (01:10:54.385)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:10:55.606)

But all the stuff in between is very taxing. The travel, the bad food, the bad places to sleep, the floors we've slept on, the cars we've slept in. I mean, it's an adventure, and it's a lot of fun in that way, but I kinda came away from that realizing like, ugh, I don't know. I don't know if this is what I wanna do.

Jay (The Him) (01:10:58.321)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:11:03.599)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:11:06.91)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm

Jay (The Him) (01:11:16.337)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:11:19.96)

And that's a band, man. Like I've often thought while I was packing my Roli case with my USB stick and headphones, oh my God, thank God I don't have to bring my guitars and my, all my other crap, you know? Like DJs have it easy in that regard. Um, but yeah, man. Yeah, it's real. It's real. It's, it's a crazy lifestyle. It's, it's one of the coolest things you can do. Um.

Brian Funk (01:11:31.714)

Yeah, right.

Brian Funk (01:11:42.37)

Mm-hmm.

Jay (The Him) (01:11:47.368)

But yeah, it's also wild. It's very wild.

Brian Funk (01:11:51.13)

Yeah. I, I loved it. I really did. I loved it. It was so much fun, but I also kind of realized it's sort of against my nature too. I'm like, I've been off for three or four days now and like, I took my dog to the vet one day. I'd dropped off something at the post office, you know, I think I went to the grocery store. I think that's all I've done, you know?

Jay (The Him) (01:12:07.633)

That's the only reason you went out. That's great. I love that.

Jay (The Him) (01:12:13.996)

nice oh amazing yeah

Brian Funk (01:12:18.134)

That's just my natural state is a kind of a homebody person. So.

Jay (The Him) (01:12:21.658)

Yeah.

I think a lot of producers actually are, like a lot of big DJs I've met around the world, they're also just like, yeah man, we just like sitting in our studio and like, that's what brings you there, you know, funny enough. Yeah. Yeah, it is, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:33.899)

Yeah.

Right, right. It's so solitary. It's interesting. You know, especially when you think of the way music has always been very communal. Like if you wanted to hear music, some sort of ensemble, like people had to play it together in the moment. But only until even pretty recently in recording technology could we just do it by ourselves. And

Jay (The Him) (01:12:45.967)

Hmm.

Jay (The Him) (01:12:52.132)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:13:00.836)

Yeah, yeah, crazy, right? Yeah, I think in a way that also kind of is what I love so much about producing and especially in terms of what's possible now, you know, like you can just create this whole thing inside of a freaking computer, like you really don't need much else. So, yeah, that's so amazing.

Brian Funk (01:13:17.359)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:13:21.074)

Yeah, it's such a great time to be a musician. But yeah, it can be kind of solitary. Uh-oh, are you afraid of that?

Jay (The Him) (01:13:24.352)

Yeah. And then AI is going to ruin the game. I don't know. We'll see. I don't know. It's going to have influences. It's hard to tell. Yeah, it's hard to tell what the influences will be. I mean, I think every generation is...

Brian Funk (01:13:38.914)

Sure, I think it already has, right?

Jay (The Him) (01:13:53.892)

Or I can imagine every generation has certain fears around how the next generation is going to like replace what they always did, um, in an easier and faster way. And then, yeah, you know, I'm sure there's there, yeah, there's tons of people that will be saying like, Oh, you know, I used to do this by hand and it was so special and it was so great. And now it's done by machine and yeah, it's kind of the same, but not really. So like.

Yeah, a lot of music that future people will be listening to will just be like, Oh, give me music that sounds like this and that, and that combined. And AI will roll that out for hours for you to enjoy. And I'll be saying like, yeah, but it has no soul and it's yeah. Yeah. But like, that's just kind of how things go, you know, like, we'll see. I don't, uh, I don't know. What's your take on it?

Brian Funk (01:14:40.82)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:14:45.194)

Yeah, I don't know either exactly, but yeah, like you said, I mean, even if you take like, say I'm recording a guitar and I punch it in and I overdub something, someone else from might say like, ah, but there's nothing like a straight performance straight through, you know, somebody played that the whole, and I can see that, but.

If that's what I had to do every time, I'd never finish anything. It would take a lot longer. AI, I think, will certainly... I'm excited for how it cleans up the more mundane things that we do, things that we don't enjoy doing. Even some of the mixing tools...

Jay (The Him) (01:15:14.456)

Exactly, exactly, yeah. Exactly.

Brian Funk (01:15:35.59)

I like mixing, it's an art form and you can be very creative with it. But some of the technical stuff, I just want to have my song. So sometimes that becomes a little bit of a drag. So if they can help me with that stuff, that's nice. But I do think...

Jay (The Him) (01:15:50.718)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:16:01.414)

I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened already, that people would be returning a little more towards like, you know, everything's been so digital and perfect and maybe like people will start getting into something more natural and human. And maybe a little bit of like the lo-fi movement has some of that going on where people have embraced that a little. But I don't think.

any kind of AI will ever replace that sort of thing where an artist touches you and changes how you think and you know you wear different clothes now because you're like kind of like looking up to them and they influence like parts of the way you look at the world. And now I don't know if that happens as much as it used to either you know like when I was younger in high school and that.

you know, the people you listened to was your identity. Like you were waving a flag of like, this is who I am kind of. I don't know if that happens quite as much anymore, at least from what I can observe. But I do think there'll, you know, take like Taylor Swift right now. Like she's probably the most famous person in the world at the moment.

And so much about her, she's a musician, right? But it's about her, her life, her experiences, what she's doing. And we'll never get that from AI. You know, a lot of people, I think like a lot of our fans look up to her.

for who she is as a person. Some of the things she's done, like re-recording all her songs so that she could have the rights. Like that's like power move right there. Like can AI do that? You know, like can AI inspire us that way? I don't know if that can ever, who knows? Maybe it can, but you know, I think that's stuff that maybe we need to lean into more.

Jay (The Him) (01:17:48.125)

Hehehe

Brian Funk (01:17:59.882)

You know, like take like your plugin, for instance, like the fact that it's like you made it, right? It's like, that's something that's really interesting to me about it when I first came across it was like, oh, like he needed this, he wanted this, and this is what he saw as a whole, and he's making this kind of music. And it had like this story behind it, whereas if it was like, say like an AI thing that figured it out for you or whatever.

Jay (The Him) (01:18:00.42)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:18:22.514)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:18:31.466)

It doesn't have that same impact. I think it's really cool, actually, the way you've marketed the plugin from you. There's a lot of stuff that you don't know who the creators are. Maybe it's a company, but that's all you get. You don't get the kind of backstory. I think that's a cool thing about what you have, that you need the human for that.

Jay (The Him) (01:18:59.884)

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. I think I relate to what you're saying. When you're a fan of a certain artist, it can be like they can sing Twinkle Little Star and you're still interested in hearing that in their voice in a way. If you're a fan of Taylor Swift and she sang the most mundane song, you'd still be curious how she's going to say it. So I do get that.

Brian Funk (01:19:16.589)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:19:27.308)

I don't know, it's too hard to speculate about when we'll lose that to computers though. It's a big subject, yeah. I don't know, we'll see. I mean, I think as with anything, we'll probably still have some time to enjoy what we're doing right now and it'll be a great tool for a while. But yeah, after 10 years, I don't know.

Brian Funk (01:19:55.07)

Yeah, and it's probably wise to get on board, you know, rather than fight it. Like it doesn't seem like it's like a tsunami, you know, like any recording technology, like if you didn't embrace multi-track recording or overdubbing or like you just left in the dust.

Jay (The Him) (01:20:00.752)

Yeah, yeah, of course.

Jay (The Him) (01:20:12.274)

Yeah.

Yeah. I've been trying to convince like some of my less tech savvy friends, like you need to get like a subscription to like chat GPT, like, I don't know if you're as adamant about this as I am, but I'm just telling them like, this is when we were in high school and we found out Google existed, you know?

And then we were like, what the hell, this is Google. This is so great. We need Google. It does everything for us. And currently, everything starts, anytime you need something on the internet, it starts with Google. And that's going to be the chat GPTs of the future. And whenever somebody says to me that is kind of my age, oh, why do I need it? What do you use it for? It's like Google. It's like you telling your parents, mom, look, this is what Google does.

That's to me what these tools are gonna do and you guess you definitely need to use them like and And if you if you're wondering why you need them you yeah Maybe you need to do more research on why they could be useful to you, you know

Brian Funk (01:21:04.191)

Right.

Brian Funk (01:21:18.37)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, like trying to explain to your folks, like this is the entire encyclopedia and more. This is the Britannica, that whole set of books. This is the library right here. It's really interesting. There's a lot of great application. I'll tell you what, even like for my job as an English teacher, I have the same mug as you. Office. Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:21:24.8)

Exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:21:32.028)

Yeah, exactly.

Jay (The Him) (01:21:43.388)

Ah, you're an office fan? Nice, nice.

Brian Funk (01:21:46.41)

I don't have it right now, but you probably see it in other episodes. That's funny. The world's best boss.

Jay (The Him) (01:21:49.622)

I call.

Yes. I once had somebody ask me like they would just kind of thought like why do you have that mug you know and I've wondered if people don't get it like if they thought like why do I have that mug it's kind of weird but I'm glad you get it.

Brian Funk (01:22:02.21)

Right?

Brian Funk (01:22:08.014)

Yeah. And then you say he bought it at Spencer's for himself too. That's so funny. I was saying as an English teacher, I've used it and my students have certainly used it to write their papers. And so I've used it to create like worksheets, like say we're doing some kind of grammatical thing or some kind of vocabulary thing or whatever it is.

Jay (The Him) (01:22:12.036)

Yes, yeah, he did. Yeah, so great. Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:22:23.92)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:22:36.122)

I can ask it to make the questions for me. I can ask it to write a story about a dog that meets a dragon and leave a blank space for all the verbs. So like they have to film, like whatever, you know? And to get it to do that frees up so much more of my time to actually focus on like the stuff I as a human can do with them compared to me sitting there and like writing questions out and...

Jay (The Him) (01:22:39.238)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:22:50.641)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:22:56.082)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:23:00.603)

Exactly.

Brian Funk (01:23:04.91)

type, which is, that's not my specialty. That's not what I'm here for. I'm not just giving out handouts to my classes. So getting help with that sort of stuff is really huge.

Brian Funk (01:23:23.154)

I get papers written by ChatGPT, I read them and at first I'm like, wow, I'm really getting through to these guys. Johnny's become such a better writer. I must really be doing a good job. Then you're like, wait, I'm not that good. But there's that, of course.

Jay (The Him) (01:23:33.243)

Ah!

Jay (The Him) (01:23:46.536)

So how do you guys deal with that?

Brian Funk (01:23:49.546)

Well, that's where I think it gets interesting, right? Because if you can plug that into chat, if you can plug my essay into chat GPT and it gives you like a great answer, then maybe I have a problem with my question. You know, maybe the stuff that I'm asking is outdated. Right? Just like, you know, our teachers when I was younger, like telling us like, you know, you're never gonna have a calculator with you all the time. You have to learn this.

And now we've got phones that have calculators all the time with us. Right? Like, so that's kind of a, you know, use the tools we have. Right? So maybe we're asking questions that are too easily answered in a formulaic way. So to combat that, it has to, I need more personal stuff. I need you to think about you and your experience in your life. Cause that's not in chat GPT. That's not in the internet.

Jay (The Him) (01:24:45.434)

Interesting.

Brian Funk (01:24:47.274)

And that's hard. That's very tricky, but I think maybe education in general kind of needs that little kick in the ass because a lot of the testing we have to do, the state tests and stuff, they're so predictable. And you wind up teaching them in a certain way. I'd say to my classes all the time, I would never teach you this is how to write. I'm teaching you how to be smarter than this test.

Because if they're going to ask you the same thing the same way every time, let's be ready. You know, if you were on a team and you knew the other team was going to run the exact play every time, wouldn't you prepare for that and outsmart them? So it's kind of like what I'm teaching in that case is more like how to outsmart the test. It's like a strategy, which I don't think is bad, but it's not writing. It's not reading. It's not English skills. So maybe we need to figure out.

Jay (The Him) (01:25:25.524)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:25:47.102)

more clever ways to do that sort of stuff.

Jay (The Him) (01:25:50.756)

Yeah. I think, I think for education, it's, uh, it can be such a gift. I think in the beginning it will be a little bit of a curse because yeah, you know, like I remember when I was in high school, there was this website that had summaries of books and like, when I found that I was like, no, I'm never going to have to read a boring book again. You know? Um, but like imagine.

Brian Funk (01:26:05.326)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:26:09.247)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:26:13.29)

And that's great if I'm asking you what color shoes was he wearing? But if I wanna know something a little deeper about what this says about humanity and how does this apply to your life as a musician, now you have to think.

Jay (The Him) (01:26:18.022)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:26:28.743)

Yeah.

ChatGPT would struggle with questions like that.

Brian Funk (01:26:34.57)

Well, it doesn't know you.

Jay (The Him) (01:26:37.648)

But what if I gave it some information about me and would say like, answer the question from the perspective of a producer.

Brian Funk (01:26:39.658)

Well then, yeah. Yeah, well, that's part of what you can do. Yeah, you can start. And that's.

Jay (The Him) (01:26:48.424)

Yeah, so I don't mean to give your students if they're listening any ideas.

Brian Funk (01:26:52.946)

No, but in a way, I think that's at least, I'd rather them do that than just get the first thing it spits out, right? I'd rather them think about it and look at it and question it and, you know. But yeah, like maybe some of this stuff isn't as necessary anymore, I don't know. But a big thing I've been doing more of is like,

Jay (The Him) (01:26:58.052)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:27:20.362)

And this is especially with, I teach students that are learning English. So a lot of our families, immigrant families, and their first generation learning English, and their big advantage is that they speak two languages. So really want to lean into that with them, but it doesn't matter if you can't speak in front of people. So that's what you're going to do. You're going to present this, you're going to speak, you're going to do things in real life that a computer can't do for you.

Brian Funk (01:27:52.391)

And yeah, I don't know if I use it to write my artist bio. I don't see a problem with that because that's not what I'm here for. I'm not here to write a cool bio. I want you to listen to my music, right? So if I'm wasting time writing a bio, that's like this. I don't know, I have a lot of mixed feelings, I guess, but overall it's like...

Jay (The Him) (01:28:06.296)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Brian Funk (01:28:18.994)

It doesn't matter how I feel, it's what's happening. So we gotta figure out how to work with it.

Jay (The Him) (01:28:25.06)

Yeah, fair enough.

Brian Funk (01:28:29.686)

What are you thinking? Do you think, are you?

Jay (The Him) (01:28:32.716)

I mean, like on the one side, I'm completely on board with the idea of why do I need to learn math if I have a calculator, you know, that's great. Why do I need to know like six times six is 36 if I have a calculator? But I do also think on the other side that learning those math things like the tables, I don't know what you call it in English, but we...

Brian Funk (01:28:41.023)

Uh-huh.

Brian Funk (01:28:58.463)

Yeah, the multiplication tables.

Jay (The Him) (01:29:00.324)

Yeah, multiplication tables. That's also just a good practice to get your brain working in the first place. And in the second place, also a good practice to get a feel for numbers. And, um, I was actually funny enough having a thing with my, uh, with my wife last night, she wanted to calculate something and, you know, like, well, I'm a little bit of a geek and like, I, I like numbers. I always loved math and stuff. And.

And she asked me how to do this math thing. And I was like, okay, I was trying to explain to her how to do it and how to figure it out herself. And she was totally fine. Like she could totally do it, but I can definitely see a world in which people lose some of those basic skills. And then you can only do it with a calculator, you know, like, and like, how are you going to know that the calculator is right? You know, like if you hit the wrong button and six times six is not 36, but like something completely different. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:29:43.394)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:29:54.126)

360.

Jay (The Him) (01:29:56.394)

And then you're like, yeah, did you say 63? Yeah, OK, exactly, 360. Great, yeah, or 63. You know, like, hey, something went wrong in this transaction, you know? It is nice to have some of those skills. And yeah, I don't, I really, it's a big challenge, I think, for education to find the balance. Because I also see a great tool in things like ChatGPT to help people learn things. Like, you could.

Brian Funk (01:29:59.527)

360, that's it. But similar idea.

Jay (The Him) (01:30:24.644)

have so much more one-on-one time with a knowledgeable chat bot, then you could have one-on-one with the teacher, you know. And then, like you said, you could focus even more on the kids that really need that extra human attention from you, the teacher. So it can be like a really great gift if it's used the right way as well, I think.

but I don't think it's necessarily good to completely lose all the more basic abilities.

Brian Funk (01:30:56.47)

Yeah. Well, I think a lot of the stuff I learned in my math classes, for instance, most of which I've never had to use again, you know, most of which I've never, but I learned problem solving. I learned how to think through these equations and I think that helps in a lot of other areas in life. And, you know, I think we've been talking about this a lot with music, how

Jay (The Him) (01:30:58.26)

It's a tough one.

Jay (The Him) (01:31:09.969)

Exactly.

Brian Funk (01:31:23.018)

You kind of learn, like you're learning stuff through making a plugin that's applying to music making, even though it's not directly. And I'm sure some of your approaches to music making correlated nicely to making this plugin. Those it's thinking it's mental workouts. Like you said, just figuring out those familiarity with numbers.

Jay (The Him) (01:31:28.335)

Exactly.

Brian Funk (01:31:49.154)

That's an important thing that we exercise our brain. That's why they say you gotta do crossword puzzles as you get older and Sudoku and all these things just to keep the mind fresh. Because it's kind of like a muscle that will atrophy.

Jay (The Him) (01:31:58.756)

Yeah. Yep.

Jay (The Him) (01:32:04.796)

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yes

Brian Funk (01:32:08.526)

and that might be why we feel rusty when we take breaks. Like I said. But sometimes the rust is good, I don't know. Like you said earlier, the advice doesn't apply all the time, every time. The trick is knowing when it applies.

Jay (The Him) (01:32:20.924)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, you got it. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Brian Funk (01:32:28.618)

Well, listen, I know you've got bedtime duties coming up, so I don't want to keep you from that. I don't want to get in trouble, get you in trouble. So we can definitely send people to dsp.thehymn.com to check out SubNinja. I'm going to have these links in the show notes as well. I think it's a really cool plugin that does something that I don't really...

Jay (The Him) (01:32:34.204)

Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:32:46.864)

Yeah, absolutely.

Brian Funk (01:32:56.938)

know of any other tool that does. It's very specific for getting like the bass stuff right and it's also just like I kind of said earlier about like how I used to look at the EQ spectrum on songs I just think it's interesting to see because I noticed when looking at SubNinja like with things like side chaining like sometimes you dial in the release just right and suddenly now it's

pumping in that way that's rhythmic, that fits the music. And you can kind of see it with the way you've got like the grid lines in there. It's great reference for like education too. So I think it's pretty cool. Anywhere else you want to send people?

Jay (The Him) (01:33:38.224)

Yeah. Awesome, man. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Jay (The Him) (01:33:45.008)

No, yeah, go check out Sub Ninja and the him on Spotify and Instagram and wherever you want to find me. We've started a Discord for people that are interested in Sub Ninja and just also chatting about music production stuff that you can all find on the site. So yeah, reach out to me.

Brian Funk (01:34:06.766)

That's awesome, man. I congratulate you on, you know, jumping into this whole other realm and following through. And it seems like it's been a successful release. I see like some of your testimonials or names I recognize, Tom Frampton. I see that you passed the snake oil test with White Sea Studio, which is an accomplishment. Yeah, that's great, man. But I understand why. It's good stuff. And it's...

Jay (The Him) (01:34:25.108)

pretty crazy, right? Yeah. Yeah, I was extremely proud of that. Yeah.

Jay (The Him) (01:34:35.016)

Thank you so much.

Brian Funk (01:34:35.666)

It's hard to find something new, you know? Like these days, like there's so many different types of plugins and you've kind of found something that wasn't really covered. So that's an accomplishment in and of itself and to follow through with it even better. So, you know, I wish you lots of success with it and I'm excited to find out what's next. And I encourage everyone listening to check it out.

Jay (The Him) (01:34:58.128)

Yeah, man, I'll let you know. Thank you so much, Brian. This was really, really fun. Great conversation.

Brian Funk (01:35:06.274)

Cool. Thank you.

Jay (The Him) (01:35:08.328)

Cheers.

podcastBrian Funkmusic production podcast, the him