Tom Cosm - Telepathic Instruments Co-Founder and Ableton Certified Trainer

podcast
Written By Brian Funk

Tom Cosm is an electronic musician, Ableton Certified Trainer, and co-founder of Telepathic Instruments. Widely known for his early Ableton Live tutorials and inventive use of hacked gear, Tom has built a reputation as a true audio mad scientist—transforming data, brainwaves, and even bugs into expressive sound.

In this conversation, Tom shares his journey from early YouTube educator to the co-creator of Orchid, a new instrument, dreamt up by Tame Impala's Kevin Parker, built to spark musical ideas with immediacy and joy. We explore the evolution of his creative philosophy, how tools can invite spontaneity, and what he’s learned about music (and life) by building instruments from scratch. 

This episode is sponsored by Baby Audio and their new plug-in Tekno!
Save 15% with the code: MPP15 - https://babyaud.io/tekno 

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Takeaways:

  • From YouTube to Orchid - Tom’s journey started with early Ableton tutorials on YouTube and led to co-creating Orchid—a creative “ideas machine” that helps musicians quickly generate complex chord progressions.

  • Music in Everything - Whether converting brainwaves, weather data, or the movement of a spider into sound, Tom finds musicality in everyday patterns and natural systems.

  • Designing for Play - Tom emphasizes having fun while making music. Orchid was intentionally built without a screen to encourage tactile exploration and playful interactions.

  • Community-Driven Development - Community has been a constant factor in Tom's work and continues through community-feedback on Orchid.

  • Making Time for Music Again - After years focused on building hardware, Tom is excited to return to making music—starting with 80 unfinished tracks and a fresh wave of curiosity.

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:01.88)

Tom Cosm welcome to the show. Great to have you, sir.

Tom Cosm (00:05.134)

Thanks for having me here. Always a fan of your work, so good to have a chat. Yeah.

Brian Funk (00:10.414)

Well, I want to tell you, maybe first off, you were one of the first people that really inspired me with just the concept of live electronic music, like going way back. I wasn't even using Ableton Live and you're probably part of the reason I got into that too. I was coming out of like rock bands and trying to figure out what I was going to do, you know, like...

Tom Cosm (00:24.398)

Wow.

Brian Funk (00:36.846)

You know, they break up and like you want to try to find a way to do your music on your own and you were talking about Live electronic music and showing like yeah, you can actually perform this stuff It's not just playing backing tracks and it's not just a CD that you play your guitar or karaoke over or anything like that and I was just blown away by all that stuff and I think you're one of the very few people that set me on this course in a lot of ways so I

Tom Cosm (00:55.14)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:05.204)

really appreciate everything you've done.

Tom Cosm (01:05.389)

Wow, that's a powerful statement. Thank you very much. Yeah, that definitely is quite an impactful thing to hear. Thank you.

Brian Funk (01:14.606)

You're one of the early guys doing those tutorials when YouTube wasn't known for that. I was just learning. You could learn on YouTube at that point.

Tom Cosm (01:18.508)

Yeah. Well.

I mean there's an interesting short story there, because that was purely an accidental thing. I'd like to say that I saw YouTube and went, no one's making tutorial videos for electronic music. It was actually a friend of mine, Ben, who was studying film and he was doing kind of an end of year project and he needed a topic. And he said, so he's doing all this cool stuff with computers and music, should we just make a few videos on how you do that?

And was just going to be for his college. And he made a really great video, edited it together. It might be the one that you saw. know, it was just kind of a handful of 10 minute videos of me running through my setup. And I was a bit more nervous back then. and then we're like, this YouTube thing is here. Why don't we upload it to that? And the views just started climbing. And that was when I went, OK, well, I guess I'm pivoting from.

being a musician into teaching music now. So it was, yeah, it's, yeah, I owe a lot to him as you, just kind of nicely owed some stuff to me. I'm going to pass the baton to Ben, my friend Ben for actually getting me on there. I love it and I don't regret anything about it, but yeah, it just happened to be one of the first, if not the first Ableton one. And that's just having that sort of, badge or

or status I guess is kind of yeah just kind of help fuel things whether I put out absolute weird chaotic experimental stuff or not you know I try to mix it up between actual good educational content and Tom's just found a spider and he's going to hook it up to something and make sounds out of it very ethically you know with motion capture I'm not actually hooking a spider up to anything and I let them go spiders are cool they're our friends yeah

Brian Funk (03:09.934)

You

No spiders were harmed.

Tom Cosm (03:20.1)

Yeah. Cool.

Brian Funk (03:21.666)

But yeah, think you did a great job.

just introducing people to the concept that this can be done and it can be interesting and expressive. And after seeing some of the stuff you've done since then, I mean, some of it, I don't even understand what you're doing. Like just this kind of like science projects, dream waves. think you had your brain hooked up to the Max For Live patch, creating music while you were sleeping.

Tom Cosm (03:41.582)

We need a...

Tom Cosm (03:46.98)

Yeah.

Yeah, I just got a new brainwave machine. This was gifted to me by, I won't say who, but it's one of the Muse ones. So I've been making my own janky ones and I have wires and stuff for years and now I've got this thing that just kind of slips over your head and a lot more comfortable. Anyway, yeah, brainwaves. Love my brainwaves. Yeah, they're for art.

Brian Funk (04:10.359)

Yeah.

Right. what a cool thing too, so personalized, right? Like you're taking data, right? Essentially and converting that into other data that turns into music. But it's from your brain, it's from your mind and even in the subconscious mind, I guess, as well.

Tom Cosm (04:24.622)

Hmm.

Tom Cosm (04:31.77)

That's it. That's it. And I mean, the type of these types of devices and, the things that are out there, which are in the price range of, you know, a hobbyist being able to take them and use them. They don't have, you know, as much resolution or as something you would get in, you know, say a research lab or something like that. But they're definitely accurate enough for art. You know, they're a bit noisy. You know, they might, you know, but they can definitely pick up relaxation, attention.

fear sometimes, nostalgia even if you you you balance everything right and the fun part for me is seeing what I can get out of the different brainwave bands and frequencies and trying to find what that actually means you know so yeah but as a general statement I think I like I've always had a big passion for taking taking data any data in the real world could be the weather

be stock markets, be brain waves, could be a spider running around on my desk and figuring out how I can convert that into something which produces nice audio without any sort of rhythmical or harmonic quantization. Maybe I'll harmonically quantize something to a minor scale just so it's not doing chromatic things all over the place, but I really like trying to that finding sample sets of data and seeing what they sound like.

Yeah, it seems to be a recurring theme for almost everything I do in my own time.

Brian Funk (06:04.141)

It's almost like a backwards thing in a way where you're taking the emotion, a lot of times music is the thing that elicits the emotion, and now you're creating the music from emotions and thoughts that will therefore create new emotions and thoughts, just kind of branching off of interaction.

Tom Cosm (06:14.319)

Mm.

Tom Cosm (06:25.178)

I get a deep sense of wonderment and excitement and mystery when I do this sort of work. Especially when I do it. I mostly do it as a hobby or I might do some sort of art piece for a festival or something. I've never done anything. I've done a few things. But there's been a few instances where I've done it on a contract level for a company who wants some research done or a company that wants an ad campaign done.

Yeah, that to me is... That blows my mind, yeah. Look, I've always tended to be the person that...

gets asked to do the thing that nobody else wants to tackle, know, when it comes to sound or doing weird things with sound. Yeah. So I tend to get people who, you know, I say, how did you find me? And they said, well, we were asking all these people and they kept saying, go and talk to Tom. That sounds like something Tom would do. And I really, I really liked that, you know, like that's, if it seems impossible, I'll give it a really good go. And that's that, that fills my cup.

Brian Funk (07:34.381)

It's a cool reputation to have. Here's the guy that's gonna do something really outlandish with some sound that no one else really knows how to do.

Tom Cosm (07:40.942)

Yeah.

I'm sure it a few people out, that's, that's, that's, that's odd, Yeah.

Brian Funk (07:46.914)

Yeah, that's good art though, right? I think that's part of the definition. Yeah. Well, I guess that's why you got the call to work on orchid telepathic instruments, congratulations on that whole project. I've been following it, watching it come to life.

Tom Cosm (08:02.202)

Thank you, thank you.

Brian Funk (08:07.565)

I just saw that Time Magazine put it as one of the best music inventions of the year. mean, how cool is that? Congrats. Awesome.

Tom Cosm (08:15.386)

Yeah, that was, that was, that was a bit of a shock. mean, wonderful. But yeah, I still haven't really processed that, you know, I mean, it's quite a, yeah, I mean, we've just been, we've been so, so busy with just getting this, getting this thing perfect and out to customers. I just, I've got quite a few things that I put on the shelf and I need to take a week and go, well, something, something.

We made this as in Time magazine that that's that's kind of a thing. Yeah,

Tom Cosm (08:53.642)

Yeah. Some people have said that to me. Yeah, a people have mentioned it to me and I haven't acted like real excited and it's just because I just haven't figured out how to be excited about that yet. I really am. I'm just, it's just such a crazy concept. mean, I think five years ago I was much more of a, I don't was playing music at festivals and traveling around and just, you

Brian Funk (08:54.347)

might have to put the brainwave machine on and see what that comes out with.

Brian Funk (09:06.541)

Hmm.

Tom Cosm (09:22.052)

just kind of didn't really have much of a care in the world and now I'm kind of, you know, time magazine. So yeah, interesting journey.

Brian Funk (09:32.279)

Maybe when you get the actual magazine in your hand, see it's a real world thing.

Tom Cosm (09:36.194)

Or do you think it'll be published in the magazine? I don't really know how magazines work these days. It seems like they do blogs, but if it's in the actual magazine, I'll buy one of those and give it to my mum and dad. I think that'll make them proud. Wish they already are. They're very proud of what I do.

Brian Funk (09:47.425)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (09:52.296)

Right. Yeah, that's cool. It's a great way to justify the career in music and arts. Right. I think probably a lot of parents get a little nervous when their kids decide to take those paths. Like, don't you want to be like a lawyer or a doctor?

Tom Cosm (10:00.986)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (10:11.725)

Absolutely, yeah. There were 10 years there where I don't think anybody, including myself, knew what I was actually doing. So yeah, it's a good little trophy to put up there to say, hey, we'll actually change the

Brian Funk (10:24.332)

Yeah, well, I mean, that didn't exist at the time, right? Like this career path that you found and built, you couldn't, you wouldn't have been able to pick that in high school as your path to, I want this, that's I want to do. I'm to go on this new thing called YouTube and take it from there.

Tom Cosm (10:32.634)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Cosm (10:40.922)

Mm.

And just the lead up to it, so you know the initial stage, know when Kevin reached out and we started working together and going back and forth and making prototypes, that was cool. I'm in my zone there for sure. And then there's this, wait you want to make thousands of these? Okay, and you know I don't know how to do that. Well I didn't know how to do that. And kind of...

finding the right people and then they had contacts and then suddenly there's a team and they're all they're all excellent at what they do and I'm kind of overseeing things you know and I'm used to working alone so I don't mind working with people but I've definitely worked alone most of my life you know again in my little dark room tinkering with you know electronics and whatever so just just that that phase of as we as we grew towards the first drop you could say where where I was

overseeing things and making sure that all these new extremely talented people were still keeping to the vibe of the machine, making sure that nothing got lost. then going over to China and meeting with manufacturers and going into production lines and sitting down in production lines and actually doing the assembly with a whole bunch of people and going, that moment then, mean, this is...

this is a weird life thing man, this is cool, this is so cool but yeah that was very, that moment there when I'm in the production line, know, like doing some quality assurance stuff in China, I'm going okay, yeah, I couldn't have predicted this one, absolutely not. yeah, it's great, I love it, I love it, it's so much fun.

Brian Funk (12:26.348)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (12:31.398)

And it's a super cool example of following that dream and passion and jump into the next step and then realizing there's another step beyond that that I didn't see from the last one and moving forward.

Tom Cosm (12:46.412)

Yeah, and I have no idea what's next either. that's, yeah. Yeah, we're definitely gonna, we're definitely gonna, I wanna build some more things, that's for sure. So, yeah.

Brian Funk (12:49.908)

Yeah, none of us do,

Brian Funk (12:58.092)

Well, maybe if people aren't so familiar with it, we can tell them just a little bit of what Ork it is, the project, how you got involved. It sounds like a great story and probably a surprising story from your end.

Tom Cosm (13:13.732)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. it's a video podcast. Yeah. Cool. Okay. If I, I thought a few props that I might bring up then here and there. well, I mean, the story, as I said, just before the story began, it was quite funny. Actually I was, I was on Instagram and I was getting all these messages from kind of teenagers and stuff.

Brian Funk (13:24.935)

cool, excellent.

Tom Cosm (13:39.972)

just all in, you know, maybe 20 or 30 in a period of a few hours saying, who are you? Like, you know, how do know Kevin? I was certainly going, what, what's going on? I kind of showed my partner at the time. She's like, they're saying Kevin Parker. That's, that's, that's Taiman Parlor. So I went into the Taiman Parlor Instagram and they just freshly followed me. So I was getting a lot of their fans wondering who this person was. And, you know, so.

I kind of reached out, I reached back and said, hey, you you just followed me like, what's up? You know, it's there. Is there anything I can help you with? And Kevin's just like, yeah, I've got this, I've got this idea. I've been brewing for years and years based off an old Casio I used to play. And it's just this chord machine. you know, he kind of told me the details. I got interested. Next thing I know, we're kind of swapping. He's sending me kind of, kind of, you know, MIDI effect.

kind of bundles of like how we could see it working and I'm sending them back kind of max adaptions and we're drawing things on paper and yeah eventually we got to the point where we had a software prototype that that worked with just a standard MIDI keyboard I think one of these like a innovation or something and yeah once we were happy I mean okay well I'm more of a software guy but I like building things so I got all the bits and pieces together I got my friend Zach to help build this so this is the original

P0 we call it, prototype 0. It's seen better days, I need to do a repair job on it, but he kind of built this aluminium slash perspex thing, you can see all these terrible soldering going on in the bottom and yeah, put a pie in it, put an Arduino in it, got some knobs, got some buttons, hoped for the best and it worked, it works really well. So I sent that over to Kevin. I remember very...

very significant point I got a video from one of his friends just him sitting quietly at a house party but he was sitting quietly by himself with a glass of wine just playing it with his eyes shut and I just went nailed it. And then just very quickly after that it was like cool let's ramp this up I don't think this should be just one of these I think we should really put a lot into it I guess it's a good

Brian Funk (15:48.78)

That's what I'm going for.

Tom Cosm (16:04.346)

I mean this is the end product here. It's a good for people who are unfamiliar. It's an ideas machine for generating chords. You can use these buttons here to kind of donate major chords or complex chords with sixths or sevenths or ninths and then you just simply push one of these keys and it will play that chord and you can move around the register like here. This is kind like your octave button but you can go in inversions and then we've got a whole range of synth engine parameters and performance effects and things like that.

So that's it in a nutshell, just if anyone's following along and hasn't actually figured out what we're talking about yet. And it's called Orchid. Yeah, so just going from that to that. Obviously we needed a really good designer. We got Ignacio from Moving Design to come in. Who's responsible for, well, him and Kevin responsible for the look of the thing, which I think is amazing. You know, that's so outside of my scope. So to have a team on how it's going to look.

Not just how it's going to look, how it's going to vibe. know, what does it feel like when it's sitting on your coffee table? know, that kind of stuff. Like it's really important. And got some really good coders in who could take my kind of janky code and turn it into like really good stuff. Synth engine specialists. So we pack like a really unique synth engine in there, which is our own. not just off the shelf and it's, you know, it's an actual

fully fledged synth engine with um we've got three three oscillator types you know we've got FM subtractive and our own sort of analog modeled electric piano analog piano type sound which kind of gives it a really unique flavor and yeah the team just grew and grew and grew and yeah it got to a point where you know there were a few stages where i'm not sure i know what i'm doing like you know everyone's looking at me for a decision and i've never been here before and i can't google this but you know just through

through asking people and intuition and we made some pretty good decisions and a few things that held us back. We didn't get everything right, especially in the first couple of drops, but this one that we've just done this weekend, we've made a lot of them. They're still for sale as of the recording of this. And we feel like we have released version one of finished product, which we're happy with, which isn't...

Tom Cosm (18:29.506)

a beta or anything like that. We have released a beta of our software to control the synth engine. So we've started a new thing, but yeah, it's kind of as of last weekend. went, okay, this is a finished product now. Like we are really, really, really happy with how this is. I think that's the first time I've told that storyline from the start to the finish. How'd I do?

Brian Funk (18:50.763)

Excellent. It's full of surprises and twists. It's cool to see the prototype you have there. Because the end product is really sleek.

Tom Cosm (18:56.954)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (19:01.592)

It's fun, yeah.

Brian Funk (19:06.493)

It's got a simplicity to it. It looks to me like how we thought the future was going to be in the 80s. If you know that feeling, like it didn't turn out like that really, but it has that like kind of like almost maybe even like a Jetsonsy, you know, the cartoon feel, which is even older, I guess, an older vision of the future. But.

Tom Cosm (19:13.848)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Tom Cosm (19:23.716)

kids and see you.

Tom Cosm (19:29.422)

You can imagine how much fun we had sitting around talking just like that. know, just trying to, Star Trek, what if we mix that with a car? What about this car? we've got orchids, we'll put some flowers in here. You know, so it's kind of, it was really fun to just be really abstract and use lots of metaphors and analogies, you know, in the initial stages. And that's the kind of, in my opinion, that's the kind of...

raw material that's the most valuable for Ignacio, for him to hear people kind of speak about their memories and their experiences and this thing has this particular emotion to me and you know all of these objects and you know he can take those and actually come up with it with a CAD of an industrial designed object you know and that is amazing like I've never seen anything like that before in my life it's beautiful it's art to me.

Brian Funk (20:22.507)

Yeah, it is. And it's a little bit of a step away from, I think, a lot of design that's happening now. I think, to me, it seems like everything's getting very square, like an angular. And this is smooth and rounded. Looks a little different. Kind of has a different kind of call to it than some of the other stuff that you see.

Tom Cosm (20:33.166)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Stick.

Tom Cosm (20:48.664)

Yeah, it's definitely by design, you know. we want, again, we want people to be proud of it, you know. Ultimately we want it to be useful and help people write music and come up with ideas, but we want people to pull it out.

people to go, wow, that's so cool. What is that? know? And I mean, yes, from a, I guess, marketing perspective, which I'm not much involved in, but yes, that's good idea. But the idea is, you bring it, I mean, I gave one to my nephew and he took it to high school and I can only imagine, you know, it's just like you pull it out and then all of a sudden there's all these people who are experimenting around with music who might not have ever touched an instrument in their lives, but instantly they're making chord progressions, complex chord progressions.

So I think that's, for me this is my personal opinion, I think that's quite a big part of it. It's a curiosity and to me that only means more people getting interested in writing music. Or maybe releasing music that's in their mind but they've never had the training or the courage to actually do something and get it down into something else they can share with people, you know.

Brian Funk (22:03.336)

Yeah, I think that immediacy is especially important today. I've asked this question a lot of myself, talked about it on this podcast, where...

Tom Cosm (22:15.119)

Mm.

Brian Funk (22:16.426)

When I started playing guitar, was 14. It's the 90s and there's nothing else to do. So you suffer through it, right? Like your fingers hurt, but you want to get better and you learn a little bit and you're so excited to get one little bit of information and you work with it. I don't know if today with phones and the internet, I don't know if I would make it through those stages when I could just turn to an app or social media and get that kind of.

Tom Cosm (22:22.5)

Yep.

Tom Cosm (22:44.378)

Hmm.

Brian Funk (22:45.798)

instant, much smaller sense of gratification but still something. Whereas something like this where you can sound like, I'm making music already. Get you in quick.

Tom Cosm (22:51.994)

I'm with-

Tom Cosm (22:55.757)

Mmm.

See, I've been going through this recently as well, know, if I catch myself scrolling at kind of 10 o'clock at night, depending on when I finish my day and I'll be in my room and you know, all of my stuff is in this room, you know, this is where I work, this is where I have my music stuff and my build my stuff. But in my room, it's kind of turned into this place where, you know,

you can lie on the bed and scroll on your phone. And I'm kind of going, I don't know if I like this. you know, I've just kind of put an orchid on the corner of my bed and I've gotten able to move sitting there as well. You know, just two things and just trying to like, instead of reaching for my phone, it's like, I'll just reach over and turn it off. Cool, I'm playing a chord, you know? And yeah, it's, I don't know if it's working yet. It's a very new thing, but I'm definitely, I'm.

I'm really looking for new ways to get back into writing music in my downtime. And I think the reason, just to get deep on it, is my downtime has changed quite a lot with the shift. So as I saying, 10 years ago, I was free, was doing my hours, I could stay up for two days writing music if I wanted to. But now I'm kind of like, I've got two hours here, I've got four hours tonight. I'm gonna be tired, because I'm gonna be doing these

and that's a really interesting thing for me because quite a few times I've tried to it's like cool I've got two hours let's sit down and do some sound design or something but knowing that I have that limitation has affected my ability to get into a flow state if that makes sense so you know I can't even though you know it could only take me 10 minutes to get into it to that state the fact that I know that there's going to be an ending point has

Tom Cosm (24:48.6)

Yeah, it kind of stops me from really getting in there. It's kind of like, I see these memes that make me feel seen, where people have a meeting at midday, but they've got nothing on until midday. But the fact they've got a meeting at midday means they just pot around. They can't really do anything until that meeting happens. And I've overcome that, but I'm definitely one of those people that...

when I have a particular thing coming up, I find that I'm not able to get creative unless that thing is a creative deadline, then it's on. If I need to finish a track by this time because it's gonna go out to get mastered or whatever, that's a different story. yeah, I'm kind of re, I kind of paused my own personal projects. I think.

people who follow me who watching this, you know, you've probably noticed that I haven't put out any content or music in the last couple of years or anything that's up to the usual level of what I like to put out. And it's, yeah, it's purely because I'm so hyper-focused on...

on this and I've made the decision after trying to do stuff and then get a bit annoyed and you know I'd almost say angry I'm not an angry person but I get a little bit like you know I've lost it I can't make make music anymore and when you don't know it's not that like you just just just pause for a bit you know get this big project thing that you're loving and excited about out of the way and then you can just pick it back up and once I made that decision things just got

great like ideas that came into my head with music I wouldn't get annoyed because I think I couldn't make them I'm just like cool all right this is something I can do once I've got you know a couple of weeks spare down the line when we've got this this amazing instrument out there and everyone's happy so yeah it's been a interesting journey for me

Brian Funk (26:44.778)

So you mean you're sort of like setting yourself up for when that time comes? Like, okay, I've got a few little sketches, ideas, thoughts I want, and then I know the time is coming, I don't know when, but when it gets here, I don't have to think about what it's gonna be. I'm able to hit the ground running.

Tom Cosm (26:53.146)

Mm.

Tom Cosm (26:59.406)

Yeah, yeah, I'd say it's more of a couple of notebooks, notebooks, ideas. So I'll need to pick the ones that still resonate with me, guess, when that free time comes. But I will just say that free time has come pretty much this week. Like I've got a taste of it at least. And again, I don't want to say that the stuff I've been doing hasn't been an enjoyable

Brian Funk (27:06.11)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (27:26.778)

part of my life. absolutely love what I'm doing with telepathic instruments. I'm so passionate about it. I'm happy. It's just awesome. yeah, I kind of this this week, you know, we're doing customer support now and you're making sure people are shipping is going out and everything's running really smoothly. But once that dies down, there's this is going to be a couple of weeks, I think, I can

start writing some music again or finish some old tracks and that just that alone that that taste is really exciting for me so i'm looking forward to that yeah

Brian Funk (27:58.942)

That might bring you some renewed passion and enthusiasm towards your work. like it's finally here. Like, you know, sometimes you can, when you're doing it all the time, it can become the routine and you might, I don't know if you do this because you seem like you're, you're trying all kinds of new stuff all the time, but you open the same template or you go for the same sounds and things like that.

Tom Cosm (28:03.864)

Mmm. Yeah.

Tom Cosm (28:22.831)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (28:26.106)

Well, I've got, I don't know if you like this, but I've got a folder on my computer with probably 80 unfinished tracks in there. And I would say 10 of them are 98 % ready to go. just, you know, I just couldn't, I couldn't quite say this is finished. So I think, yeah, I think, I think the first thing I'll do is kind of.

spend a day going through that and being like, yeah, this one and this one, you know, I think that that'll be one of the Maybe one of the first things I do I also thought it be really cool because I I've been a bit out of the loop with Ableton live versions as well and new features and all that kind of thing I was talking to Who was it? I think it was I think it was Dennis when I was over in Berlin a couple of weeks ago

He started talking about you know stem separation and how that what Ableton life has stem? Separation or what what's going on? So I'm I think I I think I might do like a big live stream and invite people to come and like yell things at me like hey try this and try and like

Tell me what the new things are that I've missed. think Live 12 was the last version I really used producing. I know there's only two or three major versions or whatever, but Ableton will really cram in some epic things in those minor versions. So yeah, think I'd like to do that. I think it'd be fun. It's like, okay, I'm rusty. I haven't been paying attention. I'm going to jump in blind and yeah, let's say you lot teach me. That teach me what I've missed. Yeah, I think it'd be fun.

Brian Funk (29:58.728)

Yeah, that's a fun turning of the tables a little bit. Kind of seeing what are you going to do with this now? Well, I hear that. mean, they're packing in so many features. Sometimes, you know, the new stuff comes out and then you're like, man, I forgot about that really awesome thing that was like three versions ago. I've stopped playing around with it because I'm either doing the new stuff or there's just too much to keep up with. Great problem to have.

Tom Cosm (30:03.214)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (30:25.762)

Yeah. What, what, what out of, since 12 and 12.X, what, what have you been using the most like practically, you know, not producing for, for, for your audience or anything like that. What do you, what's the feature that you like the most? If you can, if I can put you on the spot.

Brian Funk (30:47.409)

Yeah, it's probably, I want to have a more glamorous answer, but I think it's the bounce in place. It's the, and there's now a copy and bounce. It's like a copy and paste in place. So this feature is just super cool. I never would have thought of it, but you can just highlight any section of a clip, say an arrangement view and.

Tom Cosm (31:02.062)

Okay.

Tom Cosm (31:11.855)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (31:13.769)

copy it and then paste it to a new track and it just prints it whatever little section so all those effects

Tom Cosm (31:18.35)

just a regular, regular control C, control V, or...

Brian Funk (31:22.557)

Yeah, it's I think it might be like Shift-Ctrl-V or something along those lines. It's a... Yeah, so it's just like you want that track you have with the whole string of effects on it to sound like it does down here. Just copy and paste in place or I think it's paste in place it's called. That's a pretty new one, but I'm just like, yes. You know, like now I'm just going to mangle sounds and twist them up and...

Tom Cosm (31:28.206)

That's amazing. I didn't know you could do that. That's great.

Tom Cosm (31:38.969)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Cosm (31:44.356)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (31:52.652)

It's a real balance of new features and workflow improvements. I think people will be able to know this, but the way they just continuously give you better workflow improvements has always been why I've just...

Brian Funk (31:58.578)

It's a big workflow, yeah.

Tom Cosm (32:12.95)

stuck with them so loyally. And without messing with what already exists, because there's nothing more frustrating than an update comes out and then suddenly a shortcut which you use all the time is just slightly changed.

Brian Funk (32:28.903)

Yeah, there was a little bit of that happening with 12. Some things got shifted around a bit, I think, all in all for the better. But I mean, that's a tough one, I guess, right? And you can probably speak to this a little bit in terms of Orchid, where you've got this, here it is, it exists now. And you may be doing firmware updates down the line and little changes here and there.

Tom Cosm (32:35.545)

Mmm.

Brian Funk (32:56.497)

And then you might kind of overstep something that, you know, like maybe I love that feature the way it works. It's just so good for me. And then, they changed it now. I got to hold down an extra button and, I can't do it. That's gotta be a tough one.

Tom Cosm (33:04.801)

Okay.

Tom Cosm (33:09.218)

It's not, yeah. And I would say that's a big, it's it's a big part of, of what, what I, what I do and when I'm sort of overseeing things is yeah. If, if, if, you know, like in, in, in the, in the first two drops and we were, we were sort of releasing firmware that we knew had some problems and maybe there was, you know, there's a play style option, right? It's like, or, you know, you could.

this thing can work like A or it can work like B. We're not too sure what the best one is, so we're going to put it in the options menu and let people choose it. And then, you know, this is hypothetical by the way, but this is kind of what kind of happens. then it's like, cool, 90 % of people are using A, so let's remove the options menu and just have A and we don't have to have that. And I'm going, those 10 % of people are going to be not happy about that. You know, we really need to, we really should be...

for an instrument which is all about getting ideas out quickly and immediately and people and it's also something where people learn, know, it's kind of you learn it like you learn like a piano or a guitar or something.

So when it comes to a point where something's going to change, it's like, think we should keep the legacy version and have it as a rollbackable user definable option. Ultimately, as we roll out more firmware and new ideas, which we have a lot of, and we're to be consistently updating this thing, I think a lot of them are around how the user can customize their own experience. Just simple little things like if you push

an extension while you're holding a chord type, you you push the sixth chord or you push the nine chord, you know, so you're playing a C, you're playing a minor, and you go, okay, C minor six. Do you want that six to come in the next time you push the note or do you want it to come in when you push the note? Or do you want it to play just that extension, the sixth, or do you want it to re-trigger the whole chord? You know, so that's like, there's like three different things there and they quite drastically change depending on how people like to work, know, because sometimes it's really fun hitting that chord like it's a, like

Tom Cosm (35:18.202)

it's a finger drum you know but some people want to cue their chord up and when they play the next one it's ready because they want to find their position and only when they hit a new note it changes so there's lots of interesting things like that and it's been really it's been really great to watch like a lot of

lot of people are posting on social media and Instagram and you go to the telepathic instruments Instagram and every day there's 10, 20 reels of people using it and just wild fantastic ways and just seeing how they use it and go, okay, this thing, which we weren't too sure about is actually being used differently by all of these people. And we should just have the option to customize it to your tastes, I guess. Yeah. So that's been really, really fun, you know.

Brian Funk (36:02.396)

Yeah, interesting. Have you come across anybody doing something unexpected? Almost like maybe like what you would have been doing to some of the software back in the day. Like, we never thought of that or that's not how we intended this feature to go.

Tom Cosm (36:09.519)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (36:12.825)

Yep.

Tom Cosm (36:21.016)

I don't think I'll get in trouble with this one, but if I do, I've got heaps of brownie points, so I'll take one. There's a bit of internal discussion going on at the moment about...

kind of pops and clicks. you know, if you change a sound, if you change a patch from something which is like a really big, rich, lush pad to something which is more of a stabby thing, obviously we're going to have reverb tails, you're going to have zero crossing issues. You're going to get pops if you want that, if you want to instantaneously go from one patch to another. And this currently exists in the, in the firmware when you, when you move between some patches. Sure, we can add little envelopes. So there's a little fade between them. And that there's a fix and proof

But when I went to the telepathic studios in... where was it? It was in Fremantle on Western Australia. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the person who was doing it, but I walked into the room and he was using that pop pop and crackle thing as a feature. He was making kind of beats and ambient kind of glitchy drone noises out of the pops and crackles, which was an artifact from us not having...

Having put in a place a fix for it yet And then a few other people had I've seen another person who's feeds it through a reverb and they use changing the the patches quickly and all the artifacts that come with that as a sort of a drone generator so now it's kind of like do we actually as the pops and crackles part of the character of the thing and You know, do we have an options menu where it's like no I actually want the pops and crackles of of changing a patch on or do I want them off? We probably turn them off by default I mean, I will say we've we've had

We've had far more people say they don't like them than I've seen people who are using them. But the fact is there are people using them in that way. So that's just yeah I love I love these sort of these these problems with that require creative solutions you know.

Brian Funk (38:13.35)

Yeah, no right answer.

Tom Cosm (38:13.37)

I mean, I like things when they've got problems with them, you know, it's got some character, you know. I mean, if it didn't turn on, that's not a good problem. But, you know, if you get a little artifact here, there's one synth patch, I'm not going to mention what it is because everyone will do it. There's one synth patch where if you play the right chord and the right note, something about a synth engine will, the maths all lines up in a certain way where you suddenly just get a completely different sound. you know, we're looking at spectrograms going, how is this happening, you know?

It's things like that. It's almost like an Easter egg. Yeah, I mean, can fix it, no one's found it and complained about it yet, so.

Brian Funk (38:55.538)

Hmm. That reminds me of on Ableton's reverb, just playing reverb on the size control. I think it's size and they've updated it. So you do have a dropdown menu. I think it's smooth and whatever it was, but the old way when you turn that, it makes kind of these funny noises that, which can be kind of fun sometimes. It's an

Tom Cosm (39:02.17)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (39:16.428)

when you change the decay time of a... Yeah, I remember that, yeah.

Tom Cosm (39:23.436)

I put another review after it. Yeah.

Brian Funk (39:26.514)

you have weird things start happening, right? So it's not desirable, I don't think. it, most of the time, probably you don't want that to happen, but when you want it, it's kind of a fun way to mess with your sound a little bit. It's, it's cool to have in there. So yeah, that's a funny one.

Tom Cosm (39:28.728)

Mmm.

Tom Cosm (39:42.522)

It does, yeah.

Tom Cosm (39:46.66)

But once again, they usually always come down to...

You that whole zero crossing thing. It's like do you want to instantly have your result? Do you instantly want to change your decay time from you know? thousand milliseconds to 500 or a You know, do you want a very small envelope and that very small envelope? Especially when you've got transients things like kick drums and hats and snares You know that can actually completely dull and take away the impact of the thing or a stabby chord So yeah, I remember using Ableton and seeing these these things and these

pops in these clicks and you know sometimes you'll drag a sample in and you'll see that like it's got a little attack on it by default and you have to kind of stretch it back if you want to get the full impact of the waveform. I remember used to being like why are they doing this? Why are they dulling down everybody's drums? I don't understand and now I fully get it. You I mean you have to put that stuff in place or I'll see if anything's going to pop and click because the speaker can't go from completely out to completely in or anything that's got to make a transition and if it's suddenly goes from there to there you're basically

Brian Funk (40:28.38)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (40:49.692)

doing the start of the saw wave you know so I get it yeah there's quite a few things in Ableton that I was always like I wonder why they did that

You know, can't assign MIDI to certain things or, know, they don't, and now I understand much more deeply after building my own instrument. It's like, yeah, that has the potential to just completely put the CPU into an endless loop and heat up and die, you know, so.

Yeah, we really don't want to restrict people, but there are definitely things you've got to take into consideration that could harm the product or harm people's ears as well,

Like when Ableton decided to put, let people put their feedback up on their delays past 100. I remember that day, was like, Ooh, that's brave. You know, cause it's just going to keep going and going and going. And there's nothing more anxiety inducing than hearing a delay start getting out of hand and you don't know where it is in your project. And you're looking at the levels like, where is it? Yeah. So there is, there is something more devastating. It's when you're doing it live in front of a thousand people on a system that could really hurt them. So.

Brian Funk (41:40.442)

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Brian Funk (41:49.224)

You know it's coming.

Brian Funk (41:59.91)

Right, yeah. God, doing live sound ever and there's always that moment. Why isn't it any sound? Why isn't it making any sound? And then something's not on and all the faders are all the way up because we can't hear anything and boom.

Tom Cosm (42:01.04)

You

Tom Cosm (42:07.374)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (42:14.04)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I got hit once. I can't remember what happens. I think someone plugged a power cable into like an audio input or something and I just got hit with noise from speakers at full volume and I fell to the ground. I was like, why did that knock me over? And people were like, you pretty much just got flashbang grenade. It's the same kind of thing.

Brian Funk (42:32.06)

Really?

Brian Funk (42:41.159)

Sonic weapon.

Tom Cosm (42:41.486)

Yeah, really messed with my head, probably my ears as well. was, yeah, was just the worst. Anyway, let's not get into doom stuff.

Brian Funk (42:47.717)

Yeah. yeah, I could believe that. You guys are creating weapons now with the instrument.

Tom Cosm (42:59.348)

I'll veer away from that topic. Yeah, I'm not happy about it, but let's just say that.

Brian Funk (43:01.703)

Probably for the best.

Brian Funk (43:08.487)

If you, guess you just got to think about that though. What kind of parameters are you going to allow people access to and where are going to kind of steer them away from? Do we let them have that? And, and yeah.

Tom Cosm (43:20.058)

Mmm.

Brian Funk (43:26.715)

Were there any tough calls for you on things like the delay is a great example, Like the delay, think only over one up to 95 % until one day. And then it went up as that. Or the resonance on the filters.

Tom Cosm (43:36.698)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Cosm (43:44.09)

I just what you were talking about, mean, again, when you look at it and you look at, sorry for the fingerprints, I've been playing it all morning, but when you look at it, it's only got nine encoders on it. But I know how powerful the synth engine is. It's got a really, really powerful synth engine. I wanna, what does that say? Okay, that's okay to show. I'm going.

Why don't we have sliders? We could have a Tactic A, we have a filter, could have LFO. You know, I'm a synth nerd, wanna, we've got a cool synth engine, let's have all of the parameters and people can just design them. you know, the other creatives were like, no, this is what we're going for. We want people to just have the ease of being able to do things instantly. You can pack a whole lot into these, you know.

And of course now if people do want to deep dive into the synth they can get the software plugged into their computer and they just they can create all their own sounds on it. you know, you can go as deep as you want. But yeah, that was kind of a... I got shut down pretty quickly and I get it. I totally get it. Like the beauty of this is its compactness and its simplicity and having it extend out to here with 50 other knobs is just going to overwhelm people.

Brian Funk (44:49.479)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (45:01.038)

But yeah, there's things like that, but it's good. We've got a really good team of people. We've got engineers and nerds and we've got creative musicians and really smart designers. And between us all, we know what's going to work best, what's actually possible. And now we've got a community discord, which is just humming. We can also go, this is what people want as well, which is really powerful. Yeah. So we've got really good information about...

of how this thing can improve and, you know, into the future.

Brian Funk (45:35.56)

All that makes sense for accessibility and the whole idea of an idea machine. I'm like you, I love to see the knobs and the faders too, but there's work that comes with that. There's some learning that would definitely would make it harder for your nephew to bring it to high school and have people just pressing buttons and making music.

Tom Cosm (45:49.006)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (45:52.718)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (46:00.067)

That's it.

That's it, that's absolutely it. Yeah, I mean, you and me have got, I won't speak for you, but I've definitely got over a decade, probably nearly two of sound design. So give me, me, give me every parameter. Give me the ones that you don't usually give to people. Those are the ones that I want to play with. But, you know, if you're, you're, if you're a guitarist or a vocalist in a band and you're on the bus and you've got an idea in your head, but.

You need to get it down on something. don't need access to a resonator or the fine tuning of an LFO speed. You don't need that stuff. You want to take it out of your bag, sit down, play it, put it back in your bag, go home, and then develop it out with your band. So yeah, it's the smarter choice.

Brian Funk (46:54.735)

I like those kind of tools anyway because they focus me on the creative part and not the technical stuff and the designing sound and stuff. It's even just like one of the things I love about my acoustic guitar. You you just, that's it. This is what you could maybe play around with tunings, I guess, but you play it and you get the raw idea down. You're not trying to dial in the sound or connect your pedals or

Tom Cosm (47:07.566)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (47:20.987)

decide which amp you want or any of that kind of stuff.

Tom Cosm (47:25.826)

It's funny, just before this, jumped on with you, I was talking to one of our co-founders and he was saying a really good way to explain it is, you you choose your chords here. And this is kind of like doing your fingering on the guitar. Cause once you've chosen your chords, you can just move up and down the notes. And I kind of never thought about it like that. Like it's actually, it's actually, it's actually got that same sort of, I don't mean to say this in a-

Brian Funk (47:53.009)

Almost like plucking the strings.

Tom Cosm (47:55.384)

Yeah, it's almost like a cheat code. I don't mean to say that in a negative way, like guitarists are cheating. It's just once you find your chord, you can actually move up and down. You can play C, D, E, F, G, you know? And it's the same with this. Once you've found the chord you like, you can move up and down with the keyboard. I never actually thought about it in that way. it's kind of blew my mind a bit. After four years, went, yeah, it's kind of got a guitarist feeling to it. And then we've got a transpose, which would be a capo.

Brian Funk (48:24.058)

There go. Nice. So it's kind of modeled after the chord section in these old Casio's where you can kind of switch between, you'd have your rhythm.

Tom Cosm (48:38.733)

and

Yeah, definitely Kevin's influence coming through there. I think I've seen the devices he talks about in his interviews and stuff about what expires him. I'm playing on one at his house, which definitely does similar things. Yeah. I wasn't one of the people that played with those as a kid. What did I have? I had an Omnicord.

Brian Funk (49:05.86)

Hmm. Yeah. yeah.

Tom Cosm (49:06.478)

Do remember those? We had strum across the thing and they looked like the Star Trek or whatever. Well no, what's the Millennium Falcon? Yeah, that's what I played on. yeah, it's a real one.

Brian Funk (49:11.482)

Yeah, the Millennium Falcon, yeah. Yeah, they put new ones of those out, actually, recently. I believe it's Yamaha that put it out. Yeah, it's a...

Tom Cosm (49:21.508)

The Omnicords? yeah, yeah, the Toes I think. Yeah. Do you know what changed in them? Well, they probably didn't need to change much to be honest. Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:29.75)

MIDI I think. I think they've got that and I don't even know what else. That might just be the big thing, USB MIDI.

Tom Cosm (49:39.588)

I think I might have seen drums happening on them as well or something like that. I could be wrong. I need to look that up. Yeah, how many chords? Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:48.997)

They fun toys too. Kind of invite you to just play it and not worry about it too much, you know, as far as what's going on.

Tom Cosm (50:01.658)

They were pretty clever. Who was the company behind them, do remember?

Brian Funk (50:06.296)

I'm pretty sure Yamaha was making them.

Tom Cosm (50:11.802)

Sorry to look something up during a podcast, but I'm curious... Suzuki, is it?

Brian Funk (50:11.846)

I think, no that's fine, Suzuki, okay maybe. Maybe Suzuki, Yamaha, somebody that also makes motorcycles.

Tom Cosm (50:20.377)

Wow.

Tom Cosm (50:24.602)

Yeah, yeah, love that, Yeah.

Brian Funk (50:26.182)

Not Harley Davidson though. Definitely not them. I see it's cool to know that this journey has been happening for so long and all this back and forth and also just to see that you guys have involved the community a bit to help develop it.

Tom Cosm (50:31.226)

Play some chords while you're shooting down the road at 200 miles per hour.

Tom Cosm (50:52.738)

Hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (50:54.534)

putting it out there at first and getting that feedback.

Tom Cosm (50:59.34)

Yeah, it's a big deal for me as well, you know, I mean, you know what I do and it's the same as you. It's just big part of my life was talking to people. Yeah.

Brian Funk (51:08.29)

I mean like your mega sets that you've made in the past, those are like, there's a lot of community influence in those and based on things that people have actually included.

Tom Cosm (51:18.04)

Yeah, so I think that's that's once once once we started selling them It's quite nice because I kind of moved moved kind of more away from that. I guess Mmm manager role

And I started, you know, we didn't start the community, like the community started the community. We were doing things on Patreon. We did have like chats and stuff and lots of comments, but a discord popped up within about two or three days after people started getting orchids. Really, really, really nice, nice, nice human.

Because I got in touch, like, well, and I think he thought I was going to say like, you can't do this, our lawyers are going to take you down. But I was just like, wow, good on you. This is awesome. When you get a community to build, they basically built how they want to interact with each other, how they want to interact with us, how they want to share their feedback, how they want to share their complaints, things like that. I think that's it from a company perspective that you can't ask for much more.

we can't ask for better. And so we just went, cool, we're going to move in here. We're going to come in here, and we've got our support agents are in there every day. I'm in there every other day, kind of interacting with people. And it's not just like, hey, I have a problem. Here's a solution. We've got one person on our staff who does support Crash Gothic.

and they post their own jams, they post their own weird little things, they make their own little adapters out of Arduino Pi if MIDI isn't working into this device and it will release instructions on how other people can do this. And I think that's just so important to me. I mean, we've got this instrument and it's cool and it's mysterious and stuff, but you

Tom Cosm (53:05.742)

We do have a community where people can interact with me and some others and anything that gets said or suggestions they do get listened to, you know? And we do have big internal discussions where we talk about, you know, this is what people want, you know? Or 10 people have requested this in a week and we go, we better put that on the list then, you know? So, yeah, it's good. It means a lot to me to have that. I think it's the right way to do it.

Brian Funk (53:30.83)

Yeah.

that's a relationship.

Tom Cosm (53:34.904)

That's what I want. That's what I want if I bought a product and I and it was quite a new concept I want to go on the discord I want to talk to the people who made it and be like well Did you think about this and you know here's some weird thing? You know as somebody who's made like max of life stuff Having people come come to me

I'll make something for a specific purpose that I made it for and I'll put it out to the public and then I'll get somebody coming and saying, hey, I've just used this device in a completely different way than I intended to do this amazing art. And it's a way I would have never conceived that this thing that I made would be used for. And I just get blown away by that. I think that's absolutely amazing. And I'm looking forward to that sort of stuff happening with Orchid, kind of customers and users.

Community coming coming to me and going look at what we've figured out how to do with this thing that you've built and it's something that None of us have even imagined possible that I want that I want that buzz. That's a good one. Yeah

Brian Funk (54:36.973)

Hmm. I would expect you're get plenty of that.

Tom Cosm (54:42.126)

Yeah, I think so. What we're seeing now is people starting to post some pretty advanced stuff. The first few months it was cool chord progressions and little jams and stuff, but now people have had it for a couple of months and they're really getting their chops. So I think it's going to be an exciting time for us.

Brian Funk (55:02.265)

Yeah, it seems like something you learn to play, like you said. You get used to how it works and all of that, which is a nice quality in an instrument that you can grow with it and evolve your playing and bring it in new ways. Have you found any kind of...

creative parallels to music songwriting and developing and even like the managing side of stuff. Do you notice any kind of maybe some of those skills or many maybe even like contrasts as well to those two processes?

Tom Cosm (55:45.826)

I mean I would say my particular brain in the way it approaches music not just approaches creating but listening to music is very analytical I like patterns, pattern recognition, I like splitting things up in my mind even if it's completely wrong I do it anyway and I get a joy out of it so when I listen to music and you know I listen to the rhythms and I listen to the intervals and everything so I think that

I think years of doing that has potentially helped me.

in my journey of being more hands-on, embedded, using electronics, building hardware things, just kind of electrical engineering type stuff, know, I mean, it's still just waveforms, you know, so it's kind of like the relationship and how resistors and capacitors and everything works. think I picked that up a little bit quicker than I would have if I hadn't been so into the technicality of music. I was specifically trained as a jazz musician, so I like to think about relationships and ratios.

rather than sight reading music and playing it. I was saying this the other night during one of our director meetings is that there are a few problems leading up to the drop, not problems, but there are a few situations where some really fast creative thinking was needed to problem solve and come up with a solution. And that kind of...

That kind of zone, if I'm in that zone, I've got 24 hours to figure out how we can solve this really complex problem, which has never been solved before. And that, I get the same sort of brain juice going on as when I'm writing really good music that I'm happy with. They're quite adjacent. I know what both feels like. I mean, they're not exactly the same, but I can get a lot of the satisfaction that I'm lacking from writing music at the moment from doing really creative problem solving. So I think, again, I think

Tom Cosm (57:46.46)

I think that that's helped me. Yeah Those are the two that spring to mind. I don't know if that's exactly the answer you're looking for but

Brian Funk (57:56.268)

I'm just curious. I could see how you would be a good guy in that situation 24 hours. Like, okay, we got to really figure something out. Yeah.

Tom Cosm (58:05.786)

Yeah, I do like that. I do like that. Yeah. I like it when it happens and then I have time to cool down before it happens again. When it happens back to back to back, I'll still give it everything, but I might need a couple of days of sitting out in the nature after that.

Brian Funk (58:23.661)

Yeah, well, I bet. I bet there's a lot of long hours indoors with who knows machines and trying to figure that out.

Tom Cosm (58:31.832)

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. After this I will be just shooting outside and sitting on the couch in the sun for 10 minutes before I jump back into my next meeting. So I'm doing my best. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (58:41.763)

Yeah. that's good. Yeah. Yeah, it's a really awesome thing. I'm excited. I got in on the most recent drop, so I'm waiting for one to come. I'm excited. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love your work. I love Tame Impala, what Kevin does musically. So I mean, this is just like an obvious one for me to pick this up.

Tom Cosm (58:54.603)

you're going awesome. Nice, nice.

Brian Funk (59:09.059)

I'm sure I'm gonna be having a ton of fun. And I love that, I like to work really fast. I've been finding that probably like 80 % of a song or an idea happens really quick. But that only happens if I'm really just letting go, I'm not overthinking things, I'm not trying to be clever, just letting it happen.

Tom Cosm (59:09.114)

Cool.

Tom Cosm (59:14.03)

Mm.

Tom Cosm (59:21.582)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tom Cosm (59:32.511)

Mmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (59:34.159)

Things like this that get me there faster are right up my alley. the sounds, of course, I'm loving the sound of these synth engines. So I think I'm going to be pretty happy myself.

Tom Cosm (59:44.259)

Hmm.

Tom Cosm (59:49.698)

Are you going to a a do a rundown on you on your channel do you think? You might have to yeah I'll watch it.

Brian Funk (59:55.491)

I might have to, you know? Even just to promote this episode of the podcast. But I could foresee it being something that I used to help get ideas going and make weird sounds and just have fun with it.

Tom Cosm (01:00:10.682)

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, as I said, you can just you can just have it next to you on your bed and throw it in the like, you can take it out and have a picnic or whatever, you know, that's the cool thing. And there's no screens on it.

Brian Funk (01:00:24.28)

Yeah, that's what I'm loving about, yeah, like move, you know, like that's my favorite part about it is I can just carry it around and just.

not have to be, it's not a big serious event with things like this, you know? Even though I've got everything set up and it's not really much effort to turn it all on, but it is, it's kind of like, okay, now I'm doing this, I'm going here. Kind of like you said with the time, you feel like, all right, I'm settling into an entire new episode of the day, so.

Tom Cosm (01:00:48.002)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (01:01:02.137)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:01:05.462)

Yeah, sometimes that feels overwhelming.

Tom Cosm (01:01:10.194)

Yeah, yeah, and I think it's it's Being able to go outside, you know, like with it with the laptop You're pretty much restricted on a sunny day, you know I've done a few sessions where I've gone and sat under a tree with the laptop and it's okay But it's just it's not it's not really made for outside

But being able to take you know a move I like taking the move and the awkward I think they're very complimentary things And just those two things and I can just go anywhere, you know, and it's just I don't all of a sudden Unless it's raining the world is completely open to to creative ideas

And that's a big thing for me, you know. I like my studio, I like my white walls and my square room and all my things, you know, it's even just for the contrast, you know. If you can go sit on a cliff or go look at an ocean or even just get some grass under your feet, you know, it does change things, you know. You get some perspective on what you're up to with your own journey, for me, in my opinion.

Brian Funk (01:02:17.468)

I totally agree, getting outside, whether it's a guitar or... The computer is still the computer. It's not this... It's the screen. It's... I mean, love that you can still do it, right? You can take it out there, but it is still this electronic, digital, kind of weird thing that pulls you out of those, like, nature moments a little bit.

Tom Cosm (01:02:32.516)

Mm.

Tom Cosm (01:02:40.409)

Yeah.

Tom Cosm (01:02:45.452)

Yeah, you've got a 16 by 9 illuminated light just beaming into your face constantly. You tend to miss the birds over there or the waves over there.

Brian Funk (01:02:49.955)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:02:54.976)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, because you have to look at it like these other things you can kind of look around.

Tom Cosm (01:03:00.549)

Yeah, that's it. That's it. And that's again, that's, you know, a big part of the, I'll show it one more time. The big part of the design is, know, you can put one hand here and one hand here, and then you can just look around, you know, like you can touch and feel everything. You don't have to move your hands from their position at all. They just, they just stay there. you know, it takes a few sessions to know where everything is, but it's a big part of it for me. It means you can shut your eyes as well, you know.

I mean can't sit at my computer in Ableton Live and just shut my eyes for two minutes while I'm designing a sound. I mean I could and I probably will now just for fun.

Brian Funk (01:03:32.29)

Not really.

Brian Funk (01:03:37.09)

Yeah, that'll be the next experiment blindfolded sound design.

Tom Cosm (01:03:41.208)

Yeah, imagine that, like the Sound Design Olympics, they kind of, yeah, rifted it like this, or...

Brian Funk (01:03:49.433)

Yeah. Anything to keep the creative juices flowing. This is awesome, Tom. I'm really happy you're doing it. And I'm happy it's receiving such good feedback. And I'm happy for you to see the joy you're experiencing and seeing this thing come to life.

Tom Cosm (01:04:05.434)

Thank you, man.

Brian Funk (01:04:13.796)

It's a cool chapter in your journey as an artist. what's even cooler is like so much of your journey, it's going to be part of other people's too.

Tom Cosm (01:04:24.014)

Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah, no, it's a really nice thing to say and I appreciate it greatly. Yeah. Thank you.

Brian Funk (01:04:30.19)

That's true. No exaggeration. like I told you in the beginning, I really do appreciate everything you've done and how it's helped me just see things differently musically and kind of welcomed me into this world of like, hey, you can be just as expressive with this stuff as you could with anything. Powerful message and big impact on me at least, I'll tell you.

Tom Cosm (01:04:58.18)

Good, good. That makes me very, very happy.

Brian Funk (01:05:02.5)

So we can send people for the orchid telepathicinstruments.com. Hopefully we've still got some left by the time this hits.

Tom Cosm (01:05:08.312)

Yeah, yeah, we got, we got them in... I know we've got some in stock. Yeah, yeah, like we didn't, we're not trying, we're not going for scarcity or anything this time. They will sell out. Like we got a lot made, but we didn't get infinite made. So they will, they will sell out, but they're still in there and they'll be, they'll be in there for a while. Just, it's not my area, but I've seen, I've seen the sales and you know, you've got a bit of time.

telepathicinstruments.com if you want to buy one telepathic instruments on Instagram if you want to see people using them in awesome ways Come join our discord search for telepathic instruments discord if you want to come and chat with me and the others and just join like I would like to say one of the least toxic communities I've ever Been part of on the internet. It's just a really good hosting place Even if you don't own an orchid come and come and talk music with us and yeah get involved

What else? I should have a list of links. should show... I mean it's 2026. you want something, just type in telepathic instruments and the thing and you'll get it.

Brian Funk (01:06:07.438)

Sure, your link, Cozum.co.

Brian Funk (01:06:14.594)

Yeah, yeah, you're easy to find too. But all this will be in the show notes for everyone so they can get to it nice and easy.

Tom Cosm (01:06:20.505)

cool. Cool. I'm glad. I'm glad you're onto it.

Brian Funk (01:06:25.656)

Yeah. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this. It's great to have a chance to talk to you. Yeah, you know, I really do appreciate it. And thank you. And thank you to the listeners for tuning in.

Tom Cosm (01:06:29.262)

No worries, absolute pleasure.

Brian Funk
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