Stop Drinking from the Infinite Well with Tommy Zee - Music Production Podcast #413

podcast
Written By Brian Funk

Tommy Zee runs Tommy Zee and Co., a music production company that creates music for some of the world’s largest brands like Nike, Adidas, Google, Sony, and more. He also runs Making Music for Brands, a platform where he teaches producers how to build careers creating music for commercial projects.

This is the fourth time I’ve had Tommy on the podcast, and every time we talk, I walk away feeling inspired and energized. In this episode, we talk about the evolving role of artists in a world increasingly shaped by AI and automation. We explore how commercial work shaped Tommy’s discipline, why he’s now leaning more into slower, more intentional creativity, and how important it is to stay connected to what truly matters to you as an artist. Toward the end, things get philosophical—and I think that’s where some of the richest moments come through.

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Save an additional 15% with the code: MPP15 - https://babyaud.io 

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:01.343)

Alright, welcome back Tommy. Good to see you.

Tommy Zee (00:03.264)

All right. It's been so fun chatting to you before we even press record that. Just worry that our best bits are now not available to humanity.

Brian Funk (00:16.947)

I think we stopped ourselves in time so that we can get the good stuff.

Tommy Zee (00:20.622)

Just when you felt the eureka moment coming, you're like, could you stop right there?

Brian Funk (00:28.789)

Yeah, it's a funny feeling and it does happen every once in a while in the beginning of these where you're almost like, something's cool is gonna happen, hold on. And with that, you run the risk of losing it too. It's a tricky thing knowing when to hit that button to record.

Tommy Zee (00:44.95)

also true.

There you-

Yeah, I think that's why you should always press record.

Brian Funk (00:54.497)

It's like performing music too, you know?

Tommy Zee (00:55.896)

like just have record on. Of course, the trouble with that is like you end up with like three hours of tape and you're like, who the hell is going to want to sift through that? But that's where our friend AI, we've just been talking about it before you press record, that's where it does become your friend. So I found and we can get into the thing that we spoke about, which is the dangers of AI.

Brian Funk (01:08.854)

Yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:24.972)

the incredible dangers that I see to...

humanity and our creativity and our imagination. I don't want to sound like some kind of a

Tommy Zee (01:38.283)

negative.

doomsday kind of person. But this is just coming out of personal observation, right, of interacting with this thing and seeing where it goes. But yeah, if you press record on a conversation and you do three hours, what I found with AI is it's very good as a secretary. So dealing with data. So I give it three hours and I'm like, could you find me some patterns in there? Or could you like...

Brian Funk (01:41.313)

Mm-hmm.

Tommy Zee (02:08.962)

dig up like an archaeologist any mention of this or that. Excellent as a secretary, even as a kind of pattern recognition thing, which it is. It's a calculator, right?

But,

I just started getting very...

interested in the fact that I got almost emotionally involved in these conversations with AI because AI is speaking to you in an emotional way. It's using a lot of adjectives. It's very eloquent.

It's very much in the conversation, meaning like...

Tommy Zee (02:51.636)

every sentence follows the one before. So you're like, I'm having a really fluid, inspiring conversation.

Tommy Zee (03:06.254)

And like we said before, we started recording. You're like, yeah, it's pumping you up. You're great. It's complimenting you. And if you don't have any distance between observing what is happening in that interaction and you actually get lost in the conversation like you would with a human being, I think that's where the danger is. And the danger is because that's not a human being.

It gives zero shits, I'm sorry for swearing, about you. It really does.

It. I mean it. How can it care, right? So it's almost like a huge lie because the words are expressing care, emotion, support.

But it's like your calculator talking to you. How could it possibly have those feelings? So in a way, it's a fundamental lie to even use these words. Right? So that's what concerns me a lot. And so all I want to say, I guess, to start this AI topic is it definitely is going to have a place in our life. There's no doubt about it. I've used it with great effect.

for, like I said, sifting through transcripts of my meetings. It's been very good that way. Finding patterns in conversations. It's been really good that way. I like to speak into it, like Churchill spoke, walking around the room, preparing his war speeches. Yeah, it's great for that, because you just say what you want to say, but then it kind of organizes it for you.

Tommy Zee (04:59.31)

But if you start leaning on it like you would on a human who cares about you, that's one. Number two, if you stop using your imagination or your concept ability to come up with concepts like ideas, they may not be your own. There is nothing new under the sun. But I mean, I think every creator is asked to synthesize some things that already exist.

But in their own way and in their own context. Because there's not another person like you in this time and space with your experiences. But the ideas that AI is feeding you are so good that you're just tempted to run with it. You're like, well, that's a great email to send. I'll just send that. Or just ask it for album ideas. Feed it a few things. It'll give you amazing album ideas. Conceptual.

like, do it in this time signature, do this, do that, it'll tell you everything. At one point, Brian, was like, dude, is it working for me or am I working for it? Because if it comes up with the idea and it's going to actually send the email and it comes up with the album idea, and soon enough there's going to be automation built between the DAWs and the AI, just like AI is building all kinds of...

connections with your email program, with Google, everything, right? So it can do the task for you.

Tommy Zee (06:32.024)

You're like, okay, so what's my role here at some point? I'm just executing commands of AI. So I'm actually working for AI now. I'm just executing its ideas. So that's where it gets dangerous, I think. And I think any aspiring creator and human being who aspires to stay human, and we know that that's probably not everybody.

Tommy Zee (06:59.022)

Because soon the temptation is going to be like, would you like this AI right inside of your head?

with these ears that can pick up conversations from a kilometer away and these eyes that can basically scan anything up to five miles away and identify the object and then like tell you everything you need to know about it. The temptation is great to say, yeah, I want to be superhuman. Right. So a lot of very interesting questions, don't you find like.

Right now, to ask yourself as a human being, like, where do you stand on these things?

Brian Funk (07:37.921)

Absolutely. You've tapped into one of my favorite uses of it, which is feeding it my own information, my transcripts from the podcast. Very interesting to get information, tips, strategies. Hey, what's something I can do to make a song that I haven't done before or that I don't really talk about a lot or that I mentioned that I need to do?

I've put in my book of music making activities and it'll give me some ideas so I don't have to go through it. And so it's all my own stuff, which that feels great. That feels like I have another Brian Funk on the side sifting through everything. And then now I get to choose what I want. I think your use of the word synthesize is effective here. We...

We might not have original things for the most part, you know, as creators, but the synthesis we do is original, almost like a synthesizer. We get the raw waveform and then how we work with it, how we sculpt it and filter it and add effects to it. get our own original sounds from it. So that's an important thing to be doing. The part that

I'm feeling pretty good about as far as like some of the dangers go if you're just following or if you're just working for your AI, like you said, I enjoy making music. I enjoy that act. enjoy solving the puzzle of like, what, how can I change these lyrics? So they rhyme or they fit or, what can I do with this rhythm? How can I make this part different? So I'm not too worried about it. Taking that away from me.

I guess if the ultimate goal is just the product, just the song, because I've been there too where that's my focus, I need to finish something, I need to make a good piece of music.

Brian Funk (09:49.269)

then I could see yourself slipping into relying on these tools to just get that product. But I think it's taught me that I really enjoy the process as much as sometimes the process drives me crazy and it challenges me and it frustrates me. The actual act is very exciting when these things are starting to come together, when the melodies are happening and I'm starting to see the song come into focus. I love that and

Having it spit out or having the DAW suggest too much for me takes that away from me.

Tommy Zee (10:27.846)

You touch on something very important here, which I've realized since working with AI, and that is it really challenges you to question your motivation for why you're doing something.

I'll give you an example.

Tommy Zee (10:49.378)

I want to be able to write. Like you said, I want to write a song, I want to finish it quickly, I want to write an email, I want to finish it quickly. I'm looking at my feed, I'm seeing other people releasing stuff all the time. Daily emails, four times a week YouTube videos, this, this, this, boom, boom, boom, right? And you're like, feel this compulsion to keep up.

And you're like, AI is here. can help me to finish it quicker. And then I started thinking. But what is your motivation? Do you just want to publish something, anything? Because then you feel like you're participating in the noise like you're publishing. You're not left behind because you did publish three or four or five things this week. Or is your motivation

Which which gets weird because then it's like, I just want to be seen. I just want to be seen. I want to get that email out there, I want to get that video out there, I want to finish that song. And it's like, so you just want to be seen. Right, that's this is purse. This is me personally analyzing my own motivations. And I thought that was really crappy in a way, just a bad reason.

to try to keep up with that speed, to use AI to help you just finish things quickly. And the foundational motivation is off. It's like. Do you not want to express something that you find important and carefully crafted and struggle with it and wrestle with it a little bit?

Tommy Zee (12:43.462)

And the temptation is great because you have these NASA grade algorithms that are like, we want to try to figure out the transition here for. We got the entire history of music codified in our algorithm. We'll tell you the three things, three ways the song could go based on historical research, based on

Correlated with chart charts in the past 30 years of what it and you're like, yeah. Yeah.

Right? But then the question for me is like, what's your motivation? You know, you just want to be seen with with something that AI mostly did for you or or yeah, or do you want to wrestle with some stuff? That matters to you. So.

That's something that occurred to me, like.

People are literally going to outsource a lot of things that.

Tommy Zee (13:54.508)

are actually taking them out of their calling and their vocation.

like a writer, let's say, you and the line is going to move so slowly. Right. It's like, it'll just organize the text for me to like, I'm under a deadline. This is good. This stuff is really good. You know what I mean? And it's like the line moves slowly until one day your AI is going to say, well, Brian, I have perfectly now assimilated all of your inputs.

The quality of your inputs has been degrading over the past three weeks, meaning I no longer need you.

Like, it started with me needing you. Now that I've assimilated your inputs, the quality of your ideas is just degrading. You have nothing to offer me, in other words. So I'm just gonna be Brian Funk from now, if you don't mind. And you, I'm not sure what you're gonna do, but you can't use the name Brian Funk anymore.

Brian Funk (14:59.913)

Well, in a way, I've stopped being Brian Funk. I've given it up to the machine to help tell me what to do next, like you said. So, you know, yeah, not me anyway. So let the machine do it. Let it figure it out for you. Yeah, relying on it a lot can can do that to you. But there is a.

There's a joy in figuring it out, you know? And I think also in this rush to get stuff out, and yeah, it does seem like some people are superhuman. They're getting, like you said, four emails a week and videos and all that. It can make you feel like, well, what am I doing? But I think you can also saturate the system a little bit too, where things are no longer interesting. For me, this happened with like Marvel movies.

When I was younger, when they were first like coming out, it was really exciting. made a Spider-Man movie and it's actually good and now there's a new Batman. And after a while, was like, can't, what X-Men are we up to now? What Avengers is this? And I was just unable to keep up with it and it felt like it doesn't matter anyway.

And there are other things that take more time. And when it happens, you're like, it's finally here. Awesome. One of my favorite podcasts is Hardcore History, Dan Carlin. He's just a great storyteller. And he tells history like a story. And it's fascinating. And you realize these are people, human drama. And he draws parallels to present day. But it takes him four or five months to get an episode out.

Tommy Zee (16:43.149)

Right. Which is scary, right? Yeah. But imagine like the fortitude required for you to lock yourself away to work on something for four months as a content creator. You're like, I don't exist for the next four months. How am I going to feed the family if I'm not actually doing? But the paradox is.

Brian Funk (16:44.307)

But when it comes out, it's like, yes. Yeah.

Brian Funk (16:56.521)

Yeah.

Tommy Zee (17:07.287)

If you're at this velocity and this frequency, it's probably not masterful.

So that's the thing. it's like, how are you going to feed your family if you keep going at this velocity and frequency? You're actually diluting yourself, right? Because we can't beat AI at efficiency or volume. We just can't. So the only thing you can do is like be so good like Dan. That's yeah. Good luck. Right. And then the other thing is your personality, which I think we're going to get to a point.

Brian Funk (17:15.453)

Yeah, that's second, right? Yeah.

Tommy Zee (17:42.967)

where I personally, I'm not going to trust anything that isn't just AI. That is just AI. Like the moment I get a sense of that, like I smell it, I'll be like, if someone didn't take the trouble to write it, why should I take the trouble to read it?

Brian Funk (18:00.52)

Yeah. Just send me the prompt. Tell me the prompt. Cordial email declining your offer. Okay. Thank you. That's so much better than the three paragraphs of slop.

Tommy Zee (18:01.197)

Right. And that's not my quote. Just send me the prompt. Yeah, exactly. So I think, yeah. Exactly. But, you know, like these kinds of podcasts like yours, I mean, for instance,

Tommy Zee (18:20.619)

It's just real.

It may not be like polished, high paced, whatever, right? Perfectly optimized. But actually, you know, we went through this phase of highly polished, optimized content and people literally couldn't stand it after a while. You just get nauseous with these edits, with this all this stuff, right? Whereas the three hour podcast still stands strong.

The great conversation between two people. I mean, you could listen to that forever, right? Walking around the house with your tea, whatever. I do this all the time.

So I think that moves us closer to our humanity and I'm glad to see that it's a kind of like natural selection.

It's a natural selection because because like the stuff spikes for a while the fancy Polish stuff spikes. But ultimately people I think not everyone of course but we try to surround ourselves with what is human and real and authentic. I heard an interesting quote the other day or stat from the guy Ohan Ohan Ohanian I think his last name the guy who started read it.

Tommy Zee (19:48.995)

He said he called the internet dead. He said like 51 % of the traffic is now bots.

Tommy Zee (19:58.803)

And he said it's time for a new internet. So that could be an exciting development coming up soon. Where the social media platforms are redefined, maybe the new one shows up, maybe like a new kind of internet shows up where you can just verify the fact that you're dwelling in a place of realness and not just surrounded by code.

Brian Funk (20:26.334)

Yeah, maybe the authentic stuff will shine through when there's just a sea of junk coming your way every once in a while, that real stuff. I like that about podcasts to hear people thinking through things in real time and interacting with each other and reacting. I think that's...

Tommy Zee (20:46.191)

out loud.

Brian Funk (20:50.75)

It's kind of musical really in a lot of ways when you play with another person how you interact and it's not just two people coming together it's every single choice is two people coming together so it just really multiplies.

where the thing you did made me do something that I wouldn't normally do, which is now gonna make you do something you wouldn't normally do. So the whole time we're at the edge of our ability and comfort zones and all of that in a much different way.

Tommy Zee (21:24.175)

Tell me about this book that you told me about before we started recording, because I think that's where the conversation is naturally going next, which is like, what was it called?

Brian Funk (21:35.935)

Okay. All right. I'll tell you first the one that I kind of don't feel like talking about because we're going to go down a...

It'll just get bad. It's called If Anyone Bills It, Everyone Dies. And it's about general AI, general, you know, all that like kind of super intelligent AI. And I think you can guess the overall outcome. And I'm sure the authors would just be laughing at us talking about art. It's like, yeah, you're worried about art. OK, well, you can worry about that for like a minute and then the real problems will come. The book that I'm finding much

more inspiring is why greatness can't be planned.

Tommy Zee (22:20.015)

So that's the one I wanted to hear about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (22:22.268)

Okay, good. I think it's a more uplifting conversation.

Tommy Zee (22:26.671)

But the reason why I thought we were going that way is because we were saying, you said how in a conversation, a real conversation, it's a creative process, meaning like, I don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know where you're going to redirect what you're going to say. And so we're constantly in this creative tension where we're just trying to respond in the best way possible to wherever it's going.

And it made me think of that book title that you mentioned, which is like planning a podcast, every question and like having it systematic versus just these kind of conversations where you're like, let's talk and let's see where it goes.

Brian Funk (23:10.248)

Well, you know, I haven't really thought about it in terms of the podcast, but it's a perfect example. So the idea to sum up the book quickly is when you have a specific objective, you are going to ultimately limit yourself.

You're at best, you're going to get there, right? Cause you're going to make choices that'll get you there. But when you pursue instead, novelty and interest and whatever fascinates you, you wind up taking a path. And then the next step beyond that path is illuminated. And then from that next step, you can see the next step and you can't tell where the path is going to go. You don't know where it's going to go.

but it will go someplace interesting. And if you think about it musically, if I need to write a hip hop song, we have kind of the template there and you know, best thing you're gonna make most likely just another hip hop song. But when you're trying to find what's interesting or what if we did this, I never thought about that. And then now that you're here, we can do this. I didn't realize that till just now.

So much of creating and writing, think, is reacting to the last thing that happened. Just like in a conversation, it's reaction to what you said. If we have the questions all planned out in this conversation, you might start going down an interesting path. be like, okay, so I've read in your bio that it said blah, blah. And now we're just back on this track. We've lost that potentially really interesting detour. And that's...

Tommy Zee (24:52.495)

It's like the mainstream media interview. Like, they're so packaged, so crisp, and so like, get that 60 second.

Brian Funk (24:55.983)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (24:59.983)

And maybe it needs to be because we have seven minutes on the talk show to have the discussion or two minutes or whatever it is. So we got to get to it. And that is definitely the risk of the way I do this podcast, which is a little more just conversational. I have points and questions and sometimes we talk about things we want to get to, but that could also mean we've run out of.

Tommy Zee (25:04.899)

Right. Right. Right.

Brian Funk (25:27.853)

spaces to go, could hit dead ends, we could run out of... That's where my backup questions come in and a little research helps, but if it was just questions, questions, questions, probably a lot of them I'd already know the answer to because they've been asked and answered before. And I guess it would, it might be a standard decent interview.

but it won't ever be surprising really or even for the person that I'm speaking with for you. It would just be you recounting things you've already kind of been over before.

Tommy Zee (26:12.729)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I am really enthusiastic about conversations and where they could possibly go. And that comes from not knowing where they might end up. So that curiosity factor is very important. Just like being a good musician, listening is also very important. You have everything pre-scripted, you don't really need to listen. So essentially you're just...

just saying scripted stuff.

Tommy Zee (26:49.007)

I'm huge on this concept of aliveness now, meaning like. How can you bring life into something? And that is like literally the opposite of a script. I'm not against scripts because I think like if you're a professional. Some of the people that I follow that are great public speakers. That may be really good on their feet as far as communicators, I've realized that they prepare.

like obsessively, they will literally like write the thing and then the best will rip up the paper and literally walk out on stage once they have written it out. So I think it's that kind of thing, which is like. We're not going to have total chaos. But I'm going to be confident enough as someone who does this fairly regularly, that if it's interesting, we go with it.

And if shit happens, we go back to the playlist. Right. It's like, you know, that story was a little Richard on David Letterman or one of these shows. Yeah, it was David Letterman because who was his musical director? Do you remember Paul?

Brian Funk (28:10.843)

Yeah, Paul,

Yes, I know the piano player. Yeah, Paul Schaeffer. Paul Schaeffer, think.

Tommy Zee (28:15.407)

Paul something. Yeah, with Paul Schaeffer. That's right. So Paul Schaeffer, have you ever heard this anecdote where Paul Schaeffer talked? I think it was Little Richard. I don't know who it was. Maybe it was someone else. I don't know. But he was appearing on the show. And of course, Paul Schaeffer, being the musical director, was being asked to coordinate the whole thing. Right. And so he was emailing like and I don't know if it was Little Richard. So correct me if I'm wrong.

It doesn't matter who it was. It was a legendary musician. And Paul Schaeffer being the kind of like really well organized, everything buttoned up guy that he is, pro, consummate pro, was like basic. There's like getting in touch with him like weeks ahead. He's like, so can you tell me what we're going to do? No response, no response, no response. Like literally no response up until the day of the taping of the show.

Brian Funk (28:58.535)

we need to perform on TV.

Tommy Zee (29:15.951)

And the story went something like Little Richard, if it was Little Richard. Just kind of put his hand on Paul. Like in a kind of like caring way, and he said, it's just more exciting this way, man. You know, it was something to that effect. But I really love that story because it just shows you. When you reach the level of mastery.

what you're looking for at that level. You're not trying to ruin the show. You're not trying to sabotage the show. You're not trying to bring it down. But you know that the likelihood of producing a miracle or a magical moment is much reduced if we script everything. Where if you put two people on stage like Paul Schaefer and Little Richard, give yourself some leeway for a miracle.

Allow room for the unexpected. Of course, easy to say, right?

Tommy Zee (30:23.597)

I've never been on David Letterman. And if I was...

probably prepare the hell out of it. you know, but it just it just shows you like, for instance, Norm MacDonald appearing on David Letterman for the last time and how he couldn't get through his lines. He was tearing up. You know, then that's a moment. That's a moment, you know, and then you learn the back story of how Letterman was a big supporter and this and that. And you realize, well, these are the moments.

Brian Funk (30:34.876)

you

Tommy Zee (31:00.515)

That's what you want. That's you want. Like human beings interacting and then having a moment and you experiencing it and going, that was not scripted. Because if we tried with our best fricking attempts, with our best selves to script this thing, it would never come out the way this has.

You know?

Brian Funk (31:28.988)

So here's a paradox to what we've been saying before we were saying about flinging out content rapidly and it's not as thoughtful and genuine. For me musically, as of late especially, I've been really embracing working as fast as I can and getting through things as fast as I can.

so that I capture whatever it is that's happening when something is first happening. Because there is a special moment there when you first come up with something that you're really excited about. You're in a certain place, it's a certain time of day, of year, your mood and everything came together for that to happen in the moment.

And the next time you come back to it, if you're still working on it, you're kind of trying to return to something that you can almost never get back to. You're, you can never go in the same river again because the river's changing and so are you. So.

Tommy Zee (32:33.199)

So give me an example of what that looks like in practice.

Brian Funk (32:39.59)

That looks like trying to get as much of an idea finished as fast as possible.

Tommy Zee (32:48.473)

So do you set a clock, for instance, like, let's say, is it like you feel inspiration, you're like, I have an idea and then you run to the studio and then you're like, I just want to crystallize this idea in sound. Or is it like I'm jamming in a studio, something interesting is happening. I'm not going to leave until I actually, like. Accelerate until I feel like like, what does it look like?

What does progress look like and what does it mean to... What point is a point of completion for you?

Brian Funk (33:25.82)

All right, well, the first part, it's pretty rare that I get struck with lightning and I got to run to the studio and make something, right? Occasionally, sometimes I hear a song and I'm like, man, I want to make a song like that. But usually when that happens, I can't. I'm driving to work. I'm out of the house. It's the middle of the night or whatever it is. There's some reason why life won't let you get to it at that moment.

It usually happens when I start. This is probably why starting is so scary most of the time. Cause I don't really know exactly where I'm going yet, but once I start tinkering and moving around and putting things together, if something starts to happen, it's kind of like, I don't know, fishing where we've got to reel this guy in or he's going to get off the line. And

Tommy Zee (34:21.071)

Yeah, so I want to ask you, like, what does it look like exactly? Meaning, are you afraid that you're going to get stuck in a loop and then it'll just kind of fizzle out? So does it then mean that you're basically going, OK, I have this strong idea before I get stuck and hypnotized by the loop, which doesn't go anywhere, I'm going to immediately force myself like, you know what I mean? I'm trying to see what the tangible steps are.

Brian Funk (34:44.656)

Yeah, trying to get it together as fast as possible. Maybe it's cement, right? It's wet cement. You know, and I got to place it as best I can. Cause otherwise I kind of get stuck and then I can't.

Tommy Zee (34:51.513)

Okay.

Tommy Zee (34:58.319)

before it dries.

Brian Funk (35:08.666)

quite figure out the way, how am I going to sing that first part? Because I got a few ideas and... But if I'm just like, I'm writing these words and I know I can change the words if I need to, if I need to alter them a little, but having something down and getting that idea, and it's just so much easier to work with the cement when it's wet than it is to...

Tommy Zee (35:35.567)

So does it mean for instance like for me that would mean and this is what I often do is it is a paradox though because we just spoke about how you plant can't plan great things but.

It gives me a sense of direction when I see the song done already as far as structure. Right. think we probably touched on this in the previous podcast because this is what I teach my students. That whole chalk watercolors oil method. Where you literally will.

The chalk is like your structure. You literally put down MIDI clips, empty MIDI clips in different colors to say, okay, so I roughly imagine this thing will have an intro. It'll probably have a buildup. It'll have a drop. Maybe it kind of redirects. And then we'll just fizzle out. So then I'm like, once I have these MIDI clips in, I'm like, okay, the song is done. I just have to fill it in.

But then you don't get stuck in a loop because you're literally like, okay, now I'm working on the intro. Okay, now I'm working on the drop. Okay, now, you know. The challenge I have with that is it's so nice that I drew these many clips and that's how I imagined the song going, but it almost never goes that way, which is fine. But that is my attempt to get out of the loop. That's why I was asking you like, what is the...

What does it look like for you in reality to try to get something out as quickly as possible?

Brian Funk (37:15.994)

Well, my Ableton Live workflow is going to be session view, getting those ideas together, loops, sections, and all of that kind of stuff, right?

But if I stay there too long, that's all they ever are. These kind of ideas that could be anything. It's getting them into the arrangement view. And now we're in the linear, right? Where we can press play and hear the beginning to the end, as opposed to session view, which is nonlinear and you can just kind of be anywhere. There's no beginning, end or middle. So getting there quick and early is definitely very important because I...

Tommy Zee (37:40.131)

Right away. Yeah.

Tommy Zee (37:49.635)

Yeah. Yeah.

Tommy Zee (37:57.593)

same session.

Brian Funk (37:59.548)

I think ideally, Ideally.

Tommy Zee (38:02.095)

Yeah, I'm totally with you. Before you close down the session, go to Arrangement View with all the stuff. You don't even have to arrange it. Just bring it.

Brian Funk (38:11.567)

Yeah, and I like to do that too because it gives me something I can listen to. I can kind of keep working on it. Even if I'm in the car going to work, I can be listening. And a lot of times I'll get ideas and have a little notepad next to me that I sketch down lyrics or...

Tommy Zee (38:28.975)

You know you can just dictate a voice note to Claude for it to arrange your song. By the time you're home, it'll be done.

Brian Funk (38:38.075)

You don't have to actually do this. This is what I say to people when they watch a baseball game or a football game, they give you the answers after it's over. You don't even have to watch the game. just look in the paper or go online. Totally missing the point.

Tommy Zee (38:39.279)

You don't need to actually do the work.

Tommy Zee (38:54.817)

I love that. I love the cement analogy. I love the cement analogy and I love this. Yeah, you know, they gave you the scores at the end. I like that a lot. I wanted to ask you something about this idea of like finishing songs and releasing them. Where do you stand on that these days? You're talking to someone who's been basically.

making music because I'm commissioned by someone to create it. I have a deadline, I have direction, and like I don't have any options. I gotta deliver the music by Friday and then I get paid and then Bob's your uncle. But when it comes to releasing my own music, which I would very much like, I get this existential despair happening, which is like, what? You're gonna release a seven minute ambient track? What's so special about that?

Like what does the world need another seven minute ambient track? And I'm like, stop. These voices are terrible. Stop it. I just want to. Yeah, I just want to publish an ambient track. What is wrong with that? This whole internal dialogue, you have this dialogue like what is how do you. Are you releasing music?

How do you negotiate that conversation in your mind? Like, why are we doing this even? What's the point? You're not going to make money from it, probably.

Brian Funk (40:24.815)

Yeah, probably not. And maybe even no one will even listen to it. Right? So if you're not...

Tommy Zee (40:29.871)

So why bother?

Brian Funk (40:36.079)

doing your own music for a while and then you decide you're working on something that's a seven minute ambient track, you're probably now thinking, this is the thing that represents Tommy Z musically and it's finally coming out and I haven't had anything and it's a big deal and it's never going to encapsulate all those aspects of who you are.

And no piece of music could, that would make any sense anyway, because you're not one dimensional, you're not one style, you're not one mood, you're not one anything. So I think that can be very crippling. What should I do? I don't know, because I got to really make my statement as an artist.

The way around it for me has been pretty much the same thing of working fast, where I'm making, trying to make stuff and finish it just so I can leave behind a body of work. And the body of work can speak to who I am. And I don't even know who that is yet, because I'm still figuring that out myself anyway. Over time, you can start to zoom out on the picture. But if tonight I'm making an ambient track,

And that's where I'm at. That's where I'm at. And next week I might be trying to make a dance floor move or playing acoustic guitar and singing or playing with my band. It's more a matter of just leaving the diary entries, thinking more like that. And it's more a big collage.

Tommy Zee (42:07.097)

That's what it is. Yeah. I've I've

I've gotten, I think, a different perspective on what it means to create art recently. I'm a very conceptual person and I guess because I've had to deliver conceptually driven music to big brands and their campaigns for so long. It's like there is always this need to have a concept which drives the creation.

It's like, what is the idea behind this? And of course, the campaign idea already suggests what the music is going to be like. And then, you know, sometimes the actual conceptual idea behind a track becomes a part of the campaign. Like if when you do these ASMR things or, we're going to make a song out of beer bottles or whatever.

But in this chapter of my life where I'm really trying to treat music like an expression of something deeper, which I've always...

I've always seen music as that very special language. But I always had this compulsion to like, if I don't have a concept, there's no point in working on the track. And it does help sometimes to have a concept to finish things, or at least to give yourself like a creative format. Just as a fun exercise, a creative exercise. Like I'm going to make a track out of my cheapest scents. And that's just to close down the world.

Tommy Zee (43:46.659)

the sandbox so that you don't get lost in all the possibilities. But the perspective that I recently got out of after reading a few books and just having this realization is that

Tommy Zee (44:03.811)

The things that we consider masterpieces, the things that truly, truly are a higher level of art, however you define that.

are ones where even the artist was swept up in something trying to communicate itself through that person at the time. So I've always found it very strange when an artist cannot explain their work.

And it's always a relief when they go, well, this symbolizes the existential angst of man. You see the color here, you see this shape here, you're like, OK. But I've noticed, like, the artists that I admire were never wanting to answer those questions. It was more like turned around, like, what does it mean to you? You know? And so I want to experiment now.

with allowing myself not to have direction.

Tommy Zee (45:06.543)

And it's never going to be like, because I don't have direction, then what I'm going to produce is meaningless. And the reason for that is, is because we have a certain story, we have soul, we have certain sensibilities, there's a certain frequency, there's a certain thing happening with us at all times.

And then when you put yourself in this space and you touch a knob.

At this particular moment in time, you want to twist the knob left because you feel what's happening and you're like, yes, this is where I want to go right now. I want to go left. I want to go like filtered or whatever. I want to go murky. I want to go cloudy right now.

And that's very interesting, right? Because it's like, regardless of what your mind thinks or what it intends to do, you're going murky.

And I just find it very interesting to allow if the murkiness wants to come out, let it come out. Like just, you know, the moment the mind starts interfering, I find is when you start.

Tommy Zee (46:31.971)

really limiting the possibilities. And of course your mind is going to convince you that, right? It's like unnecessary, man. What are you trying to do here, right? I'm trying to help you here. I'm trying to package this thing. I'm trying to delineate it. Yeah, but then it's like, you know, some of the greatest pieces of art would never come out if that was the case. Because they weren't easily packaged.

It's like a three hour track that doesn't go anywhere. Or contact microphones attached to the bells in the church in Paris. The Notre Dame. Yeah. The artists attach contact mics to the bells and they picked up the resonances coming from the city that are vibrating these bells at imperceptible levels.

Brian Funk (47:16.248)

Notre Dame. Yeah.

Brian Funk (47:26.318)

Hmm. just... You alright? Cool.

Tommy Zee (47:30.169)

But when you write so so it's things like that, it's like, you know, it's like, wow, that is interesting. Anyway, I just went on this long monologue, but maybe you can. Hit the ball back from your end of the court and comment on what you're hearing here.

Brian Funk (47:43.546)

Yeah, all right.

Brian Funk (47:48.993)

I enjoy making stuff that is very concrete and direct. And when I have an idea that's clear and putting that together, this is the expression of something specific. And if you ask me, yes, this means that, and that's a reference to this and blah, blah, blah. It's also kind of fun to play with things, stick things together, put words together, play with the sounds of the words and

the kind of double meanings they might have or mess up the grammar of it even because it fits rhythmically better than maybe the proper way to say something. I think...

Tommy Zee (48:30.649)

You'd have an appreciation for that as a literature teacher.

Brian Funk (48:34.392)

Yeah, it's kind of fun to ssss-

Tommy Zee (48:35.823)

like finnigan's wake and

Brian Funk (48:38.628)

Well, even Shakespeare did it a lot. So, and you know, and some of the things he did it with became things we say now still hundreds of years later. sometimes you have to twist things around to make it fit in with everything else. But I think it's okay to not really have the complete picture of what it means and let the

Tommy Zee (48:40.771)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:07.906)

interpretation happen on the other end. Because it's not just for the listener either. Because when you hear my song that might've been a little loose around the edges as far as the picture of the story or the meaning, I can hear that song a year later and get something different than I did when I made it. And then it keeps changing and evolving and you get these different ways of looking at stuff that can be kind of fun too.

And maybe that plays into this idea of the, making that body of work, dropping things on the ground. mean, you don't always have, you haven't always made sense of everything in your life, you know? And sometimes you're conflicted and sometimes you're unsure. So I think it's okay to have that happen in what you're doing with your music or your art, because that's a reflection.

Tommy Zee (50:00.207)

We've heard it time and time again that I've only made sense of my life looking backwards. Like Steve Jobs said that, George McDonald, who was the mentor of C.S. Lewis in his journals, wrote something like that, which is like, it's nearly impossible to know what the meaning of your life is looking forward.

But when you look back, you notice the narrative, you see the narrative. So that's what's.

Brian Funk (50:32.377)

You have to leave things behind to do that though. If you're holding it in all the time and you're resisting because it's not ready or it's not exactly what I wanted to say or it's not exactly how I felt, then you don't get that perspective because you don't leave any of those diary entries or artifacts behind.

Tommy Zee (50:55.065)

Yeah, yeah. This is very interesting to me. I just discovered this guy. I don't know how you pronounce his name.

Is he Nigerian? He released, he was very prolific recently. He does a lot of like...

found sounds recorded wherever he is in Africa. can't remember where he is in Africa. I think he's also a relative or a son of a famous musician. But I really literally discovered him, like in the last two days. I've just been listening to his work. But I went on to his website. His name is he goes by K.M.R.U. Kamaru or something.

Brian Funk (51:41.855)

Yeah, I think Ableton just did a piece on him recently.

Tommy Zee (51:45.283)

Yes, I did read actually that on the Ableton website. I read an interview with him. Yeah.

Brian Funk (51:51.363)

KMRU, yeah, on the art of sharing music. Yeah, put that in the show notes.

Tommy Zee (51:55.157)

Exactly. Yeah. It's interesting because I went onto his website and I was like, this is the way you do it. His website is just literally a collection of everything he's doing, the writings, the albums, like whatever he does, he just releases it. And he's like, when I got signed to labels, I encountered the challenge of like, why aren't we releasing that yet? because the calendar says we're going to do it in two months. There's a whole process here. Relax. And he's like, what? Let's just get it out there.

He's like, when I finish a piece of music, I want it immediately to go out into the world. Right. And I thought that was very refreshing and just going on his website and just seeing that everything he's doing coalesces into this body of work on his website. And also, I'm very inspired by that, by what you're doing, Ryan, because this podcast, you've been doing it for what, like 45 years now?

Brian Funk (52:52.749)

Yeah, pretty much. 2017.

Tommy Zee (52:53.807)

45 years before There you go You know, but I remember you and I think I mentioned this every time I'm on your show like Just seeing you like when the internet was still slow and you were already on there like with your sunglasses doing stuff Right But you just keep going you just keep doing your thing, you know

And I have this tendency to like.

I'm looking for the next big thing.

You know what mean? If I'm going to attach an idea, it's got to be big. It's got to do that. And then you just look at the last five years and you go, OK, so let me see your body of work. Like there's all these unfinished pieces that are aiming to hit a home run instead of just like.

Tommy Zee (53:50.863)

Just do something and then ship it and then move on to the next thing that compels you or that excites you.

Brian Funk (53:57.368)

Well, how often have you heard artists talk about their hit song, the breakout song, and they were like, we had no idea it was going to be that one. yeah, we thought it was the other one. We didn't. No one thought this record was going to be a hit.

Tommy Zee (54:10.607)

It's very rare.

Brian Funk (54:12.761)

So even when people are changing the world and making their masterpiece and their huge, you know, genre shifting releases, most of the time they don't even know what's happening themselves. So if you're waiting to attach yourself to like the next big thing, the great movement, like you probably won't even see it coming. It's not going to be great until it happens.

Tommy Zee (54:35.395)

No, that's right.

Tommy Zee (54:39.961)

How do you deal with the fact that it seems to me like music is something we got used to?

Like once upon a time it was exciting, then it got electric, then it got like, it was analog, then it got electric, then it got digital, then it got interesting, blah blah blah blah blah. It's 2025. We've had incredible advances in technology. Everyone has access to killer technology now. Like every DAW is just doing crazy stuff now. STEM separation, this, that. And...

Brian Funk (54:50.137)

You

Tommy Zee (55:18.851)

I'm just like, are we numb already?

I'm almost looking for the kind of music that has nothing to do with that. Like nothing to do with technology. In a weird way, I'm looking for something that will haunt me. Like something that will maybe go against the pattern. Like something that will be a genuine world that I'm invited into. Where you're like, whoa, this is like, I can't...

I can't even analyze it because it's like, you know what I mean? It hits you on a deep level where your mind is not even trying to figure it out. I don't know if there's a question in there, but I suppose that would be the kind of stuff that I would aspire to make. And again, I may be sabotaging myself right out of the gate.

But I'm just like, well, who cares about a seven minute ambient track with an Omnisphere drone put through some filters? Like, who cares about that? Are we past that? Have we gotten used to that? Like, doesn't it need another ingredient or do we need a next step here in the evolution to make it more interesting, to make it, you know, how do you see that?

Brian Funk (56:30.754)

There's definitely a temptation because you got the tools, right? So let's take that seven minute Omnisphere patch and let's add something. Let's put some effects. We got this new plugin glitching and we can play this and that and add.

Sometimes it's just nice to hear a single thing on its own. And you know, if you have just that single Omnisphere patch, you can really listen to it and pay attention to the details. you know, they just announced like Omnisphere 3 and it's insane, right? But every time you add an element to your mix, that Omnisphere patch gets smaller and smaller and smaller and that initial idea becomes part of the other things together.

Tommy Zee (57:06.105)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (57:20.426)

It, it changes it or, and it might be losing something that you're really enjoying about that patch. Just because you're just cause we can, we can do that stuff. yeah, I mean, I love all the technology and I'm really excited about it, but on the other hand of, or the other side of that coin lately, I'm probably the next release I put out.

is going to be the complete opposite of all that, just acoustic guitar and voice. And in fact, the songs that I've got so far, think it was a five or six, all the recordings I have are the day I was writing it. So the recording I have is really like the first time I'm hearing it too. It's like, okay, I've kind of, I've been working it together now. Let me try to record it and put it all together.

Tommy Zee (58:11.727)

Okay, interesting.

Brian Funk (58:18.656)

It's like single performance, first time I'm hearing it, first time I'm going through it too. And you know, there's definitely little flubs here and there, but there's something about that that you just, you can't capture that again. So I'm playing with that. Yeah.

Tommy Zee (58:38.893)

No, and I think that's exactly where I'm going with this. Yeah, which is like in the age of like everything being perfect, the flub is the thing where I recognize the authentic moment. Meaning like I can actually put myself in the room with you and I can hear that it was probably afternoon that you probably scraped the string and it's...

Yeah, it's not ideal, but like. I don't know, man, I don't ever see how the best songs were ever like perfect, whatever that means. Reading the book by Bresson, the famous French director who is basically commenting about all the films that he's ever made. I'll give you the book title, I don't remember what it is now, but I have it at home.

But he said that some of the greatest moments in his films happened because of accidents. So what he was literally saying was that...

Tommy Zee (59:48.175)

He created conditions that were almost disastrous as far as like if you were to plan a set and a shot, you wouldn't do things the way he did it. He hired like non-professional actors, for instance. He basically was creating a combustive mix that according to like professionals would probably lead to a disaster. And of course, many other people thought his films were weird or whatever, but somehow they remain.

masterpieces, according to certain film critics, and they certainly are still revered by people who study that genre. But his essential theory and philosophy was like, I'm trying to invite the unknown into the process. And so very often when he looked at what he shot, he was like, how did that get in there? And then it becomes the thing.

completely not planned, completely not even desired, to be honest, in that shot. But it came in and it added a dimension which now as a whole, like it takes this thing to a completely different level. That's very fascinating, right? To allow yourself to create those conditions for the flubs.

Brian Funk (01:01:10.552)

There are a lot of things in recordings I've done in the past where sounds or noises got in there that weren't supposed to be in there, but when I hear them now, they pull me into that moment. I remember that day because that was the day that happened. I like that stuff a lot. And now we can make like.

It used to be a huge feat to create these perfect masterpieces that were ironed out and every detail constructed and that in itself was really impressive. And it still is, of course, and it's hard to do even with all the tools we have.

But maybe a part of me is also just aware that this thing came out so good because somebody was really good at the software. Someone was really good at how the program works. I don't want to take away from that because I have a lot of deep respect for that too. But I'm a little more...

Tommy Zee (01:02:03.545)

Yeah, it's masking. Right, right.

Brian Funk (01:02:20.033)

just drawn to the stuff that's a little more rough around the edges. I kind of always have been, I think, but...

Yeah, like it's, it's a moment you're capturing it instead of something that's been crafted, which again has its place. I'm not saying anything negative. I'm just a little more interested in those things at the moment that were that only happened because we got together that day and we did it in this way and we ran out of that and this thing was broken and we did it anyway. That's fun.

Tommy Zee (01:02:43.183)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:02:56.099)

Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to ask, are you actually releasing music?

And how do you do that?

Brian Funk (01:03:05.655)

without much fanfare really, mostly just posted up. Yeah, Distro Kid, usually SoundCloud. Anything I put on like the streaming services is maybe a little more purposeful and then SoundCloud is, that gets more experimental, yeah. And I wanna be a little more active with all of that, you know.

Tommy Zee (01:03:09.401)

But what do you put it on your website? Like, do you put it through distribution platforms? Okay. Okay.

Tommy Zee (01:03:24.547)

your experimentation kind of R &D thing. Okay, gotcha.

Brian Funk (01:03:36.404)

I have my own personal diary of all the music I make and stuff, but I would like to be a little more just, here it is, this is what I got, this is what I got, this is what I got. And I know probably from a marketing perspective, it's not a great idea to have everything out there put together. But like you said, I'm not...

Tommy Zee (01:03:48.505)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:04:04.533)

ever going to make money off of this in any reality I live in. It's not about that and I don't need it to be. I do have that luxury. I have my teaching job, so that frees me up a lot.

Tommy Zee (01:04:08.463)

It's not about that.

Tommy Zee (01:04:13.528)

Actually, yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:04:22.671)

That gives you a lot of creative freedom, right? Because you're not concerned with the marketplace.

Brian Funk (01:04:27.859)

It gives me that luxury in a lot of ways. It changes your relationship. I don't know what's better or worse, but I guess I figure if I'm in this position, I might as well use it instead of, yeah, like kind of wishing I had it another way.

Tommy Zee (01:04:40.185)

Yeah. Yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:04:47.181)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:04:50.647)

Because again, that creates the body of work. And there's a lot of artists I love that, I don't love everything they do, but it's really fun to go through their catalog and explore, wow, like a Bob Dylan kind of character where they're just Neil Young, they're just always doing stuff and you can kind of dive into any moment of where they were.

And, I just love them. So it almost doesn't even matter if I love the music. I'm just, I love what he does. So.

Tommy Zee (01:05:24.921)

Well, here is the interesting thing that I'm fascinated by right now.

which is the idea that.

at a time when every art form has been.

digitized, turned into zeros and ones and therefore duplicable, copyable, referenced by algorithms, whatever, but essentially automated, compounded with the fact that we have gotten used to it by having processed it already. So in a way we're numb, like it takes something different to excite us or to even notice it.

The idea that I'm fascinated by now is like the only thing that becomes.

Tommy Zee (01:06:22.957)

truly the highest form of art that is alive.

is human life, is the human. Now, that has always been true. So what you just said about like, I just like what Bob Dylan's doing. So I'm always curious. I don't like everything he's done, but I'm always going to be paying attention. Because you sense that out of this body, mind and soul entity that is named Bob Zimmerman, Dylan.

There's going to be a synthesis that when it's released, you're not always going to like it, but you're certainly going to pay attention because you appreciate the fact that this human is processing things in a very special way, seeing reality in a very special way and then spitting it back out after synthesis in a way that only he can.

So, you know, Nadia Blanchet, who was the mentor to Quincy Jones, Aaron Copeland, all these other people, she always reiterated this, which is like, I'm looking for the human being in the musician. Everything else is secondary, your piano skill, your this, that, it all comes out from the center, from the kind of human being that you are.

So this is the idea that I'm hugely fascinated by, which is like, especially when we speak about AI, when we speak about the influence of technology on us, does it actually create the conditions for you to find out who are you?

Tommy Zee (01:08:12.013)

with deep introspection. What is my place in time and space and this particular time and history, location? What am I surrounded by the people, the projects, the opportunities? What do I feel strongly about? What is my sensibility? And then to ask certain questions worth asking and then the quality of your answers is really going to be. As interesting as the kind of person that you are.

Like, so that's my fascination right now, the life itself as an art form. Like, what kind of life are you living? And I'm not talking about, like, the Instagram life. I'm talking about maybe it's the most boring, simple life you've ever heard of.

And I guarantee you that Bob Dylan is probably living that life. Like, even though it's exciting on the outside, like a lot of these poets and artists that I resonate with personally, it's the most boring lives they're living. And you realize that that actually is where they draw their inspiration from, because they cut off the influences, the noise, everything that we're fascinated by, which is like right here.

which is probably gonna glue our attention immediately.

It takes us away from. You know, that thing waiting to get out of us. Which unfortunately doesn't yell. Well, fortunately, it doesn't yell right, so it really needs seclusion, it really needs some alone time, it really needs simplification. And yeah, that's what I'm excited about right now as an idea, you know, after devoting so much of my life to like commercial appeal.

Tommy Zee (01:10:05.689)

to like, is it going to make money to like, you know, is it going to be up to par to the person paying me thousands for this score for this big brand campaign? I'm now really, really interested in a different idea, which is like. What does art mean today? You know, what is our place in it? How do we reconcile and negotiate the technological advances?

to help us become more human and more of artists and not less? Yeah, those are the questions that I find very fascinating right now.

Brian Funk (01:10:44.278)

probably where the art in art comes from, that humanity. Because you can, you know, there's craft to art. There's that whole aspect of getting good at your instrument or learning actually how to paint or dance or any of those things. But it's the life in there that...

gets mixed in, that's interesting. And you've probably seen now, there's AI artists out there and making songs. Rick Beato had a big moment a few months ago where he created that one like indie female singer and their song, know, people like, yeah, it's a good song, you know. Maybe even the type of music I would listen to.

But as soon as I hear that it's not a real person and it's just this thing that's put together, it just removes all interest for me. The most interesting part about that piece of music is the story of Rick Beato creating it. The human being showing up, prompting it. Yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:11:45.657)

Yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:11:54.605)

Right. You're still going to follow reg biato. Right.

Tommy Zee (01:12:01.145)

There's nothing to follow, there's no one to follow with an AI artist, literally. There's no one to follow.

Brian Funk (01:12:06.614)

If it's music that's on at the mall when I'm walking around, it might be pleasant enough. I might even say, this is cool sound or something. But I guess if either you get that smell that you mentioned, which I think is a good way to describe how we detect AI work, it's like a smell. It's intangible. It just, I don't care anymore for some reason.

You know, like when I was a teenager, I put on flannels and ripped jeans because I love grunge. love Nirvana. I love those bands. And there's no ripped jeans in the song. He's not singing like, put on your flannels, you wear your ripped jeans. It's the people when you get to find out who made this and where they came from. you're like, oh, that's they're cool. I like what they're doing. And that pulls you even deeper into the art.

Like you said, the whole life becomes the canvas in a way. It's what makes it interesting.

Tommy Zee (01:13:09.007)

That's I literally like that's my thing now, which I say like the highest form of art is life. You are the artist in residence. And this day is your canvas. Like, that's literally the three lines behind, you know, the kind of mentorship that I'm doing now, which is beyond making music for brands. But that's the idea that excites me, because ultimately.

in the age where everything is commoditized and digitized.

True life, like aliveness is going to be the thing that we're seeking that's going to energize us. And it always has been, by the way. It's just that there was a moment when when you plugged in the guitar to an amplifier and someone heard it for the first time, it took a while for us to get over that.

And then when analog got turned into digital, we got all excited by that. the iPhone came, we got all excited by that. But you can see the diminishing returns. Even with the most revolutionary technology, let's say, Chad GPT or language models. It always bursts the bubble and then we always come back to Bob Dylan. Who? Like, how would you rate his guitar playing or his singing?

Tommy Zee (01:14:35.949)

That's not exactly where he's making the difference, is it?

Brian Funk (01:14:36.011)

I would.

I know. And the funny thing is like, I think it is high, but it's high because of character. Like he's not winning American Idol. He's not winning the guitar Olympics or anything like that. know, but I mean, he's a great player though. mean, he's, he's

Tommy Zee (01:14:44.911)

But he dumps it down. Exactly.

Tommy Zee (01:14:57.881)

But I would even argue, that these people dumb it down. Some of these artists will dumb it down in a certain way. Like it's sometimes for noble thing, like to simplify their art. Sometimes it is a market consideration. It's like nobody is going to listen to a virtuoso thing. If you want to write a poem for an everyday human.

That's probably not the place where you display your guitar skills. I'm just saying, like, it doesn't seem like the right con-

Brian Funk (01:15:26.612)

Yeah, yeah, that could distance you from it. If you're going for that every person folk thing and you're shredding, does. Now you're not an everyday guy with a guitar. Yeah. I guess like I would consider him masterful in how he's deploying it, you know, for his purposes, like his voice.

Tommy Zee (01:15:36.539)

Look at me.

Brian Funk (01:15:54.902)

Like everyone, I think he's a great singer because, you know, when you listen to like blowing in the wind when he's like 20 or 21 years old, he sounds like he's been around the world, you know? yeah, there's a rasp in his voice that says, I've seen some stuff. Whether he has or not, it's in there.

Tommy Zee (01:16:08.749)

Yeah, it's a wisdom, like a sage kind of.

Tommy Zee (01:16:16.697)

journey man. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, what I meant about like, how would you rate his singing? I just meant like, from a technical proficiency perspective, you know, there's probably exactly, it's exactly not the point.

Brian Funk (01:16:33.333)

I hate even thinking about that because that's not the point to me. That fits me. It serves me well because I'm not technically good at any of it anyway. Yeah, of course it doesn't matter. There's so much craft and attention to detail that you can go in. Maybe that's an art too, but...

It's kind of not the point, you know, if you think if you bring singing and music back to its roots of bringing people together in communities, the tribe or whatever it is in the old caveman times. It wasn't about like how good you were. It was being part of that and sharing in it.

Tommy Zee (01:17:18.215)

But also like to speak to how do you get to that point of just embodying the kind of artistic expression that makes you just go, whoa, this is one of a kind. I can't even think about it because it goes right.

to the heart, like it's not a rational thing where you're analyzing it like, no, you can't. it's outside. it's like, how did the tribesmen who get their tribe into a trance? How does Bob Dylan, how does Neil Young, like whatever, we can go down the line. These one of a kind rare artists get to that point and.

Brian Funk (01:17:42.355)

Yeah, you can't even think about it. That's actually it. You can't think about it.

Tommy Zee (01:18:09.901)

I just think it's a natural result of who they are. You see, my whole point about like what you what we need to do if we have any shot at creating great art is to become great humans. And that's not great humans. I don't mean like by the standards of Instagram or because you got a Nobel Peace Prize or something. No, I just mean like you study humanity, which Bob Dylan has been doing.

Brian Funk (01:18:14.153)

honesty.

Brian Funk (01:18:30.247)

or...

Tommy Zee (01:18:40.761)

He's a philosopher, right? Like the greatest artists are trying to figure out what the heck is life all about, right? Just dissecting what is love, what is sadness, what is grief, what is an apple even, what is a fruit tree? Nick Drake. I don't know. The fruit tree is probably more than a fruit tree to Nick Drake. And he shows us that when you look at a goddamn tree, it's probably more than just a tree. And then you listen and you're like.

Holy shit, the tree. What is this tree? What is, you know, it's like just takes you down this new dimension of like, you can look at, you know, an avocado this way or fruit tree that way or whatever. So. It's not technical proficiency, although that's there because it's like thousands of hours, right, for Bob Dylan practicing his craft, just being inspired by.

the music that he came up with and probably studying that deeply to a point where it becomes like your natural language. I'm not thinking about what I'm saying now, just passionate about the idea. So I'm expressing it. Right. So I think it's the same for. For these guys, but like the huge emphasis for me is like. Focus on not just the technical proficiency, but like what is the thing that. Compells you in life.

what is naturally like drawing you toward it and like spend time with it, commune with it. And it could be the stupidest thing in the world, like a peanut. But are you telling me that we cannot create art around a peanut? Like, do know what I'm saying? Right. The peanuts, right. But you know what I'm saying, right? It's like. It's just new eyes, right? Like, like, I think it's.

Brian Funk (01:20:24.371)

The peanuts. Charles Schultz.

Yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:20:35.023)

Proust or pru or however you pronounce it. But it's like the journey consists not the journey of discovery consists not of like going somewhere, but seeing the world with new eyes. So not discovering new lands, but seeing the world with new eyes. So. Yeah, I mean, we're unpacking a lot of things here, but essentially like. I'm just excited about commonplace everyday life.

and ourselves as like just common human beings, not trying to be someone in particular or like not being kidnapped by the feet to try to be like someone else there. But instead, just like really paying attention to your life, to the things that arise within you as thoughts and ideas.

the things that resonate with you on the outside in your immediate environment, the people you're surrounded by, the mundane moments.

Tommy Zee (01:21:44.909)

in a grocery store, you know, like looking at cashier and just exchanging a kind word. Dude. It's all art, like it's all there. We just need to rediscover it again. Right. Yeah, I don't know if I'm. Expressing my fascination clearly, what I'm trying to say is like.

All this technological stuff, as exciting as it is, as much as I appreciate it in my life, because it allows me to do...

I don't think that's where the answer ultimately lies. Or like, that's not what's going to help us unlock our humanity. There's a greater risk that it will actually prevent us from discovering who we are, because that's a conversation that cannot be mediated by a calculator.

Brian Funk (01:22:48.126)

Well, if you're paying close enough attention, there are no mundane moments in the supermarket. are all kind of... Yeah, everything is fascinating when you look at it closely enough. The peanut is amazing. Comes in that shell to protect it. You know, the avocado, you can say the fruit tree.

Tommy Zee (01:23:06.157)

I don't appreciate it enough.

Brian Funk (01:23:12.36)

this thing that grows out of the ground that will feed us. And we have this relationship where I breathe out carbon dioxide, right? This carbon dioxide I breathe out and the tree breathes it in and gives oxygen. What? That's insane when you think about it. But maybe in that we've really hyped up all of this, you know.

Tommy Zee (01:23:12.559)

That's all.

Tommy Zee (01:23:23.407)

That's right, oxygen.

Brian Funk (01:23:36.518)

extraordinary lives, know, flying around the world in your private jet and whatever. That we kind of forget that.

Tommy Zee (01:23:41.529)

Yeah, right. Right.

that the people on this private jet are very often an antidepressants.

Brian Funk (01:23:50.537)

Well, just maybe, but even just sitting in your yard watching the squirrels collect their peanuts, it's pretty awesome.

Tommy Zee (01:24:03.599)

You ever heard that CK Lewis skit where he takes the remote away or turns off the TV while his kid is watching it? That's the TV, man. That's nowhere near as dangerous as this thing. But like he there's a skit that you can look up online where the kid just snaps. It's like a reaction, like on human. Right. It's like.

Brian Funk (01:24:19.73)

Hmm, just a phone, yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:24:31.321)

turning off the TV, it's like taking the phone away from someone. It's like they turn into like it's almost like an animal reaction, like, you know, what are you doing? And then he goes on this whole rant about like, you not see the sun rising? The friggin sun is rising. No, it's like not interesting, you know. And that I see as a great tragedy where these kids are actually now.

Brian Funk (01:24:49.522)

Yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:25:01.679)

seeing this thing as reality, as kind of like, this is just the way things are. Like, I get my life from this phone, my connections, my relationships, my information, everything. We were brought up differently. So we still remember that world. Boredom. Like, is that even the thing these days? Like, no. No, right, exactly. And isn't that...

Brian Funk (01:25:24.36)

No, you don't have to be bored. You might not be deeply engaged, but it's not boredom.

Tommy Zee (01:25:36.023)

Right. that isn't that where the beginning of

Tommy Zee (01:25:45.825)

our unique contribution begins, basically.

Brian Funk (01:25:51.753)

think it's a big part of it. You get bored enough to go out and try something. See what happens. When you don't have that, you're mildly pacified. You know, what's the point?

Brian Funk (01:26:16.052)

It's good to be bored.

Tommy Zee (01:26:18.445)

It's good to be bored. I think I'm ready to go to.

Brian Funk (01:26:20.212)

to leave that open space to be bored. But I do also think that if you're paying attention, like you're not going to be bored.

Tommy Zee (01:26:26.415)

I'm ready to go be bored.

Tommy Zee (01:26:36.193)

No, that's true. But how do you get there? That's the question, because it seems for some reason that many people have lost the sense to just like the wonder is there. OK, maybe as a sensation, but very quickly, like you find kind of an escape, you know, I just watch my kids, for instance, like they have difficulty sitting just being bored.

Right. There's always an answer. There's always a thing. And I'm trying at least not to be an example of like someone who defaults to picking up the phone when there is a silence or there is a gap between tasks. Yeah, because, you know, I've been sick for two weeks now, which means I haven't been

in my usual rhythm of like doing things the normal way. I've pretty much been at home. This is the first time when I came to my studio to have this chat with you. But my frequency has completely changed because the first thing on my first day of illness, I was like. OK, well, what am I going to do? I guess I need to rest. OK, so what does that mean? Well, I guess I'll read a book. OK.

And then, like, I've been reading nonfiction books all the time and my body literally said, no, please, not more information. That's what I felt, like, literally, not more stuff, not more information. I was like, that was an interesting thing. OK, I haven't read literature in a while. Let me pick up some literature. I read two books in the last two weeks, literature, and I was deeply moved by them. And I just feel like I understood

many things that I would never understand by reading another nonfiction book, which honestly, by now, as a big nonfiction book kind of reader, they're just getting redundant. Like these ideas. But these words, the way they're structured, these sentences, these pictures being painted in these books, fiction books, literature, I'm like, whoa, there's so much life there. Freshness. what the hell was this word?

Tommy Zee (01:29:04.289)

or this like sequence of words and it does shit to you and you're like, wow, just by exposing myself to these sentences, I'm literally like shifting my perspective much better than from nonfiction. So I have to say the last two weeks have been incredible for that. Like so much more space. I'm not exposing myself to the feeds.

I'm not reading the news. I just really briefly glance at the news in the morning just to make sure I know generally what's happening. But I'm not turning on the discussions, for instance, the heated debates about who is evil and who is great and who is the savior and who... I'm not interested. I'm not interested because honestly, the news has turned into a product in itself.

Brian Funk (01:29:44.869)

escape.

Tommy Zee (01:30:01.518)

whereby the intention is not to inform you, it's to get your attention. It's a product, man. It's a product, unfortunately. It's to keep you watching. Exactly. And so the entire political thing has turned into, like, basically a spectacle. And I was just like, nah, you know, that's not how I'm going to heal. But

Brian Funk (01:30:09.361)

Yeah, to keep you watching the news, like pretty much everything else.

Tommy Zee (01:30:28.835)

You know, after these two weeks, when I'm coming back to myself, I'm like, why would I change my modus operandi now? Like, I think I'm just going to keep reading literature. I think I'm just going to like limit my newsfeed time. And yeah, just make more space, more space. It's been good. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:30:57.011)

You almost got to wonder if your body was calling out for that, right? Like, you know what, Tommy? We need you to slow down, so now you're sick. Relax, buddy. Yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:31:08.687)

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised, right? I think our body, this is the interesting thing also, and I think this is a good way for us to like bring it home, which is.

Look how easily it is for creative people.

We're often insecure to trust an outside source, especially like AI, which is eloquent. And it very definitely and confidently will tell you, no, this is what it is. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Thank you. But that's not the way the way is to talk to yourself. The way is to learn to tune into your own body, your own intuition, to hone it.

and to trust it and to say, you know what, despite the doubts, I think the only way for me to be happy with my creative expression is to really just go with my instincts. For better or for worse, you know, to go with the instincts, to trust myself. Yeah.

That's what I've learned in the past two weeks.

Brian Funk (01:32:31.869)

Well, maybe something weird has happened. know, our hardware hasn't changed since human beings first walked the earth. We're the same computer, you know, the same iPhone 2 or whatever you want to think of us as. But all of the information has changed. We have so much access to it. So.

I could imagine that maybe it used to be we had a lot more time in contact with our internal selves because it wasn't just the abundance of information. So we craved the external information and now that we've got it, it's like we can have as much as we want. So we're on that programming to keep pulling in the external information, keep getting more, read more nonfiction. I do the same thing. And I'm like, I read this book writing. It's like, no, you read 10 others like it.

Tommy Zee (01:33:26.329)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:33:27.257)

And our balance is off because we're kind of, we were programmed in a world where we didn't have access to this information. And now we have to sort of consciously, you know, reprogram ourselves a little bit to also go within, pay attention to what's inside too, and turn off the constant flow of information. I can remember.

the change, especially once I got my first laptop to make music on. And now I'm checking websites regularly. Now I have my RSS feed. Now I have, you know, all these places where I get information and I do it every day and it's emails are coming in and that's a big part. So much coming at me that I've just turned into routine that I never used to have. So yeah, turning it down a little bit.

is important, probably something we have to do on purpose.

Tommy Zee (01:34:23.631)

I think it's a good step. I think it's a good step and a good experiment. I would advise it as an experiment and reflection. Yeah, just do it for two weeks, see how you feel. if it feels more human, more natural, if it feels like you're more connected, if it feels like there's more agency or more authorship possible, that's coming from a place of peace and greater discernment.

That's probably a good thing, I'm just saying.

Brian Funk (01:34:57.296)

Yeah. Well, I had it over the summer, about two weeks. were out West going to the national parks, Western United States. like Yellowstone and Glacier National Park, really cool, spectacular places to see with almost no internet. And it was refreshing. And wouldn't you know it, I really didn't miss much. You know?

Tommy Zee (01:35:18.5)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:35:26.674)

Life went on. I don't think I was set back too far. I mean, the reality is I think it was very helpful to just be forced to be away from it. And it does, it makes you kind of reevaluate your relationship with it a little bit.

Tommy Zee (01:35:38.745)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tommy Zee (01:35:45.283)

Yeah, I think it's important to probably schedule these things, like make it a thing every quarter or whatever, maybe a mini getaway. But I'm certainly going to stick to this kind of hermit like thing for as long as possible.

Brian Funk (01:36:04.058)

And it's so not hermit in the scale of human time, you know? You're still way more connected than we ever were, so...

Tommy Zee (01:36:08.182)

Off.

We're so connected, man, so connected. But, you know, maybe that's where the answer is that.

if we can make considered intentional.

wise use of all the technological developments so that they become tools to us becoming better humans and unlocking what is best in us, then that is probably only possible because we take enough time to contemplate. But it's not about the removal of technology from our life. But it's that cooperation. But it can only happen to our advantage if we approach it intentionally.

And we can only do that if the ratio of our awareness to like usage and being kidnapped by let's say external things is more toward the contemplation side. Which means that like when you engage with technology you can actually use whatever it can offer right now to be prolific, to create great things and not so much time will be required.

Tommy Zee (01:37:29.337)

But it's very easy also to get lost in it.

Brian Funk (01:37:34.269)

Yeah. Well, it's programmed to keep you in. That's what I want. mean, chat GPT too. I might ask it to find me something based on what I wrote in a blog or a podcast episode. And it never just gives me the answer. says, would you like me to now turn it into a, you want, like, hey, I'm still here. Like, you don't have to leave yet. Yeah. Let's keep this going. Let's keep this going.

Tommy Zee (01:37:51.785)

Right. Yeah, good point. Good point. Let's continue. Yeah, let's continue. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah, that's where we have to kind of put our foot down and say, I'm not going to drink at this infinite well of. It's novelty and stimulation. I need to remind myself, what am I trying to do over here?

Yeah, yeah, this is good.

Brian Funk (01:38:26.418)

Stop drinking from the infinite well. Might be the title of this episode.

Tommy Zee (01:38:29.455)

Stop drinking from the infinite. There you go. Well, let's experiment with that. Might want to run it through chat GPT for some alternate titles. I'm just kidding. Go with your gut. Go with your gut, Brian. Yeah, dude, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I'm going to probably. Close down the screens now and.

Brian Funk (01:38:40.348)

Nah, screw that.

Tommy Zee (01:38:55.641)

Go watch the Chopin competition, which is more screens, but of a different kind. There's a Chopin competition happening in Warsaw. The finalists are now going to play along with the Warsaw Philharmonic. And it's been very exciting for me because the last two weeks have been that. Literature, Chopin competition in the background. The whole time I'm watching these genius kids doing genius things at the piano.

So I recommend it, man. A steady diet of literature and these timeless pieces of art performed by really capable folks.

Brian Funk (01:39:31.162)

Hmm, never heard of it, that's cool.

Brian Funk (01:39:40.786)

Nice. You too. We'll send people to Making Music for Brands. I'll put all the links in there.

Tommy Zee (01:39:43.897)

Good seeing you again, brother.

Tommy Zee (01:39:50.671)

Yeah, they can go to studios.co, Making Music for Brands. For those who want to go beyond Making Music for Brands, they can go to TommyZ.com. It's where I basically collect emails from people who want to talk about life and what is a life well lived all about. But yeah.

That's where they can find me.

Brian Funk (01:40:19.954)

Cool, well it's good stuff. I can tell you firsthand, everybody. Well thank you guys for listening. Thank you, Tommy.

Tommy Zee (01:40:26.233)

Thank you, brother.

Tommy Zee (01:40:30.083)

Blessings to everyone.

Brian Funk
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Uneven Loops for More Exciting Music