Yeuda Ben-Atar aka Side Brain on the Music Production Podcast #346

Yeuda Ben-Atar, aka Side Brain, is a musician, producer, and Ableton Certified Trainer. Yeuda has taught countless students both online and in person. He first caught my attention around 2010 using his Sega Dreamcast arcade stick and other video game controllers to perform with Ableton Live. Yeuda regularly releases Ableton Live Packs and tutorials and holds a weekly "Study Group" where he and participants explore music production in all different styles of music. 

Yeuda and I finally got to speak after years of following each other's work. He spoke about his unlikely path to finding himself at the center of controllerism and the LA Beat scene. Throughout the conversation his passion for what he does is undeniable. 

If you are in the Los Angeles area, check out the Los Angeles Ableton User Group meeting on November 15, 2023.

Listen on Apple, Spotify, Google, YouTube

Show Notes:

Thank you for listening. 

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

Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk

Hello, welcome to the music production podcast. I'm your host, Brian Funk. And on today's show, I feel like I have a guest who's been a long time coming. It's Yuta Benatar, aka Sidebrain.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (00:16.428)

to it.

Brian Funk (00:32.61)

But how long have you been a certified trainer for Ableton?

Yeuda Ben-Atar (00:35.906)

uh, since 2011 or 10, 2010, something like that.

Brian Funk (00:40.034)

2010-11. Yeah, so welcome to the show first of all. I interrupted my introduction, but Basically, I've been following your work for a long time and I've learned tons from you I've used your presets. You've got a lot of cool presets and stuff coming out now You're doing a study group, which is where people can interact and learn from you and it's it seems like it's very customizable When you were running beat lab Academy

Yeuda Ben-Atar (00:43.884)

Thank you so much.

Brian Funk (01:05.87)

constant stream of great stuff and you've definitely affected the lives of many people that have used Ableton Live. I think the first time I saw you was when you were using that Dreamcast controller I see in the background. Yeah, fighting around with that. That was really cool. You can even tell us about that maybe at some point. But I just want to say thanks for being here. Welcome to the show.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (01:16.317)

Oh, right here, yes. I've been walking it.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (01:22.488)

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you. It's a follow me for a long time as well. And pleasure being here. Thank you for having me. Very excited.

Brian Funk (01:32.49)

Yeah, I think we're like two planets that just didn't orbit past each other for some reason.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (01:37.189)

All with each other. Absolutely. Pleasure finally doing this.

Brian Funk (01:42.154)

Yeah, very excited to have you here, man. I love what you do. I think you've got a great attitude about it and with helping other people, supporting, sharing your knowledge. And I've always found too that has helped me grow because I don't have these little secrets that I rely on. And of course, when you try to teach something, you really have to know it and you learn a lot about it as you have to put it into words. And you've done such a great job sharing that. So.

Let me just say thank you first for all the work you've done.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (02:14.483)

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Brian Funk (02:17.134)

So I'm wondering, maybe we'll just jump right into what you're up to right now. You've put together a really awesome preset pack for Drift.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (02:24.848)

Yes. Okay. Yeah. So we can, yeah, let's go into just the stuff that I'm in right now, which you did mention it, the study group and the drift sample preset pack. I just kind of went into the drift, the new synthesizer that Ableton released and it's great because it's kind of available for all versions and it's very friendly for beginners. So I figured that would be a great way to kind of just expose myself more to a bigger audience.

releasing this Drift Preset Pack, I did discover a bug, which I got officially recognized and they will take care of it, which let me just say it right now, if you guys ever look at the Drift and you see that small R that it's supposed to be retriggering the phase of the oscillators between the two oscillators, it doesn't do anything. So they will fix it very soon, but yeah, it doesn't do anything. So through and it's...

Brian Funk (03:18.486)

It doesn't. See, I thought maybe like, I just don't hear it. Like, you know, I played with it. I'm like trying to listen.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (03:24.852)

Oh my God, you love me insane. Dude, you don't understand. I had two days calling Ableton, calling all the certified trainers. I know guys, you got to check this out. Like, am I going crazy? I can't come up with an example of when this button works. So after getting connected with Ableton and eventually we were just able to. Kind of record with and without invert the phase just to prove that it's perfectly canceled and there's an issue there. So anyway, they're going to fix that.

Through the exploration and I'm very proud of this pack. It's a you know, push three friendly MPE mapped with all the new features There's a lot of cool sound design tricks there for the nerds who want to open up the racks and check them out And yeah, it's on my website side brain dotnet Which I still dotnet some Japanese dudes own cyber and comm so for years now, but yeah, so cyber and dotnet It's the other thing you mentioned and I'm up for up to right now

Brian Funk (04:16.863)

Yeah.

Right.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (04:23.544)

is, you mentioned I had the school, I had BeatLab Academy, that was kind of like my baby, I opened it up back in 2014, and it's right here in the neighborhood where I live in Los Angeles, it's called Eagle Rock. It used to be an awesome small school, we started small, then we grew a bit bigger over the years, it was amazing, great community, we're all about the community, and we were just like a short kind of like, you know, like a six month course, kind of like schools like DubSpot and the likes.

A six month course, music production. It was, it's like my second home. Uh, amazing stuff, amazing people. But, um, at the end, right before the pandemic started, right at the beginning of the pandemic, um, kind of, you know, the pandemic and everything was going on with my personal life. I eventually had to close it about two years ago. Uh, so since then I kind of went back of doing similar things, but just me personally at my home.

teaching online weekly. And right now what we're doing is every week we're talking, dissecting, analyzing, and producing a different style. Like two weeks, three weeks ago, we did like Ambien jungle. And then last week we did two step garage, like Craig David and stuff like that, which I love. And we did, uh, I'm a piano this week is ragaton. So, uh, but maybe I can share a link in some way, but, uh, you can go and join the newsletter and then you just get notification of.

Those topics and if you ever want to join feel free. It's every Sunday. So that's mostly what I'm doing Yes, and I need to have more time. Maybe we'll talk about that in a second, but all the Dreamcast stuff

Brian Funk (05:57.453)

Yeah.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (06:05.044)

I will briefly mention this, but yeah, a lot of people know me through these type of things, which I still love. I love this.

Brian Funk (06:12.158)

Yeah, you're holding it right now, which is awesome. I used those to play video games when I was younger. But you use it to make music. It's an arcade stick. It's got six buttons, and it's got the traditional, it looks like an arcade machine thing. It's used literally for the Sega Dreamcast, which was such an awesome system, but kind of had a real short life. I think timing and things didn't work out for Sega. But yeah. It just kind of.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (06:22.295)

Yes.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (06:37.518)

I'll do the market unfortunately.

Brian Funk (06:41.838)

They didn't last had a lot of fun games, but what you've done with the controller was really pretty revolutionary, especially at the time.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (06:50.264)

Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. So how it started this, I was, I moved to the U S in 2009 and I, I was still fresh off the boat, you know, English speaking because in Israel, you start learning English since in second grade, but still very not the, I couldn't crack a joke if we were standing in a circle of people, you know, I still had to think about it, reverse it in my head, then tell it five minutes past, we lost the momentum, you know, but, uh, I went to a friend's place, he was a game collector.

Brian Funk (07:07.663)

Alright.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (07:18.188)

He had all the gaming consoles ever, all the remotes, classic games, like Collector, and in the corner of the room it was this thing that would just sit in there, it didn't use it. This is the arcade stick fighting versions for all the fighting games for the video, in this case the Dreamcast. I asked him, hey, can I borrow it? Maybe I can do something with it. At the time I wasn't had any technical abilities, hacking, soldering, coding, nothing. I just was bored.

because I didn't have a working permit, a working visa at the time. Just bought and took that home, start tinkering with it, start looking online. At the beginning, there were softwares, mostly building mucks at the time, that were able to just translate the messages of this to MIDI. And then if it's MIDI, it's MIDI. It's MIDI, we all know it's quite easy today with softwares like Ableton to do whatever you want with it. So I had to buy this that you can still get, this adapter.

This costs like, I'm sorry, I'm on manual zoom. This costs like 10 bucks, and then you plug it into your computer with USB. And once you can translate, today I have custom Max for Live devices that I make for this type of thing. So from there, I start uploading videos on YouTube of kind of hacking this type of stuff. People really like that. And where is it? I also, before I move, right before I move.

Brian Funk (08:43.043)

Huh.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (08:44.024)

My ex-girlfriend at the time bought me alongside with my family this monome, monomy, whatever you call it, which I was, I think, the only one in Israel who ever heard of the thing. This was auctioned by Flying Lotus on eBay because you couldn't even get it at the time. I'm talking like 2007, 2008 in Israel. No one would even hear about, even today it's kind of a small niche kind of community.

even though we can now see that from this grew all the other controllers, like the push event of today, all the grid, the kind of grid controllers like this. So this, alongside this, kind of got me into this community of LA nerdy musician hackers, the most notable figure in this community is Deadalus, if anyone knows, the amazing musician that used one of the pioneers of this device.

Brian Funk (09:21.612)

Yeah.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (09:40.676)

And I was amazed first of all, culturally, because Israel is such a small country, there's no way I'm the only one there. You know, and all of a sudden I come to LA, you on the forum, forums, who, how nerdy I am on the forum, meeting with like a scheduling and meeting with other people of the same interest. It was incredible. It was amazing for me culturally to come to a place where, Oh my God, I can, someone can entertain.

my niche nerdy hobby. So that was amazing. And what then led me to start exploring other controllers, just because it kind of became my shtick when I used to perform a side brain, I used to perform a lot in LA, that's how people used to remember me. So then I start doing like other type of controllers. And by the way, anyone can get this today for like $5, $7 on Amazon.

Brian Funk (10:11.502)

Hmm.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (10:39.372)

and just plugging it into hopefully a software that can do stuff like max, like coding and use it as a MIDI controller. Okay. And I did other stuff like the power glove. If you remember the power glove, like a frame, right? Do I have it somewhere here? Um, it's like, used to be a failed product, kind of like a video game product with motion sensing, but became iconic cultural.

Brian Funk (10:53.977)

and

Brian Funk (10:58.882)

Yeah.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (11:08.332)

just an item and it sucked. But I think it still retain a cultural significance. And there's even a documentary about the glove called The Power of the Glove. I think you can watch it in like online, The Power of the Glove. And they go and interview a bunch of people who took that glove and used it as a fashion statement or

Brian Funk (11:08.534)

It was one of those things as a kid, everybody wanted until you tried it. And then you're like, Oh, yeah, it was such a let down.

Yeah, the look of it.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (11:35.996)

They interviewed me as kind of music hacking thing. There's the one guy who is like editing animation. He did some crazy stuff with the glove. So, uh, you know, all of this kind of gaming, um, that I obviously came from that world. I'd love games. I still play games, but it was amazing for me to be able to connect those two worlds of gaming and music, thanks to all these, uh, controllers that you just play beats on. So once I released this control, I made a beat on this one.

And I put it on YouTube and it got to the first page of Reddit at the time, 2009. I don't know when it was it. Uh, so from then I kind of like, okay, wow, I think I have something cool here and start, uh, going with all those video game controllers, then start building my own controllers. And I remember one day, I'm sorry, I'm let me know if I'm just, I mean, okay, so, uh, Ableton still this today. Thank, thank you Ableton.

Brian Funk (12:26.958)

This is great. No, I love it.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (12:34.672)

artists to me or me to artists like big artists to train them whatever they need in Ableton, live performance, production, songwriting, sound design, whatever it is, as a specialist come as a product specialist coming and training those artists. One of those artists, one of the early artists that Ableton connected me to was DJ Newmark. DJ Newmark is one of the DJs for a big hip hop group from the 90s called Jurassic Five.

in 2013 or something like that around there Coachella 2013 they did a reunion Newmark after I trained him as an Ableton trainer we got connected he's a great guy he called me said dude can you build me a controller that is a necklace that just have a lot of vinyls records on it and every time I hit a vinyl it's a different sound essentially he wanted a huge necklace of vinyls it's a drum machine You can go and look up Jurassic 5 Reunion Coachella

You'll see them at the end, at part of the one of the show. He comes out with this necklace that I've built that I had no idea how to do, but you just say yes, and then you figure it out. What? Yes. What, which we know what I did. It turned out great. And there was also a second version of the, of the necklace after a cat chemist, who's the other DJ of Jurassic five came out with this crazy kind of guitar, like city, Jake kind of looking thing. Uh, and they even have this huge turntable on stage, like a lot of props. Cause

Brian Funk (13:39.988)

You say yes, figure.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (14:00.256)

The DJs in this hip hop group do get a lot of spotlight. It's not only the rappers. Anyway, so all of this kind of came into controllerism. I also got a shout out some of my influencers at the time that I watched from Israel, like Moldova. Moldova, people in the community know him. People outside of the community might not know him so well because, uh, you know, he's not, I would say his, um, innovation in controllerism.

Really inspired me to do all of this stuff. And I remember there was like a really old video of him with like a hacked novation SL mark two keyboard, like everything is like tinkered with and hacked. And he explained what is the polarism and yeah. So, uh, I just want to shout out him and all the dead elusive and all the community of the kind of like this LA nerdy beat scene and of course, all the low end theory. I don't know how famous low end theory is, but when I came to LA.

Brian Funk (14:41.386)

Yeah, taped together and yeah, right.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (14:58.856)

It was like, for me, it was a mind boggling experience of going to the Lowen Theoret, which used to be in the airliner club in L.A. They still exist, the airliner, but they don't do the Lowen Theoret anymore. It used to be these legendary nights that I remember when I got here, it was empty. Every Wednesday it was empty. Year later, you can't even go in. It's so packed. Or like Prince just came to check it out. Erika Badu in the audience, you know, stuff like that, because it was so legendary. So.

Uh, the kind of innovative underground LA beats, what used to be known as LA beats. Um, I should be say, uh, I, you know, it's still, it's still surreal for me to think that I experienced that as a local air quotes, cause I'm a foreigner of course. So, uh, so yeah, all of that kind of community of nerds, controllerisms, and of course the kind of LA beats in the music behind the, what I was trying to make. Uh, I own that, you know, all.

Brian Funk (15:39.354)

Mm. Tread.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (15:55.496)

my experience of LA and the music and all of that stuff. Now, when it comes to education, that's like the music and the controllers, because I don't do much of this in class, this is just for me. The education part, which is the main thing that I do today, and content and tutorials and preset packs, stuff like that, that came, I would say, very early on in my life when I went to the, and I'm not trying to trigger any people, this is a super sensitive topic right now, but I grew up in Israel.

Israel, it's mandatory to go to the army. When you're 18 after high school, they send you off to basic training. It's not a co, I wish I had with college. The college experience looks amazing. I'm so jealous, but, um, we went to the army and in the army, I was a dog trainer and they wanted me to stay in a teach the young soldiers how to like be a dog trainer, uh, and very early on I was 18 teaching kids. I saw, I had this natural.

way of explaining things in that time just how to train dogs but uh... was explained that after the army i went to music school in tel aviv and i was the guy that my classmates are calling to solve technical issues hey dude the crack plug-in doesn't download how do i crack so uh... i also noticed a well why do i call in me well i saw him very early on i noticed that

technically savvy, I am very fluent or natural with this, everything that is technology or just kind of solving troubleshooting and stuff. And also how I explain, it seems to be in a very simple way, kind of explaining kind of these complex topics, which led me to have to do the certification program, the Ableton certification program back in 2010, it was in Miami, they sent us to Miami. And I remember I was so nervous.

I never was nervous as I was there like the day before the certification program. We got there, I think five people, only two of us passed. And I remember it was like incredible. I like it really validated. Okay. I think now I can represent being a certified trainer, you know, with honor. Uh, and since then I help, I try to help as much as I can train other, uh, certified trainers, there's a list of who I'm helped.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (18:20.16)

past the certification program, it's very important for me for the certified trainers to maintain a super high level of presentation and technical skill. Cause it reflects on all of us, you know, and I want, still want that certification program of Ableton that they maintained as something that is very, you know, not as open as other certification programs for other software, which I appreciate kind of gives some credibility to this status.

So, uh, so yeah, so that's how the education part came. And once I became certified trainer, I start working with all the, start working at all the, in all the music schools in LA, uh, SAE creativity was called at the time, um, scratch Academy and all the schools in LA before I opened my school and once I opened my school, that was my thing for seven years. And now I'm doing my thing again, but privately just a side brain.

Yes.

Brian Funk (19:21.07)

It's an awesome story and it's so cool that you were able to find that as somebody moving into America where you have kind of like a place already. I think Los Angeles and New York are one of those, those are the types of places. Once you're there, you're kind of part of it. They're designed that way. That's people from all over the world that show up and you found your spot and you were right there at the right time too.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (19:42.164)

Exactly.

Brian Funk (19:47.454)

A lot of these people and these events you're talking about are the very same things for me, where I kind of realized that you can do electronic music, computer music, live in a way that's actually interesting, where it's not just you're playing a CD or an iPod or something like that, and it's a performance.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (20:05.28)

So you might have, you might have had the same. Accidental crisis where your parents thought you were DJ for years. And I don't even know what to explain to them that I'm not a DJ. I was never a DJ. I don't know how to DJ. It's a whole other world, but, uh, at the time you're still struggling with it.

Brian Funk (20:18.423)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (20:22.494)

I'm still, uh, Oh, I am. I, I've DJed a wedding last weekend and I don't, it's the second one I've ever done. And it's their favors really for friends and family. But what I realized right away was it's not just playing music. It's not just putting on a playlist. There's a whole, you're part of the staff and getting this event. It was so in over my head. And, uh, and the thing is.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (20:34.581)

That's nice. That's nice. No, no, that's it is nice

Brian Funk (20:52.286)

you know, the people that you're doing it for, they know, and yeah, you're just helping us out, but everyone else expects a professional. So yeah, they don't know. And they're looking at me like, what are you doing? Like, that's not how it goes. And so.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (20:58.101)

Mmm, they don't know.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (21:04.373)

But no, but dude, weddings are, I'm sure it was fun. With the friends. It's amazing.

Brian Funk (21:07.938)

I'm very happy I was able to help, but I would never dare try to say to anybody that that's what I do. But you're right, a lot of what we do when we perform, say, with Ableton Live, there's definitely cues that are taken from DJs. Some of those techniques and those movements, the filter sweeps and mixing between tracks can be part of it. And that's what I really learned.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (21:30.228)

Mmm.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (21:33.944)

All right.

Brian Funk (21:35.926)

with a lot of these people mold over, Tom Cosum was doing that. They were doing songs, they were making original music on the spot and it was interesting and it was done through computers and controllers. And that's also like around the time when your stuff started coming up. And you're also doing this, I should just remind everybody, this is before Max For Live. So now Max For Live is built into Ableton and it's

Yeuda Ben-Atar (22:01.184)

Mmm.

Brian Funk (22:05.362)

really useful and there's so many devices now, but you are flying, you're one of the reasons, I'm sure, why it's now incorporated into the software for the stuff people like you are doing.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (22:14.312)

Oh, I, I don't know. I don't know, but yes, I was, it was before Max for life. It was still max, but standalone separate software. Yeah. No, you're right. Yeah, absolutely. I, I max for life is amazing and I, I don't want to take credit for it. I'm not. Yeah. Thank you.

Brian Funk (22:23.13)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (22:33.35)

Okay, well that came out of my mouth. But I do think people like you that were pushing those boundaries were probably an influence if nothing else to say like, hey, maybe we can, you know, kind of do some integration.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (22:45.176)

Could be. No, it could be. And I'm glad they did. I'm very glad they did. And I don't want to point out for the DJing stuff that I think it's coming like as a pyramid and everything kind of blurs now. And there's so much stuff that DJs are doing that can kind of be considered live production almost. And like you said, a lot of stuff that us live electronic musicians are doing that are essentially DJing in some ways.

Brian Funk (22:49.45)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (23:12.17)

Yeah, it's exciting. And I tell a lot of people when you're building your live set for performance, it's an instrument you're building, really. You've got these devices and entrance. But it's not like a guitar where you just pick it up and now you're playing it. You also have to build it. And you have to figure out how it works. So there's another level of complexity to it.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (23:21.248)

Playground, yes.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (23:27.692)

Hmm, you're right.

I feel like if you do build it, you can get to a point where you pick it up and play, but you have to build it. It's, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's part of the fun, I would say. And it's never ending. You're always building it, like you're always improving it or repairing it.

Brian Funk (23:39.372)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (23:44.371)

Yes.

Brian Funk (23:48.726)

The set I use for live performance is the same. It's like an ancestor or what would it be? Yeah, ancestor, right? Yes, it was originally made in probably live eight or nine and it's well over 10 years old, but it's just iterated.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (23:54.696)

You still use like a generation of.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (24:04.044)

Amazing to be completely honest. I can be completely honest. I performed for years, hundreds of shows with a computer and controllers. A lot of where it was the push two at a time push one. Of course the video game controllers and stuff, the power gloves to perform a lot. The last two years I did maybe like two or three shows. None of them were the computer. It was all, um, just the keyboard synthesizers. And I got to say the

kind of just the heavy, not the heaviness, just the kind of the worrying about troubleshooting that is not existing anymore. Just the worry of the computer and everything that is involved with it, for me, allowed me to enjoy the show and the performance better. And I never really tried to perform without a computer. So these past two years were very revealing for me and they were amazing.

And not to say, I just don't want, not to say that there wasn't a computer on stage because I had other band members, but I was for the first time, not the one with the laptop, not the one as the Ableton musician in the group. And it was amazing. So what I'm saying is as an Ableton musician also comes a lot of responsibility. And it means that, you know, you have to also know how to troubleshoot and be prepared and calm down and everything's okay and be prepared if things happen

performance what to do, but having been liberated from the computer was a great experience for me.

Brian Funk (25:37.17)

Yeah, and I had a similar experience in playing with a band again, playing guitar. I see you got some guitars and...

Yeuda Ben-Atar (25:42.064)

I would bet exactly. Everything's live, live automation.

Brian Funk (25:46.642)

Yeah, right. It's sometimes that just blows my mind. I pick up an acoustic guitar and I don't have to turn it on. I don't need batteries. I'm gonna need controllers. It's, it just goes, it's always on. You don't have to charge it. Yeah.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (25:57.108)

It's just goes, it's a different experience. It's different getting lost. Yeah, absolutely dude. I don't know if you see, I have a bunch of guitars. There's not even all of them. I love it. I love it so much. Although the last couple of years were more keys and piano, but guitars will always have a special place.

Brian Funk (26:13.742)

Right. Yeah. Now you're, um, this, these meetings you're doing the, um, study group, you want to tell me about that a little bit, cause this is something I do a little bit myself, um, more monthly thing, but I've personally been wanting to get into doing it more often because for one, it's a very good discipline and that's something I've learned by committing myself to doing certain things that when I first started releasing packs, I said, I'm going to do one every week.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (26:15.66)

Yes.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (26:21.116)

Oh yes. Yes. So...

Yeuda Ben-Atar (26:28.479)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (26:43.102)

And that gave me such a discipline that I used to. Yeah, it was over a year. And then I pretty kept consistent and still make them very regular, but it came at a time where I was in a band and the discipline kind of came automatically because we had practice a couple of times a week, but then once that fell away, I needed something that would give me that on my own. And that was a big part of it. Just that it got me.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (26:43.157)

Hmm.

You did it for a long time.

Brian Funk (27:12.782)

creating music and playing with sounds all the time in a direction, not just to kind of strumming the guitar or whatever. But yeah, I want to ask you about how that study group's going and how you've set it up, all that kind of gritty stuff.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (27:28.436)

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So, uh, I, for the sense I closed the school, I kind of took this forced, but still sabbatical of kind of like just, Oh my God, I ran a business for seven years, give me a second to just, uh, breathe, mental mentally. Um, then I started kind of looking into, okay, I worked for this plugin company for a couple of months, polyverse, if anyone knows great plugins. Um,

as a content director and then they had some layoffs. So I just like kinda, okay, let me see what's up. Maybe the schools, I cannot longer charge what I used to charge 10 years ago. I feel like I'm also much more established with my experience of teaching. So I'm too expensive for schools. So I figured, okay, I gotta do something on my own. And it came kinda naturally, is one day I just kinda, I got.

somewhat upset with the world. I can't find a job that can hold me financially. Let me do my own thing. Um, so I started doing this weekly things, uh, which is also connected to beat lab. Beat lab used to have workshops, kind of this one time workshops where we talk about specific styles of music when I was, and I'm connecting a lot of different things in my life right now, when I was in the army, uh, probably as a way of escapism, just escaping reality.

of being an 18 year old in the army. I was a pacifist. They gave me a rifle. What do you want from me? I'm an 18 year old kid. So my way of escaping it was just having headphones all the time, listening to music that was the days of soul sick. I don't know if anyone remembers. It's kind of like a irritation of Napster in the early, kind of mid 2000. It was Napster, right? You can download music from others. People computers are online and it allowed me kind of this, give me access to this.

Brian Funk (29:13.134)

Hmm. Okay.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (29:24.788)

world, this endless world of unknown music, music that I never heard before, because they released a new albums, music from around the world. And I in a fanatic way, in an extreme way was listening to new music. And that's an important point. It was new music, not necessarily new 2000, whatever the year was, but new to me, music that I never heard. And the amount of music that I listened to in those three years, you have to serve for three years, um, is enormous. It's crazy.

And through those listening of the music, my, I just start kind of analyzing it for myself, just to differentiate between the different styles, the different genres, and asking myself questions, wait, what, what makes this genre this? Read up about it online, research it, and really kind of, and then just yapp about it to my friends that didn't care, maybe cared, but I was just like, oh, this genre, or this sub genre, you know, all those things and

what kind of led me to my most favorite classics today, which is talking about specific styles where they come from, why are they those styles, what makes them, and of course, also together with the students producing something in that style. So the user group, or the user group, the study group started in that sense where I just give them to ask any questions and they lead the two-hour session.

And at the beginning, it was a lot of drum programming, bassline, stuff like that. And in recent weeks, we're just talking about specific styles. This Sunday's Ragaton. And last week was I'm a piano and all these amazing styles that, uh, so great to explore. And I also think is extremely beneficial for people who are learning music production, as this essentially is how music develops by taking all your favorite influence.

And kind of combining to one new style that is you. So, uh, knowing a broad range of styles, I think can only be beneficial for more music production techniques, aesthetic kind of like colors and just overall vibe and stuff like that. So that's what we do every week in the study group, which is. Yes.

Brian Funk (31:37.062)

That's great. And it's such a good point about learning new styles. And I got to experience that when I was learning computer production, whether it started with Pro Tools and Logic and eventually got to live. So much of the information that was on YouTube in those early days when you first started to realize YouTube was more than just videos, it's you can learn from it. There was so much electronic music going on at that time. And it wasn't what I was into.

but I learned so many cool techniques that helped me in other styles and it really broadened my interest in other styles too. And at this point now, pretty much anything you can put on, I can find interest, whether it's songwriting, whether it's the rhythms, whether it's just the production, because you start to just see everything as something you can kind of pick and take and put in your own little mix there.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (32:34.104)

Absolutely. It's interesting you say that because I also feel the same. I think it's some sort of kind of like sonic, audible maturity of just, there used to be some styles when I was young that I would not listen to. Specifically, there's a style in Israel which belongs, Israel is kind of like a combination of all the Jews. There's Arab Jews, there's Eastern European Jews. Eastern European Jews from Poland, from Russia, from there. Arab Jews.

Uh, like North Africa, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, you know, all those Syria, everything. My, my dad is from Tunisia. My mom is from Poland. You know, it's, that's how, uh, we live. Um, so kind of the accumulation of everything, um, that, um, uh, you know, it's a, what are we talking about? I'm sorry. I just lost my train of thought.

Brian Funk (33:25.446)

or just the collecting the different ingredients in different places.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (33:28.756)

Oh, yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So there was one music. Yes. There was one music that I hated, which is kind of like the Middle Eastern Israeli music. Um, which is, I guess, the parallels for the Western ear is Arabic music. And I would not listen to it. And I can tell you today, I absolutely adore it. I love it. And I take a lot of inspiration. I have a special guitar here called Oud.

Brian Funk (33:55.49)

Mm, yeah. Okay.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (33:56.804)

It's kind of like this really old school, Middle Eastern guitar, which I love. A lot of X, yeah, it's all double. So again, I feel like it's a maturity thing, but also interesting, I read an article that said that people after the age of 30 stop listening to new music. They mostly listen to music that they know and like. So I wonder if it's just because we're a musician or that article was completely bogus.

Brian Funk (33:59.418)

lot of extra strings on there right yeah right

Brian Funk (34:25.546)

No, I think it's right. I think you almost get frozen in your teenage years. I think they say that about, I've read that about men, like we just stop changing fashion from like whenever we were like about 20 years old and then we just stay there. But I think as a musician you're curious because I know I listen to a lot of music. It's almost a selfish way of listening where it's...

Yeuda Ben-Atar (34:36.428)

We get stuck? Yeah.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (34:40.78)

Something to about that. I can see that. Absolutely.

Brian Funk (34:54.762)

What can I get from this? What can I add to my own stuff? How can I take something from this? So I don't mind going to new places and exploring new things because I know that maybe that might plant a seed that inspires me to do something tomorrow. And that's kind of what I'm looking for almost every time I listen to music now is like inspiration, something to get me excited to go do it myself.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (35:20.48)

I can't agree more. I'm looking for the weird stuff, you know, stuff that I haven't heard before. It's all very exciting.

Brian Funk (35:25.166)

Uh-huh. Yeah, and I think if I didn't have that, I'd probably be sticking to a lot of the stuff that I grew up on and that helped me identify myself as whoever I am. Yeah. But that's the beauty of it. It keeps growing. It keeps changing. There's more stuff all the time.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (35:32.96)

Mm.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (35:36.928)

Right, no absolutely.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (35:45.676)

It is, it is. I do want to mention the Ableton user group for Los Angeles, if that's okay, if we can talk about that. Um, we got a meeting coming up. Yes. I just, I'm very excited about it because, uh, we, I'm running the Los Angeles user group meeting meetings for Ableton for long time now, 10 years, I don't know how long, and we used to be very active. We used to meet at different music schools around LA.

Brian Funk (35:56.01)

Yeah, please. Yeah, because you got a meeting coming up.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (36:15.904)

but we stopped because of the pandemic and we haven't met for over two years. We did an online meeting last week, not last week, last month. Couple of weeks ago, there was an official event at the Ableton offices in Pasadena. They have big offices here in Pasadena. It was their official event. I was hosting it and it was great, kind of like more like a push, kind of a lot of presentation and stuff.

But that was the first time the Ableton community, at least in LA, came together in this big, in this case, was official event for Ableton, which was great. So I'm very excited. We have a meeting coming up November 15th. It's going to be in a music school in LA called Point Blank, which is an international school. I'm sure some people heard of it. They have a branch here, a new branch actually, they moved locations in LA, which I didn't see yet, so I'm excited to see that. November 15th at night.

We're going to have a few presenters including Kobe. Kobe is a crazy finger drummer and he's going to show how to just build drum racks for finger drumming. Super awesome guy. I'm going to do some push three beat making and we're also going to have Connor who's going to showcase a really cool app on the iPhone called Scheme, which is really great for Ableton and stuff for mapping. And we're also going to have Alberto, which I'm sure you met.

Brian Funk (37:39.662)

Hmm, Alberto Chapa. Yeah.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (37:41.384)

Alberto, yeah, from Ableton visiting town. Just kind of checking, just want to check out the user group and is going to talk about all the exciting stuff that Ableton has going for them. And that's it, we're just super excited to do it again, finally bring back the community. Before the pandemic, we had like, we used to have a few super big events. So we really want to bring the community back together, kind of really, right, kind of reinstate all this community.

And we are, I personally, as the leader of the community, I'm still kind of trying to explore different platforms on how to communicate with the community. Maybe you have some suggestions because we used to do it on Facebook. It doesn't seem that Facebook is as popular as it used to be. Now we're trying alongside Facebook to also use meetup.com. It's another website. But if anyone have any suggestions, of course, we're open to it. But yeah, if you wanna check it out.

Just search Los Angeles user group. I'm sorry. Ableton user group, Los Angeles, Ableton user group, Los Angeles. You can find probably all the meetup or the meetup.com or the Facebook group. Either or a works. We already posted the flyers and everything for the next event, November 15th. So if you're in LA, a highly recommend checking it out. I can't say why, but this one specifically, you should check it out, but there's going to be amazing presenters. And.

Brian Funk (38:46.455)

Right.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (39:08.undefined)

really great opportunity to bring all the community together. Yes.

Brian Funk (39:10.734)

Hmm. Do you guys do any video for that? I know the point is to be in person, but.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (39:15.552)

So if it's online, yeah, if it's online, it's always a video. There's actually already a video of our last meetup from last month. It was a workshop about synthesis with wavetable and drift and it's online. You can check it out. It's actually on my website. Um, but, uh, you can't get to it from the website. You have to like go and hopefully I can share a link, but if you go to that, uh, Facebook group or the meetup group, you can see those links there.

Essentially, I will say it, and if it's a video, people can pause it, or just the audio people can pause it. It's sidebrain.net, slash, let me make sure I'm actually saying it correctly. So it's sidebrain.net, slash, Ableton, dash, user, dash, group, dash, loss, dash, Angeles. Okay, Ableton user group, Los Angeles. And that's what you, Ableton user group in Los Angeles. It's also what you should search.

If you want to join our Facebook group or if you want to join the meetup.com and get notified about all the future meetings and stuff. Okay. And they're all free. They're open. They're for the community. We always bring special guests and stuff like that. Officially from Ableton, a lot of times they bring us like swag to give away bags and stickers and stuff. So it's supported by Ableton and it's all for the community.

Brian Funk (40:32.558)

That's awesome. So good to hear that it's happening in person again too, because there's nothing like that. We're lucky we had Zoom. We're lucky we have online for, we got through all that, but there's nothing like in person. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (40:35.872)

Yeah, dude, me too.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (40:41.077)

Honestly?

I appreciate it more now. You know, I'm more now than ever. I was like, yes, I'm can't wait. Can't excited to see everyone present all those things.

Brian Funk (40:50.967)

Yeah.

Yeah, I think I saw some video from the Pasadena thing that happened. Chuck Sutton was there, right? He was doing some pretty awesome stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I want to talk to him. I've been following him too for a while. Yeah, he's a cool guy.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (40:58.268)

Oh yeah. Chuck was there. We had Chuck is crazy. It does amazing things. Oh dude, definitely. Yeah. He does crazy stuff. Very cool guys. Super nice. I got connected with him actually a night before there was another event for I, I it's a headphone company. So it was next to my house. Oh, so a very good friend of mine who used to be for 12 years in Ableton, you know,

Brian Funk (41:17.754)

Yeah, I got a pair of them. I love them.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (41:26.104)

kind of ran his, not ran his course. It's just, you know, he needed a change. So he switched to III. Now he runs the kind of us operations and they did an event with Kobe that I mentioned, the finger drummer, uh, showcasing, uh, the new wireless low latency speakers that they just released. And that's where I met Chuck. That's the commando school. That's where I met Chuck and, um, Chuck is an awesome guy. He presented and you should definitely have him is amazing.

Brian Funk (41:45.494)

Yeah, that's so cool. The monitors, yeah.

Brian Funk (41:56.234)

Yeah.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (41:57.172)

Yes. And I saw you, you just had Alexia was that, did you just had Alexia Reiner? Well, there was something. Oh, Dan, I'm sorry. Yeah. Cause she was interviewing Chuck at Pasadena. That's just the connection though. She was the main interview, the moderator of the, of Chuck's presentation.

Brian Funk (42:03.166)

No, I think maybe Dan did on Ableton Music Producer's podcast. There's another, I love that show.

Brian Funk (42:12.791)

Uh-huh.

Brian Funk (42:18.398)

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I'll put a link to all this stuff that you're mentioning. Yeah, I'm taking notes furiously. And...

Yeuda Ben-Atar (42:22.44)

Okay, amazing. Yes. Thank you so much stuff. Amazing. Yes. Uh, also I can't, you know what? I will say what it is, but, uh, me and a developer, Omar, Omar Hamidu, he's from Portugal, really great. He's like, he is in Portugal and we're working together. We used to work together in the past to develop a max for live devices for BitLab and we have a bunch of great ones that are no longer available for download. We're going to re release them through side brain.

The one is coming up very soon. I just want to put it out there. It's a MaxFar device that you can put right before Wavetable or Drift. And for me, what I wanted is I wanted a way to make Wavetable and Drift more like eight-beat synthesizers, kind of like this old school stuff. So what it does, it's a sequencer. You put it on. You map it to the oscillator pitch. And then the oscillator pitch just runs through. There's a lot of chords. There's like 30 types of chords. But it runs through very quickly.

the pitching of the oscillator. You can do that to all oscillators. So it just turns the wavetable and drift into this eight-bit oscillators. It should be out very soon. I just wanna say that it's another thing that right now we're working on, releasing some Axe for Live devices, mostly like this type of small tools to do some. And of course, I'll make a tutorial and I'll showcase what it's all about. Just wanna put it out there and shout out to Omar.

Brian Funk (43:45.13)

I love that. That 8-bit anything and I'm in. I love it. Yeah. Right, that sounds like a lot of fun.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (43:47.912)

8-bit, that's all you gotta say. 8-bit, I'm there. But yeah, so that is a lot of fun, that's for sure. I'm already testing it out, it's worked great. It's super fun, yes.

Brian Funk (43:59.934)

Nice. Well, listen, I know you got to go. You got some things happening here. Yep.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (44:03.888)

I know, yes, it's Halloween at the kids' school, ball festival. I don't know if you noticed, I just need a hat. I have a cowboy outfit on me. I just gonna, I need to bring the hat. So I won't disappoint the kids. Thank you. Won't disappoint the kids. I gotta work. But, fine, this was a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Brian Funk (44:11.506)

Oh, do ya? Oh, hey. It looks, it looks good. Yeah.

Brian Funk (44:22.474)

Yeah, yeah, I had a great time. You know, I knew we would and I guess we'll have to do another sometime because there's so many. Yeah.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (44:26.92)

Yeah. Honestly, the time went by so quickly. I would love to do another one and I would love to check out how do I get into your monthlies? What? How is that? Well, you said something about you meeting monthly online.

Brian Funk (44:40.178)

Oh yeah, I do that through my music production club and it's just a Zoom meeting. Yeah, I'll send you so that you can show up and yeah, we mostly like make music together live. We do some prompt and then we go for it. It's been really fun lately to just create and then we share what we made. And it's high pressure, you know, you only got like an hour. But the cool thing about that is it takes the pressure off in a way because no one's making a masterpiece. But it's.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (44:43.664)

Okay, I'll have to check it out. Sweet. Okay. Awesome.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (44:55.126)

Love you.

Brian Funk (45:10.006)

What did you do with this weird prompt we came up with? All right, here you go. Yeah, yeah. And it's just, again, it's just one of those, it's like when you go to the gym and there's other people that are still working out and you're like, well, I can't stop because that guy's still doing push-ups, you know, whatever it is. So it gets you motivated. It's very similar to that. Well, nice. So I got all this stuff in the show notes, but sidebrain.net for you guys listening. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you, for being here. This is awesome.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (45:13.159)

And a lot of times people continue it and finish it. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (45:26.156)

Yeah. Right.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (45:29.752)

Absolutely. Nice. Well, right.

Yeuda Ben-Atar (45:38.552)

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Brian Funk (45:39.239)

and to be continued.

podcastBrian Funkyeuda ben-atar, side brain, music production podcast