How to Keep Creating When Life Gets Busy with Joshua Blum - Music Production Podcast #415

podcast
Written By Brian Funk

Joshua Blum is the host of The Thirteenth Hour Podcast, a show about the creative process as it relates to writing, music, and imagination. He’s also the author of The Thirteenth Hour, a fantasy adventure novel, and the creator of Once Upon a Dream—an 80’s-inspired synth soundtrack to accompany the book. Josh builds a rich creative world around his stories, blending music, writing, and visual art to tell bigger, immersive narratives.

In this conversation, we talk about the routines, strategies, and mindset shifts that help Josh stay creative while managing the demands of everyday life. He shares how working within time constraints forces him to be more focused and playful, how constraints fuel creativity, and why creative output doesn’t need to be perfect to be meaningful. We also talk about nostalgia, world-building, and how developing recurring characters and themes across mediums can unlock a deeper connection to your work.

This episode is a simulcast with The Thirteenth Hour Podcast, and it was a real pleasure to swap perspectives with someone who thinks deeply about creativity across disciplines.

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Takeaways:

  • Time Constraints Can Be Creative Superpowers - Josh works in short, focused bursts—15 minutes at a time—which keeps him consistent and prevents overwhelm.

  • Build a World, Not Just a Project - By creating music, stories, and visuals around a central fictional world, Josh finds new ways to stay inspired and expand his creative universe.

  • Let Go of Perfect - A finished piece that’s “good enough” beats the idea that never leaves your head. Josh treats creativity like a muscle—small, steady reps matter.

  • Routines Protect Creativity - Morning journaling, evening music sessions, and other small rituals help Josh build momentum and reduce decision fatigue.

  • Nostalgia as a Lens, Not a Limitation - Josh embraces his love of ’80s aesthetics not as a gimmick, but as a creative compass that helps him stay aligned with his artistic voice.

Links:

Thank you for listening. 

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:04.45)

How's it going, Josh?

Josh (00:05.967)

That's going great. I'm really happy to be able to talk with you. I, yeah, yeah. You have a meeting of the minds on a Saturday morning. We're recording this the morning after Halloween. So hopefully anybody who's listening, nobody's house got tepee'd or whatever. I don't know if people still do that.

Brian Funk (00:09.356)

Yeah, me too.

Brian Funk (00:16.686)

Yep.

Brian Funk (00:22.518)

I bet they do. didn't get it happening here. It was very windy, kind of dangerously windy here in New York, Long Island. So there weren't a lot of people out braving the elements.

Josh (00:27.48)

Yeah.

Josh (00:32.547)

gotcha. Okay.

Josh (00:37.289)

Okay, you know, I don't know if you if you have seen it but there's this there's a scene in the movie ET

Do you know there's like that scene of the Halloween scene where they kind of all walk around and it's kind of like setting. It's a California setting rate, but it's like it's like probably five o'clock hasn't quite gotten dark yet and you can see all the kids in the costumes and stuff like that. So I always think of that when I think of Halloween and I happen to I live in a fairly rural area, but we live in a place where there there are there are more houses and stuff like that. And it kind of it kind of looked like that last night, which was pretty it wasn't quite as

Brian Funk (00:46.571)

E.T.A.

Josh (01:15.025)

crowded as that but it was a little, it had rained a lot the night before and you kind of saw like in the background you know it was sort of like the dark clouds above and there's a sunset and then these bunch of kids walking around you know with their parents and stuff like that. That's the only difference I think between the ET thing is like now you have parents that are walking around with the kids. Whereas before we, there were no parents but yeah.

Brian Funk (01:35.03)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:40.706)

Yeah, just come back eventually. Dinner, dark, whatever it was.

Josh (01:45.167)

Yeah, yeah, was, R10 actually has it, it starts at five and it ends at eight. They kind of have like a set thing, I guess. And I don't remember that ever being the case when I was a kid.

Brian Funk (01:58.71)

Is that for trick-or-treating?

Josh (02:00.303)

Yeah, and then like, and we kind of always knew like if the house didn't have any lights on, I mean they probably just weren't home and there was no point in going, but they actually say, the township says like, leave your lights on to show that, you're open to people coming to your room. It's much more formal in a way.

Brian Funk (02:16.685)

Hmm. Okay.

Brian Funk (02:22.347)

Yeah, we never had that. don't think there's any kind of word on that these days either. Yeah, you just went and if the house is dark, you probably knew not to waste your time waiting for someone to not come to the door.

Josh (02:33.739)

Right, right, right, Yeah. There's a sort of a loop. It's probably about a mile around the neighborhood and usually, like my son is a little older at this point. He's eight now, but I mean still, like once he's done like a loop, he's pretty much good. And my daughter's a little older than that, so she kind of wants to try to hit more houses and you know.

Brian Funk (03:00.193)

Yeah, branch out a little. I can go faster than you guys.

Josh (03:00.815)

get more candy and yeah yeah yeah so uh but yeah yeah i think i we i don't know if we could probably talk about halloween but i mean i think we're here to talk about some other things like music and creative stuff and stuff like that so i i have to say i love your background

It's not a background, but in back of you, I guess for the people who are just hearing this on audio, all the lights and the gadgets and the effect pedals and stuff like that.

Brian Funk (03:26.359)

Yeah, the toys.

Brian Funk (03:33.612)

Yeah, I've got a bunch of synthesizers and some audio effects and the interface connected to the computer and everything. It's all kind of right within reach and it's all connected too. So I really just have to kind of open up a track. I use Ableton Live and open up a track and just, I can pull in like any of those sounds real fast.

Josh (03:39.865)

Yeah.

Josh (03:44.045)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (03:52.278)

huh.

Brian Funk (03:59.176)

And it's really because I guess I'm lazy. Because if I have to connect the cables and find it and figure out which audio channel it's coming through, that might be enough time for me to decide, I either don't feel like doing this today or...

Josh (04:02.351)

Hahaha

Josh (04:16.879)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (04:18.477)

I'll just use like a plugin or something that's a little bit easier to call up. I find the creative process and all of that to be so fragile. You know, it doesn't take much to derail me from doing it. If there's a chore to be done, I'll do the chore. If there's some other dish to be washed or some other excuse to avoid doing this, even though I love it so much, I'll often go that way.

Josh (04:22.243)

Right.

Josh (04:28.249)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Josh (04:38.147)

Yeah.

Josh (04:45.604)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (04:48.431)

I think it's because of the unknown. You I don't know if I'm gonna be successful in what I do today. I don't know if it's gonna work out and be productive. I know I will vacuum the floor though, and that will get done and it will be clean. And you know, all those little other things that pop up along the way. So I try to keep the friction from starting to be as little as possible.

Josh (04:55.151)

Sure, sure.

Josh (05:01.263)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Josh (05:16.515)

Yeah, that's nice. I recently decided to create kind of a little nook where...

I would have most of the music stuff and it's sort of, you can't see it from the camera angle here, but it's kind of in that direction. It's a keyboard and guitars and stuff like that. And then the problem I had before was that the cables sort of weren't long enough to actually reach a computer. So I created a little area because the way I would tend to record was I would play everything kind of on instrument's

first and then kind of get that more or less right and then kind of record it from there. so I was like, you know, think I want to this year, that was a goal I remember for this year, 2025 was like, I'm going to finally delve into trying to do some of this electronically. And I put it off for a really long time, for years, And

I felt it was finally time. So I needed a set up that I was still kind of fiddling around with it. But that's been sort of this year's project.

Brian Funk (06:34.465)

Yeah, I think the best thing you can do with those types of things is just take any step at all. And even if it's buying a longer cable or even a little folding table that you can put in some place so that you just sort of force yourself to actually take the step. Even if it's not going to probably be what you wanted and what you imagine it to be, the full setup. But...

Josh (06:41.337)

Yeah, yeah.

Josh (06:47.491)

Right. Yeah.

Josh (06:53.667)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (06:59.105)

Right, sure.

Brian Funk (07:01.483)

I don't think we really know what that looks like until we start putting it together anyway. Once you start moving stuff around and getting your spaces together, then you start to realize like, Ooh, it'd be nice if I could have this or that or do that rather than trying to buy everything. And then, all right, let me put it all together. I think that's a way we procrastinate too. I need all the right stuff first.

Josh (07:06.137)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Josh (07:15.575)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I don't...

Josh (07:21.687)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I know you talk about that someone on your show, and I always thought that it's kind of interesting because, you walk into a music store and there's endless stuff to buy. Right. And if we don't have it near where we live now, but.

One place I used to live had a guitar, like a guitar center, you I don't know if you have them near where you are. it's like, you know, you can pick up all the guitars and play. Yeah, pretty much. Right. And then, but then there's like the section where they have like the keyboards and all this, all the little digital thingies that you can get. And so it's, I mean, I think.

Brian Funk (07:45.515)

Yeah, that's all we got left really.

Josh (08:02.999)

it's possible to spend like a ton of money on this stuff and actually not doing anything with it. I think for many people or they get it and they don't necessarily use it. I'm just curious in your take on that, you know, since, you know, this is something that you work with people on, that, do you notice that tendency? Like, and I guess the same could be true for podcasting too, though you need a lot less, but there's still plenty of stuff you can buy. And do you notice that tendency? They got, I got to buy all this and I got to have this perfect,

Brian Funk (08:07.531)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (08:29.386)

Yeah.

Josh (08:32.913)

you know, and set up and sound and all this other stuff and then they use all the time just getting it kind of set up and then when it actually comes time to make something, they don't have time for it or they burn out the steam from that. I don't know. What are your thoughts on that?

Brian Funk (08:37.782)

Definitely.

Brian Funk (08:52.234)

Yeah, it's easy to become a collector of things. This could be all kinds of stuff. It could be exercise. I need the right clothes. need to get the right gym equipment or weight or whatever. But with the musical stuff, you can walk into your local music store or guitar center or whatever and...

Josh (08:54.551)

Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah.

Josh (09:00.748)

Right. Yeah.

Brian Funk (09:13.642)

Yeah, it can be overwhelming. And it's actually worse now because then you can also go on Sweetwater, you can go on Amazon, and you can see every single thing that is available to purchase in the whole world. And it can make you feel like I need this thing, I need that thing. At least years ago, I could only go into the Guitar Center. You know, there wasn't as much of the online shopping when I really first started.

Josh (09:20.91)

Hmm.

Josh (09:25.067)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You're right.

Josh (09:36.418)

Right, sure.

Brian Funk (09:42.347)

But yeah, thinking like I need this new tool to be able to get to this point. I need the proper microphone and I need this. You can just come up with all of that stuff. Every single step. My guitar strings need to be different and everything can be a whole important detail that probably at the end of the day is unnoticeable on most recordings.

Josh (09:56.685)

You

Brian Funk (10:08.788)

I think it's a form of avoiding doing it. I've seen that in myself. I've been a collector of things. When I first got a computer to make music, was plugins.

Josh (10:22.745)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (10:22.9)

scour the dark alleys of the internet for ways to download everything I could find of learning how to crack software and realizing like after a while I'm not making any music and I have all this all the software that I don't know how to use just sitting on my computer and it's paralyzing now I have too much every time you add a new thing to your setup that sort of sets you back in a way because you have to learn it you have to figure out how to incorporate it

Josh (10:27.567)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (10:41.614)

Yeah.

Josh (10:50.019)

Yeah. Right.

Brian Funk (10:51.776)

how to use it, how to make the most of it. that's you not making the music, making the song. I mean, of course, like it's fun and it can be very inspiring to get something new. But I also try to be really sensitive to when I'm really just avoiding the hardest part, which is trying to create.

Josh (10:59.533)

Right, that's true.

Josh (11:17.709)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (11:18.656)

the scary part, the part I don't know if can. I know I can order it and it'll be here. I know I can go to the store and buy something, but just like the chores, I don't know if I can make the music today.

Josh (11:23.479)

It's true, yeah.

Josh (11:30.882)

Right, right, yeah.

I think I heard some statistic, and I know if this is correct, so I might be misquoting this, but it was something like just with a computer, a basic computer, people spend about 20 % of their time using a computer just getting it to work properly, or just fiddling around with something because it doesn't quite work the way it should, which I don't know if it's quite that high, but it does feel like that probably is accurate to some degree, like a sizeable percentage of your time.

is devoted to that. So for example, like I wanted to, I'm standing right now in front of a laptop. This is where I often will record, but I wanted to try my other setup, the computer that I use for making the music and stuff like that, so right behind me. And...

It crashed when I turned it on this one. It crashed. I was like, you know, I'm just not going to deal with it right now. It's, I'll do something that I'm used to, but I mean, it's a great example, right? You know, they had spent a lot of time trying to get the equipment to work properly and it's great when it works, but it can be frustrating. especially, you know, when it doesn't and you're trying to, you're, you're spending, expending energy on something that you'd like to use for something else.

Brian Funk (12:49.952)

You get really caught up in that kind of maintenance stuff or setup stuff. You want it to be all perfect and ready to go. And yeah, like sometimes the things just don't work and it's mysterious. And you find out your software is no longer compatible with the new upgrade on the OS on your computer or all, mean, a million things. need a new driver. I try to.

Josh (12:53.188)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (12:58.095)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (13:12.109)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (13:16.128)

set myself up with things like templates within my audio recording software or like I said have everything like already connected so that

Josh (13:19.417)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (13:28.714)

I'm not figuring stuff out. I got a label maker, which was a breakthrough because I put it on the cables. You know, this cable is connected or something like maybe a color code even, but just saying like what number input this is on the other end or what this is connected. And even on my USB cables, one says HD for the hard drive for when I need to back up. because I've spent probably

Josh (13:33.113)

Hmm.

Josh (13:38.969)

that's a good idea. Yeah.

Josh (13:45.933)

Right, right, right.

Josh (13:53.711)

That's a good idea, yeah.

Brian Funk (13:59.026)

weeks of my life on the floor, like tracing cables under tables and trying to figure out where they're all going. And it tends to happen the most when I have someone with me that's ready to work or I want to show, check this out, this really cool thing. hold on, hold on. me, let me, need to, okay. Get a flashlight and figure out what's wrong.

Josh (14:01.655)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Josh (14:12.673)

Right, right, of course, yeah.

I gotta get it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you play live? Because I was wondering, sometimes I think about, like for my last album, I was thinking about, was like, well, people do these listening party kind of things. I was like, well, maybe I could do something live or whatever. But the biggest barrier I have found is not...

the actual doing it or finding the venue with all that can be its own thing, but it's actually lugging all your junk around, the setup and like, it works fine where it's set up, but then you have to take it and then set it up somewhere else. then, don't know, it's just that you can do it obviously, which is kind of a hassle. And I find that that part, the hassle of doing it is like, I don't feel like doing it.

Brian Funk (15:10.601)

Yeah, so I do a couple different types of playing live. One is with three piece rock band where I play guitar and sing. And another is, is like a solo electronic musician. And there is a bit of a theme in how I approach those setups. And it's kind of about efficiency.

Josh (15:25.099)

Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Josh (15:30.998)

Yeah.

Josh (15:35.353)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (15:37.008)

So with guitar, you could have dozens of pedals, giant amps and all that. I found myself a nice, I think it's a 10 inch speaker. It's a Supro tube amp. It's not too big. It's maybe like a 13 inch TV from back in the day.

Josh (15:41.721)

Yeah.

Josh (15:52.811)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sir.

Brian Funk (15:56.044)

You know, something relatively small, but it's loud enough for most venues and anything bigger, you'd probably mic it anyway. So it does the job well. And then the pedal board is all connected and it fits right in a little bag. And that size of that pedal board determined how many pedals I can have. And it's kind of small. I think I have like, I think there's like five pedals and one's a tuner, one's a noise suppressor. So it's not even really doing anything to the sound.

Josh (16:03.234)

Yeah.

Josh (16:09.679)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (16:15.169)

Okay.

Josh (16:19.885)

Yeah. Uh-huh.

Brian Funk (16:26.091)

except cleaning it up, guess. And then I can carry that and my guitar and my amp all in one trip. Like I'm backpacking, you know, kind of I'm settled down a little, but yeah, I can make the trip, which is great because sometimes, you know, I'm traveling alone. And that's actually the same thing with the electronic setup, too. I've got...

Josh (16:34.968)

nice, Yeah, two, two, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh (16:46.67)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (16:54.475)

I said it before, I'm passing quick, but having a table. I bought a table which folds up nice and flat and it also has adjustable legs so it can go higher. So I like it at like a countertop height. I'm kind of tall, so regular tables I'm hunching over and that's really uncomfortable. So this goes, I can stand up straight. It's like ergonomically comfortable.

Josh (16:58.819)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Josh (17:06.617)

Josh (17:12.813)

Yeah. Yeah, I have the same problem. Yeah.

Josh (17:22.489)

Hmm, never thought of that.

Brian Funk (17:23.803)

And the limitation for my gear is it has to fit on the table. And most of that stuff I can fit into a backpack and another bag, like a duffel bag, and then carry the table. And I'm good to go. It fits in the car. And yeah, that's important because especially if I go into, say, like New York City, Brooklyn to go and play.

Josh (17:29.325)

Yeah, sure.

Josh (17:35.897)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (17:49.123)

Right.

Brian Funk (17:50.14)

Some of these places where you're parking half a mile from the venue and you're lucky you got that spot So I don't want to have to Take half my stuff drop it off in the venue and then leave it unattended To go basically a mile round trip to get the rest of it I mean those were considerations Yeah, and and it was

Josh (17:54.979)

Right. Right, yeah.

Josh (18:04.609)

Yeah. Yeah. Right. I'm just gonna get tired thinking of it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Brian Funk (18:17.139)

Because yeah, I wanted to be able to set up quick and be in and out quick because you also usually don't have a lot of time in between sets to get ready and all of that. So everything I can do to make that a little bit easier is a real consideration. And maybe even to the extent of like, I'm not going to have as many toys and tools in this live performance, but that all that builds me.

Josh (18:25.229)

Yeah, right.

Josh (18:41.399)

Right, Yeah.

Brian Funk (18:45.333)

kind of like a little fenced in area to be creative, a little sandbox or something. Because if I could bring everything I want, I'd probably have so much stuff and all that dilemma of like, how do I want to do this? What do I want to use for this? Like all that's out the window when you've really eliminated options.

Josh (18:48.279)

Right. Yeah.

Josh (19:00.385)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Josh (19:07.107)

Yeah, like how many things do you really need at the end of the day? How many effects pedals? Right? I you need couple. Yeah, I think I was thinking one time I played at a street fair and it was kind of an all-day thing. I think I took...

Brian Funk (19:10.773)

Probably less than we think.

Josh (19:27.597)

I took my synth and I think maybe I took a amp as well for a guitar. But then I remember it started to rain in the middle of the day and I had to get everything out of the way because know the electronics and stuff like that.

I remember I pared it down even further. But even that, wasn't that much stuff, but I think I put it on a dolly and I rolled it because, you I think the other consideration is that there's never enough outlets for what you want, right? Or at least I found.

Brian Funk (20:00.746)

I always bring a power strip and an extension cord. You kind of have to assume like you're not going to have that stuff because a lot of times you won't.

Josh (20:03.065)

Yeah, right.

You're not going to have it. and you need like whatever you need is not the outlets going to be far away from wherever you're going to.

Brian Funk (20:14.158)

or even if the venue has it, it's going to take time away from your setup to get it and to find it in an old milk crate somewhere in the back.

Josh (20:20.706)

Yeah.

Josh (20:25.143)

Right, right, right, yeah. I don't know, that's a side of it that I personally find kind of stressful, the logistical, lugging all the stuff, the setting up and all that kind of stuff, because you're usually under time pressure and it's like, ugh, it's like, I joke, you know.

Brian Funk (20:44.136)

Yeah, I can understand that. I can understand that being enough to make you not want to... That's why my stuff's all connected down here, right? That's... I mean, even... I've got these...

Josh (20:52.015)

Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (20:57.716)

They're, you plug them into the outlet. They're like Siri enabled outlet things. So I don't know. It's just, it's just a little tiny box. You plug into the outlet, then you plug your cord in and all it does is turn that, that, outlet on and off. And you can, you can ask Siri to

Josh (21:03.299)

Yeah, sure.

Josh (21:10.701)

Right.

Josh (21:16.227)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (21:18.846)

turn it on and off for you. So I can come down here and ask Siri, trying not to activate her right now as I'm talking to you, but ask her to turn on the studio for me and everything goes on. It's the difference though of 15 seconds of me just reaching down for three or four different power strips, but it sometimes is the difference. It really is.

Josh (21:20.184)

interesting. Yeah.

Josh (21:26.081)

Yeah.

Josh (21:31.087)

Nice, yeah, nice.

Josh (21:40.27)

Right.

Josh (21:44.937)

Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. I believe it, yeah.

Brian Funk (21:48.874)

It's amazing how small a barrier can trip you up.

Josh (21:53.57)

Right, right. I know for me, what I, initially, cause I started out, you know, do everything was kind of acoustic, but I always wanted to do like synthesize stuff because.

Brian Funk (22:00.682)

you

Josh (22:09.391)

The music that I heard in my head was sort of more 80s-ish and grew up in the 80s and so probably no surprise, but but I didn't have the sort of setup for that and getting all the What I thought would be the equipment to do that was was just I don't know there was it there was less kind of stuff to most places to kind of learn about all this stuff then and so

But I kind of really started delving into that. There was a time after my first child was born when, I don't know why I chose to do this, but I had written.

You know, my podcast is called the 13th Hour Podcast. I so it was a book. It's the first book that I published called The 13th Hour. And for some reason, I'd written that a draft of that book, an early, early draft of that book when I was.

after high school, actually. The summer after I graduated from high school. I was like, I want to do a project. I want to do something with that time. And I decided I was going to write this book. So it was just for me. I never had any intention of doing anything with it. I just wanted to have a copy. I could kind of hold in my hand. And then fast forward a few decades and then.

I had slowly added ideas here and there and I had a period of time when I was kind of in between jobs essentially and I was essentially staying at home with my daughter and I had a fair amount of time or I thought I would have a fair amount of time during the day. I didn't actually have that much time. But sometimes when she would nap,

Josh (23:56.78)

I would say, okay, you know, I want to do more with this. And I decided to publish the book then. It's probably the worst time actually in retrospect to do it when you have a newborn. But it was what it was. that's when I also started my podcast because I would hold her when she was napping and I would read a draft of the book.

to proofread it and I thought I would record it because I'd heard of these things called podcasts and I didn't really know what that was. That was 2014 so it was a little bit, it was there around obviously but they were still sort of the things that people would, you know, download off someone's website or they might charge you for these episodes and stuff like that. So I made a point, it was like, this is gonna be a free podcast because...

I like, I don't know if anybody's gonna listen to this thing. was mainly for my own proofreading. So sometimes she would sleep for 20 minutes, sometimes she'd sleep for two hours, and I could record something and edit, I guess, at the same time. But I found that it was really hard to write for any stretch of time without interruption when she was awake, because you're always...

you know, was a newborn, needs something. And you know, obviously you have to attend to him, just go play in the corner. you know, can't really do that. So.

Eventually when I just got used to kind of putting the writing side of it aside because I found that when I would write, I would get sort of sucked into it and I would find myself getting kind of frustrated with the interruptions and there were constant interruptions. And so was like, you know, I'm just not going to do that right now. I'm to do that at a different time. And when she got a little bit older, she could sit up and kind of crawl around and stuff like that.

Josh (25:58.0)

I would just play music with her, know, something like guitar or something like that. She could kind of hum along or she would, you know.

strum some of the strings of the guitar or whatever when I was doing it. But then I discovered that because I could make essentially music tracks on my keyboard relatively quickly and she could be kind of occupied doing something else, that that's something I could do that was creative that fit within that time frame and also allowed me to be there watching her, interacting with her, but not just sort of sucked into this fantasy world that I was creating in front of a computer.

You know, which is by kind of definition It's kind of exclusive right? You're just staring at a screen. You're not interacting with other things around you and so that's kind of that was probably like 2014 or something like that 15 and that's when I got into doing the like more I guess like electronic music because I could do it on a a keyboard

I could build tracks, and the keyboard has a sequencer on there, build tracks there, and just do it totally in the absence of computer, other than the little screen on the keyboard itself. But I could do it kind of with her, and she could kind of be a part of it in a way.

Brian Funk (27:10.482)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (27:22.023)

Would you say writing is more your primary outlet creatively?

Josh (27:28.077)

I don't know. To be honest with you, I think it's odd that I started off with writing because I think for me when I originally came up with the idea for the story, it's a fantasy story. It was kind of influenced by, you know, 80s sci-fi and fantasy movies I liked when I was a kid, Never Any Story, Last Starfighter.

you know, Labyrinth, Rocketeer, those kind of movies like that I would watch over and over and over again. I was like, want to write something that's kind of influenced by this, but obviously different. And but I didn't really think of the words first, this actual syntax of it. I tended not to think of I would think of things like the moving picture or often the music. I would have the music kind of.

that would kind of almost dictate the scene. So it has the idea of what I wanted to sound like if it were like a, I guess, almost like a movie soundtrack. And then I would write according to that, if that makes any sense. I don't know how other people do this typically. think as I've, you know, I often will talk to writers and stuff like that on my show. And I've obviously met many in other parts, you know, day to day life, but.

Everybody has a different kind of thing, I've never entirely been able to explain it very well because I think most people kind of think a little bit differently, but it often was the music was what happened first or a picture would happen first. So I drew pictures and stuff like that to put in the story because that's what I saw first. It wasn't the actual descriptive part. So that often came, that took more work to do. And I think that's why

I get maybe sucked into it more, I don't know, when I do the writing part of it. Because I'm picturing everything kind of in my head first and then it's the actual process of translating into words is, it takes more work, I think.

Brian Funk (29:21.533)

Right.

Josh (29:34.167)

So the music actually kind of came a little bit easier in a way. what I guess I'm trying to say is that they're kind of synergistic. Like so most of the music that I make, with a few exceptions, like soundtracks to the books.

Brian Funk (29:51.71)

Yeah, that's cool. I guess you just sort of made me realize too, when you're doing fantasy writing, maybe more so than a lot of other kind of writing too, there's so much world building that happens. You got to set up the reality of this world, the rules of the world, what magic is allowed and what's not and all of that. So I could see how...

Josh (30:08.621)

Right, sure.

Josh (30:13.337)

Sure, yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (30:17.939)

coming up with some of the more atmospheric elements like the music and the sounds and the pictures, the visuals might even have to happen before you can start coming up with the story and the drama between the characters.

Josh (30:32.975)

That might be true. I never quite thought of it that way. I think I was influenced a lot by the a lot. Do you know the films by John Hughes? You know, the teen movies from the 80s, know, 16 Candles and some kind of wonderful and Breakfast Club and stuff like that. You know, those are play would play on the TV a lot. You know, as a kid and. One of the things I really liked about those films is that, you know.

Brian Funk (30:44.944)

yeah, yeah.

Josh (31:00.225)

In some ways, not a lot actually happens. A lot of it's about, there's sort of character studies in a way, like this is about this particular person. You get to know these individual quirky characters quite well. know, 16 candles, right? The main character, their family forgets her birthday. And so you get to know her thoughts about, you know, what's going on in her head.

some kind of wonderful, you know, it's about a guy who likes art and he lives in a part of town that's, not where the cool kids are, right? And so you kind of get, but I think the often the dialogue between those characters is kind of makes the movie. And then the part that I always thought was the,

I mean, at the best part, maybe to me, was the best part was the music because they often had a lot of those movies had great soundtracks and I don't, you know, they would pick the songs that would or some of the incidental music like that was often not released on the albums. Sadly, I think they would often make these sort of like incidental little tracks that maybe they were like 30 seconds or something like that. They would play during particular scenes. And for me, I always really liked those those little

Brian Funk (31:53.31)

Yeah.

Josh (32:16.209)

Yeah, they were often like keyboard bits or things like that. They would kind of set the tone for what they wanted to convey in the film. they very, maybe now you can find some of it, but most of the time it was not on the soundtrack that you could actually buy at the time.

So that's kind of how I thought of a lot of these tracks that I was making and how I tended to write those scenes. would kind of picture, or I don't know, know what you would call it. I would have the music or that kind of incidental music in my head and then would kind of craft the scene based on that.

Brian Funk (32:54.749)

That's cool.

It's a specific type of music actually you're referring to that. Well, I mean like the John Hughes movie soundtrack. I think for a lot of us that grew up in that time period, it's just baked into our experience. And when I started exploring synthesizers and vintage synths, cause that came later for me after guitar and other kinds of music. There were some of them where I'd play them and be like, my God, this sounds like planes, trains and automobiles.

Josh (33:00.139)

Is it? Is it? Okay. sure, yeah. Yeah.

Josh (33:17.849)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (33:26.775)

Great. Right. I think he was the I think he I think so. think he was I can't always keep keep track of which ones he wrote and which ones he directed. But I know he was involved in that one. Yeah.

Brian Funk (33:26.955)

Sounds like,

Brian Funk (33:36.489)

Right. Yeah. But yeah, like those kind of segue parts, usually when the character is going through some revelation and soul searching. Yeah, like some of those little musical clips, the sounds are so... I guess they're time stamped, but there's such like a nostalgia feeling I get from that stuff. And it creates the kind of...

Josh (33:46.415)

Right,

Josh (33:59.662)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (34:05.058)

They're everyday things, but they're also kind of fantasy versions of the everyday experiences. A lot of those movies. Kind of the, you know, hyped up version of high school. know, the thing you think high school's gonna be when you're a kid compared to what it actually is.

Josh (34:09.273)

Sure. Sure. Yeah.

Josh (34:17.559)

Sure, yeah.

Josh (34:22.763)

Right, right, sure. Yeah, I think, you know, at the time, you know, you couldn't often find the movie, right, if you wanted to have the movie, you know, to watch. So, I mean, I the best you could do is maybe you could try to tape it off the TV if if, if, if, if you managed to catch it in time or you could find, sometimes you could find the soundtrack.

And I always loved a lot of those movie soundtracks. I distinctly remember in many, many cases when I figured out how to do this, holding basically a tape recorder next to the TV and just trying to capture whatever I could. right? And it was lousy. mean, looking back, the quality, of course, was horrendous.

Brian Funk (35:01.434)

huh.

Josh (35:12.269)

I guess it didn't matter as much at that time. I don't know, I didn't necessarily think of it. That's all you could get, right? Taping it off, and sometimes if I knew what the, this was pre-internet of course, so I could rarely ever figure out the actual name of the song. In some cases, the music didn't have any name. was just.

Brian Funk (35:20.456)

That's best we could get, yeah.

Josh (35:34.928)

I don't know, that part of the movie where they play this particular thing and had, it was not when they released the score or whatever, was deemed on, you know, sort of incidental, guess, right? You know, so they didn't put it on there. So there was no name. So I didn't know what a lot of those things were called for a long time. And in some cases, if we taped something off the TV, we didn't tape the credits because, you know.

Brian Funk (36:00.508)

Yeah, that was enough. Yeah.

Josh (36:02.135)

No idea. No idea who actually did it. And if I had a name, it probably wouldn't have mattered. So the internet, think, was pretty cool because suddenly you could find these things and you could figure out, like, what was that?

Who did that? And what was the name of that? Actually, what were the lyrics of this thing? I totally misheard the lyrics all this time. So that was like, I'm still pretty amazed by that, frankly. The fact that you can go onto the internet and type in random lyrics and you'll probably figure out whatever it was, something you heard on the radio. know, I actually don't even need to do that. You know, they have all these apps like Shazam and stuff like that where you can just sort of sample it and figure it out. But obviously it wasn't anything like that then. And so you kind of,

you know, we're kind of limited to the storehouse upstairs.

Brian Funk (36:54.898)

Yeah, yeah, it's nice to be able to go find that stuff and figure out what it was all about and get the backstories and all. Yeah.

Josh (37:03.853)

Yeah. Yeah. So I know like, yeah. no, go ahead.

Brian Funk (37:08.282)

know, going back to, I'm sorry. I was going to say just going back to one thing you said with your daughter and how you would, the podcast kind of started out of this finding the few minutes here and there when she's asleep and you would just talk or you'd be reading the story. I think that's a really.

Josh (37:23.523)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

Brian Funk (37:30.619)

cool use of your limitations too. And sometimes having these restrictions, like for me, having a day job is probably the thing that keeps me productive more than anything because the time is precious when I have it, when I come home and I'm very conscious of it. And if I want to do something, I have to do it now.

Josh (37:33.444)

Yeah.

Josh (37:39.375)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (37:43.277)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Josh (37:52.555)

Mm-hmm. Sure.

Brian Funk (37:53.597)

Compared to on the other end of that is when I have summer vacation from work and it's like if I want to do something I could do it whenever I want Once I feel like it when I'm ready Instead of I you know, it's 430 and I've got like an hour before I'm gonna have dinner and then next thing, know the night's over so having that Just like with your daughter. She's asleep. Okay, so let's make this happen

Josh (37:58.23)

Mm-hmm.

Right, right, sure.

Yeah.

Josh (38:13.775)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (38:21.051)

Yeah. Yeah, I think probably, I don't know if you have kids, but I mean, think many parents can probably relate to that. That's sort of like period where it's like, okay, the kids are kids are at school or kids are sleeping and you're like running around like a maniac. They do all these things that you can't obviously do. But I didn't, I think that was the first taste of that. And uh,

Brian Funk (38:32.594)

Yeah, right.

Josh (38:43.311)

You know, at the time it was just sort of a necessity thing. was like, if I want to do this, then why not? Why not do it now? Right? Because I have the time. so even if it's a couple of minutes, you know, it's a couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there, at least I've done something, you know, and that's kind of how I viewed it then because the uninterrupted blocks of time were just not going to, there's nothing like that that exists now.

me but yeah yeah

Brian Funk (39:13.384)

They're very hard to come by. And a lot of people think they need them. And I like that story because that's kind of proof that, like find, collect the little shards of time where you can and put them together and they add up. I think that's a more realistic way. And I even hear when I listen to what writers talk about and what songwriters do.

Josh (39:27.576)

Yeah.

Josh (39:40.195)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (39:41.914)

A lot of their actual work is only a couple hours a day. So if you're able to scrounge together an hour, two hours a day over time, that all adds up and you're doing it. You're putting the effort in.

Josh (39:45.337)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (39:56.752)

Yeah. I heard this quote is from I think it's from Toni Morrison and it's something like something like she never or I don't know if she never but she said she rarely suffered from like writer's block because she was just so so busy I think through you know with kids and stuff like that that it was like when she had time it was like she would turn on a faucet.

and everything would kind of flow out and then she would have to course turn it off again. And that's kind of how I always felt. It's like the ideas are there, they're generating all the time. It's like they're there and I have these few instances where I can kind of offload them to something like paper or recording music and then it kind of frees it up for something else. But the ideas will generate and then...

during these times, these little windows, then it just, I can kind of like unleash the floodgates in a way. So I think I've been, I'm grateful for that in many ways because I know many folks will talk about they agonize over starting things or they want to do it and they sit in front of the.

Brian Funk (41:06.001)

Yeah.

Josh (41:21.391)

computer or sit in front of a notepad and they're like, I just can't come up with anything. It's a really agonizing process for many people and so I'm grateful I don't have that.

Brian Funk (41:35.868)

the whole turning the faucet on and then turning it off. Even when you're not done, you didn't get that all out. That does make it a little bit easier. The next time you can turn the faucet on because it's not just dripping. You know, you've left off, you kind of left it undone. There's something a little unfinished unfinished business. I don't know if it was like Hemingway or Steinbeck or someone who said they like to stop almost like mid sentence when they're writing.

Josh (41:41.711)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (41:47.577)

Right.

Right, right, right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Josh (42:05.249)

interesting. Huh.

Brian Funk (42:06.121)

Like as soon as they start feeling like the diminishing returns, tired, they'll stop in the middle of something so that tomorrow I can pick up right where I left off and I've gotten started. Which I do think is the hardest part of the whole thing is just getting in that seat and getting the instrument out or picking up the pen and putting it down. Just something about that.

Josh (42:16.397)

Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.

Josh (42:26.159)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (42:32.707)

We have the idea we need to be inspired. We all think that. We imagine like the artists getting struck by lightning and, you know, spoken to and in some supernatural way, which I mean, once in a while that'll happen, but usually it happens when I'm totally unable to do anything about it. Like I'll be like on my way to work in a car or something. Yeah, like I, it can't happen now, but

Josh (42:39.311)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Josh (42:45.497)

Great.

Josh (42:52.845)

Yeah. You get it in the shower or something. Yeah. Right.

Brian Funk (43:01.735)

But the real time I get those feelings is once I start moving and doing stuff and playing with sounds or playing with words. And then you react to what you did and you start to get a little excited and then that can build that way. it's a matter of, of trusting that that's how it works too. And I like to believe things that will kind of serve me, you know, like just change my perceptions to

Josh (43:06.35)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (43:17.155)

Yeah.

Josh (43:22.674)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (43:28.068)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (43:31.92)

Like I want to believe that having a day job helps me be more creative because the time is precious because that's the fact is I have it and I need it and that's it's a I like it. It's good. Everything's nice. So if I. Frame it like if I didn't have to do this, then I get then like everything sucks. The the the time I have to make music sucks because I wish I had more going to work sucks because I wish I didn't have to.

Josh (43:50.861)

Right.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Josh (44:01.614)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (44:02.563)

All that stuff is negative and that's not, you know, I can't get into the creative process when I'm like that.

Josh (44:09.495)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. I think of my day job as the thing that helps subsidize these other hobbies because I mean, granted, they don't make that much money. Like if I if I wanted to support myself, you know, my family on the it would I would have to it would it would be a constant hustle and I'd have to do other stuff. I would need a job.

to support, I mean, I would need a job in order to support the creative stuff when I have a job already. So it's like, it's almost like, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly, right? It would just be a total cycle. Yeah.

Brian Funk (44:40.399)

You'd probably want it. You'd be like, I want a job so I can do more. I'm sure you've probably discovered that the podcast industry is not making anyone rich. At least not unless you're at the extreme ends of it, I suppose. I mean, for the most part, doing the podcast costs me money and definitely time.

Josh (44:52.693)

No, no, no.

No.

Josh (45:01.943)

Yeah, we're time, right? Yeah, it's really definitely time that, know, and then the, I mean, how much, don't know, people like in the music.

sort of field I guess that I tend to probably most align with like the synth world synth wave and stuff like that everybody always jokes like you know nobody's gonna get rich doing this I mean if you make any money at all like great you know and then I think you know anything is nice you know Spotify pays what per stream I mean it's like fractions of thousands of of a sentence or something

Brian Funk (45:24.901)

Yeah, anything.

Brian Funk (45:36.325)

Yeah, I don't ever expect to get a check for that. But that's a nice thing, though. I don't have to care, right? Because having that job frees me of that. And like, we both do our podcasts and we're talking about it today and we're like, well, we'll just do whatever we want. We'll release it however we still don't even know if we're going to cut this thing in half or if going to put it on separate episodes or whatnot.

Josh (45:43.331)

Yeah. Yeah, exactly, right?

Josh (45:50.467)

Yeah.

Josh (45:56.879)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (46:02.362)

when we decide to release it is totally on us. That's a beautiful thing that we would probably pay a lot of money to have if we didn't have it.

Josh (46:11.119)

Yeah, you know, I did, I'm preparing this thing. It's about podcasting. It's like a sort of a instructional thing for folks. It's about doing a podcast for basically no money. And of course, it's not entirely realistic. I mean, you probably, if you don't spend money, you'll definitely spend time, which of course translates into money. But

You don't necessarily need a lot of stuff to do it. I certainly did it. I started doing it when I had, you I was home with my daughter. mean, I had very little income coming in. My wife was working, but we were saving for a house and stuff like that. So there was like it was constantly sort of hustling and it was like, OK, if I'm to do this, I'm going to figure out how I'm do it basically for no money. I'm not going to spend any money. So definitely I didn't have the best equipment or best anything. But I think the the beauty

Beauty in that in a way was that if there was stuff that I saw that was advertised to you, you need this, you gotta have this particular service because you give us all these analytics and all these other things that you have to have, they're so important. was like, are they really that important? I don't know, like when these different podcasting.

hosts, for example, say like all these statistics and stuff like that, everybody's gotta use them, like the internet will feed you this stuff and say like, you gotta do this, it's so important. It's like, you know what? I don't even know what I would do with all that stuff because like half that stuff is nice, know, maybe it's an ego boost or maybe it's an ego deflator when you see like two people are listening to it or maybe like as opposed to 2,000 or whatever, but.

Who cares? At the end of the day, it's sort of like, who cares? Because I'm not going to necessarily, I'm not doing this for money. I'm not going to change what I do based on whether people like it or not. If they want to listen to it, great. And that's sort of the attitude I had in a way that was very freeing because going back to the day job thing.

Josh (48:07.823)

I don't really have to change what I do based on audience liking it or not. They like it great. If they don't like it, that's fine. Because I know folks who do this kind of full time, they do have to be more mindful of that because that's where their bread is coming from. I don't know if you found that with the day job and how that influences or doesn't influence your creative process.

Brian Funk (48:24.57)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (48:35.822)

a lot. And it's kind of a blessing because yeah, I don't really have to worry about that. And I mean, like I said, it really does cost me a little bit of money to do the project. Maybe I'm driving people into my worlds. Maybe they're downloading the packs or buying a book or something like that. but the, doesn't matter because for one, I love doing it. I,

Josh (48:43.375)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (48:54.487)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Josh (49:03.119)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (49:05.072)

talking to you right now is a perfect example of this. Like we're able to have this conversation because we're doing this. And I don't want to be looking at charts and graphs of my show's growth or lack thereof or disappointing downturns or, no, like this particular episode, I'm comparing it to my most popular. that's, I don't want to be looking at spreadsheets anyway. So I really...

Josh (49:07.214)

Yeah.

Right.

Josh (49:18.009)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Josh (49:27.631)

Sure.

Right. Right, right, right. Yeah. It's like, know, do you really want to be working? Yeah, it's like, do you really be working when you're not working? Right. Yeah.

Brian Funk (49:36.048)

turning it into work. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I can get into that even like with YouTube videos sometimes. I mean, it's really amazing all the information you can get from it. You can learn a lot, but I mean, that's not why I'm doing it. It's, it's, I enjoy doing it and there are some people that are interested and I've found a bit of a community through it and it also kind of keeps me at it as well.

Josh (49:49.86)

Yeah.

Josh (49:53.785)

Right.

Josh (50:04.879)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (50:09.151)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (50:10.054)

I'm always thinking about it for that reason, which means I'm making more music and it all kind of serves itself. So I like that. And if I had to change what I was doing because I needed to profit off it more or anything, I'd probably enjoy it less.

Josh (50:12.505)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (50:18.339)

Yeah.

Josh (50:27.951)

Yeah, I think that's true for me too.

Brian Funk (50:30.436)

And even if that's not true, this is the story I tell myself because it's the reality I'm in anyway. So, I don't really have like crazy desires for it to do much more than it's doing. I want to be able to keep doing it. And when new ideas and adventures come along, I can pursue them if I want to or not.

Josh (50:33.391)

Yeah.

Josh (50:44.471)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Josh (50:54.479)

Yeah, since those people have been doing the podcast sort of thing for 11 years.

Brian Funk (51:02.059)

You're one of the few people I talked to that's been doing it longer than I have. Yeah.

Josh (51:04.975)

I guess, I guess 11 years now. It's a little weird to think about. But yeah, because my daughter is 11, right? She's 11. So yeah. And I've done it. It's a sort of a habit thing. It now now I don't know if I've missed a week. There was a time when after I did the 15, it was it took 15 episodes of about an hour each to read, to read the book and sort of essentially proofread the I guess would be the final draft. And then I didn't know what to do with it for a while. And because I didn't really know what podcasts were.

Brian Funk (51:10.158)

You.

Brian Funk (51:18.822)

Amazing.

Brian Funk (51:36.518)

Well, even when I started, which was after you, I had to explain to people what it even was. A podcast? That was 2017 for me. I was... I've always had to have the definition ready.

Josh (51:41.429)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they were like, is that like a radio broadcast or something?

Yeah, but so then I started to explore like, okay, this is where the books came from and the influences behind it. then, then what I put, what I never anticipated, just never in a million years was that eventually I started to get guests and things like that. And I was like, I met all these people, like.

all different walks of life that I never would have met otherwise in day to day life, realistically. And even if I had met them, I don't know if we would have had those kind of conversations that we did because we're kind of there for a purpose. And even with friends, know, as soon as I would have friends on the show in day to day life, when we would see each other or talk on the phone or something like that, we probably wouldn't be discussing things like that on that level.

So that's been really nice. I, you know, I have, I would say in day-to-day life, I have very few people I can share most of this stuff with realistically. Maybe sort of tangentially interested. Like, you do music. okay. That's cool. You know, it's kind of like, you know, it's like, whatever you wrote about. that's interesting. What's it about? And like, that's cool. You know, it's not really a huge thing. But I think, you know, because

You know, these are people from, you know, essentially all over, I guess all over the world in a way. I mean, I never probably would have encountered them had it not been for this particular platform that I have stuck with. that I'm quite grateful for that because the community sort of things are hard. I found it hard to find. I don't live in an area that has a lot of this stuff built in. And even when you go look for it.

Josh (53:33.423)

You gotta work pretty hard to create it and to maintain it. And I've found it's quite hard to find out if that's been your experience. It sounds like you have a little bit more built in being in a band, but I don't know your thoughts on that. But the community side of it, the creative side of it, I don't know.

Brian Funk (53:51.108)

Yeah, I think a lot of what you said is the same for me. I've kind of got into sharing this stuff on the internet.

Josh (54:00.528)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (54:01.091)

because there's not a lot of people you can really connect with about it. I have supportive people in my life and some of them I do the work with, some are friends, like we play music together, but once I start talking about how I rolled off the high end at 10k on this hi-hat, really, whatever, like...

Josh (54:05.485)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (54:10.137)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (54:23.233)

You

Josh (54:27.969)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (54:28.387)

that you lose them. So yeah, I wanted to be able to find people to talk about these things and it drove me to seeking that out online and then just kind of participating in it a little bit too. And that's been really nice because...

Josh (54:33.977)

Yeah.

Josh (54:42.799)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (54:47.269)

You can't really put that on a lot of the people in your life, I think, to expect them to want to listen to you go on and on about whatever. And it might be a reason why a lot of people let go of those things too, because they haven't found that. yeah, there are communities in real life, but they are hard to find because especially when you're in a kind of niche thing.

Josh (54:51.435)

No... Yeah...

Yeah.

Josh (55:03.779)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (55:12.025)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (55:16.517)

You know, there's not people down the road that have modular synths or producing music or writing fantasy novels and all of that. But there's a lot of them scattered around the world and you can gather online. And yeah, that part of it has been extremely valuable to me, talking to people, learning from them. I mean, it's been the best learning experience of my life.

Josh (55:19.221)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Josh (55:24.42)

Yeah.

Josh (55:29.997)

Right, sure. Yeah.

Josh (55:38.243)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (55:43.558)

far better than college and all of that stuff. Because just hearing what people are doing and talking about the stuff that doesn't get in the books and in the, you know, like these kind of human side of things where like you said, even just that little anecdote about your daughter and reading the book, like what a great way to do the audio book.

Josh (55:45.451)

Yeah

Josh (55:57.283)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (56:08.805)

in that downtime and to make them, I find that really inspiring. Like, sort of like conquered those barriers that were put up to you because you were able to find a way to make it productive for you. And I think that's important to do those kinds of things.

Josh (56:10.361)

Sure, yeah.

Josh (56:19.395)

Hmm.

Josh (56:25.529)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (56:31.955)

I think I kind of think of it as like stealing stealing time I think I mean obviously we all have 24 hours in a day and you we can only do so much with it but you know you often hear people say I don't have time or I can't afford this or whatever and I think that obviously there's there's limitations right everybody has but

Brian Funk (56:35.685)

you

Josh (56:55.855)

You know, sometimes we, think we also need to keep in mind like how much time we're, we're, um, maybe not wasting is the right term, but we're using our time maybe inefficiently. And I'm certainly guilty of this too. Like you just get, don't know, you know, stuck in the toilet for an hour, you know, 30 minutes or something like that, or you're scrolling on social media or it's just, it's not productive time. And maybe it's not even something you would have chosen to do if you, uh,

could have looked at it objectively. It's like, didn't really want to spend my time doing that. And so I think it's doing this sort of inventory of like how you want to live in kind of an intentional way. It's like an ongoing exercise, at least for me. like, yeah.

Brian Funk (57:40.451)

I think it has to be because it's different now. The social media, all the stuff we get is actively trying to take our time. mean, the algorithms are pointed at us to make us want to click on things that will keep us on the platform because we will see more ads and they'll earn more money. that's just the, they're in an attention game and they've got the smartest people in the world using human

Josh (57:49.497)

Yeah.

Josh (57:54.499)

Yeah, yeah.

Josh (57:59.812)

Yeah. Yeah. That's a... Right.

Josh (58:09.731)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (58:10.464)

psychology against us all the time and I'm not trying to sound negative or nefarious about it because you can easily go down that road but it's just the fact of the matter so you have to really you got to pay you have to actively pay attention to that stuff because

Josh (58:12.473)

Yeah.

Josh (58:19.449)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it's very realistic, yeah.

Josh (58:30.019)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (58:31.426)

When I put a show on Netflix, the next one, next episode comes on right away. I don't have to do anything. I can just sit there. I don't even think they do the thing anymore. Are you still watching? I haven't seen that screen in a while. They used to put that up every once in a while.

Josh (58:37.204)

Right, right, right, right.

Yeah, right, yeah, I think it's still there. I know sometimes my kids will, like if you seem to be there for a while, I think it still pops up, but it's certainly not with every episode. So, yeah.

Brian Funk (58:53.604)

Yeah, like you just don't, you don't have to take action to continue down that road. And yeah, like sometimes I get like the screen time notification on my phone and on the computer and it pops up and tells me how much of my life I'm spending on that. And I think about that a lot. I've done the math and realized that an hour a day.

Josh (59:00.526)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (59:22.752)

is equal to about 15 full days a year when you add it up. 1 24th of a day, right? And there's 12 months in a year. So that's half of a month. So,

Josh (59:28.013)

Yeah. Yeah, huh. Right, right, right. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (59:38.008)

Yeah, when I see that, I say to myself, wow, that's like I've been on my phone from January to March. That's how much time I'm to spend on it. If I'm going to spend six hours a day on the computer, that's like three months.

Josh (59:47.125)

Yeah, right.

Josh (59:57.552)

Yeah, mean, know, it's very weird because when I did the whole publishing thing, I think it's even worse now. So that was 11 years ago. But a huge and maybe you encounter this with the I don't know if you can count it with the teaching the writing side of it. But you know, the publishing world is so backwards in many ways. And I think like

you know, even if you're traditionally published or independently published, you have to spend a huge amount of time just promoting. You you become the salesperson for everything you do because, you know, even the traditional publisher, when the book comes out, it's all this advertising and then, you know, a month later, they're on to the next thing. And it's up to the authors themselves to do that. And you can devote so much of your time.

sort of spinning your wheels, trying to get traction and all these other things. I encounter so many authors who initially who were doing this, I guess I have to do that too. But there was so much frustration, angst built around it. And eventually I was like, you know what, I don't want to spend nearly as much time on this side of it because it takes away from the actual

enjoyable part of it, the actual part that actually drew me to the whole thing. You know, I think if you are doing it full time, then obviously you have to do that to some degree. But I think for essentially a hobbyist, I guess, it's like, how much do you really want to devote that much of your life to the sales part of it? You know, and I think it's gotten worse, you know, because of the social media aspect of it, which was essentially free advertising before.

is not that way. really, they've set it up now, so you kind of have to pay to play in a way. It's paid advertising. I think when you recognize that that's what it is, then it's like, okay, those are the stakes that I have to deal with if want to do this.

Brian Funk (01:01:58.509)

Yeah, and understand the trade off of it. You know, if you're not going to do that, you're not going to reach as many people, but you'll get more time to do the thing you want to do. And if you decide to do it, it might get you to more people, might not. And that might even lead to getting more time to do what you want to do down the road. I guess if...

Josh (01:02:08.046)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Josh (01:02:20.045)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:02:23.68)

The best answers I've heard to some of that stuff, because a lot of artists are like, feel gross about promoting their stuff. The best answer is to make that part of the art that I think make that part of the creative process. How can you have fun with it? How can you make it? You know, instead of just making like an advertisement, like you've done this with the, I was listening to your episode about composing the tracks.

Josh (01:02:29.366)

Yeah, sure.

Josh (01:02:37.833)

Yeah. Can you have fun with it? Yeah.

Josh (01:02:52.622)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:02:53.128)

and taking us behind the scene and you know, I'm listening to the music now because of that and it's interesting. It's content like in itself, right? So like you're, you could call it advertising or promotion too, I guess, but it's also interesting on its own. And you can tell you're having fun reflecting on it and thinking about it.

Josh (01:02:59.384)

Right, yeah.

Josh (01:03:05.069)

Right, sure.

Josh (01:03:15.875)

Yeah.

Josh (01:03:19.855)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:03:20.724)

And that's a valuable part of the artistic process anyways, to reflect on your work.

Josh (01:03:26.639)

Yeah, I think it's important to have time to do that, or at least I found it important for me. I found it because...

I try to put out an episode each week that I'm like, what am going to do this week for the podcast? And so if I'm working on a music thing, like for example, I think what did I do last week? Last week I was, I don't know if you've seen the movie Legend. was, okay, yeah, yeah. And I was like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. was like, all right, well.

Brian Funk (01:03:49.666)

Yeah, I did listen to that this morning. You're playing the theme song and talking about the different soundtracks. I don't know the movie, though. You said it was Tom Cruise? Legend? I don't think I know that movie.

Josh (01:04:03.599)

Yeah, yeah, it's uh 85. Tom Cruise, Mia Sarah, is the Ferris Bueller's Day Off girl and who's the... Tim Curry I think plays like a devil kind of character. It's kind of, I'll be honest, it's kind of a weird movie in all... Early Tom Cruise, yeah, so...

Brian Funk (01:04:23.268)

This is early Tom Cruise before...

Josh (01:04:28.783)

Tom Cruise is running around half the movie without any pants on. that's a little, know, it could be a plus or could be a minus depending on your point of view.

Brian Funk (01:04:33.902)

There you go.

Josh (01:04:36.365)

But the soundtrack was done by Tangerine Dream, or at least the American release anyway, this gets more complicated. And there's a theme in there and I was playing around with it last week and I've worked on it a little bit more, but because I knew that I was gonna be recording something within the next week, I was like, okay, well, let me work on it more. Let me try to make it a little bit better and play around with it a little bit more. And so it kinda, I think if I didn't have that,

you know that regular is a deadline in a way that I probably wouldn't be doing it as much. It would happen probably but just not on as frequently a frequent basis.

Brian Funk (01:05:07.747)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:05:15.972)

Yeah, you know, I did that same thing.

When I first started releasing Ableton Live packs, little sound packs other producers can use in their music. So I made one, it was the sound of my laptop feeding back. So if you ever are just producing on your laptop and you're listening to it out of the speakers, and then you're also using the internal microphone. And if you hit that arm button, it'll just make this awful noise. It'll probably knock you out of your seat, but I've recorded it.

Josh (01:05:23.693)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:05:32.879)

that's cool.

Josh (01:05:39.769)

huh.

Josh (01:05:43.351)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:05:50.302)

put in the sampler and made like a really nice instrument out of it just kind of a peaceful thing with some cool movement to it and I put it out for people to download and in a weekend more people downloaded that than like ever looked at anything I've been doing musically so was like oh that's cool so I started I was into that whole making my own instruments anyway so I was like I'll make one every week and

Josh (01:05:54.208)

cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (01:06:05.455)

I'm not kidding.

Josh (01:06:12.899)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:06:15.927)

That gave me so much discipline and it was not long after like a band had broken up. So I'm still trying to get my musical footing back and doing that helped a lot. And I wasn't using Ableton Live much for very long at that point. I really didn't know it, but then people started thinking I knew what I was doing and asking me questions so I'd figure it out so could help them. And that's how I really learned it. It was that weekly discipline. All right, I want to make something or I have something to work.

Josh (01:06:21.103)

Sure.

Josh (01:06:30.991)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah

Josh (01:06:40.856)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Brian Funk (01:06:46.001)

on here, I'm make some music for this sound. Really productive. I started the podcast the same way. I was doing every week for five or so, six years maybe of it. But within the, I don't know, maybe it was like this summer I think, I started going every other week. Because I just felt like...

Josh (01:06:49.124)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Josh (01:07:02.713)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:07:08.559)

Hmm

Brian Funk (01:07:15.655)

I was doing too much. It was getting into in the way of a lot of the other stuff I was doing. But I also felt like every time I'd have these like really cool conversations with people, they only had like a week to go out. wasn't enough time for me to put out like a little clip on social media to promote it. And I just felt like a lot of stuff was getting lost in the quantity. So.

Josh (01:07:37.092)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:07:40.631)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, feeding that machine, right? The feeding the algorithm, just kind of pumping out stuff. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:07:49.848)

Yeah, so I dialed it back to half and this is, way more manageable and I think I feel less stress about it and frees up room for other stuff too.

Josh (01:07:58.287)

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you did you talk about like when you recently put out an album is more like a meditative style kind of album more electronic. And did you talk about that on your podcast, like the creation of it? I think I feel like somewhere on your website, I think I saw that it was on YouTube. You had talked about like how it was made. I know maybe I'm making that up, but.

Brian Funk (01:08:26.007)

Yeah, I think you're talking about like the ambient one, which that was 2020. That was called a journey inward. Yeah, so that I do this thing every year. Jamuary. Jamuary.

Josh (01:08:33.656)

Hmm.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be curious to know about that.

Josh (01:08:44.569)

January. January. Okay. okay. Interesting.

Brian Funk (01:08:48.187)

So you make a jam every day in January, something that you can share. So the idea is like make something and share it, whether it's like SoundCloud or Instagram or something. And I've had this like music production club community that I've been doing for like over 10 years now. That's another thing that's built into my workflow, because every month I'm producing something for them. And now we do like a monthly music mission.

Josh (01:08:55.65)

Okay.

Yeah.

Josh (01:09:02.98)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:09:10.595)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:09:16.137)

and it's like a little musical challenge or prompt or something. But yeah, every January we all participate in this thing and you try to show up as many days as you can in January. I always say like, look, if you only show up one day, that's one day you showed up. It's better than nothing. But by showing up every day, I've found that...

Josh (01:09:27.247)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:09:32.149)

Right, Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:09:40.75)

things get less and less precious. you the first one you want to be really good and like the last one you kind of like put a little more weight on, I guess too. But there are a lot of days when you only have an hour or half hour or real short amount of time and you're not, you don't have time to decide if what you're doing is good or bad. And

Josh (01:09:43.161)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:09:50.424)

Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:10:04.631)

You also kind of like, let's see what happens if I do this today. You know, it's just like January 11th. Let's try something weird today. And I'll play with this toy or that toy. And I've got this little synthesizer called the OP-1 by Teenage Engineering. It's so cool. I love it. And I was making these ambient tracks in real time. So.

Josh (01:10:08.591)

Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:10:13.099)

You

Brian Funk (01:10:33.843)

I would set like a five minute or so recording time and then I would just play a sound on this synth and slowly tweak the knobs in real time and then I would just layer together four tracks. Sometimes I'd put samples in there and background noises and stuff and it was very just I wanted it to be

Josh (01:10:37.551)

Mmm.

Josh (01:10:43.225)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Josh (01:10:51.343)

That's cool.

Brian Funk (01:10:58.441)

very uneventful music, like for falling asleep, for meditating, like that kind of stuff. Yeah, and so I did it for like four days in a row, five days in a row, and that ultimately became the album. After, after February, January, do finish February, so you try to finish something. And that's what I did for that.

Josh (01:11:00.399)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (01:11:15.631)

That's cool. I like that.

Josh (01:11:23.673)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:11:26.813)

It actually worked out nice because by the time I finished that, COVID happened.

I think we were all looking for something relaxing and calming. And I had this music that was designed for that purpose. And having it with a purpose was something I like to think about too. Like, why are you going to listen to this? What are you going to be doing when this is playing? So this was like the meditative relaxing thing. And we think about that when I play in my band. It's like, well, we're going to be playing out.

Josh (01:11:33.359)

Yeah, that's true. Right.

Yeah.

Josh (01:11:48.535)

Right. Right, sure.

Brian Funk (01:11:59.265)

bars and nightclubs. You people don't want to hear our moody artistic thing. They want to have fun. Like they're trying to have a good time. So that tends to be the angle we go for with that stuff. It's kind of like what you're doing with yours too. You're creating sounds for your books and your fantasy world.

Josh (01:12:00.332)

Yeah.

Josh (01:12:03.824)

Right, right, right, right, sure.

Josh (01:12:10.639)

Of course, yeah. Yeah.

Josh (01:12:18.649)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:19.378)

That gives you, that's a creative limitation in itself and it gives it a purpose, some direction and you can always take every decision you're making and put it up against that goal. like, am I going to put drums in this ambient record? No, cause I don't want you to start like feeling a rhythm and bouncing. So, you know, I'm not gonna put, there's probably not going to be lyrics because you know, that's gonna.

Josh (01:12:23.257)

Sure.

Josh (01:12:31.703)

Yeah, that's true.

Josh (01:12:38.383)

Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, yeah.

Josh (01:12:45.732)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:12:46.678)

be more distracting. I'm trying to fade into the background with this.

Josh (01:12:50.379)

Yeah, yeah, one of the, think as I mentioned, maybe I was offline, I've been experimenting with learning how to use a DAW. I put it off for a long time and decided to finally take the plunge. so there was a track that I wanted to do for a submission for a, it was like a Halloween thing. And I had never really, most of the music that I tend to do is like,

You know, it's like sort of 80s inspired. It's probably going to be in the key of C or G or something like that. It was kind of like chipper. It's relatively, you know, it's probably like 120 beats per minute or something like that. it's, know, it's, it's, it's, and there's slower ones too, but I never made a dark synth track before. And that was something I wanted to do. So I, it was the first time I was going to try to use this, this program.

And I was tempted many times to do it the old way, what I would do and to get on the keyboard and start doing it with my fingers. And I did plug in a MIDI controller into the computer, so I could at least do that. But I was very tempted to kind of do it the old way I had done before, what I would do it kind of more manually, I guess more in an analog way. I'm glad to say I didn't do that because I wanted to learn how to use this particular

or tool and if I had gone back and done the other way I think I wouldn't have learned it very effectively. But you're reminding me of one part of it because it was to go along with the prequel to my book The Thirteenth Hour and there's a part in the prequel

It's about a hunter and he's chasing a deer. And I wanted to do a track that was based on that. And that kind of put the, there was going to be the tempo of it was going to be fairly fast paced. And I wanted there to be sounds that kind of gave the, the, the person who was listening an idea about what was actually happening. So I wanted there to be like sounds of like people running and, and, uh, you know, going through like, uh, you know, breathing hard. And I wanted there to be the sound.

Josh (01:15:04.761)

of like a deer, you know, galloping and then snorting and stuff like that. And then for the bow, I actually went and recorded it. So I played around with archery since for a long time. then so I just put a microphone next to the bow and then reported it, you know, the string drawing the arrow, what that would sound like. And then the sound of it, you know, shooting, releasing the bow and that kind of sound. And it was really a lot of fun actually to do that. And they kind of like then take the sound

and then kind of play with it on the computer to make it sound like extended or make it louder or whatever so that it had a, you know, probably more unnatural sound, but it was also, it kind of highlighted what it actually was because I wanted the listener to be able to say, okay, that's definitely the sound of like arrows rattling around or that's definitely the sound of the bow releasing, you know, and so I think that you kind of reminded me of these different

limitations in a way I guess but it was kind of like I viewed it as kind of creating a soundscape for the person that was listening so they kind of got the idea that this was a hunt and because obviously I could do this on a synthesizer as well but the the dog gave me more choices about different sounds to use

that it was nice to be able to pick like, well, actually, I don't think this is quite the right thing. Could I find something that sounds a little bit more medieval, for example, and less like a synthesizer track? Because I want it to sound a little bit synth because that's my signature thing, I guess. So it was really a lot of fun to do that in a way.

Brian Funk (01:16:47.852)

That's a great way to do it, like you made the project out of it. your goal wasn't learn this software, because then you're going to be like, what's this button do? What's that button do? It's more, let's make the song and use the tool. And you probably figured out a few things along the way.

Josh (01:16:51.939)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (01:16:59.105)

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:17:06.826)

It's really cool that you recorded the bow yourself. I think you probably could have found a sample somewhere that anyone would have access to, I think those little extra efforts, I think that adds a lot. And nowadays, I think it's so much more important than ever to...

Josh (01:17:10.336)

Yeah

Josh (01:17:13.837)

Yeah.

Josh (01:17:19.652)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Josh (01:17:27.363)

Yeah. Right.

Brian Funk (01:17:28.15)

Bring some humanity, bring yourself into this, because it is easy enough to download samples, click on things, generate things now. You don't even have to make the music anymore. I feel like that's going to be the last episode of this podcast. Like, well, we don't have to do it anymore. You can just click a button now. But that robs you of all the fun in the process. And you took the time to have that fun.

Josh (01:17:36.535)

Mm-hmm. I know, I know. That's... Yeah.

Well, that's, yeah, that's, Well, I did, to be fair, I did look to see if I could find anything. I just didn't find it. Or, I didn't find something that I wanted, and so was like, well, I'll just do it myself. And I guess the, the,

The fun about, I guess, the making of it was that I kind of got, it's something that of course I had meant to do for a long time, but I got to approach it with fairly fresh ears because I hadn't looked at that particular story in quite a long time. And I got to think about like, okay, if I wanted to create like a soundtrack, like a score for this, how would I go about doing it?

and that was something that now I had kind of the ability to do before I didn't.

I had a much more limited set of tools to do it with. But I guess the conclusion that I had was like, well, I made this, I did accomplish my goal of making this using a DAW and that was something I'd put off for a long time, so I'm glad I did it. But the conclusion that I had from the whole thing, and maybe this would be erased if you do it a zillion times, but that I don't necessarily know if it's actually more fun to do it that way. It was a lot of fiddling and it was more convenient in some ways.

Josh (01:19:16.623)

could correct mistakes much easier. I didn't have to play it perfectly or like you know close to perfectly the way but there was some weirdness that I noticed like there was I'm still getting used to these terms what is it called quantizing when you quantize the things like the the beat because before when I would

Brian Funk (01:19:30.877)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, when you fix the notes to the timing.

Josh (01:19:36.112)

Yeah, I would do like the, would, I don't have a drum kit or anything like that. So I would, I would kind of hit the notes manually, you know, with like an effect or whatever. And of course it'd be off by a little bit. But then I, I was like, Oh, what's this do? And I quantized the backing beat and I was like, Oh, that's interesting. But then right next to that, there was a button called humanize where you could kind of make it look messier, I guess, you know, and it was like, we've come like

Brian Funk (01:19:59.49)

Cool.

Josh (01:20:05.335)

totally 180 in this world. And I saw the possibility, if you were very obsessive about this, to fiddle with this endlessly and to kind of tweak this and tweak that and kind of make it in a way that I guess you could obviously do that before, but it just was more gliborius to do that. And now it's so easy.

Brian Funk (01:20:06.815)

Yep. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:20:16.095)

Hmm. Yes.

Josh (01:20:31.215)

because let me try this, let try that. You could never finish anything. I didn't necessarily know if I liked the process better because I found that I was just sitting in front of a computer the entire time. I remember one day, I think I had the day off, and I was like, yeah, I'm going to devote some time to working on this track. And I think I worked on it for like four hours. I just sat in front of the computer.

Brian Funk (01:20:36.661)

That's, yes, exactly. Yeah.

Josh (01:20:57.615)

And I was like, at the end of that, I'd either pick up the kids or walk the dog or something like that. I was like, man, I just sat in front of the computer. I don't know where the time went. And I kind of had a headache and shoulders hurt.

I don't know. I don't know if this is better, you know? Because when you're making music, right, you're moving and you're going from kind of one thing to the next. You're standing or you're sitting, but it's a mobile kind of process, right? As opposed to like, I guess when a computer, you are moving, but it's like infinitesimally small, like clicking a mouse, right? I don't know. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:21:16.213)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:21:31.606)

Yeah, these little, yeah, same movements you do to do email and spreadsheets and work. Yeah, you you bring up a good point. Something I like to do a lot, this desk is a standing desk, so it will go up.

Josh (01:21:50.364)

huh, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:21:51.828)

I like to move. I like to walk around the room, dance a little. Like sometimes you need to be, is this moving me? Is this grooving? You know, I need to feel it a little. And we have come this kind of about face where we wanted the computer to fix everything and now we have humanized buttons to like unfix things. And a lot of what I do is fighting the perfection of the computer, doing things to mess up.

Josh (01:21:53.805)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (01:22:00.184)

Yeah.

Josh (01:22:12.419)

That's so weird.

Josh (01:22:18.262)

Uh-huh.

Brian Funk (01:22:20.191)

how perfect it is and that idea that you don't ever have to commit. You can always keep adjusting and tweaking. So I've been doing a lot of things where I'm committing more, where if I'm playing like this in MIDI, I'll get it into audio. So I can't do that anymore. I can't endlessly tweak the sound until it's perfect because if I can fix that sound,

Josh (01:22:28.302)

Right.

Josh (01:22:39.513)

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:22:46.741)

Then when I go on to the next sound, I might come up something that I really like, but then I'll say, well, all I have to do is go back and just fix that sound a little, and then it'll fit together nice. And then you fix this. Well, if I fix sound B, so sound C fixes, suddenly sound A is weird, right? And then I fix A, and then like, now C is out of place, and they all affect each other and interact with each other. If I commit sound A, B, and C, D has to work with those.

Josh (01:22:53.163)

Yeah, it does annoy us that, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (01:23:00.943)

Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.

Josh (01:23:08.174)

Yeah.

Josh (01:23:13.442)

Yeah.

Right, right, right, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:23:16.577)

So it's not like I'll fix B so D fits better. And then you're then all of a sudden all the balance is off and you're, you're just going in that cycle. And that can, that's a great way to never finish anything. But like all art and even writing a page in a book, you have to decide what happens. You have to decide and then move on from there.

Josh (01:23:20.813)

Right.

Josh (01:23:25.474)

Yeah.

Right, right, Yeah.

Josh (01:23:39.406)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:23:41.353)

You don't have to decide anymore if you don't want to. And that's where I think we get stuck a lot.

Josh (01:23:44.932)

That's fair. Yeah. This the last album I did, well, actually both of my albums, I wanted them to be on tape because I've always had a thing for tape. I've always really liked tapes. yeah, but it's interesting, know, when you at least the process that I went through for both of the cassettes.

Brian Funk (01:23:56.32)

Yeah, it's so cool.

Brian Funk (01:24:00.341)

That sound even, rattling around in there.

Josh (01:24:10.799)

because you get them and they're made for CD quality. And I don't know if you noticed that, but when CDs came along, you could hear everything. You could hear all the imperfections and all the little pops and cracks and all that kind of stuff like that, as opposed to a record or a tape. And so I got the audio all cleaned up and everything like that.

Brian Funk (01:24:21.908)

Yeah, clarity,

Josh (01:24:36.355)

And you know, it sounds, it sounds fine. It sounds good. Right. And I listened to it and, but then when you listen to it on a tape, right, a lot of that goes away because you have that background, that little like a little imperfections of the, of the tape that happened when the, the, the wheels spin like a little bit faster, a little bit slower. And it goes like that, you know, you know what I mean? Right. And you have those kinds of things, like when the battery is dying.

Brian Funk (01:24:59.146)

Yeah, pitch a little, Yeah.

Josh (01:25:05.251)

you know, that gets like really slow and those kinds of things like that. And it's interesting, all that's back in there. And so like when you, when you listen with, when you listen to it like that, I was the first time because I got a demo of it.

And I was like, does it really sound like that? Because I don't think it sounded like that actually on the, when I sent it off that way, when I got it back. And then, but that's, you know, I listened with better headphones and stuff like that. yeah, I forgot, you know, cause I don't listen to.

as many things on tape anymore, you forget these like imperfections that exist in those, in that media when we're used to pristine audio all the time. You realize how little it actually matters in the end because it didn't matter then really. It just kind of assumed that there would be those things there and it didn't make that much of a difference at the time.

Brian Funk (01:25:51.946)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:26:01.018)

That kind of stuff I'm constantly baking into my music. I'll sometimes record things to tape and then back into the computer or I'll use effects that emulate tape or I'll have the pitch slowly changing, like just subtly being modulated to recreate those kind of like living characteristics. The tape is a physical medium. It's on the tape.

Josh (01:26:04.941)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (01:26:17.666)

huh.

Josh (01:26:28.323)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:26:30.208)

The sound is in there and it ages even the more you play it. I find that stuff interesting and yeah, it's part of the experience. love that. It looks great by the way. I'm looking at it on the Bandcamp, Once Upon a Dream. And I love that you got like the CD player in there and the tape player in the background with it just as part of your presentation.

Josh (01:26:35.587)

Yeah.

Right.

Josh (01:26:46.958)

Yeah, thank you.

Josh (01:26:53.441)

Yeah, yeah, it was fun. I remember when I got the first CD back, I decided I go listen to this and I used the one I think in that picture and I went jogging and I totally forgot. Yeah, I totally forgot like half the time like it's going to skip and I just, you know, and so I had that experience, you the the the you holding it like this, right?

Brian Funk (01:27:06.464)

He can't do that.

Brian Funk (01:27:11.655)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:27:15.168)

I used to jog with a CD player and I'd be holding a server with a dish trying to keep it from skipping.

Josh (01:27:23.411)

I think we all did. I'm totally just forgetting. We all kind of just did that. yeah, right? But yeah, I would say that was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun because doing the pixel art for the, I did the cover art and everything like that because for me that was like, I enjoyed doing that.

Brian Funk (01:27:27.85)

with lot of crap.

Josh (01:27:47.344)

I would think like, well, could I get someone else to do it? And would be so much work to kind of explain to somebody else how what I was trying to convey. I was like, I'll just do it kind of myself. But that that that was fun. Well, you're talking about actually where you you do it like, you know, you maybe use a MIDI instrument and then.

you just you record the audio like the raw audio and then you you may edit it a little bit there but that's what i did is uh i didn't do any of it i did very little of it electronically um it was kind of all done like on the synthesizer and then i would send the audio to the computer and then maybe i clean it up a little bit or add reverb or something like that but uh most of it was done there and uh so the i would have to

It was in some ways frustrating because I would have to practice it many times to get it to actually be recordable quality, right? And I guess in a way I don't necessarily need to do that quite to the same extent if I do it electronically. But I don't know, it worked out. And sometimes I'll listen to something on there and I was like, ah, you know, maybe the timing wasn't quite right, but for the most part, you know, it is what it is. It's a stamp in time.

And I like that has a little bit of character. There's some baked-in flaws, I guess, kind of like the popping and the cracking and stuff like that of the audio that we naturally have. Because no one notices those little timing errors or whatever anyway. mean, realistically, they're like, OK, that's the way it is.

Brian Funk (01:29:29.384)

Yeah, well, yeah, a lot of times people assume that's what you want it to do if it's in there. But yeah, it makes it more human. makes it alive. plus, you you leave that stuff in a little and it, like you said, it's a moment in time. Like this is where you were. I think trying to make the ultimate product all the time. This is me and this is my ultimate expression. Like it's a stuck.

Josh (01:29:33.06)

Yeah.

Josh (01:29:47.267)

Yeah, at the time, yeah.

Brian Funk (01:29:58.516)

When I'm like that, nothing good happens. But when I have the attitude of like, this is what I made today. This is where I'm at musically is where, because you, the you you are right now is the only time you'll ever be this you you are, you know, like we're always changing and the world around us is changing. So I'm trying to get more comfortable with that. And it's making me enjoy the process more and I think be more productive too.

Josh (01:30:05.826)

Yeah.

Josh (01:30:11.073)

Mm-hmm. That's true. That's true. Yeah.

Josh (01:30:26.669)

Yeah, that was a real Mr. Rogers moment right there, right? The you you are right now is the only you that I'll ever be or whatever. However you put it, I like that. yeah.

Brian Funk (01:30:30.617)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:30:36.893)

Yeah, we'll have to go back and listen that again. But yeah, it gives it value though, right? So if I make something after we're done talking, I can say that only would have ever happened right now. And I like to think about that. I there are stories of artists that wrote great songs in one day. What if they didn't show up that day?

Josh (01:30:45.219)

Yeah.

Josh (01:30:54.617)

Great.

Josh (01:31:01.593)

Right.

Exactly, Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:31:05.145)

It probably wouldn't have happened. What if I don't do it today? What if I skip it? What if I stay on the couch or on the phone? It can help me get off my ass a little and get to work.

Josh (01:31:12.759)

Yeah. Right, right. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. I remember one of the tracks on there. Which one was it? It was I can tell you.

was one, it was called No Hero, and I wanted it to sound, the thing that I had, the lyrics that I had written were meant for a woman to sing. And there's two characters in the book, one's male, one's female, and I wanted it to be from the woman's perspective.

And I had in my head one of those kind of like ending songs, like, you know, to a movie where the credits are rolling and there's a, like a woman singing a song, but I wanted to be kind of happy and kind of chipper and sort of this thing that you would play, like listening, you know, in the car as you're driving off into the summer, you know, sunset or something like that. So something you might listen to like on a road trip or something like that. I, I, the only problem is I couldn't find a, I couldn't find a woman to sing it.

And the lyrics were written from that perspective and I got stuck there for a really long time. And I'd even experimented with some tools. It was probably about a year and a half ago, like some AI tools to see if like I could, you know, raise the pitch of my voice. I have a fairly like low voice, bass voice. And so.

I tried singing super high to see if I could transform that and it sounded horrendous. And I found some of these early AI tools that you would sing in the voice of...

Josh (01:32:54.191)

I don't know, whatever, Ariana Grande or something like that. was like, I don't know. And it sounded very weird. And I was like, I don't really know if I want to delve into that side of things because then it's kind of like not your own anymore. But they didn't work very well anyway. And so one day I was just, I got the idea, why don't I just change the lyrics a little bit? I'll do it from a male perspective. And that just fixed everything. It was just like, it was five minutes.

Brian Funk (01:33:20.839)

Right. That's funny.

Josh (01:33:21.263)

I changed a couple of words. It's literally all I did. I changed a couple of words and the whole song changed and I finished the song that day. I'd been working on it, not agonizing over it, but it had been stalled out for two years or something like that. I was like, well, maybe I can get somebody to do it. Maybe I can get my wife to do it. I don't know. None of it worked.

Brian Funk (01:33:44.188)

Isn't it funny how sometimes you have to just... One simple change, it might be at a fundamental level, and sometimes we're so deep in it we can't see that.

Josh (01:33:57.121)

Yeah, I just couldn't see it.

Brian Funk (01:33:59.136)

I feel like I love that kind of stuff because I think there's probably so many things in my life that I do that are causing me so much more trouble than I need or blocking me in certain ways. I mean, I don't know why this is the one that came to my head, but I decided to throw away all my socks and just buy like three bags of the same exact pair of socks so that I don't have to pair them together and figure out which ones match when I'm doing laundry and

Josh (01:34:10.017)

Yeah.

Josh (01:34:21.711)

yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:34:29.403)

I have to imagine like in the years, 10 years or so since I did that, like that's what I do now. Instead of getting new socks here and there, just, once they're kind of had their time, they all get thrown out and I just get the new bag. It's costing me probably like $12 altogether. But the time I save, every time I do laundry, if I'm saving three minutes, I'm like, man, that's like a lot of my life.

Josh (01:34:40.59)

Yeah.

Interesting, yeah.

Yeah, right?

Yeah.

Josh (01:34:53.855)

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who wants to your life matching socks? exactly. That's a good idea. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:34:59.871)

But that little change in yours, well what if I just switch a few words around and now boom, it's done.

Josh (01:35:07.599)

Yeah, I couldn't believe it. It's like all this time I was just futzing around with this thing and then I literally changed like a couple words, you know? And it was done. I recorded the audio like shortly after that. And it was done. It was like it was within an hour. I mean, was or something like that. I mean, it took a while to mix it and everything like that, but it kind of all fell into place. So it's weird how that works, you know? It's very weird. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:35:23.475)

Yeah.

crazy.

Brian Funk (01:35:34.175)

Yeah. What if we just do that? That's where sometimes another person's perspective really comes in handy. Because they just see it differently or they're not as attached to it. And you might be having a problem with a song and they might just say, well, just take that guitar part out. And I'll be like, but that's the part. I've worked on that. Then you hit mute and you're like, oh, yeah. That happened to my band too, doing vocals and

Josh (01:35:45.966)

Yeah.

Josh (01:35:52.975)

Yeah, it's just a favorite part. I work so hard on that. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:36:03.807)

I had like got the effects just right and you know to cover all my own insecurities about my singing and they just said like what if you just take those effects off so we can like really hear what you're saying and after the initial getting over it for me I was like you guys are so right and not only is it easy to hear what I'm saying but there's more room in the mix for everything else but I wouldn't have done that.

Josh (01:36:11.311)

Sure.

Josh (01:36:17.741)

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh (01:36:24.355)

Yeah.

Josh (01:36:31.104)

Right, right.

Brian Funk (01:36:33.873)

I would have probably decided to put more plugins on that voice to fix the problem.

Josh (01:36:34.445)

Yeah.

Josh (01:36:39.661)

Yeah, yeah, I can relate to that. Yeah, I think like I don't this is a very unsophisticated way of mixing it. This is how I tend to do it. I get it more or less how it sounds, right? And then I go, I just listen to it many times in different places. I'll listen to it on headphones or I'll listen to it in a car or whatever on various speakers to see. But the thing that I'm kind of aiming for is to actually be doing something else and actually realize that the entire track is played.

Brian Funk (01:36:53.801)

Yeah, that's a good way to do it.

Josh (01:37:08.335)

And I didn't, there was no part of it that thick, was like, oh, maybe kind of like, you know, a great or cringe or whatever. And to realize that, oh, I, I, nothing actually stood out, you know, and when I've reached that point, I know that I've essentially polished it to the point where there's, there's the rough edges, at least to me are not visible. It's kind I think it was like polishing a piece of, or like sanding a piece of wood or something like that. And I don't know if that's how other people do it, but I, I'm almost aiming for like, um,

not blandness, but there's nothing that sticks out, right? There's nothing that's grating in the mix, so.

Brian Funk (01:37:43.081)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:37:47.951)

I very much do the same thing. Get it to a point and listen in different places and then maybe do the laundry or the dishes or whatever. Something that's kind of occupying my mind a little bit. Because I'm kind of like pixel art. When you're mixing and when you're working on it, you're going like pixel by pixel and you're like getting them all right. But you have to be able to see what it looks like from a distance for those pixels to actually come together and make a picture.

Josh (01:37:55.811)

Yeah.

Josh (01:38:00.559)

Yeah.

Josh (01:38:04.665)

Yeah.

Josh (01:38:08.939)

Right, that's true.

Brian Funk (01:38:18.324)

Otherwise you're just looking at dots. And it's hard to switch between those frames of thinking when you're mixing to go from, I'm arranging the little dots to I'm listening to the big picture here. It's important to switch back and forth to that.

Josh (01:38:26.189)

Yeah.

Josh (01:38:31.863)

Yeah, yeah, sure, absolutely. Yeah, I think so. So let's see. We could probably talk all day, I've got to swim to get to, but yeah. But is there anything else that we think we should cover? Should we talk? Do we? Is there anything else that we didn't talk about? They're like, no, I think I want to throw that in there.

Brian Funk (01:38:42.994)

Yeah, I know, and you've got a swim meet to attend, so I don't want to...

Brian Funk (01:38:57.874)

Well, yeah, of course, I'm sure there's a lot, but I'd like to point out for people that are on my end anyway of this podcast that you've got a lot of cool stuff about the creative process in music, but also a lot of writing. And I think what's cool about what we're doing here, because my show is more music production focused.

Josh (01:39:20.292)

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Brian Funk (01:39:25.288)

However, I'm always talking about the creative process, the artistic challenges, and half the things I say on this podcast are the things I say to my students in my English class when they're trying to write papers. It all connects and crosses over, and I've found the more I explore the way people see these things in other mediums, it helps me understand how to apply it.

Josh (01:39:28.483)

Right, yeah.

Josh (01:39:36.695)

Yeah, sure.

Josh (01:39:50.703)

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (01:39:50.855)

in the musical medium. I think that's a cool thing about your show and for anyone that would be listening to my show. think whichever way you're listening right now, crossing over into those different areas can really open up some new doors and perspectives on the whole entire process of making stuff.

Josh (01:39:53.113)

Yeah, I agree.

Josh (01:40:11.639)

Yeah, yeah, I'd like to say like, you know, I,

I think even though, you said, you know, your shows about music production, think a lot of it is applies very generally. I encourage anybody who's interested in any kind of creative stuff to check it out. And because I think you'll find a lot of like, even with a different guest, although they may have different genres that they kind of focus in. Ultimately, you can distill it down to the same kind of concepts. They're talking about workflow. They're talking about how they work through creative barriers, you know, work through limitations and how

they find a time to do this or take care of themselves, show up for themselves in this way. I mean, think it's all, regardless of what you do, I think that's pretty applicable. I think that's really nice to get different people's take on it. So I encourage people to check out that stuff and your music. So we'll link to that in the show notes. So, man, we should do this again. I've enjoyed our talk. I enjoyed our talk. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:41:04.829)

Yes, we will.

Brian Funk (01:41:10.718)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it'd great to catch up with you again and see where you're at with all this stuff. like you said, there's a lot we can dive into. And I think kind of like what we said with the music and the art, sometimes it's nice to leave it with, know, leave the audience wanting more, leaving ourselves wanting more to come back for next time. So we'll have to do it.

Josh (01:41:20.323)

Yeah.

Josh (01:41:32.739)

That's true. That's true. Yeah, that's absolutely. Well, Brian, it's been a real pleasure. I hope you have a great rest of your weekend. Look forward to talking to you again. Absolutely. Thank you guys.

Brian Funk (01:41:40.092)

Yeah. Yeah, thanks for having me and thanks for being on my show and thanks for everyone that listened.

Brian Funk
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Snakes of Russia - Emotion Over Perfection - Music Production Podcast #414