Benn Jordan is a producer, YouTuber, scientist and artist whose been making music for over 20 years as The Flashbulb. In this episode, learn how Benn mixed and mastered his first few records on an extremely low-end rig, the “open secret” of the music tech industry, the unexpected song he uses to tune touring sound systems, and the only Forever Studio item he’d be heartbroken to lose if his house burnt down.
Benn Jordan is a producer, YouTuber, scientist and artist whose been making music for over 20 years as The Flashbulb. In this episode, learn how Benn mixed and mastered his first few records on an extremely low-end rig, the “open secret” of the music tech industry, which unexpected song he uses to tune touring sound systems, and the only Forever Studio item he’d be heartbroken to lose if his house burnt down.
LINKS (SPOILERS BELOW)
https://www.boss.info/us/products/dr-660/
https://www.fs.usda.gov/lpnf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe
https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/17an9oj/brutalist_structures_in_the_middle_of_forests/
https://u-he.com/products/zebralette/
https://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/jx-305
https://www.image-line.com/
https://rme-audio.de/fireface-802.html
https://reverb.com/uk/p/yamaha-hs80m-powered-studio-monitor-pair
https://www.genelec.com/immersive-hub
https://reverb.com/uk/p/mackie-hr824-8-active-studio-monitors-pair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensual_Seduction
https://uk.yamaha.com/en/products/musical_instruments/pianos/disklavier/index.html
https://www.expressivee.com/2-osmose
https://rode.com/en/microphones/360-ambisonic/nt-sf1
https://www.gak.co.uk/en/roland-gk3/18479
https://www.roland.com/us/products/vg-99/
https://www.akaipro.com/mpc-key-61.html
https://uk.yamaha.com/en/products/music_production/synthesizers/montagem/index.html
https://ronrocoreview.wordpress.com/
The Last of Us Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SWhBsbxmpk
Amores Perros: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245712/
Chris Barker:
I'm Chris Barker.
Will Betts:
And I'm Will Betts. And this is the music tech, my Forever studio podcast, brought to you in partnership with Audient.
Chris Barker:
In this podcast we speak with artists, musicians, DJ's engineers and producers about their fantasy forever studio.
Will Betts:
The imaginary studio that our guests invent will be one that they must live with for eternity. But even in studio foreverdom, we have some rules.
Chris Barker:
That's right, the rules. Our guests will first select a computer, a Daw and an audio interface. Those are three items that everybody gets. Then after that they will choose just six other bits. Studio kit plus one non gear related studio item.
Will Betts:
But.
Benn Jordan:
No bundles.
Chris Barker:
That's right, no bundles. Choosing something sold as a package of separate software or hardware as a single item is forbidden.
Will Betts:
This time we're joined by an artist, producer, songwriter and music technology polymath, who's taken the industry by storm with his music under various aliases, including the flashbulb and with his excellent YouTube channel.
Chris Barker:
Yes, if something is going on in the music tech industry, Benn knows all about it.
Will Betts:
But will his studio be a tribute to the latest tech or hark back to the gear of yesteryear bit?
Chris Barker:
Both maybe.
Will Betts:
Let's see.
Chris Barker:
This is my forever studio with Benn Jordan.
Will Betts:
Welcome, welcome, Ben.
Benn Jordan:
Hey, how's it going? Good. That's a lot of pressure. Yeah. Especially since this is like coming way off the cuff. Like, you always want to make your hypothetical decisions very carefully since they have no consequences whatsoever.
Chris Barker:
Exactly.
Will Betts:
Thank you.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Yes, exactly. And along the way, we'll be trying to upsell some dreams. Upsell your dreams. So, yeah, if you start lowballing it and trying to be cool, we'll try and get you to spend that fictional cash.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. Okay.
Chris Barker:
On something fancy. I like this. Before we get into the, into the construction of the, of the studio, tell us about your sort of journey into music. I mean, for those that can't see, obviously, that listening to the podcast, you're sat in quite an impressive studio room right now, but.
Benn Jordan:
Oh, I'm in guitar center right now. Yeah. I just asked them if I could sit. Hopefully they don't see me.
Chris Barker:
Did you start off as like a regular musician, if we can say that, and then delve into technology or did technology was the thing that pulled you in?
Benn Jordan:
I started as, like, when I was five or six years old, I started playing jazz guitar kind of on my own accord. Like, the only music that was being played in my household was kind of jazz. And so I really wanted a guitar. My step grandpa bought one for me. I brought it home, taught myself how to play the wrong way. I play upside down.
Chris Barker:
So that's jazz, baby.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, right? Yeah. And so then I got into piano a little bit. I was in a band when I was a teenager. I was really, really dedicated. Like, incredibly toxically focused on being the best at all the instruments. And then the rest of my band, they were just normal teenagers who weren't that dedicated. And so I was like, well, I don't need it. I'll just get a drum machine.
Benn Jordan:
I could play the drums, and this way I'll just produce music on my own. And so I got a boss Dr. 660, and I would record into a karaoke machine and then just swap the tapes to multitrack. And I didn't really have any money to buy a proper four track or something. And so all of the beats that I were listening to when I was a kid were like, buddy Rich and stuff like that. And so I was just trying to recreate that stuff on the boss Dr. 660, which happens to be a great drum machine for that type of step programming if you want to get really into the weeds. And then that sort of defined a style of music.
Benn Jordan:
That was one of the things that ended up getting signed to a label and ending up with me having a career in music. And so the electronic part didn't really come the same route that it does with most electronic musicians where they hear a dj and then want to make that music or something.
Chris Barker:
It kind of the route of abandoning all of the people because they're not as dedicated as you. He's quite a familiar story in electronic music, though, is that.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, I guess I could see that. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Many successful people where it's just like, just play the drums just like, no, okay, we're getting a machine.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. And it's a bit of a curse, too, because then, yeah, I mean, if you, like, try and play a guitar part over a drum machine, then you start realizing, like, oh, I'm very imperfect. This sounds terrible. And so then you need to, like, add in humanization on the drum machine, and that kind of defeats the whole purpose of doing it in the first.
Will Betts:
Place when you were signing to a label, first off, you surely didn't pitch it as buddy rich on a dr. 660. What was the sell?
Benn Jordan:
I think it was just, I had, like, a few in Chicago. I had a small group of people who were just really dedicated fans of my music. They just thought that my music was, like, the bestest thing ever at the time. And then, weirdly, over in the UK, the whole warp records thing was starting to blow up, and the reflex records and apex twin and square pusher and all that, which is not that different in a lot of ways. And both those things, I started becoming inspired by Richard James and stuff like that as well, around that time. And that's when I started being introduced to those musicians, too, and touring, you know, either with them or alongside them. And so, yeah, the artists that you.
Chris Barker:
Started being associated with, they weren't influences. When you first started making the music, it was kind of almost coincidence, if you want to put it that way, that you weren't aiming to be part of that scene or that world. You just were making music that you want to make. And it was kind of like, hey, there's other people doing this, too.
Benn Jordan:
Early on in my career, it was kind of. I always got called, even in the press, sort of got called the wedding band version of Square Pusher, like the square pusher cover band or something, which I never really was that bothered by, because I think that Tom Jenkinson, square Pusher, I think he's an incredible musician and being compared to him, I've never been really salty about that. But if you were to go back to when Tom and I were both younger, we both loved buddy rich, we both loved Jacques Pistorius, that fretless bass style we both, like, we have. And then we both played with those types of older Roland drum machines and stuff. And so it's not totally crazy to have all the ingredients and the same recipes making the same dish or making similar dishes. Yeah. So there's a lot of things where you could probably compare them side by side. And then I think once I started listening to square pusher, surely it ended up as part of that recipe, for sure.
Chris Barker:
You both, I guess you start being influenced by the actual scene directly. Yeah, but how was it when you find out that there's other people doing this? Cause part of it must be like, I'm onto something, and part of it must be like, oh, I thought I was the only guy doing this kind of thing.
Benn Jordan:
No, it was really, really validating. It was. Cause it, you know, think about, like, Chicago in the 1990s. Anything that wasn't four four was just, you know, like heresy. I mean, it was like, that's where acid house started. Right? And house music in general. And so mainstream radio stations were playing, like, acid house, and I. And I still to this day, I love acid house, but making crazy music like I was.
Benn Jordan:
But the music I was making at the time was just considered crazy. And, like, it was not accessible in any way. It was never going to get signed. I was never going to tour. And so it. It didn't look like I had a path forward until I. The first all that was happening in the UK and then in the US in the late nineties, I started talking to Aaron Venetian Snares and Richard Devine. And those are, like, my two us buddies who were doing the same thing.
Benn Jordan:
And that was also very validating because they were making music that was probably far stranger than mine at the time. So it was great.
Chris Barker:
Aaron Funky.
Will Betts:
Mm hmm.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
I have no idea why he changed his name. That's the coolest name ever. You don't need to be venetian snares. Aaron Funk, he's awesome.
Benn Jordan:
He's one of the most, like, unique individuals I've ever met in my life. He's. I love him to death.
Chris Barker:
Let's start building this fantasy studio. So we found out some stuff about where you started. Let's see where we end up. So, dream studio. It can be anywhere in the world, any style. Where would you put your dream studio in the world?
Benn Jordan:
I mean, I, like, moved from Chicago down to the far off suburbs of Atlanta to kind of get away from the big city. But I've also now been thinking about moving even further out into the middle of nowhere. And I'm not sure if I'm okay with it. I'm kind of back and forth on it because I do still want a Walmart somewhere nearby in case I need milk or, you know, something like, whatever it is. And I also. I'm not sure it's great for your mental health to just coop yourself up, you know, in the middle of the desert or something. And so I think I would probably want to be somewhere beautiful near a major city. So maybe Malibu, California.
Benn Jordan:
Maybe if I just owned a lot of land in Malibu, like, which would cost billions of dollars. But, hey, you know, we have that money in this fantasy. Although I feel like if I moved to Malibu, all my neighbors would be douchebags. So maybe. Yeah. So I'm gonna. What I'm gonna do, I would say maybe New Mexico. But I think what I would probably do is commandeer, like, Los Padres National Forest, which is a national forest kind of north of Malibu.
Benn Jordan:
It's a little bit further from LA. Beautiful mediterranean weather. It's absolutely massive. It's like, you know, the revenant out there, except you're still within an hour drive from LA. I think I do that. I just commandeer the whole thing. Sorry. To anybody who likes hiking there and stuff, you can't come on the property anymore, so.
Benn Jordan:
And then I would definitely need a moat around my house because.
Will Betts:
Oh, my God, here we go.
Benn Jordan:
California has this weird thing where it burns down every single year, and so I just want my moat to, you know, not be part of that burned down part. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
I'm glad you clarified it was for fire, because I just thought it was for other people again.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. Yeah. I want a moat. I want sharks in the moat that are trained to fight fires. A drawbridge.
Chris Barker:
Just.
Benn Jordan:
Right. Yeah. A fireproof drawbridge. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
And what about the style of the. The. The studio, then? I mean, is this kind of cabin in the woods, or would it be some modern kind of construction?
Benn Jordan:
Oh, it would be, like, super modern. Okay. It would be. It would be super artsy. Yeah. I don't know why. You know, I have no idea why. Probably because I have a YouTube production channel, so, you know, probably I'd be thinking in that regard, I'm picturing sort.
Chris Barker:
Of ex machina kind of vibes.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. No, I'm thinking, like, similar to what you would have in, like, maybe an italian lake Vista or something. One of those, like, modern euro style or adobe. I might, but that's sort of like. Those two are sort of a similar style. I don't really know anything about architecture other than I like brutalism, but I don't think I would want to live in a brutalist house just, like, a giant communist concrete that works in the forest.
Will Betts:
That's good.
Benn Jordan:
That's.
Chris Barker:
Shocker.
Benn Jordan:
That would look. Yeah, that would.
Chris Barker:
It would survive a fire as well.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, actually. Okay, then. Yeah, let's go with that. Now that I think about it, I would live in a brutalist home that had just a lot of windows on the top, because I'm moving to Los Padres national Forest. So I obviously want to see outside and see the coyotes and stuff. Yeah. So, massive, brutal structure. Let's go with that.
Benn Jordan:
That sounds good.
Chris Barker:
And what's the kind of vibe you like to work with inside? Like, do you like lots of soft furnishings and the creative vibe? Or again, is it quite modern, quite spaceship like? Or does that not matter?
Benn Jordan:
Like, does anything I have is gonna turn into a gigantic mess no matter what it is? Like, every type of studio I've ever had.
Chris Barker:
Well, not in this studio, because you're only gonna get six items.
Benn Jordan:
Exactly. I know. That's what I'm thinking. Like, what is the mess gonna be? Because if I can only. Yeah. So I guess it would be kind of cozy. I guess I really wouldn't need that much space. Maybe a little bit of space to exercise and stuff and, you know.
Will Betts:
But you'd need the dojo as well, surely.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, yeah, I guess. I guess I could have an octagon. Oh, my. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. There's a whole.
Will Betts:
There's a whole bit.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, that's the fantasy item. Right. So, like, an octagon with, like, a UFC fighter in it at all times. Okay, well, that could just beat the crap out of me when I make a mistake.
Will Betts:
Nice. So, in terms of the working environment, then, would, do you like to have windows around? Do you like to have it completely blacked out and be able to have complete control over the space, the lighting in the space?
Benn Jordan:
I like to have. I like to have windows. That's, like, the one luxury that I can't have here, just where I live. Not that windows are banned in Georgia, but it's below ground, and I can only have windows in certain areas.
Chris Barker:
It's like ye olde english time. And the taxes on the windows for the king.
Benn Jordan:
Right.
Chris Barker:
It's the one remaining place in the world that has that. Where you lived.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, no, we got window tax, gravity tax. It's terrible here.
Chris Barker:
Okay, well, let's all visualize that and move on to the three free items, which is your daw, your audio interface, and your choice of computer. So these don't count towards your six. These are just the basics that we give everybody. But tell us what you would choose for those things.
Benn Jordan:
Daw would probably be. I mean, it would be Fl studio. That's been the daw I've been using since I've been using Daws. And also, I feel like that probably is the most complete as a package. Like, I feel like I could produce music just from installing that daw. There's a couple things I miss. Like, you know, a good, solid piano sound or something, but I think that that would be. Yeah, kind of a dead ringer for that.
Chris Barker:
Not a regular choice, is it, on the podcast? But I've always found it strange. Maybe it's the guests we're having, but it's not chosen that often, but actually, it's.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. People still see it as, like, it's like, every year at, like, namm, they always have, like, the smallest little booth. And I'm always thinking, like, I think this is the richest company here. It's good. Most successful company in music yet. Like, everybody sees them still as this. Like, oh, that's the thing amateurs use, but.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, and it used to be, like, it used to be quite european centric. And I remember when I started going to the states and started seeing what basically once hip hop grabbed hold of it as well. It's. It's just because it was kind of like, it started to infiltrate european dance scene and started transitioning from being like, you know, the toy or the entry level to being, oh, that hit was made with it. That hit was made with it, but it was very edm and then hip hop and those guys grabbed it. And it seems pretty much everybody is using it. I wish on credits it would show you the percentage of the daw that's used.
Benn Jordan:
I think a lot of people don't admit to using it, which is kind of funny, and I'm guilty of that. Back in the day, I used to do tv scoring and film scoring work, and if I worked in a different studio, they would have a Pro Tools HD system set up and I would have a laptop with FL studio, and it would be unprofessional. I would be worried that I wouldn't get hired for another gig if I got caught using FL studio. It was that funny. Same with, like, colleges. Like, if I ever did a talk at a college or anything like that, it would. I would be, like, embarrassed to talk about the Daw that I use because I would be like, I'm never gonna get hired again if I'm.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, I think that was a familiar thing in hip hop. Like, it seemed like. And, and dance music, initially, when I saw it get massive in the industry, it was, or in the pro end of the industry, it was always on somebody's laptop in a studio where they were streaming bits of it into pro tools and kind of like running it like an instrument rather than its own thing. And it always sort of had to end up in pro tools. And if you interviewed people about it, they'd say, we did it in pro tools.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, it must be one of those things where, you know, like, people see daws as a luxury and pro tools was the most expensive at the time, so that made you the most professional, whereas Fl studio, most people at that time were using, like, a cracked version of it. And so that made you unprofessional. People just. I guess it is just sort of like hierarchical financial gatekeeping in a weird way. I mean, but that exists everywhere that exists with our clothes and shoes and cars and so, yeah, it would only.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, I think this is with the door side. I think it's totally falling apart now, I don't think.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
With people having multiple doors and people really not giving a damn what they made their record on. Yeah, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't matter.
Will Betts:
All but question on the door, though. So all of the drum programming you've done for your entire career, then it's all been in FL studio, because it's an extremely complex drum programming that's gone on is beyond using it already. Is there a reason why FL studio is more suited to the kind of music that you make or have made?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, most of the music that, like, you would hear on Spotify or any of my available discography was probably either a back in the older stuff would be a Roland JX 305 was my primary drum sequencer. And then once I started using daws, which was like early 2004, you could hear the shift in my music where it just kind of went completely crazy because I was like, oh, I'm going to use a computer for this instead. That would be FL studio and FL studio objectively, I feel like anybody who's used it or even paid attention to it for long enough would agree with me saying that its strongest suit is its piano roll. The piano roll tools are just nuts and nothing else even comes close to it. Unfortunately, because I wish that every DAW had that level of power, you can really, really get extremely focused and deep into programming. Also, another thing that I do is I don't really loop patterns like a lot of people do in daws and stuff. I kind of just start from, you know, the first note and then go the entire track in one thing, and I try and do as little copying and pasting as possible just because, I don't know, that makes it a more interesting song. Like, you have more room for variation and play and stuff, so love that.
Chris Barker:
So you still track like it's a.
Benn Jordan:
Tape machine, essentially, kind of, yeah. Yeah. Even if I'm drawing out each note, it's like, it's. I feel like that's. I'll just get bored if I use patterns for some reason. And it's like, obviously there's a million songs that use patterns that are brilliant, that I could never even hope to make something that cool. But for me, I just get bored if I'm using patterns typically.
Chris Barker:
Well, there's something to be said in that. We've talked about it a lot on many of these podcasts, where it's just finding that way that you work and not being influenced by other people's way, because you can just get lost changing. I mean, I've met many artists that get obsessed with seeing other people's studios and how it's set up or the gear they're using, and then they change up there, and they just never settled. And then you've got other people that are still using, you know, computers from 2002 because they're just like, I've always used this, and it works.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
And it's some kind of middle ground to find where you don't mess with what works. There's a lot of people that have gear in their studio that they don't use, but the gear itself is kind of inspiring, even though it doesn't make it onto the record. It's. They know they don't need it, but sitting in front of a laptop isn't inspiring.
Benn Jordan:
There's, like, an open secret in this entire industry that I definitely believe in a lot more. You know, learned a lot more about when having a YouTube channel. The people who buy music gear and the people that are generally, like, you know, keeping the companies afloat, I would say more than half of them are not really making music on it. They're kind of just collecting it and playing with it. Even daws and software, like, they just buy the software, they play with the knobs, they listen to it for a second, and there's no shame in it at all. Like, that's the big thing, is there's this kind of. Everybody pretends like they're making music in it, but there are a lot of people who just, like collecting synths and collecting daws and learning, and because they're not, you know, producing music that people are listening to for some reason, that they're not as validated. And I think that's nonsense because it is a hobby one way or another.
Benn Jordan:
And collecting synthesizers is a way cooler hobby than, like, a lot of other hobbies that people have. Right. It's. It's. Yeah, I mean, people have crazy hobbies. People play pickleball. They do not. There's anything wrong.
Benn Jordan:
Pickleball. But people, you know, they do all sorts of things that, like, just play tennis. Yeah, but, you know, like fly fishing. People stand in a river all day. Like, there's tons of hobbies that, like, are kind of absurd. And I think that collecting synthesizers that look and sound cool or software that, like, is really unique in its own space is one of the less absurd hobbies. So I kind of wish that that was a little bit less of a secret and a little bit more of a, you know. Oh, you know what? Actually, I do like collecting synthesizers, and I have no intention of using them in music, and that's fine.
Chris Barker:
I think you come across a lot more of those people now than you used to. It's become like, you know, like the guys that collect guitars as well. It's gone into that same world. I think maybe when 2030 years ago, they were seen as something that you would have to make music with. Why would you want it? Cause it's not a real instrument as such, but now they are real instruments.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. And accepted, oddly enough, probably like seven or eight years now. I met Herbie Hancock, and that was his number one complaint, is that things are getting less and less musician friendly, like, in the synth world because he was trying to use like, an iPad with his. He had like a solo piano set, but he was trying to use an iPad in it. And he was having a little bit of. He wasn't really excelling at it very much. And he was like, it's just that more and more things are coming out without keyboards or without, like, any way that you can interact in real time with them. And that's so true.
Benn Jordan:
And that makes me wonder if that's why the collecting thing is like, a modular synth is way easier to collect than to make music on for a lot of people, I think. Whereas, you know, like the osmos or something, or I guess, like some sort of, you know, big keyboard, you almost can't not learn how to play some chords on it and, you know, try and make some music.
Chris Barker:
That's true, actually. And even if they did have interfaces, it started being pads.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Always to or even like, you know, Ableton push style. It became, how can we break the keyboard concept? Because having a keyboard on something puts off the non musician, and that's part of the market share that we want because. So you seen a keyboard, they go, well, I can't play keyboard.
Benn Jordan:
Right. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
So it's immediately. And whereas if you put pads or buttons on it, it looks like something new. And I can be the first person to learn how to make music on an ableton push or a tenorian or.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, yeah. And I'll tell you one thing. If you take those. If you were to lob all of those enthusiast sales off of. Off of the industry, then we would have nothing to make music with, like, you know, on the other end of it. Like, they're. They're as required as ours, if not more. So it's a good thing ultimately, it keeps things going, it keeps creative people employed, which is great.
Chris Barker:
So what are we thinking for your audio interface of locked in Fl studio?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, audio interface. I mean, I guess I'm just going to choose an RME Maddy face. Maybe solid, maybe Fireface 802 just, yeah, what I'm already using, like something with a solid driver. Like, RME has really, RME has really, really solid drivers, and they update them like ten years, twelve years after you buy the interface. Like, there's probably one of the best values. It's like your lifetime interface. Like you kind of buy it once and you never really think about it again. The biggest downside of any audio interface is having to deal with, like a new interface or having to deal with driver issues or latency or whatever.
Benn Jordan:
And so I feel like that just rme seems to deal with that. The best. One question that I have. What's the deal with monitors? I don't mean that in, like, the Jerry Seinfeld will, what's the deal with monitors? You look at one in the screen and you hear them. No, what's the deal? Like, is this included in my freebies, or is that one of my pieces of gear that I.
Chris Barker:
No, your freebies are your audio interface, your computer, and your dawn. But monitors do come as a pair. We're fair on that.
Benn Jordan:
Okay.
Chris Barker:
But if you want monitors, they will be when we start your six items.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. Okay.
Chris Barker:
And some people have been rogue and not chosen monitors.
Benn Jordan:
They're just gonna listen to, like, the little BIOS speaker in their computer.
Will Betts:
Speaking of which, what computer would you go with? Because you're forever computer. What's that gonna be?
Benn Jordan:
I guess it'll just be the one I have now. I don't really have any allegiance, which I think is a, it's one of the newer generation Intel I nine s. So windows. Yeah, Windows has an RTX 4080, I think, because I do do some, like, AI stuff on here. And. Yeah, I mean, it has a bunch of solid state drives that are paired in a raid thing. And so nice. I mean, it pretty much does video editing, which is probably the most demanding thing that you could throw at a computer, is like four k, six k video editing.
Benn Jordan:
And so it does that fine music, other than the zebralette plugin, that new one that actually maxed out my cpu, which was kind of hilarious because nothing, nothing has maxed out my cpu before when that was like, somehow, somehow that plugin did.
Chris Barker:
Is that a new u he one?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. I checked it out on a stream, and my cpu just went all the way. And I was just like, whoa, what? Really? Like, how many partials are we dealing with? Like millions.
Chris Barker:
It must be.
Will Betts:
Do you want to upsell your dream to the most specced out windows machine? You could have.
Benn Jordan:
We have the budget, but I might have the. I guess I'd increase the video card to art and RTX 4090, which is one step up, I suppose.
Will Betts:
Okay, there we go.
Benn Jordan:
I don't know what. Yeah, I don't know what's, like. What's faster. I'd like to do a benchmark, maybe while I'm on this podcast, I'd like to. Let's get into it. Benchmark my entire system. Okay, wait, guys, hold on. It's going.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Will Betts:
Unedited?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Obviously, it's quite rare on the podcast for people to choose pc over Mac. I mean, any reason? Is it that the Fl. Is it the fl thing and then building your own, or.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, I do like to build my own. I like to. Yeah. Like, my system. It looks almost like a treasure chest size. It's a massive machine that's, like, under an entire table over there.
Will Betts:
Oh, wow.
Benn Jordan:
And it has, like, liquid cooling. It runs very quiet. I can even do things like, you know, train an AI model or something like that and have it relatively quiet without, you know, the fans will spin up, but they're super quiet fans. And so I put a lot of work into that to make it, you know, a studio machine. Even Apple's. What's the Apple Studio or Mac studio, whatever that is. That thing's really loud. Like, that thing's actually quite a few decibels.
Benn Jordan:
So I would still. Even if I had that, I would be putting it, hiding it away behind a bunch of, like, padding and stuff, but I would just not have any room to expand it. Whereas this one, if I feel like a drive's going out or if I feel like there's any sort of problem, it's real easy to just stick my head in there and look around and be like, there we go. Here's our issue. But I do like the expandability, and I guess the modularity. It is kind of modular in there, too. So appropriate.
Chris Barker:
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Will Betts:
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Benn Jordan:
He.
Will Betts:
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Chris Barker:
Let's move on to item number one.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's gonna have to be monitors. Cause I wanna hear things. Here's another place where I get kind of lost. I had the Yamaha H 8000s. Was that what they. H eight s?
Chris Barker:
Hs eight t's?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, those. Yeah. This is how much I care about monitors. I had those in a KRK sub for. I mean, since the Yamahas came out. So for a very, very long time.
Chris Barker:
Was that 2008 or something?
Benn Jordan:
2009, something like that. I was going on like 15 years or something. And I literally was just like, well, I should probably upgrade my monitors. And I did. Just because people kept complaining every time they came in my studio, they'd complain about the crappy Yamaha monitors I had, which I thought were totally fine. And I'm still trying to adjust now I have, like, the. Whatever the premium eyelouds are. The.
Benn Jordan:
Again, I care so much about monitors. I don't know any of the names. And I got those because they come with microphones and they just adjust themselves to the room. And that saves me a lot of time. And then even if I. Like, if I move that synth rack behind me, I have a synth rack behind me right now. If I were to move that around, I would probably do a readjustment, so. Ooh, a Genoa Atmos system.
Benn Jordan:
Can I get one of those?
Will Betts:
Yeah, you can. It's a hell of an upgrade. Yeah, sure. Love it.
Benn Jordan:
Right? Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, that's like, probably the most expensive thing that I could think of off the top of my head. Maybe like the Newman KH 420, the ten inches. Those are nice, but those are. Yeah, I mean, something like, just something with a wide range. And I guess if I can't have that much gear, if this is all I have, then I'm probably going to want to fool around with surround stuff at some time. And I like ambisonic stuff.
Benn Jordan:
And so I'll figure out a way to make that work on the Genelec Atmos system. Richard Devine told me that the Genelec Atmos system is great. So I believe him, and that's all I need. But, yeah, I mean, a lot of my older albums, I literally mastered them on Logitech speakers, like, in 2002, 2000. Even Curleen selections, the one you mentioned before we started, that was mastered on Logitech speakers. Like, wow. I don't know.
Will Betts:
Well, like pc speakers that sit on the desk. Like the little sort of gray ones.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. With, like, the little sub and. Yeah.
Will Betts:
Wow.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. I completely made that and mastered it on those speakers. And the label was like, yeah, this sounds good. And I was like, okay, here we go. And that's nuts. And after that, I bought some. I bought some Mackie monitors or something. Yeah, they would, like, the cheapest ones, like the ones Behringer ripped off.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, but everybody loved those. They sounded like a PA system.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, but they were great.
Chris Barker:
I had the. They hs as well.
Will Betts:
HR 824s.
Chris Barker:
Were they HR 824s? Yeah, I had the 624s, which were awful. I got the six two four s thinking that they'd be like, a small version of the 824s, but no, they were. They sounded completely different. They had this weird hole in the bass.
Benn Jordan:
Oh, really? Huh?
Chris Barker:
Yeah. People do not buy the 624 secondhand. They sound actually. They sound fine, but working on them was a nightmare. And I didn't realize that was, you know, when you. You just think, I've lost it. I can't mix. I don't know.
Chris Barker:
Everything sounds terrible outside of the room. And then I changed monitors to some little genelecs and, oh, it sounds, like, normal again.
Benn Jordan:
Like, that's one of the sellers of the. The eyelouds is that sort of auto calibration like that. Because that just saved me my own guesswork. Because when I first built this studio down here, it's totally dead. I mean, it's, like, weird. If you clap your hands in here, it's kind of. It's a completely dead room, which I don't recommend for anybody who's building a studio. I do not recommend having a dead room.
Benn Jordan:
It's actually kind of hard on your ears. It gets very exhausting. Like, I never listen to music for fun down here. I only work on it. But, yeah, I mean, I went through this exhaustive process of, like, getting it perfect as good as I could with every adjustment. And then I realized at the end of the day, just listening to a song I'm really familiar with and then just turning the sub up a little bit and turning the monitor down a little bit. And that kind of was the better way of doing it.
Chris Barker:
Yeah. For me, it was just listening to music on your monitors like, it's your hi fi.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Doesn't matter how crappy they are, you get subliminally tuned into what music sounds like.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, Snoop Dogg's sexual eruption is. Is my go to song. Like, when I would tour.
Chris Barker:
That's the name of a record, right?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, no, it's a song. Yeah, yeah, it's not. It's. I mean, yeah, it's not.
Chris Barker:
People might notice sensual seduction over here. I think it got.
Benn Jordan:
Oh, yeah, he had, like, a weird, like, safe version of it, didn't he?
Chris Barker:
Yeah.
Benn Jordan:
Even though the song isn't really all that vulgar. But that song is mixed kind of weird. Like, there's a bass and then there's a sub bass beneath that. And if you have any sort of crossover from your monitors to that subwoofer, it always shows up in that song to me. And so that song's always my go to when tuning an audio system. But even on tour, which is really funny, because every sound check, I would play sexual eruption for my sound check, and they'd be like, don't you want to, like, play? And I'm like, no, no, I got my mixer up here. As long as the monitors work, I'm fine. But I need to hear sexual eruption out there to make sure that we.
Chris Barker:
Don'T have muddy bass and you've got promoters going. Are you sure we booked the right guy?
Benn Jordan:
Correct. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Amazing. We're going to lock in that Genelec system. Have you got that will the Genelec.
Will Betts:
Atmos package one, it's called.
Chris Barker:
Okay, okay.
Benn Jordan:
What's the retail on that?
Will Betts:
That goes for in the UK, 12,000.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Okay, so let's move on to item number two.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. Yamaha disclavaire grand piano. Okay. I have a disclaveer upright. The reason I don't have a grand is because I don't have the space. Nor I'm not sure if I would spend like $90,000 on a piano, but it would be. Disclaveers are not cheap, but even the uprights.
Chris Barker:
But I didn't even know they did an upright. Does that still play itself?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, I can send Midi to it and stuff. I don't really use that function other than on my YouTube channel. It's a great thing to have a sequencer and put it in there and test it around and play generative music or something. But I do just play the piano normally. I don't really run Midi through it all that often, but it's cool if.
Chris Barker:
You want to record, though, and you've only got you.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, having that capability is great. And it is a way to inspire yourself if you run out of ideas.
Chris Barker:
And get great mic placement as well, because you can have it just running.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, I have the whole front open and I generally, even when I'm playing, I try to be as quiet with my fingers as possible, but I'll have the mics almost down from the ceiling right in front of me, pointed into the soundboard. So. Yeah, one of those. But, you know, the full scale grand piano would be much easier to mic and I'd be able to do more things with clamping things on the.
Chris Barker:
We can get full scale grand piano here.
Will Betts:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Is that what we're going for?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, yeah, in my brutalist piano room.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, upselling dreams. Upsell your dreams.
Will Betts:
Yeah, love it.
Chris Barker:
Good. Is that in black? We're getting a black finish.
Will Betts:
Uh, yeah, not brutalist. Gray.
Benn Jordan:
Gray, yeah, yeah, dark gray would be nice too. I don't know. I mean, I guess I'll make them paint me one that's custom. So. Yeah, let's do gray.
Chris Barker:
With your face on the lid.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, my dog's face. I want her to look at herself and wonder if it's a mirror.
Chris Barker:
Just terrified.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, just like, yeah, just like. Why am I being test for my sentience every day? Item number three, I'm gonna need a MIDI controller. This one's rough.
Chris Barker:
Can you not send Midi out of the disclavier?
Benn Jordan:
You can, but it gets a little tricky. I mean, it's kind of weird to, like, play a pad when you have a piano playing in real life right in front of you. You know, it's kind of. It's difficult. I don't really use it for that ever. I might use the Osmos as my midi controller because it is one of those things where if I'm locked in this room with only six things, I feel like I could kind of spend a lifetime learning how to play the atmos better. Like turning off the limiting on the key vibration and stuff. And then I feel like there's a whole instrument to learn there.
Benn Jordan:
If I had the time, that is beyond that. But also it has the hack and editor, if you're familiar with that. And that's like, that's another whole alternative form of synthesis that you can't really do in a daw. You can't really do with a plugin. It kind of only works with the hardware, with the Egan matrix and stuff. I suppose that's a good ringer even though it's not full size.
Chris Barker:
So essentially it's a controller, but it comes with sounds.
Benn Jordan:
Mm hmm, yeah. And so you could like, yeah, you could use the Egan matrix to edit the sound, but I mean, there's a lot that you could do with it. You could kind of make it your only instrument for a year and probably come up with some really crazy things.
Chris Barker:
So imagine if you had all of time in the forever studio.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, it's one of those things that's very expandable. Whereas otherwise, if I were to just choose my, like, what is this thing? Keylab 88 make two. It was like the best MiDi piano controller I've ever played in my life. But I can't do anything other than what I'm already doing with the piano on it.
Chris Barker:
You've got the disclavier for that, right?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, exactly.
Will Betts:
So have you used the Osmos much on your music or is that sort of yet to make an appearance on.
Benn Jordan:
The music you're releasing right now due to software issues? I am only recording it in if I want it to. Cause just because MPE is such a mess. Right. I think the only thing that, that where I could just plug it in and start mapping something like swam strings or something like that is bitwig. I think bitwig is the only software that's like fully thumbs up Mpe embracing MPe. But yeah, I'm not sure like the specs of MPE are even different depending on who you ask. And then that's kind of like mixed in with the MiDI 2.0 thing. It's so hard to follow any of that stuff.
Benn Jordan:
But yeah, I do use it in my music for sure. Because again, it could create some like really expressive sounds that I really love. Item number four, I'm gonna go with a rode NTSf one ambisonic microphone. That's probably the microphone that I could push the most to make it do what I want. It could be a shotgun, it could be a stereo mic, it could be a ambisonic mic. It could kind of do whatever with the sound field plugin as well, where you could arrange the things around in different ways and it decodes the ambisonic. So yeah, probably that, that's kind of.
Chris Barker:
A good hack when you've only got limited, right.
Benn Jordan:
It's kind of like the most like universally capable microphone.
Will Betts:
You've gone for a lot of surround and atmos capable equipment here. So. Yeah, tell us more about that. Is that something you've played with a bunch or have you released? Are you releasing in atmos? Like what's going on with that?
Benn Jordan:
No, I've actually, I got some of Dolby's marketing reached out years ago, asking me if I wanted to mix my next flashbulb album in Atmos and have a video of me going, man, I never knew that my music could sound this good. You know, one of those things. And I was like, nah, I'm good. And they're like, are you sure? Free. We'll fly out and everything. I was like, nah, I'm good. I'm fascinated with ambisonic audio. I'm fascinated with archiving.
Benn Jordan:
Things is clear. And a lot of times I record places that have no noise pollution at all, and I go way out of my way to get to these places to archive them. And I usually use the ambisonic microphone, and that's just like, the most data that I could get out of that, like, a good 32 bit, 192 khz ambisonic recording is pretty solid way to archive something. And also you could mix it and you could normalize it, and you could do all sorts of different things that can make it sound different. And so I think that's my fascination as far as the genelec atmos thing goes. I don't really care about the codec at all. I just want more speakers. Like, if I.
Will Betts:
You're just, like, cycling out a stereo pair over and over?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, yeah, honestly, that's probably, yeah, okay. Yeah, like, I probably would never use more than, like, the sub and the two speakers, but, like, but I, you know, like, you're giving me unlimited money here. I got, like, musk bucks, so, yeah, I'll buy them. So. But no, I'm not. I'm actually pretty critical of atmos, to be honest, or at least the push of everybody to, like, start mixing their music and atmos when the vast majority of people listen to music on their, like, phone speaker or on a Bluetooth speaker, an Amazon echo or something. So it's kind of, the whole thing's absurd. But, yeah, I mean, you're not afraid.
Will Betts:
Of being sort of vocal about certain things. I'm kind of intrigued when you're saying you didn't want to go out and do the testimonial for atmos. I mean, that have sort of run counter to what you're doing on your YouTube channel and your sort of ethos there.
Benn Jordan:
I mean, it was before I became critical of things like that on YouTube as much like I was still kind of gear centric and not as open about those things at the time. Well, okay, so there's like, two things here. One, when it comes to sponsorships, so when it comes to making money through sponsorships and stuff, obviously you need to do it in every line of work. However, right now, like, one of the reasons I have a YouTube channel, one of the reasons I've wrote music for ads for so many years and stuff like that, is, so the flashbulb had to touch that. Like, that's the sacred thing that never touches sponsorships or anything like that. And so when any company comes out and says, we'd like to sponsor the flashbulb for this, or we'd like to even shows, even, like, you know, we'd like to pay you more money to have a can of, you know, energy drink on stage, and nobody would really notice it was a sponsorship. I feel like that's always been just a hard rule for me, where it's like, nope, this is my therapy. This is the thing that has saved my life over and over again.
Benn Jordan:
It will never be touched by that sort of vibe, I guess. But not to be like, I don't know, it sounds like I'm hypercritical of advertising when I say that. It's just like, my comfort zone is like, nope, Dolby's not gonna get the flashbulb name.
Chris Barker:
But that's the best place to be where you've got the reality of earning a living and you've got this project that you can keep, like you say, sacred. I think that's a good way to do it. It's a good way to. It's a good way to teach other people how to do it as well, that you can have these different hats and different profiles.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, I will get burnt out on YouTube. It's gonna happen, you know, like, I'm gonna quit at some point. I'm gonna quit everything else. I'm not gonna quit writing music. I'm not gonna let that happen, because I know how these things build up. And I think the reason why so many people, you know, tap out is because they over monetize their own craft, and then it becomes a job, and it becomes. And they wanna retire from working, whereas I don't wanna retire from making music. I love it.
Benn Jordan:
I wanna retire to make music. And so, which also kind of goes into what we were talking about earlier with, like, financial people seeing themselves as professional or not professional based on, like, how much money they're making from their music or how much money they're spending on a daw or something like that. I mean, I know a lot of people who have had careers in music that were really successful and also had a side job. Charlie. The late Charlie Cooper from telephone televiv. He was one of my best friends, he worked at a restaurant. He waited tables while telephotel Viv was in their height. And he did it because he didn't want to monetize telephone Tel Aviv as his primary source of income, because then he would be more likely to write music that would be a pop hit than writing music that he actually wanted to write, which is such a logical, great way to look at that.
Benn Jordan:
What a great way to, you know. And so I think I learned a lot from him in that, too, where I was like, okay, I'm okay with writing music for ads. It's not really selling out as long as I put my. My art here and then have my service on this side and keep those things, keep those two worlds separate. That's been the way I've been able to deal with it, because obviously, yeah, money and art just don't really mix very well. No, quite.
Chris Barker:
Yeah. It's the difficult second and third album, isn't it, of a lot of people, where the first catalogue of music that people make is in a bedroom with no aspirations of it ever breaking through, and it's for them, and that's what makes it brilliant. And then as soon as you've got team around you saying more of that, or do it like this, or here's the date, here's the market research, here's the feedback, here's the data. Do more tracks like that. Less tracks like that.
Benn Jordan:
It's interesting, too. Like, if I were to go on Twitter right now or something, or x or whatever you want to call it, and if I were to say, I want to make some new music, what kind of album should I make? I guarantee the vast majority of those responses are going to be telling me to make another album like one that I previously made. It's not going when, like, the answer should be. And the answer really is make one that makes us feel challenged like the one. You know what I mean? Like, not, don't make another one like that. Make one that makes us feel as challenged and enlightened by whatever we liked previously.
Chris Barker:
But that's why you can't ask people what they want, because people don't know what they want until they get it.
Benn Jordan:
And if you ask people what they want and then you react on that, you're providing a service, not art, right? Because you just make art. Art is, to me, art, something that, like, you're creating something, because you love creating, and that's the only reason you're doing it, right. And a service is when you're trying to monetize it in some way. And both are valid. You know, it's not like one's good and one's bad, but I think that that's the way I always separate it in my head. So. Yeah, the ambisonic.
Will Betts:
Okay.
Chris Barker:
Okay, well, let's. Let's get on to. Let's get on to item number five. Let's get on to item number five.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. Back in, like, 2001 or something, a friend of mine who worked at a guitar center, he was like, ben, you gotta get in here. We just bought a used Schechter guitar. And I was like, I've never heard of Schechter at the time. And he was like, well, it's a good brand, Ben. And it has a midi pickup on it. And nobody here even knows, like, how to work that. And so, you know, do you want it or not? And so I came down and I was like, oh, man, this thing has the best action out of any guitar I've ever played in my life.
Benn Jordan:
I don't even need to strum it. And that has been. It's like a frankensteined Schecter with midi pickups. And then I've put more modern MIDi pickups on it. Over the years. I brought that to all over the world. Touring. It's been my primary guitar on tour.
Benn Jordan:
I've used it in albums. It's just the best playing guitar that I've ever had. And now it's. After the years, it's starting to lose its amazing playability. But still, that would have to come with me. That's like the one thing that isn't breathing, where I would mourn it if my house burnt down, everything else, I'd be like, I don't care, whatever. I got an insurance plan. That guitar, I would be like, I'm never going to play that again.
Benn Jordan:
Like, I'm never going to find anything like that. So that would have to come with me. And that would be my. That would be my guitar.
Chris Barker:
Is that. Is that they got the Roland Midi pickups on it? Is it the GR ten stuff?
Benn Jordan:
Was it the GK? I think I have the GK three in it now, which is still kind of old. That's like eight years old. The MIDi pickup technology hasn't really. Hasn't really advanced much anyway.
Will Betts:
So it's pretty good at tracking chords, not just single notes and all this kind of thing.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, well, it is a different instrument. It is a completely different. I feel like. So there's, like, Roland GK Midi, which is. It's not really MIDi until you have an output from the GK system. And then you could plug that into the computer or plug that into a synth or whatever. The latency is really good. You can change the height and space of each of the strings pickups.
Benn Jordan:
Because there's like six different pickups on it. Yeah, I mean, it's customizable enough. It's more customizable, in my opinion, than like the Fishman Midi pickup or something like that. And Roland, especially back in, like, their older things, they definitely had a good amount of options in the synthesizers that you could control with it. But I just feel like that's the one that I'm the most comfortable with, probably. But now I just realized that I can't really use any of the midi stuff unless I have a midi translator of some sort. So that sucks.
Chris Barker:
Item number six.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, no, I can't. I don't care about Midi guitar enough for that. I'll just rip that thing off. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't really use MiDI. I use midi guitar a lot for. I would use MiDI guitar a lot for performing live. But, you know, most of the time in albums it would only appear, you know, sparingly. So I don't really need it.
Chris Barker:
Let's move on to the final item. Right, will?
Will Betts:
Final item. Yep.
Chris Barker:
Item number six.
Benn Jordan:
This one's tough. I don't know if I want a Jaco Pistorius bass, the Fender Jaco base, or if I want a runrocco. Oh, I'm gonna have to give one of those instruments up for life. Um, you could take Jack O's actual bass. Oh, yeah, I guess I could. Although I think that's. I imagine that that's probably not that great. Like, it would be cool to have.
Benn Jordan:
But I imagine, like, I think he threw it in the ocean in Japan. And, like, I mean, I think it's been through some. If you ever want a good music tech writing piece, the history of that bass is very interesting. I've followed up on that a few times because at one point I was gonna make a YouTube video about it. But then I realized, like, nobody cares. And, you know, for, like, my channel audience, just like Jaco who. But yeah, that's a pretty fascinating story. Cause that ended up, like, in a pawn shop or something.
Benn Jordan:
At some point. Nobody realized what it was. But, yeah, I'll take the newer recreation with, like, the more, you know, properly coded pickups and the newer fretboard and stuff. But I honestly, I think I'm going to take my runroko instead. Because I feel like that's just. I feel like I just get more joy playing the roonroco, and then I'll just miss the bass for the rest of my life. But I feel like I would miss the runroko more because I kind of play the runroko. That's probably the instrument I play the most.
Benn Jordan:
If I'm just, like, letting my dog out in the yard and waiting for her to go to the bathroom, that's the instrument I pick up, probably because of its portability. But it just sounds so big for how small it is. And for anybody who's listening and doesn't know what that is, it's a bass chirongo. And anybody who doesn't know what that is, it's like a small andean. I believe they started in Argentina or Peru. I think Peru is where they started. And it has five sets of two strings, so it has ten strings total, and so it's like an andean mandolin almost. And it just sounds gorgeous.
Benn Jordan:
It's probably its most popular use in music that I could name. I mean, I use it all the time, but I'm not that popular. What is popular is Gustavo Santiago, if I'm saying his name correct. He did the last for us score with a lot of Ron Rococo, which is one of the all time best scores for video games. Yeah. Wow.
Will Betts:
And of course, they used the same score again for the tv show as well, which is enormously popular.
Benn Jordan:
Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, that's where I. That's where I know it.
Will Betts:
Exactly. The same soundtrack.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, the tv show.
Will Betts:
Fantastic sound, isn't it? It's the. So they octave tuned each of those strings like a twelve string guitar.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Will Betts:
Nice. That makes sense.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. But it's a little tricky. Like, basically, the way it works is if you pluck a string up to lower, or I guess, like, higher to lower, then you get the higher end of the sound, and if you pluck it the other way around, then you get the bass end of the sound. And so that actually kind of affects the way that a sequence is played. Generally, when the instrument was initially made, it was only made to be strumming super fast, and then the andean flute would be the lead instrument in that ensemble. But, yeah, I guess the way that Gustavo and then whoever wants to sound like Gustavo, including myself, plays it, it's generally more classical guitar style. And that's when you have to pay a lot of attention to what direction you're plucking a string in, which is pretty cool.
Will Betts:
And so was that your introduction to it through Gustavo Santiolada.
Benn Jordan:
I had a chirongo before that that I played the same way.
Will Betts:
Oh, okay.
Benn Jordan:
And I really liked that. But I heard Gustavo's music very long ago, like, I think in, like, 2000 or something. He did the score for Amoros Peros, which is a fantastic film. It's, like, maybe my top film of all time. It's one of the best films I've ever seen. And it's directed by Alexandria Inoritu, who did babble 21 grams, the Revenant, and Birdman. So, yeah, he's done a lot of now much more famous films, but Amoros Perros was, like, his first big indie film, and it's fantastic. And that was Gustavo's breakthrough film for composing.
Benn Jordan:
And so the ending of that film has one of the most gorgeous, massive, plucked string ensembles I've ever heard. And it's like, also this heartbreaking moment in the film, which, you know, just. No spoilers. Yeah.
Will Betts:
We'Re both going to go and.
Chris Barker:
Watch that afterwards only because I haven't seen it. And I was like, oh, it's good to have. Good to have new recommendations. Yeah.
Benn Jordan:
Well, one thing if you've ever. If you've never seen Inoritu film, the heartbreaking point is not like a death. It's. It's more spiritual or something. It's like he. He knows when to, like, shoot the energy at you in a way where you don't expect it. You're just like, oh, God. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
So, um. Okay, well, let's have a listen back. Will can describe back the studio that you've built, and then. Then we'll go on and finish with your luxury item.
Benn Jordan:
Oh, yeah.
Chris Barker:
Will, take it away, set the scene.
Will Betts:
We're in Los Padres National Forest, California, in a brutalist building surrounded by a moat, but with windows to have natural light and to see the coyotes. Your computer is a Windows PC with an Intel I nine, an RTX 4090 graphics processor. Your interface is an RME fireface 802. Your Daw is fl studio. For your first item, you have chosen the Genelec Atmos package. Your second item is a Yamaha dysclavia grand piano with a painting of your dog's face on it. Your third item is the expressive e osmos. Item number four is the rode NTSF one.
Will Betts:
Your penultimate item is the Frankenstein Schecter guitar with Roland GK three midi pickups, your very own. And your final item is a Ron Roco. Do you want to pick your own Ron Rocco, or do you want a specific one from history or from another famous person?
Benn Jordan:
No, I would pick my. I've gone through quite a few, and I have, like, a favorite because if you want to Ron Roko, you generally have to find a luthier in Latin America to make one for you. And so it is a bit of a challenge because some of them are better than others. So, yeah, I would take my prized runroko. Beautiful.
Will Betts:
Do you think you can make music with that setup? How does that work for you?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, I think that's good. It's kind of funny hearing it back. It, like, and then imagining whatever, like, you know, BT or dead mouse chose it. Probably, like, people are probably good. Are you sure he doesn't want to live in a caravan, but, like, no.
Chris Barker:
The brutalist moat house is good.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, yeah, it's perfect. I mean, it really kind of is, like, I don't know, it just makes me. Makes me think of, like, a. If you gave somebody in poverty a bunch of money and they were just like, I don't know what to do. I guess I'd get this. Like, a lot of it is kind of that, but I suppose that is kind of the.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, well, keep that in mind as we go to your luxury item.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. So luxury now can I have a servant? Like, people have gone really weird this season.
Will Betts:
Everyone wants another person.
Chris Barker:
Everyone wants.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah, person.
Will Betts:
That's the economy, I guess.
Benn Jordan:
That's what it is. I mean, I guess, uh, you're only.
Chris Barker:
Allowed a servant if it's robotic.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I was thinking that, like, I think.
Chris Barker:
We should rule in now. Going forward, will.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
No more people, no exploitation of humans.
Benn Jordan:
I also think, though, like, am I allowed to do other things? Like, am I allowed. Do I have a kitchen in this place? Oh, okay, cool. Yeah, then that's fine. Yeah, then I don't want to worry about that stuff. I was gonna say, like, if I'm. If I only have the studio in, like, I just have, like, a food pill that comes out of the wall once a day or some sort of thing like that where I don't really have anything to clean up. And cleaning would probably be my only escape from, like, the hellish task of making music 24 hours a day. Then I don't want a servant, but other than maybe to keep me company, then I would say, like, an electron microscope or something would probably be cool.
Will Betts:
Okay. Why an electron microscope?
Benn Jordan:
I've always wanted one. I've talked to. There's companies that are making smaller ones now, and I've, like, been like, hey, I have a really popular science YouTube channel. You could send me one of those electron microscopes. I got a garage. And I never get a response.
Will Betts:
Wait.
Benn Jordan:
But I just want to give myself a really accurate COVID test. No, I would really. I'm obsessed, a little bit obsessed with particle physics. And I would just like to play with that or see it in real life and interact with it and stuff like that. I don't know if it would be valuable to anybody other than myself and my own entertainment. I don't know if I would actually.
Chris Barker:
Could have negated your servant luxury item for some kind of particle collider under the studio.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Under the moat. That would work perfectly.
Benn Jordan:
Oh, yeah. Actually, yeah.
Chris Barker:
Maybe just a hand drawn collider under the moat.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. What could go wrong? Oops. I created false vacuum decay. But, yeah, I would really like to look at particles. That would be incredible, because it is kind of crazy that there's this entire separate set of physics under the one that we experience. And I'm also obsessed with phonons, which is like the particle of sound. So that's pretty interesting. That actually has sound.
Benn Jordan:
Phonons, or sound particles, may actually bring us quite a few steps further in quantum computing. Because it travels slower than light, obviously, and so it could store memory longer.
Will Betts:
So you're talking about the audio equivalent of a photon, which is. So it's a particle of moving sound. Or at least that's a way to model it.
Benn Jordan:
Pressure waves.
Will Betts:
Yeah. Then pressure waves. Okay.
Benn Jordan:
And phonons. Yeah. Huh.
Will Betts:
Fascinating. So where does your interest in all this come from, then, Ben?
Chris Barker:
Trying to take over the world?
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. Yeah. I think when I was. I was always really into science my entire life. I was just always very into it. And especially as I became an adult. But I dropped out of high school. I never went to God, I had no education whatsoever.
Benn Jordan:
And so I figured, you know, I'm never going to be part of this science thing. I'm never going to be a scientist, because I just. I didn't have, you know, I didn't have the privilege of going to college or anything like that. And so I just kind of tapped out on school and, you know, had this terrible life as a professional musician who got to travel around the world and make music at my leisure. No, I'm very happy with that. But I was always a little bit bummed out. And then randomly, I just kind of started getting more involved with independent research. And then had the YouTube channel on top of that.
Benn Jordan:
Then I started getting hired for private research gigs. And then, sure enough, I guess technically, I'm a scientist now, so that's awesome. And I do work with universities both on research and consulting and also speaking and sometimes courses and stuff like that will have me as a speaker, even in business and stuff. And it's kind of funny because there's this bittersweet, like, I applied for a lot of scholarships and stuff when I was younger, and I never got any. And there's this bittersweet thing where it's like, oh, so now you want me, or now I'm allowed in this institution, but at the same time, it's like such a huge privilege because, you know, it's. Sharing knowledge in any way is such a. I mean, well, you're doing it with this podcast, so there's a reason you're addicted to this podcast. That's probably it.
Benn Jordan:
It's probably the sharing knowledge with other people and making the world a smarter, or I guess, more objective place. I'm not really sure how to describe it.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, no, for sure.
Benn Jordan:
The science I study is not English, but. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Well, on that note, let's wrap up the podcast by talking a little bit about where people can keep up to date with what's going on with you and what you've got going on right now that people can get involved with or see you live or, you know.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Join the community. What's. Tell us about the Benn Jordan experience for 2024.
Benn Jordan:
Well, I have a YouTube channel where you could see my dumb face talking about a lot of different things. Just wrapped up a documentary about the hum, the phenomenon of where about 2% of people listen to or hear a nonstop hum sound. Most of them are annoyed or worse with it. Did you hear a hum sound?
Chris Barker:
Yeah, it's. Well, it's kind of. It's not tinnitus. It's not like a high pitch thing. Yeah, it's not a low pitch thing. It's just kind of this. It's like a. Almost like having a shell to your ear, like slightly.
Chris Barker:
I wouldn't describe it as a hum, but it's like a constant. Like, it's like. It's like you can constantly hear the room bigger than the room is.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. Can I ask you, like, a series of rapid fire questions?
Chris Barker:
Yes.
Benn Jordan:
Do you take ibuprofen a lot?
Chris Barker:
No. Maybe. I used to, though.
Benn Jordan:
Did it start after you started taking a lot of ibuprofen?
Chris Barker:
I can't remember ever not having this.
Benn Jordan:
Okay. Do you mind telling me, like, what city you live in or what area I live in?
Chris Barker:
Bath, in the UK about. Same place as Peter Gabriel.
Benn Jordan:
Okay.
Chris Barker:
Who I don't know if he has it as well.
Benn Jordan:
Have you had your ears checked? Like, have you ever gone to, like, an audiologist?
Chris Barker:
Yes, a long time ago, and they were fine. And it was quite a shock that they were fine because I dj regularly.
Benn Jordan:
Are you left handed?
Chris Barker:
No.
Benn Jordan:
Ambidextrous.
Chris Barker:
I was very ambidextrous as a kid, really? But it kind of got, well, ish. Okay sport.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Cricket or baseball and things. It wouldn't. And tennis. Like, it was fine when I was younger.
Benn Jordan:
One of the big things that we came into, because I've researched this for years especially. I mean, just came out of this project, which was like traveling around, interviewing people, doing field measurements and stuff. Ambidextrous people are extremely overrepresented in the data. It's very odd. That's like the one big mystery where it's just like, is it just that ambidextrous people where something's causing their ability to do things a little bit differently as a child, that also makes them more aware of sound or, like, what could possibly be the connection there? That's probably the biggest mystery that I ran into, but, yeah.
Chris Barker:
Anyway, that is interesting.
Benn Jordan:
Sorry for hijacking your podcast.
Will Betts:
No, no, no.
Benn Jordan:
So I have a YouTube channel, and I obviously have music as the flashbulb, and I roll the scary music. I run an AI company, which. An AI audio company. Well, I don't. I mean, I'm partial runner of it. I own part of an AI company, and it is initially primarily concentrated around AI voice models. But here's the kicker. We've taken equity in the company and we pay the artists not only in license fees, but in dividends.
Benn Jordan:
And so all artists have watermarked paid data sets that they are completely in charge of. And it's all done with their consent. And we're trying to create a new form of intellectual property in AI datasets for this next step forward in music production and even film production and stuff like that. And my intention is to expand that to all different types of artwork.
Chris Barker:
Excellent.
Will Betts:
And the name of the company?
Benn Jordan:
Oh, voice swap.
Will Betts:
Of course.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. Voiceswap AI. It's all. It's co owned. It was founded and it's co owned by DJ Fresh there. Yeah, there's a whole. There's a lot of great people. I've just created a model for image and heap.
Benn Jordan:
Oh, wow.
Chris Barker:
Amazing.
Will Betts:
Is that out there and available?
Benn Jordan:
It's not available on the site yet. It will be, but yeah, she was just wanted a model for her own work to use to experiment with. And I was just like, yeah, we'll create one for you. And so kind of got back from, like, the documentary shoot and immediately started working with Imogen.
Chris Barker:
Well, pass on our regards. We're huge fans. I'd love to have her on this podcast.
Benn Jordan:
Yeah. She's easily one of the most inspiring people in music. Like, if you're. If you're not for anybody listening, if you're. You're probably familiar with Imogen's music. Imogen heaps music. But, like, just do a little Google and. And see what she's accomplished in the last two decades in this industry.
Benn Jordan:
It is phenomenal. She's a rocket ship, just always going up. Like, it's. I'm always amazed every time I talk to her. I'm just like, wow. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
But, yeah, mega, mega positive and super exciting to be around, like, in her presence.
Benn Jordan:
Brilliant person. Yeah.
Chris Barker:
All right, well, all that's left to say, Ben, is thank you so, so much for all your time and great conversation for the podcast.
Will Betts:
Thank you so much, Ben.
Chris Barker:
Thank you, Benn Jordan.
Benn Jordan:
Oh, thank you. All right.
Will Betts:
There we have it.
Chris Barker:
Thank you again to Benn Jordan. Love the choices and the tangents.
Will Betts:
You should also really check out the video about the hum on his YouTube channel. Absolutely fascinating stuff.
Benn Jordan:
I will, I will, I will.
Chris Barker:
Thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next time for another adventure into studio foreverdom. Bye.