Drew: Electronic musicians, or even just musicians in general. In, in our current day and age, we tend to see people, we tend to see people when they, when they crest outta the water and we don't see the huge submerged iceberg underneath the water, right?

All the work and all the preparation that went there. And so we can get these distorted perspectives of what it takes and where we should be at. And that's another snag, which is the R the, the game of comparison. But we, it's so easy to get stuck in this, these unrealistic expectations of where things go and then that kind of impairs you for being prepared for the journey that it actually takes.

Michael: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high-quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

All right, so I'm excited to be here today with my new friend Drew Vespers. Drew is a engineer, producer, influencer, speaker and coach, and he's created a collective of music producers. And he's also presented at events like Virtual Electronic Music Summit, AEMCon and music festivals like Basscoast and now Warp Academy is a collective that he's created that is brought together some of the top tier sound designers and audio experts, and they've been officially recognized by Ableton as an Ableton Certified Training Center working with 50,000 musician students to help them to hone in on their music and their sound design.

So really excited to have him on here today to talk about the current state of sound design and being a musician, especially at the time of recording this as there's so much development with like AI and different kinds of music production tools. I'm really looking forward to hearing your perspective on where you see right now.

What can artists focus on that's really gonna help them make a bigger impact. So thanks for taking the time to be here today.

Drew: Awesome, Michael. Right on. Yeah, my pleasure. And thanks so much for having me and for the introduction. Right on. Yeah, I'm excited.

Michael: Heck yeah. So, maybe to kick things off, just for everyone that this is their first time connecting with you or, or hearing about Warp Academy, could you share a quick intro in terms of your story and kind of how you founded Warp Academy?

Drew: Totally. Yeah. It all started on YouTube. I was I had been a music producer for quite a while and my, my journey to learn, 'cause I started in about the year 2000. So it was way back there and that was predates any real social media. It predates any. Electronic music production courses that colleges or universities were doing.

Basically, I had a really difficult uphill battle ahead of me to learn what I wanted to learn. I was so passionate about the music. You know, I'd heard, you know, we all have our inspirations and I'd heard a lot of stuff that was really inspiring me and I, you know, like everybody else out there, I just wanted to know how to get that sound and I was really struggling at it and learning the hard way, which was kind of just.

I would read manuals and they, they would teach you what EV every button in the DAW does, but they wouldn't teach you the art of how to use the tools. Mm-hmm. And so I kind of resorted to the only thing that was available to me at the time, which was reading like Sound on Sound and Future Music magazine and Computer Music Magazine and all this stuff.

And every once in a while I'd find a relevant article because so many of the times the articles were on a genre that I didn't produce and it wasn't relevant or it was on a do that I didn't use. So I would snag any opportunity that I could. To sit down with a more experienced music producer. But a lot of times I found those people were difficult to connect with and if I did connect with them sometimes, you know, a lot of people were kind of guarded around the knowledge.

I don't think that's the case anymore. I'm seeing so much more openness around knowledge, which is amazing. It's been a huge trend with artists getting on YouTube and Patreon and stuff. But basically out of that frustration was borne this desire to when I learned something new and interesting that I thought was helpful for people.

I just had this natural inclination to want to share it. I kind of just gravitated towards teaching. It flows naturally for me. I kind of, you know, it's one of the things that I just do, I do fairly naturally without thinking. And so I started a YouTube channel. I knew nothing about YouTube. I knew nothing about video.

I shot my first video, so they're still up. Actually, I have 415 videos since 2009, and. The very first videos were shot on this, like really crappy little handheld seven 20 P Kodak all in one. You know, it was using the built-in mic on the thing and like, you know, there was no, no anything. It was a full auto.

Super grainy thing, but I started to do these YouTube videos and just share little tidbits that I knew some of the stuff was wrong. You know, I've recanted now and I've learned, but you know, you share what you know at the time. And I started doing these YouTube videos and it was just a hobby. It was just a fun thing that I did in my spare time.

I did about once, one a week, and after a little while it kind of started to catch, I think I was one of the few people at the time who was there. Sharing and producing consistently. And I was on Ableton Live at the time. I'd become an Ableton Live certified trainer in 2010, and that kind of gave me a bit of extra little credibility, a little extra confidence in myself to get out there.

And I started ramping it up. And before I knew it, I had like 20,000 subscribers, 30,000 subscribers. And I went to university and did a business degree, and then I did a good chunk of a executive M B A. So I have a business background. I I'm, I have opportunity recognition and I was like looking at this and I was like, damn.

I was like, any business that has like 20 or 30,000 people coming in the door on a regular basis is like, that's an opportunity. And so I wanted to change gears from what I was doing, which was social media consulting and marketing for companies at the time. And I decided to move to a little remote island called Salt Spring.

I. And I wanted to go there and I wanted to write an album which I did more like an ep. I didn't, didn't quite get to the album, but in that time I needed to, to figure out a new game plan for, for revenue. So I started doing online courses. I. And that's what brought me to Warp Academy. So I had the user base already on YouTube that was following me, and I'd never really offered anything for money.

I'd just been contributing to these people. And so the very first time I ever offered anything, which was just this super simple course, it was like, watch me write a track over four weeks. We get together three hours a week, four weeks, and you just watch me write a song and I share everything. And I, well, next thing I knew, I had like 60 people signed up for that, and I'd like.

I made a bunch of money and like I was working like, you know, I was able to put all my attention into that and again, the business background side of me was like, wow, this, this could be a really neat business where I'm serving this community of people that I've assembled and I'm talking about something that I'm passionate about and I'm.

Being supported in writing my own music. It's kind of like a dream gig, right? For for most people. And so I started to want to bring in more people that knew things in areas that I didn't know about. I didn't know anything about mixing and mastering at that time. So I brought in one of my colleagues who I'd done my Ableton certification with, Jake Purine, who's American, actually, he's down in Orcas Island, and we co-founded Warp Academy.

We kind of said, Hey, you know, like he did a course with me, similar to this really simple one that I'd done, you know, four weeks mixing and mastering, and it blew up too. And so we started bringing in more people that we knew. A lot of them were Ableton certified trainers because they have a really high standard for someone's teaching ability.

You can't get through that certification unless you know what you know, but you can also teach what you know really effectively. So we assembled a Warp Academy and that's kind of the, yeah, that was, that was 2012. We kind of began on it, and we launched it in 20 14, 20 13 at the end of 2013.

Michael: Hmm. Super cool.

So Warp Academy, it sounds like, you know, this is a collective with, you know, different different levels of different kinds of expertise that are coming together. So just that, like a high level, is it mostly like around sound design and mixing and mastering, or is it just like, is it like a holistic, like there's a lot of different angles or I'm kind of curious to, to hear a little bit more about, about that.

Drew: Totally. Yeah. It, it, we've. I have attempted probably unsuccessfully to, to make it everything that a musician needs. And I mean, like, how can you do that? But I've done my best and I think, you know, you set lofty goals and if you fail at them, you still do pretty good. You know? So we shot for the moon on that and we, I.

Definitely to do everything from like absolute basics like Synthesis 1 0 1. You know nothing about oscillators and how to make sound all the way from, you've never touched Ableton Live before. You know, you might want to look at our Ableton Live Jumpstart course that gets you to know about 90% of Ableton live in 30 days.

So we started, started doing stuff like that and then we built on that foundation. Because we had students that were graduating from those courses and they were like, Hey, what's next? So we started to build on that and, and for 10 years we just weren't building courses, building courses, building courses.

And so we've done stuff that covers pretty much the full gamut of music production, including mixing and mastering, including sound design, including music theory, including like deeper music theory, songwriting for specific genres. And then we've yeah, gotten, gotten built on stacked onto that. Other things like:

how to succeed in the music business. How to be able to identify record labels that you wanna pitch, how to build an artist press kit, how to navigate the industry. Things like, you know, booking agents and management and, and publishers and things like that. I. And we've worked with a lot of other people in the industry to be able to do that.

So we've brought in like celebrity artists, like, we brought in Walker and Royce from Dirty Bird and they did a, a workshop with us, an online workshop on how to produce Tech House. And then we brought in Jesse Brader from Gravitas and Gravitas Recordings, gravitas Create Pivotal Agency, and he talked about the music industry and like how to get your stuff signed and how to build your team.

We've brought in like Nick Middleton from the Funk Hunters and from Midnight Agency, and you know, brought him in to talk about mixing and mastering and he's done some really high profile mixing and mastering. So, yeah. And then I have a background. In personal development, you know, in, in my journey in being an entrepreneur and just being a human, trying to succeed at big things in life, I've done an incredible amount of coaching and reading, like I'm a voracious learner, and so I have a course that I did called Creative Mastery, which was nothing about music specifically.

It was kind of a, okay, so you're an artist or you're a creator, and I would encompass entrepreneurs in that too. How do you cultivate, nourish, and grow creative energy? I. What does that look like and how do you then apply that? And it's kind of like the deep inner game of being a artist. You know, we deal with some of the things that come up and like everything from like diet, nutrition and fitness and meditation and, you know, all that stuff.

That, that helps you be a better human, but also helps you be a better artist. Yeah. So wide range of stuff. 'cause we've been building, we've been building things for, you know, 15 years now.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Super cool. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for sharing. And that makes a lot of sense in terms of, you know, how it kind of started as a sound design, kind of this core expertise that you came from and it's kind started to kind of branch out.

And I love the fact that you, that you've focused on the personal developments as well and sort of the inner work which ripples out to everything and anything else. So, I'm, I'm wondering where we want to position or kind of, or angle this conversation now knowing this about you, that we could kind of go to two different paths or we could go really deep into like the personal development side.

Or we could also, you know, lean into the sound design production stuff, especially as it relates to, you know, maybe the future of music production and sound design. Mm-hmm. I would say, mm-hmm. Based on everything you just shared. Maybe we go deep on sort of the internal the internal side of things that's going to ripple out and affect everything regardless of what happens with the future of technology.

And then maybe we can touch on, you know, kinda the current state of music production, where things might be headed in the future, and how we can, you know, tap into that creative force, that creative energy that that, that regardless of what tools we're using is gonna, you know, be able to channel that.

So,

 Drew: Yeah. Trust your intuition, sir.

Michael: So, so let's start with you kind of that, that inner work and, you know, being a creator and, and being able to share that with the world. What have you found has been sort of the, like now having, you know, over 15 years of experience coaching and helping other artists with, and yourself, you know, with this specifically, what do you find that's sort of the biggest obstacle or the biggest challenge or roadblock that artists are struggling with as it relates to getting in tune with that?

Mm-hmm.

Drew: There's a few of them. Obviously any, you know, I won't be able to be comprehensive here 'cause I don't want to, you know, we could, we could talk for a, a whole seven day retreat on this, as you well know. I'll touch on some of the big ones that I think are really, are really salient. One of them is the ability to to plan your work.

And then work your plan. Hmm. And I think that mu music is such a long-term game. There's so many skills that you need to build. There's so many relationships that you need to build. You need to be working on yourself and, and it's this multifaceted thing being an artist and I. I, I was lucky enough to have a background as an acoustic, acoustic musician, so I started playing instruments when I was like four.

I think. My parents put me in the conservatory of music and, and we did these like classes for kids where you like bang on drums and you play recorders and stuff like that. And so I, I got exposed to acoustic music really early, played classical piano, then got into jazz saxophone, and one of the things that that taught me was that.

It's not reasonable to expect these crazy professional results to come super fast. So when you're picking up a saxophone for the first time, nobody expects that you're gonna be out there playing in front of other people within three or four years. Like nobody expects that because it's totally unreasonable.

You. You need so much foundational building to be able to do that, and that takes a lot of focus and discipline and regular practice. And I think as. Electronic musicians, or even just musicians in general. In, in our current day and age, we tend to see people, we tend to see people when they, when they crest outta the water and we don't see the huge submerged iceberg underneath the water, right?

All the work and all the preparation that went there. And so we can get these distorted perspectives of what it takes and where we should be at. And that's another snag, which is the R the, the game of comparison. But we, it's so easy to get stuck in this, these unrealistic expectations of where things go and then that kind of impairs you for being prepared for the journey that it actually takes.

Which for some people the shorter and for some people is longer. But for anybody, it takes a lot. And so you're, you're capacity to be able to prepare for that planet and have the day in and day out. Discipline to be able to do that is, is really key. One of my books that I'm, I'm, I'm rereading all over the time, is, is tools of Titans with, from Tim Ferriss.

He's a great author and he's been kind of one of the, one of the veins of personal development that's been key for me. And in his book, the Tools of Titans, he talks about a quote from a gymnastics coach Christopher Summer. And I won't, I won't say the whole, the whole quote 'cause it's really long.

But the, but the. Cole's notes of the quote is that the athletes out there that become successful are the ones that just set a goal and then they grind away at it. They don't require that it's sexy. They don't require that. It's interesting all the time. They don't require that they're even making incremental progress because we don't.

We plateau and then we jump up, and then we plateau, and then we go down, and then we plateau, and then we go up. You know, it's this non-linear journey and it's the ones that are able to take what he calls a blue collar work ethic, married to indomitable will to be able to forge ahead and the people that are consistent.

So it's that lack of people can lack focus. They can lack persistence, they can lack discipline because in the a scenario where you're not getting. Rewarded with that dopamine hit of a, of a linear, everyday, everyday reward of progress. You know, like you come into the studio, you do a little bit of work, your mix gets a little bit better.

Like in, in the absence of that, some people have a really hard time persisting. And so I think it's attitude setting is, is one of the big ones. So yeah, that's, that's kind of one of the, one of the big areas. As, as an example. And then there's lots of more, there's, you know, there's, we touched on it in that.

Piece, which was the inclination to compare ourselves to other people. And you know, musicians we're a tortured group sometimes because myself and many other people tell you that you need to compare your music to other people. You need to use reference tracks, right? How do you get better? How do you know if you're getting better?

Will you listen to producer's song that you really like and you compare your mix to that person's mix, and then you use that to try and make judgements. To conform what you are doing, to what they're doing. If they're, what they're doing is really working and you wanna shoot for that. But it's such a double-edged sword because this person is usually way far ahead of you in terms of skill level.

That's why they're an inspiration for you because you don't really know how they're doing it. You want to figure it out and you love their music. But when we compare back and forth between us and somebody who's really like unfairly ahead of us, it's so easy to. Not use it constructively, which is just to help us make better engineering decisions or songwriting decisions.

We end up with destructive comparison, the other side of the sword, and we end up getting deflated and we end up getting disappointed with ourselves and frustrated with our progress and that emotional piece of it. That's the deep inner game stuff where we're to not get lost in that stuff. You know, so those are, those are a couple of the big ones that that, that pop up.

And there are, there are many, many more. I'm sure we may touch on some more as we go forwards. Yeah. Cool.

Michael: Yeah, there's some super good stuff in there and you know, and it sounds like they both kind of have a similar root to, like, as you were sharing that the, the song that came up my mind was I. Semi charmed life by third eye blind.

You know, like the main statement, like, I want, I want something else to get me through this. Just sort of that, that core like wanting to be somewhere else than kind of where, where you currently are and how that relates to both, like comparisonitis, like if you, the way you called it, destructive comparison where you feel like, You know, your identity is diminished or like, you know, you feel emotionally like, it's a negative impact when you compare yourself to other people.

But also in terms of like goal setting and not being patient, and not being willing to like, invest the time, the hard work, you know, as today to make it happen. Do the little thing that's gonna, you know, lead you towards that goal. It's interesting.

Drew: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. And it's like, You. This is why.

And you know, one of the, one of the tools that I talk about being so key for, for any artist entrepreneur is some type of mindfulness practice. So again, coming back to the Tim Ferris book Tools of Titans, he, out of the people that he interviewed, which include included like Rhonda Patrick, Wim Hoff, Arnold Schwarzenegger Dr. Kelly Sturette, like these are laser Laird Hamilton general Stanley McChrystal, like these are, these are heavy hitter people, some of the world's most elite successful people at what they choose to do. And 80% of them had some type of meditation or mindfulness practice.

And so, like, why do I recommend that? It's not because I'm wanting people to be spiritual. I. Happen to be. And that's been, that's been great. But meditation can be, and mindfulness can be different from being spiritual. And the way I relate it is, you know, you come up against all these things and really there's some type of emotional or mental consternation that you're dealing with, and they can, they all have the capacity to really wipe you out creatively.

Like you can So get stuck in a rutt. You can just disengage from your work for like days or weeks or months. Or years when you get wiped out by this stuff. So you need to have some type of tool in your toolbox to be able to address that and cope and ideally move towards thriving. And mindfulness is, is one of the most powerful tools to be able to do that.

And the reason is, is because mindfulness allows you to shift your emotional state as it relates to what's happening because you oftentimes can't change what's happening. You can't change what is so and and those out there that are struggling against the universe, that are struggling against what is so kind of like a swimmer in a torrid ocean.

It's like you're, no, you're at the mercy of the ocean. All you can do is like get on a surfboard and like get on the wave and like use the ocean to your benefit. You can change yourself in relation to what is so, and, and mindfulness meditation, mindfulness-based, stress reduction, breathing techniques. All of them you could kind of group together into the, the broader term of mindfulness, non-spiritual necessarily is what strengthens you and your capacity to handle.

The ups and downs of, of life, the, the things that come and go. And so I encourage people to have a mindfulness practice and you know, yeah, when you, when you can't change what's going on, all you can do is change your thoughts and your emotional reaction to it. And we all kind of get and understand that if you want to physically thrive, If you want your body to be able and capable, you need to be able to do some type of physical training, be that yoga or Pilates or CrossFit or I.

Whatever, you know, climbing, you need to do something that's going to challenge and train the body, and it's the exact same thing for the mind. If you just let the mind kind of atrophy and, and go wherever it wants, it's this like totally untamed untrained thing that, that, that isn't going to be prepared for stress when it happens.

And meditation or mindfulness, mindfulness-based stress reduction, all of those techniques are the training that you do. In your mind so that you're prepared for those types of things. And so you can mentally thrive in, in and amongst the craziness that can happen with life. Hmm.

Michael: So good. Yeah. The, the monkey, the monkey mind, you know, getting the monkey mind under, under control.

Cool. Yeah.

Drew: You get it? Yeah.

Michael: The one, one thing that you were sharing that, you know, has been one of my personal favorite quotes or, I think it's, it's actually the Serenity Prayer is something to the degree of, you know, the, having the courage to change the things that you can, having the serenity to accept the things that you can't, and having the wisdom to know the difference.

Oh man. Like that, like coming back to that has just been such a cornerstone of, of my, my own experience, sort of what exactly what you're saying. Like, you know, trying to recognize the pieces that are you sort of out of your control and learning to accept them and, you know, being able to do the things that are within your control.

And just the whole idea of, of control as well is like, that's a interesting thing that we could potentially dive into today depending on how philosophical and like, and we wanna take this conversation, but I have a feeling that that might be a good direction for us here. Yeah, maybe, maybe we go a little bit deeper, deeper on, on that.

So, Yeah, I think that Tim Ferris and probably like Sam Harris are two people that have come up recently that talk a lot about mindfulness and also about like, the self and about. The, like free will, like our relationship with free will and our identity, who we are. I feel like that kind of goes hand in hand with this conversation around, you know, being able to, to alter or to influence, you know, things.

So I'm curious how I. How you would recommend someone kind of comes to terms, especially as it relates to their creativity. 'cause it's like so many of us as musicians, we, we have, we've had this experience where we're, we're creating, we're making music. And there's something that like, it's like we're channeling something and it's not, it doesn't feel like we're really.

Doing it, it feels like we're a conduit or like something's happening through us and at its best, like we're in the flow and it's just happening through us. So I'm curious to hear your perspective on your free will and mindfulness and creativity and kind of how we channel that creative expression and what that relationship looks like.

Drew: Yeah, totally. It's a great topic. So, this comes up a lot has come up a lot for me as a jazz musician. And so, I'm a, you know, jazz saxophonist and, and in jazz, it's one of the things that makes jazz interesting and, and different and unique, is that you're coming up with stuff on the spot, right?

Mm-hmm. You're improvising and improvising for jazz musicians can be both exhilarating and it can be. Terrifying because especially if you're in a performance and you're you, it's easy and common for people to kind of get lost in this cycle of like real time self-judgment of the quality of their performance while they're performing.

You know, I, I'm sure this, this happens for all musicians, but with jazz musicians, because they're, what they're attempting to do is get in a space where they're actually channeling something. Hmm. It's especially apparent. And so in my journey, I kind of came into contact with this book called Effortless Mastery, and it's written by a wonderful jazz musician named Kenny Werner.

And this book just like spoke to my soul. Like it was, it was just so aptly timed because it was talking about this, it was talking about our capacity to judge. Ourselves rather than just be in the flow state. Effectively. He called it the space. And he talked, you know, talked a lot about different jazz musicians that had done it in different ways.

And you know, anybody who's looked at the history of jazz, a lot of ja famous jazz musicians have used substances to do that. Namely and. Yeah. Like hardcore. Yeah. Hardcore

Michael: stuff. Let's, let's, we'll, we'll clo clear here on air to just state we do not endorse anyone taking car of, to, to get into the creative space.

Drew: Exactly. Yeah. It's unfortunate that that that's where it went, but that's the, the some people, how extreme their self-judgment is. And the lengths that they'll go to, to circumvent that, to, to not feel it. Right. And, you know, that gets into a whole other conversation of numbing and, and things that people do to varying degrees, whether it's binging Netflix or smoking a joint or whatever, eating lots of junk food.

You know, like people do all kinds of things to avoid feeling things they don't wanna feel. But Kenny Werner, the reason why that book spoke to me is because he. You know, saw that for what it was, it was extremely destructive behavior and it was substance abuse. And, and it was like, why, why would you destroy your mind and body in that way to have a, you know, a three minute solo that was like breathtaking.

And he was a huge advocate of, he's, he's a Buddhist practitioner, avid meditator, and he was able to get to that space through the use of meditation. And so in the book, he talks a lot about. Sitting and doing a practice. It doesn't need to be a traditional seated meditation with your hands like this and you know, like it doesn't need to look like that For him, it did.

And then he would immediately, without breaking that state, go and sit down at the piano and just begin to make sound. I. And so, you know, he's one of my teachers. I ended up meeting him and interviewing him. And that interview is on my YouTube channel. It's on Warp Academy. So I would highly encourage anybody who feels like they're struggling with this stuff to go and watch that video.

It's just called, if you search for the keywords, Kenny Werner, you'll find it, or we can link it in the show notes if you want to, whatever. And you know, that led me on a path of studying under other, Teachers I ended up studying under a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk ri morta for a while. And we talked all about this thing with music that comes up and, and basically accessing the flow state.

And it, a lot of it involved moving away from defining good and bad and, and labeling what you were doing. This is a good sound. This is a bad sound. This is a good performance. This is a bad performance and just. Trying to embrace that whatever you're doing is just perfect the way it is. And so like, how does this actually translate rubber to the road for musicians?

So this would come up in my coaching with musicians. So I, yeah, I do one-on-one coaching with people occasionally. And a lot of times when somebody was struggling with that and they were just like, yeah, like nothing I do sounds anything, like, you know, this person that I wanna sound like or nothing that I do is like, they're all, it's all crap.

I'm like, okay, well here's, here's a homework assignment for you. Go and make five really bad kick drums. Hmm. No, there's your, yeah, there's, there's the assignment. Go and make five horrible kick drums, you know, because that kind of wipes out. The judgment machine that we have going on, on in our mind. And yeah, there's, I mean, it's, there's, there's so many different things and tools and techniques and mindsets and things like that.

Neurolinguistic programming, N L P comes into that a lot. You know, many people, Tim Ferris included, Tony Robbins, are huge proponents of neurolinguistic programming and, you know, and putting that another way that maybe is less scientific is just. Using better self-talk. It's also kind of taken the banner of quantum languaging more recently.

It's all kind of the same concept of words are powerful, especially the words that we say to ourselves, the ones that we say silently to ourselves, the self-talk and becoming aware of that self-talk, which also meditation helps with by the way, because usually when you're sitting quietly, that's all that's going on.

You know, and being kinder to ourselves. And shifting that, and then techniques like reframing. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's such a, such a cool, deep and, and expansive topic. But yeah, there some, some thoughts on that so far? Hmm.

Michael: Cool. Yeah. Some powerful stuff. When you said Tony Robbins one thing that reminded me of is Xander our five-year-old son.

I, I, this is one of the things that stuck with me from Tony Robbins. It's been a few years that I've been through, is his programs, but I, I really liked personal power and some, some of his personal development programs and, you know, one of his neurolinguistic, you know, kind of affirmations was every day in every way, I'm

Drew: getting better and better.

Yes. Yeah, with the yes at the end, right?

Michael: The yes at the end, it really makes it, but Xander just loves that. So, so we do that all the time and, you know, every day and every way it seems like it just keeps getting better and better. Agreed. So, one thing, you know, this is, you know, touching into some more delicate territory.

I would say, but I think it's worth approaching based on this conversation. And you know, based on your background with Tim Ferriss and, you know, some of these, some of these different thought leaders right now, Ian, we touched a little bit on you, substance abuse and like, you know, having respect for, you know, what we're putting into our bodies and, and doing things in a very intentional way.

But I know that one thing that Tim Ferriss, you know, is definitely a proponent of is around psychedelic use for mindfulness and for. Internal growth. And it seems like there's been a pretty big movement and trend. You know, even the, what the f d a fast tracked breakthrough therapy status for different psychedelics.

And so it's an interesting movement and especially as it relates to creativity and musicians and everything we're talking about here. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on. Yeah, the use of substances like that. And, and I wanna be clear here on, on Air as well that, you know, this is not a podcast we're recommending or condoning like any sort of illegal, especially use.

And so this varies of course, depending on where you live and, you know, take care of yourself and don't take anything that we're talking about right now as like a recommendation or doing it. But yeah, I'd also like to create an open space to actually, to have a conversation about that and hear your perspective as it relates to these

Drew: different topics.

Yeah, totally fair, Michael. A hundred percent. Well, on this topic I always kind of talk about books because like I said, and I'm, I'm an avid voracious learner, and I, and I love gobbling things up. You may have heard of this one. It's a book called Stealing Fire. It's been really popular in the last few years, and that book speaks to this exact thing.

So, I think it's two human behavioral psychologists who wrote the book. I, I'm not, I'm not positive on that. And they basically are studying the flow state. And they've studied everywhere from Navy Seal Team six. Dev grew, you know, peak performers to like corporate CEOs, Olympic athletes, and they've worked with all of these people too.

And then they've also worked with a lot of people who, or they're aware of research into people who are trying to heal from P T S D and depression, things like that. And, and the common thread through all of this is, The psychedelic and sometimes nons, psychedelic substances that can be of service. And one of the things that they said is to if we get away from the what's legal and what's illegal conversation, the behavior of trying to alter our state of mind is normal and natural, and there's evidence of that all over the animal Kingdom. Apes eat iboga. Cats go grab catnip. Dolphins when they're being observed and they don't know they're being observed, will bat around a puffer fish until it spews its little cloud of poison. And then they all go up and take a little hit and then they trip out together. Like, wow. And a, a quote from the book is they say that substance seeking and substance taking behavior in, in those contexts, those are natural plant things that just happen to have a impact on our mind.

Is, is normal. And healthy. So, that's, that's one of the quotes from the book. And so they, they go into and they start studying things like, yeah, like, like L S D and psilocybin and and M D M A and things like that. You know, some of those are natural, some of those are, are, are made by humans and and their impacts and basically, You know, I'm kind of with them and what they found, and what they found is that they are of, of use and of benefit.

They can be of use and of benefit for creativity. Also for afflictions like, like depression and P T S D, they've been found in varying degrees to be very helpful with that. And you know, I have, and many of us do have family members that have suffered or are suffering from clinical or suicidal depression.

And it's a heavy, big thing. I. And it's so difficult to see someone struggling with that. And if those things can be of, of benefit, then, then that's great. But for in the vein and the pillar that we're talking about today, which is more as artists and creators, you know, does that have, is that of benefit?

I think absolutely. Yes. And the kind of, the main reason why is human beings, one of the things that sets us apart is we have this huge prefrontal cortex. That's great. It's one of the things that allows us to do what I was talking about earlier, which is defer rewards and work towards long-term goals so that don't have a media rewards.

We are able to have deferred gratification, and that's part of the reason why we've been able to do all these things that we've done. Build the Golden Gate Bridge, you know, like thing's not done for years. Sometimes things that humans do are not done in their lifetime. So our capacity to do that is comes from our prefrontal cortex.

But like many things, it's a double-edged sword. And the downside of having a prefrontal cortex is the voice in our head that never shuts up or never seems to shut up. And that's that judging critical voice that can get in our way when we're trying to get into the flow state or get into creating our art.

And so the authors of stealing fire talk about what they call transient hypofrontality. So using a substance. Or using a technique like meditation or breath work to be able to temporarily knock the prefrontal cortex offline and that they were doing like F M R I scans on people when they were taking different substances or engaged in meditation and they were able to watch the, I think it was the electrical activity in the prefrontal cortex kind of go down.

And that energy transfer into other areas of the brain and become available. So it's kind of like if you take, you know, Google Chrome and it's open and you have like 17 tabs open and you start closing those tabs, it's like, well, where that compute, those computing resources now get freed up and they can go into other areas.

And so, They talk in the book about solving wicked problems and they say that through using sometimes things that cause transient hypofrontality kind of knocking that prefrontal cortex offline or reducing its its capacity for a period of time. That energy, I. Electrical energy could be called creative energy can become available to other areas of the brain that maybe don't get that much all the time.

And it allows us to make these kind of crazy connections or leaps that we otherwise may, may not do. One last thing from the book, and the book is just so good in this respect. So, so I just want to, to bring this last example in is they, they talk about in, you know, we talked about meditation as mind training.

Well, In an organization like the Navy Seals and, and, and Dev grew otherwise known as Seal Team six, you know, they have, they're, they're trying to apply the world's leading research to be able to make that team even, or those teams even better and better and better. And so there's a huge amount of money that goes out into that organization.

And they have what they call a mind gym. It's a mind gym. So there you go. There's, there's proof in the pudding for you. They're engaging in mindfulness activities. For what they're doing. So as a Navy seal, they, they need to learn a bunch of different languages too, so they can operate in different parts of the world.

And normally it takes about six months to learn a new language. Well, what they've been doing is they've been putting the, the seals inside salt tanks, sensory deprivation, float tanks, and they've been wiring them with audio. So it's complete sensory deprivation. It's, you know, in some cases very similar to.

Being in the womb, which is a very calm and meditative state, you know, the water is matched to your body temperature and all that stuff, and they're sh they're, and they're learning the language in this envelopment of complete focus, total sensory deprivation, just everything else is gone. And they're able to shrink the time for learning a new language from six months to six weeks.

Wow. Apparently. So talk about the, the effect of. Eliminating distractions and bringing focus. And that's a key thing that I talk about a lot in, in just the work that I do in general. I've talked about it in my YouTube videos, I've talked about it in my Creative Mastery course. I've talked about it every time.

It comes up with my one-on-one coaching clients, and it's that you need to eliminate distractions to be able to get into the flow state. So when I'm in the studio, No phones allowed. The phone is the biggest distraction factory in the world. I did a coaching program with a gentleman named Les Hewitt, who's the author of a book called Power of Focus.

So I was lucky enough to, to work with him directly for many years, and he said that based on his research, when you get interrupted, if, when you're in deep focus, when you get interrupted, it takes you on average about 17 minutes to get refocused, 17 to 20 minutes to get refocused to that same level. If somebody's just like, Hey, I have a quick question, or a text message comes in, Z Z.

Wipes, you outta focus. Now most people's phones are doing something like that every like 10 seconds, let alone 17 minutes. So you're living in, most people are living in a, what they call a state of continuous partial attention. And so one of the things that I think is a power technique that creators can harness is leaving the phone in another room at the bare minimum going into an an area of en of envelopment.

For me, this is, this is the upstairs floor of my house. If everybody else is on the downstairs floor, people know that when my door is closed, unless the house is burning down, you pretend I'm not here. It's very quiet. I have plants all around me and you know, there's just trees and forests out in front of me and I use apps and things like that on my computer to prevent notifications from popping up.

And sometimes I even use apps that will prevent me from accessing the internet. You know, I can even restart my computer. I use app, an app like Freedom and stuff like that. And it prevents me from that temptation to, oh, I'm just gonna go check YouTube, go see how the comments are doing, or I'm just gonna hop on Instagram and like, you know, do this or do that.

And it, it eliminates that and then allows me to go into these deep periods of, of focus and, and I think that's so key for, for artists and creators. Mm-hmm. Super smart.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I think there's so much wisdom to that idea of, you know, setting up your circumstances or setting up your environment so that the thing you want to have happen just like happens automatically.

I've heard this called success or inevitability thinking or something along those lines, but the idea is that you just set up the environment, so it's like, That nothing else can happen, but the thing that, like you wanna have happen and you reduce any barriers or frictions to like getting there, you know, as much as possible.

For example, if you wanna start going for a run in the morning, then the night beforehand you put your shoes and your workout clothes literally in front of your door. So like when you wake up, it's like you can't like pass them like it's there. You try to make it. Inevitable. Or you set it up so that you have an accountability partner so that you tell them, Hey, I'm gonna text you right after my workout.

I'm gonna send you my workout details for my Apple Watch, and if I don't do this every day for the next 30 days, then I want you to cash this check that has. $10,000 on it or $5,000 and then it's like kind of inevitable that it's gonna happen because the pain of losing 5,000 or $10,000 is like more than just getting up when you don't really feel like it and just like continuing with it.

So yeah, I think super smart. So much wisdom there. Cool, man. Well, hey, this has been a fun conversation. You know, coming into it, we, we could have had two very different conversations around, you know, like sound engineering and stuff. And I think that this is something that applies to, you know, being creative, you know, as an artist and so many people listen to this right now, like I.

This is the core thing, the core relationship between who they are and their message and their music, and what they're sharing with the world. So thank you for, for sharing your perspective and being a voracious learner and being a voracious, you know, educator as well and, and coach. So thank you. My pleasure.

Absolutely. So, for anyone who's interested in connecting more or diving deeper where's the best place for 'em to go? To go deeper. Yeah. Awesome.

Drew: Luckily we are at Warp Academy at everything. So where we're most active in regularly publishing what we're up to is on YouTube, so that's youtube.com/warp Academy or at Warp Academy.

And we do videos there all the time on everything that we talked about covers the full gamut. We have our official site warp academy.com, which is a great place for people that if they're engaging with our content and they kind of like our vibe and they want to go deeper, that could be doing one-on-one coaching.

It could be joining us for an online workshop. It could be taking a course, whatever that may be. Or it might just be reaching out to us and saying, Hey this is what's going on for me. Could you guys be of assistance or do you have any resources that could be helpful for me? Hit us up on the contact form.

So that's warp academy.com. And the last thing that we've done, and this is more recent, it's been based on a lot of Requests and, and positive encouragement from our communities. We've started up a, a discord server and we've always done these, like we've done kind of monthly events and everybody gets on Zoom and everybody's all like jazzed because like we're all these musicians that are kind of isolated and we do this thing that's, you know, in a dark room and making weird sounds.

We don't have a lot of necessarily friends or colleagues that are doing that. We're not, you know, a lot of times we're not part of a team. So that sense of community that you get through being in a. Real time event is huge. But we don't, you know, we're not doing those every week or something like that.

So we wanted to create a space where it was that sense of community where people can just chat, talk shop, find like-minded, kindred spirits, you know, collaborate with other musicians, talk about the emerging conversations that are going on around like plugins and software and techniques and things like that.

And so we created a, a Discord server and That is linked in every one of our YouTube videos. The link to join the server. I can give it to you if you have show notes for, for this as well. And it's yeah, we have a series of channels that we've created on all kinds of different topics from, you know, music production to acoustic to industry chat and stuff like that.

And so that's a real nice, there's, you know, obviously there's no charge for it or anything like that. It's just a place and it's been active. It's been a really neat place where people are starting to dig in and like share cool stuff. They're posting their music when they publish it, they're asking for feedback on their works in progress, and just a way to stay in touch with other people.

I think that's so important when you're on this mission of being a creator, is to be around other people who are doing the same thing. It's, you know, part of positive habit formation is, Being around groups of people, being in a community where what you do is normalized, and what we do isn't really normal.

If you take a look at being a musician, the behaviors that we have, what we do, it's pretty different from what your average human does. You know? And so I think that when we want to be creating a lot of traction and progress, it's so helpful for us to be part of a community where making music is normalized and, and that's what we've tried to do.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michael: Awesome. Sounds super cool. Well, hey well, like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes for easy Access. And Drew, thanks again so much for taking the time to be here today. My pleasure. And thank

Drew: you for everything that you do. It's so wonderful to see people like yourself who are, you know, obviously thought leaders and community leaders, creating spaces like this so that we can all kind of learn from each other and be influenced and exposed to other people.

Doing different things around the world. So, I appreciate everything that you've done to put this show together and for having me on as a guest. Much love.

Michael: Thanks man. Appreciate you being a part of it. Yeah.