Gigi Johnson:
00:00:00
This show is about people who innovate in all walks
Gigi Johnson:
00:00:04
of life. And you have innovated, or have touched many walks of
Gigi Johnson:
00:00:09
life so far, and connected them together, which I find
Gigi Johnson:
00:00:12
fascinating. Mike, can you start us out with what you're doing
Gigi Johnson:
00:00:16
now, which your main adventure is now.
Mike Butera:
00:00:20
So I am currently and have been for a while
Mike Butera:
00:00:24
running Artifon. Artifon is a music technology company. Our
Mike Butera:
00:00:29
goal really is to reimagine musical instruments as friendly,
Mike Butera:
00:00:36
fun, casual consumer devices, the kind of smart home
Mike Butera:
00:00:41
revolution that we've seen in a lot of other areas we want to
Mike Butera:
00:00:44
apply to music. And that's not really the point. The point is,
Mike Butera:
00:00:49
we think a lot more people can have fun playing music, then
Mike Butera:
00:00:54
than have before when musical instruments were designed for
Mike Butera:
00:00:57
pros primarily. And so we want to design instruments for
Mike Butera:
00:01:01
everyone else. So what I'm doing is I'm running the company, I'm
Mike Butera:
00:01:06
leading product design. I, I'm trying to figure out what's next
Mike Butera:
00:01:11
in the world of getting more people to be creative. And and
Mike Butera:
00:01:18
so yeah, we are currently launching a new product that
Mike Butera:
00:01:22
we're really excited about called Chorda. And we can talk
Mike Butera:
00:01:25
about that. But yeah, it's our latest smart instrument. And
Mike Butera:
00:01:30
we're currently going into manufacturing on that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:01:33
Great, and I want to come back to the
Gigi Johnson:
00:01:35
Kickstarters. I want to come back to the why these. But why
Gigi Johnson:
00:01:42
drag you backwards progressively? Why did you feel
Gigi Johnson:
00:01:46
this company needed to be started?
Mike Butera:
00:01:49
So the year was 2010. I had just gotten my PhD
Mike Butera:
00:01:58
in sound studies. I was at Virginia Tech. And I moved back
Mike Butera:
00:02:02
to Nashville. And I was a professor of sociology and
Mike Butera:
00:02:07
philosophy, and really enjoying that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:02:11
Already, we've got a woven together journey here,
Gigi Johnson:
00:02:14
right.
Mike Butera:
00:02:15
Yeah, yeah
Gigi Johnson:
00:02:16
Sound studies and philosophy and sociology.
Mike Butera:
00:02:19
Yeah, for me, it was it was this continuum of
Mike Butera:
00:02:23
thinking through the ways that people want to make the world
Mike Butera:
00:02:29
sound certain ways, which changes. By the second, my
Mike Butera:
00:02:34
dissertation research was around phenomenology, which is kind of
Mike Butera:
00:02:40
this study of not just perception, but your approach to
Mike Butera:
00:02:44
the world, how you know how the world presents itself to you how
Mike Butera:
00:02:48
you respond to it interacting with the world, basically. And I
Mike Butera:
00:02:53
found that with sound, we have all these different ways of
Mike Butera:
00:02:57
controlling our acoustic spaces. We have doors and windows, we
Mike Butera:
00:03:04
have headphones, we can put on a record, we can walk away. And a
Mike Butera:
00:03:12
lot of those are mitigation strategies, you know, adding
Mike Butera:
00:03:17
sounds or masking sounds, to kind of fix your acoustic space.
Mike Butera:
00:03:23
And so I started thinking about what were the creative aspects
Mike Butera:
00:03:28
of that? How could we get people to change the way the world
Mike Butera:
00:03:31
sounds in a creative way, rather than in this more defensive, you
Mike Butera:
00:03:36
know, personal space kind of way. And as a lifelong musician,
Mike Butera:
00:03:43
I thought, well, musical instruments are definitely where
Mike Butera:
00:03:47
I'm going to start with that. But then I just basically
Mike Butera:
00:03:51
thought, well, instruments, so these professional devices that
Mike Butera:
00:03:55
we expect everyone else to play well,
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:00
with a training process too, right? With a
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:02
training process that is socialized, that is structural,
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:08
that is an economic device for for funding the trainer. and is
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:15
and is normalized, or my favorite things that I've done
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:19
is I was in at the Museum of Art in New York. And they have an
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:24
entire kind of progression of musical instruments exhibit,
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:29
which they also have online. So you can sort of see that these
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:32
all gestated for a bit and then they locked.
Mike Butera:
00:04:34
Yeah, yeah. And that's culture
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:38
Unlock business. It's also the economics, right?
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:41
So that so that when you start having the sheet music, it has
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:45
to go with an instrument that sounds a certain way that is
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:47
part of an orchestration, that is part of a normalization, and
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:51
you're kind of looking to break that.
Mike Butera:
00:04:53
Yeah, even just the number of notes that you're
Mike Butera:
00:04:56
expected to play. And yeah, I do want to think about, you know,
Mike Butera:
00:05:03
the same kinds of revolutions we've seen from technology in
Mike Butera:
00:05:07
other media forms, photography, video writing, you know, all
Mike Butera:
00:05:12
these forms of human expression that are very fundamental. But
Mike Butera:
00:05:17
now most people don't, they're not intimidated by taking a
Mike Butera:
00:05:20
picture. They might not think it's the best picture on the
Mike Butera:
00:05:23
world, and they don't care. They don't say, I shouldn't have done
Mike Butera:
00:05:27
that, or I'm bad at that. They just take another picture. And
Mike Butera:
00:05:32
that's not the conversation with music. It hasn't been for over
Mike Butera:
00:05:36
100 years. And we can talk about the role that copyright law has
Mike Butera:
00:05:42
played in that, that record labels and the distribution of
Mike Butera:
00:05:46
music scarcity was was a real problem 150 years ago. But now,
Mike Butera:
00:05:54
there is this opportunity to think about redesigning music as
Mike Butera:
00:05:59
something that is inherently interactive, and just not as
Mike Butera:
00:06:04
serious or, you know, intimidating or problematic as,
Mike Butera:
00:06:08
as people tend to think it is, it can be really casual. So that
Mike Butera:
00:06:12
really was the foundation for the company. I mentioned, I was
Mike Butera:
00:06:18
teaching at the time, I had a friend who had been in consumer
Mike Butera:
00:06:24
technology. So I was in Nashville, and there was this
Mike Butera:
00:06:28
company there. And he left and he, we were chatting, and he
Mike Butera:
00:06:31
said, Hey, we should start a product design firm. And at the
Mike Butera:
00:06:35
time, I, you know, that hadn't been on my radar, I was going to
Mike Butera:
00:06:38
be a tenured professor, that was the whole goal. And but I said
Mike Butera:
00:06:42
yes, and I didn't take the tenure track job. And we started
Mike Butera:
00:06:47
a product design firm that designed smart speakers and more
Mike Butera:
00:06:52
tech and culture kind of things for other companies that did
Mike Butera:
00:06:56
well, at, you know, Costco, and Target, places like that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:01
So you were
Mike Butera:
00:07:02
That taught me a lot.
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:03
I was gonna say that you were bringing though I
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:06
was gonna say your weaponizing your academic studies. . . that
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:09
you know, how people think, and how people buy and how people
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:14
experience products, you'd been studying and teaching and
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:19
embedding in other people's lives, where you then built your
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:23
superpowers to operationalize how people think and actually
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:28
design for,
Mike Butera:
00:07:31
like your problematization here, because
Mike Butera:
00:07:34
as a sociologist, you know, we're supposed to be well, at
Mike Butera:
00:07:39
least traditionally rather passive. Now, that's always, you
Mike Butera:
00:07:43
know.
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:44
Observent only right? Yeah, right, not
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:47
polluting the research stream.
Mike Butera:
00:07:49
That's been critiqued enough that it doesn't
Mike Butera:
00:07:52
exist. But, you know, general goal is, don't actively do that.
Mike Butera:
00:07:58
But of course, the, you know, cultural revolutions of the
Mike Butera:
00:08:01
past, you know, 100 years, have seen more active forms of social
Mike Butera:
00:08:07
engagement. And so I really like your framing of this, because I
Mike Butera:
00:08:13
do feel like I'm taking a lot of the critical theory that I
Mike Butera:
00:08:17
learned and taught, and looking at those structures of power and
Mike Butera:
00:08:23
influence and cultural capital, for instance, and saying,
Mike Butera:
00:08:28
there's, there's a different way to do this. I don't think it's
Mike Butera:
00:08:31
just democratization from a political kind of standpoint,
Mike Butera:
00:08:35
but I do think it is a form of empowerment, and even,
Mike Butera:
00:08:42
hopefully, a psychological shift that people can have in their
Mike Butera:
00:08:44
own identities as creative, expressive people, that you went
Mike Butera:
00:08:51
back to the, you know, origins of a lot of musical instruments.
Mike Butera:
00:08:55
Usually, they use the best technologies of their day, they
Mike Butera:
00:08:58
were some of the most advanced tech tools of the time. And
Mike Butera:
00:09:03
yeah, they get frozen because we need to formalize things and,
Mike Butera:
00:09:08
you know, create institutions around them and all that, but
Mike Butera:
00:09:10
when they're being invented, they're normally very cutting
Mike Butera:
00:09:13
edge. And this just felt like another moment in history where
Mike Butera:
00:09:17
we could really look at digital tech in a new way. Because for
Mike Butera:
00:09:23
decades now, digital music production has allowed people to
Mike Butera:
00:09:27
make any sound they want to, you know, keyboards in the 80s
Mike Butera:
00:09:31
digital recording studios in the 90s and onward. Laptops, you
Mike Butera:
00:09:38
know, for the past 20 some years. But the interface, the UI
Mike Butera:
00:09:45
tends to be very pro focused. And this was another insight at
Mike Butera:
00:09:50
the sort of founding moment for artifact was looking at all
Mike Butera:
00:09:55
these amazing, you know, new technologies, but seeing how
Mike Butera:
00:09:59
they're really just designed For pros, the high learning curve on
Mike Butera:
00:10:02
the instrument side, but also on the recording side. And that
Mike Butera:
00:10:06
moment was around 2010, the iPad was released, and GarageBand hit
Mike Butera:
00:10:13
the iPad. And that was a lightbulb for me of saying,
Mike Butera:
00:10:17
okay, all these sounds are available to anyone, this is
Mike Butera:
00:10:21
going to change the way kids especially think about what
Mike Butera:
00:10:25
they're capable of with music. Because now there's this free
Mike Butera:
00:10:30
app on their iPad, or five bucks at the time, that that they
Mike Butera:
00:10:34
could go in and record beats and be like, I made this beat. And
Mike Butera:
00:10:38
that's cool. And that might, that might be enough to get them
Mike Butera:
00:10:42
to feel like they're a creative person. I wanted to focus on the
Mike Butera:
00:10:47
interface, the screen wasn't enough, you know, having to
Mike Butera:
00:10:50
stare at a screen and never be able to close your eyes when you
Mike Butera:
00:10:53
play and not get that muscle memory. I wanted to bring that
Mike Butera:
00:10:57
back into music creation and bring in all the new benefits of
Mike Butera:
00:11:03
digital recording and everything like that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:06
Very cool. And we'll come back to this because
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:09
then part of it is there is a retail marketplace and
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:12
expectations and school focus and all this stuff for a sale. I
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:16
want to hear more about how you've dealt with that. But you
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:19
Mike, you started out commenting also that as a musician, so you
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:24
as a musician, do play create.
Mike Butera:
00:11:29
I do. I so I started on violin, when I was
Mike Butera:
00:11:34
eight, I came home and asked if I could play violin because I
Mike Butera:
00:11:38
saw the orchestra at school and really liked it. I for the first
Mike Butera:
00:11:44
six years of lessons, I never improvised. It was just sheet
Mike Butera:
00:11:49
music. And, and it was often music that I had never heard. I
Mike Butera:
00:11:55
only saw the notes on the page. And my teacher would say whether
Mike Butera:
00:11:59
I was playing it correctly or not. But I actually didn't have
Mike Butera:
00:12:03
the original recordings to even play along with, which was an
Mike Butera:
00:12:08
interesting way to learn.
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:10
Yeah, this was where where did you grow up?
Mike Butera:
00:12:12
I grew up in Pennsylvania. So just a, you
Mike Butera:
00:12:16
know, normal kind of grew up in, in a neighborhood worked on the
Mike Butera:
00:12:22
farm right next to the neighborhood grew up in the
Mike Butera:
00:12:24
family flower shop. So pretty classic.
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:28
Were your parents creative at all? Or did they do
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:30
music?
Mike Butera:
00:12:31
So my dad's a floral designer, so very
Mike Butera:
00:12:34
creative in that sort of visual material field. And my mom is
Mike Butera:
00:12:40
She's a painter, and has been a teacher and things so very
Mike Butera:
00:12:44
inspiring. But not musical in particuclar.
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:47
So the theme might be it can be non traditional was
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:49
there from the beginning?
Mike Butera:
00:12:51
Yes.
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:51
wWat did they think that that Mike was going
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:54
to be?
Unknown:
00:12:58
They, they never prefigured that for me. There
Unknown:
00:13:03
was there was never that like Doctor lawyer. Kind of
Unknown:
00:13:07
expectation.
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:09
Get a good degree and get a good professional
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:11
field and life will be your oyster.
Mike Butera:
00:13:14
Yeah, yeah. We liked oysters. We just didn't
Mike Butera:
00:13:17
have that many. And. And so when I said that I wanted to go to
Mike Butera:
00:13:25
college for music and music performance in particular and
Mike Butera:
00:13:29
violin. They were like, great. And they supported me even
Mike Butera:
00:13:33
though that is not a career that offers many, you know, many
Mike Butera:
00:13:38
opportunities for professional violinist.
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:41
So what did you think it was going to do? I'm
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:43
always fascinated it now then, that when people make a college
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:48
decision, they're buying a black box, and oftentimes don't say,
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:52
and then when I'm done with that, I see I would do x. So if
Mike Butera:
00:13:57
it wasn't about violin for me, I actually wanted
Mike Butera:
00:14:02
to I actually tried to go for guitar initially. But there were
Mike Butera:
00:14:08
too many guitars and they had room for a violinist. So with
Mike Butera:
00:14:12
that, but for me, it was just music. It was is there a way I
Mike Butera:
00:14:16
moved to Nashville? Is there a way to do music as a career? And
Mike Butera:
00:14:22
at the time, I really didn't know what that could mean other
Mike Butera:
00:14:26
than being a band and get signed to do the normal thing you
Mike Butera:
00:14:31
imagine? Yeah. Yeah. And I enjoy I did some of that. And I've
Mike Butera:
00:14:37
done the, you know, the band stuff, the solo stuff, the
Mike Butera:
00:14:41
studio recording engineer. I love that whole world. But it
Mike Butera:
00:14:48
was also at this moment. And this is 20 some years ago now,
Mike Butera:
00:14:54
when that digital shift was happening pretty profoundly when
Mike Butera:
00:14:59
I I started in studios, we were recording to tape and I loved I
Mike Butera:
00:15:03
mean, fully analog signal paths, amazing sound like, I still love
Mike Butera:
00:15:09
it is a million dollar studio. And, and at the same time that
Mike Butera:
00:15:16
studio had a little room that had a Pro Tools rig with a
Mike Butera:
00:15:20
computer. And they were all these people making totally new
Mike Butera:
00:15:23
sounds. And they're in this little room and then they got a
Mike Butera:
00:15:26
laptop, and they did it back in their apartments. So I was
Mike Butera:
00:15:30
seeing that happen at that moment. And that totally
Mike Butera:
00:15:33
influenced me toward this. So. So anyway, I didn't know where
Mike Butera:
00:15:37
it would go. I quickly, you know, fell in love with studios
Mike Butera:
00:15:41
and then found philosophy and sociology, I actually got a
Mike Butera:
00:15:45
triple major, how they see that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:15:48
Everything seems like a somewhat normal journey
Gigi Johnson:
00:15:52
until you look and go way way. Wait, how did Mike do that?
Gigi Johnson:
00:15:55
Because first of all, for most people, they'd have no idea that
Gigi Johnson:
00:15:59
you can create multiple blended, the you don't have to be in a
Gigi Johnson:
00:16:03
single journey path. And in fact, most universities have a
Gigi Johnson:
00:16:07
structure your own degree journey possible that they don't
Gigi Johnson:
00:16:11
tell anyone about how can you imagine if half your students
Gigi Johnson:
00:16:14
were doing that? So how did you So you did three separate
Gigi Johnson:
00:16:19
degrees? And what drove you to think this was sane? Well,
Mike Butera:
00:16:25
if we go back and nerd out just prior for some
Mike Butera:
00:16:31
reason, when I was in sixth grade, I came home and said I
Mike Butera:
00:16:36
wanted to be homeschooled. And I was doing well in school, I had
Mike Butera:
00:16:40
friends like it was working out. But I met someone who was in
Mike Butera:
00:16:44
homeschooling and they were like, Yeah, you get to customize
Mike Butera:
00:16:46
all your work. And you get to, you know, go down these paths.
Mike Butera:
00:16:50
And it's Yeah, I thought, Well, this sounds really interesting.
Mike Butera:
00:16:53
And it took a little convince my parents, but we did. And it
Mike Butera:
00:16:58
ended up that the second half of my you know, formative education
Mike Butera:
00:17:04
years, I was, you know, learning at home and able to build all of
Mike Butera:
00:17:10
these different course classes, you know, studies in areas that
Mike Butera:
00:17:17
you wouldn't normally get to. And so I kind of broke out of
Mike Butera:
00:17:20
that normal, you know, middle of high school mode. So when I went
Mike Butera:
00:17:24
to college, I was able to get in the honors program actually
Mike Butera:
00:17:29
didn't have the the SAT score for it. Standardized testing
Mike Butera:
00:17:34
wasn't one of my strong points. But I went into the office, and
Mike Butera:
00:17:40
I said, Hey, I really, yeah, I really want to do this. Yeah.
Mike Butera:
00:17:47
And it worked. We got in a conversation. I said, I said
Mike Butera:
00:17:49
what I was passionate about. And they said, well, we'll give you
Mike Butera:
00:17:53
a semester, we'll see you know, this, we'll see if this works
Mike Butera:
00:17:56
out. And it worked out. And And then luckily, that program gave
Mike Butera:
00:18:00
me kind of free rein to piece together these different fields,
Mike Butera:
00:18:04
you had to justify why. So like one of my majors was music
Mike Butera:
00:18:08
production. And I actually studied music, composition,
Mike Butera:
00:18:13
performance, business, you know, recording, distribution, like
Mike Butera:
00:18:18
all these different aspects . . .
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:19
It helps you're at Belmont because all those were
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:20
available at Belmont.
Mike Butera:
00:18:21
Exactly. Yeah. And yeah, it's very unique
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:21
Did you go right to grad school, or did you have
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:26
opportunity. And similar with philosophy and sociology, the
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:29
two there was a lot of overlap and critical theory and things
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:32
any sidebars?
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:32
but, but I was able to kind of carve out those paths. And then
Mike Butera:
00:18:33
I had about a year that I was saving up for it. I
Mike Butera:
00:18:36
when I got to grad school at Virginia Tech,
Mike Butera:
00:18:43
was working at some restaurants and things in Nashville and
Mike Butera:
00:18:53
doing music and you know, that kind of stuff. But it was all in
Mike Butera:
00:18:57
preparation to go to grad school.
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:59
But sometimes it's a good buffer or baking point or
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:03
settling out or because you then went right from masters to
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:07
doctorate, which is a bit of a journey. Know why Yeah. Why grad
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:12
school? Why is it the fact that you had this lovely blended
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:17
thing that would thrive in grad school or that you had gotten
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:21
distracted?
Mike Butera:
00:19:22
I hadn't found sound studies yet. I went to
Mike Butera:
00:19:26
grad school because I thought I wanted to be a social theory
Mike Butera:
00:19:29
professor. And that could be in a philosophy or sociology
Mike Butera:
00:19:32
department. But I knew I wanted to do that. I was especially
Mike Butera:
00:19:37
studying technology and social networks at the time. So
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:44
yes, and this was 2008 ish.
Unknown:
00:19:48
I started grad school in '07. So I finished up
Unknown:
00:19:52
undergrad and in '05 and then in December '05 and then yeah, just
Unknown:
00:19:59
over a year. started grad school, the . . . . So I went to
Unknown:
00:20:03
Virginia Tech . . . The master's program in philosophy
Unknown:
00:20:07
there was analytic compared to Continental, just two branches
Unknown:
00:20:12
of philosophy. Very kind of hardcore logic focused, not the
Unknown:
00:20:18
kind of philosophy where you just talk about what's on your
Unknown:
00:20:21
mind and and see if you can come up with new ideas. That was
Unknown:
00:20:24
primarily my style. So I was suddenly in this rigorous sort
Unknown:
00:20:29
of engineering driven culture at VT, which I learned a ton. I
Unknown:
00:20:35
also found sound studies. In the first year, while I was there, I
Unknown:
00:20:42
didn't know it existed, it was a nascent field at the time. And I
Unknown:
00:20:46
read a mention of it in a book on cyber culture studies, that
Unknown:
00:20:51
sound had been under explored in this field. And I was like, oh,
Unknown:
00:20:56
and it just all the lights came on. And you know, all these
Unknown:
00:20:59
different passions kind of magnetize together. So I, I
Unknown:
00:21:05
joined a Ph. D. program at Virginia Tech, that didn't quite
Unknown:
00:21:10
exist yet. It hadn't been finalized with the state. It
Unknown:
00:21:15
was, it was the first truly interdisciplinary PhD in the
Unknown:
00:21:20
country. And it was between philosophy, history, sociology,
Unknown:
00:21:27
political theory, things like that. So I was the first
Unknown:
00:21:31
student, PhD student in this program. And I was part of
Unknown:
00:21:37
getting it, you know, I was in those meetings with the
Unknown:
00:21:41
regulators or whatever, in academia, to figure out what it
Unknown:
00:21:45
meant. And therefore, it was a blank slate. And I said, I want
Unknown:
00:21:50
to do sound studies. And they're like, great, go for it. And so I
Unknown:
00:21:54
was able to create this whole PhD program around this new
Unknown:
00:21:57
field and travel around the world and go to all these
Unknown:
00:22:00
conferences and be a part of the new journals that were coming
Unknown:
00:22:03
out. And it was, it was amazing. So anyway, I think the theme
Unknown:
00:22:09
academically was, I, I never, I was never interested in sort of
Unknown:
00:22:16
finding the boxes to check off or, you know, put on the shelf
Unknown:
00:22:22
or whatever. I was always looking for ways to kind of
Unknown:
00:22:26
integrate different fields together and find something new.
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:31
So let's get back to the more current future. And
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:35
so you've got a past, a build it yourself for yourself, blending,
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:40
exploring, poking some things in the eye that are, are
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:45
traditional. And so then you went you created was it assault,
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:49
where you were then building company building lots of
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:54
different things?
Mike Butera:
00:22:55
Yeah.
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:55
What bridged you from we're helping, consulting,
Gigi Johnson:
00:23:00
building launching consumer products to I want to start a
Gigi Johnson:
00:23:06
company, and then what led into the first instrument? And, and
Gigi Johnson:
00:23:12
why Kickstarter, so if we could make that journey conversation.
Mike Butera:
00:23:18
So this was. . . Yeah, back to 2010 that that
Mike Butera:
00:23:22
sort of pivotal moment. One of the things was, it worked, it
Mike Butera:
00:23:27
was working, the consulting was doing well, I was able to come
Mike Butera:
00:23:33
up with ideas like for these smart home speakers that would
Mike Butera:
00:23:38
all connect with each other work with industrial designers,
Mike Butera:
00:23:43
mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and so on. Go to
Mike Butera:
00:23:48
China go to the factory oversee production and then see it you
Mike Butera:
00:23:53
know, actually do well in the market. And so this was all menopause
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:00
menopause a second because you explained a lot of
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:03
your gestation Did you have any tech skills at this stage? Did
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:07
you learn things yourself? Or did so? What was that tech
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:14
component and when the some people build things and do
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:17
things and they've been taking apart their parents toasters,
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:20
since they were five, or they've been coding forever, or they've
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:24
been doing robot design and building so so I'm not hearing a
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:27
building story, this is this part of the superpowers of your
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:30
partner is this stuff that you learned or trusted other people
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:35
with?
Mike Butera:
00:24:37
So I was always yes, I was always taking things
Mike Butera:
00:24:41
apart and and, you know, as a kid and onward, when I got into
Mike Butera:
00:24:47
studio tech in college, I was repairing gear building tube,
Mike Butera:
00:24:54
you know, gear and whatever. So I electrically you know,
Mike Butera:
00:24:58
familiar but Not an electrical engineer. A lot of training in
Mike Butera:
00:25:05
design happened from my dad from floral design, you know, more
Mike Butera:
00:25:12
aesthetically, I would say. But then I learned a lot of that
Mike Butera:
00:25:17
hands on during the consulting phase, you know, how consumer
Mike Butera:
00:25:21
tech was actually built? Coding, I always dabbled, but, you know,
Mike Butera:
00:25:28
some people, most people are so much better at that than I am.
Mike Butera:
00:25:31
So I've always been able to translate the kind of design
Mike Butera:
00:25:36
intent and understand the architecture of it, but that
Mike Butera:
00:25:40
was, that was never my thing. So yes, a lot of trust, a lot of
Mike Butera:
00:25:44
collaboration with people. And, and I felt like I was, I was
Mike Butera:
00:25:51
discovering that my role was this hub or a translator,
Mike Butera:
00:25:56
between culture and product design, ways of thinking, and in
Mike Butera:
00:26:02
the weeds, engineering and just, you know, always keeping that
Mike Butera:
00:26:06
that strand connected. Because so many products are either, you
Mike Butera:
00:26:15
know, impossible to build, or possible to build and no one
Mike Butera:
00:26:19
wants them and
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:20
are so expensive to build that no one wants it at
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:23
that price point, right. So that in many ways, specialty music
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:27
instruments, I mean, the ones that I'm aware of what Chapman
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:30
stick and other things where you kind of go so expensive to build
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:35
and creating customized and not met as mass products. That's
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:40
been on my wish list
Mike Butera:
00:26:41
for a while and let's let's tag a corner this
Mike Butera:
00:26:44
conversation in terms of with instruments, what, what are the
Mike Butera:
00:26:51
cultural references or familiarity that people need?
Mike Butera:
00:26:56
You know, Chapman stick is a good example. cool technology,
Mike Butera:
00:27:02
you can make all kinds of sound with it. People get virtuosic in
Mike Butera:
00:27:06
amazing ways with it.
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:08
So complicated. It play. Yes. Yeah.
Mike Butera:
00:27:11
I mean, it's just like a theory bomb. Music Theory
Mike Butera:
00:27:15
of like,
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:16
I can to pause everybody, because I would never
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:19
have known a Chapman stick other than I was at a small concert,
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:23
and someone was playing it. And I was so blown away by watching
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:28
total virtuosity. So it's kind of like, a unstructured guitar
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:32
had a baby with a bass. But it's sort of two directions. Yeah,
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:37
it's like a harp hanging from a bait. So it was very much a
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:41
cultural mashup. And but, uh, simply, the virtuosity was like
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:45
watching a phenomenal heart play, or were you just watching?
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:49
Oh, my gosh, but I went to go price one. I'm like, Oh, my
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:54
gosh, that is such an expensive instrument. And it is sort of
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:58
art. It's almost the opposite of what you guys have been building.
Mike Butera:
00:28:03
Right? Well, and so then get back to that. So why,
Mike Butera:
00:28:08
why build a new type of musical instrument? was the question I
Mike Butera:
00:28:13
was asking myself when I got up the courage to say, Yeah, I want
Mike Butera:
00:28:17
to start my own company. Yeah, I want to, I want to build a new
Mike Butera:
00:28:20
thing. I mentioned, the user interface challenge of all these
Mike Butera:
00:28:25
apps were out there. But you don't want to just touch a
Mike Butera:
00:28:28
screen, you want something in your hands? Well, that's great.
Mike Butera:
00:28:31
What should that thing be. And we could have designed a very
Mike Butera:
00:28:37
specific instrument, a singular instrument, like most instance,
Mike Butera:
00:28:41
instruments, or singular, you, it's intended to be played one
Mike Butera:
00:28:45
way you learn how to play it that way, and then you're good
Mike Butera:
00:28:47
at it. My goal was to create a plural instrument, an
Mike Butera:
00:28:54
instrument, we call it a multi instrument, something that you
Mike Butera:
00:28:58
could actually pick up and play in all these different ways. And
Mike Butera:
00:29:03
versatility was one of the goals. Because why not digital,
Mike Butera:
00:29:08
lets you do that. We can build form factors that allow for
Mike Butera:
00:29:12
multiple positions and gestures and playing styles. So creating
Mike Butera:
00:29:16
this universal musical instrument has a versatility
Mike Butera:
00:29:20
benefit. But there's another even more important benefit that
Mike Butera:
00:29:24
I was really going for, which is approachability. The theory that
Mike Butera:
00:29:30
I had at the time, and we're still playing this out, we're
Mike Butera:
00:29:32
still seeing if this is, you know going to be true in the
Mike Butera:
00:29:35
world. The theory is that if you multiply what a thing can do,
Mike Butera:
00:29:40
than any one thing that it does is less intimidating. Because
Mike Butera:
00:29:45
you pick it up and you say I'm gonna just gonna play some
Mike Butera:
00:29:48
drums. You know what, I'm going to have some fun and pick it up
Mike Butera:
00:29:51
and strum it like a guitar or put it down on the table and now
Mike Butera:
00:29:54
it's a piano. None of those things are the right way to play
Mike Butera:
00:29:58
it and therefore you're not playing Seeing it wrong. And so
Mike Butera:
00:30:03
creating this universal instrument also has the benefit
Mike Butera:
00:30:06
of giving more people the sense that they could just casually
Mike Butera:
00:30:11
approach it, see what it does enjoy that, and not compare
Mike Butera:
00:30:15
themselves to the best musician in the world who's so much
Mike Butera:
00:30:18
better at them at this one singular thing. And that's, that
Mike Butera:
00:30:23
really was that moment where I thought, Okay, this is going to
Mike Butera:
00:30:25
work, we do have a new conversation to, you know, bring
Mike Butera:
00:30:30
to the world of what instruments can be. And yeah, that's when we
Mike Butera:
00:30:35
started designing what we call the instrument one, which was
Mike Butera:
00:30:37
our first product.
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:39
It makes me think of Dan Shneiderman's
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:42
philosophies of creativity, technology support tools, now
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:46
I'm gonna go nerdy for a bit where it's like a metaphor as a
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:50
doorway. So you can have a low threshold or a high threshold, a
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:54
wide doorway, that you can stuff many things into it, or a tall
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:58
doorway, where you can go to extreme expertise. And I always
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:02
come to a new technology and go, is it an easy entry? Is it a
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:06
wide doorway? Or does it have extreme sophistications? Like me
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:10
trying to come in to, to Photoshop? Yeah, I know, I could
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:13
possibly start Photoshop fairly easily for about five minutes.
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:17
And then it's like, Wait, I don't like kind of grok it I'm
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:21
doing blender right now. It's it's like, immediately high
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:25
doorway, wide walls, high ceiling. But the doorway is so
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:29
harsh as you're looking to make it. So it's an easy entry. But
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:33
sophisticated uses and wide uses, you're kind of making an
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:36
infinite doorway.
Mike Butera:
00:31:39
That's it's a goal. One of one of the ways we do
Mike Butera:
00:31:43
that we call it scalable complexity. In the history of
Mike Butera:
00:31:47
instruments, they're based on physics, of resonance,
Mike Butera:
00:31:50
vibration, resonance. And therefore the material, the
Mike Butera:
00:31:57
size, all those aspects of it had to be pretty fixed, there
Mike Butera:
00:32:02
was some variables that you could add or subtract, but that
Mike Butera:
00:32:06
was it. And even the early days of electric and electronic
Mike Butera:
00:32:11
instrumentation with early synthesizers, and things, it
Mike Butera:
00:32:14
also pretty fixed circuits were kind of baked in, you had the
Mike Butera:
00:32:18
armed Martino, one of my favorite instruments, where you,
Mike Butera:
00:32:23
you could plug in these different they were like
Mike Butera:
00:32:26
speakers, but they were actually not speakers like we normally
Mike Butera:
00:32:30
think some of them were gongs, others were paper, others, you
Mike Butera:
00:32:35
know, were wood. And so the point was, when you plug in the
Mike Butera:
00:32:39
speaker, it's going to sound like a totally different
Mike Butera:
00:32:41
instrument. But it's because of the physics of it. With digital
Mike Butera:
00:32:46
tools, now we can actually create these adaptive devices.
Mike Butera:
00:32:51
And so if we get the ergonomics, right, based on simple human
Mike Butera:
00:32:56
forms, and averages of hand size, and all kinds of things.
Mike Butera:
00:33:01
So similar to say, a game controller, or remote, or all
Mike Butera:
00:33:05
kinds of other objects we use, we can program these devices to
Mike Butera:
00:33:10
respond differently based on what you want to do with them.
Mike Butera:
00:33:14
We can receive different gestures in ways that we make
Mike Butera:
00:33:18
musical, not in the same way. So if you want to strum something,
Mike Butera:
00:33:22
versus tap it, versus bow it, or press it, these are all
Mike Butera:
00:33:29
different gestures that we can program and say, well, now we're
Mike Butera:
00:33:32
going to put it in a sort of piano mode, or a guitar mode, or
Mike Butera:
00:33:37
a drum machine mode or things like that. And that's actually
Mike Butera:
00:33:41
one of the things that we patented, was this concept of
Mike Butera:
00:33:45
the multi instrument as a switchable responsive device,
Mike Butera:
00:33:50
rather than, you know, based on one way to play. So that that
Mike Butera:
00:33:55
was one of the key, you know, founding principles of what
Mike Butera:
00:33:59
we're doing, it's a bit hard to explain. And again, maybe, maybe
Mike Butera:
00:34:04
it'll be the way of the future or maybe it's a moment in
Mike Butera:
00:34:08
history, but it seems to be working.
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:11
So for for people trying to visualize this who are
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:15
listening to this, that the first one which was instrument
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:19
one, kind of look like a mash up a long, thin strip that had
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:28
sensors on the top that you could, that also had
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:34
accelerometers and other motion sensors, so that you could take
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:39
that same essentially bar and play it, hold it up and strum
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:45
it, move it in space. So that it wasn't just taking one of the
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:50
metaphors or affordance sets but let you take patterns that you
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:55
already knew from something else and bring it over. Yeah,
Mike Butera:
00:34:58
absolutely. Yeah. We, with the design of the
Mike Butera:
00:35:02
instrument one, it took just over four years to go from idea
Mike Butera:
00:35:08
into a product that we could, you know, announce to the world.
Mike Butera:
00:35:13
So a lot of iterations, six different prototype generations
Mike Butera:
00:35:16
in there a lot of a lot of different ways to look at it
Mike Butera:
00:35:22
initially, for instance, it had a doc for an iPhone. Because
Mike Butera:
00:35:26
Doc's were really cool, which made sense at the time, right?
Mike Butera:
00:35:29
It was great. It was great. It was it was really neat, because
Mike Butera:
00:35:34
it became this self contained instrument that was before
Mike Butera:
00:35:38
Bluetooth was really possible or you know, even just USB
Mike Butera:
00:35:42
connection more generally. So. So anyway, it it evolved a few
Mike Butera:
00:35:48
different ways. It ended up being a device, we launched it
Mike Butera:
00:35:52
on Kickstarter, in 2015. We didn't know what it would do,
Mike Butera:
00:35:57
the design of it was we ended up making it in plastic, so we
Mike Butera:
00:36:01
could mass manufacture it. The sensors were called force
Mike Butera:
00:36:06
sensing resistors, it was this, this kind of sheet of film
Mike Butera:
00:36:12
underneath a, an almost rubbery surface that could sense touch
Mike Butera:
00:36:18
and pressure velocity, you could slide on it, it was almost like
Mike Butera:
00:36:23
a computer trackpad. But but a rubber surface a little harder
Mike Butera:
00:36:27
to play than that. And, and it had these string features on it.
Mike Butera:
00:36:32
And we did that because in early testing, we found that a lot of
Mike Butera:
00:36:36
the musicians again, this was in Nashville, a lot of the
Mike Butera:
00:36:39
musicians were very string focused, and really wanted that
Mike Butera:
00:36:43
tactile feel of having, you know, muscle memory. Yeah, yeah.
Gigi Johnson:
00:36:51
This was not fret started, they wanted friends.
Mike Butera:
00:36:56
This is not a not a mistake. But as we talked about
Mike Butera:
00:37:00
Chorda it's interesting, we took off the strings for Chorda,
Mike Butera:
00:37:04
similar form factor kind of ukulele size bar. But Chorda has
Mike Butera:
00:37:09
pads and a strong mobile area. So insert one accord a both have
Mike Butera:
00:37:13
those things, but insert one had the string features again,
Mike Butera:
00:37:18
because musicians were asking for that. Insert one can do
Mike Butera:
00:37:22
things that stringed instruments can't do that other instruments
Mike Butera:
00:37:27
can't do. Every note can have its own distortion or for Broto.
Mike Butera:
00:37:32
You can apply effects to every little touch. If you press
Mike Butera:
00:37:36
harder, you know, you could bring in delay or whatever you
Mike Butera:
00:37:40
wanting to like amazing things. But what it didn't have was real
Mike Butera:
00:37:45
strings. And for those, say guitarists approaching this with
Mike Butera:
00:37:50
the muscle memory of strings back to physics, they wanted to
Mike Butera:
00:37:54
behave exactly like strings behave. And that was
Mike Butera:
00:37:58
problematic. It was a problem that I think is quite
Mike Butera:
00:38:02
interesting, and highlights this this paradigm shift between
Mike Butera:
00:38:06
physical and virtual instruments, virtuosic
Gigi Johnson:
00:38:10
to write I live off my business as being of not
Gigi Johnson:
00:38:15
having to think about it, and being able to create art after
Gigi Johnson:
00:38:19
years of practice.
Mike Butera:
00:38:21
Yeah, well, Aristotle's notion of virtue
Mike Butera:
00:38:28
has, you know, not quite as much to do with what we think about,
Mike Butera:
00:38:34
like, you know, a virtuous person is like, really good or
Mike Butera:
00:38:38
something, for Aristotle was more like being good at
Mike Butera:
00:38:41
something. And, and having the virtue of, of, you know, being
Mike Butera:
00:38:49
capable having the affordances matched to what you're doing.
Mike Butera:
00:38:54
And so, there's an interesting just to get kind of deep on that
Mike Butera:
00:38:59
of the virtue and virtual, that we can actually map the same
Mike Butera:
00:39:06
behaviors, the same affordances from the physical world into the
Mike Butera:
00:39:10
what we now call the virtual world, as long as people have
Mike Butera:
00:39:15
the virtue of being able to use it. And all that means in normal
Mike Butera:
00:39:19
language now is like the capability or in some cases,
Mike Butera:
00:39:23
just the confidence of reaching out and touching it. If you can,
Mike Butera:
00:39:27
strum your hand through the air. And if a guitar is under your
Mike Butera:
00:39:32
hand, you'll strum a guitar. But if you're in an augmented
Mike Butera:
00:39:36
reality environment, that can detect your hand moving through
Mike Butera:
00:39:39
the air, and you strum virtual strings. It's the same result.
Mike Butera:
00:39:44
And so you have the virtue of being able to strum the
Mike Butera:
00:39:48
technology is going to determine exactly how that happens, but it
Mike Butera:
00:39:52
might not matter what the inner workings are of it as long as
Mike Butera:
00:39:55
you get to intend for something to happen, and it happens in the
Mike Butera:
00:39:59
end. That is, you know, that's enough. And again, this is how I
Mike Butera:
00:40:06
tend to think about product design, like, can we design?
Mike Butera:
00:40:09
Tough stuff?
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:11
People will expect the haptic feedback of the
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:13
string, right? So that they there still is, then they would
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:17
like that interaction with that. I'm right now building things in
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:21
spatial audio and VR. And so really thinking about what then
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:24
that response is, and how sorry, we could go down. So holes here.
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:31
Yeah, let let me let me take you down to rabbit holes to maybe
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:35
wrap up this conversation. And because there's lots of things I
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:38
would love to talk about on this, which is, so one of the
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:42
reinforcing elements is the retail sales element of musical
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:46
instruments you came in through Kickstarter, you now have come
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:50
in with several instruments. So you also had the and I have to
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:56
look at my notes, the orba, which I've had my hands on in
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:59
play, but very much of a circular modality, really
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:04
hitting were the folks who are possibly thinking of it in terms
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:08
of beats or pads as a different modality and cheaper and
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:13
handset. And then you've taken that through Kickstarter, and
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:16
you knew, you're taking the current quarter, you had
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:20
something or have something called orbit cam, that's a video
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:23
also, I
Mike Butera:
00:41:25
was mentioned, the the AR stuff didn't come out of
Mike Butera:
00:41:28
nowhere, we've spent the past couple of years really figuring
Mike Butera:
00:41:32
out what's possible through the camera, as a musical interface.
Mike Butera:
00:41:38
So and the screen itself. So orbit cam, for instance, is an
Mike Butera:
00:41:41
app that you can make music directly in live video on your
Mike Butera:
00:41:45
screen. And there are these pads and you can play whatever sound
Mike Butera:
00:41:49
you want. And it will automatically get baked into the
Mike Butera:
00:41:52
video kind of SoundTracking your life. It works with our
Mike Butera:
00:41:57
hardware, but you can also use it on its own. And so yeah, what
Mike Butera:
00:42:01
we found is the transference of our tech, from the physical
Mike Butera:
00:42:06
products into apps on to a physical product you already own
Mike Butera:
00:42:11
your phone is all possible. And it's really just where are you?
Mike Butera:
00:42:16
What do you want to do? You know, what's what's fun at the
Mike Butera:
00:42:19
moment? And, and so yeah, we've been experimenting with AR, we
Mike Butera:
00:42:23
did a big launch with Snapchat last year with artists, lenses
Mike Butera:
00:42:29
and ways to make any song interactive, which is really
Mike Butera:
00:42:33
fun, using new AR tools and motion tracking, things like
Mike Butera:
00:42:37
that. And it's all the same thinking it's it's a lot of the
Mike Butera:
00:42:42
same kind of UX design that we put into our hardware
Mike Butera:
00:42:46
instruments that we design in the virtual space as well. So
Mike Butera:
00:42:50
that's that's been really fun. So
Gigi Johnson:
00:42:53
given the retail dominance, that the retail
Gigi Johnson:
00:42:56
challenges, yeah, in the current era of retail stores going away.
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:00
So they're feeling of fragility and needing to move volume. How
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:04
in the world do you sell this? A Kickstarter has been your friend
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:08
multiple times now including recently? To me, that's a
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:12
natural friction, and a quest retail scale. With retailers,
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:18
that's their ownership spot, right? How do you then get to
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:22
people and get to the learning complex and getting to people to
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:27
see this as an option other than by word of mouth, and great
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:32
Kickstarter marketing.
Mike Butera:
00:43:34
So Kickstarter is really this moment, just the
Mike Butera:
00:43:38
launch moment. It's actually a pre launch moment, it's when we
Mike Butera:
00:43:43
develop an instrument enough that it works, that we can
Mike Butera:
00:43:46
demonstrate that we can make music in our case, three times
Mike Butera:
00:43:50
now, we've brought that to Kickstarter and said, Hey, we
Mike Butera:
00:43:53
haven't manufactured this yet. We want to, we just want to make
Mike Butera:
00:43:56
sure you actually want it. Here's the concept. Here's how
Mike Butera:
00:43:59
it plays. What do you think? And all three times that's gone
Mike Butera:
00:44:04
quite well. And so we simultaneously we're having
Mike Butera:
00:44:10
conversations with retailers, not only in the musical
Mike Butera:
00:44:13
instrument space, but consumer electronics and and more
Mike Butera:
00:44:17
lifestyle retail as well, at the moment design store, for
Mike Butera:
00:44:20
instance, has been a great partner over the years.
Mike Butera:
00:44:25
Retailers increasingly don't take as many risks at launch,
Mike Butera:
00:44:30
they want to see that something has already worked. And so I see
Mike Butera:
00:44:33
the two functioning quite well together they have for us that
Mike Butera:
00:44:39
we've been able to go out to Kickstarter, find early adopters
Mike Butera:
00:44:42
who are like, Yeah, that should exist in the world. Let's help
Mike Butera:
00:44:44
you make it. And by doing that, we're showing that there's a
Mike Butera:
00:44:48
demand for this and retailers want to be more in the middle of
Mike Butera:
00:44:52
the adoption curve and or even past the chasm, as they say. And
Mike Butera:
00:44:59
so We're able to prove momentum in the market. With early
Mike Butera:
00:45:04
adopters, that's, it's been great for us the Kickstarter
Mike Butera:
00:45:08
community is awesome. And, and the other fact is we sell most
Mike Butera:
00:45:12
of our products direct through our website, we do sell through
Mike Butera:
00:45:17
Amazon as well. But, you know, going direct means we have a
Mike Butera:
00:45:22
relationship with our customers, we, you know, we can communicate
Mike Butera:
00:45:26
with them. If you buy on, if you buy or buy on Amazon right now.
Mike Butera:
00:45:33
And you don't go to our website and specifically sign up for
Mike Butera:
00:45:36
our, you know, email list, you might not know that we've just
Mike Butera:
00:45:40
updated the firmware and added new features or that there are
Mike Butera:
00:45:43
all these new songs and ways to play them, you know, we we'd
Mike Butera:
00:45:47
like to develop this community around our products. And it also
Mike Butera:
00:45:51
shows on social media, we have amazing engagement with people,
Mike Butera:
00:45:56
they, they make little songs, they post them, there's a whole
Mike Butera:
00:46:00
sort of supportive community around just this casual music
Mike Butera:
00:46:04
making. And that's because we have that direct relationship.
Mike Butera:
00:46:08
And we're not going through too many intermediaries. That said,
Mike Butera:
00:46:12
we we have great relationships with retailers, Guitar Center,
Mike Butera:
00:46:15
and you know, all kinds of people, but we're really focused
Mike Butera:
00:46:19
on as direct as we can get with the customer.
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:23
Mike, we have covered your highly nonlinear
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:25
journey, you're putting it together from building your own
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:28
homeschooling to building your own combination of degrees to
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:31
building your own musical instruments and companies and
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:34
products. What have we not mentioned? Is there anything you
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:37
as we wrap up, that you'd like to mention, we haven't touched
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:40
on?
Mike Butera:
00:46:43
I think, overall, for me, the the idea of building
Mike Butera:
00:46:51
a company was always secondary, it it had to be done, if I was
Mike Butera:
00:46:58
going to pursue this stuff, because I couldn't just couldn't
Mike Butera:
00:47:03
just build it all myself, I had to work with people who had all
Mike Butera:
00:47:06
these different skill sets, I couldn't just fund it myself, I
Mike Butera:
00:47:10
had to find people who wanted to build this opportunity into a
Mike Butera:
00:47:13
business that could actually make money someday. And, and I
Mike Butera:
00:47:18
didn't want to do it myself. This, it's too much fun to work
Mike Butera:
00:47:21
with other people. So the business the corporation is is a
Mike Butera:
00:47:29
body of people that is this kind of this kind of place where we
Mike Butera:
00:47:35
can all pursue that together. There are many other ways this
Mike Butera:
00:47:39
can be done, there are awesome open source projects in the
Mike Butera:
00:47:42
world, and you know, all kinds of things. And in music, you see
Mike Butera:
00:47:46
a lot of that as well. The fact that this is a business also
Mike Butera:
00:47:53
means that there are other realities to what it takes to
Mike Butera:
00:47:57
run it. And that's something I've learned so much about that
Mike Butera:
00:48:01
over the past decade or so. Things I didn't know, I wanted
Mike Butera:
00:48:07
to learn just just the total reality of doing this. And
Mike Butera:
00:48:10
again, I mentioned I grew up in the family flower shop. So I had
Mike Butera:
00:48:14
that entrepreneurial, you know, context of just how hard it is
Mike Butera:
00:48:19
to figure this out. It's it's exciting. But like you said,
Mike Butera:
00:48:25
it's it's business is also very nonlinear. Especially with the
Mike Butera:
00:48:29
economy going all over the place. There's really no sense
Mike Butera:
00:48:33
of that classic stability that you might have had decades ago
Mike Butera:
00:48:38
where if you build something, you know, it'll get out there
Mike Butera:
00:48:41
you advertise in magazines, people will read it and mail
Mike Butera:
00:48:44
order your stuff like it's nothing is that set, now. It's
Mike Butera:
00:48:48
changing by the day. So that's another exciting aspect of this.
Mike Butera:
00:48:52
I'm glad we mostly talked about design and culture and why. But
Mike Butera:
00:48:58
the vehicle that has enabled this to happen has been an
Mike Butera:
00:49:02
actual, an actual business. And that's, that's cool, too. It's a
Mike Butera:
00:49:06
very different side than I learned and taught in academia,
Mike Butera:
00:49:11
about how, you know, capitalism works on a grand historical
Mike Butera:
00:49:15
scale. This is this is how it's working at a at a product and
Mike Butera:
00:49:19
team level scale, which is it's it's been awesome to learn.
Gigi Johnson:
00:49:23
Excellent. So this episode will go out and be out
Gigi Johnson:
00:49:28
in the ether. Who would you like to reach back out to you?
Mike Butera:
00:49:32
Oh, well, anyone who wants to collaborate on this
Mike Butera:
00:49:36
kind of stuff. We are right now exploring a lot of different
Mike Butera:
00:49:41
ways to get artists content into our instruments so that our
Mike Butera:
00:49:45
instruments become these interactive music devices. We
Mike Butera:
00:49:50
already have all the tech we've we've done some of that we want
Mike Butera:
00:49:55
to do more. We're also very interested in multimedia, music,
Mike Butera:
00:49:59
and we've done some cool experiments there. We want to
Mike Butera:
00:50:04
expand that and see our instruments as controllers for
Mike Butera:
00:50:08
making music in multiple senses. So yeah, just more. I'm just
Mike Butera:
00:50:13
looking for collaborations that would be, that would be awesome.
Gigi Johnson:
00:50:18
And how should people best reach out to you?
Gigi Johnson:
00:50:22
Oh,
Mike Butera:
00:50:22
we you can go to our website we have a, you know,
Mike Butera:
00:50:25
general contact at Artiphon. And I'm just Mike@artifact.com if
Mike Butera:
00:50:30
anyone wants to reach out. Excellent.
Gigi Johnson:
00:50:33
And we'll put the various links in the show notes.
Gigi Johnson:
00:50:35
Mike, thank you so much for joining us.
Mike Butera:
00:50:38
Thank you. That was really fun.
00:00:00
This show is about people who innovate in all walks
Gigi Johnson:
00:00:04
of life. And you have innovated, or have touched many walks of
Gigi Johnson:
00:00:09
life so far, and connected them together, which I find
Gigi Johnson:
00:00:12
fascinating. Mike, can you start us out with what you're doing
Gigi Johnson:
00:00:16
now, which your main adventure is now.
Mike Butera:
00:00:20
So I am currently and have been for a while
Mike Butera:
00:00:24
running Artifon. Artifon is a music technology company. Our
Mike Butera:
00:00:29
goal really is to reimagine musical instruments as friendly,
Mike Butera:
00:00:36
fun, casual consumer devices, the kind of smart home
Mike Butera:
00:00:41
revolution that we've seen in a lot of other areas we want to
Mike Butera:
00:00:44
apply to music. And that's not really the point. The point is,
Mike Butera:
00:00:49
we think a lot more people can have fun playing music, then
Mike Butera:
00:00:54
than have before when musical instruments were designed for
Mike Butera:
00:00:57
pros primarily. And so we want to design instruments for
Mike Butera:
00:01:01
everyone else. So what I'm doing is I'm running the company, I'm
Mike Butera:
00:01:06
leading product design. I, I'm trying to figure out what's next
Mike Butera:
00:01:11
in the world of getting more people to be creative. And and
Mike Butera:
00:01:18
so yeah, we are currently launching a new product that
Mike Butera:
00:01:22
we're really excited about called Chorda. And we can talk
Mike Butera:
00:01:25
about that. But yeah, it's our latest smart instrument. And
Mike Butera:
00:01:30
we're currently going into manufacturing on that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:01:33
Great, and I want to come back to the
Gigi Johnson:
00:01:35
Kickstarters. I want to come back to the why these. But why
Gigi Johnson:
00:01:42
drag you backwards progressively? Why did you feel
Gigi Johnson:
00:01:46
this company needed to be started?
Mike Butera:
00:01:49
So the year was 2010. I had just gotten my PhD
Mike Butera:
00:01:58
in sound studies. I was at Virginia Tech. And I moved back
Mike Butera:
00:02:02
to Nashville. And I was a professor of sociology and
Mike Butera:
00:02:07
philosophy, and really enjoying that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:02:11
Already, we've got a woven together journey here,
Gigi Johnson:
00:02:14
right.
Mike Butera:
00:02:15
Yeah, yeah
Gigi Johnson:
00:02:16
Sound studies and philosophy and sociology.
Mike Butera:
00:02:19
Yeah, for me, it was it was this continuum of
Mike Butera:
00:02:23
thinking through the ways that people want to make the world
Mike Butera:
00:02:29
sound certain ways, which changes. By the second, my
Mike Butera:
00:02:34
dissertation research was around phenomenology, which is kind of
Mike Butera:
00:02:40
this study of not just perception, but your approach to
Mike Butera:
00:02:44
the world, how you know how the world presents itself to you how
Mike Butera:
00:02:48
you respond to it interacting with the world, basically. And I
Mike Butera:
00:02:53
found that with sound, we have all these different ways of
Mike Butera:
00:02:57
controlling our acoustic spaces. We have doors and windows, we
Mike Butera:
00:03:04
have headphones, we can put on a record, we can walk away. And a
Mike Butera:
00:03:12
lot of those are mitigation strategies, you know, adding
Mike Butera:
00:03:17
sounds or masking sounds, to kind of fix your acoustic space.
Mike Butera:
00:03:23
And so I started thinking about what were the creative aspects
Mike Butera:
00:03:28
of that? How could we get people to change the way the world
Mike Butera:
00:03:31
sounds in a creative way, rather than in this more defensive, you
Mike Butera:
00:03:36
know, personal space kind of way. And as a lifelong musician,
Mike Butera:
00:03:43
I thought, well, musical instruments are definitely where
Mike Butera:
00:03:47
I'm going to start with that. But then I just basically
Mike Butera:
00:03:51
thought, well, instruments, so these professional devices that
Mike Butera:
00:03:55
we expect everyone else to play well,
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:00
with a training process too, right? With a
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:02
training process that is socialized, that is structural,
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:08
that is an economic device for for funding the trainer. and is
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:15
and is normalized, or my favorite things that I've done
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:19
is I was in at the Museum of Art in New York. And they have an
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:24
entire kind of progression of musical instruments exhibit,
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:29
which they also have online. So you can sort of see that these
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:32
all gestated for a bit and then they locked.
Mike Butera:
00:04:34
Yeah, yeah. And that's culture
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:38
Unlock business. It's also the economics, right?
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:41
So that so that when you start having the sheet music, it has
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:45
to go with an instrument that sounds a certain way that is
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:47
part of an orchestration, that is part of a normalization, and
Gigi Johnson:
00:04:51
you're kind of looking to break that.
Mike Butera:
00:04:53
Yeah, even just the number of notes that you're
Mike Butera:
00:04:56
expected to play. And yeah, I do want to think about, you know,
Mike Butera:
00:05:03
the same kinds of revolutions we've seen from technology in
Mike Butera:
00:05:07
other media forms, photography, video writing, you know, all
Mike Butera:
00:05:12
these forms of human expression that are very fundamental. But
Mike Butera:
00:05:17
now most people don't, they're not intimidated by taking a
Mike Butera:
00:05:20
picture. They might not think it's the best picture on the
Mike Butera:
00:05:23
world, and they don't care. They don't say, I shouldn't have done
Mike Butera:
00:05:27
that, or I'm bad at that. They just take another picture. And
Mike Butera:
00:05:32
that's not the conversation with music. It hasn't been for over
Mike Butera:
00:05:36
100 years. And we can talk about the role that copyright law has
Mike Butera:
00:05:42
played in that, that record labels and the distribution of
Mike Butera:
00:05:46
music scarcity was was a real problem 150 years ago. But now,
Mike Butera:
00:05:54
there is this opportunity to think about redesigning music as
Mike Butera:
00:05:59
something that is inherently interactive, and just not as
Mike Butera:
00:06:04
serious or, you know, intimidating or problematic as,
Mike Butera:
00:06:08
as people tend to think it is, it can be really casual. So that
Mike Butera:
00:06:12
really was the foundation for the company. I mentioned, I was
Mike Butera:
00:06:18
teaching at the time, I had a friend who had been in consumer
Mike Butera:
00:06:24
technology. So I was in Nashville, and there was this
Mike Butera:
00:06:28
company there. And he left and he, we were chatting, and he
Mike Butera:
00:06:31
said, Hey, we should start a product design firm. And at the
Mike Butera:
00:06:35
time, I, you know, that hadn't been on my radar, I was going to
Mike Butera:
00:06:38
be a tenured professor, that was the whole goal. And but I said
Mike Butera:
00:06:42
yes, and I didn't take the tenure track job. And we started
Mike Butera:
00:06:47
a product design firm that designed smart speakers and more
Mike Butera:
00:06:52
tech and culture kind of things for other companies that did
Mike Butera:
00:06:56
well, at, you know, Costco, and Target, places like that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:01
So you were
Mike Butera:
00:07:02
That taught me a lot.
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:03
I was gonna say that you were bringing though I
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:06
was gonna say your weaponizing your academic studies. . . that
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:09
you know, how people think, and how people buy and how people
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:14
experience products, you'd been studying and teaching and
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:19
embedding in other people's lives, where you then built your
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:23
superpowers to operationalize how people think and actually
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:28
design for,
Mike Butera:
00:07:31
like your problematization here, because
Mike Butera:
00:07:34
as a sociologist, you know, we're supposed to be well, at
Mike Butera:
00:07:39
least traditionally rather passive. Now, that's always, you
Mike Butera:
00:07:43
know.
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:44
Observent only right? Yeah, right, not
Gigi Johnson:
00:07:47
polluting the research stream.
Mike Butera:
00:07:49
That's been critiqued enough that it doesn't
Mike Butera:
00:07:52
exist. But, you know, general goal is, don't actively do that.
Mike Butera:
00:07:58
But of course, the, you know, cultural revolutions of the
Mike Butera:
00:08:01
past, you know, 100 years, have seen more active forms of social
Mike Butera:
00:08:07
engagement. And so I really like your framing of this, because I
Mike Butera:
00:08:13
do feel like I'm taking a lot of the critical theory that I
Mike Butera:
00:08:17
learned and taught, and looking at those structures of power and
Mike Butera:
00:08:23
influence and cultural capital, for instance, and saying,
Mike Butera:
00:08:28
there's, there's a different way to do this. I don't think it's
Mike Butera:
00:08:31
just democratization from a political kind of standpoint,
Mike Butera:
00:08:35
but I do think it is a form of empowerment, and even,
Mike Butera:
00:08:42
hopefully, a psychological shift that people can have in their
Mike Butera:
00:08:44
own identities as creative, expressive people, that you went
Mike Butera:
00:08:51
back to the, you know, origins of a lot of musical instruments.
Mike Butera:
00:08:55
Usually, they use the best technologies of their day, they
Mike Butera:
00:08:58
were some of the most advanced tech tools of the time. And
Mike Butera:
00:09:03
yeah, they get frozen because we need to formalize things and,
Mike Butera:
00:09:08
you know, create institutions around them and all that, but
Mike Butera:
00:09:10
when they're being invented, they're normally very cutting
Mike Butera:
00:09:13
edge. And this just felt like another moment in history where
Mike Butera:
00:09:17
we could really look at digital tech in a new way. Because for
Mike Butera:
00:09:23
decades now, digital music production has allowed people to
Mike Butera:
00:09:27
make any sound they want to, you know, keyboards in the 80s
Mike Butera:
00:09:31
digital recording studios in the 90s and onward. Laptops, you
Mike Butera:
00:09:38
know, for the past 20 some years. But the interface, the UI
Mike Butera:
00:09:45
tends to be very pro focused. And this was another insight at
Mike Butera:
00:09:50
the sort of founding moment for artifact was looking at all
Mike Butera:
00:09:55
these amazing, you know, new technologies, but seeing how
Mike Butera:
00:09:59
they're really just designed For pros, the high learning curve on
Mike Butera:
00:10:02
the instrument side, but also on the recording side. And that
Mike Butera:
00:10:06
moment was around 2010, the iPad was released, and GarageBand hit
Mike Butera:
00:10:13
the iPad. And that was a lightbulb for me of saying,
Mike Butera:
00:10:17
okay, all these sounds are available to anyone, this is
Mike Butera:
00:10:21
going to change the way kids especially think about what
Mike Butera:
00:10:25
they're capable of with music. Because now there's this free
Mike Butera:
00:10:30
app on their iPad, or five bucks at the time, that that they
Mike Butera:
00:10:34
could go in and record beats and be like, I made this beat. And
Mike Butera:
00:10:38
that's cool. And that might, that might be enough to get them
Mike Butera:
00:10:42
to feel like they're a creative person. I wanted to focus on the
Mike Butera:
00:10:47
interface, the screen wasn't enough, you know, having to
Mike Butera:
00:10:50
stare at a screen and never be able to close your eyes when you
Mike Butera:
00:10:53
play and not get that muscle memory. I wanted to bring that
Mike Butera:
00:10:57
back into music creation and bring in all the new benefits of
Mike Butera:
00:11:03
digital recording and everything like that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:06
Very cool. And we'll come back to this because
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:09
then part of it is there is a retail marketplace and
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:12
expectations and school focus and all this stuff for a sale. I
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:16
want to hear more about how you've dealt with that. But you
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:19
Mike, you started out commenting also that as a musician, so you
Gigi Johnson:
00:11:24
as a musician, do play create.
Mike Butera:
00:11:29
I do. I so I started on violin, when I was
Mike Butera:
00:11:34
eight, I came home and asked if I could play violin because I
Mike Butera:
00:11:38
saw the orchestra at school and really liked it. I for the first
Mike Butera:
00:11:44
six years of lessons, I never improvised. It was just sheet
Mike Butera:
00:11:49
music. And, and it was often music that I had never heard. I
Mike Butera:
00:11:55
only saw the notes on the page. And my teacher would say whether
Mike Butera:
00:11:59
I was playing it correctly or not. But I actually didn't have
Mike Butera:
00:12:03
the original recordings to even play along with, which was an
Mike Butera:
00:12:08
interesting way to learn.
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:10
Yeah, this was where where did you grow up?
Mike Butera:
00:12:12
I grew up in Pennsylvania. So just a, you
Mike Butera:
00:12:16
know, normal kind of grew up in, in a neighborhood worked on the
Mike Butera:
00:12:22
farm right next to the neighborhood grew up in the
Mike Butera:
00:12:24
family flower shop. So pretty classic.
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:28
Were your parents creative at all? Or did they do
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:30
music?
Mike Butera:
00:12:31
So my dad's a floral designer, so very
Mike Butera:
00:12:34
creative in that sort of visual material field. And my mom is
Mike Butera:
00:12:40
She's a painter, and has been a teacher and things so very
Mike Butera:
00:12:44
inspiring. But not musical in particuclar.
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:47
So the theme might be it can be non traditional was
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:49
there from the beginning?
Mike Butera:
00:12:51
Yes.
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:51
wWat did they think that that Mike was going
Gigi Johnson:
00:12:54
to be?
Unknown:
00:12:58
They, they never prefigured that for me. There
Unknown:
00:13:03
was there was never that like Doctor lawyer. Kind of
Unknown:
00:13:07
expectation.
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:09
Get a good degree and get a good professional
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:11
field and life will be your oyster.
Mike Butera:
00:13:14
Yeah, yeah. We liked oysters. We just didn't
Mike Butera:
00:13:17
have that many. And. And so when I said that I wanted to go to
Mike Butera:
00:13:25
college for music and music performance in particular and
Mike Butera:
00:13:29
violin. They were like, great. And they supported me even
Mike Butera:
00:13:33
though that is not a career that offers many, you know, many
Mike Butera:
00:13:38
opportunities for professional violinist.
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:41
So what did you think it was going to do? I'm
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:43
always fascinated it now then, that when people make a college
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:48
decision, they're buying a black box, and oftentimes don't say,
Gigi Johnson:
00:13:52
and then when I'm done with that, I see I would do x. So if
Mike Butera:
00:13:57
it wasn't about violin for me, I actually wanted
Mike Butera:
00:14:02
to I actually tried to go for guitar initially. But there were
Mike Butera:
00:14:08
too many guitars and they had room for a violinist. So with
Mike Butera:
00:14:12
that, but for me, it was just music. It was is there a way I
Mike Butera:
00:14:16
moved to Nashville? Is there a way to do music as a career? And
Mike Butera:
00:14:22
at the time, I really didn't know what that could mean other
Mike Butera:
00:14:26
than being a band and get signed to do the normal thing you
Mike Butera:
00:14:31
imagine? Yeah. Yeah. And I enjoy I did some of that. And I've
Mike Butera:
00:14:37
done the, you know, the band stuff, the solo stuff, the
Mike Butera:
00:14:41
studio recording engineer. I love that whole world. But it
Mike Butera:
00:14:48
was also at this moment. And this is 20 some years ago now,
Mike Butera:
00:14:54
when that digital shift was happening pretty profoundly when
Mike Butera:
00:14:59
I I started in studios, we were recording to tape and I loved I
Mike Butera:
00:15:03
mean, fully analog signal paths, amazing sound like, I still love
Mike Butera:
00:15:09
it is a million dollar studio. And, and at the same time that
Mike Butera:
00:15:16
studio had a little room that had a Pro Tools rig with a
Mike Butera:
00:15:20
computer. And they were all these people making totally new
Mike Butera:
00:15:23
sounds. And they're in this little room and then they got a
Mike Butera:
00:15:26
laptop, and they did it back in their apartments. So I was
Mike Butera:
00:15:30
seeing that happen at that moment. And that totally
Mike Butera:
00:15:33
influenced me toward this. So. So anyway, I didn't know where
Mike Butera:
00:15:37
it would go. I quickly, you know, fell in love with studios
Mike Butera:
00:15:41
and then found philosophy and sociology, I actually got a
Mike Butera:
00:15:45
triple major, how they see that.
Gigi Johnson:
00:15:48
Everything seems like a somewhat normal journey
Gigi Johnson:
00:15:52
until you look and go way way. Wait, how did Mike do that?
Gigi Johnson:
00:15:55
Because first of all, for most people, they'd have no idea that
Gigi Johnson:
00:15:59
you can create multiple blended, the you don't have to be in a
Gigi Johnson:
00:16:03
single journey path. And in fact, most universities have a
Gigi Johnson:
00:16:07
structure your own degree journey possible that they don't
Gigi Johnson:
00:16:11
tell anyone about how can you imagine if half your students
Gigi Johnson:
00:16:14
were doing that? So how did you So you did three separate
Gigi Johnson:
00:16:19
degrees? And what drove you to think this was sane? Well,
Mike Butera:
00:16:25
if we go back and nerd out just prior for some
Mike Butera:
00:16:31
reason, when I was in sixth grade, I came home and said I
Mike Butera:
00:16:36
wanted to be homeschooled. And I was doing well in school, I had
Mike Butera:
00:16:40
friends like it was working out. But I met someone who was in
Mike Butera:
00:16:44
homeschooling and they were like, Yeah, you get to customize
Mike Butera:
00:16:46
all your work. And you get to, you know, go down these paths.
Mike Butera:
00:16:50
And it's Yeah, I thought, Well, this sounds really interesting.
Mike Butera:
00:16:53
And it took a little convince my parents, but we did. And it
Mike Butera:
00:16:58
ended up that the second half of my you know, formative education
Mike Butera:
00:17:04
years, I was, you know, learning at home and able to build all of
Mike Butera:
00:17:10
these different course classes, you know, studies in areas that
Mike Butera:
00:17:17
you wouldn't normally get to. And so I kind of broke out of
Mike Butera:
00:17:20
that normal, you know, middle of high school mode. So when I went
Mike Butera:
00:17:24
to college, I was able to get in the honors program actually
Mike Butera:
00:17:29
didn't have the the SAT score for it. Standardized testing
Mike Butera:
00:17:34
wasn't one of my strong points. But I went into the office, and
Mike Butera:
00:17:40
I said, Hey, I really, yeah, I really want to do this. Yeah.
Mike Butera:
00:17:47
And it worked. We got in a conversation. I said, I said
Mike Butera:
00:17:49
what I was passionate about. And they said, well, we'll give you
Mike Butera:
00:17:53
a semester, we'll see you know, this, we'll see if this works
Mike Butera:
00:17:56
out. And it worked out. And And then luckily, that program gave
Mike Butera:
00:18:00
me kind of free rein to piece together these different fields,
Mike Butera:
00:18:04
you had to justify why. So like one of my majors was music
Mike Butera:
00:18:08
production. And I actually studied music, composition,
Mike Butera:
00:18:13
performance, business, you know, recording, distribution, like
Mike Butera:
00:18:18
all these different aspects . . .
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:19
It helps you're at Belmont because all those were
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:20
available at Belmont.
Mike Butera:
00:18:21
Exactly. Yeah. And yeah, it's very unique
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:21
Did you go right to grad school, or did you have
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:26
opportunity. And similar with philosophy and sociology, the
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:29
two there was a lot of overlap and critical theory and things
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:32
any sidebars?
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:32
but, but I was able to kind of carve out those paths. And then
Mike Butera:
00:18:33
I had about a year that I was saving up for it. I
Mike Butera:
00:18:36
when I got to grad school at Virginia Tech,
Mike Butera:
00:18:43
was working at some restaurants and things in Nashville and
Mike Butera:
00:18:53
doing music and you know, that kind of stuff. But it was all in
Mike Butera:
00:18:57
preparation to go to grad school.
Gigi Johnson:
00:18:59
But sometimes it's a good buffer or baking point or
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:03
settling out or because you then went right from masters to
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:07
doctorate, which is a bit of a journey. Know why Yeah. Why grad
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:12
school? Why is it the fact that you had this lovely blended
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:17
thing that would thrive in grad school or that you had gotten
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:21
distracted?
Mike Butera:
00:19:22
I hadn't found sound studies yet. I went to
Mike Butera:
00:19:26
grad school because I thought I wanted to be a social theory
Mike Butera:
00:19:29
professor. And that could be in a philosophy or sociology
Mike Butera:
00:19:32
department. But I knew I wanted to do that. I was especially
Mike Butera:
00:19:37
studying technology and social networks at the time. So
Gigi Johnson:
00:19:44
yes, and this was 2008 ish.
Unknown:
00:19:48
I started grad school in '07. So I finished up
Unknown:
00:19:52
undergrad and in '05 and then in December '05 and then yeah, just
Unknown:
00:19:59
over a year. started grad school, the . . . . So I went to
Unknown:
00:20:03
Virginia Tech . . . The master's program in philosophy
Unknown:
00:20:07
there was analytic compared to Continental, just two branches
Unknown:
00:20:12
of philosophy. Very kind of hardcore logic focused, not the
Unknown:
00:20:18
kind of philosophy where you just talk about what's on your
Unknown:
00:20:21
mind and and see if you can come up with new ideas. That was
Unknown:
00:20:24
primarily my style. So I was suddenly in this rigorous sort
Unknown:
00:20:29
of engineering driven culture at VT, which I learned a ton. I
Unknown:
00:20:35
also found sound studies. In the first year, while I was there, I
Unknown:
00:20:42
didn't know it existed, it was a nascent field at the time. And I
Unknown:
00:20:46
read a mention of it in a book on cyber culture studies, that
Unknown:
00:20:51
sound had been under explored in this field. And I was like, oh,
Unknown:
00:20:56
and it just all the lights came on. And you know, all these
Unknown:
00:20:59
different passions kind of magnetize together. So I, I
Unknown:
00:21:05
joined a Ph. D. program at Virginia Tech, that didn't quite
Unknown:
00:21:10
exist yet. It hadn't been finalized with the state. It
Unknown:
00:21:15
was, it was the first truly interdisciplinary PhD in the
Unknown:
00:21:20
country. And it was between philosophy, history, sociology,
Unknown:
00:21:27
political theory, things like that. So I was the first
Unknown:
00:21:31
student, PhD student in this program. And I was part of
Unknown:
00:21:37
getting it, you know, I was in those meetings with the
Unknown:
00:21:41
regulators or whatever, in academia, to figure out what it
Unknown:
00:21:45
meant. And therefore, it was a blank slate. And I said, I want
Unknown:
00:21:50
to do sound studies. And they're like, great, go for it. And so I
Unknown:
00:21:54
was able to create this whole PhD program around this new
Unknown:
00:21:57
field and travel around the world and go to all these
Unknown:
00:22:00
conferences and be a part of the new journals that were coming
Unknown:
00:22:03
out. And it was, it was amazing. So anyway, I think the theme
Unknown:
00:22:09
academically was, I, I never, I was never interested in sort of
Unknown:
00:22:16
finding the boxes to check off or, you know, put on the shelf
Unknown:
00:22:22
or whatever. I was always looking for ways to kind of
Unknown:
00:22:26
integrate different fields together and find something new.
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:31
So let's get back to the more current future. And
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:35
so you've got a past, a build it yourself for yourself, blending,
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:40
exploring, poking some things in the eye that are, are
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:45
traditional. And so then you went you created was it assault,
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:49
where you were then building company building lots of
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:54
different things?
Mike Butera:
00:22:55
Yeah.
Gigi Johnson:
00:22:55
What bridged you from we're helping, consulting,
Gigi Johnson:
00:23:00
building launching consumer products to I want to start a
Gigi Johnson:
00:23:06
company, and then what led into the first instrument? And, and
Gigi Johnson:
00:23:12
why Kickstarter, so if we could make that journey conversation.
Mike Butera:
00:23:18
So this was. . . Yeah, back to 2010 that that
Mike Butera:
00:23:22
sort of pivotal moment. One of the things was, it worked, it
Mike Butera:
00:23:27
was working, the consulting was doing well, I was able to come
Mike Butera:
00:23:33
up with ideas like for these smart home speakers that would
Mike Butera:
00:23:38
all connect with each other work with industrial designers,
Mike Butera:
00:23:43
mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and so on. Go to
Mike Butera:
00:23:48
China go to the factory oversee production and then see it you
Mike Butera:
00:23:53
know, actually do well in the market. And so this was all menopause
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:00
menopause a second because you explained a lot of
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:03
your gestation Did you have any tech skills at this stage? Did
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:07
you learn things yourself? Or did so? What was that tech
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:14
component and when the some people build things and do
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:17
things and they've been taking apart their parents toasters,
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:20
since they were five, or they've been coding forever, or they've
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:24
been doing robot design and building so so I'm not hearing a
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:27
building story, this is this part of the superpowers of your
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:30
partner is this stuff that you learned or trusted other people
Gigi Johnson:
00:24:35
with?
Mike Butera:
00:24:37
So I was always yes, I was always taking things
Mike Butera:
00:24:41
apart and and, you know, as a kid and onward, when I got into
Mike Butera:
00:24:47
studio tech in college, I was repairing gear building tube,
Mike Butera:
00:24:54
you know, gear and whatever. So I electrically you know,
Mike Butera:
00:24:58
familiar but Not an electrical engineer. A lot of training in
Mike Butera:
00:25:05
design happened from my dad from floral design, you know, more
Mike Butera:
00:25:12
aesthetically, I would say. But then I learned a lot of that
Mike Butera:
00:25:17
hands on during the consulting phase, you know, how consumer
Mike Butera:
00:25:21
tech was actually built? Coding, I always dabbled, but, you know,
Mike Butera:
00:25:28
some people, most people are so much better at that than I am.
Mike Butera:
00:25:31
So I've always been able to translate the kind of design
Mike Butera:
00:25:36
intent and understand the architecture of it, but that
Mike Butera:
00:25:40
was, that was never my thing. So yes, a lot of trust, a lot of
Mike Butera:
00:25:44
collaboration with people. And, and I felt like I was, I was
Mike Butera:
00:25:51
discovering that my role was this hub or a translator,
Mike Butera:
00:25:56
between culture and product design, ways of thinking, and in
Mike Butera:
00:26:02
the weeds, engineering and just, you know, always keeping that
Mike Butera:
00:26:06
that strand connected. Because so many products are either, you
Mike Butera:
00:26:15
know, impossible to build, or possible to build and no one
Mike Butera:
00:26:19
wants them and
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:20
are so expensive to build that no one wants it at
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:23
that price point, right. So that in many ways, specialty music
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:27
instruments, I mean, the ones that I'm aware of what Chapman
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:30
stick and other things where you kind of go so expensive to build
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:35
and creating customized and not met as mass products. That's
Gigi Johnson:
00:26:40
been on my wish list
Mike Butera:
00:26:41
for a while and let's let's tag a corner this
Mike Butera:
00:26:44
conversation in terms of with instruments, what, what are the
Mike Butera:
00:26:51
cultural references or familiarity that people need?
Mike Butera:
00:26:56
You know, Chapman stick is a good example. cool technology,
Mike Butera:
00:27:02
you can make all kinds of sound with it. People get virtuosic in
Mike Butera:
00:27:06
amazing ways with it.
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:08
So complicated. It play. Yes. Yeah.
Mike Butera:
00:27:11
I mean, it's just like a theory bomb. Music Theory
Mike Butera:
00:27:15
of like,
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:16
I can to pause everybody, because I would never
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:19
have known a Chapman stick other than I was at a small concert,
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:23
and someone was playing it. And I was so blown away by watching
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:28
total virtuosity. So it's kind of like, a unstructured guitar
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:32
had a baby with a bass. But it's sort of two directions. Yeah,
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:37
it's like a harp hanging from a bait. So it was very much a
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:41
cultural mashup. And but, uh, simply, the virtuosity was like
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:45
watching a phenomenal heart play, or were you just watching?
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:49
Oh, my gosh, but I went to go price one. I'm like, Oh, my
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:54
gosh, that is such an expensive instrument. And it is sort of
Gigi Johnson:
00:27:58
art. It's almost the opposite of what you guys have been building.
Mike Butera:
00:28:03
Right? Well, and so then get back to that. So why,
Mike Butera:
00:28:08
why build a new type of musical instrument? was the question I
Mike Butera:
00:28:13
was asking myself when I got up the courage to say, Yeah, I want
Mike Butera:
00:28:17
to start my own company. Yeah, I want to, I want to build a new
Mike Butera:
00:28:20
thing. I mentioned, the user interface challenge of all these
Mike Butera:
00:28:25
apps were out there. But you don't want to just touch a
Mike Butera:
00:28:28
screen, you want something in your hands? Well, that's great.
Mike Butera:
00:28:31
What should that thing be. And we could have designed a very
Mike Butera:
00:28:37
specific instrument, a singular instrument, like most instance,
Mike Butera:
00:28:41
instruments, or singular, you, it's intended to be played one
Mike Butera:
00:28:45
way you learn how to play it that way, and then you're good
Mike Butera:
00:28:47
at it. My goal was to create a plural instrument, an
Mike Butera:
00:28:54
instrument, we call it a multi instrument, something that you
Mike Butera:
00:28:58
could actually pick up and play in all these different ways. And
Mike Butera:
00:29:03
versatility was one of the goals. Because why not digital,
Mike Butera:
00:29:08
lets you do that. We can build form factors that allow for
Mike Butera:
00:29:12
multiple positions and gestures and playing styles. So creating
Mike Butera:
00:29:16
this universal musical instrument has a versatility
Mike Butera:
00:29:20
benefit. But there's another even more important benefit that
Mike Butera:
00:29:24
I was really going for, which is approachability. The theory that
Mike Butera:
00:29:30
I had at the time, and we're still playing this out, we're
Mike Butera:
00:29:32
still seeing if this is, you know going to be true in the
Mike Butera:
00:29:35
world. The theory is that if you multiply what a thing can do,
Mike Butera:
00:29:40
than any one thing that it does is less intimidating. Because
Mike Butera:
00:29:45
you pick it up and you say I'm gonna just gonna play some
Mike Butera:
00:29:48
drums. You know what, I'm going to have some fun and pick it up
Mike Butera:
00:29:51
and strum it like a guitar or put it down on the table and now
Mike Butera:
00:29:54
it's a piano. None of those things are the right way to play
Mike Butera:
00:29:58
it and therefore you're not playing Seeing it wrong. And so
Mike Butera:
00:30:03
creating this universal instrument also has the benefit
Mike Butera:
00:30:06
of giving more people the sense that they could just casually
Mike Butera:
00:30:11
approach it, see what it does enjoy that, and not compare
Mike Butera:
00:30:15
themselves to the best musician in the world who's so much
Mike Butera:
00:30:18
better at them at this one singular thing. And that's, that
Mike Butera:
00:30:23
really was that moment where I thought, Okay, this is going to
Mike Butera:
00:30:25
work, we do have a new conversation to, you know, bring
Mike Butera:
00:30:30
to the world of what instruments can be. And yeah, that's when we
Mike Butera:
00:30:35
started designing what we call the instrument one, which was
Mike Butera:
00:30:37
our first product.
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:39
It makes me think of Dan Shneiderman's
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:42
philosophies of creativity, technology support tools, now
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:46
I'm gonna go nerdy for a bit where it's like a metaphor as a
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:50
doorway. So you can have a low threshold or a high threshold, a
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:54
wide doorway, that you can stuff many things into it, or a tall
Gigi Johnson:
00:30:58
doorway, where you can go to extreme expertise. And I always
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:02
come to a new technology and go, is it an easy entry? Is it a
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:06
wide doorway? Or does it have extreme sophistications? Like me
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:10
trying to come in to, to Photoshop? Yeah, I know, I could
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:13
possibly start Photoshop fairly easily for about five minutes.
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:17
And then it's like, Wait, I don't like kind of grok it I'm
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:21
doing blender right now. It's it's like, immediately high
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:25
doorway, wide walls, high ceiling. But the doorway is so
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:29
harsh as you're looking to make it. So it's an easy entry. But
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:33
sophisticated uses and wide uses, you're kind of making an
Gigi Johnson:
00:31:36
infinite doorway.
Mike Butera:
00:31:39
That's it's a goal. One of one of the ways we do
Mike Butera:
00:31:43
that we call it scalable complexity. In the history of
Mike Butera:
00:31:47
instruments, they're based on physics, of resonance,
Mike Butera:
00:31:50
vibration, resonance. And therefore the material, the
Mike Butera:
00:31:57
size, all those aspects of it had to be pretty fixed, there
Mike Butera:
00:32:02
was some variables that you could add or subtract, but that
Mike Butera:
00:32:06
was it. And even the early days of electric and electronic
Mike Butera:
00:32:11
instrumentation with early synthesizers, and things, it
Mike Butera:
00:32:14
also pretty fixed circuits were kind of baked in, you had the
Mike Butera:
00:32:18
armed Martino, one of my favorite instruments, where you,
Mike Butera:
00:32:23
you could plug in these different they were like
Mike Butera:
00:32:26
speakers, but they were actually not speakers like we normally
Mike Butera:
00:32:30
think some of them were gongs, others were paper, others, you
Mike Butera:
00:32:35
know, were wood. And so the point was, when you plug in the
Mike Butera:
00:32:39
speaker, it's going to sound like a totally different
Mike Butera:
00:32:41
instrument. But it's because of the physics of it. With digital
Mike Butera:
00:32:46
tools, now we can actually create these adaptive devices.
Mike Butera:
00:32:51
And so if we get the ergonomics, right, based on simple human
Mike Butera:
00:32:56
forms, and averages of hand size, and all kinds of things.
Mike Butera:
00:33:01
So similar to say, a game controller, or remote, or all
Mike Butera:
00:33:05
kinds of other objects we use, we can program these devices to
Mike Butera:
00:33:10
respond differently based on what you want to do with them.
Mike Butera:
00:33:14
We can receive different gestures in ways that we make
Mike Butera:
00:33:18
musical, not in the same way. So if you want to strum something,
Mike Butera:
00:33:22
versus tap it, versus bow it, or press it, these are all
Mike Butera:
00:33:29
different gestures that we can program and say, well, now we're
Mike Butera:
00:33:32
going to put it in a sort of piano mode, or a guitar mode, or
Mike Butera:
00:33:37
a drum machine mode or things like that. And that's actually
Mike Butera:
00:33:41
one of the things that we patented, was this concept of
Mike Butera:
00:33:45
the multi instrument as a switchable responsive device,
Mike Butera:
00:33:50
rather than, you know, based on one way to play. So that that
Mike Butera:
00:33:55
was one of the key, you know, founding principles of what
Mike Butera:
00:33:59
we're doing, it's a bit hard to explain. And again, maybe, maybe
Mike Butera:
00:34:04
it'll be the way of the future or maybe it's a moment in
Mike Butera:
00:34:08
history, but it seems to be working.
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:11
So for for people trying to visualize this who are
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:15
listening to this, that the first one which was instrument
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:19
one, kind of look like a mash up a long, thin strip that had
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:28
sensors on the top that you could, that also had
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:34
accelerometers and other motion sensors, so that you could take
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:39
that same essentially bar and play it, hold it up and strum
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:45
it, move it in space. So that it wasn't just taking one of the
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:50
metaphors or affordance sets but let you take patterns that you
Gigi Johnson:
00:34:55
already knew from something else and bring it over. Yeah,
Mike Butera:
00:34:58
absolutely. Yeah. We, with the design of the
Mike Butera:
00:35:02
instrument one, it took just over four years to go from idea
Mike Butera:
00:35:08
into a product that we could, you know, announce to the world.
Mike Butera:
00:35:13
So a lot of iterations, six different prototype generations
Mike Butera:
00:35:16
in there a lot of a lot of different ways to look at it
Mike Butera:
00:35:22
initially, for instance, it had a doc for an iPhone. Because
Mike Butera:
00:35:26
Doc's were really cool, which made sense at the time, right?
Mike Butera:
00:35:29
It was great. It was great. It was it was really neat, because
Mike Butera:
00:35:34
it became this self contained instrument that was before
Mike Butera:
00:35:38
Bluetooth was really possible or you know, even just USB
Mike Butera:
00:35:42
connection more generally. So. So anyway, it it evolved a few
Mike Butera:
00:35:48
different ways. It ended up being a device, we launched it
Mike Butera:
00:35:52
on Kickstarter, in 2015. We didn't know what it would do,
Mike Butera:
00:35:57
the design of it was we ended up making it in plastic, so we
Mike Butera:
00:36:01
could mass manufacture it. The sensors were called force
Mike Butera:
00:36:06
sensing resistors, it was this, this kind of sheet of film
Mike Butera:
00:36:12
underneath a, an almost rubbery surface that could sense touch
Mike Butera:
00:36:18
and pressure velocity, you could slide on it, it was almost like
Mike Butera:
00:36:23
a computer trackpad. But but a rubber surface a little harder
Mike Butera:
00:36:27
to play than that. And, and it had these string features on it.
Mike Butera:
00:36:32
And we did that because in early testing, we found that a lot of
Mike Butera:
00:36:36
the musicians again, this was in Nashville, a lot of the
Mike Butera:
00:36:39
musicians were very string focused, and really wanted that
Mike Butera:
00:36:43
tactile feel of having, you know, muscle memory. Yeah, yeah.
Gigi Johnson:
00:36:51
This was not fret started, they wanted friends.
Mike Butera:
00:36:56
This is not a not a mistake. But as we talked about
Mike Butera:
00:37:00
Chorda it's interesting, we took off the strings for Chorda,
Mike Butera:
00:37:04
similar form factor kind of ukulele size bar. But Chorda has
Mike Butera:
00:37:09
pads and a strong mobile area. So insert one accord a both have
Mike Butera:
00:37:13
those things, but insert one had the string features again,
Mike Butera:
00:37:18
because musicians were asking for that. Insert one can do
Mike Butera:
00:37:22
things that stringed instruments can't do that other instruments
Mike Butera:
00:37:27
can't do. Every note can have its own distortion or for Broto.
Mike Butera:
00:37:32
You can apply effects to every little touch. If you press
Mike Butera:
00:37:36
harder, you know, you could bring in delay or whatever you
Mike Butera:
00:37:40
wanting to like amazing things. But what it didn't have was real
Mike Butera:
00:37:45
strings. And for those, say guitarists approaching this with
Mike Butera:
00:37:50
the muscle memory of strings back to physics, they wanted to
Mike Butera:
00:37:54
behave exactly like strings behave. And that was
Mike Butera:
00:37:58
problematic. It was a problem that I think is quite
Mike Butera:
00:38:02
interesting, and highlights this this paradigm shift between
Mike Butera:
00:38:06
physical and virtual instruments, virtuosic
Gigi Johnson:
00:38:10
to write I live off my business as being of not
Gigi Johnson:
00:38:15
having to think about it, and being able to create art after
Gigi Johnson:
00:38:19
years of practice.
Mike Butera:
00:38:21
Yeah, well, Aristotle's notion of virtue
Mike Butera:
00:38:28
has, you know, not quite as much to do with what we think about,
Mike Butera:
00:38:34
like, you know, a virtuous person is like, really good or
Mike Butera:
00:38:38
something, for Aristotle was more like being good at
Mike Butera:
00:38:41
something. And, and having the virtue of, of, you know, being
Mike Butera:
00:38:49
capable having the affordances matched to what you're doing.
Mike Butera:
00:38:54
And so, there's an interesting just to get kind of deep on that
Mike Butera:
00:38:59
of the virtue and virtual, that we can actually map the same
Mike Butera:
00:39:06
behaviors, the same affordances from the physical world into the
Mike Butera:
00:39:10
what we now call the virtual world, as long as people have
Mike Butera:
00:39:15
the virtue of being able to use it. And all that means in normal
Mike Butera:
00:39:19
language now is like the capability or in some cases,
Mike Butera:
00:39:23
just the confidence of reaching out and touching it. If you can,
Mike Butera:
00:39:27
strum your hand through the air. And if a guitar is under your
Mike Butera:
00:39:32
hand, you'll strum a guitar. But if you're in an augmented
Mike Butera:
00:39:36
reality environment, that can detect your hand moving through
Mike Butera:
00:39:39
the air, and you strum virtual strings. It's the same result.
Mike Butera:
00:39:44
And so you have the virtue of being able to strum the
Mike Butera:
00:39:48
technology is going to determine exactly how that happens, but it
Mike Butera:
00:39:52
might not matter what the inner workings are of it as long as
Mike Butera:
00:39:55
you get to intend for something to happen, and it happens in the
Mike Butera:
00:39:59
end. That is, you know, that's enough. And again, this is how I
Mike Butera:
00:40:06
tend to think about product design, like, can we design?
Mike Butera:
00:40:09
Tough stuff?
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:11
People will expect the haptic feedback of the
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:13
string, right? So that they there still is, then they would
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:17
like that interaction with that. I'm right now building things in
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:21
spatial audio and VR. And so really thinking about what then
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:24
that response is, and how sorry, we could go down. So holes here.
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:31
Yeah, let let me let me take you down to rabbit holes to maybe
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:35
wrap up this conversation. And because there's lots of things I
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:38
would love to talk about on this, which is, so one of the
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:42
reinforcing elements is the retail sales element of musical
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:46
instruments you came in through Kickstarter, you now have come
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:50
in with several instruments. So you also had the and I have to
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:56
look at my notes, the orba, which I've had my hands on in
Gigi Johnson:
00:40:59
play, but very much of a circular modality, really
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:04
hitting were the folks who are possibly thinking of it in terms
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:08
of beats or pads as a different modality and cheaper and
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:13
handset. And then you've taken that through Kickstarter, and
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:16
you knew, you're taking the current quarter, you had
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:20
something or have something called orbit cam, that's a video
Gigi Johnson:
00:41:23
also, I
Mike Butera:
00:41:25
was mentioned, the the AR stuff didn't come out of
Mike Butera:
00:41:28
nowhere, we've spent the past couple of years really figuring
Mike Butera:
00:41:32
out what's possible through the camera, as a musical interface.
Mike Butera:
00:41:38
So and the screen itself. So orbit cam, for instance, is an
Mike Butera:
00:41:41
app that you can make music directly in live video on your
Mike Butera:
00:41:45
screen. And there are these pads and you can play whatever sound
Mike Butera:
00:41:49
you want. And it will automatically get baked into the
Mike Butera:
00:41:52
video kind of SoundTracking your life. It works with our
Mike Butera:
00:41:57
hardware, but you can also use it on its own. And so yeah, what
Mike Butera:
00:42:01
we found is the transference of our tech, from the physical
Mike Butera:
00:42:06
products into apps on to a physical product you already own
Mike Butera:
00:42:11
your phone is all possible. And it's really just where are you?
Mike Butera:
00:42:16
What do you want to do? You know, what's what's fun at the
Mike Butera:
00:42:19
moment? And, and so yeah, we've been experimenting with AR, we
Mike Butera:
00:42:23
did a big launch with Snapchat last year with artists, lenses
Mike Butera:
00:42:29
and ways to make any song interactive, which is really
Mike Butera:
00:42:33
fun, using new AR tools and motion tracking, things like
Mike Butera:
00:42:37
that. And it's all the same thinking it's it's a lot of the
Mike Butera:
00:42:42
same kind of UX design that we put into our hardware
Mike Butera:
00:42:46
instruments that we design in the virtual space as well. So
Mike Butera:
00:42:50
that's that's been really fun. So
Gigi Johnson:
00:42:53
given the retail dominance, that the retail
Gigi Johnson:
00:42:56
challenges, yeah, in the current era of retail stores going away.
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:00
So they're feeling of fragility and needing to move volume. How
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:04
in the world do you sell this? A Kickstarter has been your friend
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:08
multiple times now including recently? To me, that's a
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:12
natural friction, and a quest retail scale. With retailers,
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:18
that's their ownership spot, right? How do you then get to
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:22
people and get to the learning complex and getting to people to
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:27
see this as an option other than by word of mouth, and great
Gigi Johnson:
00:43:32
Kickstarter marketing.
Mike Butera:
00:43:34
So Kickstarter is really this moment, just the
Mike Butera:
00:43:38
launch moment. It's actually a pre launch moment, it's when we
Mike Butera:
00:43:43
develop an instrument enough that it works, that we can
Mike Butera:
00:43:46
demonstrate that we can make music in our case, three times
Mike Butera:
00:43:50
now, we've brought that to Kickstarter and said, Hey, we
Mike Butera:
00:43:53
haven't manufactured this yet. We want to, we just want to make
Mike Butera:
00:43:56
sure you actually want it. Here's the concept. Here's how
Mike Butera:
00:43:59
it plays. What do you think? And all three times that's gone
Mike Butera:
00:44:04
quite well. And so we simultaneously we're having
Mike Butera:
00:44:10
conversations with retailers, not only in the musical
Mike Butera:
00:44:13
instrument space, but consumer electronics and and more
Mike Butera:
00:44:17
lifestyle retail as well, at the moment design store, for
Mike Butera:
00:44:20
instance, has been a great partner over the years.
Mike Butera:
00:44:25
Retailers increasingly don't take as many risks at launch,
Mike Butera:
00:44:30
they want to see that something has already worked. And so I see
Mike Butera:
00:44:33
the two functioning quite well together they have for us that
Mike Butera:
00:44:39
we've been able to go out to Kickstarter, find early adopters
Mike Butera:
00:44:42
who are like, Yeah, that should exist in the world. Let's help
Mike Butera:
00:44:44
you make it. And by doing that, we're showing that there's a
Mike Butera:
00:44:48
demand for this and retailers want to be more in the middle of
Mike Butera:
00:44:52
the adoption curve and or even past the chasm, as they say. And
Mike Butera:
00:44:59
so We're able to prove momentum in the market. With early
Mike Butera:
00:45:04
adopters, that's, it's been great for us the Kickstarter
Mike Butera:
00:45:08
community is awesome. And, and the other fact is we sell most
Mike Butera:
00:45:12
of our products direct through our website, we do sell through
Mike Butera:
00:45:17
Amazon as well. But, you know, going direct means we have a
Mike Butera:
00:45:22
relationship with our customers, we, you know, we can communicate
Mike Butera:
00:45:26
with them. If you buy on, if you buy or buy on Amazon right now.
Mike Butera:
00:45:33
And you don't go to our website and specifically sign up for
Mike Butera:
00:45:36
our, you know, email list, you might not know that we've just
Mike Butera:
00:45:40
updated the firmware and added new features or that there are
Mike Butera:
00:45:43
all these new songs and ways to play them, you know, we we'd
Mike Butera:
00:45:47
like to develop this community around our products. And it also
Mike Butera:
00:45:51
shows on social media, we have amazing engagement with people,
Mike Butera:
00:45:56
they, they make little songs, they post them, there's a whole
Mike Butera:
00:46:00
sort of supportive community around just this casual music
Mike Butera:
00:46:04
making. And that's because we have that direct relationship.
Mike Butera:
00:46:08
And we're not going through too many intermediaries. That said,
Mike Butera:
00:46:12
we we have great relationships with retailers, Guitar Center,
Mike Butera:
00:46:15
and you know, all kinds of people, but we're really focused
Mike Butera:
00:46:19
on as direct as we can get with the customer.
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:23
Mike, we have covered your highly nonlinear
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:25
journey, you're putting it together from building your own
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:28
homeschooling to building your own combination of degrees to
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:31
building your own musical instruments and companies and
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:34
products. What have we not mentioned? Is there anything you
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:37
as we wrap up, that you'd like to mention, we haven't touched
Gigi Johnson:
00:46:40
on?
Mike Butera:
00:46:43
I think, overall, for me, the the idea of building
Mike Butera:
00:46:51
a company was always secondary, it it had to be done, if I was
Mike Butera:
00:46:58
going to pursue this stuff, because I couldn't just couldn't
Mike Butera:
00:47:03
just build it all myself, I had to work with people who had all
Mike Butera:
00:47:06
these different skill sets, I couldn't just fund it myself, I
Mike Butera:
00:47:10
had to find people who wanted to build this opportunity into a
Mike Butera:
00:47:13
business that could actually make money someday. And, and I
Mike Butera:
00:47:18
didn't want to do it myself. This, it's too much fun to work
Mike Butera:
00:47:21
with other people. So the business the corporation is is a
Mike Butera:
00:47:29
body of people that is this kind of this kind of place where we
Mike Butera:
00:47:35
can all pursue that together. There are many other ways this
Mike Butera:
00:47:39
can be done, there are awesome open source projects in the
Mike Butera:
00:47:42
world, and you know, all kinds of things. And in music, you see
Mike Butera:
00:47:46
a lot of that as well. The fact that this is a business also
Mike Butera:
00:47:53
means that there are other realities to what it takes to
Mike Butera:
00:47:57
run it. And that's something I've learned so much about that
Mike Butera:
00:48:01
over the past decade or so. Things I didn't know, I wanted
Mike Butera:
00:48:07
to learn just just the total reality of doing this. And
Mike Butera:
00:48:10
again, I mentioned I grew up in the family flower shop. So I had
Mike Butera:
00:48:14
that entrepreneurial, you know, context of just how hard it is
Mike Butera:
00:48:19
to figure this out. It's it's exciting. But like you said,
Mike Butera:
00:48:25
it's it's business is also very nonlinear. Especially with the
Mike Butera:
00:48:29
economy going all over the place. There's really no sense
Mike Butera:
00:48:33
of that classic stability that you might have had decades ago
Mike Butera:
00:48:38
where if you build something, you know, it'll get out there
Mike Butera:
00:48:41
you advertise in magazines, people will read it and mail
Mike Butera:
00:48:44
order your stuff like it's nothing is that set, now. It's
Mike Butera:
00:48:48
changing by the day. So that's another exciting aspect of this.
Mike Butera:
00:48:52
I'm glad we mostly talked about design and culture and why. But
Mike Butera:
00:48:58
the vehicle that has enabled this to happen has been an
Mike Butera:
00:49:02
actual, an actual business. And that's, that's cool, too. It's a
Mike Butera:
00:49:06
very different side than I learned and taught in academia,
Mike Butera:
00:49:11
about how, you know, capitalism works on a grand historical
Mike Butera:
00:49:15
scale. This is this is how it's working at a at a product and
Mike Butera:
00:49:19
team level scale, which is it's it's been awesome to learn.
Gigi Johnson:
00:49:23
Excellent. So this episode will go out and be out
Gigi Johnson:
00:49:28
in the ether. Who would you like to reach back out to you?
Mike Butera:
00:49:32
Oh, well, anyone who wants to collaborate on this
Mike Butera:
00:49:36
kind of stuff. We are right now exploring a lot of different
Mike Butera:
00:49:41
ways to get artists content into our instruments so that our
Mike Butera:
00:49:45
instruments become these interactive music devices. We
Mike Butera:
00:49:50
already have all the tech we've we've done some of that we want
Mike Butera:
00:49:55
to do more. We're also very interested in multimedia, music,
Mike Butera:
00:49:59
and we've done some cool experiments there. We want to
Mike Butera:
00:50:04
expand that and see our instruments as controllers for
Mike Butera:
00:50:08
making music in multiple senses. So yeah, just more. I'm just
Mike Butera:
00:50:13
looking for collaborations that would be, that would be awesome.
Gigi Johnson:
00:50:18
And how should people best reach out to you?
Gigi Johnson:
00:50:22
Oh,
Mike Butera:
00:50:22
we you can go to our website we have a, you know,
Mike Butera:
00:50:25
general contact at Artiphon. And I'm just Mike@artifact.com if
Mike Butera:
00:50:30
anyone wants to reach out. Excellent.
Gigi Johnson:
00:50:33
And we'll put the various links in the show notes.
Gigi Johnson:
00:50:35
Mike, thank you so much for joining us.
Mike Butera:
00:50:38
Thank you. That was really fun.
