this computer. All right, this is the Reading Instruction Show. I'm your host as always,
Dr. Andy Johnson, and we have a very special, special guest with us today, Mr. Sven Johnson.
Sven, how are you today? I'm doing great. Am I on video too? Yep, you're on video. Our video has
started. And I wanted to talk with Sven today because Sven is a unique human being. He's very
creative and I want to find out a little bit about the creative process. But before we start,
I have a question for you, Sven. Why is it that you hate people? Whoa, hold on a second. This is
entrapment. Okay, sorry about that. Why do you kick puppy dogs? So if I answer any version of that
question, then I fear that it makes it sound like I kick puppy dogs, which I don't. You do? That's
horrible. I don't. Okay. All right, we're talking about creativity. And I'd be interested in how
you define creativity because Sven is very creative both in his music, which I think you'll be
interested to see how it develops, kind of from the inside out, and his YouTube videos, which are
great. Creativity, it's a type of thinking. And we tend not to address it in schools, but yet it is
responsible for our greatest human innovations. And one definition is the ability to generate,
invent, or improve ideas. So Sven, that's Andy, the professor. How would you define creativity?
What do you think about it? I guess I've never really put it into words or thought of a definition
myself, but it's just making something that didn't exist before. Pretty easy, pretty in line with
the definition that you had. As a YouTube person, as an online creator, I guess I am both making
stuff that hasn't existed before and innovating and capitalizing on trends, especially with age of
short form content like TikToks, Instagram reels and stuff. Trends are so important, you have to
hop on something that so many other people are doing and then bring your own little take to it too.
Here's my version of this joke. Here's my take on this trend. And as a creative person, I've tried
to be as myself as I can, and not just steal other people's stuff, because I fear creativity is kind
of lacking in a lot of like, especially video creation nowadays, with the innovation of TikTok.
There's so many people are rewarded by just making the same exact video without innovating.
I'm putting it on TikTok. So I've always prided myself in putting my own little spin on stuff.
And part of creativity though is embellishing or taking an idea or piggybacking on something.
Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all. If you're bringing your own spin to it,
or adding your own spin to it. Okay. Well, creativity is a type of problem solving. How can I
create this mood? How can I write this song? How can I capture this feeling? How can I make a video
that will make me a million dollars? Solving problems, creating products in ways that are
unique yet practical is highly, and this is what people forget. It's highly dependent on knowledge.
You can't be creative in areas that you have no knowledge about. I can't be creative in life
insurance. I know nothing about it. And creativity is different than being bizarre. So creativity is
depending on knowledge. Can you tell us about that, your knowledge and how that helps you
in the creative process? I guess yeah, you said creativity is can't be, can't happen in a vacuum.
I guess I never really thought about that. I mean, I obviously have to have some knowledge. Like,
if I'm making a song, I have to know how to use a guitar, play guitar. I have to know how to use
the digital audio workspace, which is logic that I use, which was the probably the biggest
knowledge speed bump for me to get over in terms of like, having my creativity come from my brain
into existence. And that is something that a lot of creative people, I think,
fear because they just want to do like the artsy stuff where they're just making and then
creating unimpeded. Yep, like this. But you got to put in the work, you got to have some discipline
to teach yourself how to use tools. I've got so many friends who are just so stupidly creative.
But some of them don't have the discipline to like teach themselves a skill like how to use
logic. Not like I'm even the best at that at all either. But if you really want to take it to the
next level, you have to do some of the book work. And that's what a lot of creative people, I think,
are scared to do. It is a, well, come back to that, but it's a process. I like how you say that. It's
not a drive through experience. And this is the Wallace model. You have to prepare. Let's get
some, let's get in the idea. Incubation is where the unconscious mind manipulates the problem. And
that's why, you know, creativity is in a one shot deal. It happens over time. And then the illumination
where you suddenly see, oh, that's the way this song should be written or this idea. And then
verification, you evaluate, you see how it is, you test your final product. Do you see some of that
in the way you create videos and or songs? Yeah, with songs more than videos. Videos just kind
of happen to me. It seems like I'll just like have a concept and then I'll film it. And I very rarely
see like an illumination process. For example, with a video nowadays, that could just be because
because I get way more creative fulfillment from creating music in this period. But
yeah, I definitely there's a process. You got to prepare. You got to, is this incubate? Never used
that word before. Incubation. That's right. Bubbling your unconscious mind. Okay, I guess I got to
prepare an incubate for my videos as well. But yeah, there's definitely a process that you have to
follow. Yep, you're not doing enough incubating. Paul, Doran said there's four types of creating
of thinking that goes into creativity, generating a lot of ideas, that's fluency, flexibility,
generating different types of ideas, elaboration, making things better. That's where you take an
idea and you elaborate, you make it more detailed and originality, thinking of ideas that no one
has thought of before. And it's not accidental. It is purposeful, very purposeful. So let me get
out of that. That's just the academic stuff that people may have interest in. So how let's look
at your videos first, and then your music, the music is most interesting to me. But tell me
about the process of your videos, you've been working with your brother for a while.
Yeah, well, my videos, I noticed you had, I think there was one of your little bullet points on
your slideshow, on your little slideshow. Since I think fluency, I don't remember which one it was,
but said have like a wealth of ideas for videos that has always been the case. I learned this
pretty early on, my brother Gus obviously did videos before me and he was a huge mentor for me
to start my own YouTube channel. Anytime you have an idea, you have to write it down. That kind of
needs to take first priority because first of all, you just forget right away if you don't. And the
second of all, once you have this big list of ideas, you can just return to it in the future
where it's like, oh boy, it's time to time to make a video. It's been a couple of weeks having
uploaded on YouTube, just dig into the Idea Bank and you've got I probably have hundreds, if not
a thousand video ideas in some semblance of, you know, like whether it's a wine or an entire script
right now. And so that's good to have like a pool to draw from. And then that's a great starting
point a lot of times. So like usually when I start a video, I'll look into my drafts, I'll pick an
idea, I'll embellish upon it. And then I will film a lot of my videos aren't scripted though,
like I'll have a what's called a beat sheet where you have like a couple ideas that you want to
like hit some main plot points if you even want to dignify my videos by saying they have a plot.
And then we'll just film with my friends. I'm lucky to have some very creative improvisers as
friends. And a lot of times when I just have like a rough idea and go into it, the video gets made.
And so I found some of my best ideas, like you had the picture of the Heyman video,
a frame from where I'm just like making up nonsense words with my brother and then
crazy sounds come out. That one was completely improvised. There was no script. That was a
situation where I didn't even go into my beat sheet. I just filmed with Gus and then we just made
this up and we're like, what if, you know, cartoony techno techno sounds came out of us when we did
certain dance moves. And that was one of my most popular series on my channel is just almost pure
improvisation. So tell me about being around creative people, how that enhances and then
being around black holes that sucks your soul. Interesting. Creative people are definitely
interesting. I'm very happy and lucky to have creative friends. Wait, you have friends?
You're supposed to uplift.
You're supposed to uplift. You're supposed to tell my mom. Creative friends are great pros and cons
to every type of friend. I'll start with the pros with my creative friends. Like I said,
they elevate my projects. I can't do some of the stuff that I do if I didn't have that immense
collaborative power with some of my most talented friends. Excuse me. A lot of times,
they bring just a different taste to the project. Videos that I do with some of my
friends, like especially Joel, my friend Joel Haver, wildly, the guy is just leaking creative.
He's one of those types of dudes who just can't help it. Every time I collaborate with him,
the project always takes a very different turn from what I had envisioned, but it's usually good.
And yeah, I don't know. They're always adding something good to the project. One con and this
isn't all of my creative friends, but I've noticed creative friends are some of the least organized
people in my life. So if you ever have a due date or be here at 4.30, most of my friends aren't
going to be there until 5.30 at least. And it's just everything is a lot looser. I think that
might have something to do with the fact that ADD and ADHD are maybe, I don't know if comorbid is
the right word, but. Oh, what did you learn that word? My uncle Andy. I learned that in psychology.
Actually, I'm a psychology minor, don't you know? I don't know. Anyway, I've learned that ADHD is
kind of comorbid with creativity. And so I think a lot of my creative friends just kind of get
distracted by stuff in their life. And then timelines and due dates are a little harder for
them to keep in mind. And that's one thing I try to be cognizant of as well. Cognizant, very good.
Oh, yeah. Cognizant, I'm expanding my vocabulary. Okay, go ahead. Sorry.
You're good. It's hard to adhere to a schedule for a lot of these, a lot of my friends. So
I try to be the best in that way. Okay. What gets in the way of creativity?
Like any period in my life when I'm like, if you ever down, if you're depressed,
it's hard to be creative. It's hard to like put new, especially like, well, for the term,
for the stuff that I do, it's harder to be creative because I mostly make silly funny jokes on the
internet. Just stupid stuff. And if like you're ever like feeling down on yourself, it's hard to
try to be on camera. But music has been a great outlet for that too. Because like sometimes,
like if you're not feeling like super happy, you just make an emo song as you like to call them.
And then I can change the world with my emo music. So it's good to have two different
outlets for that for when I'm in like either mood. There is a certain joyfulness of creativity,
a certain playfulness. And you're when you're with people you like, when you're happy, you feel good,
you just seem to be funny all the time. Yeah. When I'm with you and Gus, my wife says I revert to
my 12 year old self. I'm a different person when I'm around you guys because I like you, sadly enough.
And you guys are funny and you make me want to be silly. And it's just this goofiness.
So you talked about schedule, you know, you're out there in Hollywood, living the dream.
What the hell is your daily schedule like? Oh boy. I try to keep the schedule as much as possible.
It's really hard. Even if you wouldn't have had this interview today, I probably would have slept
until 10 and then wake up at 10. And I have this is like the most routine that I've added to my life
in the last few months. So I'll go out and I have a rule if I want to be on my phone in the morning,
I can't do it in my bed. I have to go do it in my backyard. So I can get like the light,
the sunlight in my photo receptors in my eyes and then it wakes me up and then I don't feel like a
piece of garbage. I'll go back in the yard and do my daily stretches in the morning for like 10
minutes and then just kind of take it in, take in the sunlight because it's always sunny in LA,
which is also another fortunate thing. Then I come in, eat breakfast and then I go to the gym,
shower and then I usually start my day around noon or one in terms of doing work. Work can be
anything from filming and uploading a video. Recently, since I've been getting into short
four more like TikToks, like I say, I try to get up about four or five videos a week. So that's a
big routine thing for me. I'll come back and I'll just pull through my drafts, you know, my list of
ideas, film something that I think is good and those take a lot shorter to film and edit and then
I'll edit it, upload it and at that point it's I'm kind of a free agent. I'll maybe go golfing
with my buddies. I'll excuse me if I don't have plans, work on some more music. I've got a list
right now where I'm trying to get at least one song either started or finished or make big progress
on it in a week because I'm trying to also get an album out. So I've got my life works in terms of
like due dates that I impose on myself. My short term daily due dates of like TikTok uploads,
my weekly to bi-weekly due dates of a YouTube upload and then right now in the next month,
I'm really trying to get this album out. I've been working on it for about a year or two.
And so I'm imposing stricter due dates with like music stuff like that.
Okay, that's good. Yeah, I mean that's it. That's pretty much.
That's a good transition into the music part. But how many hours a day would you generally work?
Would you say? Oh man, it's so tough for me because even when I'm not working, I feel the stress of my
job because my job is kind of as much work as I put in. Your job. Yeah, my job. What I get out of it
is kind of dependent on how much I put in to some extent. So I feel like I always should be working
and I'm frequently stressed because of that. And I don't, I'm not the hardest worker. I know that.
I'm trying to figure out how to be my own boss with zero schedule in my life. I found that like
having some little pieces of schedule help line up everything else. So I go to volleyball, open gym
once a week and my lifting, like going to the gym is like another routine thing to kind of like
line up everything else. I've had part-time jobs too and creative fields as like a pitch writer
for a larger YouTube channel that helps like keep all the rest of my stuff in line. But yeah.
There is something about routine that enables you to free yourself. So you're not having to think
about daily stuff as much as you're able to think and expand. All right. Well, I'm interested in how
you write music. And I come from a background where to write music, you have theory and you know about
keys and chords and signatures and time things. And there's a staff, a treble clef and a bass
clef and you use a pencil and you write notes on the page. You write notes and then people see your
notes and they play them. And when I asked Sven about such things, he said, I couldn't believe he
was writing music but wasn't putting any pencils to page. What the hell? How do you get your ideas
and how do you write music? Well, that's a very good question. This might be a visual aid necessary
conversation. So do you mind if I see if I can share my screen with you? Okay.
Because like I say, or like you say, I don't have much knowledge in terms of like the language.
I don't know music theory. I don't know what I'm doing with like time signatures. I can kind of
figure out for the most part. I've been around music most of my life. I've been a band and choir.
And I've absorbed a lot of baseline knowledge about music there. But I don't know first thing
about like traditional music theory or anything. So I'll show you my digital audio workspace logic
here if I can. Do you know how to share a video on this? I don't know how to share a video but you
can share your screen. Yeah, that's what I hear. Yeah. There you go. And you get an idea. Say you
get an idea, a writing idea, a music idea. How do you capture that idea? That's another good question.
Same as like the video idea thing. The second I have like a melody coming to my head or
like a line that would be good for a song. I just write it down or I go into my phone and I record
it in the voice recorder app. And a lot of times I write it down. How do you write it down without
having notation? Write down a line. That's what I'm saying. Like if I have like a something that's like
a lyric. Yeah. Okay. A lyric. Like I canceled all my other dates through their numbers all away.
That's what that's like a line that I wrote down and I embellished upon it later that day and I made
a song out of it. Do you start with melody or sound or chords or do you start with lyrics or does it
change? It can work both ways. With that example that I showed you, I believe I've shown you this
before. But like I'll take you through my project on Zoom here if that's all right.
That specific song started with just that lyric that I told you. It was just that one line and then
I was trying to like put a little melody to it and I just figured you know.
And then I developed a melody. Once I had that I came back and then I put chords around that melody
just to like make that little catchy interval fit. And then once I had the hook, which is like the
harmony or the chorus and that melody and that line and the chords then I built the rest of the
song around it. Most of my songwriting process starts with the chorus or the hook. So let me see
if I can show you here. Here's the song I wrote the other day. This is one of the instances.
Can you see my screen here? Yep. And you're still able to hear me. That's good. Okay. Yep.
This is one of the instances where a lot of hard work paid off and I was able to make this song
so quickly because I've been working and studying logic, which is this program for
a couple of years now, a year or two. And my knowledge of just general music production has
increased so much over the last year specifically as I've self taught myself how to use this by
just watching videos online. I made this entire song tonight. And you can see there's a lot that
goes into a into one song because as I expand this, these are all separate instruments. And I'll
show you what that sounds like here. But there's vocals, there's guitars, there's synthesizers,
there's MIDI drums and stuff. This was all born from that one lyric that you asked me about.
Just I canceled all my other days through their numbers all the way. Did you play just the vocals?
Start with the vocals. I'll play just the vocals here. Yeah, I'll show you what like a little track
like this sounds like. I'll take you to the hook. This is what I told you about this is that little
snippet. Oh wait, sorry, that's the guitars. Did you hear that though? No. Okay, here.
And there might be an issue. Bear with me for one second.
Share sound, that's what I wanted to do.
Sorry for the dead air. That's okay. That's not a radio.
All right. Okay, can you hear this?
Nope.
Darn it. That's all right. It might not work. I've had issues sharing audio in the past, but
the visual cue is or the visual aid is somewhat helpful too. Yep. This is how my logic program
works. It's super easy to do stuff in it because like I say, you don't need to know music theory.
You don't need to know how a time signature works, all that stuff. I can just take my microphone and
I can record each one of these tracks that I highlight here is a different audio recording.
These are all my vocals in this folder here. There's, you can see 10 tracks. I was just able to just
have stuff come out of my brain into the program. And then if I wanted to record some, here I've
got a synthesizer here. Look at this. This is a perfect example of me not having to know
how music theory works because there's a tool in this program that I can pull this up and then it
puts it into a piano score right there for me. So I can have all the music if I want it to then
give this to someone who knows traditional music and play it. I could just print this out. I could
give it to them. But with my limited knowledge of music theory, that's not a barrier for me at all.
Here's the drum track. You can also put that in notation if you like. Yeah, that is really interesting.
Yeah. And so what about the guitar one? Can you put that? Now that's a, and if you might be able to,
but I'm not, I probably know 20% of what this program has to even offer. I said right now,
I don't know of a way that you can. Okay. Do you play your own guitar? I do. Yeah. So this song
is very acoustic guitar heavy and then like rock sound heavy. So I was able to play the acoustic
guitar for a lot of the verses. Like this would be a verse right here, this yellow section I
highlighted. And then in the, in the hook, there's some light acoustic guitar, but then I added a
lot of like MIDI synthesizer stuff here to really give it like a heavier sound. And that's just like
a combination of instruments that I figured out after years of tweak or tooling around in logic
and garage band. For the bass, you use a synthesizer and it gives you a string bass sound. Is that
how? Yes. This is, this is the string bass right here. And it sounds like I can go in this program
and then choose from all sorts of different basses. So like I chose the liver pool bass,
but there's muted bass, pick bass, all these options on the left here. And that's just,
you know, in one category, there's all these drum kits, guitars. And you use a keyboard to do the
bass? Yep. So this is how MIDI works is I just hook it up to my electric keyboard that I have
sitting right next to me here actually. Got a shirt on it right now. Yep. I see it. And then
you can just do whatever you want. So I'm like, I'm able to play a thousand different instruments
by only knowing one, the piano, because I can just hook it up to my computer and then rip,
which is so valuable to me because I can fill out an entire like musical landscape with very
limited knowledge. I could play a little bit of guitar and a little bit of piano, but my brain
is able to work unimpeded. What do the vocals look like, the score for the vocals? The vocals,
I mean, again, with most audio tracks in this, there's not a way that I know of to like transpose
it or what's the word, just put it into musical notation. Okay. But these are all my vocal tracks
here, these highlighted ones that you see. At the end, I've got one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, and then 10 here with these two backup vocals, 10 vocal tracks going at the
same time. I've learned this is a strategy to make your vocals sound like really unified and
distinct and it really makes the project sound great. You're double tracking, meaning you're
on each one? Very good. Andy, good job, Gold Star. What's interesting is when we think of the Beatles
back in the 60s, you've got more power on your dinky little thing than they had back then.
I was watching the Beatles documentary get back on Disney Plus the other day,
and it's about them recording their final studio album, getting ready for a show, and they brought
in an eight track recording device from George Harrison's home studio. And that was a big deal.
If you could have eight tracks in a song, record a bunch of different stuff simultaneously,
that's drum, guitar, bass, a few vocal tracks, and then you get some extra stuff to work with.
That was a big deal. Look at this. I got here on my project, 38 tracks, and I'm just some kids
sitting in his bedroom. The tools are so much more accessible and so much wildly powerful
nowadays. So much more. Why do you double track your vocals? Good question. That's double tracking
is a technique where you can see like, here's two orange tracks. It's the same exact vocal line
for these orange tracks. So it's the same melody, harmony, blah, blah, blah. But one of them, I pan
all the way to the left ear and when I pan all the way to the right ear. That way it's like two
different people speaking in each different ear. That adds so much more of a fullness to the sound.
And it, like I say, it helps you understand, helps the listener understand what I'm saying,
because you get more consonants, just more notes. So I've got like, here's the orange is going to be
the melody. The green is like the low harmony, dark green is high harmony. And then these blue
tracks down here are like the backup vocals. And how do you know what harmonies, how do you know what
notes to sing with the harmonies? How do you know what sounds good together? This is another example
of me being really lucky to have had so many experiences. So I am at the point where I can
just pull from past experiences. I haven't lived in a vacuum my whole life and I can create, I can
innovate because I was in choir for most of my life in college was, I was in a very good college
choir. And that was maybe one of the biggest things that brought my musical understanding to the next
level. It took me about four years to learn how to read music to some extent, and I've forgotten
that, but I'm a big ear listener. And so just like listening to how different chords locked in
in choir, and how like, you know, music flowed, I just absorbed a lot of that knowledge. So I'm
at the point now where if I hear a good melody, I can just a lot of times on the spot as it's
happening make up a harmony that sounds good. And then, yeah, I make the, I make the harmony on the
spot basically, and then I can tweak it. Here's a tool that you might want to see this. This isn't
exactly like the, what's the word for scoring? This isn't like the scoring that you saw where
there's like notes on the staff. But each vocal line you can see here, you're not going to hear it
because of, because of the audio issue. But these are the notes that I'm singing. So after I record
something, if it's not exactly what I want, I can tweak this and go, does I can't set all my other
days through my numbers all the way? If I want this to go up to here, then I can bring up there.
And then it'll, it will play that back in the recording as me having sung that note.
It's hard to like kind of visualize, but Mr. Smarty pants, I want to, you said something,
I want to put you to a test. I'm going to sing a melody and I want you to sing a harmony with it.
Okay. Okay. Just be a short one.
I saw you standing alone without you dreaming my heart without a love of my own. Okay.
An easy third of just blue moon. You saw me standing alone. That really sounds shitty.
It's not good over the zoom. Yeah.
Have you been lying to me? That sounds horrible. No, no, no. If we were a person that would sound
beautiful, you really put me on the spot there and I delivered. Oh, your emo music,
your emo music. Oh, I don't know your career. Oh, that's horrible. My career was ruined on
the Andy Johnson reading podcast. It's called the reading instruction show with Dr. Andy Johnson.
Sorry. Yep. And I want you to know I get tens of listeners. Whoa. Not up to the dozens, Eshalon yet?
Tens means 20, 30 or 40. Okay. No, I attract some listeners. I have an audience, nothing like you,
who probably get more listeners in one silly podcast, Wiggling Your Hips, and I get in five
years of podcasts. But that's a statement on our culture, isn't it? What is the statement?
People would rather engage in a tall skinny man wearing diapers than a short bald man talking
about things that impact society. Oh, yeah, likely. Yep. On the shallows. All right. Well,
I'm getting bored with you now. Can you turn off your screen or take that away? Yep.
Because I want to... All right. This is the big finish. This is where you say something significant.
Tell them how much that I write your material because I am a registered
comedologist. Oh. And because of the people in this room right now, raise your hand if you
were voted class clown. That proves it. Darn it. Mandy's got that one accolade to hold over my head.
I've been doing it for how many years now? As long as I can remember about...
Ever since you remembered, that has been something that you bring up to me.
And this is something you told me. Jokes get funnier if you tell them many, many times.
Didn't say that either. Like 27th time. It's just funnier than the 26th.
Andy's going... There's a quote. I don't know who said it, but
my brother Gus will say it all the time. Quantity is a quality in and of itself.
So that's what Andy's relying on for his humor. Yes. Quantity. Very good. Speaking of humor,
I'm doing Dancing with the Stars here in Mankato on February 10th. If you're listening
from Mankato, there are tickets still available. Okay. And it's for the Red Cross. And you can
make a donation for poor people. Remember poor people? I do. Yeah. So is that a yes or you're
going to make a donation? Oh, I can make a donation. Oh, man. What time is it? 9.36. I really got to be
going. All right, sirs. Thank you. This has actually been pretty good. I loved it. It went
better than I thought it would. Wow. You must have had pretty low hopes for it. Well, I didn't get to
show you my song. Next time when you figure out how to do, you know, to share, that is still
intrigues me and that would be really good. Sure thing. Well, yeah, it was a breeze doing this
podcast. So I hope it does well. Thanks for having me, Andy. You're welcome.