Brian Casel: [00:00:00] Hey, you're listening to Open Threads. It's my podcast. I'm Brian Casel. Welcome. Ben Orenstein is back on the show today. We are chatting about music. That's not every day that I get to chat with a friend who is a lifelong musician, just like I am. But you know, interestingly, Ben has a very, very different background when it comes to music and how it ran through his family as it did with mine.

And then how we grew up with music being a big part of our upbringing and then into our adult lives, but in very, very different ways, I think. So it was kind of cool to have this chat and kind of go deep on what. What music means to to each of us in our lives and, you know, I like to ask the question, you know, today, the, the thought entered my mind, like.

What job does music do for us in our lives? You know, what's the job to [00:01:00] be done in being a lifelong musician? I think that was an interesting one for both Ben and I to kind of reflect on. So it was a great conversation, whether you're a musician or not. I think you'll, you'll learn something on this one.

Let's talk music with Ben.

We're back here with Ben Orenstein. Welcome back. Good to be back. So I want to sort of like loop back in the story. In our last chat, we talked about like the story of how you grew up, you know, made your way into the software industry, but you and I are both musicians. Sounds like lifelong musicians. And there's not many people I get to chat with on this podcast about our lives and music when we're not looking at screens and revenue graphs and all that kind of stuff.

I don't even know that much about you as a musician, but from what I understand, I think we have very different musical backgrounds, which I think is interesting. So, you said that you started out with singing being a pretty prominent thing in your [00:02:00] family and world. Like, where did all that start?

Ben Orenstein: Yeah, so my grandfather was a barbershop singer.

So barbershop being like four part acapella barbershop quartet stuff, which is an American style developed in barbershops like back in like the 1920s. and like peaked in popularity probably in the 40s and has been on a sort of a decline since then. But that was his like main thing. So like he raised my mom and her sisters in like a household where there was a lot of singing.

Singing was like just a big part of them. And also there's a big chunk of my mom's family is Welsh and Wales has like a big singing culture to it as well. So the end result was I grew up in a household where singing was just a common thing.

Brian Casel: So like the family is just like, Breaking out in song just randomly.

Ben Orenstein: Yeah. My mom would sing stuff. She would sing songs to me. We would sing songs together. Like we would sing acapella Christmas carols. There's like a lot of singing going around. And I was probably like eight. My parents put me in piano lessons. So I was like getting exposed to piano from a pretty early age.

And I studied for that for maybe four or five years.

Brian Casel: You know, [00:03:00] my mom forced me to start with piano lessons and I sort of had a good feel for it, but I also hated going to lessons and I wasn't really into learning classical stuff, but looking back on it as a foundational instrument, I feel like you can't do better than piano.

Cause you're like literally looking at music theory, like on the keyboard. And now my daughter is eight years old and she's getting into piano and I'm teaching her on guitar too. But like a lot of that doesn't make sense until you get a feel for piano. I feel like great starting point.

Ben Orenstein: Yeah, it has like a nice visual element to it where you can see the intervals in front of you and they get wider and smaller.

And like, I think even when I'm sight reading vocal stuff, I think I'm still kind of translating it to piano in my head. Yeah, for sure.

Brian Casel: So what else did that look like when you were a kid? Did you have like formal lessons? Were you joining groups? Did you do any of that like in school or was it all like outside of school?

Ben Orenstein: So piano was pretty much all outside school. I was taking like private lessons and then doing recitals. But then After a few [00:04:00] years of piano, my mom encouraged me to join a chorus. And she was like, I think you'll really like this. And she like, I'll drive you to this thing. And like, she signed me up for some sort of youth chorus that was like community youth chorus or something.

I think it was outside the school. And I went to a few of those rehearsals. I was like, this is amazing. I love this. And like, I could read music because I had been taking piano. And so like singing a single note at a time, looking at a score was like, Oh yeah, this is not even that hard. I know how to read music already.

And so I took to it pretty quickly and I really did enjoy it. From that point on, I started joining the choir in school. And I think I basically have been in some sort of ensemble since nine years old or something. With occasional gaps, but I've been in singing group since then.

Brian Casel: Yeah. I got into guitar starting around age 13 and started taking some lessons and loved it.

I mean, I'm learning all rock songs like Nirvana, Pearl jam, all that kind of stuff. But then in high school, I joined the jazz band playing guitar. And through that, I had to learn reading music and reading like chord charts and [00:05:00] stuff as like a jazz guitar player. And. That always really frustrated me. Like I loved learning about jazz on guitar, but I felt like reading notation just completely like slowed me down because I wasn't very good at it.

I was just better at just playing it. And that always kind of frustrated me. Yeah. I didn't do so well in the jazz band as a guitarist, but like outside of that, like just playing in bands and stuff, it felt so much more natural. It's kind of a, it's like a weird thing. That's like unique to guitar. I think there's a lot of guitarists who just play and don't ever learn to read music and don't care to.

Ben Orenstein: Yeah, I agree. It's workable, but I think it's kind of to their detriment, unfortunately. Like, there's just this rich language out there, and honestly, it's not that hard. You can go real deep on music theory and notation and all the stuff, but like the basics are, are not heinous.

Brian Casel: Yeah. We get by with tablet here though.

Ben Orenstein: Sure. Yeah. I guess you have that. Yeah. That's a good hack. But yeah, I felt lucky like coming into voice, having the piano background. Cause I remember them being like, here's what an E is. And I remember like, this is so easy for me. [00:06:00]

Brian Casel: Yeah. And it's such a weird thing with music, how it runs in the family. And it's so crazy to like literally see it.

I mean, my grandfather, he directed an orchestra. And then. My mom and another grandfather played piano a little bit. I had a pretty natural feel for it since the beginning with both piano and guitar. And then now with my daughter, and she's only learning the very basics in terms of like lessons, but she's in there making up her own songs and just has such a natural ear and feel for it.

Like you could just see it from day one. And it's just incredible to see. It's like literally in the genes, you know, something about it.

Ben Orenstein: I go back and forth between how much of that is like inherent versus your exposure. I do think there's a lot to like growing up in a household where you get piano lessons at a single digit age, and then lo and behold, you're 15.

You're like, Oh yeah, I have a knack for music. It's like, well, no, you invested hundreds of hours before you were even a teenager. Like I know there's some of it, right? Like some natural ability in there too.

Brian Casel: For sure. I think lessons [00:07:00] and practicing go along. I also think that just listening, like being exposed to hearing lots and lots of music on a daily basis.

is a huge one. My dad turning me on to like the Beatles and stuff early on, like really, really helps with that.

Ben Orenstein: Totally. Yeah. I've been the assistant director of an amateur chorus before, and I've given a handful of voice lessons and things like that. And so I get exposed to a lot of people and their impressions of their singing ability.

And it's crazy to me how much people think it is pure. like talent and like natural sort of proclivity versus like any sort of work people be like oh like you're an amazing singer like i'm terrible i could never do that and i'm like i have been singing i've put thousands of hours into this i started taking lessons at such an early age i've had so much private instruction I think people underestimate how good they would be if they put a ton of time into it.

They just sort of look at someone who's put a ton of time in and be like, Oh, that's unreachable for me because of my natural lack of skill.

Brian Casel: Right. So like one of the questions that I had on this about [00:08:00] music is like, what does music do for you? You know, right now I'm working through like jobs to be done in my business, my product, but like, what is the job that music does? And like, just the way that you were describing that, like practicing and like putting in so many hours, I think back to when I was a kid, but even to this day, for me, playing is a form of meditation where I could literally lose hours and not realize it where I'm just playing either trying to pull off some lick or some song and like spending hours on it, just repeating it or trying to record something like a perfect take.

Or writing some music and just sort of like being in the zone there or jamming with something. And like with my work, I'm always thinking about the future or whatever it might be or worrying about this or that. With that, it's like I'm in a zone and I've tuned out and I'm just playing. And just the sheer number of hours of being in that state makes you a better player.

Ben Orenstein: Yeah, I think to do music well, you have to be in the moment. So it is kind of meditative like that, or like it has an effect on your brain. Like unless you, [00:09:00] I'm just like hopelessly distracted by something really significant. If I am performing and singing or something like I am paying attention to what's going on because you have to keep paying attention to what's happening to do it well at all.

So there's a few things that I get out of music. One is just that I really enjoy performing. I enjoy putting on a performance to me being on stage is really gratifying, making something impressive or interesting or moving happen on a stage. I find just like really enjoyable. I like giving the audience a cool experience that feels really fun to me.

I like being proud of the thing I put out there. But there's also this other thing that I've been kind of on for a while. I noticed that there are basically two things in my life that have held my interest for longer than anything else. One is music and the other is programming. And I think they're actually kind of the same in an important way.

And the thing that makes them the same is what I think keeps me interested in them, which is that they are both rigorously analytical and creative at the same time. [00:10:00]

Brian Casel: 100%. That actually leads me right into the last question that I had on this, which is. Music for you. Has it always been like a hobby and an interest, or did you ever think about it?

Like this could be a career where you're making a living professionally in the world of music. And I mean, for me, what you just explained that the intersection between creativity and music and then technology. And engineering. I mean, I got a degree in audio arts and audio engineering, music production. I literally thought I was going to pursue a career in recording studios, producing and composing music.

And for that reason, I love music and I love the tech and working in recording studios. And for the whole early part of my life, like I was pretty focused on being a professional and going in that path. And it wasn't until later and I pivoted into the software industry that. I finally started to accept it as like, this is just a hobby for me and I really enjoy it as a hobby, but it took me a long time to start to enjoy music as a [00:11:00] hobby and not try to think of it like a career.

Ben Orenstein: That was easy for me. I was so interested in computers that I was like, this is probably my career. And I loved singing so much that I was like, I don't need to get paid for this. I think if I hadn't had a career I was excited about, I might have pushed towards music, doing music professionally. But I think I was fortunate in that a, I had a, like a sort of a better plan a, then try to make a living as a musician.

And also I got exposed pretty early on to really excellent singers and like people that were just clearly better than I was and like were better than I had any likelihood or really desire to get. And I saw that these people were not having as much fun as I was. I joined a professional choir where like almost everyone was paid except for like a few volunteers.

And I was one of the volunteers. And I remember at first being like kind of miffed, like, ah, what the heck this sucks. And then I was like, okay, no, these people actually are way better than I am. And also they're not really enjoying this that much. Like I'm here having a blast. They are clearly at work. And I was like, I don't [00:12:00] want that.

I don't want to ever feel like I'm at work with music. Yeah.

Brian Casel: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it was only in recent years here as an adult where I've always been a songwriter composer and then I like to really produce it, like record it and produce the full. Production from the guitar to the drums and get it into pro tools and get it all produced.

Right. And then for a while, as an adult, like even that was like my hobby, I would spend a lot of time actually producing tracks and stuff, but that's such an in depth time consuming thing to even create a three minute composition can take months to get it all recorded, written and produced and mixed and mastered all that.

And that just became like too overwhelming. Like, cause I don't have that kind of time anymore. I can't give a hobby that much time. To be really good at it. And so like, then finally, recently I brought my guitars into here, into my office with just the guitars and a small amp. And like, that's all I have in here.

So all I can possibly do in here is just pick it up and play and that's it. And that's been huge for just like getting back into [00:13:00] like the enjoyment of it.

Ben Orenstein: Totally. I remember a guy at the guitar shop telling me like, put it somewhere. You can see it, put it in the stand next to your desk, hanging on the wall.

Like the best place for a guitar from like a protection and like not warping standpoint is the case with like a humidifier on it in it. But he's like, but don't do that. Put it on the wall anyway. Like you're not going to play it if it's in the case. A hundred percent.

Brian Casel: Well Ben, this was good stuff. I feel like I learned a lot more about Ben Orenstein in these talks here.

So this

Ben Orenstein: was good. Awesome. I'm glad it was fun chatting. Yeah. Thanks for doing it. My pleasure.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Talk soon.