“Thinking Outside The Box”
Featuring - Ivan Chopik
email: Ivan@ivanchopik.com
web:
https://store.guitarmessenger.com
Talking Chops Episode 3
“Thinking Outside the Box”
With Guest Ivan Chopik
In today’s music, there isn’t much that hasn’t already been done. So instead of asking yourself what hasn’t been done? Ask yourself, what has been done that I can do better? This question applies whether you’re talking about Business, Songwriting, Podcasting or Music Producing.
With the modern day guitar and amplifier gaining popularity in the 1960s and 70s, only so many notes can be played but how YOU play them is a different sound and a different story. The reason for that is, you are the only one who is you. No one grew up in same neighborhood with the same parents, same struggles, same successes and same life events as you. Therefor how can anyone tell your story and play like you when you and only you are you. Does that make any sense to anyone? Now people can relate to you and where you make that connection has turned everyday people into House hold Legends. In today’s standard everyone and everything is categorized or put into a genre. Very rarely however do you look at someones playlists and it’s all Country or all Heavy Metal. It’s almost always a mix of Hip Hop, Pop, and Rock songs from the 60s all the way up to today. So in asking the question again, How can I do the same thing but better and apply it to my life? The Answer is…Think Outside the Box.
In Episode 3 of Talking Chops we are going to discuss different ways of “thinking outside the box”. Join me as I discuss this topic with a man I have the privilege of calling my friend, Ivan Chopik. Enjoy.
[Brian] Hello and Welcome everyone to another episode of Talking Chops and today I have joining me a person who’s work you may have seen and heard before and didn’t even know it. He is a Berklee Grad currently living in Los Angeles, the founder of Guitar Messenger, COO of Abasi Concept Guitars, a Videographer, Guitarist of Father Daddy and may or may not be one hell of a hockey player, Mr. Ivan Chopik. How are you sir?
[Ivan] I’m doing well, thanks for the intro.
[Brian] Yeah man. Just as background for anyone that doesn’t know, Ivan and I, we first met at Berklee as part of the inaugural and first and possibly last sports team at Berklee College of Music. Do you even play anymore do you have your jersey or anything?
[Ivan] Yeah man, As soon as I moved out to LA, there is a league out here in Burbank and I’m part of the Burbank Voodoo. I guess, it’s just “Beer League”. It’s a good time we play like once a week, something like that. But, I think Hockey will always be a part of my life, I’m sure it’s the same thing with you. You think they still have the “Berklee Icecats”?
[Brian] I do not think so. I really don’t think they do, as soon as we left and Kingsley left, I think everything just kind of fell apart. It was kind of heading down that direction anyway. I don’t want to talk bad about it because it was a great time in my life, I had a lot of fun.
[Ivan] Yeah, yeah
[Brian] I just don’t think it was the same after we left. I could talk to Breton or any of the other guys that were still around after us but yeah I don’t think they had too many more (years)
[Ivan] Well then, I guess we’re part of History.
[Brian] After you graduated from Berklee, did you move right to LA?
[Ivan] No actually, I moved back to Florida where my family was based and I spent a couple years out there. It was a way for me to save some money and really hone in on which of my pursuits to spend really most of my time on and during that time I was working with a band called Faith and Exile, who was out of New York. We traveled back and forth and ended up doing some touring as well but I was also pushing my company Guitar Messenger at the time, which was a lot of instructional material for guitar players and interviews and reviews, things like that.
[Brian] Yeah, your interview with Zakk Wylde is amazing. For anyone that hasn’t come across that they definitely need to check out your interview with Zakk Wylde. I didn’t mean to cut you off but I just wanted to throw that out there.
[Ivan] Oh yeah, thank you man. I remember that one pretty well, usually I’m the one trying to whoever I’m talking to, make them feel comfortable and let them relax but in this case Zakk was the other way around. He has that way about him, which makes you feel like you’re on an equal level part of the conversation which is great.
[Brian] Yeah
[Ivan] So I spent a couple years in Florida, I actually was thinking about moving to LA for years and had been traveling back and forth so much because I started doing some different video projects and music projects out in LA. So I had already been thinking about it but the thing that pushed me over the edge to finally make the move was when the opportunity came up to work with Tosin and Abasi Concepts . You know, I remember when the formal invitation to join the company came through, I was like, alright let me work on selling the house here and need some time to get over there and everything, give me a couple months and Tosin goes “Can you be here next week?” Ok sure (Both Laughing) so that was that. I got an Air BNB until I figured out what part of town I wanted to live in and all that but yeah it all happened pretty fast, after all.
[Brian] Well that was my next question, was you know, if you had a plan? I know when I moved to Nashville, you know, I had a license to referee hockey and a thousand bucks in my pocket. And I just kind of when out there and you know, didn’t really know anyone is was like “Alright, let me see if I can make this work” because it was one of those things where, you know, I knew if I, you know growing up in Boston and having spent my college time in Boston I was like, “I got to get out of this city and you know, at least try to go make a name for myself and do something.” So, I didn’t know, I really didn’t have a plan, you know, I had an idea of what I wanted to do but I didn’t have a clear path and a clear goal as to where I and how I was going to reach that, you know what I mean? So, that’s pretty cool you had, a lot of incentives to kind of push you to make those decisions for you.
[Ivan] Definitely, especially when it got to a point when I had, several flights every single month coming out to LA and going back to work on different projects. And when this opportunity with the company come up it was a no brainer. I had to pull the trigger and got myself a uHaul and did the trip.
[Brian] Yeah for sure, I just want to say something about that because a lot of the discussion that we’re talking about is “Thinking Outside of the Box” and for somebody out there that’s listening going “Man, I don’t know how I’m going to connect with other musicians. I don’t know how to connect with like minded individuals.” And you don’t want to find necessarily a real job, the truth of the matter is, that we all need to do something for work and for money. Food is not free, an apartment, especially in LA is not free. It’s a matter of finding a niche that you can kind of connect with and I think there is something to be said there that you know, you were always looking for the next opportunity but you were also looking within the confines of something that is going to ultimately make you happy and still in the field of work like I said. Was that something that helped keep you in a positive mindset and help you know, keep you motivated as to where you wanted to go and what you wanted to be?
[Ivan] Definitely. I mean I think I was open for like you said, looking for the next thing, more so than even looking for the next thing I was just open to the next thing and I definitely got extremely lucky that all my different pursuits were somehow connected to my different passions and what I loved to do.
[Brian] That’s not luck, there is some science behind that and it’s called the Law of Attraction. But yes, keep going.
[Ivan] For sure yeah, I’ll speak to that a little bit because being at Berklee and making friends at Berklee and then those friends eventually moving out to these different cities and places that are musical hubs within the country. That’s all part of it. The work that I was doing, grinding, transcribing interviews word by word off a phone recording to start up Guitar Messenger. And then eventually starting to video those interviews and different lessons, all that transcribing things. All the time I put into that, led to other opportunities. You know, running my own business and having run several businesses give me a foundation to provide value to a company like Abasi Concepts. So yeah, it’s all these different things I feel lucky that I get to do so much within the field of things that I love. But they all kind of stem from you know, seizing opportunities within the same field and not necessarily, you know I admire guys who found their exact calling its a narrow lane within which they’ve accomplished so much.
[Brian] It’s very rare.
[Ivan] For me it’s always been, you know, these are things that I love. I love music, I love film, I love things in between I get excited about, you know, negotiating a business deal or looking for another opportunity. So in a way, I get the opportunity to do all those things rather than pushing really far in any one set of things I like.
[Brian] Yeah and we’ll talk about the video more in a bit and it will all kind of come full circle as far as those connections go with Berklee. And I just want to touch on Abasi again real fast because talking about “Thinking outside the Box” you look at a guitar and there is nothing that looks like an Abasi Concept Guitar. I mean, it doesn’t even remotely look the same or sound the same. You know, is there any type of mission behind Abasi and anything that you know, maybe you can talk about that we can you know, look forward to in the future?
[Ivan] Yeah, you know as far as the shape and the sound of the original model, the “LARADA” all that credit goes to Tosin who, you know, he had his different influences and came up with the shape and it’s his pick ups that contribute to the sound and all that. But I think the overall Mission is we’re looking to take these modern instruments that maybe respect the heritage of Guitar and where it came from but really without being afraid to try something new in different areas. For example, our 8-string guitar is the neck. Its that deeper into the body style, so you don’t have suck a long span with the extended scale. It’s a multi-scale finger board so you have short scale on top where you need to be able to bend strings and a longer scale on the bottom where you need clarity for really low tunings. You know, just little things like that and being open to experimenting and trying stuff out that’s definitely part of the mission statement and we’re also looking to expand into the other fields beyond guitar a little bit more. We have one pedal out and were actually working on some more pedals that provide some solutions and then we also have a software product with a company called Neural DSP.
[Brian] Ooo that sounds interesting.
[Ivan] It’s out and available, it’s a plugin that simulates basically an entire rig from pedals to an amp to a cabinet with different microphones different IRs that you can load up.
[Brian] hmm
[Ivan] It’s part of an Artist series that Neural DSP have been putting out and it’s sounds amazing I think and what’s cool is you can, you know, you don’t need a full rig that’s a mic-ed up and diminished up to start recording something. You can just record into that and tweak your sound as you go on. As opposed to having to commit to something up front and then always to re-amp, that option is there but to be honest, I’ve used that same software on a bunch on my personal recordings and recordings with my bands and I love it.
[Brian] Yeah man, that does sound cool. If we transition, you had mentioned before about being a videographer and the connections with Berklee Artists and I just want to say this is where it gets really interesting for me because you know, it had been a few years sense we had even talked between leaving school and just catching up on things even a year or 2 ago.
[Ivan] Yeah
[Brian] We had talked on the phone because I was starting to reach back out to people I hadn’t heard from in a while and you know like I said, we had talked on the phone for quite a while and then a week or 2 later, I was watching YouTube and came across on of Matt Garstka’s videos and your name came up in the production credits and I like “Wait what? I just talked to this dude like a week or 2 ago and I didn’t even know you were a videographer at that time you know it was just like one of those things.
[Ivan] (Chuckling) Yeah
[Brian] How did you know how to do that on a Professional level? You know because Meinl (cymbals) played a lot those sessions and so How did you know how to do that on a Professional Level?
[Ivan] Yeah it stemmed from Guitar Messenger. Where I was starting to do in person interviews and having them recorded and post it on our website and eventually on YouTube. That was the very beginning of YouTube. And you know, I was hiring different guys to do it and I’ve always loved the craft of recording. I was horse playing around with cameras as a kid and all that. But I was hiring different guys to do the work and there were some projects where I started more and more involved and then I directed an instructional DVD with Per Nilsson. Where I got to really, you know, spend of a lot of time editing footage and knowing what is it that I’m looking for and how should it be recorded. So just over time I started filming more and more of my own things and putting out instructional content with different players.
[Brian] hmm
[Ivan] I joined up with a company called Positive Grid. They specifically got me on board for Artist Relations and Videography, kind of two different titles within the company. And on the videography front, I’ve done hundreds of videos basically to where different Artists play and demonstrate software, hardware, talk about it. So I kind of found my niche that’s somewhere in between video for musicians, musical gear, where I can speak intelligently to a musician because I am also a musician.
[Brian] Right, you speak the language
[Ivan] At the same time having an audio engineering background from Berklee so I can dial in tones and work with different DAWs and find my way around the studio where these things were being filmed and I can do the video so in a way I was able to consolidate work that several people would normally be doing and do it myself which gave me an edge. Led me to do work with a lot of other musical product companies and I think over the years, yeah its been hundreds and hundreds at this point so I think I’ve paid my dues in that regard.
[Brian] Ha, absolutely. And the videos look great.
[Ivan] Thank You man.
[Brian] They really do. And at any point, you know taking on all these tasks, did you feel like “I’m not qualified to do this but I’m going to do it anyway and just give it my best”. Or were you, I mean you’ve always come across as a confident guy, or did you kind of always have going into this videographer thing you know, doing all these sessions and finding your way around. Did you at all feel like you belonged in that pace?
[Ivan] You know I stumbled and fell so many times trying to figure things out and spending hours on trying to get something to work within Premiere or Final Cut and then it crashes or the footage isn’t compatible or like the audio starts drifting after some amount of time because we hadn’t mixed frame rates where we were recording at. All these things, I guess, no I wasn’t confident early on but I was my own boss, my own critic. I had to live up to my own criticism so I don’t think their’s anybody knocking down my confidence in those more vulnerable times but as I got better, I could also take confidence in the fact that it was me putting in the work and eventually getting better over time. But I think where I got lucky is I was able to find some people especially the ones that were filming for me early on and just have the chance so observe up close and ask questions and see how they were doing things and some of my trial and error in learning the stuff wasn’t completely uninformed. You know, I didn’t go to film school or anything like that but I did get the opportunity to see a lot of people do this on a pretty high level.
[Brian] Yeah and I think Berklee actually has a program now where musicians learn about videography and shooting videos. Because back when we went to school there, mind if I sound like an old man for second, “Back in my day, we didn’t have Youtube. Facebook had just come out when we were in college and you needed a (College) email just to get am account with Facebook.
[Ivan] Yeah it was just Harvard and then it was just the Boston area schools and Berklee was one of them so we were one of the first schools that even got access to it.
[Brian] We were.
[Ivan] It was obviously a different animal at that time. 10 years ago or what between 10 and 15 years ago at this point doesn’t seem like that long ago but it was such a huge amount of change that happened in those years. I mean, I remember when YouTube first happened and slowly streaming videos and like Woh somebody uploaded this and that you can see o YouTube now so.
[Brian] Yeah for sure man, I kinda missed the YouTube wave, I don’t exactly remember, it wasn’t one of those AH-HA moments when it came out like I remember you’d have to wait like 20 minutes to watch like a Korn video from them playing Woodstock ’99. You know?
[Ivan] Yeah
[Brian] Just to wait 20 minutes to listen to like 3 minutes of a song and now the speed to streaming, it's crazy. So it was one of those things I was a little late on the button but like I said, I think now all musicians are kind of going down that road and it’s a very important thing to have the videography aspect of it and knowing your lighting cues and knowing what like you said matching up you know, whoever you bounce a project and video and audio project they’re not cut the same way so you have to slow down the video basically so that it doesn’t jump ahead of the audio and that’s one thing that I didn’t know but they are teaching all that stuff at school. I don’t think I don’t know if you can major in it. I could be wrong, but I know that they are providing classes on how to shoot good videos like that which I think is brilliant.
[Ivan] I agree. I think they’re looking forward and I remember they had the slogan “Berklee, there is nothing Conservatory about it.” (Both laughing) But in this case, that really is a good example of realizing where the market’s at and if you’re a musician in this hugely connected world, where you’re no longer “the guy in your town” it like you can reach anyone across the globe. It’s almost a must to have some basic video skills and be able to get stuff out there and honestly the tools that are available to do that now make it so much easier and more affordable and everything else compared to back when we in college. So there’s no excuse not to get into that. I think it’s great that Berklee’s helping everyone do that.
[Brian] Yeah absolutely and there is a lot of free apps and programs that you can use for not just photo editing but also video editing and depending on what you buy there is some audio software too there is also free ways that you can chart music. There are free chart programs so a lot of that stuff is out there and the technology is great I know it gets a lot of flack sometimes where people are spending too much time on their phones and scrolling and what not I mean everybody’s guilty of that but there is a lot of good that has come out of this whole technology thing and you know, you said that its important to be on the cusp of figuring out what the trends are and really jumping on it like you said with FaceBook and when YouTube came out.
[Ivan] Yup totally.
[Brian] This is what I mean about “thinking outside the box”. It’s getting creative and experimenting with the skills that you already have and building on them. Doing the things others may have over looked or doing things in your field that someone else would be like “I don’t know how to do that” or “why didn’t I think of that”. Matt McQuire is another one where his YouTube videos were captured in such a way, outside of using a bunch of GoPro Cameras, that it made them more exciting to watch, which ultimately landed him a gig with The Chainsmokers. In a world where everything gets put into classes, find ways to create a class of your own. Try new things that make you feel good, make you feel happy. Find that separator and share it and open it up to the world. Beautiful things can come from it. And you’re a great example of that Ivan, you know like you said taking the things that you were naturally good at, even if you weren’t naturally good at first, you’re like “Hey, I kind of like this”, starting Guitar Messenger it’s not like you were making beaucoup dollars interviewing people for Guitar Messenger. It was just something that came out of a passion project and ultimately look where it is now and it’s kind of led you down a path to getting to Abasi and all these other opportunities that have come about it. So it’s definitely interesting “Thinking outside the box”, being creative, and experimenting. Experimentation, that’s all music really is.
Where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
[Ivan] They can email me, if it’s me personally, ivan@ivanchopik.com ivan@guitarmessenger.com for those things. ivan@abasiconcepts.com
I’m pretty easy to find by email but I’m also on Instagram. The handle is @IvanChopik just my full name. So you can find me there and yeah.
[Brian] We will put the spelling for everybody, not that Ivan is that hard but Chopik can be a little…
[Ivan] It can be little challenging yeah
[Brian] Chop, with an I-K at the end.
[Ivan] There you go.
[Brian] Well put all the stuff up on the tags and stuff like that. Anything else you want to add before we close this thing out?
[Ivan] I think Berklee Icecat reunion is in order.
(Both Laughing)
[Brian] That is a possibility. I know that, that has been thrown around a couple times I’ve talked to Rory a couple of times, I know Doug isn’t really doing too much in the music scene but he is out there in LA. I don’t know if you talk to him at all.
[Ivan] Is he here now? I thought he was in Austin.
[Brian] Oh maybe he did move to Austin I don’t know. I thought he was in LA nut
[Ivan] Not sure, yeah
[Brian] See I guess we do need to catch up with everybody huh?
[Ivan] Yeah that’s right.
[Brian] We’ll have to rent some ice somewhere and maybe in Kansas sense everyone’s all spread out all across the country we’ll have to meet in the middle and find some ice somewhere.
[Ivan] Or just go to Canada. Really make it a trip.
[Brian] Or go to Canada. I like that idea two. It is the home of hockey. Alright man, well Ivan thanks for joining me man, I appreciate your time and everything you’ve done for me as a friend. If you are out there listening find us on IG and YouTube, for Chops Up hit that follow and Subscribe button. It’s not that hard, you may even get a follow back. Join us next us time for another session of Taking Chops.
Love it, Dream it, Live it.
[Ivan] Thanks a lot Brian.
