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Q&A with JP Bouvet

We're all we're all human and we're not inspired all the time we're not productive all the time so and I think a lot of people struggle with that, you know, like I know me personally I wake up some days and I know I have so much to do and you just don't like not feeling it and it's like so bad that I like that I literally can't bring myself to do it where I have to do other things um and as much as I hate to have the work pile up on my to do list to get a double double on I think that is part of this whole balancing act sometimes you have to be okay with that. So for you when you I mean you obviously have days like that too how do you handle it and how do you reconcile that inside your head to be okay and like, how are you okay with that? Yeah, um this is hard but it's a part of everyone's life um let's think you mean, today I woke up stoked about the stuff I have to do because I actually don't want dio yesterday, not so much, you know, I know exactly what you mean like some days you w...

ake up and you're like, I know that these things need to happen and I just really no part of my soul wants to do this thing, and I think I don't know it's a part of it is being okay with it and part of it's no thing what makes you feel like what if that makes so they may split, so music affects my mood bigtime, like I'm one of those people that, like, if I play enough sad music, I'll going to get really depressed if I play like some really amped up, like, energetic stuff, it make it a fax high feel very honestly and like, I know that about mice, so so when I wake up in the morning and I'm like, stoked to go like place and groans, I'm not going to play like some really sad song about who knows what it's just like I'm gonna I know what videos I love, what songs I love that get me amped to play drums and they come in phases, you know, like they'll be like a youtube video and they'll be, like literally ten seconds of it, and I'm like that is so awesome, it's like whatever videos a drummer or it's some dude talking, I don't know it means jim care, it could be anyone saying something awesome and like before I practice, I would just play that and then I have a fifteen minute walk to the rehearsal space tow let that sit and be like okay like I'm in a better place than when I was before that because that amps me up I know it you know what I mean so like acknowledging what inspires you and harnessing it like save the video's bookmark things like have your like I'm about to go practice playlist I don't know whatever you need but like yeah it's like and then the little things like when I go practice between here and my rosa spent is there's this amazing bakery that somebody's too old armenian people and every time I go practice we regardless of hologram I go by a one dollar coffee and a one dollar fifty cristante and I'm so happy and like knowing that on my way to practice I get to do that it makes me so stoked to go practice I told you it's like it's funny when I when I wake up so I living in baltimore city and you've been to my place I work in the county so it's like a fifteen minute drive and there's a spot that I stopped at every day I get my coffee I get microsoft and that's like I look forward to that every morning it's like oh I could stay in bed but you know what? I'm gonna miss breakfast there if I don't go right now I'd better go and it's going right rush things yeah, it's little things like that. And and I think everybody knows what those things are personal for. The selves that you had to find over mike it's, like I get to wake up, drink green tea, you know, it's like it was like a tv screen. Exactly. Looks like fourth one you go. Probably got pete. I do pretty bad. Yeah, but that's, you know, that's. A huge, huge thing, real quick. Before we get the next topic, I wanted to take a question from susan from the audience online. Hey, j p I just wanted to push that even further. And have you been touring with the dalai lama? Like, I don't understand how you are, mr zen, at twenty three, the things that you have said so far, one of the things you said that I thought was really interesting when you're talking about balancing is that to actually get into bed, get into balancing your day like use, like, be excited just about trying to balance things instead of just talking about balancing, but actually look at it as a task of like, oh, how can I balance today? This is exciting, but one thing I wanted to ask you is in you kind of said this a little bit mad, but you seem like a really motivated individual that is you're balancing for you means you need to chill and relax because you're just driven and your goal oriented and stuff like that, what about people who feel that they're more lazy and that their balancing for them is actually they're fine hanging out? They're fine with the time off that's not the balance they need, but they just they need more motivation in life or they need to get out there and do it like, how do you balance that way? For people that are not as driven as you are, like the reverse reverse of you? He says, I don't have any tips, I know a lot of people like that, so let me think like I think I mean, the reason that it's easy for me to feel like excited about what I want to do in the day is because I know what I need to do in the day and that I know I can do it. I realized recently I really like it makes me really happy I released thrive from being being challenged like but like challenges that I know I can it's not like, pull a semi truck down the street, it's like you need to do this thing that you've never done, it might be like email this guy like whatever it is but like I love and I live for really like these little challenges they make me super excited so for me what keeps me going is knowing what I have to do and knowing how and that I can in fact do it I think and the days that I really have trouble like like moving forward is when I just don't know what I'm supposed to be doing and I think that's probably what most people faces not like because you'll you'll sign like people who are like, quote unquote like I'm a lazy person but then all of a sudden when they have a task like they're stoked about it they're energetic they get it done so it just like it's not the fact that maybe they're lazy is the fact that they maybe don't know what the next steps are so then maybe it's like instead of like just saying I need to work I need to do well work you know and I just I need to work on something like I'm a lazy person all I did was play video games this weekend now I need to like work but it's not really like you don't just need toe work for work sake like what's the task and what are the steps forward? You know what I mean? And it's like it really helps to create dead lines for yourself like if I don't I just started doing this recently like a couple weeks ago and I was so stoked this was like a life changing event actually because all like the business side of my life which is like just this like the website and booking stuff that's like predominantly what it is like running my website new video every week, extra content and then booking whatever is being booked and like I was just finding like I was just floating and like I said earlier like a month would pass and like I wouldn't have like things would not have gotten done that I would have thought have been done because they weren't huge tasks but there was no deadline and if there's no deadline for me it's really hard for me to meet like just randomly put it out of the van today is like the day I'm feeling inspired to put this out like it's really hard to worry like that. So what I did is I got a big like one of those big paper calendars and it hangs in my kitchen and it's on ly deadlines it's like and I literally just like made like this is a list of all the things I want to accomplish this year and they all now have a date so like and what I'm realizing is like there's plenty of time to do them all like everything has like four days or a week to dio but they'll actually get done and now that they're in a calendar, if I actually just literally follow the calendar and do like the minimum right there that I set for myself were just totally tangible then after that amount of time, this is the list of things I would have gotten done, you know what I mean? And some of them aren't like this gets released this gets finished, it might be like prepare for this these two days, two days you need to like really prepare for this? So when those two days come there isn't that like, over whelming questions like, what am I going to do today? I am an independent musician, I can do kind of whatever I want today, but I get out when I put in what's important so it's like, okay, well, I've previously decided that this is important this needs to happen right now so that's, where we're going, you know, it's like it's, the kind of mentality were like if you just started a band, the best way to make your band really tight is the book of show in like three months that you're not currently ready for, so that, like you will organize the practices, you will get it together, you'll write the new music so that you don't look like an idiot, you know what I mean? So like is that kind of mentality it's like I don't think I need to work but I think what I think what do I want to accomplish that he said with goals and then like what are the baby steps to get there and then like put a little date and then just like meet your deadline like make a vow like I'm eating all my deadline's forever and then step by step I don't know yeah I think so the last thing I really want to ask you about is your support system you know and how important is it for people that are trying to accomplish what everybody tuning in and what we're all trying to accomplish with with art with music how important is it with surrounding yourself with like minded individuals and for you you know you you were at school you left school you set a goal for yourself toe win the guitar center drum off you accomplished that goal through hard work then you decide you know what? I'm going to move to the most competitive city pretty much in the world new york city and I'm going to be a working drummer and by the way I'm bringing like the coolest and most supportive and most driven people with me so how important is it to have those like minded people and how important is it to spend time developing those relationships for your goals? Um I always say you can't choose your friends but you can choose who you're not going to hang around and that was that was a big point that I want to bring up it was the other side of that question is who do you choose to not spend your time with so yeah yeah yeah and you'll know like like I I do think like my group of friends they are some of those amazing people ever and when I was deciding to move to boston from my grove minnesota one school in boston music school berkeley and it was never I had no idea they'd never crossed my mind like I'm going to go to school and find new kinds of people I didn't know existed like that was just us that was what happened really, but like I had no idea that in minnesota I shared so little in common with so many people that I grew up with because I was just really into music and no one else in my area was and I grew up in the suburbs I had didn't have drummer friends I didn't I had like a couple music friends, but it was like very like suburban sports focused sort of thing, which isn't a bad thing it's just like looking back is like, well, it makes sense that like I didn't have that much in common with people they're so then when I'm when I moved to new york, it's like every time I thought I should really hang out with this guy because, like, it'll be a good idea or are like this that, like, kind of like, like, wrong intentions like that has never led to a friendship that has lasted or mattered, like in of my best friends now, like, at no point did I remember it being a conscious decision, I should hang out, I should hang out with this guy like we just kind of ended up, we're going to go because we had similar mindsets, but the reason that that I was like, right now, I think I shared so much in common with my friends, is that I put myself in an environment where people like that exist. So I really believe in if you're really serious about music or whatever your art is, whatever your passion is, period, if you're really serious about it, you always want to make sure that you can never look back and say, what if I had done this, right? So with that mentality, where you going to put yourself physically, you know, like the reason I ended up going to burn like berkeley's really expensive, like my family is not immensely wealthy, so that was a huge part of the decision was like I don't know if I want to go to music school because, like it's going to bankrupt my family here like this could not this could turn out to be really not good, but my mom was like, this was kind of a turning point like, you know, I want to look back and say, like, what if I had gone and tried really hard? Like, what if I put myself in the best place for me to do my thing and the side product from that is the people you meet and like, the progress you make and how much, whatever you gave and this I'm not this isn't me saying go to berkeley, this is me saying for you, where's, the best place that you could possibly be to achieve whatever it is you want to achieve and why aren't you going to go there? And are you going to regret it? It's like, if I'd gone to berkeley, nothing, it happened, but I tried my absolute best, and also it was like, I you know what? I'm not going to be a musician like I tried really hard, I'm just gonna, like, go dio like graphic design, whatever I would absolutely not regret is the time I put in working my butt off, trying my hardest because I learned so much about myself and I like now I would be able to live my life and be like not be like what if I had tried to be a musician and think about it every day and inside it just kind of eat what you like if like so many people are like man I really want to be a musician but I hate my town there's no music there's no scene and I'm like so what do you going to do about it like you acknowledge the problem either like live with a problem and stop about it or fix the problem and move you know what I mean like it's really quite simple like if you always put yourself in the best position to succeed and you'll never look back and say what if I had done this what if I had tried harder what if I put the time and what if I had skipped this what if I had whatever it may be I think if you can always keep that in mind you'll end up in places with really like minded people and when you're around like many people like you just sort of gravitated to each other you know what I mean? So that's how I think I ended up around the people that I'm around and it was just like a mutual respect thing you know it's not necessarily built on like with my closest friends is not necessarily built on like we've spent so much time together because we really haven't we really know each other, like, four, five years by the time I went to school, but like, we have such a mutual respect for each other, that, like, I just adore like what they do and, like, they're so willing to help, and they think similarly about music about are, like, what's important in life, and we support each other that that's, like the like, most important kind of foundation of friendships in the art world is like, you want to find people who weren't like, well, don't be jealous of peoples practice because you'll find other people that aren't jealous of your progress so that when your friend and which you'll realizes there's no reason to be jealous, because guess what, your friends becoming super famous like there is a little bit of, like, proximity like effect that happens in the music room if the bass player that I always play with becomes, like epically famous and has bazillions of fans like some of that kind of spills over and like, they kind of like, maybe people are like, oh, I also play drums and they're like they become little j p fans or whatever it may be and what I mean, like your friend's doing great. Is great for your generation of music and it's got to just be this community effort toe like we're all doing this because it's the same thing like no one's taking your job, you know I mean like someone liking the red hot chili peppers doesn't mean that person's going toe not like your band, you know what I mean? Like you can't hate the red hot chili peppers because they stole all the fans and everyone has one band there like it's not like that so like there's room for everyone to be awesome, you know? I mean, you just have to, like, realize it's not really a competition, but this is really like a group effort and like, once you could be like, this is so a group effort, I hope my friends do awesome, I'm gonna do everything I can to make them awesome they'll do the same for you and all of a sudden you've got the coolest, most brilliant people that, you know, all working on each other's projects making something, making each of them like, really special and new and like really carrying about which is heart that's that's a couldn't ask for a better answer that was great. Is there anything that you wanted to ask her if you wantto you know, I think for me in a situation like this, it's trying to see which nuggets of j p we can bring to them because we know so much and there's just not enough time for them to soak in what we've got new experience by being friends and j p so jp, maybe I think one thing that I have definitely borrowed from you and matt and I did talk about how in the common thread weave you know, we learned so much from each other by teaching together everyday, but maybe you could explain to them kind of your concept of what that happens and really doesn't happen in the gray area and why you live in the extremes totally um yeah it's a mentality that I started to realize I guess with, um with my drumming but he's really applicable to pretty much everything. Um I call it a grey area like he said it's really just like example, if I'm playing a if I'm gonna put a drum for you, I can't drum solo whatever may be going to play like a two minute drum solo for you for whatever reason it's a clinic or something um like what moves people is the extremes like what? What what like spurs emotion is the crazy loud that crazy intense right here is like, oh my god, I'm yelling in your face and then like the whispers like that is so important and if you spend the entire two minutes right in this medium volume medium intensity like not quite sure where we're going like it's un interesting and what makes people what moves people I really think is the extremes in everything and I think I think you can live I think you can apply that to like everything you do it it's just like if you're going to do something like do it extremely that's all extremely what it doesn't matter but like don't just do something if you're going to do it is like the same idea with with ifyou're goingto do an event make it exceptional in every way and it's kind of like you could say like make it extreme in every way like it was extremely well run it was like extremely organises whatever maybe it was extremely effective everyone community communicated extremely well like like with communication that's an area like that's such an extreme that is very rarely achieved like communicating with people with such extreme like good intention honesty that there is no question about how you feel there's no question about what's going on but like there's so much gray area b s communication that happens nowadays because in almost a step on your toes no must like make you feel bad now I want to do this it's like almost like say the wrong thing but like if you would just extreme with three communication you're like you know I don't like when you do that like if when you do that like we can't keep this can't progress if you're doing this so we need to like figure out a way to make this world a little differently like no one does that but every time they do that it's an immensely positive result like that's another outside of music extremes it's just like the gray area is like it's so everything is in the gray area so like night like it's not going to stand out unless it's something like special you know let it like leaded have its place whatever it is like if it's music like strive for the extremes and like whatever you're doing I think it's just really important get to some questions from the guys here but when you sit out the drum set are you trying to be conscious of whether or not you might be in that gray area I think we all like thomas leggs gray area is much more advanced than our gray area you know so are you conscious of like okay, this is mundane this is my gray I'm chilling and not being extreme do you spend time thinking about that hears I think about a way to look at it is the gray area equals having no intent like by extreme I don't mean like you have to be doing crazy things or you have to be like just like tapping like the rim of your floor, tom every two seconds doing nothing like I just mean, you know, when you're in the gray area because, you know, you don't know where you're going like that moment where you're like, oh, my gosh, everyone's, like, probably really hating this, I'm hating this because I have no idea where I came from the way I'm going that's really the great area it's not like it is like, if you just have to be going somewhere, you know what I mean? And it's like, well, you know, when you're not going anywhere, I think that's what I think that's the way to look at it it's like bye bye bye strife, the extremes. I just mean everything you're doing, like, no, the intention behind it and just like, follow through, like, really fully, you know, that was awesome. Thank you. All right. We have one question in a studio audience, and then we have one from online. Thanks, man. Thanks much man for doing this. By the way, the same guy who wrote the art of war wrote a book called do the work. I would a man. It is phenomenal. I definitely think you might be into that. The war of words yeah sorry what I say you said the art of war the guy who wrote love sorry sorry I got confused yeah also turning pile stephen president steven press field in general's great author anyway so a little a little less philosophical I guess my question is but like a day to day thing I know that sometimes you know like I'm a musician I work from home a lot when I don't have lessons you know I'm at home you know, trying to do emails you know, websites whatever and you know sometimes it can be a bit of a solitary life at times maybe not just musicians but for artist in general like you say you get up you practice websites, videos I mean that's probably out of time kind of being at home I'm I guess I'm asking more than anything like to you'll find that you're kind of like I kind of wanna not be in my room right now I don't know I kind of want to like get out and do something and how do you do that? You know what your thoughts on that yeah absolutely like I'm definitely the same experience the same thing like and it was different when I was at school because or at even in minnesota it was a long time like so when I was in boston what was it birthday like I lived with two roommates our good friends and really most things that I did throughout the day involved someone I liked it was like if it was banned practice those were some of my best friends if it was class like I usually I conveyed a friend or two in class and like you're always around people all the day so I think that's why I didn't really like in college I really was like rarely I didn't like really yearn toe like just like go see a friend because I was like seeing friends all the time with whatever I was doing just because of the environment but when I feel that now you just described is not I I moved to new york and I live alone like it's just me and like, they're well, daphne days were like I wake up in a practice, I do my thing and go to the grocery store and deuce like whatever I'm doing and then like a pm his and I'm like, man, I didn't talk to a single human today and I didn't see anyone in like you feel it, you know you really do feel it after whiles like man, I would love to just chill with my homie right now is that you I it's just important to like just like you learning about yourself all the time, you know, like it was weird living alone moving out of the home because I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna react well, because I've always been like I'm so independent like I could spend like a week and like, just be nice super happy about something like realistically, like I do miss people I missed my friends, but I don't see them it is just like not being afraid of values, nothing like letting you might not letting my ego be like, you know, you don't need people like you definitely need people around you big time. So, like when a pm guys make maybe make a plan and like or like maybe I'm going to see a couple shows this week, I'm gonna do something fun this week or like cop somebody for lunch is like that's super super important in my life now, it's just like acknowledging it and then like making sure that it happens in the right of moon and same thing constant balancing act and you always know when you go too far, you always know what you're like, okay? Like I don't think I just, like had like six lunch dates and now it's midnight and I really wish I would have not had that sixth lunch date because I could have done a lot of things, but, you know, it's a balancing act, we'll need people awesome j p I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and just given some of your time to this to this class and the people that are tuning and watching this I learned a ton I know in the in studio audience has been just like nodding their head like yeah on the whole time that I'm having been super cool man I have one more question for you and there's been a lot of questions in the chat room actually sort of surrounding this uh this one specifically is like at what point do you outsource your material to somebody else to help you build your content like whether that's video or like website so the question is I guess do you need to learn how to be an expert well web developer and is that like on your to do list or like if your video like if you're not a getting a video editor for example and your drum videos in your lessons and stuff to you hire somebody to do that and at what point do you do that and also j t are you doing everything yourself? Mm um great question when you're asked that um that's like that's like a very relevant question because I'm able to do most things myself like do I do everything myself almost right now like it's really like what I do is the result of like things I've just been interested in in life like in high school I was I was in like the video like the school, I don't like the news show it was like we just did funny stuff on tv like I was in the filming in high school, I took a couple graphic design classes in high school, which were like basic classes it's stuff you could learn on youtube or linda dot com like pretty quick, you know what I mean? Um and from there like the design thing is one thing I'm very grateful to be able to do myself, but I really think and I really don't think this because I've been doing it for a long time, but I really don't think there's that it's not that hard of a world to like start to understand like photoshopped you know what I mean? Like saving up buying photoshopped or subscribing to creative cloud now is ah such a worthwhile endeavor such a worthwhile endeavor because like I use photo shop, I say like every two to three days to design something for my business, you know what I mean and that's the more you can do on your own, the less you're gonna wait for unbelievable amounts of time for other people to do things for you because it's like it's not as important to them as it is to you because it is your life so whatever you can learn how to do, you should learn how to do it, you know, like if you just have lake think of it this way if you're going to have some money at it, I could video they say you did like a drum cover or something you're going to put a video on youtube, you don't really know how to edit it it so you give it to your buddy that does videos like, okay, like when can we get this done by and he's like, well, I'm really like full this week, but like, I can probably work on that next week realistically that's like gonna be four weeks and think about like, if you just downloaded from you like, do not download anything like if you had finally got my movie and you look at enough tutorials like if you spent four weeks learning howto like, use this program that's really user friendly and you don't even need four weeks to learn like you can just do it yourself, you know? I mean, like the time you spend waiting for people to do stuff is going to stress you out so much I hate that and the time you spent waiting for people to do so if you could just learn howto do it yourself, I mean and there'll be a certain point were like instead of not knowing how to do it you just don't have the time to do it and then it's like a delegation factor but there are enough user friendly programs that like for video final cut is so it's it's so minus there's like ten things you need to know how to do and you could make any video that I have ever made a j p then yeah I just wanted to let you know for all of your photo shop design needs and even final cut there's a website called creative live dot com we do all that stuff here you might want to check it out sometime head yeah and it's free when you watch it lives do is let you know okay she hadn't heard of it yeah it's like this that's all it's all online it's going it's available the only thing the only thing that I have never done myself and if I could acquire one skill one just a mass of knowledge that I could just like jeannie put in my brain and I could do it would be computer programming because that's something that takes years and years and years to learn and it's something that like at this point it doesn't really make sense for me to really properly learn it so but that's really the one thing that I have from the very beginning not been able to do but a good friend of mine named mike he's of computers the fantastic guitar player he's also a really advanced computer programme has done it since he was in like seventh grades like really got into it and so he's the guy that codes all my stuff but like I paying like it's a job you know what you mean? So that's where the melody like I was like what can I afford and like at what pace can we like push things you know? Because it again he's like he has a lot of other work and if you're hiring people to do stuff they always have a lot of other work because like if they're really good at what they do, they should have a lot of work you know? It makes a lot of sense so so it sounds like now other than that I do everything so it sounds like if you if there's a huge benefit teo having somebody else do it and you can afford it so financial benefit to you and like a time benefit and and the finished product to is like going to be better for it then go for it yeah it's like if you could afford to pay someone to make you like the greatest music video ever that is going to be better for everyone involved and if you make it yourself you know I mean like but it is really like what's the best thing like with your budgets what is the best possible option was like let's just be logical about it I don't have ten thousand dollars to pay someone for a music video that's off the elves like mtv quality so that's not an option ok, check off my friends, friends and people that I have met in life who would give me a friend discount and do a pretty darn good job with gear that I can't afford to buy to make it who would be the best option to do this? Who do I like working with who's willing to do it and give me a little discount on the rates in exchange for me promoting them is a video maker and if there's nothing there was like, okay, who of my friend's owns a camera and what's the coolest thing we can do with that pam? You know they mean so it's really like it depends on your situation but like yeah, I think that's the best thing you can possibly dio it like not being afraid to ask people to be involved two favours to you in exchange for like promoting them or publicity and what not in sight standing on do what you can, you know, but the point is that you do it, do it, you do it I think the point is like like I want to make a music video I can't afford to pay like a professional videographer that works with my chemical romance and paramore. So I'm not doing a music video like throwing in the towel. That's it, you know, I mean, like what's the best. Like, ok, go's videos room. Those okay, go like they made those videos was the nice one. One camera shot and they choreographed a dance to it. Like let's say, that's, you okay? I can't afford any video team and I have one video camera, but I'm gonna make an awesome video like we're gonna work our butts off, not toe by other stuff and edit this crazy thing like we're gonna work our butts off to choreograph a dance in matching outfits to our music and that's the hit. You know, I mean, like that's such a great idea, and I don't have no idea what their budget was. That was probably just for fun, but like, I don't think, okay, go was a huge band at that time, so that was probably like the best thing they could have possibly done were