Technology Should Make Creativity Feel Magical (Zoe Wrenn of Tamber)

Also available on: Apple Podcasts · Spotify

Musician, self-taught coder, and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree Zoe Wrenn shares how she went from touring and creating the viral song “Hailey” to founding Tamber, a suite of music technology tools designed to support the creative process. We also discuss handling rejection, raising funding, and building technology that keeps human creativity at the center.

Key Takeaways

• A second skill can support your creative career and eventually lead somewhere you never expected.

• Technology is most valuable when it expands what creators can do without taking the creative decisions away from them.

• Rejection becomes less intimidating when you treat every no as practice rather than proof that you should stop.

Follow Zoe:

Website (Tamber)

Instagram (Tamber)

Spotify (WRENN)

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Transcript:

Mike: Hey, Zoe. How’s it going?

Zoe Wrenn: Good. How are you?

Mike: I’m doing well, thanks. Thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. I’m excited to talk to you because what you’re doing right now is truly incredible, but your background is also fascinating. You’ve blended your passions for music and technology into something truly unique.

I want to start by asking about technology itself. I know this is a very big question, but what does technology mean to you?

Zoe Wrenn: Definitely a big question, but technology has always meant a way to express yourself. Basically, whatever you can dream up, you can create. I feel like it’s very similar to music, where you have an idea, execute it, and give birth to something that is an extension of you.

I think technology is here to elevate the human experience. Anything that does that and makes it feel a little more magical is truly good technology.

Mike: I completely agree. I feel strongly that technology, at the end of the day, is a tool. It’s up to us as humans to determine how we’re going to use those tools, for better or worse. Ultimately, as you mentioned, technology enables creativity.

I was listening to a podcast a while ago, and they were discussing the history of Leonardo da Vinci. We’re going way back. He was an apprentice at the time and discovered a new painting technique that made paintings look more realistic. He became so good at it that his master quit painting because he couldn’t do what Leonardo was doing.

Leonardo da Vinci was inherently curious about science and technology, and he incorporated that into his art. There has always been some connection between technology and art.

Zoe Wrenn: One hundred percent. The way people can use technology right now is very similar to a paintbrush. I like that analogy because I think it’s a new way to create. If you handed ten artists the same palette of paint but different tools, what they created would be vastly different.

That’s what’s special right now. We have the ability to create things faster, but with new tools that will always produce something different.

Mike: You’re a classically trained musician, right?

Zoe Wrenn: I am. I was a jazz guitarist for a very long time, and then I was a classical composer for a while too.

Mike: That’s amazing. Being a jazz guitarist is an interesting mix because, although it obviously exists, it’s usually an unusual blend of the two.

Zoe Wrenn: I was a jazz vocalist, and that was my main thing. I think the passion spilled over from there. I was playing a lot of rock guitar, and then the jazz passion took over. It’s pretty all-encompassing when you’re in it.

Mike: Was that why you went to NYU, to study music?

Zoe Wrenn: Yes. I went to the Clive Davis Institute, which is part of Tisch. It’s essentially their commercial music program. I only went for a year because shortly after that, I was offered a tour. I thought, “Well, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” But it was a great year.

Mike: After one year, you were invited to go on tour?

Zoe Wrenn: Yes. I toured for a couple of years with a few of my friends. The first tour I did was with an artist named gnash, who had a big song called “i hate u, i love u.” We toured with that, and I co-wrote some songs on his album. It was an amazing experience.

Mike: That’s incredible. You were touring and doing all these amazing things. Did you feel that being a musician was going to be your career?

Zoe Wrenn: At that point, for sure. I think people’s purpose changes as they change, but at that time I thought, “This is what I want to do.”

I still love it, don’t get me wrong. I think I’ve found a passion that is better suited to what I currently like to do. But for a while, I thought, “This is it.”

Mike: I’m curious because, at some point, you got into coding. That’s obviously very different from making music. Why did you decide to get into coding?

Zoe Wrenn: I started coding when I was about 13 or 14. It was something that seemed hard, and I have a passion for things that seem very difficult. I like to approach things that I have no past experience with and see if I can do them.

I’ve been really into blacksmithing lately because that’s another thing that nothing in my life could have prepared me for.

Mike: You like going to the edges of things, don’t you? It seems like the complete opposite of everything else.

Zoe Wrenn: It’s interesting. I think things that exist on these outskirts are actually much more related. I’m not a particularly religious person, but my dad always said that music feels like the closest you get to God.

When I was creating things at 14, augmented reality was a big thing. I would have a dream about something, create it, and then watch it appear in real time. It was a semi-religious experience, similar to how I felt when I created music.

I feel like they had much more crossover than you might expect.

Mike: That’s incredible. You taught yourself?

Zoe Wrenn: Yes, primarily through YouTube. YouTube is the people’s college, in my opinion.

There was also a guy making a lot of tutorials on YouTube at the time. When I was about 16, I sent him a blind direct message. He ended up becoming a good friend and taught me a lot of the augmented reality skills I know now.

Mike: That’s really cool. You taught yourself through YouTube and started learning augmented reality. I noticed that you also got into freelancing. Did you decide, “This is something I enjoy, it challenges me, and now I want to make money from it”?

Zoe Wrenn: It was more that I tried it, discovered I could do it, and then the ideas started flowing. I thought, “I want to integrate this into my music.”

At the time, I was creating an augmented reality video game with all these different characters. I was also into virtual reality, so I had some VR videos you could enter. This was back in the days of the wired HTC Vive, so it was a while ago.

I built a couple of computers to handle it too. It spiraled into this question of how creative I could be and where I could expand it.

If you’re a creative person looking at a technological process creatively, it’s a very unique way of approaching it. I happened to meet people who wanted to hire me to do these freelance projects, which I really enjoyed. Pretty much every project was a challenge, which was very appealing.

Mike: During this time, you were also releasing music as an artist.

Zoe Wrenn: Yes. I was on tour for a majority of that time as well.

Mike: I like that because I talk to artists all the time about having a second skill, especially if you’re doing something creative. It can be particularly useful if it’s something you can do remotely.

For example, while you’re on tour, as long as you have Wi-Fi access, you can take out your laptop and get work done on the road. That’s a valuable skill set because you can earn income from it while also pursuing your creative work.

Zoe Wrenn: I think so. Sometimes when you’re on tour, certain moments can feel repetitive. When I would sit down and code after a show, it broke me out of that thought process and helped me give better performances the next day, if that makes sense.

They really leaned into each other. I enjoyed both of them a lot.

Mike: That’s truly amazing. I also want to mention the outreach involved in freelancing. It sounds like these things activated different parts of your brain, but was it challenging to handle the outreach for both?

You had to pitch yourself for freelance work while also setting up tours, pitching venues, thinking about release strategies, and doing everything else at essentially the same time.

Zoe Wrenn: Yes. The music side came a little easier, maybe because I had more passion for it and was doing it more often.

Getting freelance coding jobs was pretty crazy. Back then, and I think it has improved a little now, I would have to send code samples under a different name. I used Evan because it could be a female or male name.

I consistently found that to be an issue. I also had red hair back then, and that was a thing.

Can you hear my dog? I’m sorry. She’s yelling.

Mike: That’s okay. We love pets on this podcast.

Zoe Wrenn: Okay, cool. Hopefully she’s fine.

That was something I faced that I wasn’t expecting right away.

Mike: You were touring, releasing music, and doing freelance coding and augmented reality projects. It sounds amazing. Then you decided to start your own company, now called Tamber.

It sounds like you already had a lot going on. Why did you decide to start a company?

Zoe Wrenn: I didn’t mean to. I like to say that a lot.

I was a touring musician and freelance engineer. There was also a period when I was working for a company called Artisan Vehicles, creating underground mining simulations while touring.

Then COVID happened, and pretty much all of that stopped. I was home all the time with this beast of a computer I had built, unable to do much freelance work.

I decided to build a tool I had always wanted, which would help me speed up the creative process. I wasn’t necessarily a producer. I was Pro Tools certified, but not much beyond that. I wanted something that could coach me and help me make better music faster.

It wasn’t that I thought I was making bad music. I just wanted something that didn’t exist, so I built it.

The first song I wrote with it, using it as a sparring partner, was “Hailey.” It went super viral and received around 30 million streams and 350 million impressions. I gained approximately a million and a half followers from it, which was crazy.

The biggest thing was that I started connecting with other musicians who were similarly having viral success during COVID. It was special. We were all in a group chat, which was really cool.

Through those conversations, I noticed that people shared the same pain points. I would ask my friends, “What do you want?” Then I would sit down and build it.

To be totally honest, I feel like I blinked and suddenly it was a company. It was not something I ever anticipated.

When I closed my first round of funding, it was just me. I was a team of one. It became clear that this was a very real thing.

I also started seeing what was appearing in this space, and I was pretty disgusted by it. I took up the sword and thought, “There must be something more positive in this space.” That has been a driving force behind it too.

Mike: You left a few things out there. You went from accidentally finding an idea that resonated with other musicians who were going viral to raising funding. That’s a big jump.

You didn’t come from a venture capital background or have experience developing a technology company. I know you may not be able to discuss every detail, but that is huge, especially when funding can be challenging to acquire. How were you able to accomplish it?

Zoe Wrenn: If you’re a touring musician, and your first tour was in a windowless white van with six guys, I think the artist mentality is very well suited to the founder path.

You’ve done this a lot. You’re hungry. You’re not afraid to sleep on the floor of a Motel 6, get up, and say, “I’m going to do the thing.”

One of my favorite quotes is that water doesn’t cut through rock because of the force of the stream, but because of its persistence. That has been consistent for me. You get up, take a million no’s, and say, “No, I’m going to do this thing.”

I had 98 no’s before we finally closed the round and found a lead.

The lead of my first round was a guy named Kevin Novak, who is an actual genius and was one of the first people at Uber. I think he shared this mindset when he met me.

I went to a pitch competition and won $10,000. Afterward, he came up to me and said, “I saw how the crowd was responding to you and this product. Do you want to come downstairs?”

It was at a whiskey distillery. He said, “Do you want to come downstairs with the whole fund so we can get to know each other? Maybe there’s something here.”

I got to know the entire fund. They shared this old-school technology mindset that this was a unique person with an interesting idea, and she might be the person capable of doing it.

His belief in me was incredibly impactful. I didn’t go to Stanford and had never run a company before, but he looked at me and thought, “I think this girl can do it because the problem she’s solving is one she solved for herself.”

That was pretty cool.

Mike: That’s truly amazing. It shows your persistence and resilience, which you developed as a touring musician.

I feel like there are many similarities between touring and being the founder of a company. You go through a roller coaster of ups and downs. It can range from sleeping in a comfortable hotel room to sleeping on a dirty floor, doing whatever it takes to get by.

Zoe Wrenn: You have to want something so badly that it almost teeters on desperation, but it’s fueled by this hunger. A lot of musicians have that too.

It felt like a natural progression. When I started meeting founders, many of my friends asked, “Aren’t you scared and stressed all the time?”

I said, “No, I toured for three years. I’ve been ready for this moment.”

Mike: Let’s talk about Tamber. What is Tamber?

Zoe Wrenn: I like to say Tamber is like the Adobe Creative Suite for music creation tools. It’s a large suite of tools, and about six of them are currently available.

They include our tool Tamby, which is similar to Clippy and works within your sessions. You don’t need to download a new digital audio workstation. You can use whichever DAW you want.

You can talk to Tamby and ask her to do something as simple as start recording or create a new track. She can also scan your plugins and help you find a synthesizer that feels blue or tastes like chocolate.

We have a gestural instrument where you can put your hand in front of the camera and play music without touching anything. It’s really cool.

We have another tool called Librarian that can scan your entire computer and show you every audio sample you’ve downloaded. We can then apply synesthetic descriptors to those samples.

All of our models are trained in-house. We don’t train on third-party audio. We worked with many artists who have synesthesia, so the system understands not only what a note sounds like, but what it tastes like or what color it is.

You can communicate with the tools using more interesting, complex, and natural language.

We also hired musicians around the world to create a vast internal sample library based on ambient recordings. These come from places ranging from Bamako, Mali, to Hong Kong and New York. Our team of in-house producers turns those recordings into usable samples.

There are a few other things, but it’s pretty big. We don’t create synthetic audio, so you can’t type in a prompt and receive a finished piece of music. The point is to augment your workflow.

We’re very anti-generative audio. We also became carbon neutral as of last week, so that’s a big thing.

Mike: I love that.

Zoe Wrenn: Thank you.

Mike: That’s very big. You also used the analogy of Clippy. I don’t know if that’s necessarily the best analogy to use.

Zoe Wrenn: Some people know Clippy, and if people don’t know Clippy, they should Google it. It’s a fun rabbit hole.

Mike: It is a fun rabbit hole.

I’ve seen many videos online showing how Tamber works and how you’re engaging with music in a different way, especially through augmented reality. I love the gestural aspect. It was magical to see how everything worked together.

I also love Tamby, your little assistant. Even when you ask it to do something, it has fun animations. It almost feels alive. I appreciate how much thought went into that level of detail. It literally feels like a fun assistant helping you work.

Zoe Wrenn: Thank you. I appreciate that. We’ve spent years and put a lot of passion into creating something that I think is important in the space right now.

Mike: I also want to recognize one of your accomplishments. Last year, you were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, which is a very big deal. Congratulations.

Zoe Wrenn: Thank you. That was crazy. You don’t know that you’re on the list until the day it comes out. I found out around 4:00 in the morning while refreshing the page. It was crazy. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

Mike: Another important point is that you use what you created. That isn’t always the case. Sometimes a company’s founder is building a tool for someone else, but you’re a user of your own platform.

Zoe Wrenn: Absolutely. I firmly believe that if a founder isn’t solving a problem that is actually their problem, they’re going to face many issues.

That’s also why many things in this space aren’t exciting to me right now. You can sometimes tell that the people creating them haven’t personally faced the problems they’re trying to solve.

It’s like someone saying, “I’m having a hard time producing,” and the response is, “What if music was Figma? What if we produced all the music for you?”

You can tell they haven’t experienced those problems themselves. I wanted to ensure that whatever we created was something I could use in my own music creation process.

Mike: I also appreciate how much work went into ensuring that the music comes from in-house samples. You hired musicians to capture real-life sounds and build the library. As you mentioned, it isn’t synthetic. These are real-world sounds that musicians can use to create new music.

Zoe Wrenn: Thank you. It has been incredible to see because we have videos that accompany all the samples. The archivists take handheld recorders and film videos. Many of the people we hire are both filmmakers and musicians.

Every time we receive samples, before we mix them, I have the entire team gather around the television in the main room. I say, “Let’s watch all of these videos.”

It’s incredible to see what we receive from places such as Shanghai, Johannesburg, and Tokyo. I’ve seen some of these places, but not from the perspective of someone who lives there.

We had a guy named Ahmed who recorded a collection of material in Cairo. What he captured, both in sound and video, as a native Arabic speaker from Egypt, was truly extraordinary. Being able to see and hear those things is one of my favorite parts.

Mike: You’re also engaging with musicians around the world and supporting them by hiring them to capture these sounds.

Zoe Wrenn: One hundred percent. When we first contact someone, we make sure we’re paying their daily rate.

It has also been cool to have people come back and say, “I had a lot of fun doing this.” They enjoy going out, discovering things, and rediscovering the cities where they live.

Pretty much everyone has said, “If you need any more cities, let us know.” We now have a huge network of people I like to call our archivists. It has been really cool to build.

Mike: I want to discuss the other side of this. You touched on generative artificial intelligence, which is still a hot-button issue for musicians.

What would you say to someone who looks at Tamber or Tamby and assumes it’s AI slop, generative artificial intelligence taking over jobs, or something designed to replace producers?

Zoe Wrenn: For people who say that about generative artificial intelligence, I fully agree with them and share the same sentiments.

The term AI has become synonymous with what many of the big players are doing. The loudest and most horrifying voices are naturally the ones people hear first, and I think that reaction is probably correct.

I don’t want anyone to stop being angry about this because they should be angry. That anger should be directed toward the people who are actually doing these evil and harmful things.

With Tamby, I understand the knee-jerk reaction when people see machine learning being used. It reminds me of intense politics. If you’re going to have an opinion on an issue, you should understand all sides and recognize what you’re actually fighting for.

Tamby is not generative artificial intelligence. We don’t use any generative artificial intelligence at all.

Our carbon footprint for the last year and a half is the equivalent of creating one steak dinner. I’m sitting next to the computer that I hand-built to train these models in-house, specifically so we could track our energy and water usage.

I also don’t think it’s that hard. The big players could do it if they wanted to. They just don’t want to do it.

What I would say is to take that anger, which is amazing and which you should have, and direct it toward the people who are actually poisoning the world. They exist, and they’re much more powerful than me and my team.

When Tamber came out and Billboard covered our release, which was awesome, we received many comments from people who didn’t read beyond the headline. I ended up messaging almost all of them and putting my personal email address on my story.

I said, “If you want to talk about this, you can book time with me. I will walk you through everything and show you all of our energy and carbon output for the last year.”

Afterward, people said, “Oh, wow. Now we’re cool,” because I was able to explain it to them.

Mike: I also want to mention that you built your own computer.

Zoe Wrenn: Yes. He’s sitting over there.

Mike: That’s amazing. Is there anything you don’t do at this point? This is truly incredible.

Zoe Wrenn: Technology is my specialty. I built many computers for augmented reality and gaming back in the day. This was my first machine-learning computer, but it’s the same kind of work.

Mike: I partially miss those days. When I was a teenager, I built my own PCs from scratch. It was so much fun to put everything together, see why something broke, and hope the operating system installed correctly.

There’s also something to be said for the tactile experience of building something.

Zoe Wrenn: Yes.

Mike: I think that’s true across the board, whether you’re building something physical, creating something digital, or making music.

For me, the passion comes from the process and the trial and error. It’s about learning, making many mistakes, and having intention at the core of it.

I can see that your intention has always been to create something ethical and valuable to other people. You’re doing something you love, and I can tell that everything you’ve done comes from genuine curiosity and passion.

Zoe Wrenn: I appreciate that. I like to say this is my life’s purpose at this point, especially after seeing what’s happening in this space and the fear people are feeling.

I said this at the beginning, but technology should elevate the human experience and feel like magic. It’s disappointing that we’re living in this technological oligarchy right now.

The big players claim to own a monopoly. Because they do, they don’t have to continue innovating. That’s a scary place to be.

Mike: That’s true, but we’ve also seen that today’s big players weren’t the big players even a few years ago. They were the innovators.

That’s something to remember. It only takes somebody willing to take a chance and accept a challenge. If you’re doing something better, faster, or in a completely different way, you can make a difference.

Zoe Wrenn: You can take them down. I’ll put it that way. I think you can.

Mike: I was going to be slightly more diplomatic.

You can certainly make your mark. Artificial intelligence technology is a perfect example. If you’re not adapting or innovating, you could eventually be left behind.

You can innovate in a way that is moral and ethical. Even outside of morals and ethics, it comes down to purpose and intent.

You deliberately ensured that what you created would leave, at this point, no carbon footprint. You gathered original samples from around the world. You created a tool that scans the samples musicians already have on their computers.

I can tell that you put a lot of thought into creating something useful. That’s the most important thing. What can I create that I’m proud of, passionate about, and that can make a difference in other people’s lives?

Zoe Wrenn: I appreciate that. That’s what this entire team is trying to do.

Mike: We can start wrapping things up. I have a couple of fun questions for you.

What was the first concert you attended?

Zoe Wrenn: Cher. My father was her musical director when I was growing up, so I think I must have been about a month old.

Mike: That’s a great first concert.

Do you have a go-to artist you’re listening to right now?

Zoe Wrenn: There’s an artist from Egypt named Haleem Taj Elsir. I really like his music right now. I think his work is really cool. It’s Sudanese Arabic.

One of my favorite artists is Keaton Henson. I’ve been listening to a lot of his work lately.

I’ve also been playing a playlist of 1960s and 1970s Iranian funk music, which has been very cool.

Mike: Awesome. Last question. If you could only give one piece of advice, what would it be?

Zoe Wrenn: You just have to keep going. You can’t give up.

Being a blue-haired woman in music technology, and in technology in general, is a lot. I received many no’s, and I think rejection therapy became one of the best things that ever happened to me.

When things get difficult, it normally means you’re getting close to something special and important. A lot of people give up during that period. Going through difficult things can be a blessing if you continue persevering.

It’s a repetitive piece of advice because everyone says it, but it’s very true. Don’t get disheartened if you find people who don’t understand you. Screw them. Who cares? You’re going to find people who do.

Mike: I appreciate you saying that because we’ve talked about your accomplishments, but also the no’s and rejections you received along the way.

That’s hard. I’m naturally an introvert, so it took me a long time to develop a thick skin for hearing no. Even now, sometimes the particular no that you were hoping would be a yes can put you in a bad mood. You have to learn how to cope with that.

My business coach taught me the concept of closing the loop. Whether the answer is yes or no, I find a sense of accomplishment in receiving an answer.

If the answer is no, at least I know they aren’t interested or don’t want to be involved. Great. I can move on to something else.

What drives me crazy is receiving no answer. Did they see the value in it? Are they busy? Were they offended by an email I sent? I have no idea.

If I receive a no, I know I don’t have to worry about it anymore. It’s done, they said no, and I can move on. I have “close the loop” written on my whiteboard. Whether it’s a yes or no, close it out. Feel accomplished that you received an answer, and then move on to the next thing.

Zoe Wrenn: One hundred percent. I think there are a few universal human struggles. One is the feeling of rejection. Others include the fear of not belonging and the fear of not being enough.

I think everyone is born with those fears, and there are very few repeatable experiences that help you work through them. Receiving a lot of no’s and experiencing rejection is one of them.

Every time, you get a little better at making it through. I think that builds an arsenal that helps someone face one of the biggest struggles we experience as people.

I tell myself, “This is a bummer, but it won’t hurt as much next time because I’m getting better at this.”

I think the brain atrophies when you stop learning. This is a way to continue learning how to make it through difficult experiences as a human.

Mike: I appreciate that too. It sounds like you’re an inherently curious person who is constantly learning new things.

I try to do that myself. Sometimes I become so focused on getting everything done that day that I have to remind myself it’s okay to be curious. It’s okay to try different things, even if they’re completely different from what I’m currently doing.

Zoe Wrenn: One hundred percent. What a blessing it is that you get to do that at all. That’s really cool.

Mike: Absolutely. Doing this podcast gives me a lot of joy, but it also allows me to learn from so many people.

I’ve done well over 250 interviews at this point. Every person I’ve spoken with has similar struggles, challenges, insecurities, and fears. What’s interesting is that every person has a different way of overcoming them.

The important thing is finding your own way to overcome those things.

To bring this full circle, I can tell that you have this attitude of, “I’m going to get through this. Whatever it takes, this is what I want to do and accomplish.”

You remain curious, continue learning, try different things, and create something you genuinely believe in.

Zoe Wrenn: I don’t always have a positive attitude, but I think it’s natural to try to give meaning to struggle and suffering. Giving it meaning provides a reason to continue.

I’m trying to get better at it. That’s one of my skills too, so I appreciate that.

Mike: Zoe, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun, and I really appreciate it.

We’ll include all of your links in the show notes. If you’re a musician, producer, or someone interested in making music, definitely check out Tamber.

It looks truly incredible, and I’m excited to see what’s ahead for you. You’re doing an amazing job.

Zoe Wrenn: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This has been great.