Meet Josh Ball, an MA Innovation in Sound graduate who has used his Master’s to develop his business Flowstate and music production workflow products like tlkbck.
Josh Ball, who is a graduate of the MA Innovation in Sound degree at dBs Institute’s Plymouth campus, runs his company Flowstate, which develops tools to improve music production workflow. Find out more about him and his career here!
Hey Josh! Introduce yourself and your background in music and sound
My name is Josh. I've been creating music since about 11 when I started to learn the guitar. From there, I came to dBs to do my BTech. I did Electronic Music Production, went on to do my Undergraduate Degree and then the Master's.
How did you start Flowstate?
So Flowstate came about while I was on the degree here at dBs, I started to get into music-related programming with things like Reaktor and Max for Live and decided to create some tools for myself to use in the studio to improve my workflow and stay in that ‘flow state’ and in the zone. When you're trying to create music certain blockers get in the way. So I saw opportunities to create tools and devices to assist in that. I took that through the end of my degree, and then on to the Master’s as well. I started to develop various tools and projects for improving workflow, improving accessibility and some of that work did really well. They were featured in places like CDM and some content creators featured them.
What was the inspiration for your product tlkbck?
So the inspiration for tlkbck came about around seven years ago, when I saw a post from a friend of mine, a fellow student called Trey who is blind, commenting on accessibility within music production software. That’s where I had the very first idea about using voice control in the studio. I started to research that for my dissertation and then for my thesis and was then put in touch directly with Trey. We worked together for a long time on voice control and that also led to another solution called Live Reader, which is another accessibility solution for Ableton to allow control of the DAW using keyboard commands. From that, I received some Arts Council funding to allow me to develop it much further.
What was it like studying at dBs Institute?
The amount of knowledge and connections that I gained here from the BTech, BA and MA have been so valuable to me. Tlkbck wouldn't have been possible. It wouldn't be at the stage it's at now without the help of dBs. We actually applied for an Innovate UK funding grant, which we got, and that basically enabled me, at the end of my masters, to spend a year developing tlkbck. It would be nowhere near the stage that is now, it'd be a good few years behind.
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