FRANCESCO FERRINI: Mixing Orchestra and Metal, Production Secrets, and The Truth About Guitar Tones

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, and now your host, Eyal Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we are now on our seventh year. Don't ask me how that all just flew by, but it did. Man, time moves fast and it's only because of you, the listeners, if you'd like us to stick around another seven years and there's a few simple things you can do that would really, really help us out, I would endlessly appreciate if you would, number one, share our episodes with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram, and tag me at al Levi URM audio and at URM Academy, and of course our guest. And number three, leave us reviews and five star reviews wherever you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, thank you for all the years and years of loyalty.

(00:01:01):

I just want you to know that we will never charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way. All we ask in return is a share a post and tag us. Oh, and one last thing. Do you have a question you would like me to answer on an episode? I don't mean for a guest. I mean for me, it can be about anything. Email it to [email protected]. That's EYAL at M dot A-C-A-D-E-M-Y. There's no.com on that. It's exactly the way I spelled it. And use the subject line. Answer me Eyal. Alright, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM Podcast. My guest today is Francesco Ferrini, who is a pianist and composer who's well known for his orchestral arrangements as the keyboardist for Flesh God Apocalypse, which is one of my favorite bands. He also has been the orchestrator on basically a who's who of sick bands. Records like Dean of Borge, Einstein kills Dragon Force and many, many more. This guy is awesome. I present you Francesco Ferrini. Welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:12):

Hey, thanks so much,

Speaker 1 (00:02:14):

Dude. It's a pleasure to have you here. I know I probably said this last time we spoke, which was several years ago. I love your work. Always have, and one of the things that has always drawn me to it is because I have an actual orchestral background. I always felt like when people said that metal and classical music are the same thing, it always pissed me off because it's not it. It's not the same thing. They're very, very different. And lots of times when I would hear bands use orchestration or a orchestral classical influence, I just felt like it was bullshit and not necessarily bad music, but when people would say that the influence was classical music, I would think this is not it. This is just some guy with a keyboard that knows a harmonic minor scale. But when I hear the stuff you've done both with flesh God and for other bands, I don't know which bands you're allowed to say that you've worked with or not. So

Speaker 2 (00:03:27):

Whatever, it's all public pretty much.

Speaker 1 (00:03:30):

Do people know that you've worked with dmu?

Speaker 2 (00:03:31):

People know it was a fun story because I actually worked on the record, but I haven't actually written anything. I just took whatever they did and turned it into a better result, giving it a better sound because I simply rearranged what they did with my libraries and then return it like a full orchestration on what they delivered, which was absolutely great to y Boren from Fashion edition studios. He just wanted me to take the original lines and give them a richer sound. That's it. So that means, of course, if you're properly orchestrating and not, like you said before, messing up over a keyboard, that means of course, assigning and arranging all the lines I could that I got from them into properly orchestrated samples, which is, it's pretty much like working with a real orchestra, except you don't have real musicians, but all the craftsmanship is the same, and there's also more requested, more craftsmanship is required in order to make them sound real, but that's a different thing. So yeah, I did that, but there was probably a small misunderstanding because probably someone started saying that I wrote the orchestrations for them, but that's not the truth. Actually what happened is I haven't written anything. I just took whatever they had and made it sound better, so

Speaker 1 (00:05:21):

Got it. But I guess point still being is that to me it sounded authentic

Speaker 2 (00:05:28):

In that. Oh,

Speaker 1 (00:05:29):

Thank you. It sounded properly orchestrated.

Speaker 2 (00:05:32):

Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:05:32):

With the stuff with flesh, God, I feel like compositionally, I hear that. It's one of the only bands I've heard, and I'm not trying to kiss your ass or anything, so sorry if it sounds that way, but with Flesh, God, it's one of the only bands I've heard where the orchestral influence sounds like it actually affects the writing. I know that you have some songs of choruses and verses and stuff, but the way that the songs develop sound like the real thing to me, and then then projects where I've heard that you just orchestrate it sounds properly well orchestrated, which is just not a common thing.

Speaker 2 (00:06:14):

Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:06:15):

In the metal world, and I'm curious your opinion, I think part of it is because you have two different styles of music that are already complete. It's an orchestra covers everything, and a metal band also covers everything, and so getting them to work together, it almost shouldn't work

Speaker 2 (00:06:37):

And sometimes it doesn't work,

Speaker 1 (00:06:42):

But you figured out how to make it work. So I'm curious, do you see it as two different things?

Speaker 2 (00:06:47):

If you look at the orchestral, at the symphonic side of things, there are things that you can't actually properly replicate within a metal arrangement, a symphonic metal arrangement, because you're basically, you have something really dynamic and really diverse in terms of sounds and also of course, dynamic layers that you can achieve. And the loudness that you can achieve within orchestra is very, very, it's a very, very wide palette of different sounds and different dynamics. And what happens in metal is that that very wide spectrum is actually limited because you have distorted instruments, you have very punchy drums, you have everything is really, really powerful all the time. Even if you have a song, even the most hollow parts where you have perhaps less dynamic, less things happening. Actually, there are so much stuff sonically speaking happening frequency wise. Frequency wise, yes. Even in a ballad, even if you have a power ballad still you have so much punch.

(00:07:52):

The problem with orchestration is that you have to fight against it most of the time, depending also on the position in the harmonic spectrum that you're going to cover. Of course, for some sections, for some kind of sounds, it's kind of easier for them to stick out of the mix, and they do it even too much sometimes. And other sections are more delicate or complicated to blend with the metal department, let's say. So they can be really complete things. You can't exactly treat the orchestra as you would do in many ways, yes, but in other ways you can't really do it. You can really keep things in consideration, things that perhaps you learn from textbooks, the same things don't exactly apply to the metal word. That's what I'm saying. You have to think outside the box and figure out ways to overcome this constant sonic pressure that it comes from the band. That's the problem.

Speaker 1 (00:08:54):

So it's almost like if you were to do an orchestral arrangement that had no band, it would almost always have to be different because all that space that the band is taking up would suddenly be gone, and it might be actually incomplete at that point.

Speaker 2 (00:09:14):

I'm thinking about, people very often ask me about bass instruments, like double basses or I dunno, bass in the bass section in a choir, and that really depends on the nature of the instrument, of course, because you can hardly hear, probably you will never hear double bass in a symphonic metal mix because all the low end is driven by other things, not from orchestral basis for sure. But there are base instruments which still have some content, especially when they played really loud. I'm thinking about bass trombones, for example. All the

Speaker 1 (00:09:59):

Brass instruments.

Speaker 2 (00:10:00):

Yeah, brass, especially the very defined one because in the oral world, in simple words, in simple words, oral brass are divided into, let's say the brass are divided into the brassy brass. So the brass, the more defined instruments like trumpets, trombones, which in their own sound is very, very defined, can be very metallic and punchy, very brassy, I would say. Even if it's a bit weird to say. And the other ones, like the French horns for example, they sound more round and kind of mellow. They're also different instruments. They have different construction techniques, so the sound is different and they're used in, they can still be punchy, especially when you play, I like for example, to double sometimes chuggy palms on guitars and bass with low brass following that stack, cattle patterns or accenting specific parts of a riff, and somehow even low brass, they have so much harmonic content even in the medium high register, and they still stick out of the mix even if the fundamental note is very low, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (00:11:22):

I also think that there's something in the timur of a brass choral, for instance, that when they are playing loud, it's like the essence of it or the energy of it has almost like a similar aggression that sometimes distorted guitars have.

Speaker 2 (00:11:42):

Yeah, absolutely. You're right.

Speaker 1 (00:11:44):

It's hard to explain, but when I hear Finlandia or something, I mean, I could hear that shit on guitars for sure,

Speaker 2 (00:11:54):

For sure. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:11:56):

And if anyone hasn't heard that, they should listen to it and see what I mean. Yeah, there's something about it that just sounds like it lends itself and interesting that you bring up double bases because actually on one of my band's records, we tried to use double basses because our bass player was an orchestral bass player. So we figured why not, man? It sounded like shit, not because of the frequencies, but the muddiness and the timur. It sounded like this natural instrument by itself in this sea of distortion, it just did not work together.

Speaker 2 (00:12:38):

No, I can easily guess why they're simply double bass. They don't have this really punchy character. I mean, they can play loud, but you don't have that drive that you have on brass, for example, or even on woodwinds or even on low choir sometimes there's so much air, even on tenors or bass lines on singers. I mean, when they scream, when they sing really loud, there's so much air that if you take it out, some people ask me, why do you write tens and basses on choir parts? I simply answer, because if you take away the male singers from a choir part, even if you have, yeah, you have distorted guitars and bass pretty much on the same area, but you'll still perceive even very subtly that something is missing if you just have altos and sopranos even on a metal part. So there's still so much content coming from the lowest voices of the choir that's the same, even more for brass. That's the same for percussion, but strings are so mellow, and they're also the weakest section in the orchestra, but also in real life.

Speaker 1 (00:13:58):

That's why you need so many of them.

Speaker 2 (00:14:02):

If you have a look, you have 15 violins, 10 violas, 10 cellos, and then you have three trombones, four trombones. They can match the volume in real orchestras and the punch, or they can even overpower strings very easily if you don't orchestrate properly, or if you have a real orchestra and the conductor doesn't, or the players themselves, if they don't know how to blend them well with others. Because loud dynamics, if I read forte on a score, which means strong loud in Italian, it's like the dynamic marking, dynamic markings in classical music and orchestral music are all in Italian, so that's good for me. Of course,

Speaker 1 (00:14:46):

It just sounds right in Italian.

Speaker 2 (00:14:49):

So formo, which is very loud, forti O on a trombone is much, much louder than a forti O on a double base. But if two players or two sections read Forti O on a doubling, let's say, on a baseline also in real life, the conductor or the players themselves with tri find a way to blend the two SMOs together to really play together and find kind of a balance. Strings will always be overpowered in a way, but if I have four tenor or bass trombone players and I ask them to blow really loud, really, really, really strongly on their instrument, they will wipe the whole string section away out. They will throw it out the window completely. So that's what happens in real life,

Speaker 1 (00:15:42):

And the amount of power that the brass section has is kind of

Speaker 2 (00:15:48):

Unbelievable. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:15:49):

Yeah. When you hear it done in real life, I remember actually thinking back to the nineties when my dad was trying to expand the orchestra, he got it to 96 players, which is not as big as it gets. He was trying to add still 10 more string players to that, just for balance reasons.

Speaker 2 (00:16:15):

Oh, of course.

Speaker 1 (00:16:17):

So when you're orchestrating something for a metal project, are you thinking about the fact that mix wise it might get buried and might be texture only? Is that part of the consideration?

Speaker 2 (00:16:32):

That's a very complex topic. First of all, I always consider that I typically write the arrangement and try to blend them with the music that I have, the stamps that I have during the production. I try to blend them to have a balance between them, which is the balance that I like and I hope the band likes, or even if there will be a difference if the bands decides to give the orchestra less prominence. So making it a little bit smaller, it will still work. I will still make sure that there's content that can be, and especially important things, I will still make sure that the important things that I want to be heard will be written in a way that won't be buried, because now that I have experience, I know for sure what's the first things, what are the first sections, the first instruments to be buried in a metal mix, and what are the last ones that will still stick out even if you keep the or really low?

(00:17:40):

But of course, I have typically 99% of the times besides flash cut, I don't have any control over the mix. I'm just being delivered from the bands. After the process is done, Hey, what do you think? Maybe I get a preview before the, but sometimes I just hear it when the album is released. Sometimes I get my arrangements completely changed, imbalance, completely changing structure. I get them mutilated. It's a bad word. I mean, I get them cut. Altered. Yeah, altered, yes. So I have absolutely no control over it. Sometimes the producer just uses my stuff as a pool of cool things to pick up from time to time. Then all the rest gets buried or just muted probably, for example, that of course, all the sections that will have less things to fight against. Like I'm thinking about violence, violence, high woodwinds, high choir. That will of course more naturally and more easily stick out of the mix anyways. But for the rest, I just hope the producer is good enough because also there's a shortage, in my opinion, of producers. There are so many amazing metal producers for all the different sub kinds of metal, all the different languages, but there's a serious shortage, in my opinion, of really, really, really 100% great symphonic metal producers.

Speaker 1 (00:19:20):

I completely agree,

Speaker 2 (00:19:21):

Because it's a very, very complicated thing to deal with, and it's a very specialized, requires very specialized skills. So not every producer, every metal producer, extreme or power metal or fresh metal can actually do that. That's my experience. At least

Speaker 1 (00:19:41):

There's not that many bands who even do it well, I guess so I think there's obviously even less mixers and producers who understand it well, which is a challenge.

Speaker 2 (00:19:56):

Yeah, I know that for sure that in the past when some producers who weren't used to this genre of music metal got involved with some big symphonic metal band, I know for sure that some of them, sometimes they require some extra help or some consultation with other mixing engineer and thought for sure, this happened in the past, and there are many producers also who are specialized in this kind of music. I'm thinking about Y of course, YZ Boren, who is for me is one of the best, if not the best, and Jakob Hanson also.

Speaker 1 (00:20:37):

Yeah, those two are unbelievable. There's another one, man, I'm not going to pronounce his name well, but I'll try t Vander Brook.

Speaker 2 (00:20:47):

Oh, UST is a young producer. He's getting so big now, rightly

Speaker 1 (00:20:52):

So,

Speaker 2 (00:20:52):

Years ago. He started in the past few years, I think he's been building up quite a big and important name for his studios and for himself, and it's unbelievable. Now he's got to work with Blind Guardian because before for Epica as well, Epica used to write and producee with this guy, but now he, he's got so good at mixing and mastering that now they go to him. They're just doing everything there at Sun Lane in Holland.

Speaker 1 (00:21:32):

Yeah, good for him. He knows what he's doing. But yeah, man, I think Ys and Jacob are among the, probably people are going to end up realizing that they're among the greatest ever at this point.

Speaker 2 (00:21:46):

Yeah, they're really nice, very cool, cool people. With Jacob, we found perhaps, I think the main difference, they have a different approach, Jacob, maybe he is more in general as a producer, is more into the extreme side of things. He's probably more experienced with the extreme bands like us. He did Aborted, he did Black Dahlia Mortar, he did a number of those, and Yance is more towards the power slash fresh metal or gothic or more atmospheric kind of things. He produced some of my favorite records of all times, and I think they're on the same level, top notch, both of them in different ways.

Speaker 1 (00:22:36):

I completely, completely agree. When you are working on something that you know is going to go towards someone like that, I guess, does it lower your anxiety level about what's going to happen to the orchestration?

Speaker 2 (00:22:56):

Yeah. If I work with a producer, I know and I know how he sounds like I know what he will do in a way. I mean, I don't exactly know because of course it's a secret recipe, but I know for sure how's it's going to sound, at least in general, I know what the impact will be. Even though each band, every band can be different, every band can decide that maybe it's better if keyboards and orchestra oral instruments that if they just step aside at the end of the day. So even there, there's a margin of change from the band as well or from the band's view, which is absolutely fine. Other producers, I guess sometimes it's not just the band asking for let's, because the first problem with the orchestration is that it's not just a matter of perception and presence. A here, all the cool lines that I read, that I wrote, that half of them or all of them just disappeared and it's just noise, but it's not just my pride as an orchestrator, but also the final result is an orchestra being just much smaller.

(00:24:17):

So that kind of cinematic vibe that you were searching for, if you just reduce the general presence of the orchestral, all the orchestral instruments, or you just keep it very much behind everything else, it's not just that you're losing the detail, but you're also losing the presence of something big, which is not big anymore. It's supposed to sound big in the movies, but it's just some keyboard in the background. I think in many cases it can be from the band. They don't want something else written by someone else to be too much on top of what they did because they're used to listen to their music in a different way than me, and that's fine. In other cases, it might be the producer who can't really deliver a production, which blends the two things very well. So as long as soon as you start putting the orchestra a little bit more out and making it more present, all the other instruments are affected in a bad way. The perception that you have of them is being blurred, or sometimes it's even maybe the producer. It happened to me in the early days, that producer telling you, yeah, if you do that, if you just push the orchestra this high, it will ruin everything just because they can't deal with it. I know producers like yes, who can keep the same presence on the metal instruments at the same time, he can deliver a stunning orchestral production. He can blend very well. The two things

Speaker 1 (00:26:06):

I do remember in earlier days of my career trying to get mixers to blend synth and orchestra with metal, and they just didn't seem to understand that you could have both existing and being powerful at the same time. The theory was if you make the orchestra louder, you're going to kill the guitars and what's metal without powerful guitars, and they're kind of right.

Speaker 2 (00:26:38):

Absolutely,

Speaker 1 (00:26:38):

Yeah, they're right. You need powerful guitars, and guitars do swallow a lot of the frequency range, but we know that it's completely possible to make it work.

Speaker 2 (00:26:50):

It is also because the problem is what you expect. If you expect to work with your usual template, with your usual workflow where you have the most powerful guitar sound, the most powerful drum sound, the most powerful everything except keyboards or orchestras, then of course you have to go towards huge compromises in the orchestra department

Speaker 1 (00:27:16):

To make decisions.

Speaker 2 (00:27:18):

But if you want the orchestra to be a protagonist in your music, then you have to accept that you can have the kill witch engage, or the same guitar sound as Kill witch engage or Shuga or whoever has a great very rich guitar sound or lamb of God. You can't have Lamb of God guitars and at the same time a huge symphonic orchestra behind it because it is not going to work anyway, even with the best producer in the world.

Speaker 1 (00:27:46):

So when you're working on your own stuff, on the flesh, God stuff, I mean the guitars are pretty intense, but do you feel like when those parts are put together, that's taken into consideration?

Speaker 2 (00:27:59):

A great producer who is experienced enough in this can make your guitars sound huge anyways because he will make sacrifices. He will reach compromises in the guitar sound, but without having you noticing it that much. If you take King y produced King, and that's a very heavily layered album.

Speaker 1 (00:28:23):

Yes, it is.

Speaker 2 (00:28:24):

Yeah, guitars there are simply different from any other purely metal band. They're not the same. It's guitar sound, but it's still a death metal. It's still a beautiful death metal sound, just he found ways to carve space for orchestra for, or castro instruments, even some sections, which are traditionally very hard to mix. He found a way to carve space. You also had him on now the mix, right, doing septic flesh several times. So he found very surgical ways to blend these apparently completely different and opposite world together, and it works wonderfully. Same for Jacob. Jacob, if you see, I don't even understand everything that happens inside his template because it's some stuff. It's just, I dunno what's going on, man. It's just insane. It is not like he's just putting, taking my stems and putting them on top of everything with a bit of reverb and eq. He's doing crazy things to the mix, and that's how it works. Even half db, even a few inches of anything of every single thing can make a difference altogether. So the right producer is the key.

Speaker 1 (00:29:51):

Do you think basically the approach, we're going to work with someone who actually knows how to deal with this stuff so we can go as crazy as we want, or are you thinking about how it's potentially going to work together when you've got the guitars versus the orchestra in the composition and arrangement phase

Speaker 2 (00:30:14):

Now today, after 10 years writing, doing this thing with flashcard, having heavy orchestral arrangements, heavily layered orchestral arrangements on extreme music, on metal music in general, I think that for sure I know now what will never work. I have enough experience to say that there are things that perhaps I was doing back in my early days and we were doing back then. We were convinced that some stuff that we were writing was in the final mix would have enough importance, but there are things that are impossible to blend together, or there are things that will never really shine in a metal mix

Speaker 1 (00:31:07):

No matter how much you want it to.

Speaker 2 (00:31:09):

No, I mean also sometimes it's counterintuitive with the orchestra is counterintuitive sometimes when you have so much stuff going on, if you have a blast beat and a complicated riff underneath and vocals and different layers of vocals, maybe it's a chorus, you think, yeah, maybe on this chorus, on this very open part, you imagine the orchestra being even louder, but perhaps it's just, it's even simpler maybe. Yeah, there's so much stuff going on, but in terms of details or in terms of things happening in specific registers, it is actually less stuff just because they're kind of completing each other sometimes. Some other times. It's a mixing thing that you have to take into consideration when you're producing an album. That's why now I still have few tricks for, I mean, very basic tricks that Y told me in the past when we were, because I mixed the orchestral version of King here in Italy, and he was kind enough to give us suggestions, and he was also kind enough to share some of the tricks he used also on the mix of the actual album.

(00:32:20):

So some of these tricks, I am still using them today. Very simple one, applying different kind of different amounts of reverb depending on the register that if it's more crowded or depending on the part of the song you're working on, so if it's more hectic or more bombastic or more dynamic or faster, maybe you apply different kind of reverb automations, different reverb sand. Depending on the section, you can also have some section. It can be also cool to have just earlier reflections and no tail just to get the kind of initial glue for the section, but then you don't have the annoying tail getting in the way of other instruments. That's one thing. Another thing is that we tend to write stuff with a project which has some basic mastering on top, and the orchestra is processed. Back in the days, we just used to put a bit of reverb, and that was it, because we weren't experienced enough. But now we have at least some knowledge to put some basic production chains on both the orchestral bus and all the metal sections, the metal instruments. So now I think our pre-production sound a bit closer than they used to be to the final product,

Speaker 1 (00:33:44):

So it's easier to understand how it'll work or not work.

Speaker 2 (00:33:49):

For sure. You have to produce to actually put something on top of everything, or at least the orchestra itself, because the orchestra itself is so dynamic and it's moving so much. If you look at the stems, even if all the instruments are playing really loud, it's the content there is so dynamic compared to distorted instruments, compared to sample drums and stuff like that, which is always so punchy that you have to kind of fight it and make it shine somehow. So a bit of multi-band compression EQ and limiting on the orchestra can help a lot giving the orchestra more presence and less dynamism, where otherwise you will just have to provide an insane and not human inhuman amount of automations. But automations are very useful, but they're not enough because the nature of the orchestral sound is very different, so you need a technological help, multi-band compression and standard compression, a bit of glue compression in my opinion, and limiting on the orchestral buzz makes a huge difference. I have students, because I also do, I give online lessons, and with some of them it's just that they dunno how to, they think the arrangement is wrong. There's something wrong in the arrangement, and sometimes it's just a mixing issue, and I just tell them, why don't you try with the trick or with this very cheap plugin or with some of the stock plugins from your DAW, try to do this, try to do that a couple of steps that always work,

Speaker 1 (00:35:33):

Because the nature of the way that the sound is produced, just the nature of these instruments is completely different. It's just you have one thing playing that has zero dynamics whatsoever, and it's just like a train that's going to destroy everything in its path, and then you have this other thing that is all dynamics, all natural, as powerful as it could be, it's going to get destroyed by that train if you don't help it,

Speaker 2 (00:36:06):

Or in some cases, if you get what you think it's a proper balance, then that balance is being destroyed and the next time, I dunno, low brass kick their natural volume, but the natural balance with the other instruments or also simply frequencies in orchestral instruments, they move so much, it's like each one of them is almost like a vocal stem. Vocal stems can move in terms of volume, but also frequencies. They change so much, and that's the same for orchestral instruments besides being very, there's so much different timbers, but also each timber in itself has so many different nuances, even in a matter of seconds and different techniques, that sounds completely different, so it's very difficult without any help from compression chain or something similar.

Speaker 1 (00:37:08):

I mean, that's one of the reasons that if you look at a vocal stem, a process, vocal stem, oftentimes it's going to look like a complete square. If you look at it, it's a brick. Yeah, it's just like a fucking wall, and then you hear it, and it doesn't sound like a distorted piece of shit. It looks like a distorted piece of shit, but you just kind of need to do that kind of stuff to vocals because of how dynamic the human voice is.

Speaker 2 (00:37:41):

Of course, and you can't expect to treat the orchestra alone as you would do when the orchestra is on. The part is on the song. It's a different story. I remember once we were producing King and Yz was sending test mixes for each song, and there was this song where there's this orchestral break. It's a very simple one. He probably forgot, or he didn't think about kind of loosening the overall amount of compression that he put on the orchestra or on subsection of it, some sections of it. So the whole part was supposed to be kind of a drop dynamically. You have just the whole band, the full band, then all of a sudden just orchestra, but kind of a mellow sounding buildup, starting from a very low level and then building up into getting the band back on again. But man, it was just the first bars were just double bases and some subtle percussions, and they sounded like fucking, like a manover concert that they were completely, they sounded completely squashed because that's how he would make the orchestra sound right on the record.

(00:39:06):

Even if it's completely, let's say, destroyed dynamically, you don't notice that because there's so much stuff going on and eating all the transient, so you hear it as a beautiful thing and something which is embracing everything on the song. Then when it's alone, my note was just, okay, that part is not right at all. Just take away some whatever you did to the orchestra, and then it sounded right, but at first it was scared. I was scared even because it was, wow, is it sounding like that on the song? It was insane, but the important thing in a mix is how things sound together, how you perceive them together. It's a mix.

Speaker 1 (00:39:53):

Yeah. I think a lot of people forget that it's called a mix for a reason.

Speaker 2 (00:39:58):

Yeah. That's the problem with, yeah, I have these huge guitar sound and I want to keep it, but at the same time, I want the same symphonic arrangements as DM O or Epica. That's not going to work. It's just like that. You have to find ways to carve each sound into another one. You can't just blend two beautiful and incredibly rich things together without sacrificing or crat or finding a way to make them coexist. That's the problem.

Speaker 1 (00:40:32):

Yeah. One of the things that I love about dmu, I've pointed this out for instance, about Death Cult Armageddon many times, is I love the way that album sounds always have. I think it's great. I love the way it's written. I love the way it sounds, but if you listen closely, the guitar sound is not huge, and the guitar parts themselves are oftentimes very simple. They're exactly what they need to be in order to allow the orchestra to shine. It's very, very well written. It's not this insane guitar playing. I mean, some of it is pretty fast, but overall it's very well designed for an orchestra to work with it and blast beats.

Speaker 2 (00:41:21):

Yeah. Also because Yo, that was Nicholas Barker, right?

Speaker 1 (00:41:26):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:41:26):

Yeah. And who mixed it? Frederick Nordstrom. Yeah, absolutely. Beautiful, beautiful mix. And his ney did the following one, right?

Speaker 1 (00:41:40):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's what it's called. He's great too. All those guys. All those guys are great.

Speaker 2 (00:41:45):

It was great. We were trying to find interviews during the production of Labrinth. I remember us snooping for interviews and hints from Andy's er on forums and yeah, good luck. Yeah. Yeah, it was back then. I mean, nowadays, I think what's really amazing all these times is thanks to people like you guys or other people around the internet, there's so much information available compared to when I started, which was, yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:42:22):

I know, man. All we had was the Andy Snee forum, and every once in a while he would make a very simple post with almost no info. It would be stuff like, yeah, just add a little distortion to the base. Sounds great.

Speaker 2 (00:42:41):

Essential.

Speaker 1 (00:42:43):

I mean, yeah, if you've never put distortion on a base and you're mixing metal, then that's going to be a breakthrough thing. But his tips were like one or two sentences always, man, that's all that was available, and that actually helped me a lot. Even that helped me a lot. It was more than nothing, but yeah, now you can really learn how to do this stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:43:07):

Besides that, I still think that there's maybe because it's a niche, but it's actually amazing because there are so many big bands doing that. Blending symphonic with a rock or metal. I mean, there's so much about, I dunno, camper profiles, which is great, of course, but there's so little for actual tutorials, videos or I dunno, books or stuff, resources in general for proper ones, at least for symphonic metal or symphonic rock. That's why people sometimes are kind of desperate, and that's why I get at times so many students because they're like, Hey, but I couldn't find anything on this topic. It's weird. In a way,

Speaker 1 (00:43:56):

It's one of actually my goals for next year is to add quite a bit of that stuff. Part of it, man, is that there's not that many people who do it. Well.

Speaker 2 (00:44:05):

Yeah, probably

Speaker 1 (00:44:07):

There's a lot more people who do KERA profiles. Well, that's one. Two, there's not as many people who make the kind of music two. I mean, there's a lot, but just not as many, and there's just less, and then not every band is as cool as you guys or Septic Flesh. Some of these bands that do this stuff act like they're the fucking CIA or something and don't want anything to do with them shown to any students or the public whatsoever. They're not cool with it, and so it makes it harder. I really appreciate that you guys allowed the violation on now, the mix. It's really cool that Septic Flesh allowed us to do that stuff, and believe me, if we were able to get more of the great orchestral metal bands, we would, they're not all philosophically into it, or maybe I haven't approached them the right way,

Speaker 2 (00:45:08):

Maybe.

Speaker 1 (00:45:09):

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(00:46:10):

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Speaker 2 (00:47:42):

Yeah, our best attempt to towards something like that, touring with an ensemble was wiped out by COVID. So last year we had that string acquainted tour in the us, but it was canceled because of the pandemic. But yeah, full, full symphonic ensemble. I doubt there's, unless you're a Hans Zimmer, I think that's,

Speaker 1 (00:48:11):

It's not going to happen.

Speaker 2 (00:48:13):

That's once in a lifetime, or if there's a huge production like demo did it for at vCAN, if there's a huge production, a huge budget behind it, septic Flesh did it in Mexico a couple of years ago, three years ago,

Speaker 1 (00:48:26):

But these are one-time events.

Speaker 2 (00:48:28):

Yeah, yeah. One-time events touring is, I doubt there's an option for that besides bringing some smaller ensembles at this level, at least when it comes to playing. What we did was at first, when agony came out, since it was the orchestra was pretty intense, and the orchestra arrangements, I mean, so I decided to double with a keyboard strings patch to double as much as I could of a string parts. Of course, that's not always possible. Sometimes it's absolutely not human for the keyboard. I had to reduce the parts to what was humanly possible, and of course, all the rest, all the time. We have stereo baking tracks, of course, because it's the only way you can deliver also a realistic orchestral sounds sound live, because there's no way I could replicate the programming of what I did with samples using a keyboard. Even if I used the same libraries, which I don't do it, but I used just a plastic key keyboard sound back then, and we would blend it with the baking tracks, but there's no way to, even if with the most advanced sample libraries, you can't, unless even if you're really, really a great piano player, you can't really exactly replicate the accuracy and all the nuances of what you programmed on your project.

(00:50:03):

Doubling can be a key doubling. I think if you take Nightwish, the keyboard player from Nightwish, he's basically doubling the string part with an orchestral patch from his keyboard, and when he's not playing piano in some other times, he has a dedicated part like me. Now, at some point, we decided that since we have the upright piano on stage, I have this fancy keyboard stand, the fanciest and heaviest keyboard stand on the planet. We decided that we will bring the piano, like a piano part all over the song. So we decided that I would play the piano. I will record a piano part, which has an independent part. Sometimes I'm doubling orchestral parts or string some other parts. Some other times I'm doubling guitars with that. The piano is a beautiful instrument because you can explore so many different atmospheres, and all the registers you have, the widest extension there is, so I can double with a very loud, ominous and metallic piano parts, whatever he's happening in the guitar department or the bass department.

(00:51:20):

Some other times I use it as some kind of shimmering tool to add some high end with arpeggios or some kind of a music box effect. Some other times I just play chords if it's cool. So I do a number of things which are sometimes completely unrelated and independent, but there are more on the live aspect of the show. So if there's a piano part, people can see, can actually see me playing it, and as I'm playing something completely different compared to the orchestra, the orchestra is doing its own thing and I'm doing my own thing. I'm a musician on stage with a piano, and it's like a piano concerto concept in a way. So I'm not doubling strings anymore. I'm just playing an independent piano part, which is, I think we are the only death metal band with a,

Speaker 1 (00:52:14):

Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2 (00:52:15):

Yeah. I think that there's no other death metal band or extreme metal band with a full complete piano part from the beginning of the song to the end. Pretty much. It's an old fashioned or almost jazzy concept, but we found it works because piano can be a beautiful color, can add some beautiful textures or aggressiveness, more punch to guitars. If you blend it, if you really smash on the keyboard, it can produce quite a metallic sound, which is cool for, you can hear it in a horror scores, for example, very often. So piano is capable of beautiful things, and that's how we use it.

Speaker 1 (00:53:00):

There's not that many actual piano players in metal to begin with

Speaker 2 (00:53:05):

Piano or pure piano? No,

Speaker 1 (00:53:07):

No. There's a lot of people that play keyboards, which is a different kind of thing

Speaker 2 (00:53:13):

With the piano sound,

Speaker 1 (00:53:15):

With a piano sound or some weird video game from the eighties sound, but actual pianists, that almost doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 (00:53:25):

It's a concept we incorporate because it blends. I mean, it's the only way to incorporate a keyboardist within an ensemble, which is pretending to play classical music with electric guitars. It wouldn't make sense for me to have an extent and have a Yamaha motive or a nor lead keyboard on stage. Also, visually, I mean, if you understand what I mean here, it wouldn't make sense. It would be ridiculous because we are dressed as Victorian old fashioned. We have these costumes resembling people from the past who are dead and resurrected and started playing music with classical music in a modern way, and so the only way to have me on stage would have been to incorporate that decadent imagery, imagery on the instrument as well. That's why we have the upright piano shell because it blends so well with the image of the band, and that's why we are thinking of building a portable structure that we can bring with us on flights to have a piano case. Also, when we have festivals and we have to fly there because otherwise there's no option. I just have a keyboard with an extent, and I cover the extent in the front with a black blanket or something. It's the only way. So we are thinking about bringing this important.

Speaker 1 (00:55:04):

I think that's cooler.

Speaker 2 (00:55:06):

It would be much better. Also visual because it's an important, philosophically speaking, the piano has such an important role in our music. Also, we have every title track in our album since the beginning in our albums, the title track, bringing the name of the album was the Last Track, and it was a piano piece since Oracles, so it's even philosophically speaking, the piano and it's decadent image related to classical music so heavily related to classical music. It's just a must for us. We have to find a way to avoid using extens and keyboards in the future. So we're thinking about this crazy portable shell divided in one or two luggages or more, so we can kind of build it up and hide the keyboard inside it when we play, when fly to the festival or whatever. That

Speaker 1 (00:56:11):

Sounds really cool actually, and it makes perfect sense. It would be incomplete also to have only part of the band look a certain way. The whole thing needs to have the vibe that you're going for.

Speaker 2 (00:56:25):

Yeah, I think so too. We think so too. So that's why we started with piano and with this obsession with piano position to keyboards, of course, because that's also why we don't, don't use synth or keyboard sounds in our music because it wouldn't make sense with the image. So live, it's the same thing. We just have these stereo baking tracks with the full arrangement. As realistic as it is on the record, we try to incorporate that with this decadent image of an aright piano and me playing it. So it's an image thing primarily.

Speaker 1 (00:57:07):

Image matters, man. It really, really does. What I'm curious about is I'm just wondering, have you actually fucked around ever with period instruments or listened to them? So say when a modern orchestra will get only brass instruments from the 17 hundreds via old shit and then try to use it to play. Have you ever heard what that sounds like?

Speaker 2 (00:57:35):

No, I've never personally, I've never had the chance to experiment with those.

Speaker 1 (00:57:41):

It's a disaster.

Speaker 2 (00:57:42):

Yeah, I believe, I mean also because some of the, since you mentioned brass, but brass back then weren't as well developed as they are today, or at least from the post romantic period. So it was impossible for them to play specific parts like the ones that you have today, right, from modern composers from the late 19th century or early 20th century, and then from then on would be impossible for French horn player from the Mozart times to play parts, a modern French horn parts because they just had a limited set of intervals. They didn't have valves to control them.

Speaker 1 (00:58:32):

What I wonder about that time period is when I hear the period instruments, everything sounds so out of tune, so shitty compared to what I'm used to. What I wonder is if back then they also thought that it was out of tune or if that it was just this is what they had. It was normal. Nobody thought anything of it.

Speaker 2 (00:58:55):

The problem is that our tuning system, the tuning system that we take for granted now, the equal tempered system, it is pretty much like a convention because for decades, for centers, not only for decades, there has been a huge debate for having to allow everyone in Europe first, then all over the world to have the same tuning system. So there were different tuning systems back then where the 4,440 ERs was just, that's a convention we have, and that's something that at some point, everyone decided to use. But back then there were different tuning systems for the end because the tuning system that the so-called overtones, now I'm thinking about the Italian term.

Speaker 1 (00:59:50):

What is the Italian term?

Speaker 2 (00:59:53):

Ani? The Overtone series.

Speaker 1 (00:59:55):

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:59:55):

The overtones series. The overtone series. It's mathematically in physics, that's not something that mathematically makes. You can't really have perfect mathematical intervals. You have to kind of squeeze

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):

Massage, squeeze some of them, massage them,

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):

Some of them, into a well-defined system, which acts according to very, very strict rules. I mean, that's a really, really huge thing to talk about. But to keep things simple, let's say that it's perfectly normal. If you think of, probably if you really actually listen to some pieces that you're listening today from the back era, for example, with a period instrument, with a period clavier a chord, or with a period ensemble using period instruments, it will probably sound so different and probably bad in some ways for our ears.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):

It's very, very hard to listen to. So speaking of tuning, I know ever tune is a new thing. I mean, not so new, but it's still new, right? In the past 10 years, does the tuning of guitars or the lack thereof bother you when you're working on these orchestral arrangements? Just the fact that guitars don't really want to be in tune?

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):

Yeah, that can be bothering at times. That's something that when we start sketching and recording, when we are in the middle of the pre-production process, we always keep an eye on also, because we are kind of fanatics of these kind of things. When you're starting, probably that's not incredibly evident when you listen to guitars, distorted guitars alone, especially if you have very heavy and complicated, but

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):

It's easy to miss.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):

It's easy to miss. But as soon as you start putting perfectly tuned samples, which are even more in tune compared to real ensembles, even if they're really good, but samples, typically, they tend to be perfectly, I mean, not all the libraries, but most of the libraries, they tend to have perfect tuning, as really sharp tuning. That's something that when you start putting keyboards or orchestral samples or other electronic instruments on over guitars, which are not perfectly in tune, that's a problem. You can definitely hear even very softly. That's something is off, and that becomes even more evident when you have melodic lines, especially if they're simple. When you have those bands and those powerful solos on top of orchestral bed, then if the guitars are not perfectly in tuned, then you have a problem. The solo would sound ugly, even if it's the best soul in the world. So

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):

I feel like then it even makes it harder to mix. Well,

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):

Yeah, probably.

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):

Well, because something just sounds off about it, so it's hard to judge what you're listening to because no matter what you do, it sounds wrong,

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):

Even

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):

If it's not wrong. I always found that to be the most frustrating thing about blending guitars with anything else besides bass. Even that is a pain in the ass. But anytime you start to blend other instruments with guitar, that becomes a huge challenge. One of the ways that I got around it before Evert Tune existed was to program a synth bass first, then track the guitars on top of the synth bass, because then you have a perfect reference for it. Because tracking guitars alone, I know a lot of people do guitars first, but it's really easy to just not, like we said, just not notice, especially low tunings. It's just harder. It's harder for the ear to decipher it, or sometimes it even sounds kind of cool when one guitar is just a little bit off from the other one. If that's all you're hearing, the moment you start adding other things, it just becomes a pile of shit. So I've just noticed that by programming the synth pace first, just it makes it impossible. Well, not impossible, but it makes it, if you're listening, it makes it impossible to have auto tune guitars because they'll sound like shit. And then from that point forward, then it makes life a lot easier with adding everything else

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):

During. When we track, typically we have at least the orchestral sketch, but you're right, the most typical scenario is when you have your guitar, in our case, Francesco and Fabio, Francesco Paoli and Fabio or guitar player, they're tracking together, but Fabio is doing most of the job, and of course when he's tracking, he keeps guitars at a very, very loud level for himself to record. He can't really have a nice blend of orchestra vocals or other things. So probably you're right, if you do double tracking, I believe with the last two releases, we double tracked, double tracked, both guitars left, right? So it was for guitars in total, you have a little bit of chorus effect, so that can soften or at least hide some tuning problems sometimes. But they're still there. And the problem is you go on for hours and you lose the sense of pitch a little bit. You think that you're perfectly in tuned. Then you start listening everything at a proper volume, and you realize that, especially stuff like sustained power chords, when you get like, okay, we have this big soaring solo with a lot of strings and choir. Then you hear the power chord, a simple power chord, and it's out of tune, and you're like, wow, it's the simplest thing in the world, and it sounds like fucking shit. Absolutely, 100%, and you have to redo it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):

Well, I can tell you, man, when tracking guitars, you have to be hearing so detailed because distorted guitar, there's so much noise and every little thing you do is going to get heard. You need to really, really be able to hear what you're doing when you're tracking. So that's not fucked up. But what that means also is you can't have everything else that loud. I mean, if you track with drums loud, it might feel cool while you're doing it. You might have more fun, but you're not going to be able to hear all the little details that make a difference. So I know a lot of guitar players who will track just to a click, and it's because that's the only way that they can really, really hear all the nuance. But if you're tracking just to a click, it is a lot easier to end up with really tight out of tune tracks, which is just a disaster. When

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):

I have to track piano or I have to track when I record my medias, for some of them I write, some of them I play when I have some stuff that it's taking some benefit from being playing live, I play it, and then I adjust everything with the sample library. But typically I just solo the track and I play it with a click because I'm playing very dynamic instruments and having other instruments on top can distract me easily. I don't have tuning problems though, so I mean, unless you're using a real piano all the time. I was going to say. But if you're using samples or if you're using, there are stunning piano libraries nowadays. So it's when I have a very tight lead line, I rarely record on real pianos. Also, because there's so much stuff, like in our music, it's much more flexible.

(01:08:26):

I can decide, okay, maybe I can switch to another sound because if I record on a beautiful grand piano, but then I have takes and everything is there, I can't tweak it. But there's to a certain amount, but there's no full flexibility. So we prefer to use samples most of the times because if I don't blame you, if I need a puncher sound at some point I can even switch to another piano sound. If I want to tweak it or change the micing in real time, in no time like this, just in a matter of clicks, I can do it. If I want to adjust dynamics, if I want to increase dynamics, some point to get a nester piano sound, a punchier piano sound, I can do it. I can just re-export everything and resend it to the producer. So it's almost impossible for us, for our sound to use our real piano, both live and in studio it would be maybe if you have a ballad, it's a different thing. If you have a piano sonata, like the title track, it's a different thing. But when it comes to playing piano on the song, absolutely there's nothing can beat samples for our music.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):

Makes sense. So we're almost out of time. We have some questions from the listeners that I'd love to ask you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):

Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):

Okay. First question from Jo Vitor, how would you practice orchestrations as a beginner? How to start and what are the main points to pay attention to when you're still very fresh? Should I try to rewrite songs I like from scratch and midi as practice?

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):

The answer to the last part of the question is yes, absolutely writing, listening to a lot of music and trying to recreate and study what other composers or musicians that you like, that you love, that you cherish did before you, because that's the best way to learn. You can study a lot of theory, a lot of books, but there's nothing as useful as active listening, and especially when it comes to creating orchestration. There's nothing such as recreating music that you like so dynamically the flow, the language, and the actual what's happening that if you start doing that for sure, it will help nowadays compared to what it was back in the days where you just had very complicated textbooks and a few forums. Nowadays, there's so much to, also, my suggestion is not, don't get discouraged from the complexity of the topic, but try to learn. There's so many resources on orchestral music. There are great channels. I think one of the most straightforward when it comes to orchestral programming for specific kinds of music of course, but epic music game scores and stuff like that. There's a guy, he's a guy, he's originally from Italy and he's called Alex Alala. I dunno if you know him.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):

I do not.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):

He is the biggest YouTuber. He has the biggest channel and the biggest number of subscribers if you search. He's absolutely amazing at explaining complex things. In simple terms, I think that anybody can start writing after just watching a few videos of him explaining things. But most important, try to put out music. Try to practice writing active listening and writing. Writing stuff will make you realize that after a while you will look back at your early steps and you will realize that they probably suck unless you're a complete genius. But in my case, if I look back at some of the stuff that I did back in the days, I'm horrified. But that's part of the process. You have to practice creativity and composition as much as you practice guitar or piano or any other instrument.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):

Great answer question from Danny Saer, which is, how do you keep yourself from overdoing it to the point where it detracts from the song rather than enhances it?

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):

That's really difficult. One of the most difficult things that you can try to overcome, and that comes in my opinion with experience, musical taste in composition, orchestration and in general, anything that prevents you from overdoing is something that if you have this tendency to overdo, even with guitar, you can be maybe a great guitarist, but maybe you tend to do so many things that can become annoying or distracting and you lose the focus. The focus, I think the focus is always the song and the flow that you want to create within the song. In terms of orchestration, my suggestion is try to start from what you really want to hear first in the foreground. Then try to build a sketch out of that simple idea using maybe the instrument that you had in mind at first or experimenting and adding maybe just a chord sketch to it.

(01:13:57):

And then when you have the bigger picture, try to carve all the details later. But first, try to build the structure of your progression, song, chorus, composition, whatever, have at least even partially, but a bigger or horizontal picture in mind and try to define it. Then when it comes to properly orchestrate everything, then you will probably change things and change all the details, even in the composition itself, even in melodies or chord. But start with something which is not just, don't focus on the same five seconds of music unless they sound perfect to you. Because then at some point you will realize you don't know how to go further. Try to write more music first, the basic structure, and then build on top of everything. It's like you don't want to build a house starting from the rooftop. You want to start from the bottom. So it's the same thing

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):

And it's the same way that illustrators will start with a pencil outline

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):

Or

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):

Composers used to. It's difficult. Write on the piano before they would orchestrate.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):

It's difficult because you think of orchestration like something incredibly complex and you want it to be amazing as the things that you hear outside right from the start. But don't be tempted to do that. To focus on three 10 seconds of music only for days. Just go on, try to brainstorm, try to build a structure first.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):

Alright. Question from Derek Ryan. How much music theory do you use when composing? Do you have to follow those laws of melody?

Speaker 2 (01:15:40):

Music theory is, I thought music theory was much more important when I started, but I think Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. Creativity is everything. Developing your own language is the most important thing, but music theory is absolutely useful. It's an essential tool to achieve something. Stuff that is really complex with orchestration. You can't really emulate the sound of some of the best composers from nowadays or from the past without knowing music theory at a good or great level or even even more. But there's also the avoid just focusing for years, just obsessively focusing on theory because maybe you think that without all that theory or all those textbooks, you can't do anything of value. Some of the most beautiful music in rock music, if I think of rock music there comes from people, or even metal comes from people who has knowledge.

(01:16:55):

No music, not academic, proper music and knowledge. They just follow their instinct. Even some composers, great composers, some of the most famous ones. If you think of Hans Zimmer, he started with a basic theoretical knowledge. He's not the fanciest music theorist out there, but he's one of the best composers that ever lived and nowadays he's one of the greatest composers we have. He's different from John Williams or Alan Sylvester or others. But the important thing is developing your own language, not obsessively studying textbooks before putting anything. Just practice composition, practice creativity. Again, it's the same concept.

Speaker 1 (01:17:39):

I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard that also Danny Elman didn't start as a big theory guy. I could be completely wrong, I don't think he did.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):

He was able to brighten read music for many years. People said he was a hammer. So in Hollywood a hammer composer was just humming melodies to a proper composer or orchestrator that I don't think that's the case because I don't think that's true. No, because he said that his lack of knowledge, he was just getting there with experience and with time he got there, of course, he was helped by amazing people like Steve Bartek, who is his orchestrator for since the beginning because they played together. He's a guitar player, but he's also an amazing orchestrator. But at the same time, I know that Mann said that he spent hours and how countless hours on the keyboard trying to experiment with all the different sections and studying. So I think that you don't have to be a music professor to start to write good orchestration. You can have even a basic musical knowledge. Basic musical theory is fine and is welcome of course and will be better to have it. But don't be discouraged by the fact that there's people out there with crazy diplomas or degrees or with a clear academic path, which in theory, they know more than you because maybe they write worse. They can't write good music. That's the problem,

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):

Man. When I went to Berkeley, some of the professors of arrangement in theory wrote the worst music I've ever heard in my entire life. And I mean they were PhD level with their technical musical knowledge. But Francesco, I think this is a good place to end it. I want to thank you very much for taking the time to hang out. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):

Thanks to you. It was a really, really interesting chat like the last time, I think. Even better this time

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):

It was.

Speaker 2 (01:19:58):

So I'm looking forward to the next time.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):

Likewise, man. Likewise. Thank you. Alright then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post some of your Facebook and Instagram or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levi URM audio at URM Academy, and of course tag our guest as well. I mean, they really do appreciate it. In addition, do you have any questions for me about anything? Email them to [email protected]. That's EYAL at M dot aca, DEMY. And use the subject line answer me Al. Alright then. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.